Dangerous Friends (A Carlos McCrary novel Book 4) Read online

  “Thanks. I must be a great cook.”

  Miyo punched me on the arm. “What? You think I want you just for your body?”

  “So why would anyone buy alternative energy if it’s more expensive?”

  “You have to think long term. We can’t sustain an energy-intensive economy like we have now on fossil fuels. Eventually, we’ll be forced to turn to renewable sources.” She sipped her orange juice. “So we have to develop future technology before we need it. And it ain’t cheap.”

  “Where does the money come from?” I asked.

  “What, do you live in a cave? The difference has to be paid by higher utility prices, lower utility company profits, or raising taxes to cover subsidies. Everybody wants everybody else to pay the expense. That’s why it’s a big political struggle.”

  “What about nuclear energy? I get a newspaper delivered to my cave. Nuclear is much cheaper. We could power more things with electricity and batteries.” I thought of Wallace’s Tesla automobile.

  Miyo shook her head. “Too much danger with nuclear. Remember what happened in Chernobyl. Remember the Japanese tsunami and the problems that caused with the nuclear power plants. Remember Three Mile Island here in America.” She tasted her eggs, added more salsa. “Too dangerous.”

  “Slide the salsa back over here when you’re finished. I’m gonna have to eat and run. Got a meeting with Snoop in an hour at my office.”

  Chapter 23

  The burner phone buzzed. Ponder had dreaded this call. He answered. “This is Lamp Post.”

  “I got your email. It was sketchy. For a man who vouched for her reliability, you know very little about this girl. Have you found her?”

  Ponder looked to make sure his bedroom door was closed. “Not yet. Her cellphone goes straight to voice mail. I went by her house or tried to, but it’s in a gated community. I couldn’t get in.”

  “You couldn’t get in,” Redwood mocked. “What does that mean? How did you try?”

  “I stopped at the guard house and asked the guard to tell Michelle I needed to see her.”

  “Did you use your own name with the guard?”

  Ponder thought, Oh crap. Was that a mistake? “What else could I do?” He stood and paced the bedroom like a caged bear.

  “Oh, I don’t know. You could say you had a flower delivery for a different house in the neighborhood. Or you could rent a panel truck, dress in a khaki uniform, shave your stupid beard, and pretend you worked for the utility company. Or you could climb over the fence after dark. All you had to do was get past the gate, you idiot. It’s not rocket science.”

  Ponder was shaken by the barely-contained rage in Redwood’s voice. “I… I don’t know what to say. What should I do now?”

  “I expected you to take care of the girl problem personally. You failed.” Redwood sighed. “But that’s the past. We must live and act in the present to gain future benefits.” He said it like a mantra. “What other steps have you taken?”

  “I called, uh, Kinetic and Skylight. They haven’t seen or heard from her either.”

  “What else have you tried?”

  “That’s all. Look, in my defense, this is not my line of work. I’m not cut out to be a detective.”

  “For once, you are entirely accurate. Do you have any other ideas about how you might find her?”

  “Maybe she’s with that detective,” said Ponder.

  “What detective? A police detective?”

  “No, no. He wasn’t a cop, just some private detective who came looking for Michelle—”

  “Don’t mention any names over the phone, idiot.”

  “Sorry,” said Ponder. “He was just some guy who came looking for… the person in question the night before, uh, the package was delivered.”

  “You didn’t mention that in the email. Who was this man?”

  “Just a private detective her parents sent to see that she was okay.”

  “Why would her parents send a private detective after her?” asked Redwood.

  “I’ve got his card. He left one here.” Ponder dashed to the door.

  “Tell me why her parents sent a private investigator after her.”

  “She’d been sort of, uh, out of touch for a coupla days. We’d been kinda hanging out. She’s a freshman—”

  “I know that; it was in your email.”

  “—and I guess her parents were worried about her,” he finished lamely. Ponder stepped into the hall and looked for the business card. Gone. Where the hell could it be? He dashed to the top of the stairs. There it is. Must have fallen on the steps. He climbed a few steps down and snatched up the card. “His name is Carlos McCrary, with McCrary Investigations.”

