“So, how is Charlie?” Kerry asked.
Bud turned his eyes from Dar’s simmering form. “He got hit all over. They ripped his prosthesis off. Belted him in the kidney.
That’s the bitch. He’s had problems with that one.”
Dar tapped him on the knee. “This place taken care of?” She indicated the hospital.
Bud straightened. “I ain’t looking for no handout,” he snapped at her. “We’re fine.”
Dar leaned closer to him and narrowed her eyes. “If I have to, I can dial into this place and find out if you’ve got insurance or not, so just answer the damn question and don’t give me a hard time.”
Bud’s eyes dropped.
“That’s what I thought.” Dar stood up. “Okay. I’ve had it. That stupid mother bastard DeSalliers is so damned convinced I’m a part of this, he’s gonna get what he asked for.” She put her hands on her hips. “Can we see Charlie?”
Bud looked like the subject changes were giving him whiplash.
He put his hand on his jaw. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Good,” Dar said. “You got a place to stay out here?”
Bud shook his head.
“Rufus taken care of?”
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“Yeah. He’s staying with a buddy.”
Kerry pulled a slip of paper out of her pocket and got up, heading for a nearby pay phone. “I’ll call the hotel,” she told Dar.
“You want me to start calling around to find our friend Bob?”
“Wait until we get back to the room,” Dar instructed. “I need my laptop.”
Bud looked between the two of them, a little taken aback.
“What are you doing?”
“We,” Kerry told him, covering the mouthpiece of the phone,
“are doing what we do.” She glanced at Dar’s fierce expression, then went back to the phone. “Yes? Yes. We have a room, I know.
I’d like a second one.”
Dar waited for Kerry to finish. They entered Charlie’s room, walking quietly into the softly blinking machinery that surrounded him.
Dar closed her eyes. The beating her friend had taken was hideous.
DeSalliers, you bastard. You don’t know what you just stirred
up.
She laid her hands on the iron rails and gazed at Charlie’s battered form. “Hey.”
His eyes were mere slits, but they opened a little wider on seeing Dar.
Bud gently clasped his hands around Charlie’s, chafing them.
“Called in the Marines, Punky.”
A faint hint of a smile pulled at Charlie’s lips. “So I see.”
“Take it easy.” Dar leaned on the rails. “I’m in charge now, and I make the rules,” she said. “They giving you good drugs?”
Charlie nodded slightly.
“Good.” Dar wrote her cell phone number on the pad sitting on the small bedside table. “You need anything, call.” She put the pen down. “I’m going to stop at the desk when I go out. You’ll get taken care of.”
“B…” Bud straightened.
Dar just looked at him, and Bud subsided with a tired sigh.
“I’ve got a wire transfer coming in tomorrow,” Dar went on. “We’ll get your Uncle Guido taken care of, then I’m gonna go after DeSalliers.”
“What are you gonna do?” Bud asked.
“Find out the truth first, then I’m gonna give him exactly what he asked for,” Dar said. “You staying here for a while,” she asked Bud.
Bud nodded.
“Inn at Blackbeard’s Castle. We’ve got a room for you,” Dar told him.
Charlie made a muffled sound that sounded suspiciously like laughter.
“You hush,” Bud growled at him. “I can stay right here.”
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Kerry leaned over and gave Charlie’s arm a squeeze. “Chase him out, okay?”
Charlie nodded, still chuckling. “Runnin’ some tests or suchlike on me. Checking my guts out,” he explained. “Hell, if they get their asses done, I’ll drag him over there m’self.” His bruised eyes went to Dar’s face. “Damned if you don’t sound just like your daddy.”
Dar straightened. “Thanks.” She gave him a gracious nod.
“C’mon, Ker. Let’s go light some fires.”
Kerry’s eyebrows went up. So did Bud’s and apparently Charlie’s, but it was hard to tell.
Dar cocked her head. “What?”
Kerry circled the bed and took Dar’s arm. “You can light my fires anytime, honey,” she assured Dar. “But you don’t need to brag about it.”
Dar opened her mouth to answer and saw the smirks. She closed her jaw and gathered her dignity, sweeping it around her like a cloak as she followed Kerry’s lead out of the room.
Bud glared at the door for a minute, then he released a sigh.
“Son of bitch, I hated doing that.”
“Buddy, Buddy, Buddy…” Charlie squeezed his hand. “She’s a friend, yeah?”
Bud stared at the bleached linen.
“We got any other friends who’d do what she’s doing?”
“It twists my shorts,” Bud ground out. “I ain’t a charity case!”
