Nathan looked at the end table with the tools. “I’m willing to bet those are your wire cutters we talked about, the pliers too. Let’s find out if they were bought here at the marina. If they match stock sold locally, somebody might remember who bought them. It’s a long shot, but we might catch a break. You’ve got a lot of legwork to do, Jeremy.”

“No doubt. Since the wire cutters and pliers are still here, it probably means they wrapped him in the chain link here.”

Nathan squinted.

“What?” Harv asked.

“The piece of chain link on Stiegler’s houseboat.”

“If they wrapped Kramer here, why was there a loose piece on the houseboat?”

Jeremy said, “If you’re thinking it was planted, I can’t see the logic of it.”

“Let’s not worry about that now,” Nathan said. “It’s not critical at this point.”

Harv looked at Jeremy. “If Kramer was wrapped in chain link here, he wouldn’t have been able to walk.”

Jeremy agreed. “They carried him for sure.”

“Let’s go over how we think this went down,” Nathan said, then paused to think it through. “The bad guys arrive sometime during the day and gain entry. They overpower Kramer and do their dirty work. Later that evening, they retrieve the chain link from their vehicle, wrap him up and carry him out, all unseen by the neighbors. They drive down to the marina, where one of them steals Stiegler’s boat. It’s too risky to move the body along the dock, so the vehicle with Kramer’s body probably goes to a more remote beach location where they make the transfer. Maybe a loose piece of fencing comes off. They motor out and dump the body. Let’s assume they think they were seen. They rush back to the marina, moor the boat in a hurry, put back Stiegler’s key backwards, and retie the mooring knot differently. The same vehicle picks them up at the dock and they bug out without returning to the condo.”

“Or they could’ve stolen Stiegler’s boat ahead of time and had it waiting at the beach. There’s no way to know,” Jeremy said.

“My gut says they’d want to minimize the amount of time Stiegler’s boat was missing in case he returned. If our scenario’s right, it would’ve only been gone for a little over an hour.”

“How many perps are we talking about?” Jeremy asked.

“I’d have to say three or four.” Including Montez, he thought. “I suppose it’s possible to do all of that with only two, but unlikely,”

“Jeremy, can you talk to the people staying in the adjacent condos?” he asked. “Maybe somebody saw them. We might get a description.”

“I’ll definitely ask.”

“Can you come back tonight and check the lighting between the buildings? They might’ve unscrewed some bulbs. You might get prints.”