King Tide Read online

  King Tide

  A Miami Jones Florida Mystery

  AJ Stewart

  Jacaranda Drive

  For Heather and Evan.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

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  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  The weather guy was adamant we weren’t going to see a hurricane. The computer models proved it. There was a US model that said the tropical storm would scoot up closer to the Bahamas, and a European model that said it would ride the Gulf Stream out into the Atlantic. The weather guy seemed particularly enamored with the European model, but I for one couldn’t see what Europeans knew about Florida weather that Mick didn’t.

  Mick didn’t agree with the models. I wasn’t even sure Mick had seen the models. The television in the inside bar at Longboard Kelly’s was on the Weather Network, and the graphics showed a half dozen lines sweeping in from east of Cuba and then sweeping out again farther north and east of South Carolina. Mick paid it no mind. He said it would make landfall in Florida, somewhere between Boca Raton and Cape Canaveral. He said by the time it did it would no longer be a tropical storm. Most definitely a hurricane, in Mick’s opinion. Not necessarily a big one, not like Andrew, but more than a tropical storm. Enough to blow your house off its foundations if it were in a trailer park, and the fronds off a palapa if they covered your favorite bar.

  Ron and I and a couple other regulars helped batten down the hatches at Mick’s bar. It was my home away from home and to be fair, with Danielle away at the academy, it was closer to my actual home than I cared to admit. We pulled in all the chairs and umbrellas from the courtyard and stacked them inside, and then we lowered the shutters across the outside bar and locked them down.

  Ron looked over the scene as if Mick was closing Longboard’s for good. The sorrow on his face was palpable, as if he knew something. He didn’t care for the weather models, either. Ron was an analog kind of guy. His silver mane and sun-splotched face made him look like he had been at sea all his life, rather than selling insurance before joining my mentor and friend, the late, great Lenny Cox, as a private investigator. Ron handled most of the corporate work, and spent a fair amount of time working with computers, but he never seemed to trust them. What he trusted was Mick’s sixth sense about these things.

  “Let’s get these inside,” Ron said, picking up the wooden bar stool that was his throne at Longboard Kelly’s. I collected the stool next to it, the one with my butt print in it, and we stowed them behind the bar. With the shutters down and storm clouds circling it was dim inside. The only glow came from the television. I watched the light play across Ron’s face. He was like a sunflower. The sun was his power source and without it he looked drawn and sickly.

  “We best sort Miami out,” Mick said, appearing out of the darkness. He was squat and broad, like a mortar round, and about as chatty.

  “You think my place might get hit?” I asked him.

  “Moon’s your trouble. ”

  “The moon?”

  Mick nodded and then huffed like it was self-evident and not worthy of the extra verbiage. “It’s a full moon, behind them clouds. Perigean moon. We got a perigean spring tide."

  “A what?”

  “King Tide. Moon is close to earth, so the high tide will be higher than normal. You know when Flagler Drive gets flooded?”

  “Yeah.”

  “King Tide. Only add a hurricane. It hits north of here, there’ll be storm surge in the IC. You’re on the IC, right?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, my place is on the Intracoastal.”

  “You want it to be there when you get back?”

  “Probably.”

  “Then git goin’.”

  We left Longboard’s behind and traveled up Route 1 to Singer Island. The traffic was heavy. Most folks didn’t want to leave unnecessarily so they chose to believe the computer models. But most folks weren’t stupid, so they were out stocking up on last-minute items, like water and bread. A drive-thru cigarette hut had a line like a buffet on a cruise ship.

  I pulled onto the island and back around toward the Intracoastal Waterway. My house sat at the end, overlooking the water and city of Riviera Beach to the west. My seventies rancher was old Florida. All the new-build McMansions around it were new Florida. I had a pretty particular position on which architecture I preferred.

  I slowed and backed my Cadillac SUV into the driveway. Ron jumped out and directed Mick’s truck into the space beside. His pickup was older than the Union—more rust than steel. But it held its share of sandbags, which we unloaded from both vehicles in a procession of trips with a wheelbarrow.

  Mick wheeled a hefty pile of bags around to the back of my house, and we set them across the patio. Already the water level was up, gray and ragged, pounding against the seawall and spilling onto the grass. Mick brought another barrowful of sandbags, and I tossed them into place with a sound like punching a muscular gut. The effort seemed futile against the power of the water.

  Mick sensed my apprehension. “It won’t stop it. But it might divert it a bit,” he said.

  “What’s the difference?”

  “New carpet versus a new house.”

  I nodded and scooped up another heavy bag. The humidity was stifling and I was sweating like a sumo, and the rain washed the salt from my skin.

  Ron propped a lounger onto its castors and wheeled it into the garage and then came back for the second one. Beyond Longboard’s, that patio and those loungers were my favorite place on the planet. It was where I sat and watched the world go by, the yachts and the gulls and the pelicans go about their daily grind. It was where Danielle sat and watched the world go by beside me, and it seemed somehow apt that the view had grown angry and the loungers had been wheeled away in her absence.

