Kateri complied, setting down her sheriff’s wide-brimmed hat on the bar.
“Hey, Sheriff.” Berk Moore slid into the seat beside her. “How’s Rainbow?”
“I haven’t been in to visit her yet today. Things got hectic.” An understatement. “But last night she was ’bout the same.”
“Sorry. Really. That sucks. Geeze. I can’t imagine…” the Oceanview Café without her. He didn’t say it, but the words hung in the air.
Bertha whisked chocolate into the milk, topped it with marshmallow cream and slid it across the bar to Kateri. “How’s you?”
Kateri pressed her hand to her ribs. “’Bout the same. Sleeping in my own house, though. That makes me happy.” She pulled the hot chocolate close, sipped and sighed with pleasure. “So does this.”
“I know, darlin’.” Bertha was watching Kateri a little too closely.
“There’s nothing like your own bed,” Berk agreed.
Kateri licked the marshmallow cream off her upper lip. “Berk, how’s business?”
“Not much new construction. You know it’s about impossible to get permitted. But plenty of remodeling.” Berk owned a construction company in town. “With the dry summer weather, we’re hustling.”
“So why are you in here?” Kateri didn’t expect to like the answer.
Berk pulled off his baseball hat and ran his hand over his bald head. “I heard a rumor and when I saw the sheriff come in here, I thought I’d follow along and ask if it was true.”
Kateri sighed. Small towns. Everybody knew everything about five seconds after it happened. “It’s true. We lost a tourist last night.”
Bertha put her hand on her skinny hip. “Something tells me it wasn’t another dumbass who walked off the cliffs while he was texting.”
“No, although we did have one come into the police station yesterday to demand we retrieve her phone from the ocean.”
Berk and Bertha cackled.
Then Bertha sobered. “The way you’re acting, I’m going to guess it’s another slashing.”
“Yes.” Kateri pushed the half-finished chocolate away. “He, um, finished what he started with Monique.”
“Slashed her neck?” Bertha guessed.
“Slashed around her face.” Kateri gestured in a circle around her own face.
“What?” Bertha got loud.
Heads turned.
Bertha leaned across the bar. “What?” she whispered.
“Exactly what I said. Head wounds bleed, you know? I don’t ever want to see that again.” Kateri reached across and took Bertha’s hand. “Listen, if this is John Terrance, and even if it’s not, you’re the sole witness to Monique’s attack and I’m worried about you.”
“I know, honey. But I’m not leaving town, and I’m not leaving my bar.” Bertha was implacable. “No little prick with a box cutter is going to chase me away from my home.”
“I figured you were going to say that … Got any objections to the occasional police presence?”
“Not at all. I’ll give ’em peanuts, jerky, hot chocolate and maybe even iced tea.” Bertha crossed her fingers and her heart. “No liquor for the boys in blue.”
Kateri slid off the bar stool. “You take care of yourself, Bertha.” She turned to Berk. “You, too. John Terrance worked for you once upon a time, and you fired him.”
Berk turned a lovely shade of green.
Kateri said, “All of us, no matter who we are, need to be careful.”
Kateri thought he’d turned green because he was considering how John Terrance might get his revenge. But the way Berk stared at the door made her look, and she recognized the form silhouetted against the light.
Luis Sanchez, the current Coast Guard commander. He had served under her when she held the post. He had been a steadfast friend through the horror of her drowning and the constant, dreadful effort of recovery. He had been her most constant friend … and then, almost lover.
That was when things got awkward.
Luis headed for Kateri. He was Hispanic, tanned, not too tall, toned, moved like a dancer and a dark curl of hair caressed his forehead. It was miracle any woman ever resisted him.
Kateri had been so, so lucky.
Berk, the lousy coward, said, “Gotta go to work. Talk to you later, Sheriff!”
Bertha, the other lousy coward, moved to the far end of the bar and started assiduously polishing the glasses.
Even the fishermen leaned back in their chairs as if they viewed a possible blast zone.
Luis pulled up the stool Berk had so recently vacated. He leaned close and quietly said, “I’ve got news about John Terrance. Maybe.”
Kateri sat back down. This was the best news she’d had in two days and it was delivered by a man who was all business. “Tell me,” she said.
“Last night, a bunch of idiots, group of about twenty, were partying down on the beach. They had their zoom-zoom fast boat tied up against the rocks. They had a fire, they were smoking weed, drinking I don’t know what. A lot.”
Bertha called, “Commander, you want something?”
“The usual.” Luis kept talking, his dark eyes fixed on Kateri with all the fiery excitement he had once displayed in his courting. “If I’ve got this right, this guy stopped in for a drink before he made his move. Then he went over and untied the boat.”
“It was John Terrance?”
“Description matches. The group was laughing at him, teasing that he didn’t know how to drive that thing.”
Bertha placed a cold beer with a tequila chaser at his elbow. “I’ll bet that pissed him off.”
He took a long swallow of the beer. “They’re damned lucky that vicious sonofabitch didn’t kill a few before he drove away.”
Bertha retreated, but not far.
Incredulous, Kateri asked, “They watched him drive their boat out into the Pacific Ocean? What time?”
“You know drunks aren’t good with time.”
Kateri most certainly did.
He continued, “They reported it to the Coast Guard this morning when it was finally clear the boat was not coming back either with the guy or on its own.”
“Did he hot-wire it?”
“Of course not. They left the key in the ignition.”
Kateri found herself shaking her head back and forth, back and forth like a bobblehead doll. “No sign of him or the boat?”
“I’ve got a cutter out looking, but the man has been manufacturing meth for years. He knows this coast as well as we do. He could be anywhere.”
Kateri thought of the dead girl. “He could be back on land. If we had any idea of the correct time, we could figure if he’s a suspect in the murder.”
Luis knew about the murder; all of law enforcement in this part of the state knew about the murder. It made everyone itchy, and they were starting to squabble, to place blame.
Kateri was first in line for blame. “I’ve done so much wrong with this case and yet—I don’t know what I’d do differently. Except keep an eye on the Terrances while we were arresting the school board and the city council.”
“Sometimes there’s no right. You know that. You’re doing what you can. We’re all doing what we can. It’s just not enough.” Luis finished off the beer, picked up the shot.