Darrigan left police headquarters in Clearwater at three o’clock. They had been as cool as he had expected at first, but after he had clearly stated his intentions they had relaxed and informed him of progress to date. They were cooperating with the Pinellas County officials and with the police at Redington.
Temple Davisson had kept his appointment with the man who owned the plot of Gulf-front property that had interested him. The potential vendor was named Myron Drynfells, and Davisson had picked him up at eleven fifteen at the motel he owned at Madeira Beach. Drynfells reported that they had inspected the property but were unable to arrive at a figure acceptable to both of them. Davisson had driven him back to the Coral Tour Haven, depositing him there shortly after twelve thirty. Davisson had intimated that he was going farther down the line to take a look at some property near St. Petersburg Beach.
There was one unconfirmed report of a man answering Davisson’s description seen walking along the shoulder of the highway up near the Bath Club accompanied by a dark-haired girl, some time shortly before nine o’clock on Thursday night.
The police had no objection to Darrigan’s talking with Drynfells or making his own attempt to find the elusive dark-haired girl. They were reluctant to voice any theory that would account for the disappearance.
Following a map of the area, Darrigan had little difficulty in finding his way out South Fort Harrison Avenue to the turnoff to the Belleaire causeway. He drove through the village of Indian Rocks and down a straight road that paralleled the beach. The Aqua Azul was not hard to find. It was an ugly four-story building tinted pale chartreuse with corner balconies overlooking the Gulf. From the parking area one walked along a crushed-shell path to tile steps leading down into a pseudo-Mexican courtyard where shrubbery screened off the highway. The lobby door, of plate glass with a chrome push bar, opened off the other side of the patio. The fountain in the center of the patio was rimmed with small floodlights with blue-glass lenses. Darrigan guessed that the fountain would be fairly garish once the lights were turned on.
Beyond the glass door the lobby was frigidly air-conditioned. A brass sign on the blond desk announced that summer rates were in effect. The lobby walls were rough tan plaster. At the head of a short wide staircase was a mural of lumpy, coffee-colored, semi-naked women grinding corn and holding infants.
A black man was slowly sweeping the tile floor of the lobby. A girl behind the desk was carrying on a monosyllabic phone conversation. The place had a quietness, a hint of informality, that suggested it would be more pleasant now than during the height of the winter tourist season.
The bar lounge opened off the lobby. The west wall was entirely glass, facing the beach glare. A curtain had been drawn across the glass. It was sufficiently opaque to cut the glare, subdue the light in the room. Sand gritted underfoot as Darrigan walked to the bar. Three lean women in bathing suits sat at one table, complete with beach bags, tall drinks, and that special porcelainized facial expression of the middle forties trying, with monied success, to look like middle thirties.
Two heavy men in white suits hunched over a corner table, florid faces eight inches apart, muttering at each other. A young couple sat at the bar. They had a honeymoon flavor about them. Darrigan sat down at the end of the bar, around the corner, and decided on a rum collins. The bartender was brisk, young, dark, and he mixed a good drink.
When he brought the change, Darrigan said, “Say, have they found that guy who wandered away and left his car here the other night?”
“I don’t think so, sir,” the bartender said with no show of interest.
“Were you on duty the night he came in?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Regular customer?”
The bartender didn’t answer.
Darrigan quickly leafed through a half dozen possible approaches. He selected one that seemed suited to the bartender’s look of quick intelligence and smiled ingratiatingly. “They ought to make all cops take a sort of internship behind a bar. That’s where you learn what makes people tick.”
The slight wariness faded. “That’s no joke.”
“Teddy!” one of the three lean women called. “Another round, please.”
“Coming right up, Mrs. Jerrold,” Teddy said.
Darrigan waited with monumental patience. He had planted a seed, and he wanted to see if it would take root. He stared down at his drink, watching Teddy out of the corner of his eye. After the drinks had been taken to the three women, Teddy drifted slowly back toward Darrigan. Darrigan waited for Teddy to say the first word.
“I think that Davisson will show up.”
Darrigan shrugged. “That’s hard to say.” It put the burden of proof on Teddy.
Teddy became confidential. “Like you said, sir, you see a lot when you’re behind a bar. You learn to size them up. Now, you take that Davisson. I don’t think he ever came in here before. I didn’t make any connection until they showed me the picture. Then I remembered him. In the off season, you get time to size people up. He came in alone. I’d say he’d had a couple already. Husky old guy. Looked like money. Looked smart, too. That kind, they like service. He came in about eight thirty. A local guy. I could tell. I don’t know how. You can always tell them from the tourists. One martini, he wants. Very dry. He gets it very dry. He asks me where he can phone. I told him about the phone in the lobby. He finished half his cocktail, then phoned. When he came back he looked satisfied about the phone call. A little more relaxed. You know what I mean. He sat right on that stool there, and one of the regulars, a Mrs. Kathy Marrick, is sitting alone at that table over there. That Davisson, he turns on the stool and starts giving Mrs. Marrick the eye. Not that you can blame him. She is something to look at. He orders another martini. I figure out the pitch then. That Davisson, he went and called his wife and then he was settling down to an evening of wolfing around. Some of those older guys, they give us more trouble than the college kids. And he had that look, you know what I mean.
“Well, from where he was sitting he couldn’t even see first base, not with Mrs. Marrick, and I saw him figure that out for himself. He finished his second drink in a hurry, and away he went. I sort of decided he was going to look around and see where the hunting was a little better.”
“And that makes you think he’ll turn up?”
“Sure. I think the old guy just lost himself a big weekend, and he’ll come crawling out of the woodwork with some crazy amnesia story or something.”
“Then how do you figure the car being left here?”
“I think he found somebody with a car of her own. They saw him walking up the line not long after he left here, and he was with a girl, wasn’t he? That makes sense to me.”
“Where would he have gone to find that other girl?”
“I think he came out of here, and it was just beginning to get dark, and he looked from the parking lot and saw the lights of the Tide Table up the road, and it was just as easy to walk as drive.”
Darrigan nodded. “That would make sense. Is it a nice place, that Tide Table?”
“A big bar and bathhouses and a dance floor and carhops to serve greasy hamburgers. It doesn’t do this section of the beach much good.”
“Was Davisson dressed right for that kind of a place?”
“I don’t know. He had on a white mesh shirt with short sleeves and tan slacks, I think. Maybe he had a coat in his car. He didn’t wear it in here. The rules here say men have to wear coats in the bar and dining room after November first.”