The rumor mill said that both Sly Mantooth and Oscar Croft had been seen flirting with Liz not long before she died. Both of those men had spent time with Emma on the evening of her break-in. (Never mind that Emma hadn’t spoken back to Oscar as he lurked on the other side of the front door of a woman who hadn’t invited him to drop by.)
It was possible that neither Oscar Croft nor Sylvester Mantooth would talk to him. He had no probable cause, so it wasn’t like he could arrest them, but maybe they’d talk anyway. Maybe they’d think that being cooperative would keep them from looking guilty.
There was no sense in calling ahead and giving them time to think. He wanted a partner with him as a second witness, on the off-chance that one of the men, each cagey in his way, was foolish enough to incriminate himself. Detective Gerry Steinberg was sharp, he was personally interested in Liz’s murder, and he was already on Joyeuse Island getting his team started for another day of work on the contamination assessment.
Steinberg might grouse about leaving his field team for the Mantooth interview. He would certainly grouse, and loudly, about leaving them again while he came ashore to help interview Oscar Croft, but that was too bad. His performance evaluations were signed by both the Micco County Sheriff’s Office and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, so he had to serve both masters.
Rainey rather liked being sheriff. It meant people did what he said with precious little backtalk. Rainey hated backtalk. It wasted time. He got Steinberg on the phone.
“I’m in the mood to make a couple of suspects miserable. Why don’t you come help me do that?”
***
Faye heard the boat coming. Of course she heard the boat coming. She lived on an island. Boats and all their sounds colored her days. The bumping of a boat’s hull against the dock signaled bad weather coming, and it told her that she needed to go tie it up more securely. A faraway whine on a day when Joe had gone to shore told her that he was coming home. It was a fluke that he’d gotten off the island just the day before without her hearing him. The comings and goings of Gerry and his technicians must have masked the sound of Joe and his john boat, making its motor seem like just one more departing vessel.
Before she’d heard the coming boat, she’d been heading west across the island, hoping to get a little time to look at the work of Gerry and his crew before they arrived and started making a bigger mess. A light drizzle had set in and the rain was coming down harder by the minute. She’d turned around, not anxious to get caught far from the house during a rainstorm.
As she neared the house, the sound of the distant motor was growing steadily louder. When she first heard it, she’d been a few strides from the house, near the biggest of the five cisterns that captured the rainwater her family drank. It was shaped something like a missile or a fairytale tower—a two-story tall cylindrical tank, built of cypress wood and topped with a conical roof covered with handhewn cypress shingles. There had been a time when it was the house’s sole source of drinking water but, as the plantation reached its peak pre-Civil War population, her great-great-great-grandfather had built four slightly smaller versions that stood at the house’s four corners. They all collected rainwater from the gutters that drained the expansive roof.
The largest cistern’s eaves stuck out just enough to block a little of the rain, so Faye paused beneath them, positioning herself so that the old water tank shielded her from the newcomers’ view. She had no idea who was in that boat.
Fortunately, she was on her own turf, so she could hide and watch. After sizing up the situation, Faye walked quickly to the dark shade beneath the grand staircase that led to her front door and disappeared from sight.
***
Joe answered the knock at his front door, secure in the knowledge that nobody had ever paid an unannounced social call on Joyeuse Island. Nobody since the Yankee Army, anyway, and Joe didn’t really think of that as a social call.
This was the best thing about living on an island. Before anybody, even your best friend, showed up on your doorstep, you got a phone call first. Or a radio message, back in the days before Faye had a cell phone. What kind of a fool would take a boat all this way without being sure there would be somebody home at the other end of the trip? An unannounced visit to Joyeuse Island’s big house, also called Joyeuse, was no casual thing.
Somehow, he wasn’t surprised to see two lawmen when he opened his front door. He also wasn’t surprised when they asked to speak to his father. He realized that he had been waiting for this visit from the law ever since Sly Mantooth got off the airplane from Oklahoma. Maybe he’d been waiting for it since he was a little boy. When a kid’s father is trouble, that kid knows it.
***
Faye considered how she could best exploit the home court advantage. After the sound of the sheriff’s approaching boat had sent her into the darkness beneath the staircase to her home’s front door, she had listened while he secured his vessel. Then she had watched as Gerry Steinberg and Sheriff Rainey emerged from the woodsy path that led back to the dock and house from the contamination site.
The main entrance of her old house sat at the head of this staircase, a full story above her head. Crouched beneath it, she couldn’t be seen, but she would be able hear every word said before the sheriff and Deputy Steinberg disappeared into the house.
