Cooler Than Blood (2 page)

CHAPTER 2

I
was flat on my back on the deck of my boat,
Impulse,
when my phone, as if it were in the final scene of
Don Giovanni
, rang and vibrated. I was replacing a boat speaker and realized the guys who do it for a living are underpaid. The previous speaker had taken a bullet. Better it than me.

“Piece of shit,” I muttered for the forty-second time that morning as I stretched in vain to find the wire coming from the radio box. And I’d been doing so well. My New Year’s resolution was to drink expensive wine, eat more fatty foods—they really do taste better—and reduce my profanity. Six months into the year, and I was slipping. But what the hey? Two out of three ain’t bad.

The phone stopped its obnoxious buzz on the fiberglass deck. I leaned back, relaxed, and took in a gulp of air so humid that it counted as a drink. Enough for one day. Tomorrow I’d let my neighbor Morgan give it a go; his arms make fish lines look like telephone poles.

“Jake, you look like you sweated away the Gulf.” Kathleen stood on the dock and peered down at me. She, being the smart girl she is, had sat under the shade of the canvas while she sipped her morning coffee, spotted dolphins, and read a book. Why can’t I do that? Kathleen ran in the mornings, but only in October through April. In the summer, she switched to beach yoga. She claimed the rotation gave her balance. I find that obsessions leave no room for balance.

“Speaker’s been out a year, and I could have done this in January, but no, not me.” I started to rise up but bonked my head hard on the aluminum underside of the center seat and went down for the count.

“Golly gee willikers,” I said.

“See, you
can
do it. ‘Oopsy daisies’ is another one that’s vastly underutilized. But if I were keeping track, I’m afraid you’d be failing miserably.”

“No. I’m failing gloriously. There’s a difference.”

“Not everybody needs to dig bullets out of boat speakers.”

“Pity them. Most men
do
lead lives of quiet desperation.”

“And go to the grave with the song still in them, or something like that.”

I cautiously rose, and my phone started to do the floor jig again. I grabbed the bottom of my T-shirt and wiped it over my forehead, but it was a wasted effort. I hoisted myself over the side and landed on my composite dock. Kathleen took a step back. I got it; I was a sweaty mess.

“That’s exactly it,” I said. “How’s the book?”

“You going to answer it?”

“It’s not you.”

“Not bad.”

“Worth the dough?”

That didn’t warrant a verbal reply but a right jab to my shoulder. Kathleen favored hardback books, and a first edition of Somerset Maugham’s
The Razor’s Edge
rested on my bench. A “Hooked on Books” bookmark protruded out of the first third. It cost her a factor of a hundred compared to an e-book. She also favored physical replies over verbal.

“Well worth the dough. And it’s wonderful reading it out here—where you read and the conditions that surround you affect your experience. Why
don’t
you answer your phone?”

“I don’t recognize the number.” I lied; it was Susan Blake’s number. She had called earlier while I was running and had left a voice mail. No way was I going to explain to Kathleen my relationship with Susan. I wasn’t too sure of it myself.

The phone, like a dead moth, finally surrendered. Ziggy Marley came through the good speakers. The osprey that likes to crap on my boat’s hardtop watched from atop Morgan’s lift piling. It let out its distinctive series of screeches in the event that I’d forgotten about him. Feathery little prick.

“I think I’ll use that in my class this fall.” Kathleen taught English literature at the local college.

“My phone?”

“No, silly.”

“Maugham?”

She sucked in her left cheek between her teeth, a primitive sign of deep thinking. She favored that side. Chewed on that side. Stuck her tongue into her port cheek when she thought no one saw her. “No.” She strung the word out. “The reading experience. Where one reads being instrumental in forming one’s opinion of the work. I’ll divide the class into two groups, have them read the same book but in controlled environments, and then have them rate the work. Are you listening?”

I looked up from my toolbox, where I’d unsuccessfully fumbled around for needle-nose pliers. Morgan. I think he borrowed them. “Not in the least. But I was pretending to. Any points for that?”

“Half the class will read the book under Spanish moss in the shade of a tree. Maybe in Straub Park in downtown St. Pete. The other half will read the same work in short intervals, several times a day, in windowless air-conditioned rooms, and in different locations.”

