Cutting Loose in Paradise

by Mary Jane Ryals

  “That’s good news,” I said. “We’ll go see him at home, then.” She eyed me suspiciously. “I didn’t poison him, Tiffany,” I added.

  “I didn’t think so,” she said. “I just wonder who did.” She stared at the floor. We all stared at her.

  “So, if you have any evidence—do you know anybody who doesn’t like Mac?” I asked.

  “Trina,” she said. “Trina didn’t like him.” She looked at me. “Trina and Mac got into a big argument about a month before she killed herself. I’m not sure why.”

  “How do you know?” I said, trying not to sound like I was fishing.

  “I heard them. In the real estate office. It wasn’t like a shouting match—well, it kind of was, but—” she shrugged. “They didn’t sound ferocious. Not like Fletch and Trina. Just like they had a disagreement.”

  “Trina couldn’t have tried to poison him,” I said, gentle as I could. “She was already dead.”

  “I know. But you asked.”

  “Well, thanks for letting me know,” I said.

  “You say Fletch and Trina argued?” Laura ventured.

  “All the time,” she said. “Trina would call the real estate office looking for him. When he was there by chance, they’d get into it. ‘Fuck you this and fuck you that.’ I never saw them together. Just thought they had a not-so-good marriage.” She shrugged.

  “Have you stayed at the hospital all this time?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I thought he was going to die,” she said. “And he really doesn’t have anybody, you know?” As if you do, I thought. I couldn’t see Mac nursemaiding Tiffany.

  Madonna yawned. “Well, I think we should all get to bed, don’t you, girls? Tiffany, you’ve gone beyond the call of duty. I hope you get some rest.” Madonna and Laura started to gather their things, as if they were leaving. Tiffany turned and left after I gave her a box of chamomile tea to help her sleep.

  “She’s doing him, sure as the world,” Madonna said as soon as the door was shut after her. We all stifled conspiratorial laughter.

  “But why?” Laura said.

  “Classic professor-student, rich businessman-underling thing,” Madonna said.

  “Total waste of time,” Laura said. “That’s what it’s all about—pedophilia.” We all snorted back our hilarity like preteen girls telling dirty jokes during a church sermon.

  Then we got to work. Laura retrieved plastic bags from the drawer and instructed us to put anything that looked like evidence into them. “Get going,” she said, pushing us out the door. “Before you two start drinking and get sloppy.” She tripped over the new plant, and all three of us burst out laughing.

  “Hey, do you guys recognize what nursery this plant came from?” I asked.

  They looked at me like I was crazy. I told them about the note the night of the poisoning.

  “Logan’s, maybe, on Sixty-seven just the other side of Wellborn,” Laura said.

  “Wal-Mart,” Madonna said, up in Wellborn.

  Laura stripped the key code sticker off and said, “Take this with you and see.” She put it in a plastic bag, and I shoved it into my pocket. “Sometimes they can run it down. Now go on, you Nancy Drews.” Suddenly, I felt a similar dread to the fisherman on television who measured his life by the grass, shrimp, mullet, and the birds. It’s all gonna die, he said. I tried to push his words away.

  CHAPTER 14

  THE NIGHT SKY was a black satin gown with white gemstones scattered throughout. A crisp winter night. For half an hour we’d sat in the shadows of the marina between Main and Dock Streets that surrounded the cove on three sides. Huddled and shivering, walking five steps forward, five back to keep warm. We were about to trespass, and we didn’t know why.

  Saturday night traffic came in pulses. People drove in for dinner or the bars. St. Annes party culture assisted people in the night-off rituals we were used to—the shouting of drinkers, the wailing of the jukebox, the clank of beer bottles thrown in the garbage by bartenders or waiters. So every time we thought we might walk over to Mac’s boat, people left a bar on Dock or Main. We made a run back to the apartment to change into dark jackets over navy T-shirts and long jeans.

  “We’d never get our badges if we tried out for Boy Scouts,” Madonna said, gloomily. Suddenly, a lull. I fingered the tiny flashlight in the pocket of my jacket.

  “Okay. Now,” I said. We took off our shoes, leaving only our dark socks on. No footprints, no shoe prints.

