Free TURTLE DOVE (Alton Rhode Mysteries Book 7) by Lawrence de Maria Page B

tone. “Jim’s booze is doing the talking.”
    Charlie leaned forward.
    “Alton, I hope you don’t have any, ah, romantic ideas about Sandy,” he said.
    “Charlie,” Fred said. “Shut up, why don’t you?”
    “Hey, Kojak, give it a rest, will ya. You’re not in uniform. We might be saving this guy’s life.” He leaned in to me. “Vole is pounding her like a cutlet, and he’s crazy jealous. He sometimes porks her right on his boat. Some of the guys down the marina say it rocks even when the water is dead calm.”
    “Vole and Nidus?”
    I was really surprised.
    “You’ve had too much to drink, too, Charlie,” Fred said. “You’re talking out of school.”
    “Oh, for Christ sake, chief, it’s no secret. Vole thinks no one knows, but this is a small fuckin’ island and those fishermen talk like schoolgirls. Rumor is he almost killed a guy who made a move on her. I’m just warning Alton. I can’t figure it out myself. She seems so classy, and all. Looks like a young Maureen O’Hara, don’t you think?”
    It clicked. That’s who I was thinking of when I first saw Nidus. The famous red-haired actress had died recently and her old movies were all over Turner Classic Movies in retrospectives.
    “It must be because Vole was a Navy SEAL, or something,” Charlie continued. “The two of them go at it like rabbits.”
    “She is a piece of ass,” Jim added. “I wonder if she is a natural redhead.”
    “Enough!” The chief was getting annoyed. “Let’s get another round and talk golf.”
    “You don’t know anything about golf, chief,” Jim retorted. “You proved that with your last putt.”
    The table talk dissolved into more friendly put downs, and the relationship between Alexandra Nidus and Leonard Vole took a back burner.
    But it still seemed bizarre to me.
    ***
    “Alexandra Nidus and the security guy?”
    It was morning of the following day and Alice and I were on the ferry back to the mainland. I was going to drive her back to Duke. I was pretty sure I could find Raleigh, with or without help from Gladys. It’s a big city.
    “That’s what my golfing pals told me after our round.”
    “Was there drinking involved?”
    “Prodigious. But I believe it. The chief of police was one of the guys and he tried to shut the others up, but I could tell he knew it was true.”
    “The chief of police?”
    “Nice guy. It was his day off.”
    “How did the subject even come up?”
    “Sandy was in the clubhouse and came over to say hello to me. After she left, one of the guys warned me against making a pass at her. Said Vole was, and I quote, “pounding her like a cutlet”.
    “That’s gross.”
    “The guy also said Vole almost killed a guy in a jealous rage over her. That, I can also believe. There’s a screw loose in him somewhere. When he beat that shark into porridge with a billy club, I think he enjoyed it.”
    “It was a shark, after all.”
    “It was also already very dead.”
    “She’s very beautiful,” Alice said. “But she’s not your type.”
    “What’s not my type?”
    “Any broad but me, honeybun” Alice said. “I wonder what she sees in him.”
    I was about to say something when she held up her hand.
    “Don’t,” Alice said. “Save your ‘hung like a horse’ comments for your 19th-hole conversations.”
    “I wasn’t going to use a horse. In keeping with Vole’s main occupation, I was thinking more of a sperm whale.”
    “Why don’t you suck farts?”

CHAPTER 10 - THE BROTHER
    Six Weeks Later
     
    It was one of those fall days when it feels like everything is right in the world.
    I was walking back to my car after indulging myself with a Grizzly Burger in the Bear’s Den at Wagner College. The Den is the oldest and least modern of the school’s dining facilities, which are chrome, glass, plastic and salad bar palaces in comparison. The Den is in Wagner’s original administration building and the nearest salad is on the building’s ivy-covered walls, unless