Black Coral Page 5

  I realize then that Hughes was taking photos of all the exhibits with his iPhone while George went on his tirade. He and George are up to something. How the heck didn’t I realize it? Maybe that was the point.

  “Come on, McPherson,” says George. He doesn’t bother acknowledging Hughes, because he doesn’t want Aguilló and Marquez to realize what he was doing.

  The moment we get to the parking lot, I ask George point-blank, “What the hell are we up to?”

  He opens the door to his SUV. “Climb in. Hughes, can you email everyone on the contact list Cynthia gave us and tell them the press conference has been moved up and relocated?”

  “Sure, where and what time?”

  “Five minutes from now. Um . . . North Plantation High School. Then call the principal and tell him to have the auditorium ready. Also, we need a video projector set up for the photos we took.”

  “Wait,” I say. “Just like that, you’re going to call a press conference at some school that doesn’t even know we’re coming?”

  “Principal Trammel will love the attention. He wants to run for superintendent. We’ll let him say a few words about finally putting the students to rest, and he’ll get his TV time.”

  “You’re a mercenary.”

  “No. That back there? That was mercenary. Someone’s telling Marquez to squash us like a bug. She couldn’t care less about us on a personal level. They didn’t go through all that effort just to swing a bigger . . . um . . . thing. She’s getting pressured to make sure the UIU has a very short life. So we have to fight just as dirty. Dirtier. Anyway, help Hughes figure out what he’s going to say.”

  “Me?” says Hughes.

  “You’re our chief spokesperson. It can’t just be McPherson and me on camera all the time. Especially if we’re doing surveillance work.”

  “Yeah, but it’s McPherson’s case,” he replies.

  “It was the UIU’s,” I point out. “We’re a team.” Well, in this case we’re a team, because I’d much rather Hughes be on camera than me.

  “This job is weird,” says Hughes as he starts typing a note on his phone.

  My gut tells me it’s going to get weirder.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  RELATIONSHIP STATUS

  Run, the father of my daughter and, I guess, my boyfriend, knows how to throw a party. He has since high school, when we first met at the private academy I briefly attended before my family fell back on our natural state of hard times. There are more than a hundred people out on the deck at his house overlooking the Intracoastal.

  Officially it’s a housewarming party, but Run is treating it like a celebration for me as he parades me around by the hand and proudly tells people about how I found the van with the missing kids. The press conference was two days ago, and the newspaper ran it as the headline story. It’s hard to miss tonight, as Run has spread a dozen copies around the tables and bars on the deck.

  “Hey, Mrs. Steinberg,” he says to one of his mother’s friends as she and her husband watch the dancing and partying from the railing. “How you doing? You remember Sloan?”

  “Of course,” she replies. Eyeing me up and down.

  I’m sure she does. As one of Run’s mother’s friends, she’s no doubt heard an earful about me. Run’s mother isn’t exactly the head of my fan club. Partly for good reason, partly because she’s a snob. Her one saving grace is that she absolutely adores our daughter, Jackie.

  Right now, Jackie is splashing around in the pool with her cousins and their friends. She’s getting taller. She still looks like a skinny boy, but I can tell that’s about to change. Lord help me. She’s got Run’s good looks and charisma in a girl’s body.

  I pray she doesn’t turn out like me or him. Not to say either one of us ended up in a bad place, but we sure as hell scared our parents. Run’s parents, especially.

  My own parents only gave me passing disapproval when I told them I was pregnant and Run and I had no plans to wed. We’re a big family, and I could see the look in my dad’s eyes as he realized he’d have yet another McPherson to induct into our little cult. For her part, Mom had been hoping for a granddaughter to fill the role I never quite did, as I was more into spear-fishing than Saturdays at the Galleria Mall.

  “Congratulations,” says Mr. Steinberg. “Your father must be proud.”

  “You can ask him,” I reply, nodding to my father, who’s sitting in a chair on the deck drinking a beer and talking to a couple of other people.

