Blood in the Water and Other Secrets

by Janice Law

“So there’s nothing to worry about. Vern Lanyon’s dead, gone and forgotten.”

  Sandy nodded, agreeable to the death of Vern Lanyon, to the trip, to everything he suggested. Vern felt how foolish he’d been to worry. And really, who wouldn’t like the boat, a big, handsome Hatteras, beautifully fitted, that was being run down to its new owner in the islands? Vern had everything prepared in anticipation of her arrival, and they left at dawn the next morning, cruising into the cool, golden light of the seaway. All down the Canadian coast, they slept on board, remaining on the water except to put in for gas and food.

  Vern was a touch nervous when they reached the States, but in the mass of late summer yachtsmen, no one gave them a second glance. Just the same, Vern was pleased with his preparations, with the success of his disguise, with the foresight which had obtained papers for Sandy, too. “It’s your ultimate role,” he joked. “A completely new life.”

  “For how long?” she asked.

  “Long as you like,” he said.

  “And then take on another life, maybe,” she said. “When we’re tired of this one.”

  Vern decided she was teasing and passed the remark off with a smile. But she’d suggested a possibility. Oh, Sandy was fine. Easy to take, good with the boat. There’s nothing wrong with Sandy, Vern told himself a couple times a day. Of course, she was quieter than before. She didn’t make the little dirty jokes she used to make. And she liked to sit on deck at night, staring at the white wake of the boat.

  There were other things, too, if Vern had troubled himself to count them up, like the day they stopped at Cape May, and Sandy disappeared for twelve hours. Just disappeared without even her wallet and seemed surprised when he questioned her, when he was concerned. She’d gone for a walk, she said, and perhaps she had, because Vern saw no sign of Coast Guard boats or police. Only his nervousness had magnified her absence, which was an odd thing, sure, but not quite enough to make a reasonable man worry.

  Especially not when they were sliding down the edge of the continent towards a fortune. The days took on a heavier warmth, losing the bright crispness of the north in languid humidity. The sea warmed up enough so that they could swim even out from shore, and they got in the habit of taking a dip every afternoon. Sometimes they saw dolphins and one day, off Ft. Lauderdale, the black fin of a shark.

  “Nothing to worry about,” Vern said. “They come for blood. Otherwise they’re really not that dangerous.”

  Sandy got out of the water, anyway, and lay sunbathing on deck, her eyes sweeping the water. When he was finished swimming, Vern sat beside her on the warm boards and talked about what he wanted to do, about the kind of boat he’d like to buy, about the possibility of starting a charter business in the islands. “I’m going to stick to what I know from now on.”

  Sandy was noncommittal. She was already finding the endless, hot, blue and gold days oppressive, and she could not see herself crewing a boat or whipping up meals in a galley kitchen for the paying customers.

  “I can’t go back,” Vern said. “You said so yourself. Not for a few years anyway. Got to get myself established in a new business in my new identity. That’s the key.”

  “And what about me?”

  “You’ve just got a big insurance settlement. What’s more natural than that you should invest your money? Buy into a company, say? It just needs to be something I understand like boats. I understand boats just fine.”

  “I was thinking on a personal level,” Sandy said. Her voice was quiet, uninflected. There were disquieting moments when Vern remembered how she’d looked on stage as that vindictive Spanish virgin and sensed that she was now giving a slightly imperfect performance.

  He shrugged. “We get married, of course, if that’s what you want.” That was, Vern thought, the easiest way to divvy up the money.

  “Or maybe a different life?” Sandy suggested.

  “Sure, maybe a different life. We divide the money, you have a different life if you want.”

  “Or if you want,” said Sandy, and they proceeded to quarrel without really saying what they thought— or maybe without really knowing what was in their minds. They were not, after all, the same people any more.

  That night, Sandy sat up on deck in the early dark for a long time. Later, preparing some vegetables in the galley, her knife slipped and she cut her hand. Blood mingled with the cubed carrots and celery, the garlic and tomatoes, and spotted the blond maple counter. Vern grabbed a dish towel. He was wrapping her hand up and putting pressure on the shallow, fast bleeding wound, when he realized that she hadn’t made a sound, hadn’t moved. She was watching the blood with the detached, concentrated expression of a surveillance camera.

