Whit went to the door and listened to the rattle and hum of the overtaxed window unit. He opened the door. His bedroom was as he’d left it when he’d last slept in it, the night Patch died: books stacked next to the bedside phone, bed made in haste, dirty clothes in a tidy pile, ready for his Saturday laundry duty, closet door shut. He went to the closet, opened it. Clothes hung in neat lines, a cavalcade of ugly-bright tropical print shirts. In the corner was his computer and a small desk he used for work at home, with a few file folders and the Texas Civil Practice books. Nothing gone.
But the room felt subtly shifted, as though every item was just a hair out of place. He went through his files, his drawers, glanced under the bed. Nothing was missing. But the files on his desk were in two stacks instead of one, the books on his desk were leaning, and he hated that.
The room had been searched. He felt the odd tingly linger of an intruder in his space.
He went back to his front door. The lock appeared whole and unscratched. He checked his spare key – still hidden under the porch’s neglected potted fern. He inspected the windows. A back window wasn’t locked and he couldn’t remember when – if – he had unlocked it. He locked the window, went back to the den, refilled his water glass.
He tried calling Claudia Salazar at home, wanting a shoulder to bitch on about David Power. No answer. He tried Gooch’s cell phone. No answer either; Gooch was still presumably en route to New Orleans.
So who was in your house?
He checked every room. Maybe he had bumped the door the last time he left and it had shut on its own. Maybe David talking to him about Lucy – about what he didn’t know, her inheritance, her debts – made him paranoid. Christ, what else about her life didn’t he know?
Maybe she was embarrassed. Maybe she was ashamed.
It was time to get David off Lucy, time to find evidence that would point elsewhere. David was competent but not imaginative. He might dismiss Patch wanting secret funding of a hundred thousand or the skeletons found with the bodies. They could be little fringe elements that had nothing to do with the heart of the case. And Gooch looking for this Alex in New Orleans might lead nowhere fast.
So what else did he have? The name on the bottle, the guy Suzanne mentioned as interested in buying Black Jack Point.
Whit took his drink and sat down at his computer. He logged onto the Internet, opened a search engine, and did a search for Stoney Vaughn.
Results were few – a couple of articles in the Corpus paper, an article in some highflier financial magazine Whit had never heard of. He’d risen fast in the investment world, the kind of quotable grandstander the press loved. Scrappy son of shrimpers killed when he was at the University of Texas – where he’d gone on a full scholarship. Economics and history degree, MBA from Stanford. Worked for a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley for a while, took a hit in the dot-com bust, came back to Texas, and apparently started phoning the Social Register to get clients. The newspaper article included a picture. Average-looking, confident, hair a shade too glossy, a hint of gut, cool, confident, the kind of young man the numerous wealthy old ladies of the coast liked to have handle their money.
Not much else. Another link on the Corpus Christi Caller-Times site when he’d opened his office, another when he’d built that monstrosity of a mansion out on the Copano Flats, a link to something called the Laffite League. He clicked on the link.
A simple Web site opened, with an old portrait of a rakish man who wore a broad mustache and looked every inch the gentleman robber. Underneath the portrait was the text: The Laffite League explores and celebrates Jean Laffite, the great pirate of the Gulf one of the most unusual and mysterious figures in American history. Membership is open to all at dues of $50/year. We have chapters in New Orleans, Galveston, and Corpus Christi with a total membership over 100. We are academics, historians, teachers, students, businesspeople, jet pilots, nurses, retirees – anyone interested in the days of old. We sponsor trips to Galveston, Grande Terre, and other sites to explore Laffite history and also offer a quarterly newsletter on all matters Laffite-related.
Below the statement were links to newsletter archives, an on-line forum for Laffite discussion, and sites for historical research. And below that, a list of officers of the League, with Stoney Vaughn as president of the Corpus Christi chapter. He searched through the rest of the site. No mention of Patch Gilbert.
A fan club for a dead pirate. An overdue book about Laffite. Skeletons. Arid Stoney Vaughn, giver of whiskey, buyer of land, whose name kept sidling into view.
Whit clicked back to the newsletter articles, wondering if there was much discussion about buried treasure. He found none – this was all straight, well-footnoted history. The articles ranged from detailed analyses of the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812, where Laffite played a key role, to speculation of Laffite’s ultimate fate. Several of the articles were attributed to a writer named Jason Salinger, and the short bio at the end of each minutely researched piece indicated Jason was a freelance writer working in Port Leo, Texas.
He looked up Jason Salinger in the phone book. Not listed. He could track him down tomorrow.
He saw, through his window, his father moving in the soft glow of the kitchen lights in the big house and headed up there.
‘You want me to change the locks?’ Babe Mosley said after Whit explained.
‘Just as a precaution, Daddy.’
‘Why on earth would anyone be breaking in and then not taking anything?’ Babe sipped from a cup of decaf, still a big man at sixty, his face creased and handsome.
‘I don’t know. But I’d feel better if you changed the locks.’
‘I’ll call the locksmith tomorrow.’ He lowered his cup. ‘You staying out with Lucy again?’
‘Yes.’
‘Come stay here.’
‘She wants to be at Patch’s house, and I don’t want her to be alone.’
‘I wish y’all would just stay here,’ Babe said. ‘I’d sure sleep better.’
‘We’re fine.’
Halfway up toward Black Jack Point, he thought, Why wait? See if Stoney Vaughn’s at home tonight. Ask him about the Gilberts.
He drove past the Point, toward Copano Flats, looking for a big-ass mansion.
17
Stoney had only managed to keep Alex from shooting him outright by saying, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about with the emerald, but these guys are going to be here soon and we got to deal with them first.’
‘I looked at it. Closely. It’s not real.’ Alex’s voice was low and precise and getting impatient. The Eye’s looking a little bloodshot.’
‘I didn’t know you were an emerald expert.’
‘Where is it?’
‘You’re not supposed to have a key for both locks. We agreed.’
‘You fucking stole from me and you’re going to chide me?’ Alex, his tone disbelieving, shook his head, the gun in his hand pointing at the carpet for the moment.
‘I didn’t steal from you.’ Stoney glanced back out at the bay. ‘Oh, God, here they come.’ But it wasn’t Jupiter. It was a smaller fishing trawler, idling along the near edge of the bay.
‘The Eye, please. I’m not helping you with Danny and his boys if you don’t cough it up.’
‘Listen, I took it to protect it.’
‘Really. How’s that?’ Like he couldn’t wait to hear the details.
‘Danny. Look, he knows we’ve done the dig, he’s in the area, he’s seen the papers about Black Jack Point and the murders. He knows we’ve got the Eye. He might find out where we’d hidden it.’ He took refuge in outrage. ‘Listen. You had a key I didn’t know about. We’re even.’
‘We are so fucking not even!’ Alex’s gun came up, centered on Stoney’s chest.
‘If anything happens to me,’ Stoney said, ‘There are tape recordings of our conversations over the past couple of months. About Patch Gilbert. About the Laffite treasure, the Devil’s Eye, your little fuckup in New Orleans. Multiple copies, hidden in multiple places. In multiple forms. Tape. Sound file. A couple of ways you might never guess. But sure to be found if I go missing or die, Alex. I’m not Jimmy. I’m not dumb.’