Skin Deep

93

The chopper owner was a retired coast guard pilot named Rob Krueger who ran his own flight school out of a small airport in Plymouth. He was a friend of Neil’s, who had gone to the police academy with Krueger’s brother.

To save time, the pilot picked them up at the medevac heliport on Huntington Avenue in Boston and flew a southerly inland course straight toward Buzzards Bay. Homer’s Island lay about ten miles off the Massachusetts shore. The sky was heavily overcast and growing darker by the minute as they approached.

Krueger said he had been over the Elizabeth Islands before and knew the general layout of Homer’s. Using a detailed island map that marked the various estates, he found Vita Nova, the name of the estate that Monks’s receptionist had given. It was located on a rocky ledge that hung over Buck’s Cove.

About fifty minutes from liftoff, they crossed over the southeastern end of the Elizabeth chain and dropped to two hundred feet as they approached Homer’s. A sharp turn and the pilot pointed to Buck’s Cove, which was outlined by the night lights burning on the row of half a dozen estates.

Vita Nova, which sat at the easterly end of the cove, blazed on the darkling heights. And in the cove below, illuminated by lights burning along a long dock stretching into the water, sat a long white power cruiser.

It was the same boat in the photo in Monks’s office. The Fair Lady.