One of those partners, Dr. Kenneth Greer, had never cashed his check-this according to microfiche records at the bank.
Approximately seven months after Rudy Graveline closed the Durkos Center, Dr. Kenneth Greer was shot to death while hunting deer in the Ocala National Forest. The sheriff’s office had ruled it an accident.
The hunter who had somehow mistaken Kenneth Greer for a white-tail buck had given his name as T. B. Luckner of 1333 Carter Boulevard in Decatur, Georgia. If the sheriff in Ocala had troubled himself to check, he would have found that there was no such person and no such address.
The nurse who participated in Victoria Barletta’s surgery had recently gone to New York to sell her story to a TV producer.
Shortly afterwards, a paid killer named Tony the Eel showed up to murder Mick Stranahan. Tony, with a brand-new face.
Then the TV producer arrived in Miami to take Stranahan’s picture for a prime-time special.
All traced to a four-year-old kidnapping that Mick Stranahan had never solved.
As he steered the boat into the Biscayne Channel, angling out of the messy following chop, he gunned the outboard and made a beeline for his stilt house. The tide was up, making it safe to cross the flats.
On the way, he thought about Rudy Graveline. Suppose the doctor had killed Vicky. Stranahan checked himself-make that Victoria, not Vicky. Better yet, just plain Barletta. No sense personalizing.
But suppose the doctor had killed her, and suppose Greer knew, or found out. Greer was the only one who didn’t cash the buyout check-maybe he was holding out for more money, or maybe he was ready to blab to the authorities.
Either way, Dr. Graveline would have had plenty of motive to silence him.
And if, for some reason, Dr. Graveline had been led to believe that Mick Stranahan posed a similar threat, what would stop him from killing again?
Stranahan couldn’t help but marvel at the possibility. Considering all the cons and ex-cons who’d love to see him dead-hoods, dopers, scammers, bikers and stickup artists-it was ironic that the most likely suspect was some rich quack he’d never even met.
The more Stranahan learned about the case, and the more he thought about what he’d learned, the lousier he felt.
His spirits improved somewhat when he spotted his model friend Tina stretched out on the sun deck of the stilt house. He was especially pleased to notice that she was alone.
8
Stranahan caught four small snappers and fried them up for supper.
“Ri chie left me,” Tina was explaining. “I mean, he put me out on your house and left. Can you believe that?”
Stranahan pretended to be listening as he foraged in the refrigerator. “You want lemon or garlic salt?”
“Both,” Tina said. “We had a fight and he ordered me to get off the boat. Then he drove away.”
She wore a baggy Jimmy Buffett T-shirt over a cranberry bikini bottom. Her wheat-colored hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and a charm glinted at her throat; a tiny gold porpoise, it looked like.
“Richie deals a little coke,” Tiny went on. “That’s what we were fighting about. Well, part of it.”
Stranahan said, “Keep an eye on the biscuits so they don’t burn.”
“Sure. Anyway, know what else we were fighting about? This is so dumb you won’t believe it.”
Stranahan was dicing a pepper on the kitchen countertop. He was barefoot, wearing cutoff jeans and a khaki short-sleeved shirt, open to the chest. His hair was still damp from the shower. Overall, he felt much better about his situation.
Tina said, “I got this modeling job and Richie, he went crazy. All because I had to do some, you know, nudes. Just beach stuff, nobody out there but me and the photog. Richie says no way, you can’t do it. And I said, you can’t tell me what to do. Then-then!-he calls me a slut, and I say that’s pretty rich coming from a two-bit doper. So then he slugs me in the stomach and tells me to get my butt out of the boat.” Tina paused for a sigh. “Your house was closest.”
“You can stay for the night,” Stranahan said, sounding downright fatherly.
“What if Richie comes back?”
“Then we teach him some manners.”
Tina said, “He’s still pissed about the last time, when you dragged him through the water.”
“The biscuits,” Stranahan reminded her.
“Oh, yeah, sorry.” Tina pulled the hot tray out of the oven.
For at least thirteen minutes she didn’t say anything, because the snapper was excellent and she was hungry. Stranahan found a bottle of white wine and poured two glasses. It was then Tina smiled and said, “Got any candles?”
Stranahan played along, even though darkness still was an hour away. He lighted two stubby hurricane candles and set them on the oilskin tablecloth.
“This is really nice,” Tina said.
“Yes, itis.”
“I haven’t found a single bone,” she said, chewing intently.
“Good.”
“Are you married, Mick?”
“Divorced,” he replied. “Five times.”
“Wow.”
“My fault, every one,” he added. To some degree, he believed it. Each time the same thing had happened: He’d awakened one morning and felt nothing; not guilt or jealousy or anger, but an implacable numbness, which was worse. Like his blood had turned to novocaine overnight. He’d stared at the woman in his bed and become incredulous at the notion that this was a spouse, that he had married this person. He’d felt trapped and done a poor job of concealing it. By the fifth go-round, divorce had become an eerie out-of-body experience, except for the part with the lawyers.
“Were you fooling around a lot, or what?” Tina asked.
“It wasn’t that,” Stranahan said.
“Then what? You’re a nice-looking guy, I don’t know why a girl would cut and run.”
Stranahan poured more wine for both of them.
“I wasn’t much fun to be around.”
“Oh, I disagree,” Tina said with a perkiness that startled him.
Her eyes wandered up to the big mount on the living room wall. “What happened to Mr. Swordfish?”
“That’s a marlin,” Stranahan said. “He fell off the wall and broke his beak.”
“The tape looks pretty tacky, Mick.”
“Yeah, I know.”
After dinner they went out on the deck to watch the sun go down behind Coconut Grove. Stranahan tied a size 12 hook on his fishing line and baited it with a lint-sized shred of frozen shrimp. In fifteen minutes he caught five lively pinfish, which he dropped in a plastic bait bucket. Entranced, Tina sat cross-legged on the deck and watched the little fish swim frenetic circles inside the container.
Stranahan stowed the rod in the stilt house, came out, and picked up the bucket. “I’ll be right back.”
“W here youoffto?”
“Downstairs, by the boat.”
“CanI come?”
He shrugged. “You might not like it.”
“Like what?” Tina asked and followed him tentatively down the wooden stairs toward the water.
Liza hovered formidably in the usual place. Stranahan pointed at the huge barracuda and said, “See there?”
“Wow, isthata shark?”
“No.”
He reached into the bucket and grabbed one of the pinfish, carefully folding the dorsal so it wouldn’t prick his fingers.
Tina said, “Now I get it.”
“She’s like a pet,” Stranahan said. He tossed the pinfish into the water, and the barracuda devoured it in a silent mercury flash, all fangs. When the turbulence subsided, they saw that the big fish had returned to its station; it hung there as if it had never moved.
Impassively Stranahan tossed another pinfish and the barracuda repeated the kill.
Tina stood so close that Stranahan could feel her warm breath on his bare arm. “Do they eat people?” she asked.
He could have hugged her right then. “No,” he said, “they don’t eat people.”
“Good!”
“They do strike at shiny objects,” he said, “so don’t wear a bracelet if you are diving.”
“Seriously?”
“It’s been known to happen.”
This time he scooped up two pinfish and lobbed them into the water simultaneously; the barracuda got them both in one fierce swipe.