Night Moves (Doc Ford)

12




JUDGING FROM THE WAY CRESSA ARTURO WAS DRESSED, she was, indeed, eager to make up for a decade of celibacy. She greeted me at the door in a bathrobe that was belted loosely, the bikini top or bra she had selected right there for me to see, two black hammocks of lace fully laden, the breasts separated by the palest of milk cleavage.

If she had seduction on her mind, though, it had been earlier, before the dog had dampened her mood on this night of dry wind and moon.

“My god, where have you been?” Cressa demanded, motioning me inside. “I can’t control that animal. Take a look at what he’s done to my house . . . and my pool!”

Swimming pool, too? I managed to conceal my delight as I took a last glance behind me, then stepped inside.

I had arrived by pickup truck, a blue ’72 GMC now parked conspicuously in a drive that weaved through palms and landscaping to three tiers of stucco that was visible through the trees. The house was built on the beach close enough that I heard waves sluicing sand when I got out and pretended to yawn. While yawning, I scoped the area. If someone was watching the place, where had they concealed themselves?

Thanks to Bernie, I now knew things about Cressa, her husband, and her husband’s family that suggested the woman was dangerous company, possibly very dangerous. And that she was being watched.

I had narrowed it down to three likely spots before touching the doorbell, then covering a smile that now broadened as I followed Cressa into the living room.

“I think the rug’s ruined,” she said. “And my couch . . . I can’t make him get off the damn thing. It’s a Lilly Pulitzer, white sea worsted wool.” She pulled my elbow against her breast and pleaded, “Doc, please do something!”

The dog, asleep on his side, lifted his head for the first time and blinked at me while my eyes took in the room. White throw rugs on a black marble floor. Chrome-and-white furniture. It was an expensive couch. I had no idea how much something like that would cost, but the brand Lilly Pulitzer sounded pricy. Which only made sense in a beach property worth six, maybe eight million. No doubt about it, Rob Arturo and his family, father and crazy brother included, had done very well investing in Florida. “Are the rugs real sheepskin?”

“What could it possibly matter!”

“Dogs are drawn to animal smells.”

“The only animal in here that smells is him!” she snapped, then headed for the kitchen.

I called after her, “He usually minds pretty well. You tried the basic commands?”

“Yes!”

“Single words only?”

“For christ’s sake,” Cressa replied, “I tried everything but shooting him in the eyes with mace.”

“They can’t pick commands out of a sentence. You know, say it once in a normal voice. Sit-stay-come. Like that.”

Even though I strung the words together, the dog came to attention. So I signaled him with an open palm: Stay. Which caused the retriever’s head to teeter sideways, his fur darker for the white wool, and he was asleep when his jowls hit the cushion.

I asked, “Did he mind Tomlinson?”

“No! Well . . . not for long, anyway.”

The seaward side of the house was glass, sliding doors ten feet tall, one linked to another on tracks so the wall could be opened wide at sunset or on balmy nights like this. But the married mistress was an air-conditioned girl, so the room was warm as an orchid house in a structure sealed like a capsule.

The woman was obviously a compulsive neat freak—but she had kept the retriever inside, so there had to be a good reason. Did she know she was being watched, but didn’t want the dog to sniff out her observer? Was she manipulating the person who was paying to have her watched? If so, playing to the camera benefited the woman in some way. If true, I was now part of the act. So was Tomlinson.

I snapped my fingers and instantly had the attention of two alert yellow eyes. I motioned Come, then I said, “Heel,” which caused the retriever to circle behind me and sit beneath my left hand. Didn’t say another word as I marched the dog across two white throw rugs, detoured to hit a third island of white in the dining room, then backtracked across the rugs, out the door and down the steps to the caged pool.

Maybe he’s bipolar, I reasoned, surveying the wreckage. Like most swimming pools, this one had a robotic cleaner that chattered along the bottom, linked by accordion hose to a pump. A retriever’s job, of course, is to retrieve objects from the water. Possibly because there were no boats moored in the Arturo’s pool, this retriever had gone to work on the cleaning system. Chunks of hose and robotic parts everywhere. The detritus of what might have once been a sun mattress lay on the bottom of the lighted pool.

“Or possibly just neurotic,” I said aloud.

The dog, indifferent to the mess he’d created, nudged my hand as if inviting a reward. Which he’d earned, by god, so I scratched his ears on behalf of Hannah Smith, a friend who had been intentionally insulted. Offered to scratch his belly, too, but the retriever balked at this wild display of emotion. Preferred to take two galloping strides, then went airborne, crashing into the glittering pool of turquoise to continue an assault that had been interrupted by his nap on a couch of white virgin wool.

I was thinking, Maybe I remind him of his owner.

There had to be a reason why he was an obedience champ when I was around, but the Creature from the Black Lagoon when I was away. I don’t believe in pull-a-thorn-from-the-paw fables. Lions don’t befriend mice, and fairy tales don’t explain loyalty, let alone obedience. I had freed the retriever from a snake’s teeth, but Tomlinson had helped, yet the dog didn’t obey him, according to the married mistress, and obviously preferred to be with me.

Interesting, but I had more pressing matters to deal with.

“Please, please get him out of that pool. I was thinking we might go for a swim.” Cressa, at the top of the stairs, was standing with a drink her hand, bathrobe open now. Her string bikini cupped a triangle of shadows on a torso of Nordic white.

“Sorry. I’ll have to take a rain check. Better get this dog back home.”

And I left her there, with her drink and her bikini, and her mouth wide open.

—

THAT DIDN’T MEAN I didn’t come back, though.

When I was sure she was asleep, I returned to the beach house on foot, a canvas bag over my shoulder. In the bag were tools that I use overseas, seldom on Sanibel Island: night vision optics and a military Golight with an infrared cap over the lens. Cap off, the spotlight threw a mile-long beam. Cap on, the beam was invisible unless using night optics. I used the night vision to search the Arturo property. I found what I was looking for, all right, and much more. I didn’t know why Cressa was being watched, but it was the sophistication of the surveillance that concerned me most. The married mistress was being watched by pros.