Bone Key (16 page)
When Deal woke, he found himself blinking stupidly at the numbers on the bedside clock:
100
, he thought.
What does that mean?
By the time he had managed to swing his feet to the side of the bed, reason had begun to return. He had slept into Saturday afternoon, he managed to understand, and at the same time also began to process the avalanche of recollection concerning the preceding thirty-six hours or so. There seemed to be enough experience there to make up a fairly eventful lifetime, though he suspected there was plenty more on the way.
His forehead was still sore from where Conrad had pounded it into the side of the squad car the morning before, and a low-grade ache oozed up from his kidneys. Nothing a few dozen Advil couldn’t handle, he thought, pushing himself up from the bed.
The suite they’d given him hummed with quietude—no shouts from any rummy poolside crew, no sounds of housekeepers banging down the hallways. Somewhere in this vast, somnolent space, he thought, there would surely be a bathroom. Somewhere.
He stayed in the shower until the hot water gave out, a not inconsiderable time, then pulled on a T-shirt and a pair of running shorts and made his way out through the living area to the bar, where Malloy had been pouring drinks the night before. He rummaged around in the tiny refrigerator beneath the counter until he found a can of Bloody Mary mix and hauled it out, along with a tray of ice cubes. He had filled the glass halfway before his gaze strayed to the bottle of Ketel One that some thoughtful minion of Stone’s had provided. It wasn’t like him to drink until the sun had cleared the yardarm, but what the hell, somewhere in the world it was well past five o’clock.
Besides, this was more like the practice of medicine than drinking. He added a generous splash of the vodka and stirred the drink with his index finger. He had a tentative sip and then another. By the third, the pain in the small of his back was already beginning to fade.
It took him a moment to locate the pull cord for the long bank of drapes, and another minute or two until his eyes could stand the afternoon glare, but finally he could see well enough to unclasp the locks on the sliding glass doors and make his way out into the sultry afternoon. He’d stumbled out onto a portion of the balcony that faced the water, he realized, gazing out at a glassy-calm expanse reflecting a sky so blue it was painful to look at.
A sailboat was making its way out through the channel between the mainland and a mangrove island where an open fisherman puttered in the shallows, searching for snapper that had taken refuge from the midday sun. An admirable strategy, Deal thought, carrying his drink around the corner of the balcony into the shadows overlooking the pool.
There was only one woman lounging elegantly in a poolside chaise, he noted, but she had presence enough to stand in for a crowd. She wore a broad-brimmed straw hat wrapped with a colorful band, the same patterned fabric as that which made up her suit, though there might have been more fabric circling the crown of the hat than there was on her tanned body.
Deal realized he was staring, but she seemed engrossed in a magazine she was holding, and besides, he thought, taking a sip from his drink, this was a body that deserved to be stared at. It was not until she crossed one bronzed ankle atop another and put her magazine down to gaze up at him from behind a pair of oversized sunglasses that he realized it was Annie. The realization made his knees weaken.
“Are you just going to stand up there and look?” she called to him.
“Just for another hour or so,” he said. He thought his voice had a strangled quality.
“Too bad,” she said. “I was hoping you’d bring me one of those.” Deal glanced down at the drink in his hand. He supposed that was what she was pointing at; surely she couldn’t mean the swelling that he felt in his blousy shorts.
“Don’t go anywhere,” he said. He saluted her with his glass, then turned deftly, to bounce his forehead off the closed glass door behind him. He steadied himself as smoothly as he could, then made his way around the corner of the balcony and through the doorway where he’d come out. He freshened his own drink and made another for her and was about to head for the door when he remembered he’d need his key to get back in.
He took a deep breath, put the drinks on the bar, and walked into the bedroom to find his key. “She is not going anywhere,” he said to the sleep-puffed image he saw in the mirror above the enormous dresser where he’d tossed his pants the night before. “You can walk. She will be right there when you get outside.”
He found his key card and gave himself a nod of agreement, but the image of Annie in her two-handkerchief bathing suit still had him stepping smartly as he made his way out.
