Double Dog Dare (The Raine Stockton Dog Mystery Series) (14 page)

“Of course it doesn’t.”  It seemed to me he was walking faster, and the weight of his hand against my shoulder blade forced me to keep up.

“I mean, Rachelle Denison is a well-known person.  People would know if it wasn’t her.”

“Of course they would.”

“Susan thought it was her.  Everyone at the press conference thought it was her.”

“That’s because it was her.”

“But why would he say—”

“Raine, I don’t know.”  He voice was tense and hard.  “What I do know is that he’s got some other scheme going on and he’s trying to pull you into it and that’s not going to happen.  Now, I did the Christian thing,
I called a car for him, and unless he falls off the boat in the next five minutes, he’s going to be someone else’s problem, at least for tonight.  So can we just go?”

I said, “Wow.  You really don’t like him.
”

“Let’s just say this is not the way I pictured spending my vacation.”

“Still,” I murmured thoughtfully, “it really would be the perfect crime.”

Miles stopped, turned to me, and took both my shoulders.  He said, very distinctly, “There has been no crime.  And even if there had been, it has nothing to do with you, or me, or this glorious sunset we are missing because of some
deranged megalomaniac and his drunken fantasies.  Agreed?”

“But—
”

He kissed me.  I am not the kind of woman who can be distracted by a kiss, which Miles knows perfectly well, even though he is awfully good at it.  But when he said again, “Agreed?”  I felt some
measure of conciliation on my part was in order.  After all, he had gone to some trouble to arrange this evening, and I did appreciate it.

So I smiled and said, “Agreed.  The sunset is gorgeous.
  It’s just that… ”

He blew out an exasperated breath and let his head fall back briefly in a gesture of surrender.
  I might have gone on; in fact, I’m sure I would have, but suddenly there was a blast of light, a whooshing sound, and a muffled
boom
that seemed simultaneous with the flash of shock and terror that streaked across Miles’s face, and all of that seemed instantaneous with my knees and palms hitting the concrete when Miles pushed me down, sheltering me while embers of the sunset rained down around us in fiery shards.  

Dogs barked; people came to the rails of their boats and whipped out their phones; others shouted and ran toward us.  Somewhere in the distance there was the whooping sound of an alarm. The acrid smell of black smoke filled the air and blotted the sky.  Miles and I knelt together on the pavement, holding on to each other, unable to speak or even move; watching in ab
ject astonishment as his boat went up in flames.

~*~

TEN

T
hree other boats were damaged, fortunately with no one onboard, before the flames were extinguished.  Sightseers and boat owners were pushed back to the far end of the dock or into the parking lot, but even from that distance I could tell Miles’s boat was unsalvageable.  Spotlights and emergency lights gleamed in the puddles on the concrete as darkness fell, and everyone with a cell phone was taking pictures.  Fortunately, as someone had observed, the marina was not very crowded this time of year, otherwise the damage could have been much more extensive.

To me the marina seemed plenty crowded as people poured off their expensive yachts and returned from their expensive dinners to gape and point and jostle and shove.  That was probably why
I noticed the one figure who was still and quiet while the excitement whirled around him, leaning against a dark limousine with no expression whatsoever on his face and eyes that were cold and dead.  It was Alex Barry, and he did not look nearly as drunk as he had appeared when we last met.  After a time, he got into the car and the driver took him away.  He never once walked the few dozen steps to see if we were okay, or to express his concern to Miles over the boat.  He didn’t even acknowledge that I was looking at him.

He was, as Miles had indicated more than once, a bastard.

The fire chief—or was it the harbor master?—did not speak English, or he pretended not to, and it took awhile before Miles found someone in authority who did.  By this time his frustration was palpable. “I’ve already told you,” he said to the official-looking man in the button-down blue shirt with the clipboard in his hand, “we hadn’t even boarded the boat.  It had been docked since noon.  It was a sail-boat, for God’s sake.  They don’t just explode.”

The man nodded importantly. “Indeed, monsieur.  But you do store fuel on board?”

Miles looked as though the other man was still speaking French.  He said, “Do you mean for the outboard?”

I remembered that Miles had used an outboard engine to maneuver the boat out of the harbor that morning before raising the sails, and again to maneuver it into position before approaching the shallows where we had snorkeled.  It made navigating much easier, he’d explained, and was good for an emergency.  But how much gasoline could one of those things use?

