The Devil May Care (12 page)

“Yet your father claims Navarre is a con man who's only after your money.”

Riley twisted her head to look at me; it was almost as if she were surprised to see I was still standing there. Her full lips formed a tiny smile.

“I'm beginning to understand why my grandfather both likes and dislikes you so much,” she said. “You have a way of sneaking up on people.”

“It's a gift.”

“You think my father is involved in Juan Carlos's disappearance, don't you?”

“I think nothing of the sort. I'm just—”

“Trying to put the pieces together. I get it now.”

“Do you? I'm not so sure. See, I know why you came to me instead of involving the police when Navarre disappeared, and it wasn't because you were afraid of scandal. It was because you were afraid that your family was responsible, that they got rid of him somehow. Your mother believes it, too. I don't. Your grandmother and your grandfather hired a pretty good private investigator. They both want to find Navarre just as much as you do, although probably not for the same reasons.”

“Is that what they told you? And you believed them? You're not investigating, McKenzie. You're taking sides.”

“Oh, for—again, Riley? Again with the accusations?”

“What are you doing talking to my mother? My grandparents?”

“I didn't go to them, they came to me. We had conversations I could have done without, too. Look, I did pick a side. You're right about that. I picked yours. I'm trying to be your friend, but you make it so damn hard, honest to God.”

Riley didn't have anything to say to that. She turned toward the lake, and I did the same. The boat was still drifting in the middle of the bay. After a while, it got under way. A few moments later, it disappeared from view, and I flashed on the empty dock in front of Irene Rogers's home, the one with electricity and fresh-water hookups.

What a nitwit you are,
my inner voice told me.
How come you didn't think of that before?

“Riley?” I said aloud.

“What?”

“Does Navarre own a boat?”

“Yes. A cabin cruiser. The
Soñadora
.”

“Means ‘dreamer.'”

“You speak Spanish.”

“Enough for that. When was the last time you saw the boat?”

“Friday night. We used it when we went to dinner at the club.”

“Where is it now, I wonder?”

EIGHT

Riley assured me that Navarre's boat had a comfortable sleeping compartment. She blushed when she said it, and for a moment I could imagine the two of them anchoring at night in one of the big bays until the morning sun. And all day long, too, for that matter.

The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that the reason Navarre's security system was down and his BMW was still parked in the garage was because when the time came to run for it, he went by water, not by land. He simply dashed out the back door without bothering to set the alarm, hopped in his boat, and disappeared onto the vast and sprawling lake. He was probably out there now.

But where? Why was he hiding? From whom?

One question at a time,
my inner voice told me.

Riley wasn't particularly helpful. The more I pressed her for information, the more curt and condescending her replies became. She insisted that Navarre didn't have any friends on the lake whose docks he could tie up to—because he's been in Minnesota for such a short time, you see. I told her that both Mrs. Rogers and Mary Pat Mulally said he was very good at making friends. She all but accused me of leading a Spanish Inquisition. I couldn't remember meeting anyone as defensive as she was.

She did tell me where Navarre bought his boat, though. That was something at least.

*   *   *

McDonald's Marina was located on a strip of land that separated Lake Tanager from Brown's Bay in the upper northeast corner of Lake Minnetonka. I sat in the Audi and took it all in. Five piers and a chain of docks provided slips for at least 250 vessels, yet only half of them were filled. In fact, there seemed to be just as many boats resting side by side on wooden supports in a yard next to a massive warehouse as in the water, each of them shrink-wrapped in blue polyethylene film. They reminded me of toy boats still in their original packaging, assuming they were toys for giants. At the edge of the marina, a captain was trying to maneuver his cruiser into the waiting jaws of a huge boatlift and not making much progress. Apparently he wasn't very good at driving backward.

