The Bone House (8 page)

    Cab
met Lala, who was texting on her phone. 'That our witness?' he asked.

    'Yeah,
his name's Ronnie Trask. He's a bartender at the pool bar.'

    'He
looks ready to pee his pants. Is he feeling guilty about something?'

    Lala
holstered her phone and pushed up her sunglasses, which were slipping on her
sweaty face. 'The other employees tell me he's a smooth operator with girls who
like to party too much. The younger the better. But if he was involved in what
happened to Glory, I think he would have kept his mouth shut rather than stick
himself in the middle of our investigation.'

    'Have
we found anyone else who saw anything?'

    'Not
yet.'

    'What
about cameras? Don't they have any cameras out here?'

    'Not
too many spring breakers want hotels with eyes in the sky, you know? What
happens on the beach stays on the beach. The only place they've got a camera is
the lobby. We're looking at the tape.' She added, 'What about Mark Bradley? You
get anything from him?

    Cab
tugged the buttons of his dress shirt away from his sticky chest and adjusted
the gold chain on his neck. He smelled chlorine from the nearby hotel pool. 'He
ducked me. I talked to the wife.'

    'And?'

    'And
they're not crazy about answering questions. Let's dig up whatever we can about
this incident in Door County last year. Call the sheriff up there. I want to
know more about it before I talk to the sister and the boyfriend, OK?'

    'Sure,'
Lala said. Cab turned away toward Ronnie Trask, but Lala called after him.
'Hey, Cab?'

    'What?

    'I saw
your mother in a movie last night.'

    It
was an innocuous comment for her to make, but every time they deviated from
work talk, he felt gravity again, as if the two of them were circling the black
hole. He recognized it was a big leap for Lala even to say it, and he wondered
if she had an ulterior motive.

    'Yeah?
Which one?'

    'Sapphirica.'

    Cab
nodded. 'That was twenty years ago. I was on set with her when she filmed that
one in Italy. It won a special jury prize at Sundance.'

    'Did you
travel with her a lot growing up?' Lala asked.

    'Yeah,
it was like being an army brat without the guns.'

    'You
look a lot like her,' she told him.

    'Thanks.'

    'So
why aren't you an actor like her, anyway? You've got the looks for it.'

    'My
head kept getting cropped out of the frame.'

    Lala
laughed, but it was hollow. She went back to her phone as if he'd dismissed her
with an expletive, rather than a joke. He thought about saying something more,
but he didn't. He was his mother's son.

    Tarla
Bolton was a fierce loner, and so was Cab. She'd never married and never even
acknowledged the man who got her pregnant. He didn't know who his father was,
although he had narrowed the field to a few likely candidates based on the film
she was making at the time he was conceived. He'd never asked her for the
truth.

    Cab
had never married either, although he'd got close. Once. Her name was Vivian
Frost. Vivian was the reason he made a point of never trusting anyone. She was
the reason he was always running.

    Cab
took a seat at the patio table opposite Ronnie Trask and pushed the chair back
to make room for his long legs. He squinted up at the sky and wiped his
forehead with his handkerchief. 'God, this heat, huh?'

    The
bartender sucked on his lower lip and drummed the glass tabletop with his
nails. 'Yeah.'

    'I'm
Cab Bolton. Naples Police.'

    'Ronnie
Trask. Naples bartender.' He added, 'What kind of a name is Cab?'

    'Born
in one,' Cab said. 'Oh.'

    'You
work here at the hotel, Ronnie?'

    The
man drained a last swallow from his Aquafina. 'Yeah. I work nights, I work
afternoons, whenever they slot me in. Crappy schedule. I sleep somewhere in the
middle.'

    'You
always work at the bar?'

    'Yeah.'

    'So
tell me what happened last night.'

    Trask
shrugged. 'I closed up the pool bar at one o'clock. I was cleaning everything
up. It must have been close to one thirty when I saw a teenage girl in a bikini
on the far side of the terrace. She went through the palm trees out to the beach.
End of story.'

    'Was
anyone else around? Employees or guests?'

    'Nah,
once the booze shuts down, the guests go to bed. I was the only one out here.'

    'Tell
me about the girl.'

    'What
about her? She was a cute kid. Young.'

    'Was
she alone?' Cab asked.

    'Yeah,
she was alone.' 'Did you talk to her?'

    Trask
scowled and got defensive. 'Hey, I told you she was on the opposite side of the
terrace, didn't I? How was I supposed to talk to her?'

    Cab
let the man stew before he went on. 'You could see her clearly, though?'

    'Clear
enough, sure.'

    'Could
you see what she had in her hand?'

    'Like
what? She wasn't carrying anything.'

    'So
where'd she get the wine, Ronnie? We found a bottle of wine with the body.'

    Trask
tugged at his goatee. 'Oh, yeah. She had a bottle of wine with her. I forgot
that.'

    Cab
slid a pen from inside his suitcoat pocket. He reached across I he table and
rolled Trask's empty water bottle toward him with the cap of the pen. 'We're
testing the wine bottle we found near the body for fingerprints. I think we'll
test your water bottle, too.'

    Trask
cursed under his breath. 'Shit. OK. I sold her the wine.'

