A Killing Tide (19 page)

"Jesus Christ." There was a pause while Lucy drank something. "Does the word
caution
mean anything to you? The guy could've had a gun."

"That's already been pointed out to me, more times than I wanted to hear," Kaz said mildly. "Did you call for a reason?"

"Where the hell was the surveillance team? Jackson or Brenner should've been right outside."

Kaz shrugged, then realized Lucy couldn't see it. "You tell me. When I chased the guy out the front door, there was no one out there." She didn't add that Jackson had been there later, when Gary had shown up for a visit.

Lucy sighed loudly. "All right. I'll send over a team to check for fingerprints, just in case. And I'll also find out where Jackson was—he should've been out there. Can you
please
stay out of trouble for the remainder of the day?"

Kaz didn't bother to answer. She could hear Lucy shutting a door and walking somewhere outside, her steps crunching on gravel. She was probably leaving for the station. A new thought occurred to Kaz. "Hey. How did you know that someone had broken in here?"

"Your jerk of a brother." Lucy disconnected, leaving Kaz standing in the middle of her kitchen holding a dead phone. She realized her mouth had fallen open, and she snapped it shut.

So she wasn't the only one Gary had visited last night. Interesting. And since Gary wasn't behind bars this morning, that meant Lucy hadn't arrested him. Even more interesting.

It appeared that the men in their lives were giving both of them trouble. Speaking of which—she stared at the note she still held in her hand, focusing on the bold, black scrawl. Michael's handwriting was as forceful as the rest of his personality.

"I assume the weather's too lousy to go out," he'd written in large, slanted letters. "And I didn't figure you'd want me to join you in the shower—at least, not yet." She smiled a little at his cockiness, feeling a trickle of heat as an image of the two of them together under all that steam snuck into her mind. As he'd intended, no doubt.

Then she frowned as she read the rest of the message.
"STAY PUT.
Zeke and I have work to do. We'll be back this evening.
GET SOME REST."

That was it—he hadn't even bothered to sign it.

She crumpled the note in her fist and tossed it into the trash. The man had more than his share of arrogance.

Unfortunately, it didn't make him any less attractive.

#

By late morning, Kaz was pacing her living room like a caged animal. Each wind gust rattled the loose pane in the south window that they'd never gotten around to glazing. Even though she'd closed the damper on the fireplace, puffs of ash floated onto the floor. Rain now came down in drenching sheets, and she could feel the barometric pressure dropping like a stone. The coastal storms had always made her twitchy, and this one was no exception.

She'd already downloaded email and taken care of any outstanding issues from the San Francisco office. That had taken less than an hour—her partner had things well under control. It seemed to be working out fine to telecommute--at least, for now. Which had her thinking about the possibility of a more permanent, commuting-type setup. Of letting her partner handle more of the day-to-day responsibilities.

Though it would've been nice if there'd been enough work this morning to keep her from going stir-crazy.

"Stay put," she muttered, stacking a pile of books in the bookshelf, then adjusting them so that they lay on their sides, then moving them to a different shelf altogether. Like she could just sit around, doing nothing. Another hour of this and she'd need horse tranquilizers.

She couldn't see the mooring basin from this end of town, but she hoped none of the fishermen had gone out before the storm hit. Worry for them had been nagging at her since she'd awakened. Most likely, though, they were camped out in the Workman's Café on the waterfront, waiting to see if the weather let up. Or on their boats, killing the time by knocking out some of the items on their ever-present repair lists.

But her concern for the fishermen was nothing next to the hysteria that threatened to bubble up whenever she thought about Gary. He was out there, somewhere close by, trying to catch people who were capable of murder.
And
trying to evade the cops who, with the exception of Lucy and Ivar, wanted his head served up on a platter.

A nervous widow, fishermen who were too scared to talk, and something that people wanted. What did it all mean? Was it drug-related, as Michael seemed to think?
Were
some of the fishermen running drugs? Could that have been what Bjorn had been alluding to when he'd said that some of them were involved?

But if so, how had Ken gotten mixed up in it? It didn't make sense—he was a family man, not a drug runner. She couldn't imagine him taking those kinds of chances, not with his wife and kids. Then again, Bobby had been horribly sick, and Ken would do anything for him. But Kaz knew beyond a doubt that Gary wouldn't touch drugs, not for any reason.

She stopped fiddling with the books and blew out a breath.
To hell with it.
The least she could do was check up on the fishermen. And maybe one of them would let something slip, provide some small bit of information she could use to figure out what to do next.

Snagging her sou'wester off the hook by the back door, she headed out into the storm.

#

Halfway to the mooring basin, she changed her mind and pulled a U-turn, heading back toward Uniontown. At this time of the day, the Redemption was mostly deserted. She figured Steve would have time to talk to her and could perhaps shed some light on what had happened two nights ago. Pulling into the parking lot, she set the brake on the Jeep and hopped out, jogging across the gravel to the door.

She paused inside the door, shaking off the rain and letting her eyes adjust to the dimness of the room.

Steve was behind the bar, totaling up last night's receipts. "Hey, Kaz." He smiled, his expression friendly.

Like most of the people in town her age, Steve had gone through school with her. Although they hadn't run with the same crowd, she remembered Steve as being one of the good guys. She'd heard some rumors that he'd gone a little crazy after his divorce a few years back, but the divorce had been particularly acrimonious, so he'd probably had good reason.

If Steve looked the other way sometimes when it came to what went on in his tavern, it was understandable. A bartender heard a lot, knew a lot. And if he made a habit of repeating what he knew, he'd be out of business in a hurry.

