dot’
“Yeah, okay. Here it is.” Graver studied the layout of streets and docks and slips and inlets. He knew the area. It was not inexpensive real estate. “The street in front of her place is a cul-de-sac.”
“Yeah. She lives about four, five houses from the circle.”
“So eight to ten houses have a good view of the front of her place,” Graver asked.
“That’s right.”
“Describe the place to me, the inside.”
As Neuman did this Graver listened, asked a few questions, verbally playing back the description to him as though he was looking in from the canal side. When he was satisfied, he fell silent again.
They took the 518 exit off the freeway and continued to Marina Bay Boulevard which they followed around toward the coast until they began seeing the entrances to the marinas and yacht clubs. Neuman slowed when he came to the long street that ran out onto the peninsula where Heath lived. It was late in the afternoon by now and the sun was low above Houston behind them, and the shadows were lengthening in front of them.
“Just go in far enough to see if her car is parked in front,” Graver said. “If it is, turn around and come back out.”
Neuman nodded and turned in to the street They didn’t have to go far before they saw the black Corvette.
“There it is,” Neuman said.
“Okay,” Graver said. “This is perfect We’re lucky. I know someone near here who’s got a boat.”
Neuman looked at Graver but said nothing as Graver gave him directions. Within fifteen minutes they were pulling up in front of another house with boat slips in the rear. It was miles away from Heath’s by land, but by water it was just a few minutes. The houses here were considerably more modest than those in Heath’s neighborhood. There were more banana trees here than palms, and the oily smell of the shipyards nearby permeated the still air. An occasional camper or fishing skiff was parked here and there under the rows of shaggy oleanders that separated the houses, and the driveways here were made of crushed mussel shells from the bay instead of smooth paving stones.
Graver directed Neuman into a driveway and the crunching of the tires on the shell base made a comfortable sound in the late heat and softening light of the afternoon. The garage in front of the car had been converted into living quarters and the crushed shell ran dead into the wall. An enormous outboard motor lay across two weathered sawhorses in front of the car. Neuman cut the motor, and Graver got out and walked between the car and the outboard motor to the front door that was shaded by an old mimosa that bloomed as brilliantly as if it had graced a palace garden.
Graver knocked on the frame of the screen door and heard a parrot screech somewhere in the dark interior. He heard footsteps coming, heard them pause, then quicken as they approached the front door.
“God damn,” a man said, and Graver stepped back and the screen door popped open as a stocky man in his mid sixties stuck out his suntanned arm to shake his hand.
“How are you, Ollie?” Graver said.
“Hell, I’m fine,” the man said, stepping out of the house into the shade. “How are you?”
His gray hair was wispy, its thinness having allowed his scalp to become deeply tanned and speckled by the coastal sun. He wore khaki trousers rolled to mid calf over faded blue tennis shoes and a denim shirt that must have been washed a million times, its long sleeves rolled to the elbow. The shirttail was tucked into the waist of the pants which were hitched over a tight belly and held in place by a cracked leather belt that was much too large, its unused portion hanging down in front of his fly. He was grinning at Graver, looking up at the taller man with a cocky smile that revealed strong, even teeth.
“You want somethin’, don’t you.” His grin broadened.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Graver said. “A little favor.”
The stocky man looked at the car and at Neuman. “Business.”
Graver nodded.
“Right now.”
“I need a boat ride,” Graver said. “Just a few minutes from here.”
“Yeah.”
“I need you to take us there, maybe wait a while. Twenty minutes. Something like that We’ll be bringing a woman back here, and then she’ll leave with me.”
“Yeah.”
“And then I’ll owe you… again.” Graver smiled.
“No shit That’s the way I like it.” He looked at Neuman in the car. “Well, come on,” he said, jerking a thick arm at Neuman.
Ollie was always game for a game, having spent years in tactical operations before he retired out If he trusted you, he didn’t ask a lot of questions; he just followed instructions. He knew that whatever was happening here had already been thought through by Graver. Graver wouldn’t be asking him in if it wasn’t something that wouldn’t pass Ollie’s own muster… or could have been done without his help.
As Neuman got out of the car, the man eyed him and then he turned and started around the end of the house as Graver and Neuman followed. They passed under a tunnel of oleanders tangled in weedy vines to a back yard that was only thirty or forty feet deep and ended at a dock in the canal. Moored at the dock was an old inboard cabin launch, a small one, but well cared-for, if sparsely furnished.
Ollie stepped on board without hesitation and began flipping switches and pulling buttons as Graver and Neuman stepped off the dock and into the cabin.
“Where is it?” he asked as the ignition started grinding and the engine caught in a gruff cough that turned to a deep rumble. Graver told him. “Oh, yeah.” He stepped out of the cabin, threw off the mooring ropes and got back to the wheel. Without any further questions he eased back on the throttle, and the launch pulled slowly away from the dock as the old man let it glide into a drifting turn and in a moment they were moving forward, headed out of the canal toward the bay.
No one said anything for a while as the old launch casually made its way along the shore, passing the entrances to other canals, the houses growing tonier as the dusk grew darker. Graver heard the engine ease up before he actually felt it He had been watching the lights come on along the shore, watching their converging illumination flanking the narrow canals as they passed. The engine slowed yet again as they made another listless turn into yet another canal and glided past the docks of the houses.
“I figure it’s the next one up,” Ollie said in a husky voice.
“Casey,” Graver said, pulling Neuman to the cabin doorway. “You recognize it?”
“Yeah, he’s right. That’s it.”
Ollie grinned silently.
“Can you cut your lights, Ollie?”
The old man did.
“Can you dock at the very end? Not pull all the way up in back of the house?”
The old man nodded and did as Graver asked. It was almost completely dark, and his task was not all that easy. In a moment they felt the prow nudge the dock and the old man cut the engine. He quickly stepped out of the cabin and walked the gunwale to the prow and got out onto the dock.
“I want you to go around front,” Graver said, turning to Neuman. “Just ring the doorbell. When she answers and recognizes you, identify yourself. Let her know immediately you’re a police officer-but be sure to get in, at gunpoint if you have to. Don’t let her lock you out. Then let me in from back here. I’ll try to get in behind her if the door back here is unlocked.”
No one said anything more as Graver and Neuman got onto the dock and stepped a few feet into the bushes at the back of the small lawn. There were lights on in the house, a dim one in the kitchen where Valerie had burned her food the night before and then lights on in what must have been the back bedroom. Everything else was dark, some of the soft light in the kitchen felling onto the stone patio just outside the sliding glass door.
Graver nodded when he was satisfied, and Neuman made his way around one side of the house and disappeared. Easing to the side of the back door, Graver peered into the kitchen and dining room for a moment and then backed up and put his ear next to the wall outside her bedroom where the light was. He could hear water running. Was she bathing? Would she hear the doorbell? He went to the patio door and tried it He was startled to
