Текст книги "Surface Tension"

Автор книги: Christine Kling

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

And, of course, given my financial state, a free meal wasn’t a bad deal, either.

That left me with at least an hour to kill before trying to put on a “girl suit.” Red used to say that whenever he saw me get dressed up. Working as a lifeguard or helping him out on the Gorda, I lived in shorts and T-shirts, so he had always been surprised to see me looking like a woman.

When I turned into the Larsens’ drive and there was no sign of B.J.’s El Camino, I wasn’t sure whether I was relieved or disappointed. I hopped out of the Jeep and walked out to the street to get the mail. Bills, bills, and more bills. The only stuff for the Larsens was some third-class junk the post office wouldn’t forward. There was also a note from FedEx that they’d left a package under the mat at the Larsens’ front door. I collected the package and walked around to their back door took the key from under the rock and left the package on their kitchen table along with the rest of their mail. Since we were heading into summer, I didn’t expect them to show up anytime soon, but it was so typical of rich people like the Larsens, having their stuff sent FedEx just because they could afford to.

I showered and sorted through my clothes, trying to find something appropriate. Judging from appearances, James would choose a formal dining spot, and my wardrobe was sorely lacking in that department. I finally decided that since I wasn’t big on chiffon, I’d have to be original. I took a hand-painted silk pareu I’d once bought on a lark and tied it as a sort of off-the-shoulder sarong. I blow-dried my hair and pulled back one side with a small barrette, then rubbed vanilla-scented lotion on my freshly shaved legs and put on some low-heeled leather sandals. That was it. I stood in front of the mirror turning to look at my profile. No, braless was not the way to go when one was nearly thirty. I dug around in my underwear drawer and found an old strapless swimsuit top with an underwire. Presto—cleavage. I checked the mirror again. Good enough. I wasn’t about to trowel on makeup just because I had a date with a guy who looked like he belonged in a café on South Beach surrounded by gorgeous models.

I had given James directions to my place, but I’d told him to ring the buzzer outside the fence. Abaco didn’t particularly like strange men, and I didn’t want to start my date off with a dog bite.

The buzzer rang at seven on the dot. I locked the cottage door and hurried out to the gate.

“You look great,” James whispered as he brushed his lips across my cheek. He was wearing a crisp, original Guy Harvey shirt with a picture of a leaping marlin painted on the back, khaki pants, and Top-Siders. I was pleased to see I wasn’t too underdressed.

Looking past him at the car in the Larsens’ driveway, I let loose a loud “Wow!” I walked around the silver Jaguar convertible making all kinds of unintelligible, appreciative noises. He opened the door smiling, but without saying a word. I liked the fact that he didn’t launch into a big lecture about the car. Most guys who drive hot cars like nothing better than to talk about them all the time.

I sank into the soft leather seats and decided I would be perfectly happy if he took me to a drive-in. I could have stayed in that car all night.

We headed north on Federal Highway, making the usual small talk. I laughed when he told me we were going to the Mai Kai Restaurant.

“You don’t like it?” he asked.

“No, it’s not that, it’s just that I have a friend who has several family members who work there. He’s always complaining about the place. See, he’s Samoan, and he thinks the shows are far from authentic—demeaning is the word he uses. Now I’ll have a chance to tell him what I think.”

It felt rotten talking about B.J. like that. Talking about him was making me feel the heat of his kiss all over again.

Fort Lauderdale’s Mai Kai really belongs in Orlando. It was as fake and touristy a place as I’d ever seen, full of vacationing New Yorkers, French Canadians, and Germans. Although we had no reservations, James was taken to a table right away. Several of the waiting tourists glared at us as we were led to a spot near the stage, but there were nods and acknowledgments as James walked past the tables of better-dressed patrons. James explained to me that we would eat first and watch the famed Polynesian revue afterward.

He pulled out my bamboo chair, and before I sat, he brushed away imaginary crumbs with a cloth napkin from one of the extra place settings. He did the same to his own seat. I looked around at the carved tikis, flower leis, fake rock waterfalls, live orchids, and lush palms. No wonder B.J. was irked at his culture being reduced to Disney proportions.

James lifted his glass after the waiter poured us each some Pouilly-Fuissé. “To Elysia. We’ll keep her alive in our memories.” We were seated not across from each another but rather at an angle so we would both have a good view of the stage. We clinked our glasses.