  Chapter 24

  “Whiskers stole the boat at 2:45 a.m. two Saturdays ago. And the bomb was onboard at eleven o’clock Monday night when Michelle got to McKinley Park. So we need to find where the boat was for those nine days.” I leaned back and swiveled in my chair. “And it wouldn’t hurt to find out who built the bomb, where, and how they got it on the boat.”

  “The bad news is that Whiskers drove the boat upstream,” Snoop said. “If he’d gone downstream, we could have searched an area between the marina and the bay. That’s two or three miles. But upstream… the Seeti River is navigable to small boats as far as the Everglades. Could be fifteen miles or more.”

  “It’s actually good news, Snoop. If he’d gone downstream, he wasn’t restricted to hiding the boat on the river. We would have had to search not only the river, but Seeti Bay or down to the Keys or up to Palm Beach for that matter. Compared to that, fifteen miles is a stroll on the beach.”

  I stood up. “What’s the nautical equivalent of a road trip? A voyage?”

  I fired up The Gator Raider Too while Snoop stowed our drinks and sandwiches in the galley refrigerator. Thirty minutes later, we idled past Bayshore Park and entered the seventy-five-foot-wide Seetiweekifenokee River navigation channel. The NOAA chart showed five fixed bridges and twelve bascules along the fifteen nautical miles of navigable water on the Upper Seeti. The bascules all had clearance of eleven feet or more so the Raider could pass without waiting for a bridge to open.

  “Snoop, you watch the right-hand shore for any security cameras. Most docks along the river have a street address or other marker to identify the property. Photograph the security camera first and then the address marker for each camera. That will give us a jpeg file of each in the right order. Write each location on a notepad. I’ll do the same for the left side.”

  “Why write the locations down if they’re gonna be on my camera?”

  “Rule Thirteen: Always have a backup.”

  “Right. You want me to start now? Before we get to the Prime Marina?”

  “Snoop, remember Rule Five: You can never have too much information and Rule Six: You never know what you’ll need to know. Catalog every camera we find.”

  “You could ask the FBI. They must have a database of every security camera on the river. Them or Homeland Security.”

  “Sometimes I think you’re so lazy that you wouldn’t breathe if it took any effort.”

  “I’m not lazy; I crave efficiency of movement. And it’s cheaper for the client to ask the Feebs.”

  “Gene Lopez would want to know why I’m asking.” I tapped his arm and pointed. “There’s a camera up there. See it?”

  Snoop aimed his camera. “Got it… and got the dock marker too.” He wrote on his notepad.

  We passed the twisted wreckage of the railroad bridge. Huge cranes had hauled out the three locomotives and two coal cars that had plunged into the river. Another set of cranes, guided by divers, had removed the steel scraps of the bridge from the river. Normal navigation had resumed within forty-eight hours of the explosion.

  “Looks like they’re already working to remove the old bridge,” Snoop said. Steelworkers in protective masks wielded cutting torches on the mangled remnants of the old bridge.

  “They’ve got to remove the damaged part
to build the new bridge. The Pee-Jay said that all East Carolina & Florida trains have been rerouted to the Florida East Coast tracks and bridge further upriver. According to the newspaper, the coal train that Michelle’s friends blew up was delivered to the Everglades Power Plant only twenty-eight hours behind schedule, minus the two cars that fell into the river.”

  “Life goes on.”

  We motored up the river for four hours, pulling over for the island freighters wedging their way down the river. The navigable width dropped to sixty feet when the river forked into the Upper Seeti and the Lower Seeti a few miles upstream.

  We cruised the Upper Seeti first. From there to the North-South Expressway, we pulled over several times for freighters to pass. West of the expressway, navigation narrowed further to forty-five feet. There were few freighters that far upstream so we made pretty good time. I eased the throttles into neutral, and we glided toward the Florida East Coast Railroad Bridge. “Six feet of clearance there, Snoop. The 280 Outrage needs eight-feet-nine-inches. Whiskers couldn’t have gone any farther.”

