Tango Key (23 page)

"Murphy and Eve?"

"Yeah."

Aline's lunch skidded across the floor of her stomach. She had a feeling she wasn't going to like what was on the tape. "How'd you get it, Bernie?"

"Never mind how the hell I got it." She popped the tape into the recorder. "With some homicides, Al, anything is fair. Anything."

My, my. This is a switch. "Really? When did you decide that? I was always under the impression you played everything by the book."

"Al, I don't always tell you everything, okay? Now do you want to hear this or not?"

Yes. No. Maybe. I don't know.
"Does it take place in a bedroom?"

"No. On Eve's sloop."

"With Murphy."

"Yes."

"If you were me, would you want to hear it?"

"If I were you, I wouldn't have put up with Murphy's bullshit for three years to begin with. That's why questions like that are bad, Al."

"What bullshit?" She leaned forward.

"The boats, the poker games, the excuses about not seeing you, all this moaning and groaning he does inside himself about Monica. Don't get me wrong. I love Murphy, really. He's a good cop, and he's a terrific human being unless you're involved with him romantically. He—"

"Sorry I asked," Aline interrupted. "Just play the stupid tape, will you?"

Bernie started the recorder, and Aline slumped down in her chair, resting her head against the back of the chair, eyes closed. For the first few seconds, the only sounds were of the sea slapping the sides of a boat and the restless prowl of the wind. Then, footsteps and a voice, muttering. Eve's voice. "Goddamn sails got minds of their own." Louder: "Murphy, you want a beer? There's a couple cold bottles in the cooler."

"Yeah, bring a couple up here, babe."

Now it sounded like Eve was digging around in a cooler of ice. In her mind's eye, Aline could see her in the sloop's cabin, kneeling in front of the cooler in her bikini, her shoulders pink with sunburn, her lovely, ring-laden hands lost to the wrists in ice. She was probably wearing a floppy straw hat and sunglasses, and spicules of sweat glistened from her forehead, her upper lip.

Eve suddenly yelped: "Hey, that's cold, Murphy. Jesus. Get it out."

Murphy, laughing: "With pleasure."

He put ice down her suit. I know he did. That's an old Murphy trick. He put ice down the bottom of her bikini, and now he's reaching inside the band, fishing for it, caressing her.

"Hmm. You can keep doing that," Eve said softly.

Slow moans now, the sound of wet suits being stripped off, then Murphy whispering: "Feel good?"

"Yes. God, yes."

"Back like this . . ."

"Wait. The towel. Spread out the towel." Giggles, a sharp peal of laughter, a long, contented sigh. "Hmm. Okay. Oh God, that feels good, Murphy."

"Jesus, you're beautiful. Here . . . there . . . in here . . ." Eve gasped, and Aline slammed her finger against the OFF button. "I've heard enough, Bernie." She could barely speak.

"You'd rather stick your head in the sand?"

"Yeah, maybe. Maybe I would've liked to have had a choice." Her voice slid upward, angry now.

"Like you didn't already know. Tell me you didn't know, AL"

Aline covered her face with her hands and began to cry, softly, her shoulders shuddering, hating herself because, really, what was the point? Bernie was right. She had known. She'd known ever since the night Murphy had walked into the Cooper living room. She'd known it was inevitable. Hell, she could even predict what would happen from here on in.

If Murphy got away with this without losing his job, and if Eve wasn't arrested for the murder of her husband, then six months or a year from now Murphy would quit the force and he and Eve would get married and maybe they would even live happily ever after. Eve was Murphy's second chance. It was that simple and that complex.

But God, there were so many ifs.

Bernie squeezed her shoulder. "I'm sorry, Al, you're right, I shouldn't have."

"No. I'm glad you did." Her hands dropped away from her face. She yanked open her bottom desk drawer, pulled out a wad of Kleenex, blew her nose. "Let's hear the rest of this goddamn thing."

"I'll fast-forward through the X-rated stuff."

"No. I want to hear all of it."

"You do?"

"Absolutely."

"You got more guts than me, Al," she said, and hit the button.

Aline had known Murphy so well and so long that it wasn't difficult to create mental scenes to accompany the sound effects. It wasn't a particularly pleasant experience, but it wasn't as bad as she'd expected, either. She understood that her function in Murphy's life had been to help him over the hump of Monica's death. He had loved her in his way, but in the end, it would never have been the way she had loved him. The way he would love Eve. Perhaps loved her already.

"Now listen to this," Bernie said at one point, sitting forward.

Eve, her breath a ragged rasp, groaned, "Hurt me, Murphy, please hurt me."

Slaps rang out.

"Harder," Eve moaned.

Something whistled through the air. Aline winced as it struck flesh once, twice, and Eve cried out, and Murphy, his voice a hiss, said, "More? Do you want more?"

"Yes," she moaned.

"Where?"

"Anywhere."

A third slap, a fourth, and Eve's sobs fluctuated between low and broken to high and sharp. "Now, Murphy," she cried. "Now. Please."

"Where?"

"It doesn't matter."

"Where?" he shouted. "Your ass? Your pussy? Where?"

"Ass. My ass."

Bernie hit the FAST FORWARD button, stopped the recorder, then looked at Aline. "This is going to sound a little personal, Al, but . . ."

"C'mon, Bernie."

"I had to ask."

"I'm not into pain, for God's sakes."

"What about Monica? Was she?"

"If you'd asked me that question an hour ago, I would've said no. Now I don't know. Maybe she was. Maybe she was having an affair, like her brother thought, and this is Murphy getting even with her through Eve." She ran her hands over her face, feeling dirty, soiled. "Look, I don't think we should play the rest of that tape here."

