The Palm Beach Murders by James Patterson (the read aloud family .TXT) 📕

Salese and Nigel James are working together to cover this up.”

“The playboy lifeguard and the suave cop?” Jana asks.

“Both clearly know something. Paolo took our bait money with a promise to lead me to the burial site. And as for Nigel James, I’m pretty sure he’s our doer. We had a little talk earlier today and I started pushing buttons. I really thought he was going to try and do me.”

Through a mouthful of jerk pork, Otto mutters, “We’re not that lucky.”

“Why would James suddenly snap and kill a tourist?” Kate asks. “I’m sure Paige isn’t the first pretty schoolgirl he’s encountered on this island.”

“This cop is extremely vain. I could see him playing the role of the good guy, offering a ride home, and then putting the moves on her. Only when Paige doesn’t play along, Nigel gets rough.”

“And you think Paolo the lifeguard saw it?” Jana asks. At the same time, her cell phone vibrates. She looks down at the screen and grins.

“No doubt,” Theo replies. “Maybe the lifeguard was lovestruck and followed her around all night. Saw something he wasn’t supposed to see.”

Kate finishes her mouthful of curried shrimp. “I don’t know. I’m liking Jamie Halsey for this. At first he denied everything, no doubt thinking that Daddy’s lawyers would make everything all right.  But when I convinced him that Daddy had in fact sent me to help him, he got very worried.”

“Yeah, but witnesses saw Paige leave the boat and then meet up with Nigel James on the beach,” Theo says. “What, did Halsey and Kurtz wait an hour, then sneak around and ambush her right there on the surf?”

“Then again, the Clee girls thought Halsey was to blame,” Jana says.  “Brooke Clee said something about protecting a trust fund jerk. She also seemed to think that Paige was still alive and island-hopping with her new, rich friend.”

There’s a sudden muffled sound that startles the others. They turn to see Otto, his mouth chewing on a sizable piece of jerk pork. He holds up a finger, hang on a sec. The group waits, resisting the urge to roll their eyes.

After a small eternity, Otto swallows his food and then speaks. “Paige Ryerson is still alive. I have proof.”

Chapter 19

THE STINGRAYS (continued)

“So you just let us go on and on?” Kate asks. “Why didn’t you say something earlier?”

“I was hungry,” Otto says.

Kate’s eyes narrow to a kind of laser-beam focus. Are you jerking us around or what? Otto is the one team member she knows the least, and that worries her. Theo looks angry, too—and those two shared a jail cell for a while. Jana, meanwhile, shakes her head and smiles softly, which is what she always does when she’s frustrated and doesn’t want it to show. She types something on her cell phone.

“Hey,” Otto says when he sees the look on his teammates’ faces, “you guys seemed so excited about all of the hard work you’ve been doing. I didn’t want to interrupt.”

Quinn says, “Let’s hear your proof, Otto.”

“Okay. So I spent most of the day impersonating Paige’s older brother. She doesn’t have one, but whatever. Most people don’t know that. I wanted to see if anybody else had eyes on her while she was here. And I found three people who saw Paige Ryerson on three different occasions on three different parts of the island. And this was over the weekend, after the Clee girl first reported her as a missing person.”

“Why didn’t they call the police?” Kate asks.

“They told me they did but never heard anything in response,” Otto says.

Theo frowns. “Who are these witnesses, anyway?”

Otto points at Quinn’s laptop. “I did some quick background checks on all three, and they’re solid citizens. I uploaded it to your secure folder, Matthew. You can do your deep web magic from there, but I’d be shocked if they were anything but legit.”

They all knew that Matthew Quinn was an expert at surfing the so-called deep web, the murky underbelly of the internet that lies beyond search engines and passwords. It is the kind of digital underworld that takes a skilled navigator to operate.

“I’ll check them out,” Quinn says. “What did the witnesses say Paige was doing?”

“They all said she looked like she was feeling no pain—either tipsy or maybe even a little stoned. This is, after all, the tropics, man.”

“And somehow this drunk or possibly stoned girl was able to evade an island-wide search for her?” Kate asks. “Sorry, I’m not buying it.”

“Why would these people lie?” Otto asks. “It’s not as if they came forward with this information on their own. If I hadn’t gone digging, chances are they wouldn’t have told another soul.”

Theo hurls his fork into the sink like a petulant child. “So what I’m hearing is that everybody’s guilty, or nobody’s guilty, because our so-called victim might be off on a bender somewhere.”

“So where does this leave us?” Jana asks. “And what do we do next?”

“For one thing, we don’t take our frustrations out on innocent cutlery,” Quinn says, cocking an eye at Theo. “This also means that the next phase of our investigation will require great care. Whether Paige is dead or alive, I believe we’re dealing with a conspiracy—not the passionate mistake of a single perpetrator. And if they’re smart enough to form a conspiracy that’s eluded the feds, they’re smart enough not to get caught. The clock is ticking. Our ruses may have kept the suspects close at hand, but that won’t last forever.”

“I guess this means no dessert,” Otto says.

Jana is the first to rise, straightening her cocktail dress with a few tidy, precise movements. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m dying for a drink.”

Chapter 20

JANA (THE ACTOR)

I promise you, my dear Matthew, my desire for a cocktail has nothing to do with our wonderful afternoon at the beach sipping overpriced kiddie juice.

But like you said, the clock is ticking, and I don’t want to let certain opportunities slip away.

As predicted, Jamie Halsey