Behind her, inside the big house’s basement, a sneak staircase had been built to make it easier for slaves to serve their masters unseen. It rose to the dining room and then to the master bedroom, serving the two rooms where the slaves’ labor would have been most needed. Since she and Joe preferred to live in the cozier quarters in the basement, most of the rest of the house was empty and unused. This meant that she had a good shot at being able to lurk in the sneak staircase and hear anything that was said indoors, too. She just hoped that everybody talked loud and didn’t mumble.
***
Looking into Sylvester Mantooth’s eyes, Sheriff Rainey knew what it was like to be one of those wild animals that Mantooth’s son Joe stalked. There was more intelligence behind those dark eyes than the man let on. There was a guardedness there, too, and how surprising was that in a man who had survived prison? But there was also a flicker of anger in those eyes, and Rainey knew no better tool for an interrogator.
Mantooth had suggested that they talk on the porch, so that they could smoke. Sheriff Rainey didn’t smoke and neither did his deputy, but he had no objection to Mantooth doing so, as long as he did it outside where they wouldn’t have to breathe the vapors secondhand. They settled into some rocking chairs so simple and sturdy in design that the sheriff suspected that Joe Wolf Mantooth had built them himself.
Rainey saw no reason to drag his feet and possibly let Sly Mantooth get control of the conversation. He went straight to the point.
“So you took Emma Everett out fishing.”
“I would have told you that. I guess she already did tell you, since you already knew it before you came here.”
“Just the two of you.”
“Isn’t that the way most people go out on dates? Just the two of them?”
“So you took Mrs. Everett fishing because you were interested in her as a woman?”
Sly Mantooth rocked back in his chair and let out a short laugh. “Son, you get to be my age, I guarantee that you will still be interested in women as women. I ain’t even sixty, but I can guarantee you that I’ll keep liking women when I am. When I’m seventy, too. Emma’s a pretty lady. Hell, yeah, I took her fishing because I was interested in her as a woman. I don’t mind saying it. And I know for sure that Emma told you that I behaved like a gentleman, because I did and she wouldn’t lie.”
“Did you come straight back here to Joyeuse Island after you left her house?”
“Pretty much. Stopped halfway back to watch the sun go down. You may forget how pretty it is when the sun hits the water, living here like you do.”
“No, we don’t.” These were the first words Deputy Steinberg had contributed to the conversation. “We don’t forget. It’s pretty, every time.”
Sly focused those black eyes on Steinberg. “That’s why you do what you do, ain’t it? Environmental work. That’s why you do it, because you want to keep things the way they should be. Blue water, clean-smelling air, plenty of fish and birds. It’s good work you do. I got no quarrel with it. But can you try not to bankrupt my son while you’re doing it?”
“I’m trying to help your son. He loves this island and wants to take care of it.”
Sly nodded at the deputy while putting a match to the cigarette held between his lips. He took a lungful of air in, then let it go.
“I don’t know what else to tell you two gentlemen about last night. Emma called my daughter-in-law and told her about the sorry loser that tried to break in her house. You fellas need to find him. A fine woman like that needs to feel safe all the time. All women do.”
Sly fiddled with his matchbook for no good reason, since his cigarette was already lit. If Rainey had to guess, he’d say that Sly was covering feelings awakened by his own words. Talking about women and safety had accidentally reminded him of Liz’s death. Those words had done the same thing for Rainey, reminding him that a woman-killer was walking loose.
Sly’s words also reminded the sheriff that he himself had failed to protect Liz. They made him ask himself whether he was failing to protect Emma even now. Something in his chest seized up at the thought of Liz’s wounded chest and Emma’s vulnerable eyes. If Mantooth had purposefully manipulated his emotions on this subject, he was a cagey suspect indeed.
Rainey worked to wipe his brain clean of the images of Liz, and maybe Emma, battered and dead. He decided it was time to ask the only question he’d come to ask. “What time did you get back here last night? Can Joe or Faye confirm that time?”
The cigarette made a trip to Sly’s mouth. “I got back here right after dark. Took me a few minutes to tie up the boat. Then I went out in the woods and made myself a little fire to keep me warm. I sat beside it and smoked a while. Like this.” The cigarette made another trip to his mouth, exaggerated and slow. “It was real late when I went in the house, so don’t you go bothering my son and his wife with your questions. They can’t help you and they got enough on their minds.”
“Were you outside smoking for much of the night when Liz was killed?”
