Second Chance Gold (Buck Reilly Adventure Series Book 4), John Cunningham [polar express read aloud .txt] 📗

I held up my rum to toast the information. The food came and Truck wolfed most of it down.

“Must have been a popular guy if other people have come asking about him,” I said.

The bartender shrugged. “Aside from his wife and the gendarmes, just a couple of big guys, not so friendly.”

“Big guys from St. Barths?”

“Maybe Puerto Rico. Spanish speakers with bad English and no French.”

Truck let out a long belch that turned heads three tables away in the open-air dining area.

“I’m toast, Reilly,” he said.

I handed the bartender a fistful of Euros I got from an ATM by La Banane.

The bartender stared at me for a moment, no smile in his eyes.

“Jerry was popular with tourists, not so much with locals.” He leaned on the bar. “Him being rich was nothing special here.”

I followed Truck back up the dark sandy path toward the road.

“Pretty slick back there,” he said. Then in a lower voice: “Not sure why you need my ass, but I’m damn happy to be here.”

I swatted a mosquito on my neck and saw blood on my palm. The bartender had confirmed exactly what Lou told me, but I was curious about the unfriendly Puerto Ricans. Lou never said there’d be others looking for his nephew. So who were they—and what did they want with Jerry Atlas?

I slipped out of the room at dawn and walked to where the road dead-ended at the chain link fence. The ruins of l’Autour du Rocher poked out above overgrown foliage on the abandoned hill. I paused to imagine the debauchery that occurred there in its heyday.

The drainage ditch that followed along the fence through the woods led me out to the water. I jogged along the narrow beach at Lorient, my feet sinking deep into the soft white sand. Wet sea glass glistened in the pink light of dawn, and lines of mild wake slowly broke on the shallow coral near the shore. The smell of low tide was carried in with the morning mist, and the air was thick with salt.

Halfway up the beach was the old red, yellow, and green surf shack. It had been elevated and placed on a concrete foundation since the last time I was here. I sat on its stairs, watched the waves, and thought about Jerry Atlas. A week’s worth of the same stories is what I expected, but here, now, in the peace of this place, I was glad to be here. Lou Atlas’s daily report would only confirm what he already knew until I was as sure as I could be Jerry had shuffled off the coil.

Back at the hotel I found Truck seated at one of the tables next to the pool, drinking coffee and looking more relaxed than I’d ever seen him.

“We getting paid for this shit? Seriously?” he said. “I didn’t vote for Lou Atlas when he ran, but he’s got my vote now.”

Soon after I sat down, a petite blond waitress delivered a basket of fresh croissants, followed by two plates of eggs, sausage, and French bread. We devoured the meal, killed the pot of coffee, and I shared my plan for the day with Truck.

I drove us back down the coastal road to St. Jean, past the airport. Truck said he could the see the Beast tied down where we’d left her. We continued around the traffic circle, over the hill and down into Gustavia. Traffic was heavy in the capital as workers, shopkeepers, and tourists circulated like hemoglobin through the clogged arteries. Truck asked about the harbor, which was long and rectangular and packed with some of the largest yachts in the world.

“High season brings in the richest of rich,” I said. “And they all want to outdo each other.”

Truck was speechless. We followed the road along the harbor, but not before I pointed out my all-time favorite hamburger dive, Le Select. At the end of the harbor we dodged a motorcycle and took two quick lefts, doubling back, now overlooking the town and yacht basin. Halfway down the block I pulled up next to a silver Land Rover Defender with police lights mounted on its roof.

“Mind if I stay outside?” Truck said. “Not a fan of police stations.”

I found myself in a small but clean reception area within the small stone building. A nondescript bespectacled woman in her late fifties gazed up at me from her desk.

“Bonjour—” I paused and tried to formulate my question in French.

“Yes, Monsieur?”

Screw it.

“My name’s Buck Reilly and I’m here on behalf of Lou Atlas. I’d like to see Commander Grivet, if he’s available.”

Her eyes narrowed and she pursed her lips.

“Oui, he is here. And this is about Jerry?” Her voice had the sound of walking through gravel. There was a full ashtray on her desk.

I nodded. She reached for her phone, hesitated, and stood up instead.

“Excusez-moi.”

She walked down the corridor and disappeared around the corner. I glanced around the tidy station, quiet compared to most police stations I’d visited, voluntarily or otherwise. Late model computers, nice modular furniture, photographs on the walls from locations around the island.

The woman reappeared, followed by a tall, thin man in uniform, whose eyes met mine the moment he came into view and never looked away.

“Monsieur Reilly, is it?”

I pulled out the handwritten letter from Lou. Commander Grivet read it and handed it back with a flourish.

“As I told Monsieur Atlas on the phone, there is not much to say. His nephew vanished. According to his wife, it has been nearly a month now. We searched all of his, ah, usual places, spoke to the people who knew him best—bartenders and the like—and everyone said the same thing. One day he was here, the next he was gone.”

“So that’s—”

“When his Jet Ski washed up on the shore at Anse de Cayes, we concluded he had fallen off and drowned.”

“What?” Lou hadn’t told me this. “When did