Holly spent a few moments on the phone with someone named Gus, which was a good name for an electrician, as opposed to a private investigator, who should have a classy name like Guthrie, Guthrie felt. During that time, she ascertained that Gus had not in recent weeks changed any lightbulbs on either of the two pillars at the club’s entrance, and unless they had burned out last night after he’d gone home, they were still working. If she liked, he could circumvent the timer on the lights — which was set to go off at seven twenty-nine P.M. sunset in Calusa these days — and see if the lights came on now, which according to Guthrie’s watch was three-twenty P.M. Guthrie heard all of this because Gus the electrician was on the speakerphone. He heard Holly, in person, tell him “No, that won’t be necessary,” and then she hit a button on her phone, and Gus disappeared, and she crossed her long sleek legs and settled back in the big leather chair behind her desk, and smiled, and asked, “How else can I help you, Mr. Lamb?” which Guthrie felt was provocative, but did not say.
“I’d like to talk to any of your employees who were working here last Tuesday night, the twelfth,” Guthrie said.
“Why?” she asked.
“Very good,” Guthrie said, and smiled. “I hate mysteries as much as you do. What I’m trying to learn is whether any of them might have noticed a car parked just outside the entrance pillars last Tuesday night. On the right-hand side. Facing the club, that is. As you go in. Did you, for example, happen to notice such a car?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Which narrows the field,” Guthrie said, and smiled again.
But not considerably.
It turned out that the yacht club employed forty people, among whom, and in addition to Holly Hunnicutt herself, were an assistant club manager, a dockmaster and two dockhands, three security guards and a night watchman, an electrician — Gus, of course — four maintenance men, a restaurant manager and assistant manager, a bartender, a hostess, ten waiters and/or waitresses, a chef, three assistant chefs, two dishwashers and four busboys. Not all of these people had been working last Tuesday night. Two had called in sick, and one had gone back to Cuba.
Of the remaining thirty-seven, only ten had seen a car parked on the shoulder outside the club, but not at the hour Lainie Commins had specified. The time estimates varied, but they were consistent in being somewhere between eleven-thirty and midnight, rather than the ten-thirty Lainie had reported as the time she’d driven out of the club.
A waiter and a waitress who’d seen the car were reluctant to say so because they’d been outside necking, when they should have been in the restaurant helping to set up for Wednesday’s lunch. In any case, neither of them was of much help in identifying the car because they were otherwise busily occupied. The waiter seemed to remember pressing the waitress against the car as he fumbled under her skirt. She seemed to remember something hard, cold and metallic against her buttocks, but she may have been understandably confused.
The remaining eight waitresses were absolutely positive they had seen: a dark green Acura, a blue Infiniti, a black Jaguar, a bluish-black Lexus, a brown Mercedes, a blue Lincoln Continental, a black Cadillac, and/or a grayish BMW. All of them agreed there was no one in the car. All of them further agreed that the car’s lights were off. One of the assistant chefs said he’d seen the car — he was the one who claimed it was very definitely a blue GS 300 Lexus — at twenty after eleven when he’d stepped onto the road for a peaceful smoke, but that it was gone when he left for home at a little before midnight.
Most of which added up to zilch.
Guthrie walked to where he’d parked his own car — neither an Acura, Infiniti, Jaguar, Lexus, Mercedes, Lincoln Continental, Cadillac, nor Beamer, but instead a little red Toyota — unlocked the trunk, and took from it his Polaroid camera and his casting kit.
Then he went out to the shoulder of the road outside the club, where eight different witnesses had seen eight different cars at eight different times on the night Brett Toland was killed.
There are people who maintain that if you haven’t seen Calusa by boat, you haven’t seen Calusa at all. The house I was renting was on one of the city’s many beautiful canals, and the boat tied up at the dock was a sailboat I’d bought a few months before I got shot. When I was married to Susan, we owned a sailboat she’d named Windbag, but no one ever said she wasn’t clever. I might have named the new boat Windbag II, but Patricia was very touchy about my former wife, and so the boat still wasn’t named some seven months after I’d bought her.
Patricia, who doesn’t much care for boats, suggested the name Wet Blanket. Which is no worse than two lawyers I know who have boats respectively named Legal Ease and Legal Tender. Another of my friends owns both a discount furniture store and a boat with a big red mainsail. He calls her Fire Sail. A dentist I know has a high-powered speedboat he has named Open Wide. A gynecologist who has since been sent to prison for molesting one of his patients used to have a boat called Wading Room. Another doctor who is still around should have been sent to prison for naming his boat simply Dock.
In Calusa, Florida, there are as many cute names for boats as there are boats on the water. In the entire United States of America, in fact, there are almost as many cute names for boats as there are cute names for beauty salons. The naming of beauty salons and boats seems to bring out the worst instincts in everyone on the planet. Show me a city that does not have a beauty salon called Shear Elegance and I will show you a city that does not have a boat named Sir N. Dippity.
My partner Frank says I should name my new boat Wet Dream.
The boat, still unnamed, was bobbing on the water at the end of my dock that Tuesday night while Patricia and I sipped after-dinner cognacs on my screened-in patio. All the lights were out. A week ago at about this time, Brett Toland was getting himself shot, allegedly by my client. I put down my glass. I put my arm around Patricia. I kissed her.
Once upon a time...
But that was then.
We met at a motel on the South Tamiami Trail. We sneaked into the room like burglars and fell into each other’s arms as though we’d been apart for centuries rather than days, not even days, a day and a half, not even that, twenty-eight hours since we’d kissed goodbye yesterday morning. She was dressed for work, wearing a dark blue pinstripe tropical suit with wide lapels, “My gangster suit,” she called it, an instant before she hurled the jacket onto the bed. My hands had been on her from the moment the door clicked shut behind her, “Lock it,” she whispered under my lips, but I was unbuttoning the front of the long-sleeved white blouse instead, “Oh, Jesus, lock it,” she whispered, but I was sliding the tailored skirt up over her thighs, my hands reaching everywhere, my hands remembering her, my mouth remembering her, “Jesus,” she kept murmuring under my lips, we were both crazy, kicking off the high-heeled shoes, a garter belt under the skirt, dark blue stockings, “For you,” she whispered, “for you,” lowering her panties, silken and electric, the skirt bunched up above her waist, her legs wide, entering her, “Oh, Jesus,” she said, “Oh, Jesus,” I said, clutching her to me, pulling her onto me, enclosing, enclosed, “Oh, Jesus,” she said, “I’m coming,” she said, “this is crazy,” she said, “this is crazy,” I said, we were crazy, we were crazy, we were crazy.