Astoria had a healthy rumor mill, but there were unspoken rules about who you should talk to, and about how much you could reveal. Right now, Kaz was counting on those rules, because as the sister of someone who was involved, she was on the list of people Steve could talk to, if he so chose. She also wanted to find out why Gary had felt that Steve had no cause to criticize him that evening.

"I need to know what Gary and Ken were arguing about two nights ago," she said without preamble.

Steve shook his head, his expression turning wary. "It was pretty busy, Kaz. And you know I make a habit of tuning out."

"You were standing right here the whole time—you could hardly miss what they said."

He didn't reply, busying himself with rinsing out glasses.

Her heart sank. She slipped onto one of the barstools and leaned her elbows on the bar. "They've charged Gary with arson and murder. Steve, if you know something…"

He sighed. "I'll tell you exactly what I told Lucy and Ivar, and that new fire chief guy: I didn't hear anything important."

So Michael had already questioned Steve. He was conducting an investigation, she reminded herself--he wasn't obligated to keep her informed. But still, it bothered her that he wasn't being entirely straight with her. "Okay. What did Gary and Ken say that night that
isn't
important?"

Steve shrugged, then glanced around the mostly empty room before answering. "They were arguing about something to do with the crab pots."

She stared at the bartender, perplexed. "That doesn't make any sense. They drag-fish—
I'm
doing the crabbing."

Shooting her an exasperated look, Steve said, "I don't try to reason through what I overhear, Kaz. All I know is that Gary told Ken to shape up or else."

"Was Gary threatening to fire Ken?"

"Not as far as I could tell. It sounded more like a disagreement about how they were handling something."

"Was Ken upset? Or nervous?"

Steve paused and thought about it. "It's kind of hard to tell, with him being so laid back most of the time. But yeah, he did seem to be kind of edgy."

"Who was standing next to them at the bar?"

Steve's face pokered up. "I already answered these questions for the authorities. You're wasting your time, to say nothing of sticking your nose in where it doesn't belong."

"Who was standing there, dammit!" she snapped.

"Karl Svensen, okay?" Steve answered, just as angry. "Now either order something from the kitchen, or get the hell out of here and let me get back to my work."

So she'd been right about Karl. "Was he part of the argument?" she pressed.

"I didn't notice."

She was certain he had but wasn't going to tell her. "Why was Gary so angry with you that night?"

"I wouldn't have a clue." Her disbelief must have shown, because he shrugged. "It was just some crackpot remark your brother made because he was pissed. I'm sure he resented my interference."

He was lying, but for the life of her, she couldn't figure out why. She stood up. "If you think of anything else, please call me, okay?"

He picked up the pile of receipts and put a rubber band around it, then met her gaze, his expression remote. "There's nothing else to say."

"Well, thanks anyway."

He shook his head. "Don't thank me, Kaz. Just mind your own business."

"Why does everyone keep saying that to me?" she wondered out loud.

"Because there are things going on around here that you don't need to know about."

She stared at him, experiencing the same sense of unreality as she'd had the day before when she'd talked to Chuck. Steve looked worried, maybe even afraid. But he'd said all he was going to. She blew out a breath. "I'm beginning to think I have no clue what is going on in my own home town."

"You don't."

"I live and work here, too," she pointed out, sick of the obfuscations.

"Not for the last ten years."

#

Two blocks away in Uniontown Park, Lucy and Ivar stood in the driving rain in their police-issue slickers, hunched over the body of a small-time local drug dealer. Someone had stabbed him multiple times in the chest, then dumped him in the back of one of the abandoned warehouses on the water's edge. Lucy pulled her collar up, swearing under her breath at the foul weather. Hell of a way to start off the workday.

Rigor had set in, so the guy had probably been killed sometime the night before. "Two murders in as many days." She looked at Ivar. "Just what the hell is going on in our town?"

His expression pensive, Ivar watched Ewald work on the corpse. "Don't like the feel of this."

"Now there's an understatement."

"You think Gary had a hand in this? Or Chuck?"

Lucy frowned. That was
exactly
what she was worried about—that Gary and Chuck were on some kind of vigilante mission. Gary hadn't come right out and said anything that would lead her to think that, but she knew, somehow, that that was what he was up to. And where he went, Chuck followed. Still, she couldn't believe Gary would commit murder.

The murder method—multiple stab wounds—indicated that the killer had been in a rage. And while she'd seen Gary lose his temper and resort to throwing a punch or two, she couldn't envision him losing it and stabbing a man to death. Besides, why would Gary or Chuck be targeting small-time drug dealers?

She realized Ivar was giving her an odd look—probably because he'd never seen her silent for that long. "Nah," she answered. "If Chuck had done it, he would've crept up behind the guy and slit his throat. And this isn't Gary's style, either."

She turned as Clint Jackson approached, dragging a thin, nervous man. "Well, well. Look who we've got, Ivar. Briggs, ole buddy. Why am I not surprised that you're hanging around?"

The drug addict shifted nervously in his soiled, torn sneakers, his dilated eyes darting around, landing anywhere but on the body. He seemed oblivious to the fact that he was soaked to the skin and shivering. "I didn't do nothing, I swear."

"Of course you didn't," Lucy soothed. She noted the spittle in the corner of his mouth, the unhealthy pallor, the physical twitches. He hadn't gotten his usual fix, and he was going into withdrawal. Interesting. "So maybe I can help you out a little, Sammy, in return for a little information. Did you see what went down here?"