An Easy Sail_A Connie Barrera Thriller_The 8th Novel in the Series_Mystery and Adventure in Florida and the Caribbean

by Charles Dougherty

  "How do you feel about that?"

  "A little uneasy, but Contreras made the point that he's the one who will die if the wrong people find out what he's doing."

  "Hmm," Connie said. "There is that. So what happens next?"

  "Contreras is putting together a package of info on the Pink Pussycat. He'll post it early in the morning. We should have it when we wake up. I'm to pass it to Luke. Luke's doing the same with the murder-suicide, and I'll post it for Leon once I get it."

  "Luke's going to email it to you?"

  "Yes. Why?"

  "Just curious. I don't know what Marcia's going to want to do tomorrow, that's all."

  "Take her for a quick shopping excursion here in the complex. I shouldn't need more than an hour or so, if that."

  "That will work. She wanted to buy some sunscreen and stuff. After that, we can take her around to English Harbour for lunch, maybe."

  "Okay." Paul finished his drink. "Ready to call it a night?"

  "Yes. Let's go home."

  5

  "How did you two end up with such a dream job?" Marcia asked.

  They were lingering over the remains of the breakfast that Paul had served in the main saloon. He glanced at Connie and picked up the carafe of coffee, filling their cups as she began their story. Marcia listened, her eyes locked on Connie as she explained how she and Paul met.

  "So you learned to sail that recently?" Marcia asked, when Connie paused for a sip of coffee.

  "Yes. I'd never sailed before I chartered that boat in the Bahamas. I got hooked right away, and made a deal for them to teach me everything they could."

  "And they introduced the two of you? Those two women who ran the boat?"

  "That's right."

  "How did they know you, Paul? Did you date one of them?"

  Paul chuckled. "Hardly. They're a little young for me. I'm a good friend of the godfather of the woman who's the skipper. I've known her since she was a child — heard tales about her that long, anyhow."

  "When I checked out your broker's website, I noticed she represents another yacht that looks just like Diamantista II. I think it was run by two young women. I can't recall the name, but it was something unusual. Would that be the one?"

  "Vengeance?" Connie asked.

  "Yes! I remember now. I thought that was an interesting name for a pleasure boat. It sounds more like an 18th-century warship."

  "That's the one," Connie said. "I chartered her for a couple of weeks to start with, and it stretched into a couple of months. They taught me to sail, and we ended up being good friends."

  "And how did they end up playing matchmaker?"

  "Innocently enough," Connie said. "Paul was visiting another friend of theirs in Martinique when we were there. They invited everybody out for a day-sail on Vengeance, and that's how I met Paul. I'd already decided by then that I was going to buy a yacht and go into the charter business, and Paul had just retired and had some time on his hands. I discovered he was a seasoned sailor, and more important, a gourmet chef. I needed experienced crew to help me get started, and besides, I'm lost when it comes to cooking. So I conned him into helping me."

  "And here you are married," Marcia said. Smiling at Paul, she asked, "What's it like being the boss's spouse? Ever cause any problems?"

  Paul grinned and shrugged. "It's fine. Best boss I ever had."

  "What did you do before you retired?"

  "I was a cop in Miami."

  "He's being modest," Connie said. "He was a captain. He ran the homicide department, among other things."

  "And how about you, Connie? What did you do before?"

  "A lot of different things. I've always been in business for myself. I'd just sold a business when I went to the Bahamas. I wanted to chill out and see the islands; I'd never taken a vacation before. After a while, I got enough of the Bahamas and decided to charter a yacht to see what that was like. I'd always wanted to see the Caribbean, so they picked me up in Nassau and we sailed down here."

  "That's fascinating, both of you. Thanks for sharing your story with me; I like to get as much background as I can before I write about people. I hope you won't mind if I do an article that features how you got into the charter business."

  "Not at all," Connie said.

  "Don't worry," Marcia said. "I'll run things by you before I turn any of it loose. I always do that."

  "Okay," Connie said.

  "And I'll have a lot more questions, I'm sure, once I start typing up my notes. Maybe we can visit some of the places that you went on Vengeance, Connie, so I can get a sense of what it was that got you hooked on the yachting life."

