Tango Key by T. J. MacGregor Page B

his hair. "I wish you wouldn't do that, Al." There was no humor in his voice. "Really."
    "My, aren't we in a good mood today."
    "Yeah. I've been thinking of going home and starting the day all over again." He turned away from the terminal and she saw the circles under his dark blue eyes. "Lanie moved out last night."
    So here it was again, another weird parallel between their lives. Lanie had probably moved out at the same moment Aline was contemplating the demise of her relationship with Murphy. There were certain disadvantages to knowing someone born thirty seconds before you were, same year, same latitude and longitude, she decided, and told him what had happened with Murphy.
    He wasn't the least bit surprised. "I kind of figured something along those lines. You think we're going to die the same day, Al?"
    "Don't be morbid."
    "I can't help it."
    She sat forward and covered his hand with her own. "We'll have dinner sometime soon, okay? We'll get drunk. We'll walk on the beach. Rent a movie. Pretend we're ten years old."
    He smiled, but it wasn't very convincing. "Tell me Lanie's a jerk."
    "Lanie's a jerk."
    "Tell me about the ratio of women to men on Tango."
    "Two to one, maybe three to one during a good snowbird year."
    "Two women for every man," he repeated, nodding. "Okay. I feel better now."
    "Good." She squeezed his hand and took her own away. "Now tell me what you found on Cooper."
    Â  I would've preferred having his head. But based on what I had to work with, he died between five yesterday afternoon and eight-thirty last night. He'd been in the water about an hour."
    "What'd he die of?"
    "He bled to death, Al. He died as he was being decapitated."
    "Christ," she whispered.
    "Something else, but I'm not sure what it means yet. Under his fingernails, I found granules of pink sand. The only place I know of around here with pink sand is that little coral island about four, five miles offshore where we used to party in high school."
    The one, she thought, that disappeared during high tide. Great. "You think that's where he was killed?"
    "Yeah, I do. These grains of sand were embedded under the nails, Al, like he was digging his hands into the sand."
    So the killer either owned a boat or had rented one. It wasn't much of a lead, since both Eve Cooper and Ted Cavello owned boats and Ed Waite probably had access to one. Hell, everyone on Tango had access to a boat. "What was used to decapitate him?"
    "Judging from the wound, I'd have to say it was a chain saw."
    "Anything else?"
    "Nope. Unless the head shows up."
    "Don't hold your breath."

Chapter 6
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    I n the dream, Aline kept climbing the ladder to her sleeping loft but couldn't get to the top. The rungs would snap, her hands would slide, she would fall to the floor. Every time she fell, she heard Murphy and Eve laughing from inside the loft, and now, as she started up the ladder again, they leaned over the side of the loft, both of them naked, both of them waving, both of them calling, Helloooo, Aline, Helloooo . They slipped back into the dark, laughing, and Aline sobbed and shouted at them to get out of her house and her bed as she kept climbing.
    This time she made it to the top of the ladder, and when her head popped up over the edge of the loft, something buzzed past her ear. She jerked around and there was Eve, the chain saw buzzing like a horde of mosquitos in her hand as she hissed , You shoulda minded your own business, Aline. I don't want to hurt you, Aline. You're making me do this. Aline screamed as the saw slammed into the back of her neck, and when she screamed again, her head was bouncing across the floor of the loft, through pools of blood, so much blood, her own blood. The smell of it spilled out of the dream with her and poured over her as she tumbled out of the hammock and landed on the floor on her knees.
    She scrambled up and lunged for the lamp. Light puddled on the pillows and bled down the center of the mattress, which was, of course, empty.