James Patterson - Lifeguard

“My job is to uncover fakes,” Ellie said, shrugging. “Whether they’re on canvas or not.”

There was a knock on the door. Liz Stratton stuck her head in. “Excuse me.” She smiled at Ellie, then a little dully to Stratton. “Dennis, the tent people are here.”

“I’ll be right there…” He looked up at her and smiled. Then back to Ellie: “I’m afraid our money-wasting moment is over now, Agent Shurtleff.” He stood up. “We’re getting the house ready for a little gathering Saturday night. The Shoreline Preservation League, wonderful cause. You should come. We just got our settlement from the insurance company. There’ll be all sorts of new art on the walls. I’d like your opinion.”

“Sure,” Ellie said. “You overpaid.”

Stratton kept looking at her with a smug smile. He put his hand in his trouser pocket and came out with a wad of bills, credit cards, some change and left it on the desk. “As long as we understand: one of my jobs, Agent Shurtleff, is to protect my family from people making accusations about our private affairs.”

Ellie scooped up the evidence bag and was about to put it back in the envelope. Something made her stop and stare.

“You a golfer, Mr. Stratton?”

“Play at it, Agent Shurtleff.” Stratton smiled. “Now if you’ll excuse me…”

Among the wad of bills and loose change Stratton had dumped on his English leather desk was a black golf tee.

WHEN I LEFT PHILLY’S, I jumped in Dave’s Subaru. I figured I had some time before the bodies were detected – a day, at most – and by then I had to be miles away. But miles where?

I drove wildly, seeing over and over again the horrible image of my brother sitting there like some kind of gutted animal. Knowing I had dragged him into this. Seeing his stuff all over the car – schoolbooks, a pair of beat-up Nikes, CDs, Dave’s Muzak .

I ditched the car in some podunk town in North Carolina and found some salesman in a used-car lot who sold me a twelve-year-old Impala for $350, no questions asked. I went into the men’s room of a roadside diner and dyed my hair. Then I carefully sheared most of it off.

When I looked in the mirror, I was a different person.

My thick blond hair was gone. Along with a lot of other things.

I thought about ending my life on that trip. Just making a turn off some remote stop on the highway, driving this old ruin of a car off a cliff, if I could find a cliff. Or a gun. That actually made me laugh. There I was, wanted for seven murders and I didn’t have a gun!

And I might have – ended it on that trip. But if I did, everyone would think I was guilty and had killed the people I loved. And if I did, who would look for their murderer? So I thought maybe I’d just go back to Florida, where it all had started.

In a twisted way it made sense. I’d show them. The cops, the FBI, the whole world. I didn’t do it, didn’t kill anyone – well, except that one murderer up North.

So about a day later I rumbled my clunker over the Okeechobee Bridge into Palm Beach. I parked across from the Brazilian Court. I sat staring at the yellow-hued building, smelling the breeze off the gardens, realizing I’d come to the end of my journey – right where it all had started.

I closed my eyes, hoping some karmic wisdom would hit me about exactly what to do next.

And when I opened my eyes, I saw my sign.

There was Ellie Shurtleff coming out the front door.

THERE WERE A couple of ways she could play it, Ellie decided.

Turn what she had found over to Moretti and let him handle it. After all, the Tess McAuliffe homicide wasn’t even their case. Or toss it in the lap of the Palm Beach PD. But Ellie had already seen the star treatment Stratton seemed to get from them.

Or she could do what every cell in her body was crying out to do.

Take it a step forward. Just one or two more steps… What could that hurt?

She had the assistant she shared at the office print a photo of Stratton from the Internet and jammed it in her purse. She left word for Moretti that she was headed out for a few hours.

Then Ellie climbed in her office Crown Vic and headed up the highway, back to Palm Beach.

She knew Moretti would have a coronary, and a smile crossed Ellie’s lips: Fuck the art !

Crossing over the bridge on Okeechobee, she headed for the Brazilian Court. It was a whole lot quieter now than a few days before.

Ellie went into the lobby. An attractive blond guy was behind the reception desk. Ellie flashed the FBI badge hanging loosely around her neck. She showed the man Dennis Stratton’s picture. “Any chance you’ve seen this person around here?”

The desk clerk studied it for a second and then shrugged no. He showed it to a colleague. She shook her head. “Maybe you want to show it to Simon. He works nights.”

Ellie flashed the photo around to the door staff and then the restaurant manager. She showed it to a couple of waiters. Everybody shook his head, no. It was a long shot, Ellie reminded herself. Maybe she’d come back at night and try Simon.

“Hey, I know that dude,” one of the room-service waiters said. She’d found him in the kitchen. His eyes lit up as soon as he saw the face. “That’s Ms. McAuliffe’s friend.”

Ellie blinked. “You’re sure?”

“Sure I’m sure,” the waiter, Jorge, exclaimed. “He comes around here every once in a while. Good tipper. Gave me twenty bucks to pop a bottle of champagne.”

“You’re saying they were friends?” Ellie asked, feeling her pulse come alive.

“You could call them friends .” Jorge tossed a smile. “Like, I gotta learn how to get me some friends like that, too. Hard to figure, short bald dude with someone who looked like that. Gotta figure he had bucks, right?”

“Yeah.” Ellie nodded. “Lotta bucks, Jorge.”

I TURNED THE IMPALA into a half-full lot on Military Trail south of Okeechobee. Next to Vern’s Tank and Tummy and Seminole Pawn, a long way from the mansions on the beach.

The place looked more like some run-down shipping office or one of those whitewashed stucco huts that housed seedy, ambulance-chasing lawyers. Only the handful of retuned Vespas on the sidewalk and the cracked Yamaha sign in the window gave it away.

Geoff’s Cycles. NATIONAL MINI RACING CHAMPION. 1998.

I parked the car and stepped inside. No one at the counter. I heard the sound of an engine being revved in the back. I wedged through shelves of helmet boxes into the garage. I saw a half-finished bottle of Pete’s Wicked Ale on the floor and pair of beat-up Addidases sticking out from under a gleaming Ducati 999. The engine revved again.

I kicked the sneakers. “That thing run like an old lady having a coughing fit, or does it just sound like one?”

An oily face wheeled out from under the blocks. Close-cropped orange hair and a fuzzy smile. “Dunno, mate. Guess that depends on how fast the old bag can run.”

Then his eyes bulged as wide as if I’d crawled out of a crypt in Dawn of the Dead . “Holy Shit, Ned !”

Geoff Hunter dropped the wrench and hopped to his feet. “It is you, Ned. Not some body double for Andrew Cunanan?’

“It’s me,” I said, taking a step forward. “Whatever’s left.”

“Mate, I’d like to say you’re a sight for sore eyes,” Geoff said, shaking his head, “but, frankly, I was hoping you were a whole lot farther away from this sorry-assed place than here .” He wrapped his greasy, oil-stained arms around my back.

Champ was a Kiwi, who’d been on the world minicycle racing tour for several years. Once, he even held the tour speed record. After a bout or two with Jack – Daniel’s – and a sticky divorce, he ended up performing motorcycle stunts in cycle shows, like jumping over cars and through hoops of fire. I’d met him working the bar at Bradley’s. You put anything crazy enough in front of him and chased it with a beer, Champ was in!