"Let's talk about that."
Cleo plucked another string, let the note float across the music room.
"Some folks might think hiring a professional to look for Trish would make a good cover."
"They might," he agreed, "unless they knew the professional in question."
She took the compliment with a small nod. She wasn't ready to let go of the love triangle possibility yet. But she had to admit the case had taken on more shades than your standard jealous-lover-eliminates-rival scenario.
It had also piqued her interest, big time. She hated to back out of it now, particularly since Donovan had appeared on the scene.
She was skirting the line here, though-mixing personal and professional, her client's interests with the government's. She needed to make sure Sloan agreed to the altered rules of engagement.
"So you want me to keep looking for Irish?"
"I do."
"You understand I'm going give Donovan any information I turn up relating to the Afloat Prepositioning Program?"
"So am I." Sloan polished off the rest of his drink and set the glass down with a clatter. "My reputation is at stake here, as are my company's future government contracts. If my DNA signature was used to access a classified portion of the APP database, I damn well want to know who used it and why."
That was good enough for Cleo. Her professional conscience folded and went down without a whimper.
"Okay, we're agreed. I continue the hunt for Irish, you work the DNA problem from your end, and we both read Donovan in when appropriate."
That "appropriate" qualifier left her a little wiggle room. She'd been in the business too long to spill all her guts, even to Donovan.
Besides, she knew damned well he would play his cards close to the chest. He had to follow the rules, work through the bureaucratic maze. What was worse, he had the Old Man to contend with.
Profoundly grateful she didn't have that black thundercloud hovering over her head, Cleo left Marc contemplating his altered relationship with his assistant and headed back to the guest house to plot her next moves.
There weren't many that offered real promise at this point. She needed to follow up with Donovan on those calls to Malta. That topped her list of to-dos. She also needed to pick up the trail of Frank Helms. She'd get Devereaux to run an airlines check, she decided. There was an off chance Helms departed Charleston after making those phone calls. How many folks would jet directly from South Carolina to a miniscule speck of an island in the Mediterranean?
Only after she'd started to call it a night did she remember the digital photos she'd taken at Trish's apartment. There was that one of the footprints in the sand she'd wanted to play with. Retrieving her camera, she hooked it to her laptop via a fire-wire cable and hit a button to transfer the images. She then logged onto the Internet and linked into the Geophysical Satellite Imaging Database Doreen had insisted was the best of its kind.
"Okay, Beany Doreeny, let's see if this topograpical data you keep touting can tell a shoreline from a shopping center."
The program opened innocuously enough. But when Cleo dragged the image of the beach into the search box, she had the feeling she'd stepped into a Matrix movie.
The image lifted. Rotated. Became a three-dimensional graphic. The graphic zoomed in, then out. Numbers flashed across the top of the screen,so swiftly Cleo couldn't tell what the heck they were supposed to represent. Good thing, as she and numbers had a real hate-hate relationship.
And they kept flashing. Long, incomprehensible strings of them. They were still flashing when she left the computer to do its thing and went to bed.
Cleo waltzed into Devereaux's office the next morning, a green and white Krispy Kreme box held high on one palm.
"I have raspberry-filled. I have cinnamon twists. I have four, count 'em, four glazed crullers, two of which are tagged as mine. Please tell me you have fresh coffee."
"I have fresh coffee."
Lafayette rolled back his chair, departed his cubbyhole and returned with a chipped mug. Cleo downed a hearty swallow while he dived into the doughnuts.
"I also have to say your man works fast," he got out between bites.
"My man?"
"Special Agent Donovan. He called earlier this morning. Said those phone calls traced to a phone in a pub-a taverna, I think he called it-in Valletta, the capital of Malta. He also indicated the CIA had the place on their watch list some months back."
Cleo gave a nonchalant nod, acting as if this was old news. Privately, she was more than a little ticked. Donovan could have passed her the info directly instead of letting her get it secondhand.
"I've been thinking about those calls," she said. "Also about our mysterious Mr. Helms. We should run an airlines check and-"
"It's done. Your man took care of that, too."
Her man was going to be chopped liver before very long.
"Donovan cut through the bureaucracy faster than grease through a goose," Devereaux informed her. "Got the FAA to do a check of all passengers departing the East Coast in the past two weeks with connecting flights to Malta. He also had State screen visas, then got the Transportation Security Agency to match names to faces on their airport-surveillance tapes."