I sipped a little of the wine. I would have preferred a beer.

“You really look lovely, Seychelle,” James said, resting his chin sideways on his interlaced fingers and staring at me. “It’s quite a treat for me to be out with a beautiful young woman instead of a wealthy, wrinkly widow with a large estate.”

“Thank you.” It embarrassed me when men complimented me, but it was a pleasant embarrassment.

“How is it that a beautiful and accomplished young woman like you is not involved with a man at the present?”

I didn’t really want to go into this tonight. I tried for the short version. “I was in a relationship, but that ended a few months ago. I don’t want to jump into anything on the rebound.”

“Hmmm. Tell me about him. Have you two remained friends?”

It seemed like a slightly odd turn for the conversation, but I soon forgot it as our waiter showed up. Though I protested that it was really too expensive, James insisted we both order the lobster Bora Bora. At least we didn’t have to drink any of those silly colorful drinks with the umbrellas in them. The food arrived quickly, and I gave myself over to the succulent flesh. Soon my chin was dripping butter, but I was ecstatic.

I let James do all the talking. I watched as he meticulously dug out nearly every piece of meat without once ever touching the lobster’s shell. He said he was originally from Jamaica, but came to Miami at age six, grew up in Overtown, and had attended Ringling School of Design on an art scholarship. His grandmother, who had raised him, died in a house fire during his third year, and he quit school to take guardianship of his younger brothers and sisters. In need of money, he had started working in clubs in the city, and eventually went back to school for a degree in business administration.

“Art is still my first love, but it just doesn’t pay the bills,” he said.

There was an earnestness as he talked about himself that was charming. He was neither too boastful nor too modest. There was very little not to like about the man, except for the fact that he (I was finding it more difficult to believe it could have been him) or someone else at Harbor House had played some part I didn’t understand in Ely’s death.

I hadn’t yet said a word to James about the Top Ten and Patty Krix.

“There’s something I keep wondering about,” I said,

taking off the plastic bib with a picture of a cartoon lobster on the front.

“What’s that?”

“I keep wondering if there isn’t some kind of a connection between Elysia’s death and Patty’s.”

James looked puzzled. “Patty?” he asked. Again, I couldn’t read his reaction. Either he was an exceptionally good actor or he really didn’t know what I was talking about.

“Patty Krix. You remember her? Ely told me she was a resident of Harbor House for a while.”

“Oh, yes, yes, I remember her now. What happened to her?”

“You didn’t read about it in the papers or see it on TV? That big yacht, the Top Ten, found offshore with a dead girl aboard? That girl was Patty Krix.”

“What? Patty? I did hear something about that, but I never heard the girl’s name.” He shook his head. “Oh, my God ...” He was wearing the same expression that he had worn in the courtyard discussing Elysia. Either Collazo hadn’t asked him about Patty Krix—which, given Collazo’s reputation for thoroughness, was rather surprising—or James Long was getting himself caught in a rather peculiar little lie.

Before the coffee and rum pineapple cheesecake, James had the waiter bring us finger bowls with lemon and warm towels. He scrubbed each and every finger with his towel as I told him about my business, the Gorda, and how I had come to tow the Top Ten. I conveniently skipped over the fact that Neal had been my lover.

“I had no idea I was out with a lady captain,” he said, setting aside his towel with that smile that eclipsed every tiki torch in the room.

Once the Polynesian revue began, conversation became impossible. Okay, it’s touristy and hokey, but hey, I enjoyed it. It was fabulous to watch the men, their hard, oiled bodies undulating to the pounding rhythms. As I watched, I thought about how few opportunities women have to watch men’s bodies. I don’t mean checking out a guy’s butt in tight pants, but rather the chance to stare at and drink in the full curve of his bicep, the rippling of his abdomen, or the deep shadowed groove down his back. It didn’t mean that I wanted to bed them, but they moved in a manner so foreign and yet so familiar the skin swelling over the flexing muscles, that watching them was pure sensual pleasure.

Our table was off to the right of the stage in an intimate, dark corner. As we watched the show, I was intensely aware of the proximity of James’s knee under the table. My head was telling me not to trust him, but all the while that deep animal part of me was reacting to his sexuality, his maleness. His knee brushed against mine, and I felt weak and foolish when I looked up and smiled at him. I forced myself to look away. We had a good view of the opposite side of the stage, where a door led to a backstage entrance. I tried to put some distance between us as I watched a group of dancers leaving the stage.

