Читать книгу A Clandestine Affair - Joanna Wayne - Страница 9

Jaci Matlock could look at crime scene photos by the hour and never once get bored. But after a half hour in a Naples, Florida, art gallery with her mother, she was all but climbing the walls. Even the flute of bubbly the gallery owner had pressed into her hand didn’t help, though she’d have hated to face the evening without it.

Her mother stopped in front of an abstract that looked as if it had been painted by a menopausal chimpanzee. She stared at it for a minute. “I hate to imagine what the artist was thinking when she painted that.”

“Another night of reruns?” Jaci offered.

“Or when will my daughter come for a real visit?”

“I’m standing right next to you. That feels like a real visit to me.”

“Two days and one night is not a real visit. Are you sure you can’t stay longer?”

“If I did, I’d be rambling through the house alone. You’re leaving for a month’s cruise Wednesday.”

“You could use a vacation yourself. We could go to Europe for a couple of weeks when I get back, just the two of us. Paris is lovely in the fall.”

“Or we could have lunch at that new French restaurant you were telling me about. I can possibly spring for the tip.”

“I’m not kidding, Jaci. You spend far too much time wallowing in the morbid. Clarence and I could give you the trip as an early present for earning your graduate degree.”

Her mother’s husband, Clarence Harding III, could definitely afford it. And to give the old fart credit where credit was due, he was generous with his darling wife, Evelyn and Jaci as well.

But Jaci was far too independent—and stubborn—to live on her stepfather’s handouts. Thankfully, her father had started a college fund for her before he’d died. That, a part-time job waiting tables and the small inheritance she’d received from her dad’s parents had let her earn her undergraduate and Master’s degrees with a minimum of loans.

Almost. She still had one major hurdle to pass.

“If I don’t complete my thesis project this semester, I won’t be getting the degree,” she said, omitting the fact that spending two weeks stalking Paris boutiques with her mother would be far more punishing than any assignment Professor Greeley could dream up.

“I know you have your paper to write, but surely you could work on that just as well in Paris.”

“It’s not a paper. It’s a project.” They’d had this conversation before, and if her mother didn’t consider forensics an F word instead of a science, she’d have remembered that.

Actually, the project should already be half-finished, but Jaci had run into a major complication. After six years of literally getting away with murder, the killer in her research crime had found religion and confessed to everything.

The family of the slain woman was thrilled to have closure. Jaci was back to square one as far as her project was concerned. Not a lot of hypothesizing she could do on a case that was solved by the killer’s confession, and she hadn’t found another cold case that spurred her interest the way that one had.

“Oh, look, there’s Mrs. Baxter and her son, Matthew. He’s a surgeon,” Evelyn crooned. “Nice looking—and single.”

Which meant her mother had dreams of match-making dancing in her head. Jaci sized up the guy as he approached with an overweight, middle-aged woman dripping diamonds. He was Caucasian, just under six feet, medium build, dark hair, lighter mustache. No visible tattoos or distinguishing marks.

She groaned silently. Maybe she had spent too many hours buried in evidence. Actually, the guy was cute, but then so were beagles. Dogs required a lot less energy than a relationship, and she didn’t even have time for them.

She half listened while her mother and Mrs. Baxter exchanged greetings, then met Matthew’s eyes briefly when her mom made the introductions. Jaci put out her hand, and from the second his closed around hers, she was mesmerized—by the painting hanging just beyond his right shoulder.

“It’s the Santiago house.”

Matthew let go of her hand. “Excuse me?”

“That painting,” she said, walking around him to stand in front of it. “It’s the house where the Santiago family was living when they disappeared.”

“I’m sorry. Were they friends of yours?”

“Not likely. I wasn’t even born when they went missing.”

“My daughter’s studying to become a forensics scientist,” her mother said, almost apologetically.

“That’s interesting,” Matthew said. “How did you choose that for a career?”

“It kind of chose me.” She didn’t bother to explain; her attention was focused on the painting. She barely managed a “nice to meet you” when the surgeon and his mother moved on.

“You certainly scared him off fast enough,” Evelyn said. “I’m assuming that was your purpose in fawning over that macabre painting.”

“It’s not just a painting. That’s the house on Cape Diablo.”