The logical half of him had been right, he saw, as he pushed his way through the breezeway doors that opened onto the pool area. She’d donned a light cotton wrap and was sitting sideways on the lounge chair now, smiling as he approached.
“You staying here?” he said, handing her the glass.
She glanced around the lushly landscaped pool area. “It seems like a nice place,” she said.
“You should see the rooms,” he told her.
She stared at him from behind her dark sunglasses. “I have,” she said.
It stopped him for a moment. “I was hoping for something more like, ‘maybe I will,’” he said.
She shrugged, and a trace of her smile came back. “You should stick with guileless, John. It suits you better.”
He gave her a rueful nod and raised his glass as he sat on the chaise next to hers. They toasted, then sat in silence for a moment.
“That was quite some night,” she said after a moment, her gaze fixed out on the water. The sailboat had vanished, he noted, as had the open fisherman. Nothing but the dark smudge of the mangrove island out there pasted against a cloudless sky and a sea that were almost indistinguishable.
“You haven’t heard the half of it,” he told her.
She turned to him, her expression mild. “Perhaps I have,” she said.
He stared at her for a moment. “You know about Dequarius…?”
“How do you think I knew where you were staying?” she said, waving her hand around the pool compound. “Franklin keeps this wing for himself and his friends. It’s empty most of the off-season,” she said.
Deal nodded, his mind traveling back to his lame come-on. He didn’t want to think about her draped on Stone’s arm at some poolside bash, or worse, curled beside him in one of those monster beds.
“It must have been awful,” Annie was saying, cutting into his thoughts.
He nodded and took a sip of his drink. “Yeah, well, after they moved me, I decided to go break the news to the old man—”
“Who had disappeared himself,” she said, finishing his sentence.
He stared back at her. “I knew it was a small town,” he said. “I guess I didn’t realize how small.”
“Franklin keeps in pretty close touch with the sheriff’s office,” she said. “Especially when he’s concerned about his friends.”
“Would that include me?”
She gave him a tolerant smile. “As much as anyone is a friend of Franklin’s,” she said.
Deal nodded. “Maybe he could put in a word on my behalf with Sergeant Conrad,” he said. “One of us is about to stub our toe.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know any Conrad,” she said. “But if there’s a problem, I’m sure Franklin can take care of it.”
Deal had begun to think so, too, but he didn’t say anything to Annie. So Franklin Stone had been given a full account of the previous night’s proceedings, he thought. He supposed it made sense, given what had happened with him and Russell yesterday morning, but still it bothered him to be the subject of such scrutiny. He’d been leery enough of getting involved with someone like Stone to begin with. Now he understood why.
It was the kind of relationship that had never seemed to pose a problem for his old man, of course.
If they have money, then take it
, was Barton Deal’s motto. He’d managed to do it successfully for the biggest part of his life, Deal thought, and wished his father were here to advise him now.
“I don’t suppose Stone has any ideas about what Dequarius was doing over here,” Deal said to her.
She shook her head in puzzlement. “Why on earth would he?”
“I’m not certain,” Deal said. “The kid worked for him, that much I know.”
“For that matter, so do I.” She shrugged.
He glanced at her. “What are you talking about?”
“Do you think I appear in that lounge for free? I’m a professional, John.”
“Hey,” he said, holding up a hand. “I was just asking.”
“Forget it,” she said. “We were talking about Dequarius.”
“Right,” he said.
“And you were trying to connect what’s happened to Franklin.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“Jesus, Annie…” he began.
“It’s all right,” she said, “why wouldn’t you?”
Deal shrugged. “I keep telling myself that the kid was just a small-time grifter and I was the doofus mark.”
“You wouldn’t strike anyone as a doofus,” she said.
“You said I was guileless,” he told her.
“As an ear of corn,” she said. “But that’s different. Dequarius wasn’t seeing you the way I do at all.”
“And how is that?” he heard himself say.
“Whatever he wanted from you, it was serious,” she said, ignoring the question.
“Given what happened, I’d say you are right.”
“He never told you what he wanted?”
“He said he’d found something. That’s as far as we got.”