Suddenly, I was startled to see B.J. standing there among the dancers, staring straight at me. When our eyes met, he smiled and gave a barely perceptible nod, and my stomach, full though it was, suddenly felt like it was doing its own Tahitian dancing. Then he turned, put his arm around the narrow brown shoulders of one of the lovelier women dancers, and vanished into the throng of brightly costumed performers. I glanced at James to see if he’d noticed, but he was concentrating on the other female Tahitian dancers onstage.

What was that all about? I wondered for a moment if I had even seen B.J. In my mind, I again saw his hand touching the girl’s skin, and I shifted in my chair, brushing my knee up hard against James’s and leaving it there. His head turned and his eyes flicked down, then back up with one eyebrow raised. I smiled, and James put his arm around my shoulder. I hoped to hell B.J. was watching.

After the show, I excused myself and walked across the dining room to the ladies’ room. On my way back to the table, I passed by some tall potted palms near the front cash register. A large, dark figure stepped out into my path.

I heard my own gasp over the general din of the dining room before I recognized him.

“B.J.?” I felt a bit sheepish at taking fright so easily, but after the past few days, I’d grown very jumpy.

“Hey, Seychelle.” He smiled. “Don’t you look nice.”

I held my hand to my throat. “God, you scared me. What are you doing here?” I had been genuinely frightened.

“I came by to speak to my uncle Aunu’u. He wants me to help his son with his application for a scholarship to the University of Miami.”

“Here at work?”

“They get an hour or so between sets, and that’s when Vanu does his homework. He’s the fire walker you just saw.”

In my mind I saw him again, the barely clothed young man walking across the hot coals.

“They give athletic scholarships in fire walking now?”

B.J. grinned at me. “No, it’s an academic scholarship. A few Samoans are more than just big muscles, brown skin, and white teeth.”

I realized I had been caught in my own prejudice, and B.J. seemed to think it was funny. I knew what I was about to tell him would take the smile away.

“Collazo, the cop, called me this morning. Have you heard from him?”

“No, I’ve been working on the Chris Craft at Bahia Mar all day, surfed an hour around sunset, then came straight here.”

“Elysia died last night.”

The smile disappeared. “What?”

“They said she was on heroin.”

“Wait a minute.” He shook his head as though trying to clear out his ears. “What did you just say? That’s crazy. We saw her last night.”

“I know. I didn’t believe it at first, either. They found her in the river this morning. And the people at Harbor House are saying she never got home last night, making us look like liars.”

He opened his mouth as though to speak, but instead exhaled with a soft groan. He wrapped his big arms around me and leaned his weight against my body. After last night, I didn’t know what to think about B.J., and I felt awkward.

“How did she ... ?” he half whispered, half moaned into my ear.

I bit my lower lip to control the trembling. “I don’t know. But I will find out.”

“Sey ...” He held me tighter.

“I’ve got to get back,” I said.

B.J.’s body tensed.

I pulled away from him and looked at his face. He was frowning and staring across the room.

“It looks to me like your friend keeps some bad company,” he said, his voice, now deep and strong, completely changed from seconds before.

When I turned to look, I saw a short, powerfully built man leaning over my vacant chair. James was speaking fast and gesturing wildly, the whites of his eyes showing brightly in the darkened dining room. He no longer looked like the calm, sophisticated man I had left at the table. The other man wore a bright, flowered Hawaiian shirt, and from his black hair and broad, flat nose, I guessed he might be one of the dancers from the show. His right hand grasped the back of my chair, and on the back of his hand was a tattoo that from that distance looked like a coiled snake. There was something familiar about him, but I couldn’t place where I had seen him.

“You know him?” I asked B.J.

“Yeah, Cesar Espinosa.” He seemed to spit out the name. “He used to work here for a while as one of the walk-on torchbearers in the show. He’s not Polynesian, he’s Mexican, but he sort of appointed himself as bouncer. He liked to get into it with customers who’d had too much to drink—you know, roughed them up for the fun of it, acted like he owned the place.”

“I take it you don’t like him much.”

