CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

I don’t claim to know much about women,” Snyder said, “but that didn’t sound like happy talk.”

“Detective Moon was at Lola’s asking for me.”

“That can’t be good.”

I was sure that somebody in LA was finally trying to track me down, and working through the Kona department to do it. I had no intention of making contact until after Hans’s hearing, as I had promised him. I knew they’d need an explanation for my fingerprints being found at a murder scene, if only to close a messy little detail that could look bad for the LAPD if it went unanswered. It was time to start thinking about developing a credible lie. Even so, I couldn’t take the chance and make official contact before they were finished with Hans. I’d done enough to fuck him up, and I wasn’t going to make it any worse. So Moon was going to have to wait right along with everybody else, at least for the time being.

“Probably not,” I said.

Snyder eyed me skeptically, changed the subject. “How’s Lani?”

“Angry,” I said. “Scared.”

He looked out the window into the dark, squinted at some thought inside his head. “When this is over we need to get good and drunk. We’ll consider it a wake. You’re obviously not ready for a woman like her.”

“You finished?” I asked.

He eyed me for a few seconds, then went to the console where the TV was hidden, opened the door.

“For now,” he said, and turned on the set.

We sat like that until the news came on. Snyder got up from time to time, checked my eyeballs and wandered the Kehau’s deck. On the news, I watched a rerun of Phillip Lennox doing his song-and-dance about the fires, watched J.R. Lennox look on uncomfortably from the sidelines, and learned that the fire in San Diego had killed three more of their employees.

By the time Conan O’Brien was over, Snyder had fallen asleep. I prodded him awake and told him to go below, that I’d look after myself for the night. He made a token protest, looked at my dilated pupils again, and reminded me to stay awake.

It was after three in the afternoon when I woke with a start. I was damp with the sweat of my dreams, my mouth dry as cotton, lips cracked and leaking blood.

I’d managed to keep myself awake until dawn when Snyder had come topside to check me one final time, and said he thought I was well enough to sleep. Despite the beating I’d taken, or maybe because of it, I hadn’t expected to sleep so long, and was instantly pissed that I’d lost the day.

I took a shower, feeling the aftereffects of every blow the joggers had laid on me, aching from somewhere new every time I moved or tried to slide the bar of soap over my bruised skin. I grabbed a pair of faded surgeon’s scrub pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt from the drawer in my stateroom. I put them on to cover the damage, to keep from alarming the neighbors. I looked into the mirror, decided against shaving, and saw that the swelling of my lip had gone down considerably. The lump over my eye was another story. I tied a bandana around my head, pirate-style, in an attempt to cover it, and put on my Ray-Ban shades.

I came up topside and found Snyder tinkering with the scuba equipment. He sat cross-legged on the teak deck, the parts from a scuba regulator spread out in front of him.

“Shiver me timbers, mateys,” he said. “It’s Doctor Bligh.”

I started to smile, but winced when my lip stretched too far.

“You look like an asshole, Travis.”

“I should lose the bandana?”

He picked up a small screwdriver and went back to his work. “As soon as possible.”

The day was all bright light and moving shadows, the trades blowing intermittent white clouds across the sun. I looked out toward the mouth of the harbor, followed a nice looking Hatteras as it made its way up the channel.

When I turned back to Snyder he was looking past my shoulder, focused on something farther up the dock.

“Friend of yours?” he asked.

It was Patricia Dunross, taking cautious steps in her slingback pumps as she came down the steep ramp to the dock. She wore a dark business suit, with a skirt that showed off a pair of shapely calves, one hand on the wood railing and another on a black briefcase-purse that was slung over her shoulder.

“Nice,” Snyder said.

I tossed her a wave that sent shock waves down my aching back and abs, which she returned with a smile. She picked her way across the dock, careful to avoid planting a heel in the spaces between the planks and came up alongside the Kehau’s transom.

“Patricia,” I said, offering a hand up the stairs. “I meant to call you.”

Her red hair was pulled back in a ponytail, but the wind had blown a few strands loose across her cheeks.

“I thought you were coming back to—” She interrupted herself when she looked up at me. I couldn’t see through the Gucci sunglasses she wore, but I could tell she’d noticed the knot on my head. “Good Lord, what happened to you?”

“Got blindsided on my way home last night.”

She reached out her free hand and gently touched my forehead. “Are you all right?” She turned to Snyder, who was standing now, the regulator parts scattered at his bare feet. “Is he all right?”

“He’s fine. I thought he might have a concussion, but he doesn’t. Don’t know why.”

I interrupted him, wanted to change the subject. “Patricia Dunross, this is Snyder. A friend of mine from the Big Island.”

Snyder wiped a hand on his shorts, and reached out to greet her.

“A pleasure,” he said.

“Ms. Dunross is the lawyer who lent me the use of her conference room yesterday,” I told him around my split lip.

“I thought you were coming back to the office today,” she said to me. Her face had gone serious. “We got a call for you this afternoon and it seemed important.”

A gust of wind picked at the halyards, pulling hard at Kehau’s dock lines. I looked up at the wind sock on the mast, watched it fill momentarily and go limp.

“You could have called,” I said. “I’m sorry you had to come all the way down here.”

“You didn’t leave your number. Besides, it’s almost five o’clock and I wanted to get out of the office.”

“How’d you find me?”

“I called Thel Mishow. He told me the name of your boat.” She smiled, pushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “From there, it was easy, a yacht this size.”

“Can I offer you something for your trouble?” I asked. “Glass of wine, maybe?”

“Beefeaters?”

Snyder smirked, but had the decency to look away, like he was concentrating on the work he’d left in pieces on the deck.

“How do you like it?” I asked her.

“On the rocks and very dirty.”

Snyder buried a chuckle inside a noise that was supposed to sound like a cough. I shot a glance at him as he sat back down to finish rebuilding the regulator.

She followed me into the salon below. I mixed her drink, and capped a bottle of Asahi for myself. We took seats on the banquette along the port bulkhead and let the breeze drift in through the open sliders.

“You mentioned a message? ”I said.

“Yes, of course,” she said, as she sipped at the martini and put it on the table between us. She reached into her black leather bag, withdrew a pink phone message slip and handed it to me. “When you didn’t come in this morning, I forwarded the conference room line to my assistant. She took the message.”

It was from Hans and it listed his home phone number. The slip was time stamped three fifteen. That would have been five fifteen in LA. A glance at my watch told me that Patricia Dunross had called Thel at home, then come right over with it. All it said was, Call me.

“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate all the trouble you went to.”

“No trouble,” she said, and kicked off her Guccis. “Your boat is lovely, by the way.”

“Thank you. She was built in Southern California.”

“Your friend seems like a nice guy.”

I heard the shuffle of feet above deck, and the rattle of tools being tossed back in the box.

“He has his moments.”

She smiled and sipped her martini, and settled into the banquette. The equipment locker door slammed shut, and Snyder’s shadow preceded him down the stairs. He pulled a beer from the refrigerator just in time to hear her ask me if I was married.

I hadn’t seen that question coming.

“His lady recently broke up with him,” Snyder answered for me. “But he doesn’t seem to know it yet.”