  I shoved the transmissions in opposite directions and the Raider rotated in its own length. “Let’s go check out the Lower Seeti.”

  As we cruised downstream, we compared our observations of security cameras and found two more that we had missed on the Upper Seeti.

  The Lower Seeti navigation stopped at the North-South Expressway so we’d covered about four miles. It took another two hours. By the time we returned to the river’s mouth, the shadows had lengthened into twilight and sunset painted the sky with gold and pink. We’d cataloged a hundred seventeen security cameras.

  As I lay in bed that night, I tried to figure out an easy way to search a hundred seventeen security videos. The only thing I came up with was to ask FBI Special Agent Lopez for help, but I needed to stay beneath his radar. I tossed and turned for a couple more hours until I figured out how to cut the work in half—literally. I went right to sleep.

  Chapter 25

  “You gotta be kidding, Chuck.” Snoop waved the sheets of paper at me. “How many freaking cameras are on this freaking list for crissakes, a hundred?”

  “Sixty-two on your list and fifty-five on mine. Rule Eight: Sometimes there is no substitute for shoe leather. Don’t get antsy on me, Snoop; I pay you by the hour.” I unfolded a city map on my desk. “Besides, it won’t take as long as you think. Start here at the 46th Avenue Bridge on the Upper Seeti, six miles upstream from the Prime Marina.” I penciled an X on the map. “I’ll start on the Lower Seeti at the 52nd Avenue Bridge here.” I marked another X. “That divides the river into two equal parts. If we see the boat pass either of these bridges, we narrow it down to half the river from looking at one video on each fork, and we’ll know which fork he took. If the boat doesn’t pass either bridge, we move halfway toward the marina to the 28th Avenue Bridge here.” I marked another X on the map. “We’ll leapfrog like that, cutting the river in half each time, until we narrow it down to a block or two. Genius, huh?”

  “Don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back.”

  An hour later, Snoop and I conferred by phone. We knew Whiskers had not driven the boat under either bridge where we had started our search. “What’s the first camera you’ve got east of 28th Avenue, Snoop?”

  “Three Isles Dredging. How about you?”

  I checked the list. “Seeti View Apartments.”

  “They oughta call it Dredge View Apartments. Okay. I’m on my way to the dredging company.”

  Luxury condos, rental apartments, and waterfront houses dot the banks of the Seeti, but it’s also a working river. Often as not, the expensive homes have a view of giant steel buildings, rusty barges, and working boats across the river from them. It’s marvelously eclectic, often chaotic, and I love it there.

  Maritime businesses and distribution companies line the riverbank, jostling for space with the waterfront housing. Half the commerce with the Caribbean and the Bahamas ships on the island freighters that load and unload in South Florida—on the Seeti or the New River in Fort Lauderdale or the Miami River to the south. Marinas, chandlers, and marine mechanics keep the freighters humming. Also dredges and marine construction companies with floating cranes and pile drivers maintain the river’s infrastructure of seawalls, navigation markers, and the channel itself.

  I drove tree-lined streets around the canals and tributaries to the peninsula where the Seeti View Apartments stood. As I got closer, the industrial facet of the neighborhood took over the street. By the time I reached the Seeti View at the end, the neighborhood was pure business with hurricane fences topped with barbed wire to guard the outdoor storage and equipment of the maritime industries.

  The Seeti View apartment complex was a purebred in a kennel full of mutts. It sat in a forest of Sabal Palms, Royal Palms, and Queen Palms. I counted a half-dozen different colors of bougainvilleas. It stood out like a polished diamond in a coal mine.

  I glanced in the rearview mirror and watched the blue Ford sedan behind me turn into a warehouse parking lot I had just passed.

  I parked the Avanti in a visitor’s spot by the office where a sliding glass door was open to the morning breeze. I didn’t see a place to knock so I stepped through the door. “Hello. Anybody here?”

