Whiskey Beach(41)
But the idea of it tightened every muscle in his body. “I’m sorry about this, Abra.”
“Me, too. But it’s not your fault, and it’s not mine.” She got out of the car, smiled at the deputy who approached. “Hi, Vinnie. Eli, this is Deputy Hanson.”
“Eli. You probably don’t remember me.”
“Yeah, I do.” The hair was shorter, and brown rather than bleached blond, the face fuller. But Eli remembered. “Surfer dude.”
Vinnie laughed. “Still am when I can grab a board and a wave. Sorry for the trouble here.”
“So am I. How did he get in?”
“He cut the power. Shorted it out, and jimmied the side door—the one going into the laundry room. So he knew or suspected there was an alarm. Abra said you left late this morning, went into Boston.”
“That’s right.”
“So your car wasn’t here all day, into the evening. You can take a look around, see if there’s anything missing. We called the power company, but they’re probably not going to get on this until tomorrow.”
“Soon enough.”
“We didn’t find any vandalism,” Vinnie continued as he led the way. “We got some blood on the floor right in the foyer, and on Abra’s pajama top and hoodie. It’s enough for DNA if he’s in the system, or if we get him. But that’s not going to be quick.”
He opened the front door, shone his light, then picked up the flashlight Abra had dropped and he’d already set on a table in the foyer.
“We get a break-in now and then, on rental cottages empty during the off season. But that’s mostly kids looking for a place to hang out, have sex, smoke dope or, at worst, vandalize or steal some electronics. This doesn’t look like kids. None of the local boys would risk Bluff House, for one thing.”
“Kirby Duncan. Boston PI. He’s been poking around, asking questions about me.”
“It wasn’t him,” Abra said, but Vinnie took out his book, noted down the name.
“It was dark. You didn’t see his face.”
“No, but I had an up-close-and-personal with his build. Duncan’s soft in the middle, paunchy, and this man wasn’t. And Duncan’s shorter, more beefy.”
“Still.” Vinnie tucked his book away again. “We’ll talk to him.”
“He’s at Surfside B-and-B. I poked around,” Abra explained.
“We’ll check it out. There’s some easily portable valuables in the house, and electronics. You’ve got a nice laptop upstairs, there’s flat-screen TVs. I imagine Ms. Hester’s got jewelry in a safe. Maybe you had some cash sitting around?”
“Yeah, some.” Eli took the kitchen flashlight, started upstairs. He checked the office first, booted up his laptop.
If Duncan had been after anything, he suspected it would be a look at his personal e-mail, files, Web history. So he ran a quick diagnostic.
“Nothing since I shut it down this morning. That shows.” He opened drawers, shook his head. “It doesn’t look like anything’s been gone through. And nothing’s missing in here.”
Eli walked out and into his bedroom. He opened a drawer, saw the couple hundred in cash he kept for easy access. “If he was up here,” Eli said as he shone the light, turned a circle, “he left everything just the way I did.”
“It could be Abra interrupted him before he got started. Look, you should take your time, take a good look around. You may want to wait until you’ve got some light. We’ll be doing drive-bys, but he’d be pretty damn stupid to come back at this point. It’s late,” Vinnie added, “but I don’t have a problem rousting a private investigator out of bed. I’ll follow up with you tomorrow, Eli. Do you want a lift home, Abra?”
“No thanks. You go ahead.”
With a nod, he took out a card. “Abra’s got one, but keep this around. You call me if you find anything missing, or have any more trouble. And if you pick up a board, we could see if you remember any of those lessons I gave you back in the day.”
“In March? The water’s freaking freezing.”
“That’s why real men wear wet suits. I’ll keep in touch.”
“He hasn’t changed much,” Eli commented when Vinnie’s footsteps receded. “Well, the hair. I guess bleached-out shoulder-length isn’t police issue.”
“But I bet it was cute on him.”
“You know each other? Before tonight, I mean.”
“Yeah. He lost a bet with his wife last year and had to take one of my yoga classes. Now he’s a semi-regular.”