  My shoulders burned by the time I dropped the last sandbag in place. Ron had secured the steel storm shutters across the windows, and the scene looked like Normandy, without the razor wire, or the massive human toll. I shook my head to swish away the ridiculous simile. Mick slapped my back as we surveyed the barricade.

  “You do what you can,” he said .

  It wasn’t exactly a Hallmark card, but it was Mick. It was as sugarcoated as he got. We stood in the rain for a moment, looking at the back of my house like patrons at The Met look at the art.

  “We should get going,” said Ron.

  I could see he was getting antsy, so I nodded and we walked around the side of the house. We tossed a few last sandbags around the front door and then stepped to our vehicles.

  “Where are you going?” I asked Mick.

  “Longboard’s.” He looked at
me like there could be no other answer.

  “Will you be okay?”

  He grunted. “This too shall pass.” Mick pulled open the door to his truck and it screeched in anger, and then he dropped down inside and he revved the engine to life. Ron and I got in my SUV. It didn’t groan or require revving. I simply turned the key. With the rain and the slap of the palm trees I wasn’t even sure the engine had started, but I pressed the accelerator and we moved so I figured it had.

  We followed Mick out and crawled along Route 1 until Mick pulled off for Longboard’s with a wave of his hand. I continued into West Palm Beach. Flagler Memorial Bridge was being rebuilt, and had been closed due to the impending storm. Traffic was being routed south to Okeechobee Boulevard and across Royal Park Bridge, which made the usual traffic snarl in West Palm even more fun than usual. Cars were breaking down, tempers were fraying. Storms always brought out the best in folks.

  Most of the downtown traffic was trying to get west on Okeechobee, away from the water and wind, which was the smart play. It was going to be our play too, once we had everyone on board. But first we were headed onto the island. There weren’t many with us. The traffic flow was definitely headed for the mainland, so we picked up speed as we rose over the Intracoastal. The water below looked like it was boiling. There were whitecaps and eddies and spray as if the water were being propelled from below. The water was the same heavy gray as the sky, and the rain hit the windshield harder now that we were in the open.

  As we reached the crest of the bridge I saw down to the island. It wasn’t the pretty tropical view that snowbirds traveled thousands of miles to see. The palm trees were bent over as if waiting for some kind of corporal punishment, and a line of cars stretched back into Palm Beach. Most of them weren’t going to make it.

  The surging Intracoastal had broken the seawall along the park and was rapidly spilling across Royal Palm Way. As it did so it cut access to the bridge. A Palm Beach PD SUV was stuck farther back in the traffic, sounding its electronic bleep into the wind, trying to reach the flooding water.

  I looked at Ron and he at me.

  “They’re going to close the bridge,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “We have to get Cassandra.” There was a rising panic in his voice. Ron was a solid guy, Florida through and through. He loved everything about it. The sun, the sailing and even the tropical storms. But it had been stress that had driven him out of the insurance game, and whenever it rose its ugly head I worried for him. He didn’t wear it well. I on the other hand had played professional baseball for a living. I knew a thing or two about stress. That wasn’t to say I didn’t feel it, or that I went looking for it. But when it came, as it inevitably did, I had a method that had always seen me through.

  Breathe and keep true .

  The water was cascading onto our side of the roadway as we reached the bottom of the bridge. I could see the police car on the other side pulling across the lanes, lights ablaze, stopping the fools trying to get off the island from attempting to drive into the torrent of water.

  I took a deep breath, in through the nose and out through the mouth, and then like a fool I jammed the accelerator down and burst into the flood.

  Chapter Two

  This wasn’t my father’s Cadillac. Not that my father ever owned a Cadillac. But there were plenty of men of my father’s vintage driving around South Florida in two tons of fifty-year-old Detroit steel, and those babies were going down like the Titanic if they hit this water. But my Cadillac was a whole other generation, more Jeep than Caddy. It had all-wheel drive and traction control and goodness knows what else to keep us on the road. Still, when we hit the water the steering wheel was pulled from my hands. The water was only as high as the rims but it fought above its weight class. The Caddy jerked right and if there had been another car beside us I would have taken it out. But all the smart money was trying to get off the island, so I pulled hard on the wheel and kept my foot clamped down on the pedal and we pushed through the tide and burst out onto the island.

  We drove on through increasingly deserted streets toward the ocean side of the island. As we reached our pit stop we were almost sideswiped by another Cadillac, a black Escalade, the bigger, badder brother of my vehicle. It was the kind of thing that looked like it belonged to the Secret Service, even when it was piloted by a petite Palm Beach housewife. I gave the driver a mental cussing and then followed the Escalade down the palm-lined driveway to the majestic steps of the hotel.

