To the Limit (10 page)

A lot of split shifts had gone by since then. A lot of changes. Now Mac was back home in West Palm trying to make a go of his new business and Dave was head of hotel security at the Atlantic City Taj Mahal.

After he'd watched a royally ticked Eve Garrett stroll away from him yesterday morning outside the Clayborne building, Mac had first dug out his cell phone and punched in Angie's number, taking a chance that his ex was home. He'd gotten lucky and spent a good half an hour on the phone catching up with his daughter's latest Barbie adventures.

Then he'd gotten back to work searching for Tiffany Clayborne. Like her other escapades, this one appeared to be more a cry for attention than a calculated attempt to disappear. And after what he'd discovered, he was certain that the girl was running on her own steam and not against her will. Which was good. Eve may be worried about foul play, but Tiffany was just plain playing.

And she was playing hard. She'd been dropping a lot of coin up and down the East Coast—so said her credit card and ATM transactions. Roger Edwards had provided him with Tiffany's account information last week. The info had led him to Club Asylum Saturday night where she'd blown a bundle in the past month. Of course the small matter of an explosion had killed his shot at finding any useful information there. Now, however, thanks to the financial information, he had listings for several airlines, five-star hotels, and upscale shops as the benefactors of her latest spending spree.

Edwards had also provided Mac with Tiffany's photo, a list of her favorite haunts and acquaintances both in and out of the country, as well as her Social Security number.

Holed up in his office yesterday afternoon, Mac had gotten to work studying the info Edwards had fed him about Runaway Tiff.

The PI license and a U.S. map were the only framed items hanging on the wall of his ten-by-ten second bedroom that he loosely referred to as a den and currently doubled as his office. A laptop with wireless connection, a cell phone, a fax, and an answering machine and he was in business. God bless modern technology.

The U.S. map hanging on the wall was not for decoration— though God knew, the place could use a touch or two from a domestic diva. No, the map was a tool. Because Edwards had provided Tiff's ATM info and her Social Security number and DOB, Mac had been able to set up online banking and track her ATM use along the East Coast. Foolish girl, Tiff. She'd never bothered to set up a password on her account; consequently, he'd done it for her. No thanks necessary. The result was that he could monitor her account transactions real-time either by phone or by using his laptop.

It wasn't exactly kosher, but it was common practice in his profession, and since banks had some culpability for making access so easy, charges weren't usually filed unless theft became an issue. That wasn't gonna happen here—though Lord knew, the balance in her account was enough to have him thinking of opening up his own account in the Caymans and disappearing for the rest of his life in abject luxury.

Anyway, the last transaction had been recorded in Atlantic City, so he'd given Dave a call, figuring that if anyone had a finger on the pulse of the city, it would be Dave.

"That was fast," Mac had said, tucking his cell to his ear and reaching for a pen and paper when his phone rang, waking him around 7:00 a.m.

"Yeah, well, lots of freaks running around, but even a woman with berry red hair, a tear tattoo, twin lip rings, and accessorized by a rock band makes an impression. Especially when she's stoned out of her mind. People don't have too much trouble remembering a sight like that. Anyway, the whole tribe's been staying here at the Taj Mahal."

Mac and Dave had both made detective the same year. Had both been on career track to lieutenant. A high-cholesterol problem and a mild heart attack had permanently sidetracked Dave's public law enforcement career. Can't have a detective who might have the big one in the middle of a car chase or a drug bust. Just like you couldn't have a detective with a gimp leg making foot chases after law-breaking gangbangers who were pedaling on two good ones.

As he cruised down Duval, Mac rubbed his thigh, wished to hell he still had his badge instead of a banged-up knee and a line-of-duty disability pension that covered life's basics but not the luxuries like oh, say, pride. Or like frequent airfare to visit his daughter in San Diego. He'd followed Angie back to West Palm after the divorce so he could be close to Ali. So, of course, she'd relocated shortly after to San Diego with her new, not a cop, not a rat-bastard, husband.

That's what Discovery Unlimited was supposed to do. Provide the luxuries. He needed to make a decent living on his own. He wanted to see his kid more often. And yeah, the fishing boat was a ticket to a dream. So far, Discovery Unlimited had netted him enough to cover his investigator license, insurance, and office equipment. Oh yeah, and this piece-of-shit '98 tan Taurus that was good on gas and on blending into the background but was a gutless wonder on the straightaway.

"Your girl and the boy band she's playing with were here for several days but checked out night before last," Dave had said in that big booming voice that had put as much fear of death and dismemberment into a suspect as his size had. "Concierge overheard them talking about heading back south. Key West came up."

Thanks to big Dave, Mac hadn't had to resort to any additional, shall we say, back-door tactics as he had at Club Asylum. He'd upheld the law for over a decade. Still liked to stay within it—even if it was a little more fun to skirt the fringe of it on occasion like he had Saturday night. He did, however, plug into Tiff's account again, and sure enough, a new transaction popped up for an ATM withdrawal at a Key West bank.

So, here he was. Key West—or Key Weird, depending on your perspective. Land of spectacular sunsets, Ernest Hemingway, 24-7-365 parties, and rainbow flags. And he was looking for a buddy of Dave's in the good-buddy network who might know someone who might know someone who might be able to give him a direct line on the Tiff.

See, that was one of the reasons Mac knew he hadn't always been a rat-bastard. The good guys were still his buddies. It was mostly women he had a tendency to piss off.

"Take my ex-wife. Please," he muttered under his breath as he drove slowly by a T-shirt shop that may or may not have had the number of the address he'd scribbled on his notepad. The purple paint was worn. He couldn't tell.

"And take Eve Garrett," he said, then did a double take and slammed on the brakes.

"What the hell?" He swore he'd just seen her walking down the street.

Tiny red tank top, tight white capri pants. Blond hair loose. Beautiful breasts bouncing.

He rolled down his window. Hot, humid tropical air smacked him square in the face.

Sonofabitch. It's her.

Mac couldn't believe it. Eve Garrett was here. In Key West.

He spotted her again—then lost her when she walked into the T-shirt shop whose address he'd been trying to make out. A car honked behind him. Next thing he knew, a buff blond beach boy drew alongside piloting a pedicab. He stopped by Mac's open driver's side window. Two middle-aged tourist-type women blinked and smiled from the pedicab's passenger seats.

"You lost?" the kid asked, tipping a pair of Oakleys—the kind Mac couldn't afford—down his bronze god nose and looking at Mac over the top of them.

"Not anymore."

He floored it, swore when he couldn't find a parking spot, and finally outmaneuvered an octogenarian in a tank-sized Caddy for a spot three blocks away. The old guy was still shaking his fist and glaring at Mac from between the steering wheel and the dash as he sprinted back to the T-shirt shop.

"I'll be damned," he muttered. It
was
the address Dave had given him. And it
was
a T-shirt shop.

He walked in the open door of a long shotgun-narrow space—one of roughly 50 million such shops lining the Key West streets and designed to trap tourists and separate them from roughly 50 million of their dollars annually.

"Looking for something for a special woman?" A male salesclerk, possibly Syrian born, and heavily accented, flashed a broad smile.

Mac was looking
for
a special woman, but Eve was nowhere in sight. When he spotted a closed door with a
PRIVATE
sign printed in bold red letters at the back of the store, though, he had a sneaking suspicion he knew exactly where she was. Not all PIs had to advertise their services. Not all wanted to. But you could bet anyone who needed an investigator's service knew someone who knew how to find one.

Stood to reason that Eve would know, too, but damn, she was good if she already had a line on the Tiff through the contact Dave had given Mac here in the Keys.

And now we were talking about pride. No way was he going to let her beat him to Tiffany.

The clerk held a hot pink T-shirt out for Mac's inspection.

Shuck me, suck me, eat me raw,
was stenciled in glittery gold letters across the front. The smiling crawfish clinging to the
w
in
raw
was white and very, very small.

"Your lady ... she'll like this one."

Oh yeah. Any real lady would be proud as punch to wear that shirt.

Mac took a step around the clerk. "I'm looking for Bud Winchell."

The small man matched Mac's move with a wide sideways lurch. "Bud's busy right now. Would you like to wait?"

The clerk was five-six, maybe one-thirty if he'd been soaked in rum punch. Mac particularly liked the worried look on the guy's face that told him he was a runner, not a fighter, because he intended to see Bud whether he was busy or not.

"Waiting's not my style," Mac said as he shouldered past racks of shirts and headed for the door in the back. "Neither, my friend, is that shirt."

Eve sat on the opposite side of Bud Winchell's battered gun-metal gray desk. Bud always made her think of a character drawn straight from a 1940s gumshoe detective novel—Key West style. So did his office, which was tucked discreetly away in the back of the "2-T's 4 $10" T-shirt shop.

The tiny office was a movie set complete with a slow-moving Panama fan sluggishly stirring the smoke-choked air and what appeared to be several years' worth of dust that had accumulated on every horizontal space. An old, faded ten-by-twelve framed photograph of a younger, slimmer version of Bud standing, Hemingway style, beside a trophy-sized marlin hung crookedly on the wall behind his desk. A coatrack in one corner sported a tan straw fedora, the black band stained from years of perspiration. A metal file cabinet occupied another corner. The top of the cabinet was cluttered with a slew of dog-eared papers, an overflowing in
/
out mail basket, and a sickly-looking good luck bamboo plant.

Evidently good luck did not extend to the plant.

Bud talked around a rattling cough and the unfiltered Camel jammed in the corner of his mouth.

"When are you going to stop smoking those awful things?" Eve asked as his barrel belly expanded beneath his white linen shirt, jiggling with the force of his cough.

"You sound just like your mother. Look like her, too, darlin'." His gravelly voice softened. "More and more every day. She's a beautiful woman and so are you."

Bud had been her father's mentor on the West Palm PD when Wes Garrett had returned from 'Nam, then graduated from the police academy. It was through Bud that Wes and Bud's sister, Susan, met and eventually married. And it was Eve's dad who had founded E.D.E.N. Securities, Inc., before turning it over to Ethan when he'd retired.

"When was the last time you called Mom?"

Bud lifted a hand, shook a disciplinary finger. "Last week, Miss Smarty-pants. If you kept in better touch with her yourself, you'd know that."

"No fair. I've been busy."

"And I rest on my laurels all day."

She grinned. Uncle Bud always made her smile, and frankly, she could use a smile or two today. Between worrying about Tiffany and watching her back for whoever wanted her dead, Eve hadn't done a lot of smiling lately. Oh yeah. And then there was McClain.

He made her think of mistakes and broken dreams—and lost babies.

She shook herself back to the moment and Uncle Bud, who had retired from the West Palm police force fifteen years ago and moved down to Key West. He'd set up a security slash investigation slash missing persons business shortly after. He hadn't intended to work more than a few hours a day, but as with most good PI enterprises, his work spread by word of mouth, and now he didn't get nearly as much time on his fishing boat as he'd like.

"Tell me, little girl—why are you and your smart mouth sitting in front of me today? And don't say you're on vacation. You've got that look in your eye."