  “Here, put these on,” I said, handing her hairdresser’s gloves. This protected stylists’ hands from dyeing chemicals. We each stuffed several plastic bags in jeans pockets.

  “Why are you whispering?” Madonna asked as we crossed the street by the hardware and fish bait store, heading for the moored boats.

  “I don’t know,” I whispered.

  “Well, stop. It’s so obvious.”

  We stepped onto the starboard side of the twenty-four-foot boat. It swayed, and we both walked straight to the stern, farther from the dock and the streetlight.

  “Look for—” I said in a low voice.

  “Anything,” Madonna said. We slid on the gloves.

  We silently scoured every inch of the port side of the boat with our flashlights. I examined the floor while she explored the flanks. A well-cleaned boat smelling of a bleach-and-water scrub. Madonna tapped me on the shoulder and thumbed down towards the cabin. We took steep steps into the cabin.

  On either side of the center aisle lay two slim beds. The carpet and beds were dark blue. Beyond that, the inner cabin. “You take starboard, I’ll take port,” Madonna said.

  I checked the padded cushions. Under the mattresses were boarded seats that opened to storage. An old fishing net, some nice deep-sea fishing poles, a hammer and screwdriver. A Swiss Army knife. I dropped that into a bag, moving towards the inner cabin.

  On the wall, photos with ends curling from ocean humidity were tacked up on the paneling, ends curling from humidity and time. One photo of a younger Fletch and Trina standing beside a small boat. They beamed, and between them stood a boy about five years old.

  Another photo of Fletch and some guys holding up a goliath grouper. I smoothed the brittle, curling photo and placed both snapshots into the bag. Madonna was brushing her gloved hands along the other side. Her white glove against the dark boat looked like sea anemones swimming.

  Another photo struck me. Trina as a young woman, with maybe a baby brother. This child, the same kid that stood between Fletch and Trina, only older now? No, they didn’t look the same. The boy was about four, and Trina looked about eighteen or twenty. The kid was familiar. I stashed the photo in the bag and headed for the inner cabin.

  “Check it out,” Madonna said from the other cabin. She had removed the padding off the other bed and was curled inside, under the bottom of the bed that served as a sofa during the day. She held her flashlight on a big splotch beside her under the boarded bed. A blob of rusty red ran from above and had stained the storage wall.

  “Here,” I said, opening the Swiss Army knife. “Get a bag and hold it right below this. I’ll scrape.”

  “Hang on,” she said. She squirmed inside the box to get more comfortable. “Okay, go.” I scraped the red that now crumbled off the knife and fell into the bag. The cove’s waves slapped the sides of the boat. “Good going,” I said.

  “Well, it might be paint or fish blood, so don’t get your hopes up,” she said.

  “Jackson said he never excluded anything,” I said. “Let’s check the inner cabin.”

  “You go ahead,” Madonna said. “I’m going to look at these pictures on the starboard side.” She flashed her light on the strange mosaic of pictures and squinted. I entered the inner cabin. A musty smell. Benches were built into the front, but not much else except storage shelves on either side.

  Suddenly, the boat dipped sideways, and then began to sway back and forth. The slapping of the waves against the boat got louder, quicker, like the wake of another boat. Then I hea
rd a footstep above. Ducking through the door, I reached up and lightly touched Madonna’s elbow and pulled her down.

  “Shh,” I said. I pointed up. Her eyes got huge as she turned towards me, then winced, blinded by my light. She tiptoed towards me, and we shut the inner cabin doors behind us without a sound. Footsteps clomped above, all around the boat. Heart thumping, I turned on the flashlight again and picked up a shoe iron and handed it to Madonna. She found a hammer on her side of the shelving and handed the shoe iron back to me. I clicked off the light.

  I could hear our shallow breathing. The sound of footsteps coming down the ladder. A flashlight clicked on, and I could see the silhouette of legs, someone scanning and then rummaging the room. A thin male, maybe? One shadow of an arm reached up where the photos were, then came back down. The person turned and walked back upside. We stood still, quiet, sweating. The waves against the boat slapping. Two minutes later, we felt the boat dip to starboard when the person stepped off and back onto the dock. We stayed completely still and quiet for about five minutes.

  “Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus,” Madonna finally whispered, letting out a deep sigh.

