The Edge

Chapter Thirty-Two

Out with it, Mac. What happened?" "Molinas is dead," I said to Laura. "It wasn't our side who killed him.

Del Cabrizo's people arrived before we did and executed him."

"He was afraid of Del Cabrizo."

"He was right to be. Unfortunately, we didn't find Molinas's daughter. By the time we and the Costa Rican people got to the compound, it was deserted. The police burned it to the ground to prevent any possibility that it could ever be used again as a halfway point. They're going to patrol the airspace too."

"Any word yet from Edgerton?"

"They searched the Tardier house from top to bottom, and they're going through his business records.

Nothing yet, no financial records to indicate anything concerning drugs.

"Paul's gone, everything in his house including his computer, gone as well. Tarcher says he doesn't have any idea what all this is about. They can't hold him, at least not yet. They're still looking for Jilly too. But as of two hours ago, we've got nothing on anybody."

I helped Laura move herself higher on the pillow. "There, that's better. Now, what about Charlie Duck and the traces of the drug the M.E. found?"

"Tarcher said he hadn't any idea how Charlie Duck had gotten ahold of Paul's drug. Maybe Paul killed him, Tarcher said." I lightly kissed Laura's hand. Her skin was smooth and soft. Her fingers clasped mine.

Her grip was stronger. "As you can imagine, the local sheriff, Maggie Sheffield, isn't a happy camper. She and Atherton are going at each other like two cocks after the same hen."

Laura laughed.

"Well, two dogs after the same bone. You get the idea. Since I got this from Atherton, he didn't quite phrase it like that, just complained that this cop in Edgerton was a pain in the butt."

"What are we going to do, Mac?"

I kissed her mouth and the tip of her nose. I got her ear-lobe on the third kiss. "We're going to stay right here until you're well enough to travel. Then"-I drew a deep breath-"I've got to go back to Edgerton. I've got to find Jilly."

"Give me a couple more days, Mac. We'll go together."

Four days later, all four of us landed in Portland, Oregon. Sherlock and Savich wouldn't let us go alone.

Savich rented a Toyota Cressida and I rented a Ford Explorer at the airport. They remembered us from last time and gave us a distrustful look, but our original rental cars had been returned to the rental company, the repair bills paid, everything right and tight.

I laid back behind Savich's car, bright red and in-your-face, on the road to Edgerton. We pulled into Paul's driveway on Liverpool Street a little over an hour later. It was two o'clock in the afternoon, a Thursday, in early May. A thick wet fog hung over the coastline. Since Paul and Jilly's house wasn't even fifty feet from the ocean, the fog was thick, so thick I could barely see Savich's red car right in front of me. I ached all over in the dampness, a lingering present from my injuries in Tunisia, I guessed. I wondered if this bone-deep damp made Laura's shoulder ache and pull.

There was no one around to see me pop the lock on the front door.

"It's not really breaking and entering," Savich said, providing me some cover as I broke in. "This is your sister's house, after all."

The house felt as cold and hollow as ever.

And empty. If Paul had left any notes or journals or equipment, the cops had taken it. I imagined that he'd taken everything.

"We might as well look," Laura said beside my elbow. "You never know."

Sherlock, humming, went off to the back of the house. I stood there quietly in the living room, wondering just where Paul would have hidden something he hadn't taken.

I turned slowly, taking in the modern art, the glass and furnishings, all cold whites and blacks that filled the long room. I still hated it.

Thirty minutes later I joined Savich upstairs in Paul's laboratory. Savich was looking through an empty closet, singing a country-and-western song under his breath.

I smiled as I carefully scanned the long narrow room, looking, I suppose, for anything that might be out of place, or something that wasn't quite in the right place, like a seam in the wall. Anything that felt even slightly unusual to me.

Nothing.

Savich was singing about Tommy breaking out of that hot, dark Mexican jail…

He stuck his head out of the closet. "I even tapped around the walls. Nothing."

He rose, wiped his hands on his pants, and said, "Well, I say we go over to the Tarcher house and see how glad they are to see us."

I said, "This is probably off the wall, but once Maggie told me that Jilly was sleeping with Rob Morrison.

Let's just go see if he knows anything."

Morrison's cottage was deserted, not even a car parked in front. No fresh tire tracks. The place looked like it had been empty for a good number of days.

Savich tried the front door. It was locked. Savich looked at me and said, "This is personal, Mac." He pulled out his small pick set and went to work. He couldn't get it open. "Interesting," he said.

"It is," Sherlock said, crowding in on him. "Why would you have a Fort Knox lock on a shack?"

"Good question."

I walked around the cottage to the large glass window behind the sink in the kitchen. I whistled as I gently broke the glass. Now this was breaking and entering, for sure.

I managed not to cut myself as I pulled myself in over the sink and jumped to the linoleum floor. The lock on the front door was elaborate, state of the art. It took a minute to figure out. Finally, I flipped three switches and opened the door for Savich and Sherlock.

"A guy lives here?" Sherlock said, looking around.

"Alone? This place is as neat as ours, Dillon, just after Julie our housekeeper's been there."

"Morrison's got a housekeeper too, a retired Alaskan fisherman named Mr. Thorne. I've never met him, but he sure does good work."

We got to it. Twenty minutes later, we gathered in the living room, not a whit wiser than twenty minutes before. We'd found a file drawer that held his insurance papers, medical records, car repairs from three different mechanics, and a few odd letters from relatives, nothing interesting or informative. There were a few framed photos around, but the only one that made me stop cold was one of Jilly, set in a gold frame, facedown on the bedside table. She was standing on a cliff, smiling big, wearing a sundress and big sunglasses.

"The shed beside the house," Savich said. "I want to take a look in there."

The shed looked as old as the dirt it sat on, the wood rotting and smelling of damp, the door rickety. It was locked. Savich gave it a solid thump with his fist. The door shuddered off its hinges and fell inward.

An ungodly odor slammed out at us.

"What is it, Dillon?" Sherlock was crowding him.

"Jesus," Savich said, turning slowly and taking her arms. "Stay back."

We hadn't found Jilly.

We'd found Rob Morrison.