Her mother stepped back, tilted her head slightly and studied the picture. “What’s Cape Diablo?”

“One of the mangrove islands off the coast. It’s not that far from here.”

“The bougainvillea looks as if it’s bleeding all over that decaying villa. It’s repulsive.”

So were the facts. A wealthy but scandalous drug runner, his wife and two children had disappeared from the house and the island thirty years ago. The only clue to what might have happened to them was splattered blood found in the boathouse.

The crime had fascinated Jaci since she was eleven and had heard her father and his partner talking about it one night when they’d thought she was asleep.

“I can’t imagine why an artist would want to create something so morbid,” Evelyn said.

“That’s nothing compared with what you hear and see on the nightly news.”

Her mother put her hand on Jaci’s shoulder. “You are so much like your father.”

The hint of melancholy in her voice surprised Jaci almost as much as the mention of her father did. He’d been dead eleven years and they’d been divorced for three before that. Her mother probably hadn’t mentioned his name a dozen times since the divorce, and never since his funeral.

All Jaci had known of the facts surrounding the divorce was that it had broken her dad’s heart. It had broken hers, as well. And Clarence Harding III’s entrance into the picture so soon after hadn’t made matters any better.

Jaci stepped closer to the painting and studied the artist’s signature, “W. St. Clair.” It was almost hidden in the trunk of a mangrove in the bottom right corner of the canvas.

Her mother had already moved on. Jaci joined her in front of a painting of a blue heron perched on the bow of a sinking sailboat. “Are you familiar with the work of W. St. Clair?” Jaci asked.

“No. Is that who painted that horrid picture?”

“Yes.”

“Then I don’t plan to become familiar with his work.”

His? Maybe. But Jaci had the feeling the painting had been done by a woman. She wasn’t sure why.

“Do you have a pen?”

Her mother fished a silver ballpoint from her Prada handbag and handed it to her. Jaci scribbled the artist’s name on the napkin she’d been holding under her champagne glass, then slipped the napkin into her skirt pocket as she returned the pen.

“You surely aren’t thinking of buying that painting,” her mother said. “The house looks as if it came straight from a nightmare.”

“On my budget? Are you kidding? I’m just curious about the artist. But the Santiago disappearance would make a fascinating subject for my culminating project. And it’s nearby,” she added, thinking aloud more than making conversation.

“You wouldn’t actually visit Cape Fear, would you?”

“Cape Diablo, Mother, and there’s no reason not to go there. It’s a nice quiet, secluded island amid ten thousand others in the Gulf of Mexico.”

“I don’t like it. In fact, I’m getting a really bad feeling about the place.”

So was Jaci. It was probably the crimson paint splattered like fresh blood. But she was desperate for a project, and the murder case was still as much a mystery as it had been thirty years ago.

Besides, there was nothing to fear on the island—nothing but isolation and an aging mansion that likely held deadly secrets hidden within its crumbling walls. All within an hour of the mainland by a fast boat.

The night hadn’t been a waste, after all.

FOR THE NEXT TEN DAYS, Jaci ate, slept and breathed the Santiago murders. She was so engrossed in the details, she half expected old Andres Santiago to be standing by her bed when she woke up in the morning.

But who knew what might happen when she actually reached Cape Diablo? She was headed there now, booked into one of the small apartments in what had once been a lavish pool house, or so said one of the many articles she’d read on the Santiagos’ disappearance.

She’d tried to reach Wilma St. Clair and had finally tracked her down to a residence in South Dakota, of all places. But the artist was out of town on her honeymoon and there was no way to reach her.

Jaci had also tried to get in contact with Mac Lowell, the cop who’d taken the detailed pictures of the blood splatters on the boathouse wall the night the family had disappeared.

That was a wash, as well. He’d quit the force right after that and moved out of the area. He’d later inherited his mother’s Everglades City beach house and went to visit on rare occasions. Jaci was still hoping to contact him.

She’d left word with the neighbors and also stuck a note beneath the door, asking him to call her—covering all bases in case he made a trip back to the area.

His partner that night was also unavailable. He’d been killed in a car crash about the same time Mac had moved away.

The good news was that once Professor Greeley intervened on her behalf, the Everglades City Police Department had released copies of the blood splatter photos and the pertinent police records.

