kiDNApped (A Tara Shores Thriller) by Rick Chesler

him.
    “Actually, it’s Doctor,” she said, not wanting to get too personal. “And no thank you, I’ll take an iced tea if the waitress ever comes around.” Dave waved at an attractive female server some distance away who smiled and approached their table.
    Lance was tipping back his beer, enjoying the scenery. Clearly he would be of no help here, Kristen thought.
    “Doctor, as in medical doctor?” Dave asked.
    “No, PhD,” she said. Cutting off the chance for more small talk, Kristen turned to Tara, who was silently absorbing the details of the conversation ]
    The waitress arrived with the iced tea for Kristen. Tara declined the offer of anything to drink.
    “I did notice one small thing,” Tara said, “which is why I thought it appropriate to meet with you at the same time as Mr. Turner here,” Tara said, nodding in Dave’s direction.
    “And that is?” Kristen asked. Dave also looked on with interest. Lance guzzled his beer and gawked at a passing waitress.
    “It isn’t much,” Tara began, “but I have copies of the ship’s log from the R/V Tropic Sequence , and I noticed that they stopped to collect water samples at coordinates very near the ones where the Honu was anchored,” she said.
    Kristen said, “You actually think this incident may be related to our father's case?”
    “I'm not saying that,” Tara said, not wanting to falsely inflate the Archers' hopes. “I'm only pointing out an observation. It may mean nothing at all.”
    “But two boating incidents in the same area within three months? That isn't normal around here, is it?” Kristen said.
    “No,” Tara said. And before she had a chance to continue, Kristen interjected.
    “So Dave,” Kristen said, turning her attention to the diver, “do you really think it was a ring that you were looking for down there today?”
    From time to time in the course of her career, Tara had been confronted with family members of victims who fancied themselves amateur sleuths. They were more annoying than anything else, but they could be time wasters and, occasionally, even dangerous.
    Dave answered before she could regain control of the conversation. “Like I said, I was told I was looking for a wedding ring,” he said, before quickly adding, “not mine—for the guy who hired me—the dead guy, Johnson. He said he dropped it off his boat,” he concluded with a frown. “But now I’m not so sure,” Dave said, finishing off a beer and starting in on another. “I mean, like I told the cops, I find it hard to believe that someone would kill for a stupid ring.”
    “What about the boat?” Kristen asked. Tara continued to appear bored, looking out over the water from behind dark sunglasses.
    Dave laughed. “Nah. Don’t get me wrong—I’d love to have a little boat like that, but the Honu’s not worth killing over.”
    “Honu?” Kristen asked.
    “That’s the name of my boss’s—former boss’s—boat. It means—”
    “Sea turtle,” Lance interjected, setting his empty bottle on the table and sequestering another.
    “There ya go,” Dave said. “Not bad for a tourist. So no, nothing I saw was worth killing over. All I can think of is that Johnson must have been involved in some bad sh—stuff that I didn’t know anything about. It’s not like I really knew the guy.”
    “To look for the ring,” Kristen said, “what kind of equipment did you use?”
    Dave explained in detail the diving setup and the metal detector, then finished by relating how his detector had just locked onto a solid signal when Johnson’s body had come plummeting down.
    “So whatever it was that was down there…”
    “…should still be down there,” Dave finished for her, his eyes taking on an intense gleam.
    A moment of silence ensued as the four of them contemplated this, sipping their drinks. Tara appeared slightly more interested.
    Despite the trade winds blowing in from the ocean, the detective felt a trickle of sweat slide down the back of her