“Bud,” Charlie’s voice gentled, and he stroked Bud’s cheek,
“for her, it ain’t charity,” he said. “She’s Navy; she’s family. That runs deep, you know. If anyone from back then asked, and we could, wouldn’t we do it?”
“Almost anyone,” Bud muttered. “But…” He slumped a little.
“Yeah.”
Charlie ruffled his hair affectionately. “Well then, they gotta let me outta here, ’cause damned if I ain’t gonna stay with you in Blackbeard’s Inn.”
KERRY PUT THE phone down into its cradle and closed the room service menu. Dar was seated across from her with her laptop open on her lap, its cellular antennae poking up along the side. “Hey, sweetie?”
“Uh?” Dar looked up, blinking at her.
“Could I bribe you to do that from here?” Kerry patted the bed next to her.
“Sure.” Dar got up and carried the laptop with her, dropping down onto the bed and waiting as Kerry fluffed the pillow up behind her. She leaned back and was rewarded with not only a 208
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backrest, but a body pillow that propped up her arm and twined between her legs. “What’d ya order?”
“It’s a surprise.” Kerry put her head down on Dar’s shoulder and examined the screen. “What’s that?”
“Police reports.” Dar scanned them. “Not that I really know what I’m looking at. I need a lawyer.”
“Sorry.” Kerry stifled a yawn. “Though, that was actually one of the acceptable alternative careers my family would have allowed me.” She reviewed the cryptic comments on the screen. “They were hedging their bets. I think they knew Mike wasn’t going to cut it.”
Dar rubbed the side of her thumb against the laptop, trying to imagine Kerry as a lawyer. “What kind of lawyer would you have been?” she asked curiously.
“No kind,” Kerry informed her. “I never even considered it.”
She scrolled with the thumb pad and clicked. “First thing I wanted to be was a fireman.”
Dar held back a chuckle. “That shoulda told them something.”
“Mm.” Kerry chuckled softly. “Yeah, now that I think about it,”
she agreed. “Then I wanted to be a research scientist, but I realized in high school that I didn’t have the aptitude for it.” She clicked again. “Then I found computers, and went… Ah hah!”
“Ah hah.” Dar examined the screen. It was a complaint filing, apparently by Bob’s grandmother at the time of his grandfather’s death. In the stark, impersonal language used by the police, the complaint involved the woman’s accusation that Bob’s uncle had somehow been involved in the sinking, and detailing why. Threats had apparently been made. The police had not been impressed, and merely had noted the complaint along with the comment that the woman had been extremely “emotional” when the statement had been taken.
“Hm.” Dar drummed her fingertips on the laptop keyboard.
“What do you think?”
“Well,” Kerry exhaled, “at least it wasn’t just some bs story Bob made up on his own,” she said. “Which does not excuse him from skunkhood for leaving Bud and Charlie behind.”
“Mm. Think you can find him? Where do you figure he went—
back to St. Richard?”
Kerry rolled over and squiggled across the bed, reaching for the island directory. The squiggling intrigued Dar, who enjoyed it as Kerry squiggled on back and opened the book.
“I’m betting he’s here in St. Thomas,” she said. “It’s bigger and busier than St. Richard.” Her finger traced a column of hotels.
“Let’s see if we can find the little stinker.”
Dar watched in bemusement as Kerry selected a number and dialed it on the room phone. “He’s probably not registered under his real name,” she commented.
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“Last name, no,” Kerry agreed, waiting for an answer. “Hello…
Hi, um…” Her voice shifted to a slightly different tone. “This is kind of crazy, but I met this guy today… Yeah… I’m trying to find him again, and I only know his first name. Can anyone help me?”
She paused to listen. “Oh, thanks. You’re wonderful.”
Dar folded her arms over her chest.
“Hi, yeah. No, his name’s Bob, and he’s really cute… Oh, right, um…he’s got red, curly hair, and he’s really well built… Yeah, about that age. Yeah…okay, I’ll hold.” Kerry hummed under her breath. “No? Oh, what? Oh, I see… You did? Wow… Thanks!” She hung up. “They’re full. They sent their overflow to a different hotel, and she thinks Bob was one of them.”
“A different hotel?” Dar laughed.
“This one.” Kerry found the name on her list and proceeded to call it. “Want me to try Southern belle, next?”
“Is that how you conned those circuits out of Southern Bell last month?” Dar was still laughing.
Kerry grinned. “No, but…I’ll have to remember that.” She cleared her throat. “Howdy there… Ahm lookin’ for a real cutie I met down on the beach t’day… Kin you help me?”