  Huh, Mom’s sitting next to him. I guess they’re on speaking terms this week. “There she is!” says a woman behind me in a cheery voice.

  I spin around and get blindsided as Run’s mom plants a kiss on my cheek. “I read the story in the Tribune. Those poor children. My god, what their parents must have felt!” She takes my hand and presents me to the Steinbergs. “Have you met Sloan?” she asks. “You might remember how she went after those drug runners before. Well, she’s done it again!”

  I glance over at Run, who has a sly smile on his face. Now I understand. This whole operation was his way to win his mother over. I’ve gone from one PR maneuver to another.

  She doesn’t let go of my hand and drags me around the party, introducing me to people I’ve met half a dozen times before. We all go along with it. It’s her moment. She dealt out plenty of snide comments when her son knocked me up, but now she gets to parade me around as her proud . . . um . . . mother of her granddaughter, as she says to someone, making me sound like a surrogate. It’s fine. I’ll take it. She loves Jackie, and that’s all that matters.

  After she’s made the rounds with me, I find myself over by the railing where Hughes is watching the party with his too-cute-to-be-real blonde wife, who’s holding a baby that looks like a miniature version of him.

  “McPherson,” he says. “This is Cathy. Cathy, Sloan McPherson. Thank you for inviting us.”

  Cathy swings the baby to her other arm and shakes my hand. “Beautiful place you have here,” she says, admiring Run’s mansion.

  “Me? Oh no. See that marina down there?” I point down the waterway. “My place is a little boat out there. This is my boyfriend’s house.”

  “Oh,” says Cathy, trying to sort out our relationship. I hope she tells me when she figures it out.

  Run has kind of invited me to move in, but I’ve held off. I’m still trying to figure out what our future is supposed to be. Part of it is ego. Part of it’s fear.

  We share custody of Jackie, which pretty much means letting her set her schedule with us. I’m worried that if I move in with Run and Jackie gets to live here full-time, and if things don’t work out between Run and me, Jackie won’t want to go back to living with me.

  It’s selfish, I know. But Run and I are complicated people. He’s settled down since his wilder days, although I was probably the wildest part of them. Still, I don’t know how we’ll function together as grown-ups. That’s why I’m taking things slowly—glacially slowly. I’ll sleep over occasionally, and we’ve taken trips as a family, but we’re still living separate lives.

  “Calvin told me all about the case,” says Cathy.

  I’m about to ask who the hell Calvin is, then remember that’s Scott Hughes’s actual first name. “Well, we couldn’t have gotten the van without him. We’re lucky to have him on the team.”

  “I have to say I was worried when he took the job. We just had Callie, and I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea. But now that I see what you’re doing, I think it’s the best choice ever.”

  First, Callie? Drop it, Sloan. Second, we now have an infant and a new mom dependent upon the success of our flea circus of an operation. My worst-case scenario is sleeping on my mom’s couch while Run watches Jackie. Theirs is . . . I don’t know.

  I wonder what George said to get Hughes on board. Does Calvin have any idea how tenuous our job is?

  The pitter-patter of wet feet comes from behind me, and suddenly I’m wrapped in thin, drenched arms. I look down at my soaked dress and see Ja
ckie’s grinning face.

  “Hey, Mama. Oh my god! Your baby is so cute!” she squeals.

  Oh my god, please believe babies are hideous troll monsters for at least two more decades.

  It’s too late. Jackie is already shaking little Callie’s hand, and the baby is smiling in delight. It’s adorable, but I’m getting flashbacks of my swollen belly.

  “Is there a restroom we can use?” asks Cathy.

  “Sure. You can use mine. I’ll take you there,” Jackie replies before leading the mother and child away to visit the largest bathroom any twelve-year-old has ever owned.

  “It’s like looking at a miniature version of you,” says Hughes.

  Please don’t say that. “I hope not,” I reply. “Although your daughter certainly looks like you.”

  “They say she’ll grow out of it. I hope she turns out like her mother.”