The important man went on, “
Oui, c’est ca
, but also for cooking, for your food heater, yes?”

Miles frowned.  “No.  There’s no galley onboard, it’s a sailboat for the love of—
”

“
Mais non
.” He consulted his clipboard.  “It would appear that the propane food warmer malfunctioned and ignited the container of gasoline which was kept nearby. You are fortunate, monsieur,” he added sternly, “such a malfunction did not occur while you were at sea.”

“Food warmer,” Miles repeated, and as the angry confusion on his face slowly cleared
, I understood as well.

“Dinner was waiting,” I said, remembering his complaint when I had insisted we stop to check on Alex.  “The concierge service must have used a portable propane stove to keep it warm.”

He nodded absently, still frowning. “I’ve never used them to cater dinner on the boat before.” 

“Why would they leave an open flame unattended?” I wondered out loud.

His frown only deepened.  “A question for the insurance company.”  He looked at the official.  “When can I go onboard and check out the damage for myself?”

“I am afraid that will not be possible, monsieur.  The craft is not safe for boarding.”  The official
-looking  man handed Miles a paper from his clipboard.  “This is an order to have your vessel removed from the marina within five days. Failure to do so will result in significant fines and charges against you. You will also please visit the office of the harbor master at your earliest possible convenience, to review other paperwork.”  He paused and looked back in the direction of the charred remains of the sailboat.  “I am very sorry for your loss, monsieur.”  His regret sounded genuine.  “She must have been a beautiful boat.”

Miles agreed heavily, “She was.”

The man nodded his head, reminded Miles of the five-day deadline, and departed. I wrapped my hands around Miles’s arm and leaned in close in a gesture of comfort, pointing out, “It could have been worse.  We could have been onboard.”

“We should have been onboard.”  He looked at me, his expression haunted. “If you hadn’t insisted we stop and talk to Alex, we would have been onboard.  We might have even been out of the harbor.”

“Or,” I pointed out, “you might have noticed whatever was wrong with the propane stove and turned it off.”  I gave a short sharp shake of my head, refusing to go there.  “That’s the thing about accidents.  Second-guessing never makes them any better.”

He said, almost to himself, “The reserve fuel was in the storage bench. I can’t figure out how…”

He let the sentence trail off but I knew what he was thinking.  There were a lot of unanswered questions.  And how much gasoline would it have taken to produce an explosion and flash fire like that one, anyway?

Abruptly, almost fiercely, Miles drew me close and kissed my hair.  I knew I smelled like smoke and charred gasoline, and so did he.  He said, “Let’s get you some first aid.  And dinner.”

The first aid referred to my scraped knee; the cinder-holes in his silk shirt— the one that was the exact shade of his eyes—were much more painful to me.  As for dinner… I was really wishing I had stayed home for spaghetti from Embargo. 

I mustered a smile. “Maybe a rain check on dinner.  Any chance we could call it a night?”

He responded by squeezing my waist, and I leaned into the strong muscles of his chest.  “Baby, two great minds with but a single thought.”

His phone rang.  I knew Miles had blocked all calls for th
e length of this trip from anyone except his mother, Melanie, or me.  I guessed one of them had seen something on the news about the fire at the marina and so, from the expression on his face, did Miles.  He answered with a casual, “Hi, Mom.  Everything’s fine. I was going to call.”

But then he was quiet, listening.
I saw the tiny muscles in his face go slack, and in the glare of the phosphorescent lights, his lips seemed to lose color.  He said hoarsely, “When?”

I stared at him
, trying to hear what was being said on the other end of the connection, trying to read his expression.  Except for the clatter of voices and the grind of engines and the mutter of equipment all around us, there was silence.  It was a silence of the mind, and it seemed to go straight to my heart. 

After forever, Miles said, “We’re on our way.
”

He put away his phone and he looked at me.  His eyes were two dark orbs
that looked through me and saw nothing.  He said, “It’s Mel.”  His voice was stunned and laced with disbelief, the voice of a man who never expected to speak the words he was about to say.  “She’s disappeared.”

