Judas Island by Kathryn R. Wall

Author:Kathryn R. Wall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Published: 2004-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

In honor of the gift of a warm, sunny afternoon, we moved our office out onto the deck. I hunkered down onto the chaise with my favorite Waterford pen and a supply of yellow legal pads, while Erik balanced a state-of-the-art laptop on his knees. An extra-long modern cable snaked its way through the open French doors and into the phone jack in the great room so we could access the Internet when necessary. The file labeled PALMER/ALBRIGHT lay spread out on a low rattan table between us.

We systematically worked our way down the list of Gray Palmer, Senior’s reward seekers, chewing over the possible legitimate ones for later contact while attempting to eliminate the kooks and the weirdoes. Erik managed to coax his recalcitrant cell phone back into service while I used the portable from the kitchen. In the space of two hours we had reduced the list to a manageable few by virtue of the criteria we had decided upon, primarily insisting on a description of Gray’s boat and the unusual name painted on its stern. Erik proved surprisingly good at this game of trap-the-liars, and we had a couple of laughs at the expense of some of the more inventive claimants to the twenty-five-thousand-dollar jackpot.

Two of our possibles weren’t at the numbers they’d provided, so my partner used his expertise to tease addresses from the Internet. The woman who had provided the information about a verbal altercation between Gray and two men in a boat pulled up alongside his lived only a few streets away in Port Royal Plantation. The second had been added to our follow-up list over my protests, but Erik had a gut feeling it had possibilities, so I deferred to his instincts. I felt certain the paramilitary angle would prove to be a dead end, but my partner stood his ground.

“There’s an awful lot of bases around here, aren’t there?” he asked as I returned from the kitchen with our second pitcher of iced tea. “Parris Island, the Marine Air Station. A couple in Savannah. And isn’t there a Navy base in Charleston?”

I refilled our glasses and added melting ice from the bowl I’d carried out earlier. “I think the big one in Charleston got shut down in the last round of Defense Department closings, but I’m not certain. I haven’t been around there much lately, except for that last trip to meet Mindy Albright.”

“Well, I’m not ready to dismiss it out of hand just yet. There’s something about the story which speaks to me. I’d like for us to talk to the guy before we write him off.”

“Fair enough. So where are we with this thing? Any closer to finding out what really happened to Gray?”

“Not that I can see.” The admission brought a frown to Erik’s normally cheerful countenance. “You know,” he added, “there’s something else bothering me about this whole scenario. A couple of things, actually.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, why are we going through all this when the authorities obviously think Gray’s

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