  I hear the sound of Run’s infectious laughter echo across the party. “Well, I hope Jackie turns out like . . . actually, she’s pretty awesome, so, exactly who she is.” I decide to change the topic. “So, what do you think of the UIU so far? Overwhelmed by all the new faces?” I joke.

  “It’s what I hoped for,” he replies.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. When I decided to get into law enforcement, I wanted to make a difference, but that’s hard to do when you feel like you’re standing still.”

  “I see. Can I ask you a question? You seem normal . . . I mean, highly qualified. Unless there’s some baggage I don’t know about, you could have worked for anybody. We’re not even a sure thing yet. Why did you say yes?”

  “I didn’t sign up for the UIU. I signed up to work with you and George Solar. I followed the Bonaventure case. I was on a task force at the time. I read about what you went through. I knew what George had gone through. I told myself, those are the kind of people I want to work with. The kind of people I served with back in the navy, when I felt like I mattered. That’s why.”

  Oh jeez. No pressure, now. “We’re just trying to do the right thing.”

  “Finding those kids was a great start,” he says.

  “Yeah, well, we’re thirty years too late to really make a difference.”

  “Are we?” asks Hughes.

  “What do you mean?”

  He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small plastic bag and hands it to me. Inside is a silicone rubber ring shaped like a broken number eight.

  “What’s this?” I ask.

  “A friend gave it to me. Someone at FDLE. Let’s leave it at that. It was missing from the evidence pile.”

  “Because they took it?” I reply.

  “No, because they excluded it. Do you know what it is?”

  I recognized it immediately. “It’s a snorkel ring to keep it attached to your mask.”

  “My friend thought you or I left it in the van,” he says.

  “But we were never inside the van.”

  “You sure?” he asks.

  “Sure I’m sure. You saw the van when we raised it. It was intact,” I reply. “Sealed.”

  “Maybe it came in through the vent in the top?” he suggests.

  I examine the ring. “Possibly. It’s the only explanation that makes sense.”

  “The only one?” Hughes asks.

  He’s a lot smarter than he looks, but I don’t think what he’s implying could be true. “I mean . . . someone could have been in there before us. Maybe opened the door or went through the hatch and replaced it. But why? Maybe Udal scuba dived? I mean, that’s the obvious answer, right?”

  “Yes. That’s the obvious answer,” he replies.

  But not necessarily the correct answer. I groan inwardly. “You show this to Solar?”

  “Nope. I wanted to check with you first.”

  “Okay. Let me think about this. I went out on a limb with the van, and I don’t know if we need to do that again just yet. Marquez is clearly looking for opportunities to put us in our place.”

  Hughes nods knowingly. “Mum’s the word.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  GOLDEN MERMAID

  The Golden Mermaid is a two-hundred-foot-long megayacht owned by a Hollywood producer who has an average-guy demeanor in interviews but lives like a Saudi prince in private. Last night, the captain of The Golden Mermaid reported a suspicious boat without lights watching the big vessel in a marina in Palm Beach.

  This wouldn’t necessarily get our attention if it wasn’t for the fact that three nights earlier masked gunmen robbed a boat docked off the coast of Miami. That has every state and federal agency with armed agents and boats out patrolling the water.

  George and I are no exception—we’re watching the Mermaid with night-vision goggles from a twenty-foot Boston Whaler across the channel.

  “Did you see this guy’s last movie?” asks George.

  “Yeah . . . I feel like robbing the yacht,” I reply.

  “Smart-ass. What about the profile? Does this fit the Bandits?”

  “Maybe. Hesher—the photographer—he hasn’t done a photo spread on this one yet, has he?”

  Greg Hesher was the one common link between the other boat robberies. Our current theory is that he or someone he knew was connected to them and provided them inside information.

  Presently we have him under surveillance, with an assist from the Broward sheriff’s department, since UIU lacks the manpower to do that kind of work and get anything else done.

