“They're very close. The butler said so. We've observed it ourselves.”
“And the kidnapping?”
“An excellent means of expediting the whole probate process. To ensure no one contested the will and Ashley immediately inherited everything-billions and billions of dollars. Surely, the richest girl in the world would share some of her newfound wealth with her mother. I believe Betty Bell Hart cooked up the kidnapping scheme early Saturday afternoon, when she realized Ms. Stone was in a position of power and able to dispose of assets….”
“So all of a sudden, you think she did it? Did everything all by herself?”
“Not all of a sudden, Danny.”
I'm remembering our walk from the bank.
“And,” Ceepak adds, “not all by herself.”
“But how would Ashley know to tell us about the crazy man with the buggy eyes?”
“I believe Ashley and Mom had a quick little chit-chat. After the murder, after the junkie was gone. Miss Bell most probably ran off the beach … around there … to the side … somewhere where they couldn't be seen. Maybe behind another Sunnyside Clyde sign. I suspect she coached her daughter on exactly what to say … and Ashley was scared … covered with blood … horrified … but mom calmed her down … talked her through it….”
“That would take some time….”
“Yes,” Ceepak says. “At least fifteen, twenty minutes. But Betty was very clever. She didn't overload her daughter with too much information. Just enough. About a crazy man with googly eyes. I suspect they talked and rehearsed from 0725 to 0745.”
“Which is when we saw Ashley in the street!”
“A full half hour after her father died. I never stopped to ponder that lag in the timeline until I talked to Squeegee.”
“Squeegee gave you a lot of information.”
“He's our first eyewitness. His testimony, however, would be vigorously contested in any court of law, given his vagrant background and history of drug abuse….”
“So why'd you shoot him?”
“Who?”
“Squeegee.”
“Danny, did I ever say I shot anybody?”
“No but … I assumed….”
Oh, Jesus. My dad was right. I made an ass “out of u and me.” I drank all that beer last night without just cause.
“But….”
“Danny, I could not ask you to lie for me when the chief, as I knew he would, asked you what I did inside the hotel. Furthermore, telling everyone the suspected kidnapper was alive might have endangered Squeegee before I had a chance to see if he was telling me the truth.”
“But-you fired your rifle! I smelled it.”
“As I knew you would.”
“I see. So you sort of set me up?”
“I allowed you to jump to a conclusion. Yes. Sorry.”
“It's all good.” I actually say his catch phrase back at him because I am totally relieved. “So-who did you shoot at?”
“No one. I took a little target practice. You know that lighthouse? Where the red paint meets the white?”
“Yeah?”
“I think I nailed it. Right on the line. Split it down the middle. We should run by and check it out … later.”
“And the hotel burned down because?”
“I couldn't deactivate the timers.”
“But you knew when the building would blow?”
“I used the sniper rifle's telescopic sight to read the digital output on the timers secured high in the rafters of one of the turrets. It's why I encouraged evacuation of the premises in such a dramatic fashion.”
“You mean firing your pistol into the floor like that?”
“Affirmative.”
I feel all warm and fuzzy. The Code lives on. So apparently, does Squeegee.
Ceepak crouches down near the sand-covered trapdoor.
“Now then-we never actually checked the bottom of this fence for fibers. If Betty crawled out, perhaps….”
“Don't touch that fence!”
A skinny old lady in shorts and a cowboy hat is limping up the beach, yelling at Ceepak.
“Do not touch it!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
“You Ceepak?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“Where are your gloves?”
“In my pocket.”
“Not doing us much good in there now, are they?”
“No, ma'am.”
The old lady is wearing khaki shorts and a Hawaiian shirt and one of those Australian cowboy hats with the flap buttoned up on one side. She's squinting and crinkling her pixie nose because she really should have worn sunglasses. She has Irish eyes and fair, freckled Irish skin, neither of which does particularly well in the sun. The Irish were designed for mist, fog, and bogs-not sand, surf, and sun.
Ceepak pulls on his evidence gloves.
The lady nods her approval.
I think she should have reconsidered her choice on the shorts. She has these white, Bic-Stic ballpoint pen kind of legs with carbuncled knees like Popeye's girlfriend, only this lady's are wrinkled.
Ceepak is studying her face.
“Dr. McDaniels?”
“That's right. Call me Sandy. Like the inside of my shoes. Come here.”
Ceepak moves closer so the little lady can lean against him with one hand and use her other to shake out the sand in her tennis shoe. She has short-cut white hair that might've been red once and blue eyes that twinkle, like she just told herself a dirty joke.
“You work out?” she asks Ceepak while she's balancing against his bicep.
“Some.”
“I could tell. You do more curls than anything else.” She slips the shoe back on her foot. “So what we got?”
“First, Dr. McDaniels, I want to thank you for coming out so early….”
“Save it. I'm just sorry I was on vacation Saturday. I hear Slobbinsky royally screwed the pooch.”
“Not too badly. Fortunately, the rest of your team did a fantastic job….”
“They always do. Slobbinsky sat next to the dead guy and ate a greasy sandwich, hunh? Figures. With him, a sandwich is not a sandwich unless big globs of grease drip out from between the bread slices. I can always tell what he's had for lunch by studying his tie. Soup. Chili. Chicken fingers with honey mustard sauce….”
I put two and two together. This is the fabled Dr. Sandra McDaniels. The legendary Crime Scene Investigator.
“So you talked to Chris Morgan?” Ceepak asks.
McDaniels nods. “He's good people. For a Fed. We've worked together before.”
“He mentioned our peculiar situation?”
“Yep. Nobody knows I'm here. Hell, I think I'm still on vacation. My plane lands sometime around noon. Unless, of course, I caught an earlier flight because an old FBI pal called me late last night….”
“Thank you.”
“Yeah, yeah. Don't get all mushy on me.” She knuckle-punches Ceepak in the arm. “So, find anything interesting in the garbage this morning?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
Ceepak pulls out two evidence envelopes.
“This was swept off the beach Saturday morning.”
McDaniels looks at the clove cigarette butt.
“Ah, Djarum Black Kretek,” she says. “An Indonesian import. It is widely believed that the name Kretek derives from the crackling sound that cloves make when burned-‘keretek-keretek.’ As you see, I share Sherlock Holmes's fascination with tobacco products.”
“Indeed,” Ceepak says.
Man, I can so see these two nerding out in front of the TV with milk and cookies, thrilling to Forensic Files.
“This,” he tells her, holding up the second evidence bag, “comes from the suspect's home.”
McDaniels peeks in the bag.
“Looks like a perfect match. We'll run it through the lab. How'd you secure it?”
“I asked politely.”
“Oh. You're a sneaky one, hunh?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
McDaniels puts the envelopes in her cargo pockets. I guess that explains the shorts: lots of pockets. Not as many as Ceepak, but almost.
“Can I borrow your magnifying glass?” she asks him, just assuming the big guy lugs one around with him at all times-which, of course, he does.