The Turin Shroud Secret Read Online Free PDF Page B

to Nic again. ‘Sorry, I gotta
     go, they both have parties today and they’re wound up already. You heading boatward?’
    ‘You read my mind.’
    ‘Have a good one.’
    ‘You too. Hope the girls have fun.’ He hangs up and pictures Mitzi bundling Jade and Amber into the family’s beat-up station
     wagon while her lazy no-good bum of a husband stays in bed and sleeps off another Friday night bender. She could do so much
     better.
    Nic makes instant coffee and thinks a while more about Mitzi’s old man. She said he hit her once. Slapped her after he saw
     a male neighbour coming out of the house when herolled home drunk from a bar crawl with the boys. The idiot put two and two together and made five. Mitzi had kicked his ass
     back and that had been it. But Nic wonders now if the strapped-up fingers he saw in the office were really the result of another
     fight. He pours OJ and eats a cup of granola without any milk – a quirk dating back to bachelor days when he was always running
     out of everything except cereal. If Mitzi’s in trouble, she’ll tell him. And if she is, then it’ll be his pleasure to go and
     straighten her husband out.
    It’s a little after nine when Nic shuts his front door and begins the thirty-minute drive to Terminal Island, just east of
     San Pedro and west of Long Beach. The Al Larson Marina on Seaside Avenue is leased from the Los Angeles Harbor Department
     and has more than a hundred slips, for vessels between twenty and fifty feet long. Slap bang in the middle is Officer Karakandez’s
     pride and joy. The one thing that’s kept him sane.
    Reunion
isn’t a yacht that turns heads. In fact, the nine-ton Hillyard sloop is a real Ugly Betty of a boat. No bikini-clad supermodel
     or playboy prince will ever be seen near her, let alone on her. But after his wife and son’s deaths, Nic fell in love with
     the rust bucket and saved its cast-iron keel and white oak ribs from the breaker’s yard. The process of renewing something
     was good for his soul, if not his pocket. Every spare dime he’s made has gone on repairs – reframing and caulking, a new centre
     cockpit with wheel steering, three cabins refurbished in mahogany, fresh fibreglass over thick pine decks.
    Nic passes the morning tending her thirty-four-foot mast and adding varnish to the back decking. Around 1 p.m. he steps ashore
     to get a bite of something hot. Across the quayside he catches sight of someone he thinks he knows. It needs a double-take,
     though – he’s never seen her dressed in anything like jeans and a sweater.
    ‘Dr Chang?’
    Amy Chang turns from the water’s edge. Her jet-black shoulder-length hair bounces, there’s a flash of ice-white teeth beneath
     soft pink lips and a sparkle in her green-brown eyes. ‘Detective Karakandez.’ She says his name warmly as she walks towards
     him, hands in front pockets, a gentle rock of the hips against a large camel-coloured bag slung over her shoulder. ‘Little
     birdie told me you had a boat down here.’
    He tracks her way. ‘Little birdie’s right. But I’m certain
you
don’t sail. Do you?’
    ‘No, not at all. Never been to sea in my life. Unless a ferry ride in San Francisco counts?’
    ‘It doesn’t. So what brings you to the water?’
    She smiles. ‘Fresh air. Clear my head. Forget work for a while.’
    ‘It sure is a good place for that.’ He nods towards the metal whale occupying the slip to his right. ‘That’s mine. Quite a
     looker, eh?’
    She smiles ironically.
‘Distinctive
may be a better word for it.’
    He laughs. ‘I’m going to grab coffee and a sandwich. You got time to do that?’
    ‘Sure.’ She falls in comfortably by his side as a flock of seagulls break from the deck boards and scatter skywards.
    He turns to her as they walk. ‘That little birdie who told you I had a boat down here – its name wasn’t Mitzi, was it?’
    Amy puts a finger to her lips. ‘Detective, you know better than to ask someone to betray their