Bone Deep by Randy Wayne White Page A

was the maid who had given Deon Killip the security code to Tovar’s home. But had she also sent a gunman to rob the petty thief? A maid willing to take risks to secure a bigger chunk of the prize had cunning. She would know more about Finn Tovar than she had told the petty thief and drug addict. Was it worth a return visit to Venice?
    I was considering logistics when I heard a woman’s voice call through the foliage, “Is someone there?”
    Mrs. Albright
—that’s the way I thought of her after exchanging only a few words at the drum ceremony. I’d been right. Breakfast onthe patio had emptied the house. I stopped and replied through the shrubbery, “It’s Marion Ford. Your husband is expecting me.”
    “Who?”
    I said my name again.
    “Oh . . . I remember you.
Doc.
Sure! Hey—I could use your help with something, Doc. The gate’s at the back, come on around.”
    I found the gate, entered, turned . . . and there was Ava Albright, naked, floating, small-breasted and buoyant, in a gel of turquoise, her blond hair pinned primly, her body a paleness of refracted angles, white, brown, and pink.
    “I can’t reach my mimosa,” she said, an intentional parody of a pouting vamp. Then stood to show off her body and laughed, “
I’m joking.
My glass is on the table—don’t be shy. We’re practically nudists around here.”
    I said, “You should post a warning sign.”
    I turned, exited, closed the gate, and walked to my truck. Gave it some time before trying the front door again. Leland Albright, red-faced, loomed over me. “What the hell do you mean surprising my wife like that?”
    “Is that what she told you?”
    “I came out on the balcony as you were leaving.”
    “Then you know I didn’t surprise her,” I said. “And you know your wife liked it, too.”
    Albright slammed the door in my face.
    I leaned against my truck and waited. Two minutes, I allotted, then two minutes more because I wanted the list of old-time relic hunters he had promised. When I heard the ascending verbal punch and counterpunch of an argument, though, I drove away. An angry man can be won over. A man who has been humiliated cannot.Space and time are required before he can reappear in his old familiar role.
    Leland Albright had more backbone than most. I was on Bee Ridge Road, driving east, when he phoned. I saw the name and answered, “Leland, sorry about that last crack. You didn’t deserve it.”
    “Ava knows exactly the buttons to push,” he said, sounding hoarse, a man who’d been yelling. “You’re right, Ford. She enjoys it. Where are you?”
    I told him, “Not far. Want me to come back?”
    “No . . . I’ve still got a few rounds to go with Ava. If she’d just admit what she does! Christ, she claims I’m imagining things. From the pool, she invited you in—I could swear I heard her say your name.
We’re practically nudists, Doc.
That’s what she said, isn’t it? Or . . . maybe I am crazy.”
    The man had called to make amends but was now drafting me as a witness. “We’ll make it another day,” I said.
    “Wait. You can still drive to the phosphate mine. You don’t need me. Owen will meet you there.”
    Owen, last name Hall, was the stepson. That had been our plan: take Leland’s SUV inland to a section of land north of the Peace River the family owned and where Mammoth Ridge Mines had started.
    “Your stepson won’t mind?”
    Leland answered, “He does what I tell him,” but heard his own phony overconfidence. He exhaled, frustrated. “Sorry. She’s got me off my game.”
    “They do it to us, we do it to them. The human comedy, it’s called.”
    “The way Ava does it isn’t human,” was the reply. A coldnessthere he tried to cover by adding, “Owen’s a good kid. If anyone can get you into Mosaic on a Sunday, it’s him.”
    Mosaic was the largest mining company in the state and an adjunct to our plan. If we could get through security, that was a bonus. If not, nothing lost.