Sunset Bridge (27 page)

Blake rejoined her.

“Sorry.”

“Something come up?”

“There’s always something. I’m getting regular reports on the storm. People are starting to worry. It looks like we’re going to get hit.”

“Take my word for it, it won’t amount to anything. Too late in the year.”

“Did you know they’ve revised the hurricane season a couple of times over the decades? It gets longer and longer, stretching into November now, and who knows how long it’ll be in a couple of years. The water’s staying warm later. Phyllis might surprise you. I think she’s surprising the meteorologists.”

“I guess it’s your job to worry.”

He smiled, but with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm. “I’m afraid so. In fact, I’m not going to be very good company tonight. Would you mind too much if I take a rain check on dinner? I’ve got to pick up some papers for a colleague and get them over to his hotel, then we’re going to make some phone calls.”

“Not a problem. Where are the papers? I can drive with you to get them, if that saves you time.”

“No, they’re at my house. I’ll just take you back.”

She had driven to Blake’s and parked so he wouldn’t have to make the trip out to her end of the key. She held out her
hand for the scorecard and checked it. “You’re ahead. But not by much. Give me one more hole to catch up, then let’s call it a night.”

He leaned over and kissed her. Not casually, but not with inordinate enthusiasm, either. “You’re easy to be around. I was looking forward to getting to know you much better tonight.”

She smiled, glad, then, that the date was ending. She wasn’t ready for “much better,” and now she wouldn’t have to remind him.

She didn’t catch up to his score, but by the end of their last hole, she wasn’t so far behind that she had to hang her head. They turned in their clubs and balls at the little stand, and headed for Blake’s car.

On the trip home they chatted, but only intermittently. Clearly his mind was elsewhere. After he parked, they both got out, and she went around to his side to say goodbye. She knew something was bothering him.

“Can a tropical storm do that much damage?” she asked. “Enough to delay your project or make you rework your plans?”

“Anything’s possible, and that’s what worries us You can bet the odds all you want, but sometimes, no matter what they are, they’ll go against you.” He rested his hands on her shoulders. “I had fun, even with the phone calls. I owe you dinner.”

“Not to worry. When things settle down.”

She kissed him lightly on the lips, then raised a hand in farewell. He didn’t linger and headed right for the house. As she walked toward her car, which was parked on the side of the road so as not to block his driveway, she watched Blake out of the corner of her eye. He didn’t go to the front door
and use a key to get into the beach house. He went to the garage door and raised his hand to the door frame. She realized he was punching a code into a keypad at the side, because after a moment, the door slid open.

She wondered if the keypad had been programmed before he moved in, or if he had programmed it himself with a code he could easily remember. A birth date, the last four digits of his social security number. Numbers a cop could get hold of with very little effort. Numbers that would probably show up on the report her friend was supposed to fax her tonight.

She slid behind her steering wheel and thrust her key in the ignition. One thing was perfectly clear about her date with Blake. She had set out to learn more about him, but for every question she had asked, he had asked two. Perhaps he was just a polite guy with a real interest in people.

Or perhaps he wasn’t.

The rest of the evening dragged. Maggie filled the time by vacuuming up cat hair and cleaning out the refrigerator, but by the time the clock struck eleven, she was glad it was time to go to bed. She was pulling on her nightgown when the telephone rang. She didn’t even check caller ID. She was so bored she was willing to talk to a telemarketer.

Of course, the man on the other end of the line was the person she was both most and least happy to have a conversation with right before going to bed.

“Felo,” she said. She couldn’t think of another thing to say.

“I figured you’d be up,” he said. “Wasn’t sure you’d be home.”

She pondered that for a moment, then told the truth. “There’s nobody here I’d want to stay out late with.”

He didn’t pick up the cue. “Well, I’m glad you’re there. I have some information you’ll want.”

