Louis Woodburn wore khaki slacks and a faded yellow shirt, and a tan that could only have come from a bottle or a bed. He didn't wear a tie.
Alena and I watched as he made his way over to us from behind his desk at Cape Fear Marine and Yachts, which was about as straightforward a name of a business as one could ask for. The receptionist who had beckoned Woodburn over, a busty blonde with lipstick the color of a stoplight, made the introductions.
"Louis, this is Miranda and Simon Cole," she said. "Apparently, they've been referred to you."
"Really?" Woodburn's face lit with unexpected pleasure. "Wonderful! What can I do for the two of you?"
"He wants to buy a yacht," Alena said. It came out flat, as if she was indulging her husband, but only barely.
"Well, that's what we sell here, yachts." Woodburn smiled brightly at me, then at Alena. "You don't sound convinced, Mrs. Cole."
"I think they're awfully expensive."
"Some of them can be very reasonable, you'd be surprised. And you can't forget it's a great investment." He leaned forward slightly, lowering his voice, his Carolinian drawl thickening slightly. "And, depending on your accountant and your business, a hell of a write-off."
"See, that's what I mean," I said to Alena. "It's an investment."
"Exactly," Woodburn said, taking a step back towards his desk, and motioning us to follow him. "Why don't we take a seat, look at some of the brochures, figure out what you're looking for. There are a lot of choices. Would either of you like something to drink? Iced tea, bottled water?"
"Bottled water." Alena sniffed. "Still water, not bubbling."
"Nothing for me," I said.
Louis Woodburn ushered us to the leather-upholstered chairs opposite his desk, then went off, presumably to find Alena a bottle of still water. I took another glance around the showroom, at the shiny displays and brightly colored posters. There were two other salespeople working at nearby desks, and an older couple browsing one of the catalogues. I suspected this was the off-season for yacht sales.
Woodburn returned with a bottle of Evian, which he was wiping down with a paper towel as he approached. He handed it over to Alena with all the ceremony of a sommelier presenting the pride of his cellar, then took his seat behind the desk. I put him on the cusp of fifty, and despite his exuberance-or perhaps precisely because of it-he seemed to be taking to it well. If the ring on his finger and the photographs on his desk were to be believed, he was currently on his second, or perhaps even his third marriage.
"So, what kind of vessel are you thinking about? Something like a Funship, or maybe something in the cruiser line? The Four Winns Vista series are excellent yachts, perfect for entertaining or for entertainment." He shuffled the papers on his desk, searching for brochures, beginning to lay them out before the two of us. "There's also the Cruisers Yachts line. I highly recommend looking at those. They're manufactured right here on the Cape Fear River. They're really the yacht of choice."
I extended my hand, and he filled it with one of the brochures.
"What size are you looking at?" Woodburn asked.
"Twenty-eight feet," Alena said.
"Closer to fifty," I said, examining the brochure.
Alena lowered her bottle of water and shot me a glare. "That's not what you said earlier."
"Let's see what he's offering," I told her, then turned to Woodburn. "The problem is, Miranda doesn't have an idea what we're talking about. She's got horrible spatial perception."
"Simon!"
"C'mon, it's true, honey, you know that. Admit it, you don't have the first idea between a fifty-footer and a yacht that's twenty-eight feet."
"Twenty-two feet," she said.
Woodburn laughed softly, and he was good, because he made it clear he was appreciating Alena's wit, and not the reproach that had come with it.
"It's a significant twenty-two feet," he said. "But, yes, it's certainly hard when you're dealing in the abstract like this."
"Twenty-eight feet, there's not a lot of room below," I told Alena. "Not like you're going to want."
"Tell you what," Woodburn said. "Let's go take a walk around the shop and the service department, you can see the different sizes. We can't really go aboard them, of course, but that way you can get a better picture of the kind of scale we're talking about."
"That's a great idea," I said, and got to my feet, Woodburn following suit. We both looked at Alena expectantly.
She sighed, and then, with convincing reluctance, got to her feet. We let him do his song and dance for much of the next hour, following Louis Woodburn as he escorted us through the service shop, listening attentively as he pointed out the amenities on this model, the appointments on that one. He played more to Alena than to me, though he never forgot I was there, and Alena did a good job of allowing herself to be won over, little by little. By the time we'd finished with the tour, it was nearly four in the afternoon, and Alena was even laughing at Woodburn's jokes.
On our way back to the sales office, Alena said to me, "Jake was right. He's very good."
