“Cordite?” Dino asked.
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“Gun oil,” Tommy replied. “The deed didn’t get done with Charley’s own gun.” He put the round back into the magazine and bagged the works.
Tommy checked the closet, which contained some jeans and Hawaiian shirts. “He’d blend right in in Key West with that wardrobe,” he said. They checked the bathroom medicine cabinet, which contained a toothbrush and a razor, and the toilet tank, which contained water. They went downstairs and checked the kitchen. There were two cases of Bud in the fridge, along with a jar of peanut butter and some left-over Chinese in cartons. In a drawer they found some utensils, and in a cabinet a few glasses.
“That’s it,” Tommy said. “Do you believe it? I mean, everybody collects a little of life’s detritus, but not Charley.”
“How long did the neighbor say he’d lived here?” Stone asked Dino.
“Since last year. She didn’t say when last year.”
“Did he own a car?” Stone asked.
“There was a motorcycle chained to the electrical post on the dock,” Tommy said. “I reckon that’s his.”
“Was it searched?” Stone asked.
“Search a motorcycle?”
Stone walked up the dock and found the motorcycle, a light Honda. “Do you have the keys?” he called back to Tommy. Tommy produced a plastic bag containing some items and found some keys. He tossed them to Stone. “These were in his pocket.”
Stone found the right key and unlocked a little storage compartment on the cycle. “Hey, hey!” he yelled and held up a ziplock bag with two fingers. “That’s half a key, I reckon.”
Tommy walked down the dock, took the bag, opened it and tasted a sample. “Cocaine,” he said, “and my guess is it’s uncut.”
“That’s a lot of product to be walking around with,” Stone said,
“and there were no smaller bags, so I guess he wasn’t hawking it on the street.”
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“More like a delivery,” Tommy said, “one that didn’t get made.”
“Enough to get killed for,” Stone pointed out.
“I guess the killer asked Charley for it, and when he didn’t give, the guy got pissed off.”
“It wouldn’t have taken long to search the houseboat,” Stone said,
“but he didn’t search the motorcycle.”
Dino had joined them. “Let’s take another look at the boathouse,”
Dino said.
They did, and this time they looked everywhere. Dino stood in the little wheelhouse, holding a fl oorboard in his hand. “Take a look at this,” he said to Tommy. Tommy looked and found an empty compartment with a trace of white powder at the bottom. “Maybe the shooter didn’t go away empty-handed after all.”
“You could get half a dozen kilos in there,” Dino said.
“Yeah, and that’s more than enough to get shot for. Anybody know what a key goes for these days?”
“I don’t know,” Dino said, “maybe twenty-five, thirty thou? I guess it would depend on availability.”