  “Hey,” said Vern, grabbing her shoulder. “You’re not going to faint, are you?”

  Sandy’s eyes came back into focus. “Sight of blood,” she said. “I’ve never done that before. Ouch, what a stupid thing to do.” She gave the old Sandy smile, and Vern got some bandaids and relaxed.

  The weather held— Vern thought he had never seen such perfect conditions for cruising— and they reached Freeport on schedule. Sandy was sick of fish and wanted to find a butcher shop. Vern had in mind to do some banking; he wanted to transfer some money, to begin pulling down that big new account, but she said, “Let’s wait until we look at some boats, at something big.” There was a nervous, enthusiastic note in her voice. “Just like you wanted.”

  And Vern, knowing that was safest, agreed. He worked around the boat, putting everything in order, while Sandy set off to find a steak. She returned two hours later, hot and tired, with a large package.

  “You bought the whole cow?” asked Vern.

  “A steak and a surprise,” said Sandy, and she packed everything away in the galley refrigerator.

  The following day, heading toward Berry Island, they stopped in the Channel to swim. They’d gotten fond of isolation, of the vast blue green open water, of the great depths below. Vern liked to dive straight down as far as breath would take him, then rocket back up on the edge of fear. The water was very clear, and once in a while, they would see the white of a sail or a hull on the edge of the horizon.

  Vern shook the brine out of his eyes and looked for Sandy far out from the boat— she was a strong swimmer. He saw only empty water and the gentle roll of the waves. He turned, isolation and a thousand little hints and feelings breeding alarm, to see her starting up the ladder of the boat.

  He waved and she called back, “I’ve taken a cramp.”

  “Need some help?”

  “I’ll be fine as soon as I get out of the water.” She reached the deck and began massaging her left calf.

  Vern ducked under the surface, the sudden cold of the lower water washing away his anxiety. There’s nothing wrong with Sandy, he reminded himself, before he struck out for the horizon with his flashy crawl. Vern was fast but not good for any distance. He was ready to turn back when he heard the rumble of the motor, and the pleasant frisson of the deep turned into something else.

  He shouted to Sandy, then swam briskly toward the hull. Sandy was standing at the helm in her floppy hat, her eyes hidden by the brim and by her sun glasses. She could be anyone, Vern thought, but he was an optimist, so he called again and waved to the woman who adored him. The boat hung suspended in the emerald water with nothing wrong at all except for the sound of the motor. Vern swam into the shadow of the hull. She had lifted the ladder, but he could perhaps scramble up the side.

  “Sandy!”

  She looked down at him, her face blank, indifferent, her voice steady and uninflected. “I did for you. And what did it get me?”

  Vern was indignant. “It got you well over a million dollars!”

  “He was killed,” Sandy cried, her voice turning hoarse and strange, a stranger’s voice, carrying a stranger’s inexplicable passions.

  “Who?” demanded Vern. “Who are you talking about?” In his present distress, he had forgotten Sandy’s former lover. Vern’s only thought was that sh
e’d had a breakdown, taken some sort of fit.

  “The only man I ever, ever loved.”

  “You’re going to marry me. I thought you loved me,” Vern protested, but Sandy ignored him.

  “How was I to know he’d be on that cutter?” A wail of grief and desolation. “How was I to know? Of all the boats, out of all the Coast Guard bases! How was I to guess?”

  “Christ, Sandy, you couldn’t know,” said Vern, who was wondering how any of his was his fault. If she couldn’t keep track of what’s his name, how was, he, Vern, supposed to? The whole situation was bizarre, nonsensical, and he was tired of treading water. But when he tried to reach the stern, Sandy eased the boat away and brought it around again. Sandy could handle the Hatteras very nicely.

