“Willing?”
“Willing? Oh, sure, willing. Of course, it’s all in fun. Somebody doesn’t groove on that. Fine. Don’t party. You know?”
“What about the nude pictures.”
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S E A C H A N G E
“Oh those,” Mandy laughed and stubbed her cigarette out in the remains of her napoleon. “Tommy got it all rigged on his boat, cameras in the bedrooms, all hooked to a VCR.”
“Do the participants know they’re being taped?” Kelly Cruz said.
Mandy shrugged.
“I know,” she said, “because he showed me some pictures of me.”
“You didn’t mind?”
“Hell, no, fun stuff. I thought it was cool.”
“How’d you meet Mr. Ralston?” Kelly Cruz said.
“Around. I like yachts and men who own them,” Mandy said. “You hang around the right marinas and you get to see a lot of both.”
“And the other women?” Kelly Cruz said.
Mandy laughed.
“I’m not there,” she said, “because I’m interested in the other women.”
“Any names?”
“No. I don’t know any of them. There’s some babe named Brittany, and somebody named Janine, but I don’t know any last names.”
“Men?”
“Harry,” Mandy said with a big smile, “and Mike and a guy named Ace.”
“No last names,” Kelly Cruz said.
“We’re real informal on the yacht,” Mandy said.
“You know what Mr. Ralston does with all his videotapes?”
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R O B E R T B . P A R K E R
“He looks at them, I guess, in his spare time.”
Kelly Cruz nodded.
“Do you know where he is now?” Kelly Cruz said.
Mandy tipped her glass so that the small chunks of ice in the bottom slid into her mouth. She crunched them thoughtfully, and shook her head.
“He’s up north near Boston someplace,” she said after she swallowed. “There’s some big race thing going on.”
“Do you know when he’ll be back?” Kelly Cruz said.
Mandy shrugged and shook her head.
“Do you know anyone named Florence Horvath?” Kelly Cruz said.
“There was a Florence, hung with Tommy for a while.”
“Know anything about her?”
“She was old for Tommy.”
“Anything else?”
“No.”
“Know where she is now?” Kelly Cruz said.
“No.”
“Know any other friends of hers?”
“No.”
“Do you know Corliss and Claudia Plum?”
“Twins?” Mandy said.
“Yes.”
“Corliss and Claudia, yeah. They been on the boat with Tommy, pretty sure. I mean how many twins you meet, let alone named Claudia and Corliss. Yikes.”
“They party with Tommy too?”
