Cross Current - Kling Christine - Страница 49

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“Don’t even think about it, Perry,” I said, keeping an eye on him.

“Hey, babe, what you doing in that little bathtub toy?”

“It’s called exercise, Perry. Not that you’d understand the meaning of that word.”

He put his boat into reverse and I stopped paddling. We both eased to a stop, side by side and still in the water, but traveling slowly with the tide. The last car of the freight train rumbled over the trestle, and it grew much quieter as we waited for the automated bridge to reopen.

I grabbed the gunwale of Little Bitt. While he was here, I might as well ask him a couple of questions. “Perry, I saw you in Flossie’s yesterday. I’m guessing you were there talking to Gil Lynch.”

He pressed his lips together like he was getting ready to spit, and I cringed. He turned his head aside and blew a mouthful of spittle into the water off the stern.

“God, gross, Perry.”

“So what if I was talking to Gil. It’s a free country.”

“No big deal. I’m just curious what you guys were talking about, and why he ran when Mike and I tried to talk to him. Do you have any idea why he took off like that?”

“He’s crazy. You do know that, don’t you? But the thing is, he’s still got connections. We was just shooting the shit. I told him about towing in your friend Mike and then I was asking him about the owner of that Eye-talian boat we worked. He was just starting to tell me about that dude when he split. So I went back to Flossie’s last night.”

“Perry, you’re at Flossie’s every night.”

He nodded. “Nearly. Anyways, when Gil showed up, he was acting real skittish. Said he didn’t want to have nothing to do with that one-legged cop. Meaning Beesting, of course.”

“That’s kind of weird. What’s he got against Mike?”

“Hell if I know what goes on in that dude’s head. It’s all scrambled in there.”

The railroad bridge sounded the buzzer and the span began to rise. Perry said, “Much as I love chatting with you, sweetheart, I got a Hatteras down at Bahia Mar waiting for Perry to make his magic.”

The rest of the trip downriver hadn’t taken nearly as long since I had the current flowing with me. That was fortunate because the last half hour on the main river, with all the Saturday-morning boating crowd who were jockeying like it was rush hour on the Interstate, churning up the water and impatiently revving their engines, had come close to making me seasick.

My arms burned and my palms were blistered when, finally, I feathered my paddle to ease the kayak into the dock off Gorda's stern. When I reached up to grab the cleat on the dock, I saw a pair of familiar handsome brown legs walking toward me.

“Morning, Miss Sullivan,” Joe said. He was carrying two covered paper cups and a grease-stained brown bag. “Your cappuccino’s getting cold.”

“Where’s my brother?”

“Nobody here but the dog when I arrived. I knocked on your cottage door and was about to drink your coffee when I saw you come paddling this way.”

“I’m surprised Abaco let you back here.”

“Onion bagels are her favorite. She wouldn’t have done it for honey wheat. I tried that first.”

“Ah, so, do you always bribe women to get what you want?”

He grinned. “I usually don’t need to.”

I was attempting to execute the rather complicated maneuver required to climb off a kayak alongside a dock, and I nearly went into the river at this comment. The tide was high, so very little of the ladder was left above water, and I made an extremely ungraceful landing by sliding onto the dock on my belly. After tying off the kayak’s bowline, I dusted off my hands on my shorts and stood up. Joe’s mountain bike was propped against the trunk of an old oak tree, and he was again dressed in Lycra bike shorts, this time with a baby-blue tank top. He handed me a cardboard coffee cup.

“Thanks.” I inclined my head in the direction of the wood picnic table closer to the Larsens’ house. “Let’s get a ways back from the river. I’ve inhaled enough exhaust this morning.”

“So how’re things?”

I didn’t say anything, just looked into the bag he’d brought, pulled out a cinnamon raisin bagel, and spread the cream cheese on with a plastic knife. I knew what he was doing. Joe was trying to get back on my good side by bribing me with bagels. I’d take the bribe, but as for forgiveness, he was going to have to work for it.

I bit off a big piece and chewed slowly. “Hmmm. These are really good. The coffee, too. Thanks.”

“So, how’s that kid?”

“Fine.”

“Have you been to see her?”

“Yup.”

He tried to wait me out, make me need to fill in the silence. Not this morning. Not after what he’d said yesterday.

“Seychelle, look, I want to help you. I like you. I’m a retired cop and I’m bored, so I’d like to help out any way I can. You’re not experienced. You should use me. Use me and abuse me.”

“It’s nice of you to offer, Joe, but...”

“You’re still pissed off at me, aren’t you. First my daughter, now you. I seem to piss off all the women I try to help. This is about yesterday, isn’t it. About what I said about your old man.”

“Don’t call him my ‘old man.’ ”

“Okay, this is about Red, then. Hmm. I thought you were better than that, Sullivan.”

I glanced quickly at him, frowned, and turned away. The bagel tasted lousy all of a sudden.

“You said you were going to find that kid’s father,” he said, “and you sounded like you meant it. I believed you.” He balled up his napkin and crushed his empty coffee cup. “But now you’re so hung up on some old news about what did or didn’t happen more than twenty years ago, you’re gonna turn down a chance to use thirty years of investigative experience because you’re pouting over your daddy.” He stood and collected the bag with the remaining bagels.

I sighed. “Sit down.”

He stood there, waiting.

“Would you sit already?” I said.

“Why?”

“You’re gonna make me say it, aren’t you. Okay. Maybe I could use a little help. There. See, I kinda screwed up last night. Somebody followed me, and it nearly got ugly. I thought I’d made sure I didn’t have a tail, but I guess I’m not a very good Nancy Drew after all. I don’t want to make that mistake again. So, yeah. I’ll take you up on your offer.”

He sat down on the wood bench. “Okay, so you need to find this kid’s father.”

“Yeah. She says her father is an American, and she thinks she was being brought to America to join him. I figured the place to start, then, was the boat that brought her to America. I’ve set up a meeting today with someone who knows something about the Miss Agnes."

“Would you mind if I tag along? I could watch your back.”

I looked at his bike shorts and clean blue tank top. “I don’t know that you’ll still want to when you hear where we’re going.”

“Where’s that?”

“The Swap Shop.”

What we now know as the Swap Shop started life back in the sixties as the Thunderbird Drive-in Movie Theater. When the owner began running a flea market on the blacktop expanse on weekends, the concept grew and grew, eventually becoming an indoor/outdoor collection of permanent booths with a food court and full-time entertainment including a circus, complete with elephants, rides, and an outdoor carnival. The place still showed movies at night, but the main business now took place during the day when the Swap Shop resembled the outdoor markets of third-world countries more than an American shopping mall.

We got lucky and found a minivan pulling out of a parking space. I whipped Lightnin’ into the spot before a hooked-up Honda Civic with booming bass could beat me to it.

“You like to live dangerously, I see,” Joe said.

Although most of the sky was blue, a small dark cloud just overhead began to spit raindrops on us as we walked across the parking lot. We picked up the pace and ducked under the tent that covered the long rows of outdoor stalls.

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