Killer Swell

5

I was standing at the open back door of the lobby, admiring the sparkling black evening ocean when a finger tapped me on the shoulder.

“Mr. Braddock?” he asked as I turned around. “I’m Randall Tower.”

Randall was slightly taller than me, maybe six-four, and movie-star handsome. His thick, dark hair was cut stylishly short on the sides, a longer shock combed off his bronze forehead. Bright blue eyes rested above a very Waspy nose, thick lips, and a dimpled chin. A black cotton dress shirt and white linen slacks hung loosely on his thin frame. Black loafers covered his feet.

He offered his hand, and his grip was stronger than I expected.

“Noah,” I said.

He nodded, a small smile turning up a corner of his mouth. “Marilyn said I might be hearing from you.”

“That’s funny?”

He waved a hand in the air. “Marilyn said to watch out for ulterior motives. Those were her exact words, I believe.”

“I’m sure they were.”

He aimed a thumb back over his shoulder. “Buy you a drink?”

I nodded and followed him through the lobby into a small room that housed a bar and half a dozen stools, all empty. Apparently, in expensive hotels you didn’t hang out in the bar. Maybe you had the bartender hang out in your room.

We sat at the farthest end of the bar. I ordered a Jack and Coke, and Randall asked for a Heineken. The small man behind the bar had the drinks on the bar in less than thirty seconds and then moved away from us. Probably didn’t want my T-shirt to rub off on him.

“You knew Kate?” Randall asked me.

“In high school.”

“Marilyn said you dated.”

“We did.”

He chuckled, his eyes amused. “So are there ulterior motives that I should be aware of?”

“Nope. Marilyn hired me to find Kate. That’s my motive.”

He eyed me for a moment. “Sure about that?”

I stared back. “Yeah. I promise that if I find Kate, I won’t ask her to go to the prom with me,” I said. “Believe it or not, I have moved on since high school.”

He nodded. “Good.”

Something in the way he said it made me think that he was telling me that if I did have other reasons for taking on the case, I could forget them. Kate was his. It shouldn’t have, but it irritated me.

“How long have you been married?” I asked, sipping the drink.

“Three years,” he told me, his eyes focused on the green beer bottle. “We met at Stanford. Kate was finishing her master’s and I’d just completed my internship at the hospital.”

“You’re a doctor.”

“Orthopedic surgeon,” he said. “I’m practicing now at St. Andrew’s in San Francisco.”

“That’s where you live?”

He took a drink from the bottle and nodded. “Yeah. North of the city in Marin County.”

Randall and Kate were making some big bucks to live in one of the most expensive counties in the country.

We didn’t speak for nearly a minute, the silence in the bar broken by the bartender’s polishing of the brass rail that ran the length of the bar. A quiet shushing sound.

“Enough of the small talk,” he said, suddenly, his voice serious. “I hate small talk. It’s what I do with Marilyn.”

I raised my glass in his direction. “You said it, not me.”

“You’re an investigator?”

“I am.”

“Can you find Kate?”

“I don’t really know enough about what’s going on to give you a good answer to that,” I told him.

He thought about that and stared at his Heineken. His eyes were elsewhere, though. “I don’t think she wants to be married anymore,” he said.

“Why’s that?”

He laughed, shaking his head. “Because that’s basically what she told me.”

I didn’t react right away because I felt bad for him. No matter the state of their marriage, hearing that had to hurt. I remembered her conversation with me on Catalina and feeling as if someone had just died.

“Someone else?” I finally said.

He hesitated for a moment, glancing at me as if I’d asked an unexpected question. Then he looked back at the beer bottle. “I don’t think so. I think she just doesn’t want to be married.”

I found that odd. “So why would that make her disappear?”

He held the neck of the beer bottle loosely between his fingers, swinging it back and forth. “Not sure. We’ve been arguing, though.”

“About?”

“Oh, everything, I guess,” he said, a frustrated expression on his face. “We can’t get along. I get mad at her, she gets mad at me. Neither of us can please the other.”

I nodded. “When was the last time you spoke to her?”

“The night before her flight was supposed to leave. She seemed fine, said she was looking forward to getting home after being down here for a few days,” Randall said. “That was it. When she didn’t show up and no one had heard from her, I flew down right away.”

I finished my drink, and we walked back to the lobby. We shook hands again.

“Thanks for doing this,” he said, giving a quick nod.

“No problem,” I replied. “You’re staying in San Diego for a while?”

“As long as I need to,” he said, a weak smile creasing his face.

I said I’d be in touch and walked outside. The valets were talking and laughing. They glanced at me and then went back to their conversation. Guess I didn’t look like I owned a car they would consider parking.

Dr. Randall Tower hadn’t given me much. Normal marriage problems, seemed surprised that Kate would take off. But one thing bothered me as I walked back along Prospect to my car.

He seemed pretty calm for a guy who hadn’t seen his wife in nearly two weeks.