  “Let’s give it a minute more,” I said. We waited five minutes and then slowly replaced the heavy implements. One of the photos was missing. Whoever it was had taken it. Neither of us spoke. Before now, neither of us thought of ourselves as women who would crack someone’s skull open. After another five minutes, Madonna poked her head out and looked. We slowly made our way upside, breathing clean air.

  We crouched on the floor so as not to be seen, listening to people bar hopping, laughing, singing, occasionally yelling in bursts. We waited another five minutes. I had to pee. We stepped off the boat, found our legs, peeled off the gloves, stuffing them into our pockets. My hands were shaking. Without saying anything, we put on our shoes where we’d left them by the marina door just across the cove. Madonna led the way one block to my apartment away from the cove. Once inside, we bolted the door.

  “What in freaking hell? . . .” Madonna said, staring at me.

  “What happened?” Laura said, going to the refrigerator and getting two beers for us.

  “Who was that?” I said. We each plopped down on opposite sofas, popped open the two beers, and nearly sucked both all down.

  “Thanks.” I put the bottle on the table, then stood, too freaked out to talk, and checked on my sleeping kids. Still slumbering hard, thank the gods of sacked-out babies. I lightly touched the heads of my soft-haired children. Daisy in her old white canopy bed, Tay in his upper bunk, the collection of bones, arrowheads, and rocks on his bureau.

  When I returned, Madonna and Laura were already talking in low murmurs. Laura kept shaking her head and staring at the floor. She finally said, “I can’t believe how close you two came to getting caught. Remind me not to let you two do that again.” I nodded, turning on CNN.

  We forgot ourselves in the new bad news, as I lay across a sofa, watching. Scientists were concerned about holes in the food chain in the Gulf. The mainstream news had finally decided to report that the people BP had hired to spread dispersant in Louisiana and Mississippi, mainly out-of-work fishermen, had burning eyes. Subcontractors who took boats out to spread the dispersant were vomiting brown phlegm, had headaches, dizziness.

  And there was no compensation. I wondered when the poison would wander over to us, but it didn’t matter. The Gulf coast people were our Gulf coast people. It looked like we were screwed. My mind followed the terns, the oysters and shrimp. Dolphins. And then I went below the surface, to sleep.

  I WOKE UP in the living room as the phone rang. Daisy thundered down the hallway to answer it. The sun had made its way above the horizon and well into the sky. I’d left the TV on, and CNN was telling us the world’s spanking new bad news. The heavy storms might follow up with snow. Tropical stormlike weather was headed to the Gulf. It would surely send more trouble into Louisiana, which could handle it least of all. This storm might drive the poisonous goo to the northwest coast of Florida.

  Madonna had crashed hard on the other sofa. She hadn’t heard the phone ring, even the second time.

  “Hello?” Daisy said sweetly into the phone. “Oh,” she said with disappointment. “Mama, it’s for you. Some man. Mama, why is Laura in your bed? I’m hungry.” I took the phone, sat up and pointed to the kitchen. Mother sign language for ‘You know where the food is.’

  “Hello?” I said, groggy, clearing my throat and turning off the TV.

  “So island people sleep in. I’d always suspected it.” It was Jackson.

  “What’s up, Investigator? It’s so damn early on a Sunday. What could you want?”

  “It’s nine-thirty a.m.,” he said. “I could want any number of things.” Was he teasing? Passing time? I staggered to the kitchen to make coffee. Daisy was pulling waffles from the freezer.

  “Yeah, pretty damn early,” I muttered. “I was working until late last night cutting hair.”

  “Opening the shop at night?” Daisy went to the living room and turned on TV cartoons. Madonna groaned, stretched, got up, and staggered to Daisy’s room to sleep. I put the coffee on.

  “I didn’t—I cut friends’ hair. That’s all.” Not even a white lie. “It was Laura’s hair—she’s your friend. You want to arrest us both? I can see it now in the headlines: Famous investigator arrests single mother and friend for cutting hair in apartment.”

  “I know what you think. Cops and investigators are stupid, don’t do their job, so I’ll just help them out and help myself out, too. Can’t trust cops anyway, right?” he said.

