If they come up with anything fishy, the feds will make a decision on how to handle it . . . Thanks, Rosco, old buddy, I really needed this one.”
Rosco held his hands in the air. “Hey, I’m here to help.”
“Great . . . Happy to hear it. Why don’t you start by ‘helping’ Stuart load that tender into the back of his squad car. Maybe he’ll even give you a lift into town if you’re real nice to him.” Lever turned and walked toward his Ford. “I’ve got work to do,” he muttered.
“Have the lab check out the Dixie-Jack, too,” Rosco called after him, “and check out those blood samples.”
The three men watched in silence as Lever drove off. “You guys need a hand with this thing?” Mitchell eventually asked.
Stuart shrugged. “I think we can handle it, Mr. Mitchell.” He positioned himself over the outboard motor and added, “You’d think the weight of this engine would make it sink, wouldn’t you?”
They looked at each other, then at the deflated tender, then back toward each other. Rosco was the first to speak. “I can double-check with Ed Colberg, but it’s my understanding that the dinghy would remain seaborne—despite the loss of air. Rubber’s pretty buoyant. Look at all those empty tires that wash up. They’re full of water and they still float.”
“That’s it,” Mitchell said as he snapped his fingers. “I knew there was something else I thought of while I waited for you . . . Look at this beach.”
Rosco and Stuart stared at the length of empty sand.
“Yes?” Rosco asked.
“Waterlogged tires. That’s just it! There aren’t any. No driftwood. No dead turtles. That’s what makes this such a great beach in the summer; no seaweed or debris . . . and that’s also why no beachcombers are here off-season . . . There’s something about the way the cove is situated in the current . . . It’s really unusual for anything to wash up here.”
After Rosco and Stuart had stowed the inflatable in the trunk of the patrol car, they returned to Newcastle at a leisurely pace. The officer dropped Rosco at his Jeep, then continued down the ramp leading to the morgue and forensics lab below police headquarters. Rosco slid behind the Jeep’s wheel, started the engine, then entered his office number into his car phone and waited for it to pick up. He had three messages: the first from Tom Pepper, anxious for information; the second from a man claiming to work for A.M.I.; the third message was from Belle.
Rosco smiled at the sound of her voice, but the longer he listened to the message, the more his smile faded.
“Rosco, it’s me . . . Where are you? I’ve been trying your car phone like crazy. Call me as soon as you get this . . . No wait, don’t call me. I’m starved. I’ll be at Lawson’s Coffee Shop . . . It’s quarter to one right now. I don’t have any food in the house . . . well, nothing you’d call food . . . You’re not going to believe this. Someone sent me another crossword puzzle. I’ll bring it to Lawson’s. I won’t order anything until you get there, so don’t take forever . . .”
PUZZLE 2
13
Belle was already ensconced in the far-window booth at Lawson’s Coffee Shop when Rosco opened the glass-paneled front door. His arrival was heralded by the noisy peal of a rusting tin bell attached to the upper hinges, an early-warning device left over from the 1950s when Lawson’s had been built. True to form, none of the aging waitresses—also relics of the poodle-skirt era—turned a mascaraed eyelash, although one shouted out a raucous: “She’s seated in the back, angel.”
“Thanks, Martha.” Rosco nodded at the speaker as he walked past the long, green Formica counter. Martha was as much an institution as the coffee shop. She never called customers by name, but that didn’t mean she didn’t know each and every one of them—and most likely their parents, too. Martha, with her defiantly flaxen beehive hairdo and rustling candy-pink uniform, was a font of information. She prided herself on keeping her eyes peeled.
“What happens next?” Belle asked while Rosco slid in beside her on the banquette. The motif, here, was also fifties flamingo pink, but the seats’ aging vinyl covers were cracked and the tabletop chipped and scarred. Regulars like Rosco and Belle wouldn’t have changed this homey ambience for all the tea in China, however. To