5

Thirty minutes later, Jack pushed hard on the throttle as he exited the five-mile-per-hour zone of the protected jetty. As the boat geared up, the vibrations ran through his body, and the salty wind whipped his face and hair. Cirrus clouds knifed the bright blue sky and jagged whitecaps stretched to the horizon. As he powered through a mild wake, he felt the stability of his modest craft and started to breathe normally again.

In the rapidly approaching distance he could see the Santa Monica Pier. Its psychedelic Ferris wheel and neon-lit roller coaster remained still in the morning light. The crowds were thin, but it was early.

Ten feet off the boat’s stern, a formation of pelicans flew in a V pattern inches above the water, looking like prehistoric birds of prey. The sight cheered him. Jack wasn’t in a stellar mood after the unexpected visit from Vincent Cardona, but his day was definitely looking up.

He left the pier behind in his rearview. After Cardona’s visit, there was no question where he was headed.

Paradise Cove.

If the incident in the news was an accident, no harm, no foul. He’d have a beautiful cruise up the Malibu coastline. If a crime had been committed, he’d better take a look before the site was picked clean.

Paradise Cove was a special piece of California real estate befitting its name. The protected cove of emerald water was surrounded by rocky shale cliffs draped in electric-red bougainvillea and mescaline-green succulents. Eucalyptus and palm trees fanned out high overhead and framed the high-end prefab mobile homes with their million-dollar views of the Pacific and the Paradise Cove Beach Café below.

Up closer, yellow police tape cordoned off a hundred-yard perimeter where technicians were collecting large pieces of debris from the boat crash and videotaping the scene. A grease stain spread ominously from the site of the explosion, fouling the pristine water.

Jack spotted bloody smears where the young woman had been thrown onto the rocky outcropping, but the body had long since been removed. Jack made a mental note to find out which coroner was handling the case.

Perched high on the cliff, Jack noticed, a middle-aged woman with a tangle of red hair, standing on the deck of her double-wide, was holding court. Her hands moved a mile a minute as she regaled a small crowd and pointed at the accident scene below. Jack decided to get her story after he got the lay of the land.

He dropped anchor, reached into the waves, and snagged a jagged piece of white-painted wooden debris that clearly had once been attached to the wreck. He stowed it for later examination. Then he pulled down the small inflatable Avalon that was secured onto the roof of the boat’s cabin.

Jack paddled for shore along the rickety wooden fishing pier. When he hit the beach, he jumped out and dragged the inflatable up onto the soft white sand.

Rows of Adirondack chairs were set up under faded grass-thatched umbrellas fronting the café’s picture windows. A smattering of patrons were eating an early lunch, and small groups of people stood on the beach watching the tech crew hard at work in the late-morning sun. He didn’t recognize any of the crew. He was just approaching the yellow security tape when he was stopped in his tracks.

“You have got to be shitting me, Bertolino. What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Where’s the warmth, Lieutenant Gallina?” Jack said even before he turned around. He couldn’t help but grin as Gallina and his partner, Tompkins, a lean, six-foot-tall African-American detective, kicked up a cloud of sand as they drew closer.

Gallina was an acquired taste, and Jack wasn’t a fan. A head shorter than his partner, midthirties, with pasty-white skin that hung loose on his jowls. The lieutenant’s receding hairline looked to have taken another step back and he’d put on some weight. He didn’t have the bones for it, Jack mused, enjoying the observation a little too much. The lieutenant had arrested Jack for a murder he hadn’t committed, an event that understandably put a strain on their relationship.

“Tompkins,” Jack said with a little more enthusiasm.

“What, things too quiet for you after you set off an international incident?” Tompkins asked, tongue in cheek. He wiped some sweat off his forehead. “Good police work,” he added.

“I got pulled in kicking and screaming,” Jack said, deflecting the compliment.

“I know you’re on the wrong beach and not here to fuck with our crime scene,” Gallina stated.

“It was a crime?” Jack asked.

“Leaning that way; we’re waiting on the coroner’s report,” he offered, instantly regretting his decision to share intel.

“Either that or suicide,” Tompkins added. “But it looks like the throttle could’ve been locked down. Too early to tell.”

“Any witnesses?”

Gallina exchanged an extended look with his partner. He came to a decision and answered the question.

“Some boozy broad. Gave off enough fumes I was afraid to stand near her when she lit up. Kept yakking about the crush she had on Don Johnson and a Miami Vice boat she saw heading away before the explosion.”

