Chapter Twenty #2
“George’s Steak House at eight o’clock? It’s a block from your office. I assume you’re a carnivore.”
Marcella had raised eyebrows when Gabriela got off the phone. “Are you really going to have dinner with him?”
“No,” Gabriela said. “Get me on a flight to Selpan, Florida.”
“And Rafer?”
“Yes. And Rafer.”
“Do you want to go over the job offers now?” Marcella asked.
“Is there anything interesting?”
“Mostly standard insurance fraud. A man in Minneapolis would like you to find his cat. And a Saudi prince is offering a big bag of money if you can locate his gold-plated Bugatti.”
“No to the cat man and the prince. Send me a file on the others and I’ll look at them on the plane.”
Gabriela left her office and walked two blocks to her condo building.
The temperature was already in the low eighties, the air was humid and gritty, the blue sky was obscured by a morning haze.
This was all part of life in the big city, and Gabriela was happy to leave it behind her and step into her air-conditioned building.
She took the elevator to the seventh floor, crossed the foyer that opened to four condos, and let herself into one of the front-facing ones.
Rafer was on the couch, his MacBook Air on his lap, his coffee mug on the side table next to the couch. “How was your run?”
“Good,” Gabriela said. “I did five miles and a circuit at the gym.”
Rafer thought it would be good to get out and stretch his legs, but he wasn’t excited about fighting his way through the mobs of people and cars.
When he was home, he ran on the quiet back streets of Kingstown and swam in the ocean surrounding St. Vincent.
He worked out in a gym that was open to the sea breeze and welcomed the occasional chicken.
He thought he could live in New York if he had to, but it wouldn’t be his first choice.
“And I stopped in to see Marcella,” Gabriela said.
“How’s business?”
“It’s business as usual, with the exception of a phone call from Harry Bench first thing this morning.”
“Dumb luck? Or did he know you were back in town?”
“I suspect he knew.”
“What did he want?”
“Lunch. And the items that he thinks I stole.”
“Are you lunching?” Rafer asked.
“No. I told him I would meet him for dinner, but I’m not doing that either.” Gabriela got a bottle of water from the wine cooler. “Why would he want to have lunch with me?”
“To get his bank off the hook for the insurance money they don’t have?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. The bank reeks, and Harry Bench is too aggressive in pursuing me. After I delivered the stone, Bench obviously did a background check on me. Why? It made perfect sense that I would be involved in finding the stone. It’s what I do.”
“And when he read the background check, he realized there was a connection between you and Harley.”
“Yes. And he said that we worked together to steal everything.”
“It could happen,” Rafer said. “I could see you masterminding a gig like that.”
“I appreciate the compliment, but I don’t buy any of it. My instincts tell me Bench is involved in the theft somehow. Especially after finding a link between him and Rocky Mausud.”
“And Searl.”
“Yes. And Searl.”
“Maybe Bench needs to get rid of you,” Rafer said. “Maybe he can’t have you poking around in his shady business. The breakfast meeting might have been a setup to kidnap you and then dump you in the Thames.”
“Would you get rid of me like that?”
“No,” Rafer said. “I’d shoot you.”
“Exactly. If I’m such a threat, why don’t they just shoot me like the bank president, or John Mackey, or the guy in the tunnel, or the museum’s IT guy.”
“You forgot Dodi Khabi,” Rafer said.
“No one said anything about a bullet hole in Dodi Khabi.”
“That doesn’t mean he didn’t have one.”
“True. So, what’s different about me? Why does Harry Bench want to talk to me?”
“If you went to dinner with him, you could ask him.”
“If I went to dinner with him, I might never be seen again.”
Marcella called. “I have you and Rafer booked on a seven thirty flight tonight out of JFK, getting into Fort Myers at eleven. Do you want hotel arrangements?”
“Yes,” Gabriela said. “And a rental car.”
“Are we going someplace?” Rafer asked.
“Selpan.”
“Nice.”
It was midnight when Rafer drove into Selpan.
“I haven’t been here in years,” Rafer said. “Selpan has grown.”
“I was here last year,” Gabriela said. “It was a short trip. I was investigating medical insurance fraud. I got lucky and caught the insured running on the beach. Supposedly she was crippled by a car crash and was confined to a wheelchair.”
Rafer picked up Main Street and headed west toward the gulf, driving past Selpan’s high-end restaurants, ice cream parlors, art galleries, and upscale shops. Traffic was light and the sidewalks were empty. This wasn’t the city that never sleeps.
“Turn right at the next cross street,” Gabriela said. “Marcella booked us into a weekly rental apartment. I stayed there on the medical insurance fraud case. It’s difficult to rent in season, but this is the offseason, so there wasn’t a problem. It’ll give us a lower profile than a hotel.”
Rafer took the cross street, and the scene changed from ritzy resort downtown with palm trees wrapped in lights to a quiet residential mix of single-family houses and small clusters of two-story condos and rentals.
Even in the dark, it was obvious that yards were maintained by professional gardeners.
Manicured lawns, green hedges, and shrubs bordered by flowers.
Shade trees were mixed with palms and lit by landscape lights.
“The apartment is just ahead on the right,” Gabriela said. “It’s the two-story stucco building. You can park in front. There are six units, and ours is on the south side, ground floor. One-A. Marcella gave me the combination to the door lock.”
Rafer parked and followed Gabriela inside. She switched the light on and walked through the apartment.
“Everything looks good,” she said. “There are two identical bedrooms. I’m going to take one and crash. We can get organized in the morning.”