“That’s an understatement. There was this girl working here. One of Vanu’s friends. She wasn’t Polynesian either; she was Chinese-Jamaican, an amazing exotic beauty. Her parents owned a convenience store, and her father was shot and killed there. She was only sixteen when she started here, still in high school, a bright, really nice girl, but she started dating Cesar right after her dad died, and she changed—quit school, ran away from home, got into drugs and prostitution. She still used to call Vanu sometimes, told him she wanted out, and then we heard she’d been found dead. They called it an accidental overdose, but Vanu always thought it was intentional, that that had been her way out. Cesar used her and then just threw her aside. She could not take the shame.”

“You said he used to work here?”

“Yeah, he quit about six months ago. I haven’t seen him around here since.”

“I wonder what the two of them are talking about.”

“It can’t be good. If your friend is a buddy of Cesar’s, be careful, Seychelle.”

“B.J., my ‘friend,’ James Long, is the director of a very reputable charitable organization. He wouldn’t be in that position if he was a lowlife or crook of some kind. This man’s in the limelight. They write stories about him in the newspaper for crissakes.”

“And you say I’m the one who is naive. Just promise me you’ll be careful.”

“Okay, okay.” I wondered if his distrust of James could have anything to do with his having seen James’s hand on my shoulder.

He placed a quick peck on my cheek. “Tomorrow, we need to talk.”

For an instant I felt a kind of hope rise inside me, a hope that maybe things could be different.

“You take care of yourself.”

He turned and passed through a side door into the backstage area.

When I returned to the table, Cesar Espinosa was halfway across the dining room, headed for the exit. “Sorry I took so long,” I said, settling into my seat.

“That’s all right.” James smiled. He looked completely calm; there was no trace left of the wildly animated speaker of a few moments ago.

“That man you were speaking to. Was he a friend?”

He looked surprised. “Him? No way. He’s an unsavory character who has dated some of the girls at the Harbor House. I try to warn them, but some young girls are just attracted to bad men. You know the saying ‘Good guys can’t win.’ ” He flashed those perfect white teeth and shrugged.

I nodded and grinned back at him like a smitten teen.

“Apparently he wants to see one of our girls now, and Minerva won’t put his phone calls through. Sometimes I can’t help feeling paternal about the girls. I want them to get their lives back on track. He’s not going to help them out in that direction.”

I nodded. It made sense. For now.

The night was cloudless when we left the Mai Kai, and James asked if he could put the top down. I told him I would have asked if he hadn’t, that I wasn’t exactly the sort to mind wind-whipped hair. We drove down to A1A and along the beach, and I felt like purring, nestled into that buttery leather admiring the few stars that could overpower the city lights and the velvet night wind that was teasing my face with loose wisps of hair. He put a Louis Armstrong CD in and we cruised to “What a Wonderful World.” I felt more than a little woozy from the wine, and it was only when we cruised past Bimini Lane and I looked down at the darkened outline of Harbor House that I started to sort through my confusion about what I was doing in a Jaguar cruising the beach with James Long.

James left me to my thoughts, and I added that to the list of things I liked about the man. For more than twenty minutes, we cruised along and reveled in another spectacular Florida night, the waves breaking in plankton-lit foam in the background, the parade of tourists with their sunburned glow in the foreground. Louis launched into “La Vie en Rose.” I was trying hard just to empty my mind, to let the cleansing breeze blow the events of the past couple of days away, but Collazo’s words kept coming back to me. Why were so many people connected to me turning up dead?

“Would you like to stop and walk awhile?” he asked as we approached the most populated stretch of the strip.

“Sure, that would be nice,” I said.

To my surprise, instead of heading for the beach, James turned up Las Olas Boulevard, away from the beach, and drove inland into the ritziest little shopping district in Fort Lauderdale. For a stretch of less than a mile, this quaint street was lined with old buildings– old by Fort Lauderdale’s standards, anyway—that had been turned into galleries, cafes, and boutiques. Big old oaks grew up in the street’s median, creating a canopy over the sidewalk eateries, and the homes just a block to the south were riverfront mansions. The area reeked of money, which is why it wasn’t exactly high on my list of frequently visited shopping spots.

James parked in the lot behind the Riverside Hotel and walked around to my side of the car to open the door. I always feel like a complete incompetent sitting in a car waiting for a man to open my door, but I was trying hard to be socially correct. Why, I wasn’t exactly sure. I had agreed to go out with this man in the belief that I would find out something about Harbor House that would provide some answers, and I found myself not doing a bit of interrogating, but rather wanting him to like me.