  “It’s an old island tradition not to trust authority,” I said. “Sometimes we get up late, too. You should know that.” I walked onto my slanting wooden balcony porch, a risky endeavor. The wood was old and rotting just like every other porch on Main. The balconies stayed there for looks only nowadays. Still, the sun beat down and warmed things up, and the water was calm as gray satin, the light glittering off its smoothness. The sun was a huge orange pill in the sky.

  “Okay, well.” There was a silence on the line, and I checked, squinting into the window to the kitchen, to see if coffee was filling the pot.

  “It’s gorgeous out here this morning,” I said to soften the conversation. “Water’s calm, seagulls and pelicans flying across the Gulf.”

  “Oh, yeah?” he said. “Just foggy, muggy, and chilly here in the city. So much cement will be the downfall of us all.”

  “Yeah, why do we keep covering up Earth, I wonder. Anyway, I’m going to take some wildflowers and maybe some cookies to Mac,” I said. “He gets home from the hospital today.”

  “How about asking him who he thinks might have done it,” Jackson said. “He probably trusts you more than cops.” I agreed. He went on. “Something else,” he said. “Mary Lutz was committed to a mental health unit of Tallahassee Memorial last spring. Have any idea why?”

  “Hmmm . . . she’s crazy?” I said. “Seriously, I didn’t know that. I thought she left to visit family up in Georgia.” The silence again ensued, and I said, “Well, I haven’t found out much of anything. I’ll go check on the plant thing. And grill poor Mac, too.”

  “Ask him if Trina kept his books,” he said. “And I’ll tell you what.” He paused. “Let me take your underemployed, single-mom self to dinner tonight and we can compare notes.”

  My stomach tightened. I wasn’t paying enough attention to what he was saying. What I was realizing at the wrong time was that I’d faced being a possible murderer until last night, holding a heavy metal tool. I also understood that I would have been willing to crush someone’s skull in to save the kids or myself or friends. I finally understood the murderer, whoever it might have been, and how that person might want to crush me.

  “Hello? LaRue?” he said, noticing the silence between us.

  “In Tallahassee?” I said, dreading a trip into that traffic and the complicated life of malls, suburbs, school districts, and cement.

  “Su
ch disdain!” he said. “No. St. Annes. The Pelican.”

  “The Pelican sucks,” I said. “Everything’s boiled in bad oil. The only thing they have is view.”

  “Well, what’s your preference?” he said.

  “The hotel,” I said. “Pricey, pricey.”

  “You mothers are a picky lot,” he said. “Okay, sounds fine. Say six, before the sun sets?”

  “Now you’re talking like an islander. Okay, meet you—we could meet at the dock on Dock Street if you want to watch the sun set, and walk over to the hotel.”

  “Sounds good,” he said. I could order pizza for the kids. Maybe Daisy was old enough to stay alone for a bit. If she got scared, she could walk down Main Street to the hotel. If not, I’d ask Tiffany to sit. I resented just a little that he didn’t have to think of any of this. “What about your kids?” he said.

  “Covered,” I said. But my stomach still hurt. “Okay, see you for some visual drama at the dock at six,” I said and hung up.

  Back inside, I hugged Daisy and said, “Let’s bake some cookies for Mr. Duncan!”

  “And some for us, too?” she said, putting the TV remote down. So we stirred up a double batch of chocolate chip oatmeal cookies and slid the first pans into the oven. Meanwhile, Laura had gotten up from my bed and grabbed a cup of coffee. The apartment began to fill with the scent of baking butter, sugar, and chocolate. The house warmed and Madonna stirred, rose for coffee, and then Tay was up hunting orange juice. One of Daisy’s friends knocked on the door, and the two girls dove into her bedroom and shut the door. That left me with the cookies. Everyone else was sitting around the table with morning drinks and toast.

  “So how are you feeling about last night?” Laura asked.

  I walked behind Tay and gave Laura the shush sign, not wanting him to know too much.

  “Well, we nearly got busted,” Madonna said.

  Too late to keep it from Taylor now. In fact, these women were helping me raise my kids. I certainly didn’t know how to do it alone. So I took my cue from them and went on. “Someone we don’t know came onto the boat while we were searching the cabin, so we hid,” I said.