“Yes, we do.”
“Well?”
Kat glanced down at Totoo, who stared up at her. A lousy cage after whatever he’d been through? The dog would be better off with... hell, with her, until Bev Bridger was found.
“I’ll see that Totoo is in good hands.”
Sandra Lister nodded. “I really appreciate that.”
At the door, she touched Kat’s arm. “I’ve got a perfectly awful feeling. Please find her.”
Kat patted her hand. “I’m sure there’s a logical reason for all this. I’ll be in touch.” Empty words, she was afraid. If only Totoo could talk.
Not good. A naive young woman on a late-night walk wrapped in tropical vacation euphoria. Half the department’s work was responding to calls from stunned visitors: “I left my purse in the car and it’s gone.” “My beach bag was out of my sight not more than four minutes.” But a woman disappearing on an evening walk? Had Beverly Bridger suddenly decided to go home for some reason Sandra was covering up? Not likely without her dog. Or had she met some irresistible hunk out there in the dark and spent the night at his pad? And let Totoo wander off by himself?
Kat had just one potential lead, if she could even call it a lead. She left Totoo at Island Vets for a checkup. Then she drove to her little mid-island beach house to change into more businesslike gray slacks and white blouse. At eleven-fifteen, she drove back to the island’s south end.
Opposite the Gulf Sands, she turned off the main road into Baylook Drive. The street was a short one, flanked by towering Australian pines. Three homes nestled along each side. At the bayside dead-end was a community dock. Beyond the dock and its four tethered boats, the bay glittered in the unrelenting sun.
Halfway down the shaded blacktop, Kat parked. “Door to door,” she muttered. And with nothing to sell. Well, maybe a degree of information-eliciting charm.
Forty plodding minutes and five nothing-seen-or-heard houses later, she was running out of hope. The last residence loomed imposingly on pilings, with its ground level neatly boxed in to provide a two-car garage. The Clymers, the stylized alligator mailbox announced. Clymers indeed, with towering steps to the main floor.
A white-haired gnome answered the door chime, an ancient fellow in rumpled khakis. He stood barely up to Kat’s breastline, which he savored at his piercing eye-level.
“Mr. Clymer?”
“Alban Clymer, at your service, unless you’re selling goods or goodness.”
She showed him her badge folder. “Detective Curtci, Mr. Clymer. Hoping for a little help.”
“Sweetie, I’ll be overwhelmed to help you any way an old man can. Bring yourself in and set yourself down. Coffee? Tea? A pinch of pinchbottle?”
“Nothing, thank you. Do you live alone here, Mr. Clymer?”
“Alban, for gosh sakes. And no, the wife is on the mainland getting her hair youthenized. I’m eighty-six, though; you don’t have a heck of a lot to fear.”
She perched on the edge of an overstuffed chair near the brick fireplace. Why did people move down here to escape snow country, then insist on a fireplace?
“So what can I do for you, darling? Oh my, that’s a beautiful head of hair you have. Shines like licorice.”
Oh, great. She had skewered come-on artists for less than that. But he was eighty-six, and he was teasing, not demeaning. “Thank you, sir.”
“Come on, girl. Between us, it’s Alban.”
“Were you awake around eleven last night? Alban.” Fat chance. She wasn’t sure he was completely awake now; possibly a bit aglow from a pinch of the pinchbottle?
“I’m awake every night at eleven, honeybun. That’s when the wife’s asleep and HBO starts its skin shows.”
Good Lord.
“Might you have noticed anything unusual out in the street? Or anything at all?”
“Anything at all on this street at that time of night would be unusual.”
“So you didn’t—”
“Don’t jump ahead of an old man, dear. I heard a boat.”
“Out in the bay?”
“Right out there at the dock. Then it went out in the bay.”
“Is that unusual?”
“Yep. Those boat owners are sixty, seventy. Not much given to moonlight cruising.”
Worth pursuing? What else did she have? “Any idea who it might have been?”
Alban shrugged. “Heck, I know exactly whose boat it was. Recognized the sound.”
She waited.
“Don’t you want to know whose boat it was?” he asked.
“Sure, Alban. Whose?”
“John Spencer Kingman’s. That’s whose.”
Was the old coot playing with her? “Alban, John Spencer Kingman is a U.S. Senator.”
“You’re a very smart babe. That’s who owns the boat that makes a peculiar burbly sound. It’s an inboard. I’d guess a six-figure inboard. The others are rackety outboards. Last night that boat went out just as The Bottom’s Line was ending. Those skin flicks are short.”
“What time was that?”
“Eleven-thirty, thereabouts. The senator has a place up around the corner. Second one northward. Uses it for a couple weeks when the Senate’s out of session. Like now.”
“Did you hear the boat come back in?”
“Nope. Past my bedtime by then, honey.”
“Well, Alban, you’ve been a real help,” Kat said as she stood.
“I’ll bet you say that to all us snitches.”
She couldn’t help grinning. “I do, but so far, none of them has made a U.S. Senator my next stop.”
“The senator say he will see you.” The Hispanic maid, in uniform, no less, had left Kat on the front deck of the imposing three-story house. Now she led Kat down a pine-paneled entrance hall, through a two-story-high great room, then out onto the vast screened-in rear deck.
The view of the bay was magnificent. The view of the senator, in voluminous white slacks and surely an xxx-large ivory golf shirt, was forbidding. Not because of his imposing size; because of his scowl.
“Better be a damned fine reason for the local police to interrupt my siesta time. I’m down here to get away from interruptions, not to welcome them.” He hadn’t budged from his huge wicker chair, and he didn’t invite her to sit down. From the third-story deck overhead, she heard recorded country nasal enough to compete with Willy Nelson.
“Detective Curtci, Senator, Malabar—”
He waved an impatient hand. “So Esmeralda informed me. What business can you possibly have here?”
“I’m investigating the disappearance of an island visitor, Senator. A woman named Beverly Bridger.”
“Never heard of her.”
“She went for a walk last night around eleven, probably down Baylook Drive. A resident at the bay end of the drive states that your boat left the dock around eleven-thirty.”
“I know absolutely nothing about any boat leaving the Baylook dock last night, Detective. And I do not understand why you think a departing boat concerns me.”
“It was your boat, Senator.”
“You say you have a witness?”
“Yes.” If not an eyewitness, at least an ear-witness.
Senator Kingman glared at her. Then he looked at the ceiling and bellowed, “Gary, get your butt down here!"
The music overhead cut off in mid twang. She heard footsteps thumping down stairs, more than one person. An athletically trim youth in khaki shorts and a blue T-shirt thudded onto the deck from the great room. He was followed by a less trim boy in jeans and a rumpled tan golf shirt.
“My son, Gary, Detective, and his buddy, Edward Herkiser. Penn State seniors celebrating spring break. Gentlemen, this local detective lady claims our cabin cruiser went out late last night. Might you know anything about that?”