The bad news was that other than the photos, the police reports left a lot to be desired. Crime scene investigations from thirty years ago, especially when the crime involved a smuggler’s family living on an island that hadn’t fallen under the jurisdiction of a big-city police force, didn’t even approach today’s standards.

Jaci swatted at a mosquito that was circling her in search of a target not coated in insect repellent. “How much farther?”

Bull Gatlin kept his eyes straight ahead. “Another ten minutes or so.”

She hoped the trip wouldn’t take longer than that. It was already dusk, and she didn’t want to be out in these waters with nothing but the moon and stars to light their way.

She didn’t see how the pilot could find Cape Diablo as it was. One island followed another, all looking pretty much the same: swamp grasses, sand, jungles of mangroves that grew along the edge of the water.

Walking trees. That’s what her dad had called the mangroves when he’d taken her fishing out in the gulf. The tangled red roots made the spindly trees look as if they were walking on the incoming surf.

Jaci settled back into the memories. At age thirteen she’d been certain losing him was the end of the world. She still missed him, especially on nights like this when she could all but hear his deep, rumbling laugh and see the sweat trickling down his brow below the grungy old hat he’d worn on their fishing excursions.

He’d considered himself an ordinary cop, but she’d be happy if she could be half as good at locating evidence and solving crimes as he’d been.

“You plan to stay long?”

The boatman’s question yanked her back to the present. “I’m not sure.”

“You brought a lot of luggage.”

“Only four bags and my laptop.”

“That black duffel could hold enough for a year-long stay. Felt like it, too, when I put it in the boat.”

So what was he—the luggage patrol? The duffel contained her research material, and that was none of his business. “I won’t be staying a year.”

“Bet not. Most folks don’t stay more than a few days.”

“Why not?”

“Not much to do there. No TV. No entertainment ’less you like to fish, and you need a large boat to do that right, one you can take out in the open waters of the gulf.”

“No distractions. No demands. That’s the beauty of a secluded island.”

“Cape Diablo’s secluded, that’s for sure. I’m the only one who goes out there regularly, and that’s only ’cause I get paid to do it. Last man who had this job was murdered right there on the island.”

“When did that happen?”

“About three months ago. Pete got mixed up with some crazy broad who went around killing people for the fun of it. That’s the kind of folks you get on Cape Diablo. Woman like you won’t stay long.”

If his plan was to give her the creeps, he was succeeding. She studied him while he steered the boat through one of the narrower channels. He was scrawny with blond scraggly hair that fell a couple of inches past his collar.

Maybe forty. Maybe not. Hard to tell, since his face showed the signs of too much sun and not enough sun block. Looked pretty much like your basic beach bum, but his name had been given to her when she’d made the rental arrangements.

“Do you run a regular shuttle to Cape Diablo?” she asked as he slowed to maneuver through a narrow spit.

He rubbed his fingers through his unkempt beard. “I bring mail and supplies out twice a week. Occasionally I make an extra run to transport a tenant.”

“Only an occasional tenant?”

“Yeah, but then I’ve just been on the job a few months, and we’ve had a run of bad weather this year, tropical storms popping up like mushrooms.”

“Mr. Cochburn said I should call you if I need supplies from town.”

“Mr. Cochburn told you that, did he?”

“Yes, he’s the attorney I talked to when I made the rental arrangements.”

“I know who he is. I just don’t see why he doesn’t level with folks he’s sending out here.”

“Then you don’t deliver supplies?”

“I deliver them, all right—mail and supplies twice a week, like I said—but good luck trying to call, unless you got one of them satellite phones. Other than that, cell service is about as dependable as a FEMA roof in a hurricane.”

Jaci hadn’t considered that possibility. “What do people on the island do in case of an emergency?”

“Tough it out. Guess that’s all part of the beauty of having no distractions,” he said, clearly mocking her earlier optimism. “That’s it up ahead. Not much to see this time of the night, but the house is pretty impressive if you arrive by day, especially while you’re too far away to see its dilapidated condition.”

The narrow dock they were approaching was lighted, but beyond that all she could see was a tangle of tree branches and one light shining from the top of a rambling Spanish villa.

“That’s the old woman’s apartment,” Bull said, as if reading her mind. “Surely Mr. Cochburn told you about her.”

