John Lutz - Torch

Beth laced her fingers behind her head, inhaled deeply as she stretched her long body, and gave him a sloe-eyed glance. “You talk to Post?”

Not looking at her breasts, he told her about the conversation with Charlie Post at the Hotel Miranda in Miami Beach.

“Pussy broke,” Beth said. “That’s how some people I know used to describe Post’s condition. And some men’ll go out and find the wrong woman and do it all again. It’s a masochistic thing with them, giving up their money for love.”

“Post didn’t strike me as masochistic.”

“Nobody’s how they strike people, Fred. You oughta know that.”

Then he told her about stopping briefly in Palm Beach on the drive up the coast. May Post hadn’t been in her office at Post Yacht Sales, and she hadn’t answered her home phone.

“Why didn’t you hang around until she showed up?” Beth asked.

“Because the office workers were frantically finalizing arrangements for a party that night on a yacht they had listed to sell, the Stedda Work. Woman in the office who was calling to check on the caterer explained to me that was how they showed some of their yachts to prospective clients. Like a floating open house with booze and hors d’oeuvres.”

“And May Post is sure to be on board,” Beth said, her head resting back so she was staring now at the ceiling. “It’s a pretty smart tactic, getting the rich sales prospects liquored up and maybe bidding against each other.”

“Charlie Post told me May was smart.”

They both were quiet for a while, listening to the low hum of the air conditioner and the soft rush of the surf. Not far away outside a gull cried. Beth idly moved a bare foot over and rested painted toes on Carver’s moccasin. He could feel the pressure of each individual toe through the supple leather.

She said, “I’m assuming you’re going to drive back to Palm Beach tonight and crash the party.”

“No. I’ll be there as a guest. I managed to pick up a few unused invitations when no one was looking.”

“A few?” She sounded interested.

Carver said, “We’ll have to look as if we belong with the Palm Beach set and could afford a yacht or two. Got something suitable to wear?”

“Don’t worry,” she told him, “I’ll be the richiest and the bitchiest. But you I’ll have to supervise, Fred. When you get dressed up you look like a gangster.”

The Stedda Work was, according to a color brochure available at the foot of the gangplank, a 94-foot Broward Motoryacht built in 1985. It was a beautiful white vessel with red trim, three luxury staterooms, two salons, an on-deck galley, a 170-bottle wine cooler, a teak swimstep with stairs and transom door, and a range of 3,000 miles so you could get far away from land and enjoy it all without being disturbed.

All of this could be had for only 2.3 million dollars, described in the brochure as a bargain reduced price. Since it was a reduced price offer, Carver considered it for a few seconds before pushing it out of his mind.

Ushering Beth before him, he handed his two invitations to an attractive and smiling blond woman in a blue yachting outfit, then limped up the canopy-covered gangplank to where a dozen or so people were wandering about the deck holding drinks and helping themselves to hors d’oeuvres offered by white-coated waiters balancing silver trays. It was, as Carver had suspected, a well-turned-out crowd devoid of polyester. Most of the men and not a few women turned to appraise Beth as she and Carver boarded. She was wearing a simple black dress with laced sleeves, a jade necklace and pin, black high heels. She looked like a princess. Carver looked like a gangster in his black slacks, pearl shirt with black and gray tie, and gray silk double-breasted sport coat, but he figured that was okay; it was something these people understood.

A waiter with a tray of champagne in tall continental glasses approached them. The glasses looked like expensive crystal, Carver noted, as he and Beth helped themselves. The champagne had the taste of fizzy old bank notes. Carver liked it.

He and Beth nodded to a few people who glanced at them as if they might know them, then they made their way toward the stern where more guests were lounging about and chatting. Carver noticed one of the women he’d seen that morning in the Post Yacht Sales office, but she was busy smiling and talking to a fat man in a gray suit and didn’t have eyes for anyone else. Carver didn’t try to avoid her. Even if she did recognize him, she’d probably figure he’d made contact with May Post and been invited.

Beth nodded and smiled at an elderly man who nodded and smiled at her. There was a lot of nodding and smiling all around. A lot of quiet calculation.

Beth sipped champagne and said, “This is a great vessel, Fred. You think we should make an offer?”

“What we should do,” he said, “is find May Post.”

“What does she look like?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen her.”

“No matter,” Beth said. “She’s the hostess and should be easy to spot. She’ll be smiling too much and moving too fast.” She swirled her remaining champagne around in her glass. “Isn’t that a certain U.S. Senator?” she said, nodding toward a handsome gray-haired man talking to a man and woman near the rail.

“Probably.”

Beth said, “Excuse me, Fred,” and started toward the man.

“Where are you going?” Carver asked, knowing where and not liking it. She acted as if she hadn’t heard.

The party had been going for a while. Music suddenly came over the yacht’s sound system. Laughter and conversation became louder. Carver watched Beth talking earnestly to the Senator, who seemed to be listening just as earnestly. Over near the opposite rail, he saw an elderly woman standing with her arm around a handsome young man in his twenties, not in a motherly way. Carver thought he’d seen the man at Nightlinks the day he’d photographed people entering and leaving. It would be interesting to look at the prints when they came back from the lab. Conversation continued buzzing around him. Two men waving drinks at each other were talking about bow thrusters. Carver didn’t know what a bow thruster was, but this boat probably had one. Or was it a ship? Someone had once told him that a ship was any vessel large enough to carry a boat. The Stedda Work qualified. “Talk to May,” a woman’s voice said somewhere near him. “She’s in the Blue Salon.”

Carver decided to follow that advice, even though it had been meant for someone else.

With a final glance at Beth and the Senator, who were both laughing now like old chums discussing schoolday pranks, Carver made his way below deck.

Outside sounds were nonexistent there, but the music and conversation were louder. Shuffling along a narrow companion-way, he squeezed past a heavyset woman in a sequined blue dress, traded his empty champagne glass for a full one as a white-coated waiter with a tray squeezed past him, and found the salon. It was crowded with people watching a card game, and it was red.

A man with a dead cigar in his mouth looked over at Carver and grinned. “You a gambler, sport?”

“No, just looking for the Blue Salon,” Carver explained.

“Above deck,” the man said around the cigar, then returned to watching the game, which was seven-card stud. “I raise you back,” a woman said firmly, as Carver edged away.

The Blue Salon was above deck and lined with windows that looked out over the party on deck and the lights of the marina. It wasn’t as crowded as the Red Salon. Most of the guests there were clustered around a small bar where the woman who’d collected invitations was now dispensing drinks. The sound system had been turned off and the music seeped in softly from the rest of the yacht, heavy with violins, pleasant at lower volume.