was the original settlement on the island, and a place where working people and poorer retirees could still afford to live. It had been a thriving community for many years before the developers discovered our island and began to build bigger and bigger condominium projects for wealthy refugees from the Midwest and New England.
The Mar Vista hugs the shoreline of a little lagoon that meanders off upper Sarasota Bay. Tables and chairs are arranged on a patio overlooking the water. Servers were trudging back and forth between the kitchen and the tables, delivering lunch to the patrons.
Logan and I sat on the patio and ordered soft drinks. Logan told the server we were waiting for one more person. The noon sun was warm and a light breeze blew off the water, rustling the fronds of the palm trees that provided sparse shade to the diners. A large yacht, gleaming with white paint and polished bright work, cruised the Intracoastal, heading north toward Tampa Bay. A go-fast boat bounced over the yacht's wake, and with unmuffled engines roaring, passed to port.
Chief Lester arrived, walking among the diners, stopping to say hello to some of them. Bill was mid-forties about five foot eight, and while not overweight, sported a little paunch that didn't quite hang over his belt. He was wearing the same clothes as that morning: a navy blue golf shirt with a Longboat Key Police badge embroidered over the left breast, khaki pants, and black athletic shoes. No weapon was visible.
He took a seat at our table, grinned, and said, 'You guys get into more trouble. I don't know how you do it.'
Logan laughed. 'It ain't easy,' he said. 'Not at all.'
'What'd you find out about Yardley?' I asked.
'First off, lie's not Yardley,' said Bill. 'His real name is Clyde Varn. He's got quite a rap sheet. Fingerprints confirmed it.'
'What else?'
'He didn't live in that condo in Tampa, where you met him. His driver's license, the one with the name Yardley, had an address in Brooksville, but Varn hasn't lived there in years.'
Logan leaned forward, his elbows on the table. 'Who is he?' he asked.
'He used to be hired muscle for some of the drug rings that work out of south Florida. Apparently, he was some kind of a freelancer; worked for whichever group needed him. He's been arrested a dozen times, but only convicted once. Possession of marijuana. Did thirty days in the county lockup in Miami-Dade.'
I said, 'What about the condo in Tampa?'
'Owned by a Bahamian corporation. We're trying to find out who the shareholders are. That could take a while.'
Logan took a sip of his cola. 'Did the crime lab people find anything?'
The chief shook his head. 'Not much. He'd only been dead about an hour when Mrs. Johnson found him. He was shot on the boardwalk, about fifty feet from the gazebo where we found him. There was blood splatter in the area, and they found scuffmarks on the boards. Looks like the killer dragged him to the gazebo and propped him up.'
'Why?' I asked.
'Who knows? Why kill him on Longboat? Maybe they were trying to send a message to somebody. Maybe to the two of you.'
I shrugged. 'If somebody was, I don't understand the message.'
We sat quietly, sipping our colas. The waiter came, brought Bill a glass of iced tea and took our food orders. Logan asked for scallops, the chief chose a burger and fries, and I ordered a salad.
Bill said, 'Tell me more about this guy and your meeting the other day.'
Logan and I filled the chief in on what we knew about Yardley and why we went to see him. While we talked, the waiter brought our food and refilled our drinks.
Bill said, 'It's got to be connected to Peggy somehow.'
I chewed a bite of salad. 'What in the world was he doing with Peggy?' I asked.
The chief looked up from his burger. 'I wondered about that myself. I did some checking on missing young people in this area. Manatee and Sarasota have had reports of about twenty people missing in the last year. All of them were late teens or early twenties, all over eighteen. Male and female.'
Logan speared a scallop with his fork. 'Why wouldn't somebody get interested in that many disappearances?'
'Nobody put them together. There were one or two or three in various jurisdictions, both counties, Bradenton, Sarasota, Venice, North Port. They were all adults in the eyes of the law, so nobody got excited about them.'
'I bet their families did,' I said.
'You know what I mean, Matt,' said Bill. 'Cops have a lot better things to do than look for kids old enough to make their own decisions.'
'I guess,' I said. But I was thinking that Peggy's disappearance might be more than it seemed. I didn't like that thought.
CHAPTER NINE
'Why do you think Varn told us he dropped Peggy and her friends at Robarts Arena?' I asked Logan.
'Maybe he did.'
We were driving down the key, heading for my condo. The salad had not done much to fill me up, and I heard a faint rumbling from the area of my stomach.
I said, 'That doesn't make any sense, unless he had nothing to do with her disappearance. That's a pretty big coincidence to get my arms around. He admitted to spending the three days with them at Sea Club, and then he lied to us about who he was. The kids seemed to have dropped off the earth when he left them.'
'Why don't we see what was going on at Robarts the day he says he dropped them off?'
'Good call. The arena probably has a Web site.'
We pulled into my condo complex and parked next to a huge bougainvillea, its blood red blooms dancing in the breeze off the water. We took the elevator, sharing it with one of my neighbors, and got off on the second floor.
I had enclosed my balcony the year before, making it into a sunporch. I also put an air-conditioning duct out to the area. Florida is hot in the summer. My computer was set up there, giving me a magnificent view over Sarasota Bay as I surfed the Internet.
My new twenty-eight foot Grady-White walkaround sat sedately in its slip in front of the condo, bobbing slightly when a wake rolled in over the sandbar that separated our little harbor from the bay proper. The sun was high and the cerulean sky was dotted with puffy clouds. The Sister Keys, uninhabited mangrove islands, defined the eastern edge of the Intracoastal Waterway across from my home. Several elderly ladies were doing water aerobics in the pool that took up most of the space between my building and the docks.
I Googled Robarts Arena and came up with a list of events for the entire year. I scrolled down to the period three weeks before.
'Looks like a revival ended the same day that Peggy checked out of the Sea Club,' I said, pointing to the highlighted event.
'I can't see how that would be of interest to a guy like Varn.'
'We'll have to check it out. Let's see if the evangelist has a Web site.'
He did. I found it, and clicked on the tab that detailed his schedule.
'They moved on to Venice,' I said, 'and they've been there for three weeks. Last night was the last evening for saving local souls. Maybe somebody's still there.'
'Probably a waste of time. Let's go.'
We drove to the mainland and took Highway 41 to Venice, about fifteen miles south of Sarasota. The address given on the Web site turned out to be a large undeveloped lot on the highway south of the city limits, about halfway to the town of North Port.
The lot wasn't empty. A sea of canvas covered the ground, a tent being disassembled for transport. A crew