“Have we ever done it with Spanish moss waving above us?”

She tossed me a quick smile. Kathleen smiled every day, every hour, every few moments. She smiled like other people breathed. She ignored my Spanish moss inquiry and instead said, “I’m leaving. My best to Morgan.”

She stayed a safe distance, landed a kiss on my cheek, and took off down my dock with a mug in one hand and Maugham in the other. I gathered my tools and went into my 1957 blockhouse on the bay. I was famished. I’d run five miles in the Florida sauna before I’d sweated away in the boat—the heck was I thinking? I took some of last night’s trout Morgan and I had caught off my dock, cut it into pieces, and sautéed it in olive oil with chopped chives. I whipped up three eggs and scrambled them in a separate skillet. At the last moment, I added chunks of sharp cheddar cheese.
Eat more fatty foods
.

I always operate best when I possess clear goals.

I took my breakfast out to the screen porch and lowered the sunshade. I lived on an island, off another island, and my bungalow faced the morning sun. The beach was a half-mile from my front door, and the pink hotel, built on the sands of the Gulf of Mexico, was another half mile beyond that. I was especially fond of the hotel and, in particular, its beachside bar, where several bartenders depended on me for their livelihood. It was my contribution to trickle-down economics. We do what we can.

I finished breakfast and was stymied in my effort to get cold water out of the outdoor shower at the side of the house. I put on a clean-dirty T-shirt; it was pockmarked with permanent olive oil stains, fish residue, and every chemical I’d ever rubbed on
Impulse
in vain attempts to combat the sun and salt air. I remembered I’d left my phone recovering from a seizure on the deck of my boat, and that I had lied—it sounds worse than it was—to Kathleen about not recognizing the number.

Susan Blake.

I’d spent a single two-hour dinner with Susan, yet every minute, every look, and every touch of that evening lingered with me. I tried to wash her away, but like a well-waxed surface of a car, my feelings for her were protected and harbored from any attempt to erase, alter, or expunge. That was more than a year ago. I drove away that night vowing to never cross her path again. I was just starting to wonder if Kathleen was the mythical one for me, and Susan Blake, in many ways the opposite of Kathleen, was kick-ass competition. I didn’t need or want that.

Susan had put herself through college then realized her brain wasn’t wired for her ass to be in a chair all day. She took a job pouring liquid dreams, enlightened the bars’ absentee owners on how to run a profitable operation, and subsequently became part owner of three watering holes in Fort Myers Beach. I couldn’t imagine why she was calling me.

Nor could I imagine why she was now sitting at the end of my dock.

CHAPTER 3

S
he must have arrived when I was showering. That would have been a close brush—too close—with Kathleen. I headed down my hundred-foot dock
and broke back into a sweat halfway there. I picked up the pace. I’d forgotten to put shoes on. Walking on coals would have been cooler. I sat next to her—not too close, not too far.

“Hey, Susan. How are you?”

“Hey, Susan. How are you?” Good grief, man—that’s the sum of your parts? I whip off
The New York Times
—

“Didn’t you get my messages?” she demanded.

“No. I didn’t recog—”

“I need your help.” Her interruption saved me from a second lie in one day over the same phone number. She turned to me, her dark eyes trapped under her bangs. The one evening we’d spent together flooded over me like a tsunami.

By the end of our leisurely dinner, my schoolboy heart had been radioactive, and no, it wasn’t just the grapes. We had faced each other in the parking lot on a Florida night so thick you needed a snowplow to walk down the street. Susan was close to a foot shorter than me, but in no manner did that diminish her stature. I had just rejected her invitation to stroll on the beach and look for sea turtles.

“Has the bar business robbed me of my vanishing youth?” she’d asked.

“You haven’t been robbed of a thing. Her name is Kathleen, and she makes me the luckiest guy in the world, but it’s a close call with the runner-up.”

“I’ll take it. Who is he?”

“Whoever takes that walk on the beach with you.”

That was after two glasses of wine and a beer. Impressive, right? Call me Mr. Monogamy, but if you don’t know what the hell an anchor is for, you’d better get your ass off the water.

When I took her home, she’d given me a light kiss on the cheek then left the truck without a word. I had not walked her to the door. Susan Blake wasn’t the type of woman to ask just any guy to take a walk on the beach unless both sides felt that once-in-a-lifetime tug. But there can only be one once-in-a-lifetime tug.