  We toyed with questioning him but feared it might make him clam up. That would not only get us nothing on the New River Bandits but also possibly turn the trail cold. Truth be told, though, given the armed robbery, it could still be the more prudent decision. We don’t want to wait until someone gets killed to pounce on our best lead.

  “I don’t want to sound judgmental, McPherson, but it feels like your head isn’t exactly in the game. Something else on your mind besides the violent gang of pirates that may be about to attack The Golden Mermaid?”

  “They’re not attacking tonight,” I reply. “If they’re smart and have eyes, they know everyone and their aunt is out tonight looking for them. Especially since the robbery’s hit the news.”

  “Whoever said thieves were smart?” replies George. “But, yeah, I get your drift.”

  “I also think we’re overlooking something. There have been a dozen linked robberies, yet the case files from the other agencies haven’t turned up anything. Isn’t that kind of weird?”

  “Weird how?”

  “Like there’s an angle we’re not seeing. We have one boat chase and that’s it.”

  “They searched a hundred boats going from the crime scenes and found nothing,” he says.

  “Isn’t that telling us something?”

  “Like they’re not using a boat?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. Anyway, I was thinking about the van . . .”

  George sighs. “Because a van that went into the water three decades ago is more urgent than this?”

  I shrug. “Your boy Calvin showed me something interesting.”

  “Cal . . . oh, Hughes. What was it? Your turn, by the way.” He hands me the night-vision goggles and tripod.

  “A diving mask ring. The thing that fastens your snorkel to your mask. FDLE found it in the van but didn’t report it.”

  The only lights on the Mermaid are on the mast and in a porthole near the waterline at the bow. Right now, Hughes is aboard with two Palm Beach sheriff’s detectives, waiting to see if anyone pays a visit.

  “Since you were never inside the van, I’m guessing one of the kids dropped it at some point,” George says.

  “Maybe. But I took a look at the FDLE report. There’s a problem with it. I didn’t want to say anything until I was sure.” I pull back my sleeve and show him the watch on my wrist. “I found it in a vintage store.”

  George uses the light of his phone to examine the watch. “What is that? A Swatch?”

  “Yeah. Just like the one Grace Sandalin was wearing when the van cra
shed.”

  “Now you’re creeping me out, kid. This better be leading somewhere besides asking you to submit to a psych evaluation.”

  “Look closer.” I keep my wrist in front of him while watching the yacht.

  “It’s stopped. You bought a bad watch.”

  “It’s stopped at four fifteen,” I reply. “Same as Grace’s watch.”

  “Okay, now you sound like a Twilight Zone episode. You intentionally stopped the watch at the same time as hers ran out?”

  I lean back from the scope and rub my eyes for a moment. “I stopped it at the same time she died.”

  “But aren’t those waterproof? In fact, I think I read that on the FDLE report. It’s why they couldn’t determine what time they went into the water.”

  “They are waterproof. Unless you get into an accident and crack the casing like this one . . . or the one Grace was wearing. Then it only takes about a minute for the watch to stop.”

  “Okay, now you have my interest. What else?”

  “Well, the mask ring might just be what it is, something the kids left, but I read deeper into the report. The van still had half a tank of gas. The report speculates that they died a little after midnight, about an hour after leaving the concert and getting lost. That’s how long it would take for them to get to Pond 65. But if Grace’s watch is correct, they didn’t die until five hours later. And the half-full tank suggests they weren’t driving around in circles.”

  George follows the thread. “In ’89, they pulled all the gas-station footage they could find. They didn’t spot the kids. So, they didn’t fill up?”

  “Right. They were doing something for five hours. FDLE glossed over that part because it doesn’t fit the simpler narrative.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “Saying? I’m asking. What were the kids doing for five hours?”

  “Two boys, two girls. Do the math,” he responds.

  “Five hours? What kind of teenager were you? Besides. They were supposed to be high as a kite at the time. Was Udal just driving his stoned friends around, waiting for them to wake up? He was the one with the substance-abuse history.”