She indicated Woodburn, less for my benefit than to make certain he knew who we were talking about.
"Yeah, he was, wasn't he?" I agreed. "I'll have to thank him for the recommendation."
"Let's wait until we actually buy one of them," Alena said.
"Jake?" Woodburn asked.
"Our friend who recommended we come talk to you," I told him. "Jacob Collins."
He was smooth about it, and very quick, which I supposed was what made him so ideal as a contact person. "No kidding? Now, that's funny. That's…that's funny."
"Why do you say that?"
"I haven't talked to Jake in quite a while." Louis Woodburn checked his watch, then added, "Aw, Christ, I didn't realize how late it had gotten. I'm sorry, Mr. Cole, Mrs. Cole, I'm going to have to cut this short. My stepdaughter has a softball game I need to attend. Let me hand you off to one of my associates, how about that?"
"We were enjoying dealing with you," Alena said.
"I appreciate that, I really do, but I have to go." He smiled at us, and it was almost the same smile he'd been using before, but not quite. I wasn't reading fear in it, but instead something closer to confusion, perhaps mixed with a mild alarm. He reached out for my hand, gave it a firm and practiced shake, then nodded to Alena, and then he was heading for his car parked outside the sales office, a silver Cadillac, one of the new models.
We watched the Caddie pull onto Market Street and disappear into traffic.
"So, if he's still your guy, he does what now?" I asked Alena. "Calls the latest number Sargenti sent him and says that Miranda and Simon Cole came by?"
"Most likely."
"His reaction seem odd to you?"
"In what way?"
"I don't know. Like maybe we weren't the first people to actually mention Mr. Jacob Collins to him in person recently. Instead of, for instance, over the phone."
Alena nodded slowly. "We should head back to the hotel. I'll call Nicolas, tell him to check the box and report back to us."
We headed to where we'd parked our rental, and I took the wheel and started us back in the direction of the river and the hotel. I checked the mirrors a couple times, and twice I thought that maybe we were being followed by a blue BMW, but then I thought that maybe I was being overly paranoid. Market was pretty much a long, straight shot back into downtown, and while there were plenty of places to turn off of it, it was heavily traveled, and the BMW certainly wasn't the only car that seemed to be heading in our direction.
That's what I told myself, at least, until we'd parked back in the lot of the Wilmingtonian and I was out of the car and Alena was joining me.
"The car at four o'clock," she said, not indicating it in the slightest. "That car was behind us all the way here."
It had parked some sixty feet away, and there was a man getting out of the vehicle, and already I didn't like what I was seeing. It wasn't that he was big, certainly no taller than either Alena or myself, but there was something in his carriage that reminded me immediately of Dan. As he turned towards us I saw his right hand going into his jacket, and I liked that even less. If he was going for a gun, we weren't going to be able to do much but run or bleed. But the hand came out as smoothly and quickly as it had gone in, and there was no gun in it that I could see as he continued on his line towards us.
I put a hand on Alena's back, turning her and myself towards one of the five buildings that made up the Wilmingtonian Hotel, and, specifically, the suite we'd taken.
"Coming up from behind."
"So you give him our back?" Alena muttered.
"I want you inside," I said.
"You're being a fool."
She stopped and turned around and so I did, too.
The man had closed to about twenty feet. Both of his hands were visible, at his sides, but he was focused on us, and as we faced him he called out, saying, "Pardon me, I beg your pardon." He had a deep voice, not quite from the gravel at the bottom of the quarry, but not many feet above it, either.
"Can I help you?" I asked.
He slowed his approach, easing off and giving first Alena, then me, a quick eyeballing. His expression wasn't hostile, but it wasn't in neutral, either. Wary, perhaps. His skin had the rich warmth of a good tan or a Mediterranean heritage, and given the absolute black of his hair and the deep brown of his eyes, I was leaning to the latter. Maybe Italian extraction, more likely Sicilian. He was wearing khakis, with a black T-shirt under his open coat, and the coat itself was almost the same brown of his eyes, and thin, as if optimistic at the promise of spring. When I checked his feet, I saw he was wearing boots rather than sneakers or loafers, and that the boots had a squared toe. The clip to a folding knife hung over the lip of his left front pants pocket.
He was military, or he had been, and I wondered for a moment if this wasn't another of Sean's friends.
"You dropped this," he said to me, and then he closed the rest of the distance, extending his right hand.
"I don't think so."
"Yeah," he said. "You did."
Then he showed me what he was holding in his hand.
It was a picture of Natalie Trent.