82 Desire

this is good.” He started to attack the thing with so much enthusiasm, further conversation was momentarily impossible. Skip could have sworn she saw color come back to his face even as he chowed down.
    When he had polished off the burger, he touched a napkin to his mouth and looked the officers in the eye, suddenly a man who’d been an executive at an oil company and still had a few of his marbles.
    “I’m a new man,” he said, and Skip believed it. “Did anyone call my wife?”
    “I did, but I didn’t have a number to give her. I told her you were fine.”
    He nodded, that out of the way. “Okay, you were wondering who wanted to kill me.”
    Skip and Rudolfo nodded in unison. “Two guys I used to work with—or one of them, maybe. Seaberry and Favret. I talked to Beau about this whole thing the other night. The short version is this—the four of us did some things we shouldn’t have. Beau wanted to come clean about it. He didn’t exactly say it, but it was obvious he thought one of the other guys killed some PI who’d found out about it.”
    Skip nodded, not about to give away Allred’s name.
    “He said they were about to have a meeting about it.”
    Fortier paused, donning an appropriately sober face for what he said next. “And then I read about Beau in the paper. Guess they got him, too.”
    Rudolfo said, “I think we need to Mirandize you.”
    “Yeah, I guess maybe you do.”
    Skip thought she had never seen a person so completely at peace with the mess he’d made of his life. Rudolfo delivered the warning, and then said, “Do you want to waive any of these rights?”
    He thought about it. “I’m going to have to call a lawyer at some point, but let’s finish up the easy stuff. I want to give you enough information to move on these guys.”
    Rudolfo seized the moment. “I still don’t get why they were trying to kill you.”
    “Because if I tell what I know, their lives fall apart. And that’s not including the two murders—those kind of up the ante.”
    “How’d these guys know where you are?”
    “Beau could have told them, I guess.” He looked at Skip. “How’d you find me? “
    She shrugged. “Few lucky guesses.”
    “Yeah, well. Everybody knew I’d spent time here. Everybody knows I sail. I guess they just looked in the obvious places.”
    Skip let Rudolfo ask the biggie. “What exactly are these big secrets that people would kill to conceal?”
    “We defrauded people out of oil leases. Lots of them.” He stood. “And now, I guess I really do have to call a lawyer.”
    In the end, they all wound up back at the Fort Lauderdale police station—Skip and Rudolfo and Fortier and the lawyer. And late that night, Steve and Skip flew home. As they checked out of the hotel, the clerk handed Skip a fax, which she tucked into her purse to read on the plane.
    Jane’s story blew her out of the water. There wasn’t a second to waste. She called Abasolo from the plane. “Look, I’m on my way back, and something’s come up. Can you meet me at the airport? We might get ourselves a murderer tonight.”
    “How could something have come up? You just called me before you got on the plane.”
    “I read something Jane Storey faxed me—the story that’s running on Page One tomorrow. Trust me—we’ve got to get to this dude tonight, before he goes behind a wall of lawyers.”
    “Could you just tell me one thing? Who is it?”
    “I’m getting it narrowed down.”
    She kissed Steve good-bye at the other end, and got in the car with Abasolo. On the drive back to town, she filled him in.
    “So which one is it?” he said. “Favret or Seaberry?”
    “Let’s flip a coin.” She produced a quarter. “Heads, it’s Seaberry; tails, Favret.”
    It came up tails.
    The Favret house was dark, but a light came on after about ten minutes of leaning on the bell. A woman’s voice spoke through the intercom: “Who is it?”
    “Police.”
    “Oh.” And then silence.
    In a moment, a woman tying a robe answered the door. “We’re looking for Edward Favret.”
    She looked at her watch. “He, uh, went out about half an hour ago. Is everything all right, officers? I mean—he hasn’t been in an accident or anything?”
    Skip said, “Nothing like that. Can you tell us where he went?”
    She shrugged, clearly not knowing what to make of all this. “He went to see a business associate. Douglas Seaberry.”
    “Thank you, ma’am. Sorry to disturb you.” As they turned away, Skip and