~*~

Your mind goes down all the usual paths. 
Misunderstanding.  Missed connection.  She’ll be home before we get there, apologetic and contrite and with a really, really good explanation
.  Even though I knew Rita would not have called in a panic if there was a chance any of those things were true.  It was dark.  It had been dark for almost an hour.  And Rita had been searching for Melanie since sunset.

I said things like,
“She’s a smart girl.” 
Just a little too independent
.  “She knows how to take care of herself.” 
And she wouldn’t just disappear
.   “She knows her way around the island.”  But her phone was lying on her bed where she had left it before she went to the beach that afternoon.  She couldn’t call for help if she wanted to.

Then there were those other paths, the paths I knew Miles’s mind was taking too, the paths I didn’t want to explore, couldn’t bear to explore. 
The daughter of a wealthy man.
An island with a foreign government, surrounded by water where anything could—and often did—happen. Do you know why burials at sea are so efficient, Miss Pretty Lady? 

Melanie would never, ever just disappear.  Not if she had a choice.

“Okay,” I breathed out, hardly aware I was speaking aloud.  “Just wait.  We don’t know the details.  It could be simple.  Just wait.”

The drive to the marina had taken about twenty minutes.  The drive home took half that time, and Miles never said a single word.

The lights were blazing all over the house and the grounds when we pulled up.  A single police car was out front.  It was one of those ridiculous little Euro cars with only one light on top and it wasn’t even flashing.  I don’t know why a detail like that should strike me as so outrageous, but it did.  

I don’t remember leaving the car.  I barreled into the house with my breath dragging in my chest, and Miles a powerful shadow at my side.  No scrabbling of claws on the marble floor.  No cheerful, “Hi, Raine!”
No waving golden tail.  Just harsh lights and cold silence and Rita, looking small and vulnerable as she stood in the center of the big room, hugging her arms and talking to the uniformed officer.  When she saw Miles, she broke off and rushed to him; he embraced her and they held on to each other, hard, for a long moment before he said, “Tell me.”

But because she was his mother, she touched his soot-smudged cheek and noticed the burn holes in his shirt and she said, “What happened?”

“Nothing.  A fire at the marina.  It doesn’t matter. How long has she been gone?”  
      The officer said, “You are Monsieur Young?”

Miles barely glanced at him.  He held his mother’s eyes, willing her to stay calm.  “What happened?”

Her hand fluttered to her lips and she took half a breath to compose herself.  “We took Cisco for a walk on the beach after dinner. We kept him on leash, like you asked, Raine.  We didn’t go far.  It was still light when we got back. Melanie and Cisco ran ahead up the steps, the way they always do.  They went through the gate and it closed behind them. I was only a few minutes behind…”  She had to stop and I could tell she was trying not to cry.  I wanted to tell her it wasn’t her fault, that everything was going to be okay, and I wanted to scream at her to go on.

Rita braced herself and continued, “Everything seemed normal at first. The gate was locked, the back doors were open but you know Melanie never closes them.  I went inside and called her, but she didn’t answer.  I—I  thought she didn’t hear me.  We were going to watch a movie, so I made popcorn.  Then I realized I didn’t hear Cisco.
”

She glanced at me, but I was okay.  I knew I was going to hear this. Melanie wouldn’t leave Cisco.  Cisco wouldn’t leave Melanie.  Not if either one of them had a choice.

Rita swallowed hard.  “That’s when I started looking for them, but I didn’t really panic. Not then.  I thought Melanie had taken Cisco to the pool, so I checked.  I walked all around the grounds, calling them.  Then I checked the house, every room.  But they were gone.”

Okay then.  This is what I do.  I find missing people. I knew
the questions to ask. I knew the steps to take.  This is what I do.

I said, “How much time had passed by then since you last saw them?”

She looked uncertain.  “I don’t know.  I might have been five minutes behind them at the beach.  It takes four minutes to make popcorn…  Maybe fifteen, twenty minutes.”

“And then you searched the neighborhood?”  Because that’s what I would have done.

She nodded.  “I thought… I don’t know, I thought Cisco might have gotten away from her and she chased him down the street.  Or that for some reason she’d decided to take him on a walk outside the gate.  I searched and I called until it was too dark to see, and I knocked on doors when I could, and then I came back here but they still weren’t home…”  Her voice had gotten higher and tighter with every word until finally it broke.  She started to cry.

I said, “Was the front door closed?”