“Someone who didn’t mind a quickie,” Judey said. “If they left the club at one, and they were stealing the boat an hour later, they didn’t have a lot of foreplay time.”
“Maybe Bill ran off with someone’s wife and now the enraged husband is after him,” Todd said.
A perfectly logical assumption, but the boat part of it bothered me. “I don’t get the boat-stealing part,” I said. “Bill’s running from someone. Let’s say it’s the husband. Why does Bill take a boat? If you wanted a fast getaway you’d use a car. If you were going any distance you’d take a plane. A boat seems so limiting. And snatching the boat seems extreme. And what about the apartment trashing?” Not to mention Puke Face and the fear speech.
No one had an answer.
“Maybe it was that the boat was the fastest way out,” Hooker finally said. “Or maybe it was the only way out. Maybe Bill didn’t go home to his apartment. He was supposed to sail in the morning. So maybe he went back to Flex, and something happened, and he had to take off.”
“We were supposed to sail early. Almost everyone stayed on the boat,” Todd said. “I went to dinner with some friends, and I was back on the boat by ten.”
“I have twin diesels. Combined they give me fifteen hundred fifty horses,” Hooker said. “Didn’t you hear Happy Hooker leave?”
“You can’t hear a whole lot in crew quarters. Mostly you hear the generator. I can ask around, though. Maybe one of the other guys knows something.” Todd’s eyes opened wide. “Hey, wait a minute. Happy Hooker wasn’t in its usual slip. There was something wrong with the electrical hookup, so they had her at the end of Pier F. Bill moved her. He had your key. He was listed as captain with the dockmaster.”
“I walked every square inch of this marina, and I didn’t see my boat,” Hooker said. “Why didn’t the dockmaster tell me the boat was moved?”
“It was a real mess when they discovered the guard. Nobody was thinking about anything but the murder. And then the office was a mess and the records were trashed. I guess it was a real bloody struggle. Probably no one even remembered about your boat.”
“One last thing,” I said to Todd. “Have you ever run into a big guy with a scar on the right side of his face? Glass eye?”
“That sounds like Hugo. Don’t know his last name. He’s one of Salzar’s henchmen. Sails with us sometimes.”
Hooker swung the Porsche into the lot that serviced Monty’s. It had only been a ten-minute drive, but it felt like a lifetime. It looked like Bill had snatched a woman who belonged to Salzar. I didn’t know what to think. Was this woman a daughter? A girlfriend? Personal chef?
Hooker and I got out. I took Brian. And Hooker hauled Judey out of the Porsche’s pretend backseat.
“What sort of business are you involved in?” I asked Judey.
“Interior design. And I’m much sought after. Calvin and I were making a nice living…until he dumped me. The jerk.” Judey took Brian’s leash from me. “How about you? What have you been up to?”
“I work for Salyer Insurance Group. Property damage. I’m the supervisor over six claims adjusters.” Not the world’s most glamorous job, but it paid the rent. And paying the rent was important, since I wasn’t doing so good in the finding-a-husband department. Unfortunately, it also wasn’t a very forgiving job. Salyer Insurance Group wasn’t going to be happy if I didn’t show up for work on Monday.
“You were always the brain,” Judey said. He turned to Hooker. “When we were kids, Barney always won the spelling contests in school. I was a complete loser, but Barney always got a perfect report card.”
“You were smart,” I said to Judey. “You just had a concentration problem.”
“I was conflicted. I was having an identity crisis,” Judey said.
“Right now I’m having a hunger crisis,” I said. “I need lunch.”
“There’s a wonderful deli next to Monty’s,” Judey said. “They have spice cookies that Brian adores.”
Brian’s ears perked up at the mention of spice cookies.
“Isn’t he the clever one,” Judey said. “He knows ‘spice cookies.’”
Hooker looked doubtful, and I was guessing Hooker wasn’t a schnauzer person. Hooker looked more like an English bulldog sort of person. Hooker looked like the sort of guy who’d feed his dog beer. I could see Hooker sitting in front of his television, in his underwear, getting wasted with his bulldog.
“You’re smiling,” Hooker said to me. “What’s that about?”
I didn’t think it was a good idea to tell Hooker I was smiling about him in his underwear, so I popped out a lie. “It’s Brian,” I said. “Don’t you think he’s cute?”
“That’s not a cute-dog smile,” Hooker said. “I know a cute-dog smile when I see it, and that’s not it.”
“Are you calling me a liar?”
“Yeah.”