  “I wouldn’t have done it except for you,” she said. “It was not the sort of thing, I’d ever have thought of. The seas were terrible, but I insisted they go, because my fiance was out. My fiance,” she added bitterly, “who wants the money and the single life. Don’t deny it!”

  In the water and beginning to gasp for breath, Vern thought it best to remain silent, though a preference for the bachelor life is hardly a capitol offense.

  “They were hit by a huge wave. He was slammed against the rail and hurt and swept overboard.”

  “No one’s fault,” Vern gasped. “No one’s fault.” And then he asked her to let him come aboard. She needed help, he said. She’d had a bad shock, how bad he hadn’t realized. He should have realized. She should have told him. But now he knew, and they could work something out.

  Sandy shook her head. “I loved him,” she said. “I wanted to get away from him, but I loved him. You didn’t know I was still seeing him, did you? I was, I was. But after a while all I wanted was to start fresh.”

  Vern pleaded with her and tried to distract her, as he paddled about. The water felt cool, almost cold, in the shadow of the hull. Above him, Sandy didn’t answer; she held her head stiffly as if she was wearing an old fashioned, high collared dress.

  At last Vern risked everything. “Listen,” he said, “there are yachts passing all the time. When I get picked up, Sandy, and I will get picked up, what will you say?”

  In response, she lifted a dark red plastic bag like a lumpy balloon. Before he could cry out, Vern saw the flash of the boat knife. Liquid spurted onto the water, making soft, red fans.

  “I’ll tell them sharks came while we were swimming,” said Sandy. Her voice had gone dead, dead and uninflected, as if Vern was of no concern to her. “I know how to act. I know what to say. I’ve had practice with a dead fiance.”

  She threw the plastic bag into the water and put the motor into gear. Vern shouted once, twice. Then he began splashing after her, churning through the wake, exerting all his strength, because, though he’d never catch up, he could already see the fins.

  My Famous Relative

  As long as I can remember, my famous relative, Professor Jonken, was an important person in my life. When I was a child, his portrait, placed above the buffet in the dining room, literally loomed overhead, and all the romance archeology has ever held for me was summed up in that image. The great man stood in front of a massive stone work deep in jungle. Feathery sepia colored boughs closed off the sky; the walls, perfect, yet barbaric, stretched high overhead. A serape clad worker stood to one side, leaning on a pickax, his face in shadow, while the professor, himself, wearing a slouch hat, a shirt with lots of pockets, and pants tucked into high boots, held center stage. The camera caught him as he looked up from his notebook. Tall and commanding, with strong features and light eyes, he was a prince in the wilderness, and everything around him breathed mystery and adventure.

  How I longed to step into that clearing. To touch the stonework and discover what lay hidden behind the exotic foliage was an almost irresistible desire. Especially after illness damaged my right leg, I cherished the picture as my imaginative escape route. I spent hours dreaming of jungle expeditions and devouring maps and geographies and tales of exploration.

  Later, I grew interested in the personality, as well as the adventures, of this intriguing figure, and what I discovered only enhanced his appeal. Intelligent and fearless, Petrus Jonken was further distinguished by the great sorrow of his life, which completed his romantic image in my eyes and won my impressionable heart. As befitted my age, his tragedy was conveyed obliquely at first.

  “Poor Uncle Petrus,” my mother would say. “He didn’t have a very happy life, for all his great discovery.” And later, “It was his wife’s death. He never got over losing her.” And finally, when I was maybe twelve: “She was lost on his third expedition. A great mystery— she disappeared and was never seen again. You can imagine,” Mother said. “Not even a grave to visit, unless you consider that whole place a tomb with all its altars and bones and whatnot.”

  “It must have been dreadful for him!” I was on the verge of tears, so closely had I identified with my gallant relative, whose strength and skill had carried him places that I, with one severely crippled leg, could only dream of.

  “Hard? It broke his heart, your great-grandmother said. He was never the same. He worked on, of course. But he was never the same. It’s difficult to get over things when there’s so many questions.”

  “What questions?” I asked.

  “What had happened to Alice, of course.”