"There're two tapes. This is just the first one."

"Is there still a bug on the boat?"

Bernie shook her head. "I removed it early this morning."

"You going to give those tapes to the chief?"

"I'm not a snitch, Aline. I don't want Murphy to lose his job. But maybe you should talk to him. Tell him you know what's going on between him and Eve. Make him understand that if you know, it's only a matter of time before everyone else on the island knows it, too."

"
Me?
You think I should talk to him?" She laughed. "Oh, yeah, sure. And you know how it'll sound to him, Bernie? Like I'm jealous. Like I'm just trying to drive him away from Eve. No, thanks. Murphy's a grown man. He got himself into this mess, and he can get himself out with no help from me. You talk to him. Tell Dobbs to talk to him."

A knock at the door interrupted her. Bernie, lightning quick, yanked the cord from the wall, wound it around the recorder, and dumped it in her purse. Aline walked over to the door and unlocked it. Dobbs said, "Secret powwow?"

"Woman talk, Jack."

"Mind if I come in, Al?"

"Oh." She hadn't realized she'd been blocking the door. She walked back to her desk, Dobbs following.

"Hi, Bernie."

"Lo and behold. It's our man of the hour in his chino pants and Calvin Klein shirt, our boy Jackie Dobbs. Hi, cutie."

"Man, who wound you up, Bernelli?"

"I'm always like this, Jack. You just never noticed. So what's what on the surveillance front?"

"All's quiet in the Cove. No stalkers, no peepers, no perverts."

He sank into the other chair and locked his hands behind his head. Your new friend Kincaid seems like a nice enough guy, Al. Who's he working for, anyway?"

"Cooper's attorney."

"You got any idea what this Colombian's connection is to all this stuff?"

"Nope," she lied. "Not yet."

Dobbs looked from Aline to Bernie, who was busily filing her nails, and back to Aline again. "How come I get the feeling I interrupted a lot more than woman talk?"

"Guilty conscience," Bernie said with a smile. "That must be your problem, Jackie boy."

"Women," Dobbs muttered, and left.

Aline and Bernie looked at each other and burst out laughing. Bernie shook her finger at Aline. "You do know about the Colombian. Come clean, Al."

"You first."

"Not here."

"Come over to my place for dinner, then. Bring Danny. He and Wolfe can keep each other company. And bring me copies of those tapes."

"What time?"

"Six?"

"Make it eight."

"Can't, Bernie. I've got an appointment at nine."

"With Kincaid?"

Aline smiled. "With Ted Cavello's office."

The Saab's speedometer needle brushed eighty, but the car didn't so much as shudder. It negotiated the hills with ease, rising through them, whiter than an albino whale. Moonlight suffused the windshield and spilled into Aline's lap, where she'd hooked a key ring with four keys on it over her index finger.

"You afraid you're going to misplace those or something?" Kincaid asked.

"I just don't want to have to dig for them."

"Suppose none of them fits Cavello's office door?"

She looked over at him, at the way the moonlight had absorbed the pale yellow bruises around his eyes. "There was a label over them that said they were office keys."

"I don't suppose there's one for the front door to the shop."

"I doubt it. We can try them, though."

"I'll do it. I have this weird feeling we're going to want to get in there and out as fast as we can."

She wished he hadn't said that. There was nothing like a case of nerves to screw up a job. She should've fixed herself a cup of lobelia tea before she'd left, but with her luck, she would've put in too much lobelia and fallen asleep on the way up here. No, the crystal was better. She wore the same rose quartz crystal she'd had on the night she and Kincaid had become lovers. She'd come to think of it as her good luck piece, an amulet that possessed the power to ward off the evil eye, bad luck, ill health, negative vibrations, anything undesirable.

"We should think positive about this," she said, absently rubbing at the crystal. "I mean, there's a lot to be said for positive thinking."

"I agree. If I hadn't been thinking positive about you coming into the water that night, you probably wouldn't have."

"You make it sound like you put a hex on me or something."

"A positive hex. There's a difference. Tell me more about those tapes."

"There's nothing to tell. You heard them." He had heard them over dinner with her and Bernie, and she knew what he'd been itching to ask ever since. "And the answer's no."

"I didn't even ask a question."

"You didn't have to. Bernie asked me the same thing. Bernie. God, you'd think after twenty years she'd know I'm not into pain."

"How long have you known Murphy?"

"Ten years, but it isn't the same thing."

"Sure it is. There's no guarantee that if you know someone X number of years you know them better. It just means you know their habits. I've known you . . . what? A week? And I feel like I know you better than I ever knew either of my wives."

"Yeah?" She smiled, liking the direction this conversation was taking. "I thought you said you never knew anyone until you'd traveled with them. We've never been off Tango Key together. Not even to Key West. So how can you know me better?"

He scratched at his beard and looked over at her. "You've got a point." He downshifted as they started up another hill. "That's the weird thing about this island. If you live here too long, you begin to forget there's anything besides Tango. When I first moved here, I really believed this place was enchanted. You know, like in fairy tales." He shrugged and gave a small, self-conscious laugh. "Maybe I still feel that."

She nodded; she knew exactly what he meant. Part of it was what you found on any island, in any sea. But there was something special about the power, the magic, that Tango Key exerted on the people who lived here. Sometimes, she was sure the island possessed a consciousness separate from the people who inhabited it. If she shifted her perceptions, she would hear the soft patter of its voice, the beat of its heart. She would see its trees strolling, its hill shaking with laughter. She would stretch out against its grass and feel it stroking her like fingers. She wondered, too, about the ubiquity of this consciousness. Did it manipulate events? Did it play with lives? Was it, even now, nudging them through the hills, directing them toward something?