Brian Freeman: The Bone House

Still, she couldn't complain. When he gave up golf, Mark had gone in a new direction and taken up teaching. That was how they'd met, when he was a substitute teacher in the Highland Park system. If he'd never been injured, he would have been on the Golf Channel, and she would probably still be single. So maybe it was fate. On the other hand, she knew it made the current situation even worse for Mark, because it meant that a second career had been stripped away from him in circumstances beyond his control.

'So what did you do?' she asked.

'What do you mean?'

'When you couldn't sleep. Where did you go?'

Mark hesitated. 'I took a walk.'

'On the beach?'

'Yes.'

'That must have been great. It was a beautiful night.'

'It was,' he said.

'How long were you gone?'

'I don't know. An hour maybe.'

Hilary pushed her chair back and stood up. 'I'm going to get some more orange juice. You want anything?'

Mark shook his head. He'd picked at his food but left most of it on his plate. It made her feel guilty eating everything she'd taken. If she'd been alone, she probably would have treated herself to another scoop of scrambled eggs, but instead she wandered over to the buffet and poured a second glass of juice over ice.

She noticed the cluster of police on the beach again. The handful of patrons in the cafe watched them curiously. Several guests had stood up and were shielding their eyes to get a better view of the activity near the water. A white-uniformed waiter passed Hilary with a fresh tray of cut fruit, and she smiled at him.

'Do you know what's going on?' she asked.

The waiter shrugged as he positioned the fruit on the buffet. 'Somebody told me they found a body out there.'

'A body? What happened?'

'Don't know. That's all I heard. Somebody died.'

'Do you know who it was?'

'A hotel guest, I think.'

'Here? At this hotel?'

'I guess so.'

He slid the empty tray under his arm and left without answering more questions. Hilary looked around the patio for someone she knew, but she didn't recognize anyone among the morning guests. She was concerned, because she and Mark had traveled to Florida this week specifically to watch the dance competition, which included several of her former students from Chicago. She had good friends among the girls and the coaches, and she hoped they were safe.

Hilary brought her juice back to the table. Mark saw the anxiety in her face.

'What's wrong?' he asked.

'Those are police out on the beach. The waiter says they found a hotel guest dead out there.'

Mark reacted immediately. 'Dead? Who was it?'

'I don't know.' She saw his eyes dart to the water, and she asked, 'Did you see anything last night?'

'What, like a body? Of course not.'

'Well, I wonder if you should talk to someone,' she said.

'And tell them what? I didn't see anything.'

Hilary shrugged. She saw the glass doors open on the other side of the patio, and she knew the woman who emerged from the hotel lobby. It was Jane Chapman, the mother of one of the dancers from Chicago. She waved at Jane, who made a beeline for their table. Her face was distraught.

'Hilary, it's terrible, did you hear?' Jane asked breathlessly. 'I can't believe it.'

'I heard that somebody from the hotel died. Do you know who it was?'

Jane nodded. 'A teenage girl. She was murdered.'

'One of the dancers?'

'I don't think so. I heard she's from your area, though. Door County.'

'Who ?' Hilary asked. Instinctively, she felt a wave of nausea and fear.

'A coach told me the dead girl's name was Glory Fischer.'

Hilary's breath left her chest. She felt dizzy. She heard Jane asking if she was OK, but the woman's voice was at the end of a long tunnel, muffled and distant. Hilary tried to speak and couldn't. She knew. Somehow she knew, without looking at Mark, without saying a word, that this event was a tornado that would suck in her and her husband. Her head swiveled slowly so that she could stare at him. She didn't want to see the truth, but their eyes met, and his expression confirmed all her fears. She saw emotions in his face she'd never seen in him before. Panic. Terror. Guilt.

Mark, what did you do? What happened last night?

She hated it that her first thought had nothing to do with trusting him. She hated it that her first thought had nothing to do with protecting him. It didn't matter that she would never believe for a moment that Mark Bradley could ever harm another human being. It didn't matter that she had faith in his willingness to stare at temptation and walk away from it. Her first thought had nothing to do with his innocence.

Instead, she stared at the man she loved, and all she could think was: Not again.

Detective Cab Bolton didn't notice the Gulf wave riding up the beach until he felt salt water lapping at his two-hundred-dollar Hugo Boss loafers. The surf rose above his ankles like a margarita in a blender and soaked inside his shoes before he had time to leap out of the way. As the wave retreated, he squatted in the sand, removed the loafers, and peeled off his wet socks. He shook his head in exaggerated dismay.

'Every time I buy a new pair of shoes, we get a beach body the next day,' he complained.

Cab rolled up the trouser legs of his navy blue silk suit. With his hare ankles and size 13 feet on display at the bottom of his six-foot- six frame, he resembled a great blue heron. His long neck, spiky blond hair, and the ski-jump slope of his sunburnt nose contributed to the impression of a bird on stilts.

Lala Mosqueda, who was the lead crime scene analyst, didn't look sympathetic. 'It's Florida, Cab. You ever hear of flip-flops?'

'I'd sooner wear Crocs,' he said.

The damage to the leather was done, but he took a handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped the sand from his shoes and blotted the excess water. He hooked the shoes on the fingers of his right hand and let them dangle. With his other hand, he stripped off his amber sunglasses and squinted at the tower of the hotel.

'So what do we have in this place, five hundred rooms?' Cab mused. 'Maybe more? You'd figure somebody had to be up there staring at the beach at three in the morning. Somebody saw something.'

Lala shook her head. 'No way. Too far, too dark.'

Cab pointed a long, crooked finger at the floor-to-ceiling windows, where at least a dozen gawkers followed the activity near the water. 'Look at the binoculars spying on us right now. Beachfront voyeurs are always looking for people humping by the water in the middle of the night.'

'Well, we've got uniforms interviewing guests in the lobby,' Lala told him. 'It's Sunday, and half the hotel is checking out. We're trying to catch people as they leave.'

'Good.' Cab eyed the narrow strip of Gulf Coast sand, which stretched along the water like a ribbon for several miles in both directions. Even in the early morning, there were already bathers sunning themselves up and down the beach. 'If you strangled someone in the surf, what would you do next?' he asked Lala.

'I'd walk along the water and head up the beach where there are a ton of footprints in the sand,' she said.

'Exactly. I hate beach bodies.' He replaced his sunglasses on his face, covering up his sky-blue eyes. 'OK, Mosquito, what do we know so far?'

Cab saw her dark eyes flash with annoyance. He knew she hated it when he used her nickname, but he couldn't resist pushing her buttons. He'd never been a master of social graces; his mouth was always getting him into trouble. That was one of the reasons he'd gone from the FBI to the police to private investigative work and back to the police in half a dozen cities over the past twelve years. His colleagues also resented his born-in-LA style. Unlike most cops working for a pension, he had a bulging trust fund thanks to his Hollywood mother, and he did what he did because he enjoyed it, not because he needed a paycheck. That didn't fly with most cops, and particularly not in Naples, which was a sun-soaked resort town of rich snowbirds and spoiled spring break college students. If you had money, you were supposed to be on the other side of the social divide.