After a short stroll, James turned into an art gallery and walked over to a group of oils all clearly painted by the same artist. He didn’t say a word and didn’t look at me, in fact, he seemed to have forgotten I was there. He just stared at the paintings with a half smile.

From a distance, they looked like photographs. All five paintings were done in shades of black and white and gray, and they depicted very realistic objects against stark backgrounds: a single black enameled vase in an all-white room, a white sickle moon in the black sky, a black hand reaching for a silver knife on a white tablecloth. Two paintings hanging side by side were of matching eyes, huge eyeballs nearly a foot across, one in white skin, the other in black. Though you could not see the expression on the face in either painting, there was something disturbing about the eyes. I felt a chill looking into them. I knew the features outside the frame included raised brows, flared nostrils, and a mouth in an open scream. I had to look away.

“You did these, didn’t you?” I said, turning to look at him, waiting for his answer, but he hadn’t heard the question, apparently. He just stood there with that odd little smile.

When we pulled into the driveway at the estate, James was out of his door and opening mine before I’d collected my shoulder bag from the backseat. Oh, hell, I thought, I’m a big girl, and it’s not all that late. Besides, I really hadn’t learned anything from him yet.

But as I stepped from the car, I knew it was more than that. I could make all the excuses I wanted about how I was really inviting him in only to pump him for information, but in fact there was something very charming and exciting about the man, not to mention that his interest in me was doing great things for my recently bruised self-image. The fact that he might be dangerous as well only made him more interesting. Part of me hated myself for the attraction I felt, but it was not that part of me that spoke first.

“Would you like to come in for a drink? Actually, beer is about all I have. I haven’t had a chance to do much shopping lately.”

“That would be nice.”

“I’d better go lock up my dog first. She can get a little weird sometimes.”

I let myself in, took Abaco to the Gorda, and locked her into the wheelhouse. She stood up on her hind legs and rubbed her wet nose against the glass in the door. I felt sorry for her, but I pointed my finger: “Now, you be a good girl.”

James was leaning against his Jag, his head back, staring up at the sliver of a moon, very similar to the moon in his painting. He looked just like something out of one of those perfume ads where all the gorgeous people appear faintly sad. The gate squeaked, and he turned to look at me.

“Are you okay?” I asked him.

“I was just thinking about Elysia. It was such a waste to lose her like that.” His voice cracked, and his Adam’s apple dipped as he swallowed. I walked over and leaned my butt against the warm car hood next to him. The stars visible through the the branches of the oaks were few and far between, as the lights of the city just across the river had washed most of them away.

“What do you think really happened to Ely?”

Over the sound of the insects humming in the underbrush, I again heard him swallow. He opened his mouth as though he were about to say something, but then he only looked down at me and rested a hand on my shoulder. “You said something about a beer?”

I led him back to the cottage and unlocked the door. Before swinging it open, I felt a little moment of panic. For all I knew, this man had played a part in Ely’s death and could be plotting the same for me. After I’d switched the lamp on and the light filled the room, though, such fears seemed foolish. After all, he was the head honcho, the director of Harbor House. He probably dined at the mayor’s house, for Pete’s sake. And lots of people had seen us together this evening.

He went straight to the easel and paints.

“You paint?” he called out as I retrieved two beers from the fridge.

“Yeah, just as a hobby.” I handed him the can, and from his look, I could tell he would have preferred his beer in a glass. He took a paper napkin from the holder on the bar and began to wipe the aluminum top of the can.

“Are you any good?” He settled on the couch and stretched his arm across the back. I wondered if I was expected to sit inside that arm.

“Hmmm ... tough question. Technically, I’m decent, but I don’t have the passion for painting—you know, the artistic temperament. My mother had it, so I know what it is.” Standing in the center of the room with my back to him, I pointed to the dark canvas on the far wall. It depicted a bird-of-paradise flowering in an unruly garden in the midst of a threatening summer squall. “That’s one of hers. My mother had all this emotion in her, all this thought and spirit and soul that she just couldn’t express any other way.”

“I know what you are talking about. That is why many people paint.”

I turned to face him. “Of course. I saw that tonight in your paintings.” I didn’t go so far as to say that I found it very difficult to believe that such a warm, sociable person could make such cold paintings. “You said those canvases were several years old. Do you still paint?”

