Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 01 - Galveston by Kent Conwell Read Free Book Online Page B

several stevedoring firms and two buoy manufacturers. 
    Then I searched the bedroom.
    Seagulls didn’t pick fish bones any cleaner than the bedroom. Several suits, slacks, and sport coats hung on the rack. A pair of running shoes and three pairs of shoes, two loafers and one slipper hung upside down on shoetrees.
    I picked up one of the loafers, a brown Brioni with a leather tassel. Size eleven and a half with a ribbed sole. I stared at the shoe, remembering the footprint I had spotted in the fresh cement back at the wharf. If I weren’t mistaken, the print was the same as the sole of the Brioni.
    I checked the other shoes. All Brioni. Well, Cheshire had taste in shoes at least.
    “Find something?”
    Virgil’s question jerked me around. I kept everything close to the vest. “Nope. Not here. What about you?”
    “Nothing.”
    I wandered back into the kitchen.
    A telephone directory lay on the snack bar. Several numbers were scribbled on the cover. I copied them. Probably pizza or hamburger delivery joints. One had the word, Allied, beside it.
    I glanced under the cabinets. The usual bug sprays, overflowing trash beginning to ripen, a couple cans of paint—one with ribbons of red paint dried on the side, the other unopened, a yellow background with a green paintbrush as a logo, and a collection of dollar store pots and pans. Nothing out of the ordinary.
    As an afterthought, I flipped to maritime shipping in the yellow pages. I wasn’t sure what I was hoping to find, perhaps a circle drawn around a shipping line with a note stating ‘this is the one’ or perhaps a shipping line corresponding with one I found on Cheshire’s computer. No such luck.
    Except for the Internet files and the phone numbers, the place was clean as a freshly scrubbed floor.
     
    Outside, stars sparkled in a black sky. We stopped off at a hamburger joint along the seawall and picked up a bag of double-deckers along with fries. During the remainder of the ride back to the motel, I planned the next couple steps. I wasn’t crazy about Virgil tagging after me the rest of the evening, listening to what I said, learning what I learned. I didn’t trust him—not completely, not yet. Whatever I found, I wanted to keep it to myself.
    After we ate, I’d get rid of Virgil. Then I could follow up on the websites, call the numbers we found, visit Pete, and check the shoe print in the fresh concrete at the wharf.
    At the thought of the fresh concrete, a tiny idea formed in the back of my head, so nebulous I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it was there, nagging at me. I remembered the unsettling feeling I had earlier that I knew more about that night than I thought.
     
    Virgil didn’t argue when I told him I was going to hit the sack early. He nodded and left. I watched from the window as he descended the stairs and crossed the parking lot to the front of the motel.
    He seemed like a nice guy. I felt a twinge of guilt, but I didn’t know him well enough to trust him. As far as I knew, he might be the kind to hit the nearest bar and blabber his head off.
    No, what I had to do tonight, I could best do alone.
     

Chapter Seven
    Leaving my .38 behind, I grabbed my coat and jumped in my pickup. I didn’t know if ‘Mustache Pete’ were still at his office or not. If I missed him, at least I could assure myself the footprint in the cement had the same configuration as the Brioni in Cheshire’s apartment.
    I checked the flashlight in my glove apartment.
    From time to time during the short drive the docks, I glanced in my rearview, wondering if the police were still tagging after me. I didn’t spot anything unusual.
     
    Augie stopped me at the warehouse door. By now, the fog had settled in. He grinned. “Not a good night to be out, Friend. This stuff will be too thick to drive in.”
    “I’ll make it. Pete around?”
    He shook his head. “Left an hour ago.”
    “My lawyer called me. Said Pete told him the slug that shattered the window today was