Dar covered her mouth and continued her scrolling, keeping one ear on Kerry’s best efforts to sound like Dolly Parton. The information she’d recovered was straightforward enough, but the problem was, it was hard to tell if there was any truth to any of it.
What to do? She really felt in need of an expert to at least look at the case and give an opinion as to who was more likely to be telling the truth, if any of them were. The uncle had answered through a lawyer, in a tone almost insulting in its dismissal of the insinuation, and she instinctively favored the grandmother, but…
Grandmothers
can be sneaky, too, and maybe she was trying to hold on to her husband’s
money
. Dar sighed. She checked her address book and looked up a number, then dialed it on her cell phone.
It rang twice, then was answered. “Hello?”
“Merry Christmas, Richard,” Dar said. “It’s Dar.”
“Dar!” Her family lawyer sounded pleased, if a bit puzzled, to be hearing from her. “Merry Christmas and happy birthday, lady!”
“Thanks,” Dar replied. “Listen, I need a favor.” She paused.
“More or less a professional one.”
Richard Edgerton’s gears switched. “Well, sure, Dar,” he answered briskly. “You’re not in any trouble, are you? Hard to believe.”
“No,” Dar answered without thinking, then considered. “Well, not me personally, that is.”
He hazarded a guess. “Kerry?”
“No. We’re on vacation,” Dar explained.
“Uh huh.”
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Dar could hear rustling, and she guessed Richard was getting a pad to write on. He was a very good lawyer, and he knew estate law like the back of his hand. “Don’t ask me how I got involved in this, but I am,” she began.
“Uh oh.” Richard chuckled. “Let me hold onto something. This should be a doozy.”
Dar sighed. “You don’t know the half of it.”
“He’s here,” Kerry’s voice interrupted her. “He’s staying in this hotel.”
“Hang on, Richard.” Dar looked at her. “Invite him over for a drink,” she said. “Tell him we’d like to chat.”
Kerry nibbled her lip. “I won’t let him know we know about Charlie and Bud.”
“Not yet, no.” Dar smiled grimly. “Wait until he gets here.”
Kerry nodded and went back to the phone. Dar did the same.
“Okay, Richard, here’s the deal. We’re out on St. Thomas—”
“Nice place to spend Christmas,” Richard replied amiably.
“Right. We ran into a guy who told us a horse’s tale about trying to prove his uncle murdered his grandfather to inherit the family fortune.”
A long silence preceded the lawyer’s response. “Dar, have you been at the rum?”
Dar sighed. “Yes, but not today,” she said. “Listen, if I shoot something over to you in email, will you just look at it and tell me what you think? It’s a pile of legal crap I don’t have time to figure out.”
Richard chuckled. “Sure, Dar, send it over. I was stuck watching my second cousin’s vacation video from Mexico. It’s a great rescue.”
Dar packed the files into an archive and sent it. “Thanks. You can call me on the cell once you see what you think.”
“What’s your percentage in this, Dar?”
Hm. Good question
. “Like I said, I got dragged into it,” Dar replied. “Now some friends of mine got dragged in too, and they got hurt. I need to know what side the angels are on, so I can figure out what to do.”
“Ah, I see,” Richard murmured. “It’s your crusader side coming out, eh?”
“Why does everyone keep calling it that?” Dar whined. “It’s not crusading. This stupid asshole just won’t leave me alone!”
“Uh huh,” her lawyer replied. “Lemme take a look, Dar. It sounds like some typical sordid, family in-fighting over money, but I’ll give you my best opinion on it.”
“Thanks, Richard.” Dar smiled. “I owe you one.”
“How about letting me handle your investments?” Richard shot back with cheerful mercenary humor. “You know, I hate to admit
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this, but you made me a bundle investing in ILS last quarter.”
Dar chuckled. “We’ll talk.”
“How are your mom and dad doing?” Richard asked. “I heard some scandal that they were living out on a boat?”
“A sixty-foot Bertram, yes,” Dar replied dryly. “Having the time of their lives.”
Richard laughed heartily. “Good for them! I love it!” he chortled. “I’ll have to come down and see it sometime. Listen, let me get to this and I’ll be back to you, okay?”
“Thanks, Rich.” Dar hung up the phone and turned to Kerry.
“Are we set?”
“Hook, line, sinker, and a tin can off the bottom.” Kerry nodded. “He’ll be on his way over in a little while. He’s just finishing dinner.” She scratched her nose. “He sounded really happy to hear my voice for some reason.”