Читать книгу The Night in Question - Kelsey Roberts - Страница 11

He probably should have told Kresley that the yacht had been found, but since he didn’t know her involvement or lack thereof, it seemed prudent to keep her out of the loop.

Finding the rental applications on the coffee table was something of a bonanza. He’d been fully prepared to show his badge and get them from the landlady, however, Kresley had apparently saved him the trouble. This whole thing had already blossomed out of control and he needed to get a grip on it before it got any worse.

Since it would take at least four hours for the Coast Guard to tow the Carolina Moon into port and then process the scene, Matt sat on Kresley’s sofa until she fell asleep. Before he left for the dock to see what he could find out, Matt took Kresley’s cell to make a clone of it. Not ethical but it was for her safety, and might help him get a solid lead on Janice, and what she was involved in.

Then he went over to the laptop, tapped the touchpad and brought it to life. He logged into the FBI database. Emma Rooper and Abby Howell appeared to be normal young women. Abby was a waitress at a restaurant called The Grille in Summerville. Emma worked for a pawn shop. He accessed their tax returns and found that in the past three years, neither of the women had made more than twenty grand. Matt typed in Kresley’s information.

Eyes Only.

“What the hell?” Matt said, reentering his password and again attempting to access her file. Same result.

Sitting back in the chair, he raked his fingers through his hair trying to figure out why a grad student in South Carolina would have an Eyes Only FBI file.

Using his cell phone, he called Gabe. “Can you check to see the last time Kresley’s phone was used?” Matt asked, then gave him the number.

“Day before yesterday at 7:20 p.m.”

“What number was called?” Matt asked.

Gabe read it off, then had Matt hold while he called it. “Nothing. My guess is it’s a prepaid. It’s going straight to voice mail.”

“I’ll swing by and get you,” Matt said.

He checked on Kresley. She was fast asleep and his sympathies went out to her. He was fairly certain sure that she was hip-deep—whether she knew it or not—in whatever Janice was up to now.

The only illumination in the room was a small sliver of moonlight slicing through the room. It gave Kresley’s pretty face a soft glow. Absently, he reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, then he left to meet up with Gabe and get an up-close look at the 135-foot yacht, the Carolina Moon.

“Do you know any more yet?” Matt asked as Gabe squeezed his six-foot-four-inch frame into the passenger’s seat of the Jeep.

Gabe shook her head.

The short ride felt like it took forever. Matt steeled himself, half expecting to find Janice zipped into one of the body bags.

“What took them so long to bring the yacht in?” Matt asked.

“It drifted into international waters. Usual governmental jurisdictional bullshit. Present company excepted.”

If Janice wasn’t on the boat, then where was she? What had happened? The only person who could answer that, he suspected, was Kresley. Even though he felt a clock ticking away the minutes, he had to wait out her trauma-induced amnesia.

When they reached the dock, banks of high-power floodlights shone down on every nook and cranny. The yacht was a Heesen—worth from eight to eighty million, depending on the accessories. Matt parked and, thanks to Gabe’s friendship with Gary Ross, one of the detectives, they were welcomed beneath the yellow crime-scene tape at the end of the dock.

He was a good ten feet from the boat but Matt could easily see the blood on the deck, splattered everywhere. It even ran down the sides of the white hull.

The medical examiner’s minions were unzipping five body bags. Gabe quietly said something to Detective Ross, then they were given paper booties and allowed aboard. Ross came over to Matt and asked, “Is this the woman you think was on the boat?”

He shook his head. “That’s not Janice.”

Ross led him to the second corpse. “How about her?”

“No. Not her, either.” Matt felt a weight lift off his shoulders.

“Recognize this?” Ross asked, holding a small sealed bag with a single earring in it.

He recognized it all right. It belonged to Kresley. She’d been wearing its mate when he found her.

Matt was trying to find a way to equivocate without actually lying outright when Gabe spoke up.

“You IDed the men?” Gabe asked, steering the detective toward the male victims.

Ross nodded. “That one,” he said pointing to the one being lifted to a gurney, “according to his driver’s license, is Thomas Gibson, Jr. The other one is Jason Wellington, Jr.”

“They had their identification on them?” Matt asked.

Ross nodded. “Oddly, neither of the women had purses. The guys were in tuxes and the women in fancy gowns, but they had no purses. Hell, my wife won’t drive to the corner store without a purse.”

“What about the captain—?”

“Found his body below deck. Wasn’t sliced and diced like the other four. Shot.”

“With a .22?” Matt asked.

“You psychic or do you have something you’d like to share with the class?”

“Just a guess,” Matt shrugged. Had the captain been shot with the same weapon used on Kresley? “Have you found the gun?”

“Not the gun. Not the knife,” the detective replied.

Matt strolled carefully along the edge of the yacht, taking care not to disturb the blood. “The dinghy is still tied up.”

Gabe and the detective came up beside him. “So, unless the purses and weapons helped each other off the boat, they had company.”

“Did you dust the ladder?” Matt asked.

“Lots of smudges and a partial. Small, either a man’s pinkie finger or could be a woman’s print.”

“Have they been run yet?” Matt asked.

“Not yet,” Ross said. “Once we finish processing the scene, then we’ll start scanning the prints through the system.”

Gabe patted Ross on the back. “Sounds like you’ve got it all covered.”

“Naw, too much blood,” Ross countered. “And the galley is stocked for eight dinner guests. I think what we’re looking at is half a crime scene.”

SO FOUR OF the dinner guests were missing. This fact gave Matt a glimmer of hope. Especially after he saw the smudge of red paint along the port side of the yacht. Now all he needed to do was find a red boat that might have been tied up to the yacht—one of whose occupants may have been Janice. Only problem? Too many maybes and assumptions. Truth be told, there was a greater possibility that Janice had been killed and her body tossed into the ocean.

Near dawn he headed back to Kresley. He knocked on the door of possibly the only person with answers to what had gone down on the yacht—if she could only remember them.

IT HAD BEEN more than twenty-four hours since Matt had pulled her out of the ocean and what had Kresley learned? That she was a left-handed woman who was behind on her rent, even though she had sufficient funds in her bank account to make the fifteen-hundred-dollar payment. Oh, and the gown. “Let’s not forget the gown,” she muttered as she got up on tiptoes and peered through the peephole.

“Good morning,” she said, opening the door just enough so that turned sideways, she was blocking his path.

“Smells like you made muffins,” he said with a smile that reached all the way to his eyes.

She couldn’t help but smile back. “One-handed, no less.”

“Do I get one? I did save your life.”

Kresley tilted her head to one side. “You know this isn’t I Dream of Jeannie. I’m not going to do your bidding for the rest of my life.”

“I am not feeling the gratitude.”

“If I give you a muffin, will you go away?”

“Maybe. Why, you have a big day planned?”

He followed her inside and couldn’t resist asking, “Any more memories or flashes?”

She shook her head. “Sorry,” she said as she took a lemon-and-poppy-seed muffin off a plate and handed it to him.

“Then why so chipper?” He shoved his hands into the front pockets of his shorts.

She turned, her blue eyes sparkling with amusement. “Having Thor helps,” she admitted.