Nick put his key card in the reader and the garage door opened. He pulled his Pontiac into his reserved spot and stopped the car. “So you see,” he was saying to Carol, “he knew that we wouldn’t find anything. He let us search both his house and the lot that he had bought for his new mansion, down at Pelican Point. We found nothing. At that time it was still hidden somewhere out in the ocean.”
“Did you look in the water around his new property at that time?”
“Yes, we did. Jake and I each dove there, on separate days. We found a very interesting subterranean cave, but no sign of any of the Santa Rosa treasure. But we must have given him the idea. I bet he moved the stuff there a year or two after Jake left. He probably figured it was safe by then. And he had doubtless worried himself sick that someone would discover the treasure out in the ocean. You see, it all fits. Including his involvement with underwater sentries.”
Carol nodded and laughed a little. “It certainly makes better sense than your idea that Troy was working for the Russians.” They opened the doors and climbed out of the car. “So how much do you think they have left?” Carol asked as they headed for the elevator.
“Who knows?” Nick answered. “Maybe they stole three million out of five.” He thought for a minute. “They must still have a bunch. Otherwise Greta would have split by now.”
The elevator doors opened and Nick pressed the button for the third floor. Carol heaved a big sigh. “What’s the matter?” he asked.
“I’m exhausted,” she said. “I feel as if I’m on a carousel that’s spinning faster and faster. So much has happened in the last three days. I’m not sure I could deal with much more. What I need now is a second wind.”
“Magic days,” Nick replied as they walked out of the elevator. “These are magic days.”
She looked at him with a curious expression. He laughed. “I’ll explain an old theory of mine later,” he said. He entered a sequence of numbers into the small plate on his door and the lock disengaged. Nick moved to the side with feigned gallantry and let Carol enter first. What she saw was chaos.
The place was a total shambles. In the living room, just beyond the kitchen area, all of Nick’s precious novels had been scattered randomly about on the floor, the couch, and the chairs. It looked as if someone had taken each book out of the bookcase, held it up and shook it (trying to find loose papers perhaps), and then either dropped it or thrown it across the room. Nick pushed by Carol and stared at the destruction. “Shit,” he said.
The kitchen had been plundered as well. All the drawers were open. Pots, pans, and tableware were strewn on the counters and on the floor. To Nick’s right, the cardboard boxes containing his memorabilia had been pulled into the middle of the second bedroom. Their contents had been partially dumped onto the floor around them.
“What hurricane hit this place?” Carol asked as she surveyed the mess. “I didn’t expect you to be a good house-keeper, but this is ridiculous.”
Nick was unable to laugh at Carol’s comment. He checked the master bedroom and found that it also had been ransacked. He then returned to the living room and started picking up his beloved novels and stacking them neatly on the coffee table. He winced when he found his worn copy of L’Etranger by Albert Camus. The spine of the book was destroyed. “This is not the work of vandals,” he said as Carol knelt down to help. “They were searching for something specific.”
“Have you found anything missing yet?” she asked.
“No,” Nick replied, picking up another novel with a mutilated cover and shaking his head. “But the bastards have really screwed up my books.”
She stacked his Faulkner collection on the easy chair. “I can see why Troy was impressed,” she said. “Have you really read all these novels?” Nick nodded. Carol picked one up that had fallen under the television stand. “What’s this about?” She held up the book. “I’ve never even heard of it.”
Nick had just arranged another dozen books on the coffee table. “Oh, that’s a fantastic novel,” he said enthusiastically, forgetting for a moment that his condominium had just been trashed. “The whole story is told through this exchange of letters among all the principal characters. It’s set in eighteenth-century France, and the main couple, socially prominent and bored, cement their weird relationship by sharing details of their affairs. With other lovers of course. It caused quite a scandal in Europe.”
“That doesn’t exactly sound like your typical Harlequin romance,” Carol remarked, trying to commit the title of the book to her memory.
Nick stood up and walked into the smaller bedroom. He began to sort through the contents of the cardboard boxes. “There are things missing in here,” he called out to Carol. She stopped arranging books and joined him in the bedroom. “All my photographs of the Santa Rosa treasure and even the newspaper clippings are gone. That’s odd,” he said.
Carol was beside him on the floor, in front of the boxes. She frowned. “Is the trident still on the boat?”
“Yes,” he answered. He stopped rifling through the papers. “Down in the bottom drawer of the electronics cabinet. You think there’s a connection?”
She nodded. “I think that was what they were after. I don’t know why. It just seems right.”
Nick picked up a large yellow folder that had been on the floor and replaced it in one of the cardboard boxes. A photograph and some sheets of typing paper fell out. Carol picked up the picture while Nick scrambled after the papers. She studied the photo and read the French inscription. She was surprised to feel a twinge of jealousy. “Beautiful,” she commented. She noticed the pearls. “Also very rich and sophisticated. She doesn’t look like your type.”
She handed Monique’s photograph to Nick. Despite his attempt to be nonchalant, he was blushing. “That was a long time ago,” he mumbled as he hastily stuffed the photo back into the folder.
“Really?” Carol said, eyeing him carefully. “She looks as if she’s about our age. It couldn’t have been too long ago.”
Nick was flustered. He packed some more loose material in the boxes and glanced at his watch. “We’d better leave soon if we’re going to meet Troy at your hotel.” He stood up. Carol remained kneeling on the floor, looking up at him with a steady gaze. “It’s a long story,” he said. “Someday I’ll tell you all about it.”
Carol’s curiosity was piqued. She followed Nick out of his condominium and into the elevator. He was still ill at ease. Bullseye, she thought to herself. I think I have just discovered a major key to Mr. Williams. A woman named Monique. She smiled as Nick motioned for her to precede him out of the elevator. And the man does love his books.
Carol’s room at the Marriott had two entrances. The normal approach to the room was by way of the corridor that led to the lobby. But there was another door that opened on the garden and the pool. When she exercised in the morning, Carol always used the garden entrance.
Nick and Carol were talking casually but quietly as they came toward her room from the lobby. She pulled out her electronic card key just before they arrived. As she started to insert the card into the lock, they heard an unusual sound, like metal banging against metal, from the inside of her room. Before Carol could say anything, Nick shushed her by putting his finger to his mouth. “You heard it too?” she whispered softly. He nodded his head. Using gestures, he asked her if there was another entrance to the room. She pointed out the door to the hotel grounds at the end of the corridor.
Palm trees and tropical hedges covered most of the area to the east of the Marriott swimming pool. Nick and Carol left the walkway leading to the pool and crept up to the windows of her room. The venetian blinds were drawn but they could still see into the room through a crack under the bottom of the blinds. At first the room was completely dark. Then a solitary beam from a flashlight reflected for an instant off one of the walls. In that split second they saw a silhouetted figure in the neighborhood of the television set, but they could not identify him. The flashlight came on again and it paused for a moment on the door to the corridor. The door was bolted. In the brief flicker of the light beam, Carol also saw that all her dresser drawers were open.