Lifeguard - James Patterson [49]
“You think it’s Stratton?” I looked at her, a little dazed.
Ellie didn’t answer.
I stopped walking. “You said you were going to bust him for murder and fraud. You think it’s Stratton?”
“You got a car, Ned?” Ellie said, ignoring me.
I nodded vacantly. “In a manner of speaking . . .”
“Then go get it. Now. I don’t want to know you here. Meet me back in Delray.”
I blinked. She wasn’t arresting me.
She glared impatiently. “I don’t think you need directions, do you, Ned?”
I shook my head, and as I started down the street, a grin spread across my face. “You believe me, don’t you?” I called.
Ellie stopped at a navy sedan. “You believe me,” I called again.
She opened her car door. “That was stupid, Ned. What you did.” She softened. “But thanks . . .”
The whole drive to Delray, I wasn’t sure what Ellie really meant back there. The new, paranoid me was sure I was going to come face-to-face with a roadblock of cops and flashing lights. All she had to do was turn me in and Ellie could make a career for herself.
But there were no roadblocks. No cops jumping out at me when I pulled around the corner from her house near the beach in Delray.
By the time I knocked on the front door, Ellie had changed. Her makeup was off, the diamond earrings gone. She had on a pair of jeans, white tee, a pink waist-length sweatshirt. You know what, though, she still looked beautiful.
“Let’s get one thing straight, ” she said as I stood in the doorway. “You’re going to jail. You were involved, Ned, whether you killed those people or not. I’m going to help you with the guy who killed your friends, and then you turn yourself in. You understand? You got it?”
“I understand,” I said. “But there’s something I have to know. You and Stratton on the terrace . . . You were talking about Tess.”
“I’m sorry you had to hear that, Ned.” She sat on a stool at the kitchen counter. She shrugged. “She and Stratton. They were seeing each other. They were lovers.”
Those words slammed into me.
Tess . . . and Dennis Stratton. A hollow feeling rose in my chest. I guess I’d kidded myself a bit. Why someone like Tess would want someone like me. But Stratton? I sank onto the couch. “For how long?”
Ellie swallowed. “I think until the day she was killed. I think he was with her after you.”
The sinking feeling was starting to simmer now—into anger. “The police know this? They know, Ellie, and they’re after me?”
“Seems nobody wants to take on Stratton. With the possible exception of, say, me.”
All of a sudden things started to become clear. What I’d heard up on Stratton’s terrace. Why Ellie hadn’t turned me in. Why I was there. “You think he did it, don’t you? You think he set up my friends? That’s he’s Gachet?”
Ellie came over and sat on the coffee table in front of me. “What I’m starting to think, Ned, is if your friends didn’t steal Stratton’s art, who did?”
A smile crossed my lips. I felt this weight draining out of my shoulders. For a moment I wanted to take Ellie by the hand, or hug her. But the joy quickly faded. “But why Tess?”
“I don’t know yet.” Ellie shook her head. “Did she ever say anything to you? Maybe she knew about you and your friends beforehand. How did the two of you meet?”
“On the beach. Near where I worked . . .” I thought back. I was the one who had gone up to her. Could it be possible that she was in on it? That I’d been set up? No, that was crazy. It was all crazy. “Why would Stratton want to steal his own art?”
“The insurance maybe. But it’s not like he needs the money. Maybe to cover up something else?”
“But if that’s the case, where was the art when Mickey and the guys went to take it?”
A light blinked in Ellie’s eyes. “Maybe someone beat them to it.”
“Someone else? Who? Tess?” I shook my head defiantly. “No way.” But one thing I couldn’t put away, and it didn’t make any sense to me. “If Stratton set up his own heist, if he has the paintings—why did he need to send a guy to kill Dave? Why is he still coming after me?”
We looked at each other. I guess we came to the answer at the same