“Oh yeah.” Will eyed the mess around them. “I’m thinking it’s time to call this in.” He searched Mario’s pockets, and was shocked to come up with a wallet and a Palm Pilot.
“Why would they leave that on him?”
Will glanced at her. “Why do people do half the stuff they do?” He realized she was shaking like a leaf, and just as green as one. “You holding up?”
“Better than he is.”
A grim smile crossed his face. Atta girl. “I’d say a lot better.” He flipped open the little palm-held unit and started accessing the data.
“Looks to me like they did this in the height of the evening’s festivities,” she said, looking around, anywhere other than at Mario’s body. “Maybe with a full house all around, thinking that in the chaos they wouldn’t be seen.”
“And maybe they were wrong, and they were seen.”
“And everyone cleared out in a hurry.”
“Yeah. Look at that. Payday.” Will lowered the unit so she could read the screen. “His daily log. From the day before yesterday.”
“‘Sell gems to Jade,’” she read. “ ‘Pay off Frank before he breaks my kneecaps.’” She stared at the words and frowned. “He was going to sell me the stolen gems. But . . . I couldn’t have afforded to buy them.”
“Probably only one or two. He needed quick cash.”
“And I broke up with him before he could get it.”
Will glanced at the body on the bar. Mario’s slacks were torn at the knees, revealing two bloody masses beneath the material. “He was right. They broke his kneecaps.”
Jade eyed the gaping hole in Mario’s linen shirt on his chest and shivered in horror. This could have been her fate, too, if not for Will. “They added that fatal bullet. Why would they do that if Mario still owed them?”
Will fiddled with the palm-held and then showed her another entry, this one dated yesterday.
Get gems back from Jade.
Jade stared at the words, her stomach jittery. “But . . . he never gave me any gems.”
“My guess is that several people believe he did.”
They both looked at Mario.
“And because they believe it,” she said slowly, “he became dispensable. And now . . .”
“They’re after you,” Will said. “Now we call this in, because until this Frank guy is nailed, you need some serious protection.”
“If it hadn’t been for you, it’d already be too late for me. Will—”
At the sound of tires on gravel outside the windows, he swore softly, pocketed the Palm Pilot and grabbed her hand. They ran past Mario, with Will pulling out his cell phone as they went. He tried to turn it on as they ran through the bar into an extremely small kitchen and storage area, and then out the back door, across the already warm sand toward the marina.
“No battery,” he said, then swore and stuffed the phone into his pocket and tugged her along even faster.
The sun had made an appearance, sitting low on the hills in the east, casting the ocean in mauves and purples. The rhythmic sound of the water smashing onto the beach drowned out the slapping of their shoes on the wet sand as they kept running, far past the time Jade wanted to collapse in an exhausted heap.
“Hurry.” Will leapt onto the wooden dock bordering the marina, reaching back to pull her up.