She felt a stab of disappointment. So the call wasn’t personal, but what had she expected? She had yet to respond to the bombshell Felo had delivered in the bar at Pelican Point. She seemed incapable of dealing with it. These days she was like a tree that had been cut down, only to send out new shoots in every direction. She couldn’t let go of what she’d believed. She couldn’t simply trust Felo again. She had been wrong about Alvaro, as well as Felo’s own reasons for asking her not to confront Paul Smythe, but there was so much more. Anger that he was pressuring her to become a wife and mother. Confusion about who she was when she was with him, and who she was when they were apart.

“You got my messages?” she asked.

“Right. I’m glad I have voice mail, since you’re good at calling when you know I won’t be able to pick up.”

She didn’t protest, because it was true. “I don’t know what to say to you,” she said, which was also true.

“Let’s just concentrate on this case right now. Alvaro’s been able to get some interesting information about the dice and that slot machine bank you faxed the photo of. Good thing you found it. The dice were a limited edition of two thousand. The bank was a limited edition of three hundred. And guess whose name was on both lists? One of the highest of the high rollers?”

She had a feeling she knew. The very man who tonight had talked about playing the odds. The one who had claimed to be lucky and wealthy. The one who had so casually asked her what she’d discovered recently about the murders. The one who had told her, on their first date, that he and his partners had just returned from Las Vegas. He’d made some joke
about it, but even then she had wondered idly if he was one of those guys who really
didn’t
go to Vegas for the shows and the camaraderie.

“Blake Armstrong?” she asked.

“Dead on. How did you know?”

She was silent for a long moment. Felo let the silence build.

Maggie finally broke it. She told him about her suspicion that Harit had been Blake’s barber, though unacknowledged, then told him what else she knew.

“Nice of you to keep me up to date,” he said once she had finished.

“I’m sorry, but all we really know now is that Blake is a gambler, and he probably gave Harit Dutta the dice and the bank, most likely for his children. Little gifts he happened to have on hand.”

“Seems likely.”

“I can’t figure out how or why they’re connected, though. Harit had no money for gambling. And I checked with the manager at the barber shop. He didn’t recognize Blake’s name.”

“You asked him directly?”

“Did. Of course, it’s possible Blake was one of Harit’s private clients, but unless he was just a walk-in who paid cash, the manager should have recognized his name. Harit paid the shop what they were owed for those clients, even though he didn’t have to.”

“Is it possible Armstrong was referred to Harit by somebody else, another customer maybe, so Harit saw no need to pay the shop for someone who never would have gone there in the first place?”

Maggie had been standing, but now she found a chair and
lowered herself into it. Rumba jumped up on her lap, and she stroked the cat as she wondered how she could have missed that possibility herself. Now it seemed so obvious.

“I didn’t think of that,” she admitted, although she didn’t want to. “It’s definitely possible.”

“That’s why the Lone Ranger had Tonto, Mags.” He moved on quickly, as if he knew she wouldn’t appreciate the reminder. “Even if it’s true, that’s a long leap—from cutting hair to murder victim.”

“Right. Maybe they met when Harit cut Blake’s hair, but what would that have to do with his death?”

“Probably nothing.”

“No, Felo, I think this is something. Blake knows I’m looking into the case. He asked me about it tonight.”

“You were with him?”

“Twelve holes of miniature golf, then something came up. He kept getting phone calls. He dropped me back at his house so I could get my car and come home. Something to do with the tropical storm, he said. Work stuff.”

Felo was all business. “You said he knows you’re looking into the case.”

“I told him a while ago. And he asked me about it tonight, but he’s never admitted Harit was his barber, or that he even knew him. But he
did
know him. Harit’s children have the toys to prove it.”

“Not a slam dunk, Mags. We could be missing something else—probably are.”

“I don’t know where to go from here. I need some kind of connection between the men. Right now I don’t know any reason why Blake would have been involved in the Duttas’ murders. They were from completely different worlds.”

“Maybe Armstrong gave
Mrs.
Dutta the toys for her children. Maybe they were having an affair.”

