'He looks ready to pee his pants. Is he feeling guilty about something?'
Lala holstered her phone and pushed up her sunglasses, which were slipping on her sweaty face. 'The other employees tell me he's a smooth operator with girls who like to party too much. The younger the better. But if he was involved in what happened to Glory, I think he would have kept his mouth shut rather than stick himself in the middle of our investigation.'
'Have we found anyone else who saw anything?'
'Not yet.'
'What about cameras? Don't they have any cameras out here?'
'Not too many spring breakers want hotels with eyes in the sky, you know? What happens on the beach stays on the beach. The only place they've got a camera is the lobby. We're looking at the tape.' She added, 'What about Mark Bradley? You get anything from him?
Cab tugged the buttons of his dress shirt away from his sticky chest and adjusted the gold chain on his neck. He smelled chlorine from the nearby hotel pool. 'He ducked me. I talked to the wife.'
'And?'
'And they're not crazy about answering questions. Let's dig up whatever we can about this incident in Door County last year. Call the sheriff up there. I want to know more about it before I talk to the sister and the boyfriend, OK?'
'Sure,' Lala said. Cab turned away toward Ronnie Trask, but Lala called after him. 'Hey, Cab?'
'What?
'I saw your mother in a movie last night.'
It was an innocuous comment for her to make, but every time they deviated from work talk, he felt gravity again, as if the two of them were circling the black hole. He recognized it was a big leap for Lala even to say it, and he wondered if she had an ulterior motive.
'Yeah? Which one?'
'Sapphirica.'
Cab nodded. 'That was twenty years ago. I was on set with her when she filmed that one in Italy. It won a special jury prize at Sundance.'
'Did you travel with her a lot growing up?' Lala asked.
'Yeah, it was like being an army brat without the guns.'
'You look a lot like her,' she told him.
'Thanks.'
'So why aren't you an actor like her, anyway? You've got the looks for it.'
'My head kept getting cropped out of the frame.'
Lala laughed, but it was hollow. She went back to her phone as if he'd dismissed her with an expletive, rather than a joke. He thought about saying something more, but he didn't. He was his mother's son.
Tarla Bolton was a fierce loner, and so was Cab. She'd never married and never even acknowledged the man who got her pregnant. He didn't know who his father was, although he had narrowed the field to a few likely candidates based on the film she was making at the time he was conceived. He'd never asked her for the truth.
Cab had never married either, although he'd got close. Once. Her name was Vivian Frost. Vivian was the reason he made a point of never trusting anyone. She was the reason he was always running.
Cab took a seat at the patio table opposite Ronnie Trask and pushed the chair back to make room for his long legs. He squinted up at the sky and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. 'God, this heat, huh?'
The bartender sucked on his lower lip and drummed the glass tabletop with his nails. 'Yeah.'
'I'm Cab Bolton. Naples Police.'
'Ronnie Trask. Naples bartender.' He added, 'What kind of a name is Cab?'
'Born in one,' Cab said. 'Oh.'
'You work here at the hotel, Ronnie?'
The man drained a last swallow from his Aquafina. 'Yeah. I work nights, I work afternoons, whenever they slot me in. Crappy schedule. I sleep somewhere in the middle.'
'You always work at the bar?'
'Yeah.'
'So tell me what happened last night.'
Trask shrugged. 'I closed up the pool bar at one o'clock. I was cleaning everything up. It must have been close to one thirty when I saw a teenage girl in a bikini on the far side of the terrace. She went through the palm trees out to the beach. End of story.'
'Was anyone else around? Employees or guests?'
'Nah, once the booze shuts down, the guests go to bed. I was the only one out here.'
'Tell me about the girl.'
'What about her? She was a cute kid. Young.'
'Was she alone?' Cab asked.
'Yeah, she was alone.' 'Did you talk to her?'
Trask scowled and got defensive. 'Hey, I told you she was on the opposite side of the terrace, didn't I? How was I supposed to talk to her?'
Cab let the man stew before he went on. 'You could see her clearly, though?'
'Clear enough, sure.'
'Could you see what she had in her hand?'
'Like what? She wasn't carrying anything.'
'So where'd she get the wine, Ronnie? We found a bottle of wine with the body.'
Trask tugged at his goatee. 'Oh, yeah. She had a bottle of wine with her. I forgot that.'
Cab slid a pen from inside his suitcoat pocket. He reached across I he table and rolled Trask's empty water bottle toward him with the cap of the pen. 'We're testing the wine bottle we found near the body for fingerprints. I think we'll test your water bottle, too.'
Trask cursed under his breath. 'Shit. OK. I sold her the wine.'
'She was sixteen.'
'I didn't know she was underage.'
'You already said she looked young.'
'Fuck it,' Trask breathed. 'So what, man? She gave me thirty bucks. These kids down here will always find a way to score booze, you know? Why shouldn't I get a slice? The hotel writes it off as breakage, and everyone's happy.'
'Not Glory Fischer. She's not happy, she's dead. Had she been drinking before you sold her the wine?'
Trask shook his head. 'She looked sober enough.'
'Did you help her drink it?'
His eyes widened. 'Say what?'
'Did you have a drink with her? Did you go with her to the beach?'
'Shit, no,' he hissed.
'Word is, you do well with the girls who come down here, Ronnie.'
'Yeah, well, I don't do jailbait.'
'So you did know she was underage.'
'Oh, for Christ's sake, sure I did. Big deal. I didn't go to the beach with her. I took her money, opened the bottle for her, and she went
Cab heard the panic in Trask's voice. 'What did the girl say to you?' 'Nothing. She wanted a drink. That's it.'
'Did she say why she was out there?'
'No, man, no.'
'How did she behave?'
'What do you mean?'
'I mean, how was she acting? Upset? Happy? Angry?'