There were several buildings, all of them white. I walked to the building that looked most like an office while I adjusted the holster behind my right hip. I hadn't seen anything at the marina that frightened me, yet the gun wasn't doing me any good locked in the trunk. It was a 9 mm SIG Sauer P228. I had been a Beretta man most of my adult life. I had taken a SIG off of a disgruntled bartender in the tiny town of Krueger, Minnesota, a while back, though, and decided I liked it. When I got the holster the way I wanted, I hid it beneath my sports jacket. The sports jacket made me the best-dressed man in the marina.

The owner was occupied, so I wandered around, looking at the boats moored at their slips until he was free. I used to have a 28-footer with an eight-and-a-half-foot beam—the largest boat you can pull on a trailer in Minnesota. As I stopped to examine a pristine cabin cruiser I wondered why I sold it.

“The
Amante,
” a voice said. I turned to see a middle-aged man dressed in cargo shorts and a polo shirt. He was reading the name painted on the boat's bow. “It means ‘lover.' The previous owner, his wife named it. She said if a husband must have a mistress, it's best that she be made of fiberglass.” He extended his hand. “I'm Jimmy. You were looking for me?”

I shook his hand and introduced myself.

“Are you in the market?” he asked. “We have some nice boats, new, used…”

“Actually,” I said, “I wanted to ask about a boat called the
Soñadora
.”

“I'm afraid you must have been reading one of our old flyers. I sold that boat seven, eight weeks ago. She was very similar to the
Amante
here. Thirty-eight feet LOA, thirty-six-inch draft, four-hundred-horsepower Volvo engine, three-hundred-gallon gas tank, sixty-four gallons of fresh water, sleeps five.”

“How long could you keep a boat like that out on the lake?”

“How long can you go without a hot shower?”

“What do you mean?”

“You need shore power to run a hot water heater. Otherwise, it depends on your battery setup. With a good bank of storage batteries, and let's say you're frugal with your amp hours, running the refrigerator, microwave, blender, coffeemaker, TV, computer at the bare minimum, I'd say you might be able to keep this boat off the grid for three, four days. Five if you push it hard.”

“How long would it take me to recharge the batteries?”

“You could do it overnight.”

“Where?”

“Lots of places—Minnetonka Boat Club, Wayzata Marine, Howard's Point, Rockvam Boat Yards, Blue Lagoon, Excel. There are private docks, too, depending on who you know. Listen, if you want to live on the hook for a few days, I can show you several boats besides this one that would be damn comfortable. You need to understand, though, the Lake Minnetonka Conservation District rules won't allow you to use a watercraft as living quarters. You can't actually live on the lake.”

“But I can take a boat out for a few days at a time with no problem, right? The lake police won't bother me.”

McDonald's smile was a bit askew, as if he weren't sure whether I was naive or up to something.

“It's the Hennepin County Sheriff's Department Water Patrol,” he said. “No, they won't bother you. Plenty of people go camping on their boats. Just remember to make sure you mount a white light that's visible from any direction between sunset and sunrise.”

*   *   *

I pulled up a map of Lake Minnetonka on my smartphone. It was so damn big with so many miles of unbroken shoreline and so many places for a man to conceal a boat, not to mention just anchoring in the middle of a bay or inlet somewhere, hiding in plain sight. I didn't even know where to begin looking for Navarre, although I figured it might actually be easier to sneak up on him after dark when I could concentrate my search on any white lights I saw flickering across the water. That would require a boat, though, and a pilot who knew the lake, because if I could get lost just trying to drive around it …

'Course, Navarre might also be moored in a slip at one of the many marinas, paying dockage fees for the day while he recharged his batteries and took on fresh water. It had been nearly a week since he took the
Soñadora
out, and Jimmy McDonald said five days was the maximum. I could check on each and every marina in turn. Grunt work, I knew, but that's what private investigators do.

You should apply for a license one of these days,
my inner voice told me.

Yeah, I'll get right on that.

What else?

Would Navarre have the balls to return to Irene Rogers's dock? How 'bout Club Versailles? They would accommodate him if Mrs. R said so. Would she say so? Would they even bother to ask her? I called Mrs. Rogers. There was no answer, so I left a message. I called Sarah Neamy. She assured me that the
Soñadora
was not currently tied up at one of the club's slips.