She wondered, but it didn’t feel right. “I guess it’s possible, but Janya says Kanira Dutta had no family, no friends, no resources. When would she have gotten away from those kids to have an affair? How would she and Blake even have met?”

“We need more information about Armstrong. What he’s been doing in his free time. Who his friends are, if he has any locally. Anything suspicious in his past. Anything shady going on with his personal and work life.”

“I tried to ask questions tonight, but for every one I asked, he asked two.”

“That’s not a good thing. Maybe he’s aware you’re on to something. Maybe he’s checking
you
out.”

“I told him I hadn’t found anything, and that it was likely the deaths were exactly what the police said they were.”

“You need to be careful.”

Maggie still couldn’t believe that Blake Armstrong—fun, transparent Blake—had anything to do with the murders. Were she and Felo grasping at straws? Were there perfectly good explanations for everything that bothered them? But one thing she had learned from her years on the force—sociopaths were perfectly capable of lying without detection.

“I noticed tonight he has a keypad on his garage door,” she said. “It might not be too hard to get in.”

“Stay out of his house. You’re not a cop anymore, remember? And if you were, no judge would give you a search warrant based on the little you have. You don’t even carry a gun, Mags. You gave it back, along with your badge. Don’t take chances.”

“You’re right,” she said, because he was. Although that didn’t mean she was going to listen.

“We’ll figure out the connection,” Felo said. “If there is one. But back off for now, okay? Look like you’ve given up. We need to sit down together and see what we can come up with, before you go any further.”

Despite herself, a part of her was warmed by that possibility, even though another part was annoyed that he felt she required his assistance. “Sit down together?”

“I don’t like this storm. Phyllis has been erratic from the beginning. And now she’s heading your way. The water’s warmer than usual this time of year, and that could lead to anything. Why don’t you get out of town. Your mother will close the shop, and she won’t need you.”

“You want me to come all the way to Miami because of a wimpy tropical storm?”

“Why take a chance? And not Miami. Meet me at Alvaro’s camp. That’s where I’ll be.”

Alvaro’s camp was halfway between, in the middle of nowhere, but inland. If Phyllis really did make it to hurricane status, the camp wouldn’t be a bad place to wait it out. Because he was in the middle of a swamp, Alvaro had a generator, his own water supply, enough food for weeks. Not a bad place at all.

Particularly if Felo was there.

“Is Alvaro there?” she asked.

“No.”

“Will he
be
there?”

“Maybe. Does that matter?”

She considered. If she said no, that was a gift to Felo, a sign she was sorry about her doubts, that she trusted his word. It said that despite all her previous misgivings, she was willing to accept the truth that his old friend and partner was more good guy than bad.

If she said yes, then she wondered if Felo would simply write her off for good.

“You know what they say about three being a crowd,” she said instead.

“I know what they say about a lot of things.”

She couldn’t go deeper, couldn’t concede. “I’ll think it over, Felo. I need to check with Mom, see if Tracy needs my help getting things done around here in preparation. I’ll let you know.”

He didn’t argue; instead he changed the subject. “I’m sending you an email with an attachment. The two lists from the casino and something even more damning. You’ll see when you get it.”

She didn’t want to hang up. But she didn’t know what to say to keep the conversation going.

“Let me know one way or other whether you’re coming,” Felo said.

“I will. And thank you for doing all this legwork.” She paused. “Will you thank Alvaro for me?”

“Maybe you can do that yourself.” He hung up.

Maggie held the phone against her cheek for a long moment. Then she replaced it in the cradle and went to her computer. She turned it on and waited until it had booted up, then she tried going on the internet, to see if the cable company really had repaired her connection.

Surprisingly, they had. She downloaded her mail, then found Felo’s email and downloaded the attachment so she could print it out.

It consisted of three parts. The two lists, and a copy of both the back and front of a player’s card from the Atlantis Casino with Blake’s name and photo. There was a note at the bottom from Felo: