Whiskey Island (7 page)

“No. No, I should have said that right away. At my office, he—” He stopped, as if he’d just heard what she said. “You know him, then?”

“Uncle Frank, Nick’s the man who interrupted the carjacking. I was hoping he’d drop by tonight to help us celebrate. I guess I should have sent somebody by his house to tell him.” When her uncle was silent too long, she added, “Look, what was he doing at your office? And why are you telling me about it?”

“He didn’t come to the office directly. One of my workers found him prowling around the property.”

The property was Grogan Gravel. As a young man, right out of high school, Frank Grogan had worked at the railyards on Whiskey Island. One night he had come up to the Whiskey Island Saloon to quench a day’s thirst and met young Deirdre Donaghue, the strawberry-blond daughter of the saloon keeper. In short order the gawky and undistinguished Frank had married lovely Deirdre, departed for Vietnam and returned with a pocket filled with medals, as well as several thousand dollars in poker winnings and a premonition that the world was changing and he’d better change with it.

He had invested in a floundering gravel business near the railyards, and with hard work and savvy he had turned it into a million dollar success story. Now he had his hand and money in a dozen different enterprises, but his main office remained on Whiskey Island, where he seemed to feel most comfortable.

“What did Nick want?” Megan saw Barry bearing down on them, and she waved the bartender away. She already knew she had to finish this conversation quickly so she could take over.

“He told me he’d seen an old man heading our way the night before, and he thought he might be living on Whiskey Island. He said the man was dressed in layers of clothing, like he might be homeless.”

Megan’s stomach knotted. “And he didn’t say where he’d seen him?”

“No, he was vague about that. I didn’t know…” He shook his head. “I should have made the connection or asked him more. He just said that he had reason to believe the man had crossed the Shoreway the previous night and might have ended up out on the island. He wanted to know if there were any homeless people living out there.”

Megan felt her way. “I’m not sure why you’re telling me this….” Although she was much surer than she wanted to be.

“We’ve had reports, Megan. Sightings.”

“Sightings of what?” She bit off the words.

“Of a man. No one’s ever caught him, but they’ve seen glimpses. The description’s usually the same. Medium height, layers of old clothing.” He paused, then he shrugged. “Reddish hair. A limp.”

Megan closed her eyes, but that couldn’t shut out the picture Frank was painting.

Frank lowered his voice. “Was this homeless fellow involved in the carjacking? Is that why this Andreani was down on the island asking questions this morning?”

Megan sighed and opened her eyes. “Nick claims he saw a man running away after the police arrived. And no, the man he saw wasn’t a carjacker. If anything, he disabled one of the gunmen and made it possible for the police to capture them both.”

Frank was silent.

“Casey thinks she saw him, too,” Megan said at last.

“Did Casey recognize him?”

Megan cut right to the point. “It couldn’t be Rooney, Uncle Frank, if that’s where you’re leading. No one’s caught even a glimpse of Rooney in more than ten years. It’s pretty clear he’s gone to that big drunk tank in the sky.”

“Don’t let your aunt hear you talk that way, Megan.”

“Don’t worry. I don’t intend to talk about Rooney at all.” She started to leave, but he stopped her.

“Your friend Andreani could change that.”

She turned back. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that he’s pretty determined to find this guy he saw, whoever he is. He seems compelled more than curious. Would you happen to know why?”

“Niccolo’s a stranger. He’d never even set foot in the saloon until last night. He’s probably just grateful to this guy for rescuing them. If that’s what happened.”

“I think you should talk to him.”

“Why?”

“Because I think he’s going to keep asking questions. And if this homeless fellow is—”

“He’s not!” She realized she’d spoken loudly enough to draw the attention of those closest to them. In a moment she and Frank would be the center of a crowd. She lowered her voice to a near whisper. “I’ll think about what you’ve said.”

“I tried to discourage him myself, Megan. If there’s no need, I don’t want him stirring up memories. But maybe he needs to hear it from you.”

“I’ll think about it.”

Frank smiled sadly. “I’m here if you need me. I’ll do whatever I can. But let’s not involve Deirdre or Peggy. Not yet.”

“Not at all. And please, don’t mention this to Casey.”

“We’re agreed on that.”

Nobody liked a good time more than Casey. She had a knack for enjoying herself and for choosing the right men to do it with. She had met one at tonight’s celebration, a truck driver and Elvis lookalike named Earl who had an ex-wife and two children and didn’t want to dabble in the aforementioned again. He was new to the Whiskey Island Saloon, but not to Casey. She’d met a hundred Earls in her life and knew exactly what she would and wouldn’t get from a fling with him.

She supposed she’d encouraged him at the beginning as an antidote to her family. Earl was one of the few people in the room who didn’t know the entire story of her life or have firm opinions about it. As the evening progressed, she had flirted with him while simultaneously fending him off, but now she was picking up signs that he expected that last part to change.

“You’re sure we can’t blow the joint, baby?” Earl, who was sitting on the stool at the end of the bar, caught Casey’s hand and held it firmly against his midriff.

Since he’d been asking some version of that question every five minutes, she was more than halfway to being annoyed. “I can’t go anywhere. It’s my welcome home party.” She didn’t bother to mention Ashley, who, after a brief introduction to some of the family, was upstairs with a teenage baby-sitter. Casey had not wanted to overwhelm the little girl—Casey was overwhelmed enough for both of them.

“It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to…” He finished off-key.

“What?”

“It’s a song. You’re too young. A baby. My baby.”

“I’m not your anything, Earl. And I’ve told you, I’ve got to hang around tonight.” Casey regained possession of her hand. “How about another beer?”

“I want to be able to per-form.”

Casey didn’t think old Earl was talking about a warbled chorus of “Blue Suede Shoes.” “Find somebody to talk to, then. Everybody here likes to talk. Every one of my relatives has the gift of gab. It’s one of those stereotypes that works.”

He looked blank. Earl seemed to have all the imagination of a digital clock. She supposed she had been drawn to him because she didn’t have to concentrate on anything he said.

She patted his cheek. “Never mind. Just go find somebody to talk to.”

Irritation descended over the blank canvas of his face. “I’m not staying. Either you come with me now, or I’ll find someplace more fun.”

She didn’t like threats. She was beginning to realize she didn’t like Earl. He looked great in tight jeans, and he had a pouty lower lip that should be sunning itself in
Blue Hawaii,
but he also seemed to have the King’s high opinion of himself.

She lifted her chin. “Fine. Go on, then.”

“Hey, who do you think you are, anyway?” He rose off his stool. “You think you’re too good for me? You’re nobody. You live over a bar.”

“And I suppose you’re somebody because you haul bananas from New Orleans to Chicago and probably swallow enough speed while you’re at it to run the Indianapolis 500 on foot.”

He looked blank again. He knew he’d been insulted, but he wasn’t sure how. “Hell, I’m outta here. I can do better. A lot better.”

“I suggest you try.”

He pushed her aside and started toward the door. But he hadn’t gone far before a man blocked his path.

“You know, you just pushed the lady out of your way.” The man standing in front of Earl wasn’t quite as large as he was, but his stance was menacing—which was odd, since he was wearing a conservative gray suit and his thumbs were casually hooked in his pants pockets.

“Get out of my way.”

“I don’t think so,” the man said softly. “You owe the lady an ‘excuse me.’”

The man’s voice was familiar. As she spoke, Casey struggled to place it. “Hey, I don’t care. It’s okay. Let him go.”

The man shook his head. He had short dark hair, which contrasted with Earl’s pseudopompadour and sideburns. He had appealing but unremarkable features, the perfect face for a man who wanted to go undercover.

“I think he needs to say it. It’ll be good for his conscience. Right?” He addressed the last to Earl.

“Get out of my way.” Earl was snarling now, Elvis in his final years.

“Not much chance.”

“Do I know you?” Casey asked.

Earl charged before the stranger could answer. The stranger stepped back and lifted an arm to deflect Earl’s weight, shifting his own weight forward as he did. Earl lurched and reeled 180 degrees, and the stranger twisted Earl’s arm behind his back and held it there.

“Ex-cuse me….” The stranger spaced the syllables evenly. He was demonstrating,
not
apologizing.

Earl was facing Casey now. She wasn’t sure which of them was the more surprised. “Just say it,” she said softly. Because the bar was crowded, so far they hadn’t attracted much attention, but that could change quickly. “For Pete’s sake, Earl. Say it and get out of here.”

Earl mumbled something that sounded enough like “excuse me” to satisfy the stranger. The stranger released him, but Casey noticed he didn’t shift his weight from the balls of his feet. He was ready if Earl whirled and attacked.

“You just missed the best sex you’d have had in a decade, baby.” Earl straightened his T-shirt. As a gesture of rebellion, it fell flat.

“Have it without me,” Casey said wearily. “You won’t even notice.”

Earl sidestepped the stranger, taking care not to touch him, and took the straightest path to the exit. Casey watched until the door closed behind him. Then she switched her gaze to the stranger.

“Do I know you?” she repeated.

“Still hanging out with the losers, Casey? The dropouts and the druggies?”

She bristled at that. “I don’t do drugs. Never did, and I choose my friends accordingly.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s right. The kids you hung out with always looked tougher on the outside than they were. But not many of them won academic prizes, either.”

“What’s this, a slam at every man who doesn’t wear a suit?”

“Not at all. I know a lot of men in suits with fewer brains than your friend Earl. Some of them are running this county. It’s more of an introduction. A memory jog. I was one of those losers.” He smiled gravely, and when he did, she knew him.

“Jon Kovats.” She cocked her head, as if a different angle might give her new information. “God, we’ve had this conversation before, haven’t we?”

“A long time ago.”

The conversation in question had been more of a longstanding dialogue than one blowout extravaganza. She and Jon had attended the same high school, an overcrowded public institution roughly divided between the kids who hoped to make something out of their lives and the ones who were looking for easy answers. They had been tracked in the same gifted classes, thrown together because of high IQs and a dollop of motivation to go with them. They had rebelled together, cut classes whenever they could, and studied together when they couldn’t.

Over the years they had become close friends and academic rivals.

“You always were a sucker for lost causes.” Jon lowered himself to the stool that Earl had vacated and looked up at her. But he didn’t have to look far, because sitting, he was still nearly as tall as she was.

“No, I just wasn’t the snob that you were.” Casey noted the things about him that hadn’t seemed important before. The deep-set hazel eyes, the square jut of his jaw, the fact that a scrawny teenage rebel had morphed into a broad-shouldered man in a suit.

“Me? I wasn’t a snob. I come from a long line of Hungarian peasants. I was born with dirt under my fingernails.”

She lifted one of his hands to examine it. She rested it in the palm of hers. “You’ve scrubbed them.”

“Hello, Casey.” He threaded his fingers through hers and squeezed.

She fell back on a cliché. “It’s been a long time.”

“I’d say so. You disappeared off the face of the earth after high school. Nobody knew where you’d gone.”

She wasn’t about to get into that. “I heard through the grapevine that you disappeared, too.”

He leaned back against the bar. “It’s not much of a mystery. My parents were just waiting for me to finish high school, then they packed up and moved south of Columbus. My father bought a car dealership in a small town.”

“And you went with them?”

“No. I went as far away as I could. San Francisco State, then Stanford for law school.”

“It’s no wonder nobody could find you.”

“Could anybody find you?”

“Not easily.” She didn’t elaborate. She did a swift calculation and didn’t like the answer. “It’s been ten, nearly eleven years. Law school? You’re a lawyer now?”

“I’m working in the district attorney’s office.”

She thought of Earl with his arm twisted behind his back. Truck driver Earl, who had probably won more rest stop brawls than he’d lost. “Is that where you learned to defend yourself?”

“No, I learned that in the LAPD.”

She cocked a brow in question.

He explained. “I was a cop between college and law school. At the time I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to catch bad guys or put them away.”

“Well, you always had a highly developed sense of right and wrong.” Somehow that brought them full circle to the beginning of their conversation. “And so do I, for that matter. Maybe my friends don’t live up to your high-flown criteria, but I’m careful. No drunks, no druggies, no abusers.”

“Just guys you don’t have to talk to, right? Guys who don’t listen.”

He had remembered a lot over ten years. “Welcome home, huh, Jon?”