Chapter 3
When they arrived, and after they wasted enough time with the Gables exchanging hugs and inanities, Dane took Bill Gable aside.
“Let’s talk a minute.” Dane pushed the door open to the study off the main hallway while the women talked. Bill followed as if Dane owned the ridiculous mansion and Bill was an impressed visitor.
“I need you to watch out for Penny. I don’t want her going to the scene of the crime.”
“Got it. That wouldn’t be good for her to see.”
Dane wanted to ask more of him, but Laura pushed through the study door and brought a pitcher of what looked like lemonade with her. Dane knew better.
“Lemon-tini anyone?”
Bill raised his hand. Penny followed Laura into the room, then slid into a chair.
“I definitely need one of those. Maybe two,” Penny said.
This might be a good time to get to know their client better. Dane wanted to be doubly sure she had no role in her husband’s demise. And he didn’t trust a woman who flirted with another woman’s guy right in front of him.
“I’ll have a tequila. Straight up.”
Shana shot him a look. He didn’t meet her gaze, but gave her a signal for ‘go along with me because I have a plan’. His signal was to wave her over to the couch. She ought to get it.
He put an arm around her to make sure.
“Coming right up,” Bill said. “I always have a bottle of Patron Gold for you. In case you drop by.” He poured a generous tumbler full and stood with him while the three women sat on the couch.
“You ought to come by more often. We’re having a dinner party—“
“Send me an invitation,” Dane said.
He contemplated Penny. She’d already swallowed half her lemon-tini.
“Do you need any help with making arrangements for Harvey, Penny?”
Penny’s surprise showed before she smiled.
“You’d do that for me?”
“Shana would be happy to help you. It’s more up her alley than mine.”
A stab of memory at the last time he’d made arrangements stopped him from saying more. His mother’s ashes rested out behind his shack at the edge of his lawn along the harbor.
Shana spoke up. “I’ll find out when the ME is releasing the body. It’s a truly puzzling case.”
“Sorry I don’t have more information for you—I gave you all my contacts, but I don’t have Harvey’s.”
“How did you know Harvey didn’t have any clients on Martha’s Vineyard?” Dane segued the conversation into the business end of the pool for his own sake.
“I asked him,” Penny said. She took another sip of her drink and added nothing.
“What is it you do for work?”
Shana gave him one of her looks matched by the look he got from Laura. They were both unkind.
Penny laughed.
“I keep house. Volunteer for charity. I’m on several boards.” She waved her glass around.
“Basically, this is what I do.” She lifted her glass with a resigned smile. “I sit around and socialize and drink.”
“But you do it for good causes,” Laura added.
Bill said, “That’s how we met Penny. At a gala for Autism.”
“You’re for autism? Most people are against it.” Dane knew he’d get trouble, but he had no experience behaving with the type of people who went to benefit galas.
“Oh brother,” Shana said. She wasn’t alone in the chorus.
Bill slapped him on the back. It was very brave of him.
“You’re not drinking?”
“No.” He wasn’t one for making excuses for his behavior even when it was bad. Which was almost always.
Dane didn’t want to drink. He turned to Shana and raised a brow.
Shana got his message as if he’d blinked his eyes in Morse code that it was time to go.
“Dane, we need to leave. We’re late.” Shana saved him from further rudeness.
She probably knew Morse code. He ought to try the trick sometime. He didn’t need to be told twice. He let Shana handle the good-byes as he walked out the door. The background interview of their client would be continued later.
*****
Back on the road, he pushed the old Jeep past its red zone, reaching a whopping seventy miles an hour, but they’d still be a few minutes late getting to the morgue.
“Don’t worry, Dane. Cap’ll wait for us.”
“I’m not so sure. In fact, I’m not sure why he’s even letting us take a look at the crime scene. He’s been withholding something from us.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. He’s withholding it.”
“Cap’s not that devious.”
“He’s a smart cop. Same thing.”
“Hey—I’m a cop too—or as much of one as you are.”
“Sure. But you have different talents to leverage. ‘Devious’ is a little further down the list.”
“Sure.” Shana waited for him to say more.
The urge to smile almost won out over his annoyance that she knew him so well. She knew he was devious and she wanted him anyway. Or maybe his deviousness was part of the attraction. His smile won out in a full grin.
“Speaking of your talents, what did you get from your friend Dr. Wall?”
“More than I wanted to know. He found drugs stashed in Harvey’s body in a place they had no business being.
Chances are good someone else put them there.
There were restraint marks on his wrists and some defensive wounds on his hands.
