“That’s a line, not in sand, in solid rock. We can’t be sure he doesn’t have another gun, but we can be reasonably sure if he does he’d use it. Duncan had one registered, and it wasn’t found on his body, or—as far as I can find out—anywhere else.”
“Speculative—but I mostly agree. We don’t have to lurk. Come with me, I’ll show you.”
She led the way to the terrace, and the telescope. “According to Mike, the previous owners bought it as an investment property about five years ago right before the bubble burst. The economy bottomed out, people weren’t spending as much on vacations, and so on,” she continued as she turned the telescope south. “It was on the market for over a year, and they had to keep cutting the price. Then—”
She straightened up from her focus. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, I’m an idiot. You need to talk to Mike. He brokered the property.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, I wasn’t thinking. He was the agent on that property. He might know something about something.”
“I’ll talk to him.”
“For now, you can look.” She tapped the scope. “Sandcastle.”
Eli bent over, looked through the eyepiece. It stood near the north point, two-story clapboard, with a wide deck facing the beach. Windows and sliders shuttered with blinds, he noted. A short driveway and no car.
“Looks like nobody’s home.”
“So, it would be a perfect time to go down, take a closer look.”
“No,” he said, still studying the house.
“You know you want to.”
Damn right he did, but he didn’t want her with him.
“The only thing to see is a house, with the blinds closed.”
“I bet we could pick the lock.”
Now he did straighten. “Are you serious?”
She shrugged, had the grace to look sheepish. “I guess I sort of am. We might find some evidence that—”
“Would be completely inadmissible.”
“Lawyer.”
“Sane,” he insisted. “We’re not breaking into his—or anyone’s—house. We’re especially not breaking into the house of a man who may very well be a murderer.”
“You’d do it if I weren’t here.”
“No, I wouldn’t.” At least he hoped to Christ he wouldn’t.
She narrowed her eyes at his face, then sighed. “You wouldn’t. At least tell me you’d like to.”
“What I’d like is for him to be in there. I’d like to go down, kick in the door then beat the living crap out of him.”
The cold rage in his voice got through, had her eyes widening. “Oh. Have you ever beaten the living crap out of anyone before?”
“No. He’d be my first. I’d enjoy it. Fuck speculative.” He rammed his hands into his pockets as he paced the terrace. “Just fuck it. I don’t know if he killed Lindsay, but odds are. And I know, I know he’s responsible for what happened to Gran. I know he put his hands on you. He put a bullet in Duncan. He’ll do it all again and more to get what he’s after. And I can’t do a goddamn thing about it.”
“Yet.”
He stopped, tried to shrug off some of the frustration. “Yet.”
“What can you do at this point?”
“I can talk to Mike. I can think about talking to Eden Suskind, and the best way to approach her if I do. We can give the cops your ID of Justin Suskind, which gives them a reason to have a conversation with him—in a few days, to give Sherrilyn some time first. Not much is likely to come from that, but it should worry him when it happens. I can keep researching the dowry, and try to figure out why he thinks he’ll find it here.”
As he thought it through, he calmed. “I can trust the investigator to do her job. And as insurance? I can put together a plan to lure Suskind into the house so I can catch his sorry ass.”
“We,” she corrected.
“We can see his place, therefore he can sure as hell see Bluff House. So he’s watching it, at least off and on. We’d have to make sure he was in there. Then we could make a show of leaving the house. Maybe we even take a couple of overnight bags.”
“Like we were taking a quick trip.”
“It would give him the perfect opening. We just park out of sight, circle back on foot and go in the south side. And into the passageway with a video camera. I’ve been looking at some online, and nanny cams.”
“Excellent, proactive. And it could work. What about Barbie?”
“Crap. Yeah, he might not come in with her barking. We take her with us, leave her with Mike.