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The kettle screeched. Talia nearly jumped out of her skin. She turned quickly and lifted it off the burner. In the process she sloshed some of the boiling water onto her hand. She cried out. The detectives lurched forward, ready to lend assistance, but she warded them off.
“I’m fine. It’s fine.” She tucked her scalded hand into her opposite armpit. “You believe that Jasper is either in need of rescue or already dead? Is that what you’re saying?”
Their grim expressions confirmed it.
“You’re wrong. If he were going out on the water with Elaine tonight, he would have told me.”
“Did they take the yacht out together often?”
“Not often. But there have been occasions.” She wet her lips. “Were you given a description of the man who was with her?”
“Not a very good one. No one actually saw him board the yacht. It was a gloomy dusk. The mist limited visibility. One witness said the man he saw in the wheelhouse was wearing a baseball cap. Other than that—”
“Baseball cap?”
At her startled reaction, Locke and his partner came to attention. Locke said, “That’s been confirmed. A baseball cap was found on the yacht.”
Talia wilted against the edge of the countertop. “Orange, with a white capital letter T?”
“University of Tennessee,” Locke said.
She covered her face with her hands.
“Does your husband own a cap like that?”
She shook her head, said no into her moist palms, then lowered her hands. Her throat seized. She had to swallow several times. “No. But our neighbor does.”
“Next door?”
“He rents the garage apartment behind the house next door.”
Menundez said to Locke, “The patrolmen who responded to the call about the alarm talked to that guy.”
Locke asked Talia, “Was he acquainted with Mrs. Conner?”
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“Jasper and I introduced them.”
“What’s his name?”
Menundez was hurriedly swiping the screen of his phone. “I’ve got it here.”
“My name is Drex Easton.”
Startled, the three of them turned as one. He was standing in the open doorway between the screened porch and kitchen. How had he opened it without their hearing him? He was wearing the same dark suit he’d worn the night he escorted Elaine and her to dinner. The same shirt and tie.
But an altogether different countenance.
His right hand was raised and open to show a small leather wallet with a clear plastic window and a gold badge. His eyes zeroed in on Talia’s. “FBI Special Agent Drex Easton.”
Chapter 21
Rudkowski was sprawled on his hotel room bed, watching without much interest the dirty movie on the room’s flat screen, nursing his third scotch, and wondering how a man who weighed almost three fifty could vanish into thin air. It had been some trick, but Mike Mallory had managed it, and Rudkowski was made to look like a fool. Again.
His cell phone rang. He spilled half his whiskey in his haste to mute the bump-and-grind sound track and answer his phone. “Rudkowski.”
“It’s Deputy Gray.”
