Murder Most Frothy

“Joy, can I talk to you a minute?” I asked after returning from the parking lot.

My daughter had been talking with Graydon Faas and Colleen O’Brien by the dessert prep area. I waved her over to the back door.

“I’m off at eleven,” I told her, “but I know you’re here until closing.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So I thought I’d be going straight back to David’s, but I have some business to take care of first.”

“At eleven at night? What sort of business?”

“It’s no big deal, honey. I just want you to stay available by cell phone. Don’t power it down. Let me know what you’re going to do, where you’re going to be. Okay?”

“Graydon and I are just going out for a little while. We’re both going to surf in the morning, so I won’t be in too late. If my plans change, I’ll tell you.”

“You have your birth control?” I whispered.

Joy rolled her eyes. “Yes, Mom. If I need it, I have it! Please don’t worry so much!”

A few hours later, at fifteen minutes to midnight, I was sitting behind the wheel of my Honda in the parking lot of Monroe’s Marina.

The phone call to O’Rourke hadn’t just frustrated me. It had made me angry. And, okay, maybe that anger had impaired my judgment just a little bit. I’m sure Matt would have said as much. But at this very moment, I wasn’t emotional. I was calm, cool, and trying to think as logically as I possibly could.

Detective O’Rourke believed Rand had given a solid alibi the night of Treat’s murder. But I trusted O’Rourke to catch the killer about as much as I trusted Rand, which is to say not at all. Consequently, I couldn’t get Jim Rand’s invitation out of my head.

“Midnight tonight…Come out with me…. After you see with your own eyes that I’m telling you the truth, you can cross me off your suspect list, and I’ll give you any photo you like.”

“Or you’ll push me overboard,” I muttered, remembering my earlier response to his invitation.

I got out of the car and slammed the door. With more than a few nerves fraying, I walked down one of the marina’s many long docks, and right up to Rabbit Run. The yacht was still in its slip, completely dark. There was no sign of Jim Rand anywhere. In fact, there was no sign of anyone on board.

“Damn you, Rand,” I muttered.

It was obvious he had been pulling my leg about the invitation. I am such a fool. He was playing me.

“Excuse me, ma’am, may I help you?”

I turned to find a young man walking towards me along the dock. He had short brown hair, a baby face with a very serious expression, and he wore a navy blue Windbreaker with the words MONROE’S MARINA SECURITY emblazoned on the front. The Windbreaker was unzipped and I noticed a picture ID clipped to the pocket of his shirt. I read the name beneath the picture.

“T. Gurt.”

“That’s my name, ma’am. What are you doing out here?”

“Oh, I was supposed to meet someone. But he’s clearly standing me up.”

“Sorry about that. Can I help you call a taxi?”

“No, no, I have my car in the lot. I was just leaving.”

“All right, ma’am. Goodnight,” he said, and started to head back down the dock.

“Wait,” I called.

The young man turned back. “Yes, ma’am?”

“Do you have an Aunt Alberta by any chance?”

The young man nodded. “Yes, ma’am, Alberta Gurt.”

“I know her. She’s a very nice woman. So you must be Thomas?”

“That’s right.”

“She said you had a security job here in Hampton Bays.”

“I do, during the day.” He checked his watch. “And at midnight, I have another job to go to. Sorry to cut you short, ma’am, but I’m due to change the shift.”

“I understand. Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise.”

As Thomas Gurt headed back to the marina office, I recalled what Alberta had said about Thomas having trouble in his youth, but then straightening out after enlisting in the army. With all those “ma’ams” it wasn’t hard to believe he’d been a GI.

I hadn’t forgotten my suspicions of Alberta. She had motive to murder David, and Thomas was obviously comfortable with firearms. Still…the baby faced kid seemed so earnest.

“Murderers come in all temperaments, Clare. All shapes, all sizes.”

Mike Quinn’s words came back to me then. And I knew I shouldn’t let a momentary good impression persuade me one way or the other. In the end, I wasn’t ruling out anyone as a suspect. Which led me back to the reason I’d come here in the first place.

As I strode back down the dock and into the parking lot, I checked my watch. It was exactly midnight now. If Jim Rand had played me, I figured he’d also played the authorities—cooked up some bogus alibi to send the cops in another direction. But I wasn’t going to give up on Rand as easily as O’Rourke apparently had.

I decided to question the frogman myself. If he was telling the truth, I wanted to hear it with my own ears, find it believable with my own brain. But if he was protecting the person who hired him, I would find out who that person was.

I decided to drive over to Rand’s house in Bridgehampton, and if he wasn’t home, I would simply wait in my car until he showed. But one thing I am not going to do, I told myself as I yanked open my car door, I am not going to blow an opportunity to nail him.

“Giving up so soon?”

I turned to find Jim Rand standing no more than two feet away, his arms folded casually, his cocky confidence evident in his posture and expression. He’d cleaned up for our meeting. He’d shaved, exchanged his diver’s shirt for a seafoam green button-down. His blue jeans looked new.

For a second, I didn’t think I would find my voice. The man had approached me from behind, like a silent shadow in the dark marina parking lot. Somehow I managed to keep it together long enough to say—

“Yeah. You were a SEAL, all right.”

“I didn’t scare you, did I?”

“Were you trying to?”

“No. But a little payback is probably in order. You were trying to scare me, weren’t you?”

“When?”

“When do you think, Clare? When you sent the Suffolk County police to my house.”

I swallowed uneasily, didn’t expect to be put on the defensive. “I had to, Mr. Rand. You must have known that I would.”

“That’s why I’m very surprised to see you here. I’d already convinced myself you’d been playing me.”

“Funny, I was just thinking the same thing about you.”

He smiled. “Guess we think alike, you and I.”

“So are you going to take me out?”

He waved for me to follow him. We approached the rows of docks. But we didn’t go down the one I’d just left. Instead, he gestured to a lit boat on the far side of the marina.

“That’s not Rabbit Run,” I noted as we walked up to the slip.

“I never rent the same boat two nights in a row.”

“Why not?”

He shrugged. “Throws off the scent.”

We boarded tonight’s rental, Rabbit Is Rich, and headed out. This yacht was about thirty-five feet, too, but unlike Rabbit Run, the helm on this vessel was open to the air. It was a nice night, warm and clear, and the smell of the ocean was strong as we motored slowly out of the marina