Page 41 of Nightshade

THE SEAS WERE rough on the Express ride back to Catalina but things were smooth between Stil and Tash. They sat inside and away from the spray and were so engrossed in their conversation that they didn’t bother to get up with all the tourists and go to the stern deck to watch the fleet of porpoises jumping in the boat’s wake. The closer they got to Avalon, the more Stilwell saw the tension ease out of Tash’s face. It was reassuring in the moment, but it also reinforced his belief that a future with this woman meant a future on the island. That was going to be fine in the short term. The island felt like home to him. But he wasn’t sure he liked the idea of the rest of his life being predetermined.

The thrum of the engines and the up-and-down rhythm of the rolling seas helped put him into a pleasant daze as she held his right hand, took one finger at a time, and massaged the joints. She announced that she wanted to cook dinner that night and would go directly from the dock to Vons to pick up groceries if he could handle both their suitcases and his backpack.

“Not a problem,” he said. “Whose place are we going to?”

“Yours,” Tash said.

Another good sign, he thought.

“What are you making?”

“Not sure yet. It’ll be a surprise.”

“Okay. Cool.”

“You know I told Dennis I was taking a few days off. I only promised to be back for the weekend. You want to maybe go camping out at Two Harbors now that you don’t go back on duty till the shrink signs your RTD?”

“Uh, maybe. Yeah, sounds good. When do you want to go?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Uh…”

“What?”

“Just wondering if I’ll need to be around for any final questions from the shooting team. Can I just check in the morning and then we’ll make a plan?”

“Fine.”

Her tone turned cold with that one word. Stilwell didn’t want to lie to her, but he needed to be ready to go back to Long Beach if Juarez was successful in bringing in Terranova.

“They might want me to come over for another sit-down.”

“Why? You’ve told them everything. What more can they ask?”

“That’s how they do it. They make you tell the story over and over at different times to see if you slip and your story changes. It’s going to be done soon, but let me just check with them tomorrow. If we’re camping somewhere and I don’t have cell service, it could be a problem. Technically, even though I’m relieved of duty, I’m supposed to be available to the investigators.”

“What a nightmare.”

Stilwell wanted to stop the cascade of lies and get her back into a positive mood.

“You want to rent a boat and go fishing?” he asked. “Or just stay on land?”

“We can go fishing,” she said. “That’ll be fun.”

“Then we’ll rent a boat. Or we could charter. I know this guy who works on a charter over there.”

“No, just you and me. Maybe just use my kayak and a rental for you.”

“That’s good too.”

It appeared he’d successfully weathered the rough seas of guilt and dishonesty. But like a gambler who wants to make one more bet, Stilwell pushed his whole stack of chips into the pot.

“Can I ask you something?” he said. “It’s work-related.”

“What?” Tash said gamely.

“Do you know who Daniel Easterbrook is? Do you ever deal with him directly?”

“I know him because he’s a boat owner. Uh, I deal with him occasionally. Why? He’s got a nice boat.”

“He’s the guy I went to see last night.”

“In Pasadena? I didn’t know that’s where he lived.”

“Well, South Pasadena now. What is your take on him? Good guy? Bad guy?”

“Well, you can hardly tell by the sort of interactions we have with the boat owners. But they generally fall into two categories. You’ve got your rich, entitled guys who treat you like you’re there solely to give them what they want, and you’ve got the ones who don’t. Mr. Easterbrook is definitely in the second camp. He seems like a nice guy. He always says thanks over the radio when he works with the tower or the pilot boats. Why? Is he mixed up with the girl with the purple hair?”

“He knew her. Well.”

“Is he a suspect?”

“Maybe. At least a person of interest.”

He realized he should not be talking to her about the case.

“What kind of boat does he have?”

“Uh, I think it’s a Hylas. Fifty-plus feet. It’s super-nice.”

“That a yacht or a sailboat?”

“Sail.”

“Oceangoing? Could he make it to Tahiti?”

“If he knows what he’s doing. Those ocean sloops can easily cover two hundred miles in a day. But that’s still a long journey.”

A long journey Easterbrook would now have to make on his own. Stilwell wondered if he should risk checking in with Sampedro about the interview he’d said he and Ahearn would conduct with Easterbrook. He knew that he might wind up in another confrontation with Ahearn. He decided it was too soon. He had only told Sampedro about Easterbrook a few hours earlier. He would wait until the next morning to check in.

“What about Charles Crane over at the Black Marlin?” he asked. “Do you ever deal with him?”

“Oh, yeah, every now and then when there’s a complaint about something in the harbor from a member of the club,” Tash said. “He’ll call us up and explain the member’s complaint. He’s definitely in the first camp I was talking about.”

“Crane is, or the members who complain?”

“Crane, and we kind of laugh about it. Because he always acts all entitled, and he’s just a glorified servant, if you ask me. He’s not the rich guy but he sure acts like he is.”

“You remember any sort of complaint in particular?”

Stilwell felt and heard the engines throttle down as the ferry approached the mouth of Avalon Harbor. He had been on the Express so many times that he knew this meant they were ten minutes from docking. Neither he nor Tash made a move to get up from their seats.

“Uh, I think the last time was when he called to complain that Judge Harrell was making too much of a wake with his boat,” Tash said.