Downing the rest of his cinnamon twist in one gulp, the detective dusted his hands and used a forefinger to slide a grainy faxed image across his desk.
"Here's our boy. Frank Helms, aka Adrian Mustafa Moore."
"Aka, huh? That doesn't sound good."
"It isn't."
While Cleo studied the thin face in the photo, Devereaux reeled off some details.
"Born Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Mother Saudi, father a British businessman. Educated at Chilton Academy, outside London. Philosophy degree from Oxford. Hired to teach at King Abdul Aziz University six years ago. Quit after being questioned in regard to his participation in protest against the royal family. Entered the United States a little more than three months ago. Dropped out of sight until he departed Charleston four days before Patricia Jackson's parents reported her missing. Deplaned in Valletta. Present whereabouts unknown."
Cleo sucked in a swift breath. "I'd say that's an uh-oh, Lafayette."
"A big, fat uh-oh," he agreed, pursing his lips. "The question now is how a twenty-two-year-old office worker from South Carolina hooked up with a former philosophy professor from Riyadh."
"Tell you what. You work the how. I'll work a little more on the where."
"Come again?"
"I found a picture in Trish's apartment showing two sets of footprints in the sand. Looked to me as if she might have been strolling along a beach with someone bigger and heavier."
"Yeah, I saw that photo. I thought maybe I could get a tag on the location of the beach, but no luck. South Carolina has almost two hundred miles of coast. With all the islands, inlets and coves, that adds up to nearly three thousand miles of shoreline."
"I found that out when I digitized the picture and ran it through a special program that uses NASA satellite imagery. It took a while, but the program came up with two possibilities in the Charleston area."
"No shit?"
"No shit."
Tossing the uneaten half of her second cruller in the wastebasket, Cleo produced the maps she'd printed out based on the computed coordinates.
"One is right here in Charleston harbor. The other is about fifteen miles south of the city. I thought I might hire a boat and do a little exploring."
"No need to hire out. The Charleston PD Harbor Patrol is a little busy these days, but I can pull a few strings."
Two phone calls later, Devereaux handed Cleo a scrap of paper with directions to the marina where the Harbor Patrol moored its craft and the name of the officer who'd be waiting for her.
12
The Escalade's OnStar system took Cleo right to the marina, where a uniformed patrol officer met her at the gate. Sergeant Alicia Thornton wasn't more than five-two or three, but she radiated a don't-mess-with-me confidence that won Cleo's instant approval.
"Detective Devereaux said you wanted to check out Duck Island, then head down to Sand Creek State Park."
"That's right."
"Might be a bumpy ride," she warned, leading the way to the slips. "The wind's whipping up the water this morning."
"You've already been out?"
Laughing, the auburn-haired patrol officer lifted a life vest from a locker at the end of the slip. "I've been on patrol since 6:00 a.m. I've crisscrossed the harbor three times already, taking inspectors out to transients. Here, put this on."
"Transients?" Cleo asked, poking her head through the dun-colored vest.
"Ships, not people. Charleston's one of the busiest ports on the East Coast. More than eighty-five thousand ships enter our waters every year. Only a few are registered in South Carolina. The rest are transients that include everything from thirty-foot sailboats to supersize cargo vessels."
This was obviously Cleo's week to get educated on things nautical.
"I saw one of those supersize jobbies up at Sunny Point yesterday," she commented as she followed Thornton aboard a sleek white speedboat with prominent police markings on its hull.
"Then you can imagine what fun it is for our inspectors to crawl through them to check for contraband or illegal immigrants."
"I wouldn't have thought inspecting commercial cargo ships fell under the purview of the Charleston PD."
"It didn't, before 9/11."
After untying the stern line, Thornton nudged the throttle into Reverse.
"Used to be our job was mostly crisis response. Handling distress calls, performing search and rescue, recovering bodies. Stuff like that. Now we're part of a joint task force that includes Customs, the Coast Guard and the Charleston County Sheriff's Office Marine Patrol."
Peering over her shoulder, she backed the speedboat out of the slip before continuing.
"Our focus has shifted to homeland security. We escort ships into the harbor, perform inspections and provide protection for high-profile targets like bridges and military vessels. In addition to handling distress calls, performing search and rescue, and recovering bodies," she added dryly as she brought the bow around. "Makes for long and interesting days."
Cleo could imagine. Much as she herself had disliked being a cog in the bureaucracy, she felt a real appreciation for those who were still turning the wheel. Particularly with the increased terrorist threat these days.
