Sink or Swim (Beach Kingdom 3)

“Here she goes,” Rory said, smiling into his coffee. “My little brainiac.”

“That would definitely give us a place to start digging for dirt on him. Unfortunately, that information probably wouldn’t be online.”

Something was tugging at Andrew’s subconscious and Jiya was the first to notice. She laid a hand on his arm “What is it?”

“I don’t know, it just makes no sense that our father built this relationship with a cop. He hated cops. It doesn’t fit. I keep thinking Handler used the situation with my mother to blackmail our father so he’d let Handler use the Castle Gate as a drop spot. But that doesn’t really track, either. Our dad was an unapologetic asshole. He didn’t give a damn about his reputation.”

Jiya’s brows pulled together. “You think Handler had something else on your father?”

Andrew shrugged one shoulder. “Yeah. And if that’s the case…”

“Dad would have had something on him,” Jamie finished. “Some kind of collateral. He never would have made a deal without it.”

“You’re right. That guy loved gloating about the dirt he collected on every customer in the bar. It would have been a point of pride for him to have an ace in the hole on a cop.”

“But what?” Olive asked.

Jiya inhaled. “Jamie, did any of Handler’s cases involve the Castle Gate?”

Andrew’s middle brother stared into space, as if performing mental math. “No, but I’ve only got the final year of our father’s life outlined so far.”

Olive and Jiya already had their phones out. A handful of minutes passed in silence while the brothers traded looks across the kitchen. “Oh my God,” Jiya held up her phone, then brought it back down in front of her to read out loud from the screen. “July 2011 there was an alleged shooting at the Castle Gate. Nearby residents reported gunfire.” Her fingers tapped the screen a few times. “This is literally just an archived police blotter. I can’t find anything else about it.”

“Me either,” Olive said. “Not even when I search the address.”

Marcus dropped into a chair beside Jamie. “Too bad you don’t have cameras in the bar.”

Andrew’s pulse spiked. “We don’t. But our father did.”

*

Andrew couldn’t skip another day at the beach, but concentrating on assigning chairs and settling squabbles among the lifeguards was no easy task. He wanted to be at the Castle Gate, searching his father’s old boxes for old camera footage. It was a long shot to say the least, but he’d meant what he said. Their father didn’t back down from anyone, especially cops. If he’d been forced to make a deal with Handler, there was a good reason.

They just needed to find out what it was.

The day moved by at a snail’s pace. There were a couple of drunk and disorderlies on the beach and one teenager who ventured into a no swim zone, so by four o’clock, Andrew couldn’t change fast enough and get to the Castle Gate. He bribed the daytime bartender to stay an extra hour and went down to the basement, stopping at the base of the stairs to regard the long-ignored stacks of boxes left over from his father’s days at the bar’s helm.

Guilt prodded him in the side. A vision of his father’s surprised face caught him off guard, frozen in a flash lightning. His old man would hate knowing Andrew was about to invade his privacy like this, especially after what he’d done. Andrew could practically feel the undercurrents of loathing right now, reaching across the basement and wrapping around his neck. Thus he couldn’t have been more grateful when he heard two sets of footsteps coming down the stairs. They belonged to his brothers. He didn’t have to turn around to know it.

“Let’s do this,” Rory said, clapping Andrew on the shoulder.

It took them twenty minutes.

Each brother had gone through two boxes when Jamie found the DVD, July 2011 written on the reflective silver surface in Sharpie. They all but tripped over each other to get upstairs to the office. “Thank God I never upgraded this laptop,” Andrew muttered, opening the CD player on the side, loading the disc and tapping it back closed.

“I’m almost scared to watch this,” Jamie said.

“Likewise, man.” Rory blew out a breath. “But I’m even more scared that it’s nothing.”

“It’s got to be something,” Andrew said. “I need it to be something.”

With both of his brothers’ hands on his shoulders, Andrew clicked on the folder icon and a grainy, soundless video came up on the screen. The scene was a snapshot straight out of Andrew’s memory. The Castle Gate dining room from another lifetime. Half-lit neon beer signs, mismatched furniture, fist-sized holes in the wall. All at once, the sight of it soured Andrew’s stomach and gave him a shot of pride over how far the establishment had come.

There was nothing surprising about the footage. Based on the time stamp, it was well past midnight. Some drunk male tourists were having a laugh, beach bags abandoned at their feet. After about a minute or so, though, their smiles disappeared and one started jabbing the air with his finger, bringing his friend up and out of his seat. They dove for each other across the table, knocking it on its side.