What else?

Anne Rehmann. Rehmann Lake Place Real Estate. Did she have a dock with fresh water and electrical hookups? It seemed unlikely a real estate agent could afford it, given the lake's exorbitant property values, although—taking prospects out on the water, I could see how that might be a powerful sales tool. Except she had been looking for Navarre, too. When I met her at Mrs. R's house …

Wait a minute. The first time I saw Anne, after she startled me, she asked what was I doing and I said I was looking for Juan Carlos and she said he wasn't there. How could she have known that? She couldn't have known that unless … Maybe Anne already knew where he was. Maybe Navarre was at her place. Maybe he sent her to get some of the clothes and toilet gear that he left behind.

C'mon, McKenzie,
my inner voice said.

Maybe, I told myself. Think about it. It was Anne's idea that Navarre occupy Mrs. R's house in the first place—isn't that what Mrs. R said? It's possible they have a relationship.

And wouldn't that make Riley happy.

I called. Anne's voice mail said she would be out of the office until early in the afternoon. However, my call was important to her, and if I left a message, she would return it as soon as possible. I hung up and found Anne's address on my GPS. Her office was in Deephaven. I could be there in twenty-one minutes if I skipped lunch.

I skipped lunch.

*   *   *

Rehmann Lake Place Real Estate did have a dock on Lake Minnetonka that it shared with a half-dozen other businesses. It was narrow, made of treated redwood planks, and could accommodate three boats on either side. Only one boat was tied up there, though, an 18-foot speedboat with a 75-horsepower Mercury engine.

Oh, well, I told myself.

The office was located at one of the few spots on the lake where the road actually hugged the shoreline. The dock was on one side of the road, and a modest office park was on the other. I waited for traffic to clear and pulled into the parking lot. There were three two-story buildings arranged in a semicircle, all of them designed to resemble a Cape Cod cottage. Anne's office was located on the top floor of the far-left cottage; there was an insurance office on the bottom. All of the cottages were painted white. It occurred to me that most of the structures I had seen on Lake Minnetonka were white, and I wondered if there was a lake association that dictated the color.

What if you wanted mauve?
my inner voice asked.

There were several cars in the lot. I recognized Anne's from when we met at Mrs. Rogers's place and parked next to it. An outside staircase led to her office door. I climbed the staircase two steps at a time just to prove that I could even at my advanced years. The door was unlocked, and I stepped inside. A desk chair was lying on its side as if it had been thrown across the room, and I nearly tripped over it.

I looked up. There was a man standing behind the desk. I took him in all at once—six feet, 190 pounds, brown eyes, brown hair cut in a military style, wearing a white T-shirt beneath a black leather jacket and jeans. His left hand was gripping Anne's red-blond hair and yanking it backward so hard that her back was arched. Her white blouse had been torn open. The man's right hand was violently squeezing her breast through a pink bra trimmed with lace. His mouth was close to her ear as if he had been whispering to her. His entire face was twisted in a snarl. Her face revealed the fear and pain she was suffering.

They both looked at me.

I looked at them.

There was a balcony behind the desk. The sliding door was open, and I could hear the sound of traffic moving in the distance.

“McKenzie,” Anne said.

She spoke in a harsh whimper, yet her voice echoed in the office like a starter's pistol.

Her attacker released Anne's breast and lunged for a knife that was lying on top of the desk. He continued to grip her hair with his other hand, and the sudden movement turned Anne's head savagely.

She screamed in pain.

I reached for the SIG Sauer.

He brought the blade of the knife against Anne's throat and spun her toward me.

I went into a Weaver stance, my feet shoulder-width apart, knees bent, weight slightly forward, my gun hand pushing outward while my support hand pulled inward.

“Don't move,” he said.

I took two steps forward.

He positioned Anne's body so that it was between him and me and hid behind it.