Read Online Black Jack Point by Jeff Abbott - Free Book Online Page B

from his ears. Perhaps, David decided, that
     was best for the moment. But he turned his friendliest smile toward Lucy Gilbert.
You just make one teeny misstep, bitch, you had a thing to do with these murders, you’re mine.
    ‘Miss Gilbert? Thanks for coming in. I just had a few questions on your statement you gave the police. If y’all will just
     step this way …’
    Patch Gilbert’s older niece, Suzanne, lived in a grand development called Castaway Key, a series of streets and private docks
     that few born and raised in Port Leo called home. Her house sat facing St Leo Bay, and in the summer afternoon the bay hummed
     with craft: sailboats slicing the waves; jet skis buzzing like maddened bees; a pleasure boat loaded with urban weekenders
     cutting near the shore, extra-bad eighties dance music drifting from its deck. Whit rolled up the window.
    Castaway Key was not aptly named. Many houses went for a quarter million and higher. Whit supposed anyone dressed like Robinson
     Crusoe, ambling along Castaway Key’s resort-named streets – such as Hilton Head Road or Cozumel Way – would be summarily brought
     to him on charges of vagrancy.
    Suzanne Gilbert’s house was white and modern, and it glittered with windows large enough to drive a car through. Delicate
     palms and sprawling bougainvillea filled the beds near the curved stone driveway. Brightly painted Mexican tiles spelled out
     the house number. Suzanne, an artist, seemed flush rather than starving. Or maybe Suzanne was house-poor, and this mansion
     was a symptom of her supposed financial woes.
    His cell phone beeped as he parked. ‘This is Judge Mosley.’
    ‘Judge. Hi. This is Linda Bird. I’m Jimmy Bird’s wife. I think you know who he is.’
    ‘I know we want to talk to him, ma’am.’
    ‘Well, I just talked with that prick David Power. I don’t want to talk to him no more, and the sheriff said I might have to
     talk to you. So I’m talking because’ – she paused – ‘I find the deputy to be irritating.’
    ‘Yes, ma’am.’
    ‘New Orleans. I think if Jimmy has run off he’s gone there. Couple of times last month I hear him, late at night on the phone,
     talking, saying,
Alex.
I thought it was some drunk friend of his. They love to get tight and phone each other. Like goddamned teenagers.’
    ‘I see.’
    ‘Then the phone bill comes. We don’t know people in New Orleans but there’s three calls there, late at night. I pay the bills,
     as I have the job. I ask him about who he’s calling, he says it’s a mistake. He’s a bad liar. I can tell he’s lying.’ She
     paused. ‘So then I think maybe Alex is a girl. In New Orleans. How he got a girlfriend in New Orleans is beyond me, but I’m
     telling you because I sure ain’t telling David Power. You want the number he called?’
    ‘Yes, ma’am, I do.’ She gave it to him and he jotted it down.
    ‘You tell David Power he better fucking treat me nicer next time he sees me, or I’m filing a complaint. I got a lawyer now,
     what with getting the divorce, and I am in a filing mood.’
    ‘I sense your resolve, Mrs Bird. Thank you.’
    ‘You set bond on my brother last year,’ she said. ‘An amount we could handle. We appreciated it. I’m voting for you next time.’
    He thanked her, stared at the phone number, nearly laughed.
    Suzanne Gilbert opened the front door as he headed up the stairs. She wore black jeans, a black T-shirt, black sandals.
Idiotic in this heat,
Whit thought. Artist mourning clothes. She was very fair, attractive, a good five or six years older than Lucy. Her cheekbones
     and chin and nose were all precise and perfect, as measured as an architect’s drawing.
    She greeted Whit with a brief hug, so quick he wondered why she’d bothered. Whit suspected that Suzanne wanted to pat his
     blondish hair flat or put him in a suit, tidy him up for Lucy. He saw her eyes take in his clothes with disapproval: the faded
     polo shirt, the rumpled khakis, the