"You'd better grab a strut and hang on," Thornton warned. "Once we clear the marina, I'll open her up."
With her passenger in a brace and the marina behind them, the harbor patrol officer shoved the throttle forward. The engine revved to an ear-busting roar, and the speedboat leapt ahead like a sprinter coming off the chocks.
"It's only about three nautical miles to Duck Island," she shouted over the engine's thunder. "Won't take us long to get there."
Not at this speed! Legs spread, body angled forward against thrust, Cleo kept one fist wrapped around the metal pole supporting the fold-back canopy, the other clamped on the bill of her ball cap. Wind whipped tears out of her eyes as the speedboat wove past the pleasure craft and commercial vessels navigating Charleston's busy harbor.
Within minutes they were approaching Duck Island. According to Thornton, it had once been home to a lighthouse keeper. Electronic beacons and navigational aids had long since replaced both keeper and lighthouse. The pilings of the pier where the beacon tender had once tied his skiff was still there, though, as was the small curve of sandy beach stretching out from the pier.
"Can we go ashore?" Cleo shouted.
"Sure. As long as you don't mind getting wet."
Throttling back, Thornton brought the speedboat in on a sweeping arc that got them within wading distance of the shore. Thankful that she'd opted for her rubber-soled Oakleys this morning instead of the Gucci ankle boots, Cleo rolled up her pants legs and hopped over the side. The harbor-patrol officer threw out an anchor and joined her.
It didn't take them long to make a circuit of the island. They spotted the usual effluvia washed up by the harbor tide-kelp, clam shells, plastic six-pack holders, a child's sneaker. No starfish, though, and nothing that linked Duck Island to Trish Jackson or the mysterious Frank Helms, aka Adrian Mustafa Moore.
Cleo wasn't sure what she'd been hoping to find. Shell collectors shuffling through the shallow waves, maybe. Or bird-watchers studying the resident gull population. Some fishermen hunkered over their poles. Anyone who might have spotted Trish and a friend strolling this stretch of beach within the past few weeks.
"I don't see anything here," she admitted. "Let's try beach number two."
The wind picked up during the trip south to Sand Creek State Park. Whitecaps skittered across the gray-green water. With every plunge of the bow against the waves, Cleo's stomach performed a corresponding lurch. A sigh of relief feathered through her lips when Alicia throttled back once more and aimed the speedboat toward an isolated stretch of beach.
Sand Creek Park lay outside Charleston proper but still within the sheltering arms of the harbor. Unlike Duck Island, the park showed signs of human habitation. Cleo spotted a boat launch, several dozen day-use sites tucked among the spindly pines and scrub oak, campsites with hookups and what looked like trailer dumping faciliti
es.
At the near end of the beach, a weathered cypress pier jutted out into the bay. A solitary fisherman lazed in a folding lawn chair at the end of the dock, tending the three rods that sprouted up at his feet.
"Let's start with him," Cleo suggested, eyeing the cross ties nailed to one of the pylons. "Can you boogie up next to that ladder?"
"Does a red-ear have a snout?"
"Beats me. Does it?"
"It does."
Demonstrating the same skill she'd displayed The Middle Sin 165 off Duck Island, Thornton danced the speedboat right up to the pier. Cleo dug the black-and-white of Trish and the grainy fax of Frank Helms out of her purse and slid them into her waistband at the small of her back. She was reaching for the cross ties when Thornton waved a pair of heavy canvas work gloves.
"Better put these on. With the tide going out, the barnacles on the bottom rungs of that ladder could do a serious number on your palms."
She hadn't exaggerated the case. The lower struts were encrusted with a thick coat of slippery, spiny crustaceans. Cleo managed to make the pier without slicing palms, elbows or knees. Thornton tied her craft to a low rung and followed. Together the two women made their way down the weathered boards to the solitary fisherman.
He looked to be in his mid to late sixties. The caked perspiration riming his ball cap and the three poles anchored to the boards suggested he spent a lot of time out here on the pier.
"Good morning."
The fisherman eyed Thornton's uniform curiously and bobbed his head. "Mornin'."
"Are they biting?"
"Now and again."
"I'm Officer Alicia Thornton with the Charleston Harbor Patrol. This is Ms. Cleo North, a private investigator. Okay if we ask you a few questions?"
THE MIDDLE SIN Page 13