  The Mornington was one of the grand old hotels from the age of railways and robber barons. It had begun life as a personal residence for a rich New York industrialist, a job title that I found covered a lot of territory. After the golden age of rail the building was sold by the great grandchildren to a Boston-based hotel consortium that specialized in boutique hotels, boutique being Palm Beach-ese for hotels that only rich folks can afford.

  Ron and his partner, Lady Cassandra, lived in an oceanfront apartment in Palm Beach that was currently undergoing renovation, and because no one worth a bean actually lives through a renovation, they had moved temporarily into a suite at The Mornington. I had no idea why Cassandra was referred to as Lady, but I did know her late husband had done very well for himself, and according to Ron, Cassandra had invested the estate shrewdly. It was fair to say that she wasn’t hurting for a dollar. But for all the trappings she was a down-to-earth woman who made Ron smile, and that was good enough for me.

  I pulled in behind the Escalade at the base of the stairs that led to the hotel entrance. There was ordinarily a canvas awning to keep the hot Florida sun off the balding heads of the discerning clientele, but the awning had been removed in preparation for the oncoming weather. A big guy jumped out of the Escalade and pounded his way up the stairs. He carried an umbrella that he didn’t open.

  We got out into the downpour and charged up the stairs. The doorman was nowhere to be seen, and I pulled open the hefty glass door and let Ron through, and then dashed in myself .

  It was like stepping through the looking glass. The glass door swung home with a suck and shut out the sound of the rain, leaving only the sound of classical harp music that echoed around the wide open lobby. It was a grand space: high chandeliered ceilings, gilded sconces and plush love seats. There were fresh flowers in crystal vases and the reception desk was dark wood, which reminded me of the New York Public Library.

  There were people in the lobby, but not many. Clearly most of the guests had either checked out or never bothered to check in. Sitting in the middle of a tropical storm was very few people’s idea of a swell time. I loitered by the concierge desk while Ron took the elevator up to collect Cassandra. The big guy from the Escalade was leaning over the check-in desk like he was in a serious hurry and an immaculately dressed guy behind the desk cradled a phone between his shoulder and chin and offered the big guy the kind of smile that only top-flight hospitality professionals can muster, something that says: I have no greater concern in the world than your welfare—it’s just that I don’t really give a damn about you .

  “I’m afraid Mr. Walter isn’t answering, and I don’t have a spare porter at the moment,” said the desk guy in a smooth English accent.

  “Just give me the room number. I’ll get their damn bags.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, you are?”

  “I told you. EvacJet. We’re here to fly the Walters to Atlanta.”

  The desk guy glanced toward the floor-to-ceiling windows across the lobby. On another day he would have seen blue sky and jaunty palms and a seawall that led down to the golden beach. Today it was dark and getting darker, and the palms looked like they were trying to touch their toes. It wasn’t any kind of weather to take a flight. The commercial airlines had halted flights the previous evening. But it didn’t faze the desk guy. He nodded and returned his impassive eyes to the big guy.

  “Can one fly in this weather?”

  “Not for long, pal. That’s why we’re in kind of a hurry here.”


  He nodded again, and then he tried the phone once more. The big guy threw his hands into the air and spun toward me.

  “You believe this guy?” he said to me.

  I shrugged. “You really fly in this weather?”

  “We fly in anything. It’s getting off the island that’s gonna be the problem.”

  “EvacJet, hey?”

  The guy nodded. “Five-star evacuation from danger. There’s even champagne on board.”

  “A lot of call for that sort of thing?”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  Fact was, I wasn’t surprised. There were people in the Palm Beaches who visited food banks as a matter of survival, and I saw more than my share of young mothers swallowing their pride and using food stamps to buy baby food at the local Publix. There were also plenty of folks who owned twenty-million-dollar estates that they only visited for two weeks in the winter. I’m not saying one was related to the other, not necessarily, but there were few things that people did that surprised me anymore.

  “Sir?” The desk guy was replacing the phone in its cradle. “Mr. Walter is awaiting you. Suite 202. Ocean side.”

  The big guy nodded and turned for the stairs by the elevators. I watched him hit the door to the stairs and disappear at a gallop, and then I glanced back at the guy behind the desk. He had swept-back brown hair and he was tall and lean in a way that was purpose-built to wear a suit. And he wore it well. The word that came to mind was dapper .

  He gave me his concerned but not really face. “I’m sorry, sir, but the hotel is closed for the duration of the storm.”

  I grinned. I was impressed that he was prepared to even give consideration to the idea that I wanted to check in, given I was standing in the lobby in a pair of cargo shorts and a shirt covered in blue foliage. I was so wet a puddle had formed around my feet big enough to house a small alligator.

  I said, “I’m not looking to stay.”

  “You shouldn’t even be on this island,” said the voice behind me.