As Frost searched the house, he kept seeing Belinda Drake’s face in his memory. She’d looked alive enough to open her mouth and talk to him. He could hear her voice in his head. An hour earlier, they’d been on the phone; now she was dead. He felt responsible. It was sharing secrets with Frost that had led to her death.
Another loose end tied up by Lombard.
He checked Gorham’s office. This was where the intruders had done their work. His computer and printer were gone. There were charging cables on the desk but no devices. The drawers of two steel file cabinets were open and empty. A section of the hardwood floor had been pried up, leaving an empty hole that Gorham had obviously used to hide things he didn’t want found. It didn’t work. The intruders had taken whatever was inside.
Gorham’s life had been sanitized, much like Denny’s boat. The thoroughness of the job — and the evidence of Gorham living beyond his means — led Frost to think that Gorham was dirty, just as the captain believed. If so, he wondered how far back the corruption extended into Gorham’s past.
What if Alan Detlowe really had gone to Gorham with his suspicions about Martin Filko?
What if that was what got Detlowe killed?
Frost shook his head. Trust no one.
He checked the kitchen. Gorham was surprisingly neat. There wasn’t a dirty dish anywhere, the stainless steel appliances gleamed, and the refrigerator was perfectly organized. Frost studied the contents and had a hard time imagining a high school jock like Gorham drinking soy milk and eating takeaway vegan meals from Trader Joe’s, but this was California. Anything was possible.
The last room to search was Gorham’s bedroom.
Most of the memorabilia inside was sports related. He saw photographs and trophies from Gorham’s days on the college track team. There were also pictures of him and Alan Detlowe drinking beer at a Giants game, which didn’t make sense. Frost couldn’t imagine Gorham killing Detlowe and still keeping pictures of the two of them on his dresser. He was missing something.
He studied the other items, which included a beer stein filled with loose change, a baseball signed by Madison Bumgarner, and two objects that felt out of place among Gorham’s possessions. One was a Middle Eastern music box, obviously expensive, inlaid with colored gems. The other was a wood carving of an African elephant.
Frost picked up both of the items as if they could speak to him, and then he put them down. He felt an odd, cresting wave of adrenaline that he couldn’t explain. The clues in this room were pointing him to something, but he didn’t know what.
He noted two nightstands on either side of the king-sized Tempur-Pedic bed. The one closest to him was obviously used by Gorham and included a man’s dress watch and diamond cuff links. On the other nightstand, he saw a bottle of hand cream and Jean Patou Joy perfume.
That was the missing link.
A woman.
Gorham didn’t live alone in this house. He was unmarried, but a woman obviously spent time here, too. Frost went to the closet and opened the doors, and among the clothes that Gorham would wear, he also saw a lineup of sexy, elegant dresses. He opened the built-in drawers and found lace lingerie.
Soy milk. Vegan dinners.
Not Gorham. Gorham’s girlfriend.
Frost took another long look at the bedroom, and the truth came to him in a rush. It wasn’t just hand cream on the nightstand next to the perfume. It was Bulgari hand cream. He stared at the Middle Eastern music box and the African elephant, and he could hear the voice of Prisha Anand in his head.
Men fly her around the world. Africa. The Middle East. South America.
He thought about the indications of money in the house. The expensive toys. Even the house itself. It wasn’t Trent’s money. It wasn’t a payoff for his work for Lombard. It came from somewhere else. Someone else. A woman with highbrow tastes and the means to pay for it.
Fawn.
Gorham’s bedroom door was wide open, but behind it, Frost could see the wooden edge of a picture frame. He went over and pushed the door aside, and there on the wall was a sketch of Trent Gorham, black-and-white except for his sky-blue eyes. The style, the picture, the pose were all a match for another picture he’d seen two days earlier. In Fawn’s bedroom.
Trent Gorham. Zara Anand.
They were in love. He could see that in the eyes of each sketch, as if they were looking at each other across the miles. It was a relationship they’d kept secret, the escort and the cop. She’d kept her own portrait, and he kept his, the opposite of what couples would usually do.
Trent and Fawn.
This changed everything.
Yes, Gorham had been waiting at the yacht harbor on Wednesday morning, but not because he was in league with Lombard. He’d been waiting for his girlfriend to return from the Tuesday-night cruise. And knowing that secret led Frost to a cascade of other questions.
Why did Fawn agree to go on a cruise with Martin Filko, a man she hated and feared?
Why did Gorham call Denny before the cruise?
Why were there hidden cameras on the boat?
He began to realize that he’d been wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong about Trent. Wrong about Fawn. And all wrong about the cruise on Tuesday. He could only think of one explanation that tied everything together. One answer to solve the mysteries.
The cruise had been a sting.
A setup.
It was Trent Gorham’s plan to trap Martin Filko and lure Lombard out of hiding.
The night was dark on the Roughing It.
The only lights were from the city on the other side of the harbor. There was no moon and no stars overhead. The bay was angry, slapping against the breakwater with gusts of wind and surging across the pier into clouds of spray. When Frost climbed onto the yacht, he tried the lights, but the power was off. All he had was his flashlight to guide him.
The windswept sway of the boat took him back to his own past. He could remember being out in the open water with Denny, where the ocean would come to life without warning and toss you around like a cork. He remembered the loneliness out there with no other crafts around, out of sight of land. He wondered if Denny had thought about those days, too, when he took the Roughing It under the Golden Gate Bridge that night and out to sea.
Frost cast his light around the luxury interior. He knew there would be nothing to find on the upper decks. Lombard’s team had been here to remove the evidence, and they’d been thorough. He descended to the bowels of the boat, following the beam of his flashlight. He passed the crew quarters and could imagine Chester there, playing cards with Carla and Mr. Jin. He wondered if the awful noise from upstairs would have carried to the lower deck for the others to hear. Martin Filko, alone with Fawn. The sex. The drugs. The abuse.
All with cameras secretly rolling in a panel on the wall.
Fawn had been on the boat for a reason. There was no way Trent Gorham would have let his girlfriend walk into harm’s way without some other motive. There was no way Fawn would have agreed if she didn’t think that the night would end in revenge against Martin Filko and justice for Naomi.
But how had it all gone wrong?
Sooner or later, the people on the boat would have gone to sleep. Except for Denny. He was the captain, and the captain was always awake. The Roughing It would have been dead silent, the way it was now, riding the swells of the Pacific. Denny would have been on the flybridge, keyed up and nervous, alone with the ocean and the night.
And then what?
What happened next?
Frost made his way to Denny’s office at the rear of the boat. There wasn’t much to find. Denny’s bunk. A filing cabinet. His desk. Pictures on the wall. Behind the desk, tightly locked, was a narrow door that led to the mechanical areas of the ship. No one went there without the captain opening the door. It was the one place on the ship that Denny always kept private and secure.