Stranahan said, “I think you both ought to know: Somebody wants to kill me.”
Garcia’s eyebrows shot up and he rolled the cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. “Who is it, chico? Please, make my job easier.”
“I think it’s a doctor. His name is Rudy Graveline. Write this down, Luis, please.”
“And why would this doctor want you dead?”
“I’m not sure, Al.”
“But you want me to roust him on a hunch.”
“No, I just want his name in a file somewhere. I want you to know who he is, just in case.”
Garcia turned to Luis Córdova. “Don’t you love the fucking sound of that? Just in case. Luis, I think this is where we’re supposed to give Mr. Stranahan a lecture about taking the law into his own hands.”
Luis said, “Don’t take the law into your own hands, Mick.”
“Thank you, Luis.”
Al Garcia flicked a stubby thumb through his black mustache. “Just for the record, you didn’t invite the lovely Chloe Simpkins Stranahan out here for a romantic reconciliation over fresh fish and wine?”
“No,” Stranahan said. Fish and wine—that fucking Garcia must have scoped out the dirty dinner dishes.
“And the two of you didn’t go for a boat ride?”
“No, Al.”
“And you didn’t get in a sloppy drunken fight?”
“No.”
“And you didn’t hook her to the anchor and drop her overboard?”
“Nope.”
“Luis, you get all that?”
Luis Córdova nodded as he jotted in the notebook. Shorthand, too; Stranahan was impressed.
Garcia got up and went knocking around the house, making Stranahan very nervous. When the detective finally stopped prowling, he stood directly under the stuffed blue marlin. “Mick, I don’t have to tell you there’s some guys in Homicide think you aced old Judge Goomer without provocation.”
“I know that, Al. There’s some guys in Homicide used to be in business with Judge Goomer.”
“And I know that. Point is, they’ll be looking at this Chloe thing real hard. Harder than normal.”
Stranahan said, “There’s no chance it was an accident?”
“No,” Luis Córdova interjected. “No chance.”
“So,” said Al Garcia, “you see the position I’m in. Until we get another suspect, you’re it. The good news is, we’ve got no physical evidence connecting you. The bad news is, we’ve got Chloe’s manicurist.”
Stranahan groaned. “Jesus, let’s hear it.”
Garcia ambled to a window, stuck his arm out and tapped cigar ash into the water.
“Chloe had her toenails done yesterday morning,” the detective said. “Told the girl she was coming out here to clean your clock.”
“Lovely,” said Mick Stranahan.
There was a small rap on the door and Tina came in, fiddling with the strap on the top piece of her swimsuit. Al Garcia beamed like he’d just won the lottery; a dreary day suddenly had been brightened.
Stranahan stood up. “Tina, I want you to meet Sergeant Garcia and Officer Córdova. They’re here on police business. Al, Luis, I’d like you to meet my alibi.”
“How do you do,” said Luis Córdova, shaking Tina’s hand in a commendably official way.
Garcia gave Stranahan another sideways look. “I love it,” said the detective. “I absolutely love this job.”
Christina Marks heard about the death of Chloe Simpkins Stranahan on the six o’clock news. The only thing she could think was that Mick had done it to pay Chloe back for siccing the TV crew on him. It was painful to believe, but the only other possibility was too far-fetched—that Chloe’s murder was a coincidence of timing and had nothing to do with Mick or Victoria Barletta. This Christina Marks could not accept; she had to plan for the worst.
If Mick was the killer, that would be a problem.
If Chloe had blabbed about getting five hundred in tipster money from the Reynaldo Flemm show, that would be a problem too. The police would want to know everything, then the papers would get hold of it and the Barletta story would blow up prematurely.
Then there was the substantial problem of Reynaldo himself; Christina cold just hear him hyping the hell out of Chloe’s murder in the intro: “The story you are about to see is so explosive that a confidential informant who provided us with key information was brutally murdered only days later … “ Brutally murdered was one of Reynaldo’s favorite on-camera redundancies. Once Christina had drolly asked Reynaldo if he’d ever heard of anyone being gently murdered, but he missed the point.