He turned to Diane. “Look, Miss Woods, I think you are worried for no real reason.”
“No reason! What about the articles?”
“By themselves, they mean nothing.”
“Then why did he keep them?”
“Why don’t you just ask him?” Louis said firmly.
“I can’t,” she said.
Louis shook his head. A voice inside was telling him to just leave and not get pulled any further into some messy emotional drama with this woman and her old man. Besides, even if he were to go after Frank Woods, he didn’t know where to begin. There were a million places he could hide in, not just the usual campgrounds and parks but dozens of forgotten little islands where a man could put in a boat and get lost forever.
“I’m leaving,” he said. He went back into the kitchen. She followed and grabbed his arm.
“Wait. There’s something else,” she said. She let go of his arm. “Please, just wait.”
She disappeared back into the bedroom. When she came back, she stood there for a moment, her eyes searching his face.
She held out her palm and he looked down.
In her hand was a white coral ring. It looked exactly like the ring Louis had seen on the finger of the dead woman on Monkey Island.
“You’ve had that the whole time?” he asked.
She nodded.
Louis looked away, his chest tight. “Where did you find it?”
“In a box in the bottom of one of his desk drawers.”
“You never saw it before?” Louis asked.
Diane shook her head. “No, never.”
“What about your mother? You’re sure she never wore it?”
She shook her head again. “No, her wedding ring was a plain gold band. After she died, my father gave it to me.” She held up her right hand. “I wear it now. It’s the only thing I have to remember her by.”
She looked like she was going to cry. It struck Louis that it was the first time he had seen her look genuinely upset.
“You should have given me that ring the first day,” Louis said. “How the hell can you expect me to waste my time on something when I don’t have all the evidence?”
“If I had given it to you, you would’ve turned it over to the police.”
“Damn right. And that’s still what I’m going to do,” Louis said. “This is important. This is more than just suspicion. This is a link, Miss Woods. To a murder victim.”
She closed her fist quickly over the ring and stepped back.
Louis held out his hand. “Give it to me.”
“No.”
“Suit yourself. I’ll just tell the cops what I know and what you have and you will be charged with obstruction. How’s that?”
“You can’t do this to me.”
“You’ve done it to yourself,” Louis said. “I’m leaving. Put your last check in the mail.”
Louis started away but she grabbed him again. This time, he jerked away and spun to face her.
“Look, lady —-”
“I’ll give you five hundred dollars more to find him first. Just give him ten minutes. Talk to him, please.”
Louis headed to the front door and pulled it open.
“A thousand!”
He turned. “You can’t afford that. Look, just —-”
Diane came to stand in front of him. “You said yourself he’s an ordinary guy. You said he was normal."
Louis rubbed his face. “I don’t know what normal is any more than you do, Miss Woods.”
“Please,” she said. “I just want this to be quiet.”
Louis just looked at her.
“The police,” she said, “I don’t want...”
Her voice trailed off and Louis knew what she wanted. Or rather didn’t want. Diane Woods didn’t want to see the spectacle of her father being hauled into the police station on the nightly news. For a moment, he was disgusted. But then, who in their right mind would want to be part of the circus?
He looked at her balled fist. And there was the ring. No way was she going to give up that ring without a fight, and he had no authority to take it from her. Hell, for all he knew, she was just going to go throw it in some canal as soon as he left.
“All right. If I don’t find him by tonight, you give me the ring and I go to the cops.”
She nodded. “Just find him. And make sure he doesn’t get hurt...or try to hurt himself.”
Louis looked back around the room, his eyes falling on the filled ashtray. There was a book of matches next to it. Louis picked it up. Sutter’s Marina. He knew that place. It was down the street from Roberta Tatum’s store. It was a popular place for fishermen or anyone looking to rent a boat or catch a ferry.