Wyatt's Revenge: A Matt Royal Mystery by H. Terrell Griffin Page A

him the usual way, so I called you.”
    “Okay, Matt. Good talking to you.” He hung up.
    I got out of bed, showered, shaved, and drove back across the peninsula to Longboat Key.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
    Logan and I were on his balcony eating Chinese food. The sun had dropped into the Gulf of Mexico and a quarter moon was rising over the bay. The night was quiet. Now and then we heard the cry of a seabird that nested on the mangrove islands dotting the near edge of the bay.
    I’d arrived at my condo a little after noon that day. I’d dropped the Chevy at the Sarasota-Bradenton airport and grabbed a taxi to the key. I spent some time in the afternoon searching the Internet for a sailor named Robert Brasillach. I called Logan, and he asked me over to share the huge amount of Chinese food he’d bought on St. Armand’s Circle. We ate and sipped our beer as I told him what I’d learned and about my visit to Miami.
    “So this killer named Rupert was really a New York City cop named Rudy Chardone?” he asked.
    “Yeah. And a pervert.”
    “How could he get away with being a cop and a killer and a kiddy pornographer?”
    “When you think about it, it’s the perfect cover. Cop by day, killer by night. He was Banchori’s Central Florida franchisee, I guess. The Fern Park apartment is probably his branch office. It was a place for him to go to ground when he was working in the area.
    Logan chewed thoughtfully for a moment. “Who is Robert Brasillach?”
    “I don’t know. I Googled him, but the name only pops up as a French writer who collaborated with the Nazis and was executed by deGaulle at the end of World War II.”
    “Could it be his son?”
    “I doubt it. I can’t find any mention of Brasillach having children,and even if he had, the kid would be in his fifties now. Banchori said the guy who brought the money was a young man. And he wasn’t French. Banchori said he was from Odessa. Probably Ukrainian, or maybe Russian.”
    “If he came in on a sailboat, he might not have been here legally.”
    “I thought of that. It doesn’t really matter. There’s no way for me to track anybody coming into the country. Besides, he may live here permanently. I’m afraid I’ve hit a brick wall.”
    “There’s got to be a reason why somebody would kill Wyatt. A professional killer doesn’t just take someone out by mistake. Plus, when you talked to him, Chardone knew you were Wyatt’s friend. He hit the right target. But why?”
    “That’s what doesn’t make sense. Maybe we’re missing something. I’m going to go back through Wyatt’s condo. See if there’s anything the police missed.”
    “Not to change the subject, but I had a date last night,” Logan said.
    “A date?”
    “Well, more than a date.”
    “A sleepover?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Do I know the lucky lady?”
    “Marie Phillips.” He smiled smugly.
    “You old dog. The widow Phillips. I’m impressed.”
    Marie Phillips was in her thirties, the widow of a man killed in a car wreck. She lived in a large condo on the south end of the key. When we’d met her, she was the administrative assistant to a man who later died as a result of some drug business gone bad. Marie, who had an MBA from the University of Florida, was not aware of the ugly side of her boss’s business. She was cleared of any wrongdoing and now worked in administration at the Sarasota Memorial Hospital. I ran into her occasionally around the island.
    “We’ve dated a few times,” Logan said. “I didn’t want to say anything, because I kept thinking she’d break it off. She didn’t. Last night was the clincher. I think we’re a couple.” He grinned some more.
    “Good for you both.” I was happy for Logan. He’d been without asteady girlfriend for a long while. He’d date now and then, but he never found anybody he wanted to spend a lot of time with. Maybe things were looking up.
    We spent the rest of the evening sitting on the balcony, talking quietly about absent friends, some