Joe put down the telephone.
'He was here, but I didn't see him. He came in a British sloop with a red hull.'
'Green,' said Sam.
'No, it was red. Her name was Bahama Mama.'
'He changed the name again,' said Sam in wonder.
'Now why would a man do that?'
My upraised hand silenced him. I said to Joe, 'Is the boat still here?'
'I'll find out. ' Joe picked up the telephone again and I held my breath. If the boat was still here then Kayles, in all likelihood, was dead with Julie Sue and Pete. If not. Joe said, 'She left on the twenty-fifth Christmas Day.'
I let out my breath with a sigh. That was six days after Lucayan Girl had disappeared. Joe said, 'No one saw her leave; suddenly she wasn't there. ' He shrugged.
'It didn't bother anyone; the marina fee had been paid in advance to the end of the month. We made a profit on that one. '
I said, 'I want both of you to wait in the outei office until you're wanted.' They left and I rang Perigord.
'I've got a name and a face for you. That crewman.'
He did not sound surprised. All he said was 'Who?'
I told him.
'Where are you?'
'My office at the Royal Palm.'
'Ten minutes,' he said, and rang off.
Perigord put Sam Ford and Joe Cartwright through the wringer, but did not get much more out of them than I had, then he took the negative and photographs and departed. But he did not take all of them; I had retained some, locked in the office safe. I spoke to Sam and Joe.
'If you see or hear of this man I want to know, but don't alarm him -just contact me.'
Sam said, 'What's all this about, Tom?'
I hesitated, half inclined to tell him, but said briefly, 'You don't have to know. It's a police matter.' I changed the subject.
'We're organizing the marinas into a division, Joe; and Sam will be boss. Spread the word that we're expanding. There'll be no firings and a lot of hirings Sam will tell you all about it.
All right, that's it. '
And that was that.
Jack Kayles did not come to the surface, not then, but Billy Cunningham arrived a couple of weeks later with a platoon of lawyers and accountants and they started to go through the books of West End Securities, finding not much wrong and a lot that was right. After a few days Billy came to me and said with a crooked smile, 'You under- estimated your value by about a quarter-million but you're still not going to get more than a fifth of Theta stock.'
'Suits me.'
'The Corporation will be set up by the end of the week; I've had the Nassau lawyers working on it. Then we can sign papers.'
'You'd have done better to have consulted me on that,' I said.
'Perhaps, but I thought that maybe you weren't in any condition to think straight.'
7i 'You could have been right,' I admitted.
He stood up and stretched.
'Gee, it's been a hard week. I could do with a drink. Where do you keep your office bottle?'
I opened the cabinet, poured drinks, and handed him a glass.
'Here's to the Theta Corporation.'
We drank the toast, and Billy said, 'You sure put a burr under Debbie's saddle. What the hell did you do?'
'Just a bit of fatherly advice.'
Billy's lips quirked.
'Fatherly!' He sat down.
'My revered uncle, Jack Cunningham, Chairman of the Cunningham Corporation and something of a prime bastard, thinks you're some kind of subversive nut. He says you've been putting leftist ideas into his daughter's head ' ' What do you think? '
'I think it's the best thing that ever happened to her,' he said frankly.
'She's been spoiled silly all her life and it's time she thought of something other than herself. Maybe this will doit.'
'I hope so.'
He hesitated.
'She told me about Sue, and the funeral. Why didn't you let me know?'
'Not your problem.' I tasted the whisky.
'Did she tell you about the photograph?'
'What photograph?'
So Debbie was keeping her promise to Perigord; she had not even told her family. I was not as honourable.
'I'll tell you about it, but keep it under your hat.'
So I told him and it was long in the telling, and when I had finished he said, 'Jesus, I've never heard of anything like that!' He picked up the photograph I had taken from the safe.
'You mean this son of a bitch killed your family?'
'That's the general theory. If he's still alive he did, and if he's dead who took his boat from the marina here?'
'This is a crummy picture,' said Billy.
'I think we can do better than this?'
'How?'
'You know we have the Space Center in Houston. I know a lot of the guys there because we do business with NASA.
When they shoot pictures back from space they're pretty blurred so they put them through a computer which sharpens them up; makes a computer-enhanced image, as they call it. ' He tapped the photograph.
'I think they could do the same with this, and if they can't you're no worse off. Mind if I take this back to Houston?'
I thought it was a good idea.
'Take it.'
Three days later we signed papers and I was President of a $50 million corporation.
Time passed.
I had a heavy workload as I buckled down to making the Theta Corporation work. I began by activating some of the suggestions I had outlined to Billy, beginning with the construction division. Jack Foster was a childless widower who ran a construction company based in Nassau. He was past sixty and wanted to get out, not seeing the point of working himself into the grave when he had no one to leave the company to, so I flew to Nassau and we did a deal, and I got the company for a quarter-million less than I expected to pay. Since this was the company that was building the hotel on Eleuthera things started to move faster there because I saw to it that the Theta Corporation got first choice of materials and manpower. The sooner the hotel was completed the sooner the cash flow would turn from negative to positive.
The quarter-million I saved I put into a geographical and economic survey of the Bahamas, hiring an American outfit to do it. I did not expect them to come up with anything that would surprise me, but what they found would buttress my ideas with the Cunninghams.
I flew to Abaco at least once a week to see Karen, even if only to stay an hour. She seemed to have settled down completely and seemed none the worse for her bereavement. I wished I had her resilience; I stopped myself from brooding only by hard work and keeping occupied.
But there were times in the small hours..
I discussed the question of taking Karen home but Peggy counselled against it.
