Sea Change

“No. I don’t know any of them. There’s some babe named Brittany, and somebody named Janine, but I don’t know any last names.”

“Men?”

“Harry,” Mandy said with a big smile, “and Mike and a guy named Ace.”

“No last names,” Kelly Cruz said.

“We’re real informal on the yacht,” Mandy said.

“You know what Mr. Ralston does with all his videotapes?”

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“He looks at them, I guess, in his spare time.”

Kelly Cruz nodded.

“Do you know where he is now?” Kelly Cruz said.

Mandy tipped her glass so that the small chunks of ice in the bottom slid into her mouth. She crunched them thoughtfully, and shook her head.

“He’s up north near Boston someplace,” she said after she swallowed. “There’s some big race thing going on.”

“Do you know when he’ll be back?” Kelly Cruz said.

Mandy shrugged and shook her head.

“Do you know anyone named Florence Horvath?” Kelly Cruz said.

“There was a Florence, hung with Tommy for a while.”

“Know anything about her?”

“She was old for Tommy.”

“Anything else?”

“No.”

“Know where she is now?” Kelly Cruz said.

“No.”

“Know any other friends of hers?”

“No.”

“Do you know Corliss and Claudia Plum?”

“Twins?” Mandy said.

“Yes.”

“Corliss and Claudia, yeah. They been on the boat with Tommy, pretty sure. I mean how many twins you meet, let alone named Claudia and Corliss. Yikes.”

“They party with Tommy too?”

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“Absolutely. College cuties, you know.”

Kelly Cruz took out the three head shots Jesse had sent.

“Know any of these?” she said to Mandy.

Mandy studied the pictures.

“I mighta seen them around the marina, hard to say. Pic -

tures aren’t really great, you know?”

“I know,” Kelly Cruz said.

Mandy looked some more.

“I can’t tell,” she said. “Everybody hangs around the marina looks the same, tan, blond. Boys, girls, doesn’t matter.

Hard to remember.”

Kelly Cruz nodded and took the pictures back. She took a card out of her purse and handed it to Mandy.

“Anything occurs to you, call me.”

“Sure,” Mandy said and tucked the card into her bra.

“Tommy give you money?” Kelly Cruz said.

“He helps out, bless his horny little heart.”

“So what are you doing now,” Kelly Cruz said, “while Tommy’s away?”

Mandy paused to light a new cigarette.

“I have other friends,” she said.

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33

I been working my little butt off for you down here,” Kelly Cruz said on the phone.

“Glad to know it’s little,” Jesse said.

“Perky, too,” Kelly Cruz said.

“Even better,” Jesse said. “What do you know.”

“I talked to the vic’s parents,” Kelly Cruz said. “The old man is off in happy land someplace. Booze, denial, Alzheimer’s, I don’t know. But as far as he knows, everything is dandy and let’s have a cocktail.”

“How about the mother?”

“She knows. And she doesn’t know what to do with it, and so she pretends she doesn’t know, and let’s have a cocktail.”

S E A C H A N G E

“She know the twins aren’t in school?”

“Yes,” Kelly Cruz said. “I feel kind of bad for her.”

“She know anything else?”

“She knows that Florence was pals with Thomas Ralston.”

“Son of a gun!” Jesse said.

“And the twins,” Kelly Cruz said, “Corliss and Claudia, were also pals with Thomas Ralston.”

“You got that from the mother too?”

“No. I did some follow-up,” Kelly Cruz said. “I’m trying to make sergeant.”

“Follow-up and a perky little butt,” Jesse said. “You’re a lock.”

“Yeah. Ralston led a pretty lively sex life. You want to hear?”

“I do,” Jesse said.

Kelly Cruz told him everything she’d learned. Jesse listened silently. When she was through he told her what he knew about Harrison Darnell.

“And Darnell’s parked right beside Ralston?” Kelly Cruz said.

“In the same harbor,” Jesse said. “And, I don’t think they call it parked. I think it’s anchored, or moored, maybe.”

“I’ll make a note,” Kelly Cruz said. “So they both knew Florence Horvath. They both have the same, ah, atypical sexual interests. And they were both . . . anchored . . . in Paradise Harbor when Florence washed ashore.”

“Yes,” Jesse said. “Does that seem significant to you?”

“I might check it out, I was you,” Kelly Cruz said.

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“Thanks,” Jesse said.

“You’re welcome, but there’s one other thing, maybe,”

Kelly Cruz said. “One of the people I talked with down here, a girl, maybe twenty-one, twenty-two, mentioned that Florence Horvath seemed a little old for Thomas Ralston.”

“She was thirty-four,” Jesse said.

“No accounting for taste,” Kelly Cruz said. “Maybe he passed her on to Darnell.”

“Darnell seems somewhat able to tolerate age diversity,”

Jesse said.

“I’ll keep snooping around when I’m not busy with my real job,” Kelly Cruz said.

When she hung up Jesse sat silently, looking at nothing.

The scientists had established that all the tapes were recent.