Candy Apple Red. Nancy Bush
was overwhelming. Law enforcement was crawling all over him. He just couldn’t accept the truth about someone he loved, so he moved away.”
“Durango ain’t so far away, darlin’,” Dwayne pointed out, turning all cowboy on me all of a sudden.
“Santa Fe,” I corrected, to which he faintly smiled. I realized belatedly that he’d set me up on that one. I ignored him and mentioned instead the benefit at Cotton’s on Saturday.
Dwayne grunted. “Take Tess’s money. Have a little bit of fun. Be glad their problems aren’t yours.”
I was absorbing this when Jeff Foster saw me and came over. “Why aren’t you eating?” he demanded, as if I’d personally maligned the food.
Afraid his arrival might cause people to notice us, I turned a shoulder toward Cotton’s group and responded to Jeff in my usual fashion, “Because I could buy a small country with the amount I would spend on a steak here.”
“For you, Jane, it’s on the house.”
This was utter bullshit and we both knew it. I pretended to dig through my purse—a stylish burlap-type sack that I saved for boat trips as it was deep enough to hide a bottle of wine—and thereby kept myself further averted from Cotton’s view. “One of these days, I’m going to call you on that, Foster,” I threatened. I caught Manny’s eye. I wasn’t going to rat him out about the free beverages. Foster grinned, waved me away and returned to the kitchen.
Dwayne said, “You ready to go?”
“Just about.”
Sensing that I wasn’t quite steady I carefully put one foot on the ground. Dwayne finished his beer, ignored my thrust-out hand full of crumpled dollars, settled the bill with Manny and slid off his stool.
“Here’s my pizza,” he said as a server handed him a cardboard box. I looked up in surprise. I hadn’t even known he’d ordered. On The Lake’s menu is diverse; its mainstay steak and seafood. But it has a killer array of gourmet pizza listed on the backside of the menu, and I could smell the blue cheese and garlic as if that cartoon aroma finger were beckoning me near. In that vein I stumbled after Dwayne through the maze of small tables, embarrassed at the way my mouth watered, and damn near ran straight into Cotton as he pushed open the knee-high gate from the patio to the boat dock. Cotton, Dwayne and I stepped outside the eating area toward the boats. Dwayne threw an arm around me and pulled my head into his chest as we walked, giving the impression we were lovers. It was his way of hiding me from Cotton. I appreciated it, but my gut tightened for reasons I didn’t want to examine too closely.
We turned toward our boat slip and I risked a glance toward Cotton. He’d pulled out a cigar and was absorbed in the ritual of cutting off the end. He didn’t know I was alive.
Dwayne stepped into the boat, pizza box held aloft. I followed a bit unsteadily and he held a hand out to me.
I clambered inside with a lack of grace attributed to alcohol. “I haven’t seen Cotton out in ages. He’s been like a hermit. What happened all of a sudden? Has the limit on Bobby’s disappearance expired and no one bothered to tell me?”
He handed me a piece of pizza. “There’s no expiration on murder.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
I gave Cotton a long look from beneath my lashes. It had to be a struggle to keep up appearances. Bobby’s crimes had taken a real bite out of Cotton’s social calendar. Snap judgements being my specialty, I decided I didn’t like either Cotton or his wife.
I bit into the pizza slice and nearly fell over with delight. Not just blue cheese, several other combos of the stuff as well lay a half-inch thick on the crust. And garlic. Tons of garlic. It was certain to clog up my arteries. I munched away with gusto. We ate in silence for a moment. I tried not to make too much noise but food had been scarce around the apartment and I was certain I’d lost five pounds in the last three days. All I wanted to do was scarf it down with as much haste as possible and damn the lactose intolerance.
Note to self: go grocery shopping.
After a second large piece of pizza my stomach suddenly seized up. I visualized an influx of cheese comprised of not only milk sugar but thirty percent fat. I could picture my overloaded stomach pushing the food through as quickly as possible in an effort to keep me from exploding. And then I could see the little villae in my small intestine sucking up that fat and shooting it straight to my bloodstream.
“You don’t look so good,” Dwayne pointed out, working on his third piece. He, apparently, doesn’t suffer from anything beyond suffocating good humor. I shook my head when he silently offered me another slice. He chewed away in silence while I tried to pull myself together. Just as I was feeling better he closed the pizza box and started the engine.
Ducks had gathered outside the low fence which opened from the patio to the boat dock and they looked eager for a crumb. A furry creature I first thought was a beaver stood on its hind legs, equally eager. A second glance had me realizing there was no paddle tail on the rodent. A muskrat. He twitched his nose at me, hoping for a handout. I leaned over said, “Sorry, buddy. No can do.”
The critter actually placed a paw on the gunwale and looked for all the world as if he were about to jump inside.
“Do it and die,” Dwayne growled. The muskrat took him at his word and moved back. Dwayne gently guided the boat into the bay. Ignoring the signs posted to not feed the wildlife, I tossed the muskrat a piece of crust. He raced over, sniffed it a few times and waddled off.
“Did you see that?” I demanded, incensed. The flapping ducks appeared more appreciative but Foster, who’d happened to walk by at my moment of generosity, glared at me. I waved sheepishly and grimaced to myself. I wasn’t going to get that free meal unless I changed my ways.
Dwayne hit the accelerator, trying to outrun the fading light. It wasn’t that you couldn’t boat after dark; it was that you couldn’t go fast. Lake Chinook was only a few miles from end to end, but it seemed like forever at six miles per hour—night speed. We had to slow down as we went beneath the bridge and through the tight curves of Half Moon Bay, a narrow inlet that connected Lakewood Bay to the main lake. As soon as he was able, he punched it up again and we were hurtling across the water.
“Wait!” I screamed as we neared the looming tree-shrouded cliffs of Cotton’s island, his fortress completely surrounded by the moat of Lake Chinook.
Dwayne ignored me.
“Damn it, Dwayne! Slow down! Circle the island!”
Swearing under his breath, Dwayne did as I requested and we knifed slowly through the restricted speed areas that surrounded all the shoreline. The boat cut beneath the private road that led from North Shore Road to the island and through the fading purple light I glimpsed the path that circled the Reynolds’ private compound. There was the black chain-link fence and I could faintly make out the trail just on its other side.
I glanced around automatically for the Lake Patrol. They weren’t bad; an offshoot of the sheriff’s office. The Lake Chinook Police Department was another story altogether. Their motto was: no call too small. And they meant it. There was relatively little crime in Lake Chinook, and officers had nothing to do but dispense speeding tickets and M.I.P.’s, Minors in Possession, to underage drinkers and pot smokers. Once in a while they saved a cat in a tree. Their dedication worried me and I steered clear of them on general purposes. Having Booth as a policeman probably contributed to my overall paranoia.
“We haven’t done anything illegal,” Dwayne pointed out, interpreting my glance around for what it was.
“Yet,” I said.
Dwayne smiled to himself. He thought he had me; I could tell. Maybe he did.
Pulling back on the throttle, he coaxed the boat around the island at the regulation six miles per hour. Neither of us said anything as we both examined the fence, the oaks and Douglas firs with low sweeping boughs, the faint outline of the path, and the glimpses