  I heard barking and a rapid scratching from the back room before a giant dog barreled around the corner, claws raking the tile floor as it skidded around the curve. The dog slid to a stop four feet from me, barking like the hounds of hell were after him. An indeterminate breed with multicolored straggly fur, his black collar was studded with spikes that matched his personality.

  I moved my jacket so I could reach my gun and backed two steps toward the open door. “Easy boy.”

  The dog advanced in lockstep with me, hackles raised.

  An old woman puffed around the corner after the dog. “Tuffy, you hush up.” She reached down and touched the dog’s head. Tuffy dropped to his haunches and quieted to a low growl with teeth bared. His head reached almost to the woman’s waist. I must have seen bigger dogs somewhere; I just couldn’t remember where.

  I covered my gun again before the woman looked up.

  She wore turquoise pedal-pushers two sizes too small and a sleeveless pink blouse that let the backs of her arms flop like wet clothes hanging on a line. She had a ’do-rag tied around her dirty gray hair. She wiped the sweat on her forehead with the back of one hand as she looked at me suspiciously. “No vacancy. Place is full up.” Tuffy growled his agreement.

  “I’m not looking for an apartment.”

  “Then whatever you’re selling, I ain’t buying. Get out of here.” Tuffy growled again.

  I handed her a business card, one without my SPCA member logo on it. “I’m Chuck McCrary.” I did not offer my hand; Tuffy might think it was an appetizer.

  She extended her arm full-length and squinted at the card. “Don’t have my glasses on. What’s it say?”

  “It says that I’m a private investigator with McCrary Investigations. I’d like to ask you a few questions if I may.” That’s me, Mister Smooth.

  She peered at the card again. “Private investigator, eh? Never met one of those. Seen ’em on the TV, but never met one in the flesh. What are you investigating?”

  “A stolen boat. We’d like to see the footage from your dock security cameras from Saturday before last from three a.m. to sunrise. It could help us catch the thief.”

  She eyed my jacket. “You carry a gun?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You got a license?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Show it to me.”

  I pulled my credentials from my jacket pocket and held them out to display both my concealed weapons permit and my PI license.

  Hmph. She peered at the licenses as if she could read them without her glasses. “That’s pretty specific.”

  I wasn’t sure what she meant, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to be agreeable. “Yes, ma’am.” I put my creds away.
<
br />   She glanced over my shoulder and her eyes got wide. “Is that your Avanti?”

  “Yes, ma’am. My grandfather gave it to me as a graduation present. It’s been in my family for over fifty years.”

  “I seen cars like that before at car shows.”

  “You like car shows?”

  “Brings back memories from when I was a girl. You’d never know it to look at me,”—she spread her arms and Tuffy looked up at her—“but thirty years ago, I was pretty hot stuff.”

  “I like car shows too. My Avanti is a collector car to some people.”

  “But you drive yours?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. Helps me remember my grandfather.”

  “Did he pass?”

  “Yes, ma’am, four months ago.”

  “Hmph. Sorry to hear that.” She made a face while she considered that information. She scratched Tuffy’s head. “Did something special happen on our dock between three a.m. and sunrise Saturday before last?”

  “Not on your dock, on the river. There was a boat that might have passed your dock around that time.”

  “Why you want to know?”

  “I want to find the boat,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “It was stolen at 2:45 that morning and the thief drove it up this way.”

  She wiped her forehead again. She scratched Tuffy behind the ears and he stopped growling. She handed the card back. “Okay. The monitor’s back there in the next room. I’ll show you.” She turned and patted Tuffy on the head. “Let’s go, boy. This fellow’s all right.” She looked back at me. “By the way, my name’s Becky.”

  After reviewing the video, I called Snoop. “I got a hit. The boat raced past the Seeti View Apartments at 3:04 a.m. How’re you making out over there?”

  “I’m not there. I got caught with a bridge up. I’m pulling into the parking lot now. I’ll call you back in a few.”