Wall is pretty certain he’ll find that there were lethal amounts of heroin in Harvey’s system when he gets the labs back.
He hasn’t finished autopsy, but he expects to find needle holes. ”
“Was Harvey a user?”
“Not a regular user. Smells like someone was mad at him and that someone might have been a dealer.”
“Is Wall going to call you with the lab and autopsy results?”
She nodded her head and frowned. “And that will cost me dinner with him. He insisted as if…” She stopped and scowled.
He liked that she wasn’t looking forward to dinner, but he didn’t like that she’d agreed to it. Not one bit—if the telltale tension across his shoulder blades was any indicator.
“As if what?”
“As if you and I weren’t … you know…”
The hell of it was that he didn’t know. He never knew where they stood.
Not even when they had an understanding.
He never felt like he had a right to call her his as much as he made the claim all the time.
As much as he wanted to beat the word into the head of anyone who insinuated themselves—like Dr. Wall asking her to go to dinner.
“Then why did you say yes?’
She shrugged. “It’s what I’ve always done. How I’ve always operated. How we’ve always operated.”
It was true. But hadn’t things changed? Hell, they’d been up and down on this see-saw too many times to tell where they were supposed to be.
“Not anymore, Shana. Break your dinner date with him.”
“After we get the information.”
“Naturally.”
She laughed and shook her head. “He’ll be pissed.”
“Tell him you’re with me and that I didn’t like it.”
“The truth? That’s a new one for you, Mr. President of the Cagey Club.”
He yanked on her hair and pulled her close to him. She didn’t resist. She kissed him on the side of the mouth. Like she owned him and had a right to such casual intimacies.
He smiled as he pulled into the small parking lot of the state police. The minute they entered, Dane went back to wondering what Cap was withholding because he was walking down the hall toward them, ready to go.
“Let’s take my official car.” Cap walked past them without waiting for their agreement.
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not be held captive by you at the scene if I happen to have the need for a ride.”
“Wuss.”
Dane had no choice but to laugh. His humor was real enough.
“Ouch.”
“What’s the problem?” Cap stopped.
They all stood at their respective doors next to Cap’s official car.
“You’re holding back.” Dane met Cap’s eyes straight on.
“Let’s not have this discussion in the parking lot,” Shana said. She opened her door and got inside the passenger side of the front seat.
Cap gave Dane a shrug.
“I’m not letting you drive my Statie car. So, you might as well go drive your own junk heap.”
“Sir, yes sir.” Dane gave Cap the finger as he walked away.
He hoped to hell Shana would get him to talk on the drive because that little exchange was goddamn humiliating.
*****
Dane followed Cap and Shana to a motel in Edgartown off the beaten path that looked like it had been forgotten about for the last forty years.
He’d never seen it before. Not that he went looking for seedy old motels, but he’d explored 99% of the island by now.
Since he’d been summering here for years before he landed for good, he’d made it his business to know his environment.
He watched Cap go around to Shana’s door in time to help her from the car as if she were a precious socialite.
He caught up with them as they reached the door to the last room along the row of the sad motel with only the yellow police tape brightening its misery.
Cap turned to him. “This place look familiar to you?”
“Sure. I was here with your mother last week.”
Cap grinned and shook his head. He said to Shana, “How do you stand him?”
Shana’s mouth was open, but she wasn’t speaking. For his part, Dane reined himself back into professional mode. Enough joking around.
Shana said, “This isn’t the kind of place a guy would conduct an affair. Let’s rule that out. He was meeting a drug dealer and things went wrong. I think we should rule out Penny Lake as a person of interest.” She stood with her hands on her hips scanning the woe begotten premises.
Dane’s mouth watered watching her do the Wonder Woman impression. She didn’t need a skimpy outfit and red hooker boots to play the part. Shana had the attitude pulverized and the rest was beside the point.
“Did you find out what Cap’s big secret is?” He asked her while Cap stood there listening. And watching Shana.
“Of course I told her,” Cap said as he took the tape down from one side of the door frame and opened the door.
“Well?”
“You’re not going to like it,” Shana told him. “That’s why he wasn’t telling you. Not because of some strategic cop caginess.”
The three of them walked inside and stood in the middle of a shabby, disheveled motel room that smelled worse than the morgue.
“Penny Lake’s brother is ATF,” Cap said. “And he’s on the case.”
That was the next question he meant to ask their client—whether she had any relatives.
“Shit.”
They were right. Dane didn’t like it. Not one bit.