    'She
was sixteen.'

    'I
didn't know she was underage.'

    'You
already said she looked young.'

    'Fuck
it,' Trask breathed. 'So what, man? She gave me thirty bucks. These kids down
here will always find a way to score booze, you know? Why shouldn't I get a
slice? The hotel writes it off as breakage, and everyone's happy.'

    'Not
Glory Fischer. She's not happy, she's dead. Had she been drinking before you
sold her the wine?'

    Trask
shook his head. 'She looked sober enough.'

    'Did
you help her drink it?'

    His
eyes widened. 'Say what?'

    'Did
you have a drink with her? Did you go with her to the beach?'

    'Shit,
no,' he hissed.

    'Word
is, you do well with the girls who come down here, Ronnie.'

    'Yeah,
well, I don't do jailbait.'

    'So
you did know she was underage.'

    'Oh, for
Christ's sake, sure I did. Big deal. I didn't go to the beach with her. I took
her money, opened the bottle for her, and she went
off
by herself.
That's all. That is
all
.'

    Cab
heard the panic in Trask's voice. 'What did the girl say to you?' 'Nothing. She
wanted a drink. That's it.'

    'Did
she say why she was out there?'

    'No,
man, no.'

    'How
did she behave?'

    'What
do you mean?'

    'I
mean, how was she acting? Upset? Happy? Angry?'

    Trask
ran his hands over his slicked-back hair. 'Oh, hell, I don't know. She was kind
of flirty, you know, the way teenagers are. Smiling at me. Adjusting her
bikini. Acting all girlish. I think she figured she could tease the wine out of
me.'

    'Did
you take that as an invitation?'

    'Huh?'

    Cab
leaned across the table. 'Did you assume she wanted sex?'

    'Look,
whatever she wanted, I didn't give it to her.'

    'OK,
Ronnie. How long was she at the bar?'

    'A
couple minutes, no more. She bought the wine, and she headed down to the
beach.'

    'Did
you see anyone else after the girl showed up?' Cab asked. 'Did anyone follow
her?'

    Trask
shook his head. 'Nobody.'

    'You
didn't see anyone else outside?'

    'I
left right after the girl did. My shift was over. I locked up, and I cleared
out.'

    'What
about before she arrived? Did anyone go past you out to the beach during the
half-hour you were cleaning up?'

    Trask
stared at the sky, as if he was hoping he would remember someone, but he came
up blank. 'I didn't see anybody.'

    'So
you were the only other person out there with the girl who was murdered.'

    'Hey!'
he barked. 'I'm telling you, I left. I didn't follow her, and I didn't see
anybody else. The clerk behind the desk saw me leave through the lobby. You can
ask her. Hell, you've got hotels up and down this beach. Anybody could have
done this.'

    Cab
knew that Trask was right. That was what worried him. Beach bodies meant
thousands of suspects. If you didn't get lucky with forensics or witnesses, it
was almost impossible to make a case. He thought about Glory Fischer on the
beach. And about Mark Bradley. He'd hoped Trask would have spotted Bradley
outside, or at least mentioned someone matching Bradley's description. He could
have prompted Trask by mentioning the yellow tank top, but he guessed that the
bartender would take that tidbit of information and spit it back the way jail-
house informants do, to give Cab whatever he wanted to hear. Yellow tank top?
Yeah, come to think of it, I did see someone out there wearing something like
that.

    'Did
you recognize the girl?' Cab asked Trask.

    'What
do you mean?'

    'She
was at the hotel for several days. Had you seen her before last night?'

    He
nodded. 'Actually, yeah.'

    'You
sound pretty sure. This place was crawling with teenage girls this week.'

    'Well,
she almost knocked me over.'

    Cab
cocked his head. 'When was this?'

    'Friday
night. I was bringing a case of wine to the pool bar from the restaurant, and
out of nowhere, this girl sprints past me. I mean, there I was big as life, but
it was like she didn't even see me. I almost dropped the bottles. Pissed me
off. You want to shout at these kids sometimes, but the hotel won't let you do
that.'

    'Why
was she running?'

    'I
don't know.'

    'Did
anyone else run after her?'

    Trask
shook his head. 'Nope. There were people milling around down by the event
center, hitting the bathrooms, going outside to smoke, that kind of thing. No
one paid any attention to the girl, as far as I could tell. She just came at me
down the corridor past the outside windows like some bat out of hell.'

    'She
came toward the lobby from the event center?'

    'Yeah.'

    'That's
where they were doing all the dance competitions, right?'

    'Yeah,
I guess.'

    'Did
she stop and talk to you when she ran into you?'

    'No,
she kept going. I dodged out of the way, and she didn't apologize or anything.
She looked really freaked.'

    'Excuse
me?'

    'Freaked,'
Trask told him. 'Scared. She was crying. It was like she'd seen a ghost.'

    'Oh,
man,' Amy Leigh announced. 'Did you see this?'

    Amy
sat in the next-to-last row of the Green Bay team bus. The window beside her
was cracked open, and Amy could smell exhaust fumes as the bus sputtered
through the foothills of southern Tennessee. Unlike the Wisconsin campus, where
winter had barely loosened its grip, the trees and mountains here were lush
green.