  "We can do that," Connie said. "You mentioned yesterday that you might want to do a little shopping here in the marina complex. Want me to show you around?"

  "Yes. That would be nice. And I think I'd like to do a tour with your friend tomorrow, maybe."

  "I'll give him a call and set that up while you two are shopping," Paul said. "Connie and I were thinking it might be fun to sail around to English Harbour today for a late lunch. We could spend the night there, and William could pick you up there in the morning."

  "That sounds good. I do want to see English Harbour; I've read a little about it. The history is interesting, and it sounds like there's some good shopping there, too."

  "I'll book space for us at Nelson's Dockyard, then," Paul said. "That's a good way to see the place, and it gives you access during the times when there aren't too many tourists — early morning, late evening. It's pretty, too."

  "Good," Marcia said. "Let me go freshen up, Connie. Want to go ashore in a few minutes?"

  "Okay," Connie said. "Whenever you're ready."

  Leon Contreras was impatient. He had been checking his email every 15 minutes, looking for a message from Connie and Paul.

  "Yes!" he said, pumping his fist in the air.

  His exclamation attracted the attention of Jorge and Miguel. Standing behind his chair, they looked over his shoulder as he read the file Paul had uploaded minutes before.

  "The cops don't know who LaRosa's victim was," Contreras said.

  "But they're sure he's not Berto," Miguel said. "Wonder how?"

  "Look!" Jorge said, putting a finger on the screen near the bottom of the page. "They got a name for Berto, and we were right."

  "Guillermo Montalba," Miguel and Contreras said, in chorus.

  "He's gotta be that woman's brother," Miguel said.

  "Yeah," Jorge said. "He looks like her twin and they've got the same last name."

  "But she's not supposed to have any living relatives, I thought," Contreras said. "If he is her brother, why hide it? That's suspicious."

  "No shit," Jorge said.

  "Let's back up and read the whole thing, now," Contreras said. "I want to know how they ... ah, there it is. They ruled out the corpse being Berto because this woman, Beverly Lennox, had dinner with Berto, twice. She said the inside of his right hand was all scar tissue."

  "Who's Beverly Lennox?" Jorge asked.

  "Guys," Contreras said, "slow down, damn it. I'm gonna do screen shots of this so we don't have to risk a download. Then we can each go through it separately."

  Once he had the screen shots stored on his laptop, Contreras deleted the file in the drafts folder of the email account he and Connie shared. "Get your phones," he said, plugging a cable into his laptop.

  Miguel put his iPhone in Contreras's outstretched hand. "Why not airdrop them?"

  "The wired connection's more secure, remember?"

  "Oh. Right," Miguel said.

  "Settle down, Miguel," Contreras said. "You're the one who explained that to me."

  "Yeah. Sorry. I just wanna see what we got."

  "Okay," Contreras said, unplugging Miguel's phone and returning it to him. "Go check it out. Give me yours, Jorge."

  Jorge passed him another iPhone.

  "What did you give them in return, Leon?" Jorge asked, as Contreras transferred the screen shots.

&nbs
p; "Just the stuff on the Pussycat surveillance."

  "Not the scar-faced guy?"

  "No. We never put him at the Pink Pussycat."

  "Right," Jorge said. "But I was hoping the cops had something on him."

  "They may, but I don't want to get this moving too fast," Contreras said. "If we give them Scarface, we'll have to give them O'Toole, and I'm not sure about that, yet."

  "Yeah, okay. I can see that. The stuff on O'Toole's dangerous, but they already got a link to him through the Montalba woman, right?"

  "Yes, but that's their information, not ours. I want to see how they play it. Then we can decide whether to tell them about O'Toole's tie-in to the Pussycat and the drug business."

  "You don't trust them?"

  "I trust them, but I'm not sure what they'd do with that information, and I'm not ready to see O'Toole get busted. We need whoever's up the chain from O'Toole, whether it's the scar-faced man or someone else."

  "You don't think it's this Guillermo Montalba, then?" Jorge asked.

  "I don't know. We've seen him a lot more than we've seen the guy with the scarred face. That makes me wonder about their relative importance."