  I somehow knew better than to point out that was only one question and contented myself with the romance and tragedy of my illustrious great uncle. The magic of his image led me to my profession, and though extensive field work was out of the question, I gained a modest reputation for my skill at interpreting artifacts and for mining neglected museum warehouses for new patterns and insights.

  At first, I was scrupulously careful to avoid treading in Uncle Petrus’s footsteps, though I must admit that bearing the famous Jonken name didn’t hurt my career. I started out in Caribbean archeology then moved over to Mesoamerican pottery. Having achieved a degree of eminence, I was hired by my famous relative’s alma mater and found myself, junior but tenured, with access to all his papers and collections.

  Even then, a kind of delicacy, part professional and part personal, kept me aloof from these treasures. But as my interests began to converge on his most famous discovery, I was the logical choice when the university decided to mount a major exhibition of Petrus Jonken’s life and work.

  This was a massive project, because the great Jonken Bequest had never been fully catalogued. Successive generations of students and scholars had explored bits and pieces, producing monographs on the pots and textiles, and on the metal work and the fabulously detailed architectural drawings produced by his expeditions, but no one had tackled the whole, sprawling Edwardian treasure.

  Amos Brisco, the energetic museum director, young and recently hired like myself, had plans for a new approach to the material. “Life and work,” he told me, his dark features glowing. “We need to convey the passion and excitement of the man. And to make his work accessible.”

  The museum, I did not need to be told, relied a great deal on student groups.

  “Plus— and this may be difficult and why I pushed very hard for your involvement, as I know you’re sympathetic— we want to be inclusive. Though Jonken’s the very peak of American archeology, he didn’t do it all by himself. We want to get a feel for the contributions of the local people.”

  In my fascination with Uncle Petrus, I had not, to tell the truth, seen the natives as much more than local color, but I understood Amos’s point completely. Another scholarly possibility!

  “I’m betting Jonken had a number of native informants and collaborators who were more influential over time than the boy who first took him into the ruins,” Amos continued, “though he’s usually the only name mentioned.”

  “Jonken’s diaries may help out there. I was surprised to find they’ve hardly been touched.”

  “Who’s had the time until now? But the big NEH grant makes this project a priority,
and we’ll be able to employ some grad students—”

  I nodded my head. We could both envision one or more fascinating dissertations based on the Jonken papers, and we soon found two promising students, Kristen Boisvert and Matthew Dinatale, for the transcriptions. The plan was that I would supervise their work and the cataloguing of the still quite chaotic bequest, while Amos arranged for the displays and explanatory documents and handled the grant money. I offered to begin examining the diaries, myself, to give him a head start, but it was really to satisfy my own curiosity that I found my way into the yellowing pages and copperplate script of Uncle Petrus’s records.

  These were kept in a high and grandly proportioned storage room constructed to the architectural taste of the last century. The long windows were equipped with yellowing blinds to protect the shelved volumes, while the even more perishable manuscripts and diaries were stored in massive flat files. I can still remember my emotions when I unlocked the first drawer.

  I’d come up alone to do the initial inventory, and as the drawer slid open, revealing an assortment of green and buff leather bound books and untidy bundles of photographs and letters, I was returned for a moment to my childhood dining room and the mysterious jungle with my princely relative. There in the Special Collections room, I recovered the sense of mystery and adventure I’d felt as a child whenever I looked at Uncle Petrus’s photograph.

  Jonken had left two different sets of diaries: the green bound work volumes, meticulous notations of every detail of each expedition’s discoveries, with— yes— records for every worker and, more to the point for Amos’s exhibition, notations about whoever turned up any significant artifact. One of the students could manage a roster, surely, and perhaps we could coordinate the names with some of the faces in the photographs. This was excellent news already.

  I put Kristen onto that, and only two days later, she had the first tentative ID— Hector, mentioned as uncovering an outstanding silver mask, turned up in one of the browning photographs holding just such an artifact. Amos was delighted and snatched the just catalogued photograph to have it enlarged for the exhibition. Very soon we had a growing list of Jonken’s local collaborators, and the work diaries were yielding other useful insights.