Sometimes I say that three times in row.

“Tell me…” I shook off the memory and pivoted on the bench so I could face her. I tensed up, which I thought was totally ridiculous. “What brings you north?”

She fidgeted with her fingers. “Nice place.” She gave me a quick glance then dropped her eyes. Maybe she felt she was coming on a little strong.

“It’ll do,” I said.

She paused as if summoning her strength. “I…I need your help.” She looked right into me. “She’s missing.” It came out fast, like water tumbling over falls.

“Who’s—”

“She’s been gone two days. There’s no way she wouldn’t tell me.”

“Slow down. Take it from the top.”

Susan blew out her breath and folded her hands tightly on her lap. “My niece. Came down to live with me, and I haven’t seen her since Wednesday. That was a day after the police said she killed some guy on the—”

“The police think she killed someone?”

“She did kill him, practically gutted him like a deer…Oh, I shouldn’t say that.” Her speech started to gear down as she apparently realized there was nothing I could do in the next few seconds.

“Can they prove—?”

“I just told you. She killed him. Told me. Told the police. That’s not the problem.” She uncrossed her hands and ran her left hand down the top of her thigh then back up again.

“They got new beach laws down there?” I asked her.

“Self-defense, and they think she did the world a favor. The guy might have killed a girl up in Georgia and maybe another they’re still investigating.” She placed one hand on each side and nudged herself up. She crossed her legs. I looked away. I didn’t want to look at those legs, those eyes, that body. I felt guilty having her there, but what choice did I have? A yellow cruiser with a tuna tower plowed by, and a dolphin jumped its massive wake. We watched as it passed, and then rows of its swelling wake were soon beneath us. They crashed into the seawall like liquid thunder and rolled down the wall.

“How well do you know her?” I said, but I was thinking,
How well do I know you?
Sounded like her niece had hit the road and was on the lam. Maybe Susan was blind to the obvious, but I didn’t want to ride her too hard.

“She came to live with me less than a week ago. Just graduated from high school.”

I turned back to her. “She from close by?”

“Ohio.”

“How well do you know her?” I asked again.

“Listen, we’ve spent some time together over the years, but that’s not the point. I know her. I know her very well. She wouldn’t run.”

“We all misjudge. It’s hard to know people, especially—”

“How much time did we spend together, Jake?”

Women.

They can sucker-punch you with the flutter of their eyes. Do they even know that? Susan and I had dinner and nothing else. But she was right. We connected so fast that it threw the tides. If it’s ever happened to you, you know what I’m talking about. If not, welcome to Thoreau’s desperation club and take your song to your grave.

“Fair enough,” I said in response to her question.

“You told me you located stolen boats, right? And when we met, you were looking for a couple of guys.”

“Correct.” I saw where this was going and thought of how to extract myself.

“She’s in danger, and I know it. You need to find her. The police say since she’s eighteen, she can go as she pleases.”

“You tried her cell, her—”

“She left her cell behind. You
know
that’s not right. I covered everything. Called my sister…She had to hear from a friend that her daughter had moved in with me. Her friends, her…She didn’t have anybody.”

“When was the last time—?”

“Are you going to get into that black beast and come help me or not?”

What was on my calendar for the next few days? Work out in the mornings until I nearly collapsed—I just loved that part of the day—fish, read, and after my Tinker Bell alarm clock went off at five, drink. The days I puttered around the house, Tinker Bell—I picked her up at a garage sale—kept me honest in the event I felt like opening something too early. I’d follow all that with a simple gourmet meal I’d prepare for Kathleen and whoever else dropped by. Sleep. Repeat.

My schedule was packed. Might even need to take one of those time management courses.

“Jake?” Softer now. Pleading, as much as someone like Susan would ever plead, as she sensed my hesitation. What kind of person says no?

“I’ll leave as—”

She uncrossed her legs. “I’ll have pictures and arrange for the detective to bring you up to speed.” No gushing thank-you, just straight to the next item. “I need to go.” She stood up. “You remember where I live?”

“I do. One more thing.”

“What?”

“Her name?”

“Jenny Spencer.”