  "I see what you mean. Less visible might mean more powerful, huh?" Jorge said.

  "Maybe. Like I said, let's see how trigger happy the cops are before we start feeding them the good stuff. If they bust O'Toole straight away, we might never find out who's running him. Montalba's part of it, but we don't know yet if he's the head honcho." Contreras unplugged Jorge's phone and handed it to him.

  Jorge nodded and went to sit on the ratty couch in their makeshift office.

  "Let's study what we got here and then kick it around in about, say, an hour?" Contreras said.

  "Okay, boss," Jorge said.

  Miguel looked up from his phone. "An hour?"

  "Yeah," Contreras said. "Digest it all and see how it fits with what we know. Maybe we'll get a fresh idea."

  As soon as Connie and Marcia left the boat, Paul sat at the chart table and opened the laptop computer. He was curious to see what Contreras had posted; he already knew the contents of Luke Pantene's message, which he had uploaded while Connie and Marcia got ready to go ashore.

  He digested the report on the surveillance of the Pink Pussycat as he skimmed through it. Pouring himself a fresh mug of coffee, he glanced at the clock and decided to call Luke. Connie and Marcia would most likely spend at least an hour poking through the little shops.

  "Hey, Paul," Luke said. "I just got through reading the file you sent. Not a lot here, but it's interesting."

  "I thought the story about Kilgore hauling an unidentified body out to the Everglades might pique your interest."

  "Yeah, it did. But here's what's even more interesting about that. Two of my guys were flashing a sketch of Berto around the Pussycat a couple of days before the murder-suicide. You talked with Dani and Liz yet?"

  "Yeah, why?"

  "Their charter guest, this Beverly Lennox. They tell you about her?"

  "A little, but I'm not getting this."

  "She was an escort. LaRosa hooked her up with the congressman I mentioned."

  "Okay. While he was running the Pussycat?" Paul asked.

  "Yeah. He had his fingers in a bunch of things. After she became the congressman's mistress, LaRosa told her to call Berto. Dani and Liz tell you about that?"

  "They just told me Berto set up a honey trap for the congressman using Lennox for bait."

  "Yeah," Luke said. "Anyway, LaRosa sent her to Berto, so we were trying to put Berto at the Pussycat."

  "And?" Paul asked.

  "Two of my guys talked to LaRosa and his bartender and the bouncer. They claimed not to recognize the guy in the sketch. As my guys were getting in their car, this wino came up to them. He's been living on the streets around there for a while. He was in the Pussycat when they went in, but he took off while they were talking to the bartender. He claimed he'd seen Berto meeting with Kilgore in a limo behind the club."

  "With Kilgore? But I thought he was missing."

  "Yeah, now. But this was before. They talked to the bum some more, and he told them the same thing your source said, about seeing Kilgore load what could have been a body into the trunk of Pinkie's car and drive away. That wasn't long before Kilgore met Berto in the limo."

  "So," Paul said, "that corroborates what my source said."

  "Yeah, it does. And then after that, Kilgore had another meeting with the guy in the limo, according to your source. That was right before LaRosa took over the club."

  "You think Berto told Kilgore to waste Pinkie?" Paul asked.

  "The timing fits," Luke said. "And then Berto's second meeting was right before Kilgore disappeared. Coincidence?"

  "I see your point," Paul said. "That makes it look like Berto might have had something to do with the changes in management at the club."

  "Yeah, it does. Especially since Berto was seen going into that condo a few minutes before the murder-suicide."

  "And from what Beverly Lennox told you about Berto's hand being scarred, you think Berto's still on the loose."

  "Yeah. If Dani gave you that much detail, she probably told you the rest."

  "She did."

  "You see the mess I'm in, Paul?"

  "I do. All that evidence and no way to build a case."

  "Not to mention the Montalba woman's gonna marry The Honorable William O'Toole," Luke said. "Dani tell you that?"

  "Not that it was O'Toole. Just that she was engaged to a senator. Now I see why you said it could get political. I'm surprised now that you told my source that Berto was really Graciella Montalba's brother."

