Peak Season by Jeff Widmer

Author:Jeff Widmer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fiction, crime, suspense, female sleuth, detective, tourist, florida, kidnap, real estate, investigate
Publisher: Jeff Widmer

Chapter 18

I spent the afternoon at the office, inhaling coffee and reviewing the MLS listings and the other databases I could still afford. If Hernandez got his timeline right, Darby fled the apartment at the irrigation company a week ago for a more out-of-the-way place. I was looking for short-term rentals that had disappeared during that time. Darby could have hijacked a boat or pitched a tent in the homeless camp behind the college, but Cheryl said the department had searched the camp and come up empty, and Walter and I had scoured the intercoastal and found nothing. That left short-term rentals. It was a long shot but, as my frustration and impatience boiled over, I had to do something other than waiting for the good guys to ride to the rescue. And the argument with Walter still stung. Going it alone seemed the only option.

Paging through the listings, I ruled out the most obvious choices: his properties, his condos in town and the rentals on the keys. The FBI had scrubbed Darby’s homes and boats and the police would keep them under surveillance. A place in the city would enable him to blend with thousands of others but with the publicity and his disguise, and Pap in tow, he’d stick out too much. Same thing on the tony barrier islands. Even without the makeup, Darby didn’t look like a tourist or a retiree, and ever since a group of thugs had started robbing tourists, Spanish Point Police had stepped up patrols on Sara Key and its neighbor to the north.

No, Darby had to stash Pap where trees outnumbered people, where a handyman or lawn-care worker would go unnoticed, and that narrowed the search to three areas. He could have ducked into one of the walled compounds north of University Parkway, in a sketchy part of the city called North Point. He could have picked a trailer south and east of the city in a zone that jumbled homes with cement plants and trucking companies. Or he could have holed up on one of the former cattle ranches east of Interstate 75. Developers scrambled to buy them for the buildable space they offered but I’d shown several of the more run-down buildings and knew how isolated it felt out there. That solitude was one of the reasons Walter chose to live east of seventy-five and not on the water—the anti-Travis McGee. I knew I should call Walter for backup but I couldn’t wait. Neither could Pap.

I printed the specs on three of the most promising places and folded copies of Pap and Darby’s photos into a pocket. Grabbing the helmet from the clothes tree by the door, I made sure I locked the office, climbed on the bike and headed north on the Trail, veering right at the Ringling Museum onto University Parkway. Sliding past the airport, I bumped the bike over a set of railroad tracks and angled onto a narrow road that ran between storm drain ditches as deep as ponds and walls of slash pine and oak.

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