Metro Girl (Alex Barnaby 1)

“You have a short memory. I kissed your dart wound.”

“I figured that was a pity kiss. I was pathetic.”

“Well yeah, but I was still being nice to you.”

We got into the battered Mini, and Hooker drove south toward town.

“I haven’t spent a lot of time in Naples, but I think I can find my way to the house,” Hooker said. “Bill gave me directions.”

Hooker turned right at Fifth Avenue and drove past blocks of restaurants and shops. People were eating at outdoor tables and strolling into art galleries. The pace was slower than South Beach. The dress was more conservative. Palm trees were wound in twinkle lights. Cars were expensive.

We took a left onto Gordon Drive and watched the houses get larger as we drove south. No more restaurants or shops. No high-rise condos. Just block after block of expensive houses and professionally landscaped yards. And beyond the houses to our right was the Gulf of Mexico.

When we reached the Port Royal Beach Club, Hooker turned left into a neighborhood of curving streets that we knew followed a series of man-made canals. Half the houses were 1970s ranches and half the houses were new mega McMansions. The McMansions filled their lots and were hidden behind wrought iron gates that opened to brick drive courts and lush gardens. I suspected there were some older residents of Naples who might roll their eyes at the McMansions. I thought the McMansions were glorious. For that matter, I thought the ranches weren’t bad either.

In my mind I imagined movie stars living behind the wrought iron gates, or possibly Fortune 500 CEOs. The reality was probably much less fun. Probably these houses were all owned by realtors who’d made a killing in the grossly inflated housing market.

Bill had rented one of the ranches. It was easily recognized by the yellow crime scene tape stretched across the front of the property, preventing people from using the circular drive.

Hooker parked at the side of the road, and we ducked under the tape and walked to the front door. Even in the dark it was possible to see the bloodstains on the yellow brick drive and concrete front porch.

“Maybe you should go back to the car,” Hooker said. “It’s not necessary for both of us to do this. I’m just going to collect Bill’s things and check out the boat.”

“Thanks,” I said, “but I’m okay.”

In the absence of fake dog poop, Bill had hidden the key under a flowerpot on the front porch. Hooker found the key and opened the door. We stepped inside, and Hooker hit the light switch. The foyer was white marble and beyond that beige wall-to-wall carpet. There was a grisly trail of blood through the foyer to the carpet. The blood was smeared where Bill had fallen and dragged himself up. In the middle of the foyer was a perfect bloody handprint. Bill’s handprint. Drops splattered out in an arc.

I felt my stomach sicken, and I went down hard on my knees. I was on all fours, fighting back nausea, shaking with the effort.

Hooker scooped me up and carried me into the powder room off the foyer. He sat me on the toilet seat, shoved my head between my legs, and draped a soaking wet hand towel over my head and neck.

“Breathe,” he said. His hand was on the towel at the back of my neck. “Push against my hand. Push.”

“I guess I wasn’t okay,” I said.

“No one should ever be okay when they see something like that.” He replaced the towel with a fresh one, and water ran down my neck and soaked into my shirt and my shorts. “I’m going to leave you here while I get Bill’s things. You have to promise me you won’t move an inch.”

“I promise.”

Ten minutes later, he came back for me. “I have Bill’s and Maria’s things in the back of the Mini. Can you stand?”

“Yes. I’m horrified and disgusted and angry, but I’m not sick. And I’m not going to turn to mush when I see the blood on the way out. It caught me by surprise.”

Hooker took my hand and led me past the blood in the foyer and out the door. He turned the lights off, locked the door, and pocketed the key.

“I want to show you something out back,” he said. “Take a walk with me.”

We followed a footpath around the side of the house, past trees filled with oranges and grapefruits and flowers that were still fragrant in the warm night air. A pool stretched the width of the yard, and beyond the pool was a swath of manicured lawn and beyond the lawn was a dock and beyond the dock was the canal. A full moon hung in the lower sky, reflecting light that shimmered across the black water.

“It’s pretty, isn’t it?” Hooker said.

It was more than pretty. It was calming. Standing there, looking out at the canal, it was hard to imagine anything bad had happened in the house behind us.

“No Sunseeker,” I said.

“No. But then we already knew they had the gold.”

We returned to the car and left Port Royal. Hooker retraced his route and got back onto the Trail, heading north. This part of the road was clogged with traffic. Professional buildings, strip malls, furniture stores, and chain hotels lined both sides of the highway. Hooker pulled into the first hotel he came across and parked in the unloading zone.