actually making them worse, touching them so much. He used to raise champion roses.”
Landry ticked the family off on his fingers. “Your mom, your dad, the senator, and you. Have I got that right?”
“My cousin Zoe lived here until last night.”
“Oh?”
“We got in a fight and she moved out. She’s a pain in the ass, but in another way, she’s really amusing. God, was she upset when I threw her out.”
“You threw her out?”
“Uh-huh. She said bad things about my boyfriend.”
“You have a boyfriend?”
Riley told him about her boyfriend, Luke. He’d worked for the tree and lawn service that kept the grounds neat. She told Landry that she and Luke had been in love and were planning to run away together, like Romeo and Juliet. But then he died.
“How’d he die?”
“In a shoot-out with the police.” She told him the story, portraying Luke as an outlaw. “He wasn’t going to let anyone take him—he wasn’t going to go without a fight.”
Landry thought that kind of logic was the ultimate in stupidity. “Why did he take that woman hostage?”
Riley didn’t have an answer to that—it didn’t fit with Luke’s heroic image. She had no idea why Luke Perdue would take a woman hostage in a motel. None at all. So she glossed over it with proof that he loved her, then went back to blaming Zoe for saying bad things about him.
“What did she say?”
“She said he was sneaking around spying on the vice president. She was lying.”
Landry thought this was an interesting side trip. He didn’t know if it had any bearing on his own investigation. He’d have to ask Franklin about it. It was an interesting coincidence that Luke Perdue got himself killed in a motel holding a woman hostage.
Was this the hostage Special Agent Eric Salter shot? Eric Salter, the FBI agent he was currently impersonating.
Eric Salter had been consumed with guilt because his shot had taken out both the bad guy and the female hostage. Someone—Cardamone, probably—blackmailed Salter into doing jobs for him. He had been one of the two men keeping track of Franklin Haddox.
Small world.
The dogs accompanied them to the octagon house. They’d run ahead, then circle back. Always watching Landry and Riley to gauge their reactions. Outside the octagon house, Riley turned into a tour director. She gave Landry a canned speech she must have repeated a hundred times. There were two stories, a basement, and a cupola, she said. The low hill it sat on was man-made, she said. You could see the whole island from the cupola, she said.
Close up, the octagon house looked smaller than he’d expected. Riley told him the island had been built almost from scratch in the twenties—the reason it could accommodate a basement and the tunnels in an area where you normally wouldn’t find basements or tunnels. The tunnel, she said, was considered a “structural marvel”—those were the words she used—and had been designed in such a way that it would not flood during storms. She also told him her grandfather was sensitive to sunlight, so he had a room in the basement. Stairs from the outside led down to the basement. Landry noted that the steps had once been wide but were now narrow, to make room for the wheelchair ramp running alongside.
They went up the steps into the house, the dogs’ toenails clicking on the hardwood floor. The ankle-biters had given up trying to penetrate Landry’s desert boots.
The floor was empty of furniture. The room partitions had been taken out, except for what appeared to be a kitchen and a bathroom by the stairwell along the far wall. The windows let in plenty of sunlight. You would be able to see someone coming from all eight windows.
“What do you use this place for?” Landry asked.
“Mostly press conferences, when the veep is here. We rent this floor out for parties and weddings. We don’t really need the money, but Mommy thinks the place should be used. Once a month, some wildlife group meets here. Upstairs is storage.”
“May I look around?”
She shrugged. “Sure.”
She’d clearly lost interest in him. The novelty had worn off. It was heartbreaking. He would need years of therapy to recover from such a devastating blow. As he went up the stairs, he heard her talking on her cell phone.
The upstairs was as advertised. Jumbles of old furniture, some of which might be antique—Landry wouldn’t know. Ranks of folding chairs and long folding tables, school cafeteria-type stuff. The door to the cupola was locked. He came back down the stairs, his shoes echoing in the empty space. The dogs funneled down behind him and followed as he stepped into the sunlight.
Riley was outside, texting.
Frank drove up in his golf cart. “Don’t you think we should get this show on the road?”
“We’re just getting to know each other,” Riley said between text messages. By now it was a symbolic fight, not a real one.
“Scoot.”
“Daddy—”
“I mean it.”
“Fine.” She didn’t stomp off, but it was close.
Frank patted the passenger seat of the golf cart. Landry got in. “I thought we’d go to the cabanas,” Frank said as they zipped down the path. “It’s private, so no one will overhear.”
“Are you nervous?”
“Nope. Just cautious. This guy has antennae like a lobster.”
“He won’t be able to bother anybody when he’s in supermax.”
“That’s what I’m counting on.”
As Landry had surmised, the cabanas were really bungalows, tastefully done up in what Landry thought was a cross between art deco and beach cottage. “Before we get started,” Landry said, “I’d like to see the passageway.”
“Sure thing.” Franklin led him outside and around to a small structure, a pool shed set flush to their cabana. Inside, pool equipment was hung neatly. There was a narrow space to the right, and beyond that a small closet—a restroom for the landscapers, Frank said. He opened the door to what looked like basement steps in a regular house. The steps and walls were concrete. The workmanship was nothing to write home about, but the tunnel had lasted since the twenties—not bad. Frank pulled the string to the overhead lightbulb and they started down, their footsteps echoing on the walls. It got damper and cooler as they went down, seven steps. The steps opened onto a narrow passageway stretching into the darkness. The tunnel reminded Landry of a mineshaft, timbered at intervals. He had to hunch his shoulders and pull his head in like a turtle to go through. Overhead bulbs lit the way. You had to pull each one on as you went—very low-tech. Three of them were out. About thirty yards in, they came to a T. Franklin explained that the tunnel on the left led to the octagon house. They took the tunnel on the right. At the end of the passageway, they reached another door, also without a lock. Approximately fifty-five yards in. The steps up were wooden and led to a structure similar to the pool shed. Wood-planked and cramped. They emerged out onto one of the docks inside the cavernous boathouse.
“Pretty neat, eh?” Franklin said. “They had wheelbarrows they’d trundle the bootleg whiskey in. It’s also how my great-grandfather smuggled in his girlfriend.”
“His girlfriend?”
“An actress called Ariel Sawyer. She was big early on in the silent era. She was the girlfriend of a notorious gangster named Hugh Gant. Great-granddad was seeing her on the sly. That’s what the tunnel was for—not the booze. The booze came in by boat, and they could have just as easily carted it along the paths. It’s a private island—who’d see them? But he couldn’t take a chance with Ariel.
