Orchid Beach (Holly Barker 1)

“Not for its own sake. I enjoy tennis, golf, and sex.”

“I’m acquainted with your enjoyment of the latter,” she laughed.

“I reckon we burned a lot of calories last night. I’ll think of that as the moral equivalent of my morning run.”

“That’s the kind of slippery thinking a lawyer can get away with,” she said, “but not a police officer. On the other hand, maybe I could skip the run today.”

“We could always burn some more calories,” he said.

She laughed. “Mind if I finish breakfast?”

“Not if you hurry.”

“Jackson, the car or truck or whatever it was last night—could it have been a Range Rover?”

Jackson thought about that. “Let’s see, a Range Rover looks kind of square from the front, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Maybe it could have been, I don’t know. Could have been anything big—pickup, SUV, whatever. Why a Range Rover?”

“What do you know about a real estate development called Palmetto Gardens?”

“That’s easy: almost nothing, which is what most people know about it. I know it’s a superprivate, superexclusive retreat for the super-rich. When they were building the place they hired local contractors to do the basic work—roads, sewers, electrical and phone—and locals seem to do all the basic work on the houses—foundations, framing, roofing. But they bring in their own construction people for the finishing work. There was stuff in the papers about that early on; there was some resentment that more local jobs weren’t being created, but their public relations people came back with some very detailed answers about what the development was doing for the community at large—number of jobs, money spent in the town, their contribution to the tax base. It was very impressive, and it pretty much squelched any opposition. The city council backed them up, too.”

“Have you ever been inside the place?”

“No, and neither has anybody else I know.”

“I have.”

“You have?”

“Yeah. I was driving around a couple of weeks ago, getting to know the geography and the neighborhoods, but when I tried to drive in there I got stopped cold.”

“Well, it is private property, I guess.”

“Yeah, but the head of security came out and gave me a tour of the place.”

“What was the place like?”

“Like you’d imagine a superexpensive place would be: a lot of facilities for apparently only a few people. What heaven would be like, if it had been designed by a real estate developer.”

“Oh, I remember, too, that the local real estate agencies were pretty pissed off not to get a piece of the action on property sales. They don’t work with local agents at all. But what has all this got to do with Range Rovers?”

“The head of security, a guy named Noble, was driving one, and I saw a couple more while I was there. The security force drives them.”

“Noble? What’s his first name?”

“Barney.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Huh?”

“You remember, I told you my ex-partner, the ex-convict, now works for a Miami security outfit?”

“Yeah.”