Chapter NINE
The bay was flat, not a ripple on it. The cold front that had moved through the area on Friday night had wiped the sky clean of clouds. Our universe was defined by the turquoise sea and a sky of crystalline blue. Sam was at the helm, keeping our speed at a stately seven knots. The soft breeze generated by our passage was suffused with the briny smell of the bay. J.D. and I sat on a bench seat placed at right angles to the helm. She was dressed in navy-blue shorts, a white T-shirt bearing the logo of The Old Salty Dog restaurant, and flip-flops. Her dark hair was tied in a ponytail, her smile radiant, and her emerald-green eyes a shade or two darker than the water that surrounded us.
A Cigarette-style go-fast boat roared by us on our port side, its un-muffled engines pushing it along at fifty or sixty miles per hour. The captain waved at us and poured on more juice. Two women in bikinis sat next to him, laughing, their hair blowing in the stiff wind over the bow. As if on cue, they both pulled up their bikini tops, flashing the old fogies aboard the ancient Hatteras. Fun in the sun. A Florida tradition. Life never gets much better than this, I thought.
“What did the chief of detectives say?” I asked.
“He’s going to get his people moving. He’ll send me a list of names of violent men I arrested, along with their pictures and information or whether they’re still in prison, on parole, or dead. Maybe one of them was at Pattigeorge’s Friday night.”
I smiled. “How would you rate the chances of that happening?”
“Probably nil.”
“Even if you could identify the killer, it’d take some doing to round him up.”
She shrugged. “At least we’d have a starting place.”
• • •
It was almost two when we pulled into the harbor at Marina Jack. Sam checked in by radio with the dockmaster, and then backed Sammy’s Hat into a slip next to a floating dock. J.D. and I handled the lines as Sam used the engines to hold the boat against the pier.
The lunch crowd had thinned out, so we didn’t have to wait for a table on the patio overlooking the harbor. We ordered drinks and chatted about gossip on the island, forgetting for a moment that a woman had been brutally murdered in this tranquil piece of the world. While we were waiting for our food, J.D.’s phone rang. She looked at the caller ID, said, “Shar-key,” and took the call. She listened, said “thanks,” and closed the phone. “They found a boat that fits the delivery captain’s description of the one he saw at Sister Key yesterday morning.”
“Where?” asked Sam.
“Tied up at a dock in a canal in Emerald Harbor, two houses down from the Alexanders’ place.”
“Somebody’s just now noticing it?” I asked.
“The couple who live there have been out of town for a few days,” J.D. said. “They got home an hour or so ago and noticed the boat at their dock. They called us. Steve Carey went down there, called in the registration number, and got a hit. It was the one stolen from Bimini Bay Friday night.”
“If the guy in my bar that night is the killer, how would he have gotten from Pattigeorge’s to Bimini Bay?” Sam asked.
“Were there any cars in your parking lot when you and Miles left on Friday night?” I asked.
“Only Miles’s convertible.”
“How about in the parking area underneath the Harbour Square building next door?”
“There’re always cars there.”
“It’d have been pretty simple,” I said. “He followed Nell home, popped her before she got into the house, stashed her body somewhere, drove his car to Bimini Bay, stole the boat, ran down the bay to the canal, put the body in the boat, went to Sister Key, left the body, took the boat back to the canal, and drove away in Nell’s car.”
“One of the neighbors would have heard the shot,” said Sam.
“Not necessarily,” said J.D. “That little twenty-two doesn’t make a lot of noise, and if he’d shot her in the car or inside the house, the noise would have been very limited.”
“Did your people take a look at the house to see if she was killed there?” asked Sam.
“Yes. The forensics people went over it with a fine-tooth comb. I don’t think she was shot inside the house. Maybe in her car.”
“You haven’t found her car?” asked Sam.
“Not yet.”
“The killer could be anywhere by now,” said Sam.
“He could,” said J.D. “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
Our trip back up the bay was uneventful. I called Jock to let him know that we were on our way back, and he met us on the dock behind Pattigeorge’s. J.D. left for the police station to see if she could get an update on the forensic examination of the boat. Jock and I helped Sam wash down Sammy’s Hat and left for home.