“No, I’ve found other outlets for my passion.”

He said it matter-of-factly, without a wink or a leer. My mother had found another outlet, too.

I turned back to my mother’s bird-of-paradise painting. “It tortured my mother when she couldn’t paint, when what she managed to get on canvas didn’t look like what was in her head. But when things were going well, she knew a real serenity. I just wish it had happened more often for her.”

The sofa creaked when he stood, so I wasn’t entirely surprised when he rested his hands on my shoulders.

“And your mother? Where is she today?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. As soon as the subject of her death came up, I was that little girl again, the one who couldn’t speak for months.

James bent down and brushed his lips against the side of my neck, and I could barely hide the shiver I felt. “It’s okay,” he whispered.

No matter that I’d been insisting to myself that I really was only with him to try to get some information from him, when he slowly turned me around and kissed my mouth, I didn’t push him away. My eyes closed, and I reached up and ran my hands lightly along his jawline. His skin was smooth and cool, not at all like B.J.’s.

B.J. I placed my hand in the center of his chest, applied gentle pressure, and our lips parted. “James, there’s something I need to ask you ...” I opened my eyes for just a second, and in that flash, I became aware of a movement just past his shoulder at the kitchen window. My eyes flew wide open, and I turned my head in time only to see the blur as a head ducked below the window. Through the closed window, I could hear the rustling of the vegetation as someone pushed through the bushes out there.

“What the hell—” I disentangled myself from James and ran for the front door.

My kitchen window, which is at the back of the cottage, is accessible only through the thicket of bushes that separates the Larsen estate from its neighbors. I pushed my way through the clipped ficus and bougainvillea, ignoring the thorns and branches that cut into my flesh. By the time I’d fought my way clear to the neighbor’s large expanse of lawn, there was no one in sight.

“Damn!” I looked down at my thighs. Blood trickled down from numerous slashes. “Shit.”

“Seychelle? Are you all right?” James’s voice sounded distant, muffled as it was by the thick hedge. Then Abaco started barking inside the wheelhouse.

“Yeah,” I shouted. “I’ll be right there.” I trotted down the hedge to the wooden gate that joined the two properties, where on the rare occasions when both sets of neighbors were in town at the same time, they could socialize without having to exit their enclaves. It was standing open.

James was in front of my cottage when I returned. “Look at you,” he said, the lines on his forehead clear above his arched brows.

I glanced down at my pareu. The cloth had ripped, and a piece hung to the ground. The blood on my legs was starting to coagulate.

“They’re just scratches. No big deal.”

The dog was still barking. “Abaco,” I shouted. “Quiet!”

“What was that all about?”

“Didn’t you see him, or at least hear him?”

James shook his head. “See what?”

“There was a man at my kitchen window. I didn’t get a clear look at him. I just saw him out of the corner of my eye.” I didn’t tell James, but there had been something familiar about that fleeting glimpse.

Had it been a prowler, someone else come to rob me, or someone who was spying on me? Suddenly, I remembered B.J. watching me from backstage at the Mai Kai.

“I didn’t know what was going on when you just ran out of there like that.” James was looking at me as though I were something he had stepped in and he didn’t know how to politely wipe me off his shoe.

Suddenly, I started laughing. “God, you must have thought I was nuts, huh?”

He stepped back, staring, as I bent over laughing. He nodded.

“Guess this whole thing kind of broke the romantic atmosphere, eh?” I tried to control myself, but the giggles just kept erupting every time I thought I was under control.

“Seychelle, are you sure you’re all right?”

“Don’t worry.” I caught my breath and finally managed to pull off a straight face. “I’m fine. Whoever that was is long gone by now. Probably just a Peeping Tom,” I said, although I didn’t really think so. “I think we’d better call it a night, James.”

“I agree,” he said, smoothing out imaginary wrinkles in his shirt and tucking it tightly into his pants.

“Before you go, though, I’ve just got to ask one more thing. It’s about this business with Ely and the sign-in sheet. I saw her go in the door and bend down to sign in, James. I could see there was a person sitting there behind the desk. Now you’re saying no one saw her last night? I was just wondering if you really know everything that goes on at Harbor House. I mean, isn’t it possible that those girls could be into something behind your back?”