data for us by this time tomorrow. Logan needs to see this stuff. You’re sure he’s due in tomorrow?”
“Yeah, but he may not be at his best. A week on the cruise with all that food and booze would be way too much temptation for Logan.”
“Let’s go find out what makes our girl Nigella tick,” Jock said.
That turned out to be easier said than done.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
We were driving across the Sunshine Skyway Bridge that spans lower Tampa Bay and connects Manatee and Pinellas Counties. The sun was low on the horizon, but it still had a couple of hours before its daily descent into the Gulf of Mexico. A large ship, probably a phosphate carrier, was inbound, riding high, its Plimsoll Line showing far above the surface. It would load at the Port of Tampa and return to sea heavy with phosphate that would be turned into fertilizer for use around the world.
Few of the people who wintered on the gilded coasts of Florida knew that just a few miles inland a very different world existed, one of working men and women who mined the earth for phosphate, ran cattle, harvested citrus and vegetable crops, hunted deer, and fished the fresh-water lakes and rivers for food. A land of large Indian reservations and scrub and swamp and sinkholes and alligators and panthers, a land where man was an intruder and where life was cheap and dismal and desperate.
In the center of the state, near Orlando, the top tourist destination in the world, home of Disney and Universal Studios and SeaWorld and numerous other attractions, lay a single working cattle ranch that comprised three hundred thousand acres. Florida was a working state as well as a retirement mecca. And like every other state, we had our share of crooks and scam artists and other assorted criminals. Ours were just flashier and sometimes funnier than those of most any other place.
I’d called Nigella’s home phone just before we left my house. She answered and I apologized for calling a wrong number. She was home, and hopefully would still be there when we arrived.
I had also logged onto the Florida Bar website to see what I could find on her. Not much. She’d graduated from the University of Tennessee and Vanderbilt Law School. She’d been admitted to the Bar five years before. Her office address was listed as a post office box in Tampa. She had no ethical grievances filed against her.
Nigella lived in a large house on Bayshore Drive near Hyde Park with an expansive view of Tampa Bay. The house was long and slender, built on a narrow lot in the style of Charleston, with the front door on the side. It was still daylight when we knocked. It was opened by a woman with a definite Asian appearance, but the softening of the epicanthic folds and the lighter skin tones told me that Caucasian blood flowed through her veins. A Eurasian. She was about thirty, tall and slim and beautiful, her black hair pulled back into a tight bun, diamond studs in her earlobes. She was wearing a white shirt, white shorts and shoes, and held a tennis racket in her hand.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“I’m Jock Algren, Ms. Morrissey. I wonder if we could talk to you for a few minutes.”
“Make it quick. I’m on my way to play tennis.” Her voice was edgy, suspicious.
“May we come in?” asked Jock.
“We don’t have time for that. What are you selling?”
Jock put his hand on the tennis racket and wrenched it from her grip. He used his other hand to push her back into the house, holding onto her arm with one hand, with the racket in the other. I followed. We were in a foyer with a living room opening to our left. Jock continued pushing Nigella, until she backed into a sofa and sat down.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked, her voice loud and strained, pissed.
“We’re here about Bud Stanley,” said Jock.
“Who?”
“Bud Stanley. You know, the one who sends you all that money.”
She sat perfectly still, staring at us. Silent.
“Matt,” Jock said, “check out the house. I don’t want another surprise with a shotgun.”
I pulled out my thirty-eight-caliber police special and went to search the house. Most of the downstairs was taken up by a kitchen, formal dining room, living room, and foyer with a staircase leading to the second floor. There were four bedrooms, each with its own bath. Only one of the