  "That's a test of sorts," Luke said. "I want to see what he does with that before I give him any more dangerous stuff."

  "You're afraid he won't be able to sit on that?"

  "I'm not making judgments. I'd rather he didn't burn O'Toole just yet; I'm hoping we can figure out who this Montalba brother is and what he's up to first. I want to see if your boy can resist the temptation to bust a senator. If he can, we might be able to do business."

  "Okay. The next move is his," Paul said.

  "Yep. I gotta go do some boring police work, now. Let me know what you hear from him."

  "Sure thing," Paul said. "Take care."

  "You, too, partner," Luke said.

  Paul put the computer away and took his coffee up to the cockpit to wait for Connie and Marcia to return.

  6

  "Remember the wino you guys found at the Pussycat?" Luke asked the two detectives working the murder-suicide.

  "Yeah, sure," the lead detective said. "Why?"

  "I just got some info from a confidential informant that corroborates what the wino told you. The c.i. saw Montalba talking to Kilgore in a limo at the Pink Pussycat. The wino said it was the guy we were calling Berto, right?"

  "Yeah," the lead detective said. "The c.i. knew he was Montalba?"

  "Not by name. He called him Berto; he knew about the sketch."

  "Your c.i. have anything else?" the detective asked.

  "Yes. He thinks Kilgore met Montalba in the limo twice. Once before he was seen hauling what might have been a body away, and once after."

  "Okay," the lead detective said. "He thinks?"

  "Yeah," Pantene said. "The first time, he didn't get a good look at whoever was in the limo. But the car and the behavior matched the second time, when he did see the guy in the sketch."

  "The bum only told us about the second meeting," the lead detective said. "You think that means Montalba got Kilgore to kill Pinkie?"

  "Maybe," Pantene said. "We don't know for sure if that was a body, or if it was, whether it was Pinkie. But get this: my c.i. said Kilgore used Pinkie's car, and that he ditched the body in the Everglades. Left the car out there and drove back in a beater Jeep. The c.i. saw him weight the body and dump it. He even gave us a GPS fix on the disposal sight."

  "Jeez, captain. Who is this source? You believe him?"

&
nbsp; "I will if we find a body out there."

  "You want us to look?"

  "I want you to get a team out there to look, yeah. But hang on."

  "You got more?"

  "Yeah. After the second meeting in the limo, Kilgore went to talk to this hotshot criminal lawyer, Gator Jaw Ryan."

  "No shit?" the lead detective said. "I woulda guessed ol' Gator Jaw was outta Kilgore's league. Your source know why he went to Ryan?"

  "If he does, he didn't say. But that was right before Kilgore disappeared and LaRosa took over the club."

  "Maybe Montalba was afraid Kilgore was gonna rat him out on the Schultz hit, or something," the lead detective said.

  "Or something," Pantene said. "You're getting ahead of the facts. We don't even know if there was a hit."

  "Aw, come on, captain. You know we're gonna find what's left of Schultz, if your guy gave you a GPS fix."

  "I'll wait and see," Pantene said. "It'll give me an idea about how reliable my source is, if nothing else."

  "So you want us to check out this spot in the 'Glades," the lead detective said. "Anything else?"

  "Yeah. I want you to go see Gator Jaw Ryan. Ask him what Kilgore wanted."

  "He ain't gonna tell us anything." The second detective spoke for the first time.

  "You won't know for sure until you ask," Pantene said. "But I'll be more interested in what he does after you talk to him. Think of it like turning on a light in a roach-infested room. We want to see where he runs, what he does."

  "You want us to put a tail on him?" the lead detective asked.

  "Yeah, for a little while," Pantene said.

  "Think we could get a warrant for his phones?" the detective asked.

  "Not a chance. Not yet, anyway. See what you can dig up."

  "Okay, captain. Anything else?"

  Pantene shook his head. "I'll call if I think of anything."

  "How was the shopping?" Paul asked. They had just made sail at the outermost buoy marking the Jolly Harbour entrance channel. Marcia was sunning herself on the foredeck, and Connie was at the helm.

  "Fine," Connie said. "She's some kind of shopper, though. She wore me out."