“He didn’t mention any of the tenants.”

“She ain’t a tenant. More of a permanent fixture, and crazy as they come, that one.” He circled his finger by his right temple to make his point. “Spent too much time sniffing the white stuff, if you know what I mean.”

“Are you talking about Alma Garcia?”

“Yeah. So you do know about her.”

Absolutely. Jaci knew about Carlos Lazario, as well. In fact, they had been the deciding factors for her moving onto the island instead of just hiring a boat to take her out for a day.

Alma had been the nanny for the Santiago family. Carlos was said to have been Andres Santiago’s right-hand man and bodyguard. Reportedly neither Carlos nor Alma had been on the island at the time of the disappearance, but they were now, thirty years after the fact.

Jaci was eager to talk to them, but didn’t plan to tell them why she was here. Better to let them think she was just a tourist in pursuit of a little R and R. It would make snooping easier.

“Carlos, the old caretaker, he’s been here forever, too,” Bull said, surprisingly talkative now that he’d gotten started. “He’s all right, but don’t mess with him if you can help it. He’s tired of tenants. Says all they do is cause trouble. Seems like that’s true of the ones he gets out here. Me, you couldn’t pay me to spend the night. They got bogs out in that swamp that can suck you in and bury you in the mud quicker than you can sing a chorus of ‘Margaritaville.’”

Another little problem Mr. Cochburn had failed to mention. “Thanks for the warning. I’ll make certain to stay out of the swamp.”

“Yeah, and I guess you know there’s no electricity out here except for a generator. You can hear it running all over the island, kind of a constant low drone. Gotta be some kind of dark at night if it ever goes off.”

The wind picked up and Jaci pulled her light jacket tighter while Bull docked and tied up the boat. He helped her out, then unloaded her luggage, dropping it on the edge of the dock.

She stood for a moment, soaking up the atmosphere. Every crime scene she’d ever visited had its own feel about it. Cape Diablo was no different, except that her instant reactions to the place were even more pronounced than usual.

The island had a sinister aura about it, as if the place itself might hold evil. More likely she was letting the seclusion get to her. A good forensics expert wouldn’t be influenced by that, and neither would she. But first impressions did matter.

A gray-haired man stepped into the clearing near the dock, a black Lab following a step behind. For a second it seemed that the man had appeared from nowhere, but a closer look revealed a slightly overgrown path that led back to the boathouse. The two-story structure was at the edge of the clearing, just as described in the police report. Only the reports had not mentioned how spooky the run-down place looked in the deepening grays of twilight.

“Welcome to Cape Diablo.” The man’s tone didn’t match his words.

“Thanks. I’m Jaci Matlock, the new tenant.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“And that’s Carlos Lazario,” Bull said.

So that was Carlos. He didn’t look that bad for a recluse who’d spent almost half his life on a secluded island. He was unfriendly as she’d expected. She’d have to play this just right to get him to talk to her about the past, or even let her in the boathouse.

Carlos scanned the pile of luggage. “All this?” he asked, shaking his head.

“I tend to overpack,” she said, tossing the laptop over her shoulder and picking up the two smaller bags. “I can carry my own luggage,” she said. “I’ll come back for the rest.”

“I’ll bring ’em,” Carlos said, “but don’t go expecting me to wait on you.” He turned to Bull. “Did you get my order?”

“I got it right here.”

“Good.”

Bull reached inside an old cooler at the front to the boat and took out a package wrapped in brown paper. “It wasn’t easy to come by,” he said, handing it to the man.

“I appreciate it.”

“You be careful, Carlos. You don’t need any trouble at your age.”

“I’m not going looking for any.”

The verbal exchange between the two men bordered on the surreptitious, and Jaci would have loved to know what was in the package.

Carlos tucked it in the pocket of his tattered black jacket, then bent and picked up the two heaviest pieces of luggage with seemingly little effort. He was strong for a man his age.

“Follow me,” he said.

“Sure you want to stay?” Bull asked, climbing back into the boat.

“I’m sure.”

But an icy tremble slithered down Jaci’s spine as she started up the shadowy path toward the house. The crimes might have occurred thirty years ago, but the air seemed alive with dark and possibly deadly secrets.

The situation was a forensic student’s dream, unless…

Unless it turned into a nightmare.