“She saw the accident. Nothing specific except the direction the other boat was headed. South,” Tompkins added.

Jack nodded. He’d had a lot of experience with cigarette boats in Miami. The cartels used them to pick up bundles of cocaine dropped in international waters and then ran them back into Miami cloaked in darkness. He couldn’t remember offhand how far a cigarette boat could travel on a tank of gas, but he’d get that information in case there was a connection between the two dead women.

Tompkins raised his eyebrows in a question that Gallina put words to.

“You are blessing us with your presence because . . .”

“I was approached with a missing-persons case this morning. The client, who shall remain nameless, brought up the possibility of a connection. His daughter has the same look and the age is spot-on for both women who turned up dead in the past few weeks.

“I haven’t made a commitment yet,” Jack said. “Just thought I’d take a look around since I was in the neighborhood.”

“If you come up with anything we should know, call. Let us handle it, Bertolino.”

“Will do,” Jack said as he turned and walked back toward the café. No one believed a word of it.

Instead of heading back to the inflatable, he turned left through the parking lot and hiked up the road that led to the mobile homes.

By that time the crowd had dispersed, and the woman in question was sitting on her front porch in a wicker chair with her eyes closed, burning what wasn’t already dangerously tanned on her face. One hand was wrapped tightly around a red metal goblet that might have contained iced tea. Long Island iced tea, Jack suspected. The pink lipstick mark on the rim was covered in beaded condensation. She had red hair that had been augmented with red dye and wore a red zip-up Nike workout suit revealing cleavage that demanded to be zipped up another six inches.

Jack rapped on the wooden railway and the woman almost leapt out of her sun-damaged skin. Not unattractive. Just tired.

“I didn’t mean to startle you. I just wanted to ask you a few questions about the accident,” he said.

When the woman’s eyes cleared from the sun blindness and she focused on Jack, she purred, “Come up.” She held out a once-elegant hand. “Maggie Sheffield. And if it was an accident, the woman had to be stoned, dead, or asleep at the wheel,” she noted with a nasality that shattered any notion of elegance.

Jack shook her hand, and she held on for an uncomfortable moment too long.

“Jack Bertolino.”

“You’re certainly easier on the eyes than the other two detectives I spoke with.”

Jack would be sure to share her critique the next time he ran into Gallina and Tompkins.

“You saw the actual crash?”

“I heard it before I saw it. Sounded like a mosquito. Small outboard engine. Old wooden boat. Sat low in the water. When I walked out the door, I could see she was headed for the rocks. Stevie Wonder could have seen the rocks. The tide was out and there was no way she could have mistaken them for sand. I shouted, but it didn’t do any good. I’m still shaking.”

Maggie held out her hand and indeed it betrayed a slight tremor. More booze-induced than from nerves, Jack suspected.

“I can still see that poor girl’s body lying on the rocks. She looked broken.”

“What else did you see?”

“She was naked. I mean, who goes out in a boat at night dressed in nothing but her birthday suit? It’s too damn cold.”

The question was rhetorical, but Jack noted Gallina hadn’t shared that little tidbit. Both women were found naked.

“And then there was that sexy boat that drove away before she crashed,” Maggie said.

“What did it look like?”

“Well, like Don Johnson should have been driving it. Like a jet.”

“A cigarette boat?”

“Yes,” she said, a little too excited. “That’s what they called it on Miami Vice. They don’t make TV like that anymore. I used to—”

Jack stopped her with, “Color?”

“Colors,” she said, annoyed he had interrupted her flow. “Three long thick stripes. Different colors but I couldn’t tell you for the life of me what they were. Just different shades of color.”

“Did it look like the two boats were together? Did they arrive together?” Jack asked.

“I couldn’t say, but the girl was butt-naked. They couldn’t have missed her. They must have gotten an eyeful, but they sure as hell didn’t turn back to help.”

“Did you see the pilot? Man or woman, how many?”

“Now that I think about it, there were two. Men, I think. It was too dark to really tell, though, and they were already beyond the spillover from the café’s security lights.”

“Anything else you can think of?”

“Not offhand, Detective, but why don’t you leave me your card? If anything comes to mind I’ll ring you up.”

Jack knew he might live to regret it, but he pulled out one of his cards and passed it to Maggie, being careful to keep his fingers away from her snapping manicured nails.

Jack didn’t trust coincidence. Not when two women, both young, blond, and naked, turned up dead on the seashore. Either they’d been enjoying a good time that got away from them, or someone had deliberately sent them to an early grave.