“Did he seem scared, like he was being followed?”
Officer Matthews brushed his fingers through his short-cropped, salt and pepper hair. “Again, that is definitely something I would have keyed into.” Heat believed him. He was one of those local types who put on the uniform every day to help, not hassle.
Heat asked to show where he found Beauvais. He spread a map on the hood of his car and tapped North Sea Road near the cemetery. “That’s literally on the other side of the tracks from here,” she observed.
“Correct. His direction of travel to the train station was coming from the north.”
Which was odd. Odd enough, thought Heat, to qualify as an odd sock. If Fabian Beauvais had been coming from either Keith Gilbert’s or Alicia Delamater’s, he would have been walking from south to north, not the other way around. “What’s up North Sea Road?”
“It’s a lot of residential,” said Detective Aguinaldo.
“Right,” continued the officer. “Some nice homes up that way. Not like all this, but middle to upper-middle class. Wooded lots and two-car garages. Let’s see, a liquor store, which is where I first thought he might have been coming from. But he could also have been a kitchen worker from the seafood place. Everything else up there would have been closed that time of night. The tree service, Conscience Point, the general store.…”
“Hang on,” said Heat. For a second, the word almost slipped by Nikki. But as it started to float away, it suddenly turned like an arcing boomerang and returned to her full force, slamming into her mind. “What is Conscience Point?”
Nikki pulled into the parking lot of Southampton’s municipal marina at Conscience Point fifteen minutes later and parked beside a public works truck that was unloading sand bags to brace for the storm. Inez Aguinaldo got out of her unmarked SUV and led her counterpart on a brief walking tour of the Parks & Rec moorage, which amounted to a humble, yet tidily kept green between the road and North Sea Harbor. Three T-shaped docks jutted out from the seawall and a row of slips ran at a right angle down the shore’s walking path.
Two months after Labor Day, most sat empty. The few remaining sloops and cabin cruisers belonging to diehards trying to extend the season were in the process of getting hoisted out now. A crew operating a diesel crane with a sling lift worked at a feverish pace to get the boats dry before Sandy came knocking. Heat kept to herself, watching the cascade of water sluice off a winched-up Ensign 22, observing the layout of the grounds, contemplating the pair of Parks & Rec buildings situated just off the blacktop, noting the trash bins and the white six-hundred-gallon fuel storage tanks across the lot. Listening and seeing, the detective tried to be open; to let this place speak something to her.
The two detectives sat on top of a picnic table, eating their panini, watching the three-thousand-pound Ensign swing on a crane toward a carrier on a flatbed. Finally, Aguinaldo asked, “Can I be of help? Is there something specific you’re looking for?”
“It’s like playing Jeopardy,” said Heat. “I’ve got the answer, I just need to guess the right question.” The answer, Nikki explained was: Conscience.
“That word has had me scratching my head ever since we found it. ‘Conscience’ was written on a scrap of paper stuffed in a fat envelope of cash hidden in Fabian Beauvais’s closet. Not insignificantly, Keith Gilbert’s address and phone number were on the same piece of paper. But ‘conscience’ was in pencil, like it was added later.”
“You’re holding back on me, Detective Heat. I think you already know your question. It’s ‘What is a meeting place for a payoff?’”
Nikki watched the boat hull settle gently against the padded supports of the carrier and said, “It had occurred to me.”
More than that, Heat had spent the last few silent minutes playing out its viability in her mind. “Here’s a what-if: What if Fabian Beauvais had some personal leverage, some reason to extort or blackmail Keith Gilbert? I don’t know…Maybe, working for Alicia Delamater, he learned about their affair and threatened to expose that.” As she spoke, Nikki realized she was building her scenario on one of Rook’s theories and that there would, no doubt, be some crow eating and a sexual favor trade-off as a result. That would have to wait for tonight, she thought, with some relish. “That accounts for the phone calls between Beauvais and the commish. And the ten thousand in cash.”
“Calls to negotiate the payoff and the place to make it. Here.”
“Conscience,” said Heat.
Detective Aguinaldo picked up the what-if, in complete sync with Heat’s thoughts. “So they meet here that night. The money gets paid. But something goes wrong.”
Heat took the handoff. “It’s not the agreed amount, or Beauvais says something to piss off Gilbert, or vice versa, or Gilbert never intended to pay — or to let him live. Think of all the things that can go south fast in a deal gone bad. Either way, Gilbert brought his gun, and whatever happened, didn’t finish the job. Beauvais runs, wounded. Gilbert gets the hell out of here.”
“But if the ten grand was some kind of blackmail,” asked Aguinaldo, “why didn’t Beauvais expose Gilbert after he shot him?”
“Not sure.” Nikki felt comfortable enough with the other detective to speculate aloud. “What about this? He’s an immigrant, right? No standing in the community. He got his money — through an illegal blackmail. Figures he’ll survive the wound. Why put himself out there by getting into the justice system against a power broker?”
“…Who already tried to kill him.”
“And may be highly incentivized to finish the job,” said Heat. “Sure would explain how a shooting in the Hamptons leads to smashing into the planetarium in New York City.”
“If we know for sure there was a shooting here.”
A breeze stirred and Nikki turned to look at it ripple the surface of the harbor. And wondered if the Ruger was buried in the silt out there somewhere.
“That’s a lot of water,” said Aguinaldo.
“Did Gilbert keep a boat here?” asked Heat as they walked back to their cars.
“Doubtful, but I can check.”
“I’ve asked you to do a lot. I have to get back to the city. Mind another favor?” Heat gestured to the scattering of homes nestled behind evergreens and rail fences off the rural road surrounding the marina. “If you can free up the personnel, could you have somebody knock on a few doors around here, Detective Aguinaldo?”
“It’s Inez,” she said, opening her notebook.
Rook texted Heat while she was buying a cup for the road at Hampton Coffee Company. Her first reaction was a twinge of melancholy that they had devolved from personal contact to voice mail to IMs. He might as well be in Switzerland. But she cheered up when she read his invitation. STILL IN THE MOOD TO BE IN THE MOOD FOR THAT ROMANTIC ROOFTOP DINNER? Making sure to be immediate, she replied yes. He pinged her back, asking if they could do it at her place. He had his reasons, and she had a roof, too.
Nikki hit the highway with a smile. She wanted to see his face by candlelight when she told him she’d poached one of his wacko theories. She suppressed the tingle she felt about what else the night would bring. For now, she was happy things might be settling back to normal between them.
On the way out of the Hamptons she started counting the round blue metal signs posted a half-mile apart that read: COASTAL EVACUATION ROUTE. Those warnings had been there for years, but she never really noticed them. Like so many things.
What had she missed in this case? Asking herself that, as she did at some point during every investigation, Heat succumbed to the detective’s disease. To always feel something got overlooked or was lost in all the complexity and lies. But what experience had taught her was to just push forward. That there’s always more going on than you think, but the answer is usually simpler than it appears.