“Really?” Stilwell said. “I wouldn’t think that old Viking could make that much of a wake. Besides, I pick him up most Fridays and he doesn’t come plowing in.”

“It’s when he leaves. He’s always in a hurry to get back, I guess. When he heads down the lane behind the BMC, he rocks the floating dock and the tenders. Sometimes there are members out there and they get mad.”

“You ever tell the judge to mind the wake?”

“I have, yeah. But I think it only encourages him. I don’t think he likes those rich guys ever since they kicked him out.”

“Wait a minute—they kicked him out? When was that? What did he do?”

“He didn’t really do anything. But for, like, fifty years they used to give the judge assigned to the island court an honorary membership.”

“Like the mayor.”

“Right, and I think it was mostly so the judge could have lunch at the club after he came over to hear cases. But Judge Harrell has a boat and that was new. I guess before him, the judges used the Express. But Harrell comes by boat, and so he really started using the club—you know, coming over on weekends, using their moorings like a real member, not an honorary one.”

“And they didn’t like that.”

“No. So they said no more membership, and they told him it was, like, a belt-tightening move. But everybody knew the real reason—including the judge. The club members don’t like outsiders acting like they belong.”

Stilwell nodded as he thought about Judge Harrell’s fall from grace at the Black Marlin Club. Heaven help any member who had to appear before the judge as a defendant.

People started lining up in the aisles to exit before the ferry was even docked. Stil and Tash waited to stand up until after the jolt of the vessel hitting the rubber liners of the pier. Stilwell slung his backpack over his shoulders and managed the two roller suitcases as they got off. Tash asked him if there was anything from Vons he wanted her to pick up and he said they might need coffee for the brewer at his house.

They split up on Crescent, Stilwell heading toward home and Tash going up Sumner to the grocery store.

Two minutes later Stilwell was dragging the two roller bags behind him through modest crowds of tourists when his phone buzzed in his pocket. There was a number on the screen he didn’t recognize, but he stopped and took the call anyway, anticipating that he would be telling someone that he was off duty until further notice.

But it was Lionel McKey, the reporter from the Call, engaging in the reporter’s trick of calling from a line that wouldn’t be recognized in hopes that a reluctant source would answer.

“What do you want, Lionel?” Stilwell said. “I’m off duty, and if this is about Friday, you know I can’t comment pending the outcome of the investigation.”

“It’s not about Friday,” the reporter said. “It’s about the press release the sheriff’s office just put out.”

“I don’t know anything about a press release. You’ll have to call—”

“They say they’ve solved the woman-in-the-water case. That’s our story, and I’d hoped you would have at least given me a heads-up before it went out to every newsroom in the damn county.”

“Wait a minute. Just hold on a second.”

“Fine.”

Stilwell looked around. Tourists were passing on both sides of him and it wasn’t the right place for a call like this. He spotted an empty bench facing the harbor. He slipped the phone into his shirt pocket, grabbed the handles of the suitcases, and dragged them over to the bench. Sitting down, he retrieved the phone from his pocket.

“Lionel, do you have the press release there?” he asked.

“Yeah, they just put it out,” McKey said.

“Okay, read it to me.”

“It’s kind of long.”

“Just read it to me. I haven’t seen it. I can’t comment on it if I don’t know what it says, okay?”

That was an old cop trick. To act like you’re willing to comment if the journalist will reveal what he’s got.

“All right, I’ll read it,” McKey said. “It says: ‘Today the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department announced its findings in the homicide of twenty-eight-year-old Leigh-Anne Moss, whose body was found May twenty-third in Avalon Harbor on Santa Catalina Island. Moss was bludgeoned to death before her body was weighted with a boat anchor and submerged in the harbor. In an intensive ten-day investigation, detectives from the homicide unit and the sheriff’s substation in Avalon were able to identify Daniel Easterbrook, age forty-four, of South Pasadena, as a suspect in the case. Today—’”

“Ah, Jesus,” Stilwell said.

“What? You want me to stop?”

“No, just keep reading.”

“‘Today, when investigators went to his home to question Easterbrook about the killing, they found him dead by apparent suicide. Captain Roger Corum said that there is evidence that Easterbrook, who was married but had recently separated from his wife, had been involved romantically with the victim and that she had tried to break off the relationship. Investigators believe Easterbrook, an attorney, met Moss in Avalon, where she worked as a waitress at the Black Marlin Club. Corum said that DNA evidence is being analyzed that investigators believe will further connect Easterbrook to the death of Ms. Moss. Corum said that the investigation is ongoing and further details will be withheld until its completion. He thanked investigators from the homicide unit and the Catalina substation for their tireless’—blah-blah-blah, and that’s it. Now, can you tell me what exactly led you to Easterbrook?”

“No, I can’t.”

“Was he a member of the Black Marlin Club?”

“No comment.”

“Come on, man, you said you would comment if I read it. I need something nobody else has. This is our turf. Our story.”

“It’s nobody’s story. They have it wrong.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“That’s off the record.”

“No, you can’t do that. You can’t say something and then afterward say it’s off the record. What do you mean, they have it wrong?”

“I have to go.”

Stilwell disconnected and got up off the bench.