“He didn’t say what?”
Deal shook his head.
“Or where?”
He shrugged and took a sip of his drink. “I thought he was talking about buried treasure. Our pal Magnum the bartender tells me that was one of Dequarius’ favorite scams.”
“Like I said, it doesn’t make sense that he’d take you for a sucker.”
He gave her a smile. “I’m heartened by your confidence.”
“You should be,” she said. “But why was Dequarius so set on you as his target?”
Deal threw his hands up. “That’s what I’ve been asking myself. He knew I was in town to talk to Stone about his project. I thought he might want to sell me some inside information, some dirt on Stone, but he told me he’d
found
something…” He broke off, shaking his head.
At about the same moment, Deal noticed that her wrap had fallen open. He tried to keep his eyes from the view of her scantily covered breasts, but it was like telling himself not to breathe. If Franklin Stone knew the thoughts that were racing through his mind, perhaps he’d end up like Dequarius.
“Does Stone have a big interest in wine?” he asked her abruptly.
She looked at him. “He keeps a wine cellar, if that’s what you mean. I wouldn’t call him a collector. What’s that have to do with anything?”
Deal hesitated, wondering if he ought to continue. Annie Dodds was living with Stone, after all. What would keep her from sharing anything he told her with the man? On the other hand, why should he care? he told himself. He was simply trying to make sense of all that had happened.
“I found some things, that’s all,” he told her.
“Where?” she said, shaking her head. “What things?”
“It’s probably nothing,” he told her. “Just a series of coincidences, but still…” He waved his hand in the air as if he were trying to bring shape to something.
“You’re being pretty mysterious,” she said.
“It is a mystery, isn’t it?”
She held up her glass. “Maybe we could have another one of these?”
“Sure,” he said. He stood and held out his hand for the empty. “I’ll be back in a flash.”
“I’ll go with you,” she said, taking his hand to pull herself up.
“Sure,” he heard himself saying. “Why not?”
***
She stood behind him in the long and silent hallway as he pulled his key card from the pocket of his running shorts and inserted it in the slot. He jiggled the door handle but the tiny electronic dots blinked obstinately red.
“I think it goes the other way,” she said, pointing at the card slot.
He nodded and withdrew the card, then turned the thing around. This time the tiny lights turned green and a click sounded somewhere inside the mechanism. “I knew that,” he said, ushering her in ahead of him. “I was just testing you.” As she passed, he smelled a hint of lemon blossom mixed with the tang of perspiration. Oh my, he thought. Oh my.
“I’ll be right out,” he heard her call as the door to the foyer bathroom closed.
He went to the bar and found another can of mixer in the fridge, then pulled out the last of the tiny trays of ice. Ice in the glass, he told himself. Vodka. A little mixer after that. Why did his fingers seem numb?
“Quite a place they’ve given you,” he heard.
He glanced up to see her coming around the corner of the bar. She’d taken off the cotton wrap, he noticed, and had hung it over the back of one of the stools. As he handed her the drink, she removed the broad-brimmed hat and tossed it onto the granite bar top.
“That’s good,” she said after she’d taken a long sip of the drink. She gave a toss of her hair, then gathered it in one hand, twisting it back from her shoulders. “It was getting hot out there.”
“I thought so,” Deal said, taking a sip of his own drink. His voice seemed to echo in his ears.
She put her drink down on the countertop and moved quickly against him. He felt her arms go around his waist and back, felt her pull herself hard against him.
What he felt inside seemed tidal in its power. He managed to get his glass down somehow and then his arms were around her, pulling her even closer, if that was possible. She yanked her sunglasses off and buried her mouth at his neck. He felt exquisite jabs of pain where her teeth nipped at him, and thought he might go down in a swoon.
His hips were backed into the bar sink now, and hers were writhing against his. If he’d ever been more breathless, he couldn’t remember when.
“You’re okay with this, aren’t you?” she said, her breath coming in gasps, the words scorching at his ear. “Tell me you’re okay.”
“Way okay,” he managed, and forced his lips toward hers.