J is for Judgment (Kinsey Millhone 10)

She nodded. “I don’t know the details.”

“He told you he wasn’t guilty?”

“Oh, he wasn’t,” she said. “He took the blame for somebody else. That’s how he was able to get Brian out of jail. By calling in his marker.”

I stared at her without slowing my pace. “Did you ever hear of a guy named Harris Brown?”

She shook her head in the negative. “Who’s he?”

“An ex-cop. He was originally assigned to the fraud investigation after Wendell disappeared, but then he was pulled off. Turns out he’d invested a lot of money in Wendell’s company, and the scam wiped him out. I was thinking he might have used some of his old connections to help Brian. I just can’t figure out why he’d do it.”

The ramp for Marina I was another fifty yards down on the left, the gate locked as usual. Seagulls were pecking intently at a fishing net. We stood there for a moment, hoping somebody with a key card would pass through so we could slipstream in behind them.

Finally I grabbed on to the fence post and held on while I climbed around on the outside of the barrier, working my way along the fencing until I reached the other side. I opened the gate for her and let her through, and we started off down the dock. Conversation between us dwindled. I turned into the sixth line of slips on the right, marked J, counting down visually to the slot where the Lord was tied up.

Even from a distance, I could see the slip was empty and the boat was gone.

21

Renata’s mood darkened as we moved up the ramp toward the harbormaster’s office, which was located above a ship’s chandler selling marine hardware and supplies. I half expected an out-burst of some kind, but she was remarkably silent. She waited on a small wooden balcony outside while I went through the explanations with the clerk at the counter. Since we weren’t the legal owners of the missing boat and since there was no way we could prove Eckert hadn’t taken the boat himself, it soon became clear that for the time being, nothing much could be done. The clerk took the information, as much to appease me as anything else. When and if Eckert showed, he could file a report. The harbormaster would then notify the Coast Guard and the local police. I left my name and telephone number and asked if they’d have Eckert get in touch if they heard from him.

Renata followed me downstairs, declining to accompany me as I walked over to the yacht club next door. I was hoping somebody there might know where Eckert had gone. I pushed in through the glass doors and went upstairs, pausing outside the dining room. From the second-floor deck, she looked cold and tired, sitting on the low concrete wall that bordered the breakwater. At her back the ocean thundered monotonously, wind tearing at her hair. In the shallows a yellow Labrador charged through the surf, chasing pigeons off the beach while the seagulls wheeled above him and screamed with amusement.

The yacht club dining room was empty except for the bartender and a fellow with a vacuum cleaner, mowing the wall-to-wall carpeting. Again I left my name and number, asking the bartender to have Carl Eckert get in touch with me if he came in.

As we walked back to the car, Renata gave me a bitter smile. “What’s so funny?” I asked.

“Nothing. I was just thinking about Wendell. He has all the luck. It’ll be hours before anybody starts to look for him.”

“There’s nothing we can do, Renata. It’s always possible he’ll show up,” I said. “Actually, we can’t really be sure he left. Hell, we can’t even prove Wendell took the boat.”

“You don’t know him like I do. He rips everybody off one way or another.”

We cruised through the parking lot in search of her missing Jeep, but it was nowhere in sight. She drove me back to the office, where I retrieved my VW and drove out to Colgate. I spent the next two irksome hours getting the rear window replaced. While I was waiting, I sat in the chrome-and-plastic reception area, drinking free bad coffee from a foam cup while I leafed through tattered back issues of Arizona Highways. This lasted four minutes before I left the building. As was my habit of late, I found a public telephone booth and conducted a little business from the parking lot. Once I got the hang of it, I could probably dispense with an office altogether.

I put a call through to Lieutenant Whiteside in Fraud and brought him up to date. “I think it’s time to run mug shots in the paper,” he said. “I’ll contact the local TV station, too, and see what they can do for us. I want the public aware these guys are out there. Maybe someone will dime ‘em out.”

“Let’s hope.”