Crystal Blue (Buck Reilly Adventure Series Book 3) by John Cunningham (novels for beginners txt) 📕

have no choice but to try and keep this thing together,” she said finally. “We’ve put everything on the line—” She pressed a fist to her mouth and willed the tears away. “Are you still going to fly people around if I can keep the event on track? Because the people start arriving tomorrow and the day after—”

“I won’t abandon you, Crystal. But there are a few things here I want to check out—”

“The Westin!” she said.

“The what?”

“We had a room booked at the Westin. John was going to stay there until tomorrow.” Her forehead wrinkled. “I don’t recall if I told that to the police. I know he’d already checked in, he called me from there the afternoon he disappeared.”

A worker on the ferry opened the gate and began loading baggage piled by the ramp. People started to press aboard.

“Okay, I’ll check that out too,” I said. “Now get moving—wait!” I retrieved Booth’s cell phone from my bag and we exchanged numbers. “Let’s touch base later today, but call me sooner if you hear anything about John or Stud Mahoney. Okay?”

“Right, and one last thing…” Crystal reached into her bag, pulled out a folder, and opened it. Her husband stared out at me. “I had this printed at the hotel on St. Thomas last night. I thought they might come in handy.”

“Good thinking.” It was a different photo from the one on their website, but he still had the great smile. “Now get moving or you’ll miss the boat.”

She nodded, then a determined expression settled on her face. She started to go, spun back and gave me a bear hug.

“Thank you so much, Buck. I know you’ll call me with anything you learn too.”

I stood on numb legs as the ferry pulled away. When Crystal waved from the back of the boat a shiver passed through me. I was in danger too, and not from gangs or bombs or kidnappers.

The cell phone rang and I jumped. Unless Crystal was calling me already, it could only be one person.

The screen read: YOUR MASTER. I answered the call.

“Very funny, Booth.”

“What the hell’s going on with this Adoption AID show? The promoter disappears, now a leading man has been kidnapped? Maybe your lady friend should cancel—”

“Get to the point—”

“The point is that you’re now off the case of the missing promoter and on the case of the missing movie star—”

“I don’t think so.”

“Listen, Reilly, this isn’t an option—hell, they interrupted regular programming on every major network to break the story about Stud Mahoney being kidnapped. Nobody gives a damn about some do-gooder—”

“Maybe they’re connected, Booth, ever think of that?”

“Different M.O. altogether, hotshot. Nothing but silence followed the promoter’s disappearance—”

“A bomb threat on Seaborne Airlines is silence? The phone call I had in the middle of the night telling me to stay away from the Adoption AID concert is—”

“What phone call—”

“Two people in the Virgin Islands, both here for the same reason, both disappeared, and you think it’s a coincidence?”

My finger hovered above the END button.

“Reilly! Don’t you hang up on me, Reilly!”

“You’ve got me for another ten seconds,” I said.

“And why did you call that real estate developer on St. John?” he said. “You better not be doing side business with federal prop—”

“Are you going to check up on every call I make?”

“Damn straight—”

END. I stabbed the button with my rigid index finger, over and over.

Eat shit, Booth.

“YEAH, I WAS WORKING here that night, what a party,” the bartender said.

The Beach Bar was at the end of the beach at Cruz Bay, past a few restaurants and behind the retail stores out on the road that paralleled the shore. It was nothing more than a bar with stools on both sides covered by a canopy, with a small seating area cum stage at the far end. According to the cops, it was the last place John Thedford had been seen.

“What was the party all about?”

“Drinking, listening to music, trying to get laid. What else?”

The bartender was pushing fifty, pudgy but tan. His beard was at least four days old, his gray hair was tied into a ponytail, and the letters B-E-E-R were tattooed on the knuckles of his right hand. Not-so-subliminal advertising to his patrons.

“That’s it?” I said. “Just a typical night at the Beach Bar?”

“That, and Kenney Chesney here for an acoustic show. God love him.”

I tried to remember if Crystal had mentioned him on her list of participants.

“Is he playing in that Adoption AID concert on Jost this weekend?”

The bartender glanced at me, then turned back to washing glasses.

“Let me call his manager on my speed dial and I’ll let you know.”

I ordered a beer, drank half in one slug, and reached into my bag.

“Friend of mine’s the promoter, and he—”

“Wandered off and disappeared. Yep, know all about it. Cops came around yesterday asking questions.” He looked at my hair and mustache, both due and overdue for a trim. “You’re no cop.”

“That’s right, I’m a friend. Thedford’s wife asked me to help find him.”

“Like maybe he ran off with another woman? You a private eye?”

“Nope.”

I drained half of the remaining beer and opened my file.

“Here’s his picture. You remember him from the night of the party? Anything you can tell me that might help me find him?”

He looked up from washing glasses.

“Yeah, I remember him, he was pretty buzzed. Yucked it up with the musicians during a break, flirted with some of the babes waiting to take a shot at Kenny, then throws me a handful of cash and stumbles down the steps there onto the beach.” He smiled. “Alone.”

Innocent flirting or my-wife’s-a- thousand-miles-away flirting?

“You see him get on a boat down the beach?”

“Nope, wasn’t that interested, but heard the guy down at American Watersports saw him.”

American—that’s the group Crystal chartered.

“You know the guy’s name?”

“Billy. Kind of a lush.”

The unreliable witness?

“Thedford say anything to you while he was here?”

The bartender looked both ways down the bar, then leaned toward me, holding a