“I already talked to you about that night, back when I first found Liz. I ain’t going to talk to you about it any more, so you can trip me up on my own words and tell me I changed my story. I know how you people work. I talked to you and told you all I knew. I’ve been helpful. If you want me to be helpful some more, you’re going to have to wait until I get myself a lawyer.”
The cigarette made yet another trip to Mantooth’s lips and, again, away. “I don’t have anything left to say to you two gentlemen. If you have hearts in your bodies, you won’t go in there and bother my son and his suffering family. Don’t you agree that this conversation is over?”
***
Faye crouched below the porch where Sly sat with the two lawmen. She believed her father-in-law, which surprised her.
It wasn’t that she had ever suspected him of killing Liz or breaking into Emma’s house. She hadn’t, not seriously. Sly was mercurial. He was self-centered and inconsiderate. He was totally lacking in boundaries. But was he dangerous? Was he a killer? She didn’t think so, despite that mysterious penitentiary stay. Until this moment, she’d had no basis for her opinion. Now she did.
She was convinced that he hadn’t broken into Emma’s house the night before. She had spoken to him herself, not long after sundown, which wasn’t long before the break-in. This wasn’t to say that he hadn’t hopped right in a boat and headed back to the dock behind Emma’s house. It would have been odd for him to leave Emma, come back out to the island, then rush back to shore and try to break into her house, but it was possible. This illogical behavior could even have been intended to provide him an alibi, but it didn’t. Not really.
Regardless of any other evidence, Faye didn’t believe that he had climbed back in one of their boats as soon as she was out of sight. If he had, she would have heard him. She was an islander and she was never unaware of the sounds of boats.
There had been no boats coming and going after her encounter with Sly Mantooth the night before. If Sly had gone back to shore, Faye believed wholeheartedly that she would have heard him start the motor. Even if he had been crafty enough to paddle far from the island before starting it, Faye believed that she would have heard an unexpected bump when the boat hit the dock as he maneuvered it into open water. She didn’t doubt that she would have heard repetitive splashes as paddle hit water.
If she testified in court, would these observations stand up? Maybe not. But Faye knew what she heard and didn’t hear.
Reaching back to the night Liz was killed, she considered whether Sly could have left the island without her knowing. She thought not. She hadn’t slept that night. That was a certainty. On the day she heard about Liz’s death, she had thought back to the night it happened, remembering how she’d lain in bed looking at the moon all that long night. Sly would have been hard-pressed to get out of the house, kill Liz, then come home without her hearing him. She just didn’t believe he could have gotten a boat away from the island without a single bump or splash reaching her ears.
Faye’s ears never rested, not when a squall could blow in and trash a boat that was poorly secured and not when her family’s lives might rest on the condition of that boat. Island dwellers slept lightly, listening for the next storm and, lately, Faye slept so little that it hardly counted. She couldn’t prove Sylvester Mantooth’s innocence, but she believed in it.
What if he needed her to prove it? What if Sheriff Rainey was set on pinning those crimes on the nearest ex-con?
Faye understood that Sly rubbed her husband the wrong way. She knew there was history between them that they needed to work out, but she couldn’t help them with that, not when she was hardly keeping her own head above dark emotional waters. She hadn’t realized it until this minute, but she didn’t share Joe’s irritation with Sly’s coarse jokes and the buffoonish behavior that cried out “Like me! Please like me!”
When Faye looked at her husband’s father, she saw a man who knew he’d made mistakes and wanted to fix them, but he wasn’t sure how. Joe saw the man who had failed his dead mother.
Faye couldn’t fix their relationship. Joe and Sly would have to do that for themselves. She could, however, do her best to keep her father-in-law from being railroaded for murder. She could honestly provide alibis for him for both crimes, but those alibis required a jury to believe her when she said that she would have heard him leave the island. So there would be no airtight alibi from Faye that would save Sly. This left her only one way to ensure that her father-in-law wasn’t wrongfully accused: Find the killer herself.
Chapter Eighteen
Sly and his cigarette waited on the porch while the lawmen ran through the rain to get back to the dock. It was so damn quiet on this lump of land in the middle of the water that he could hear everything. Just everything. A tree full of birds tweeted to his left. The shushing sound of waves hitting the shore came from all around him. Before long, he heard the tap of hard knotted rope hitting the deck of Sheriff Rainey’s boat. The wordless murmur of two men’s voices drifted up to him, as did the quick cough of a boat motor coming to life.
He was not surprised to hear the house’s front door open behind him as that motor raced for a second before the sheriff shoved his throttle forward. Joe had been listening, making sure they were gone before coming outside to have a long-overdue talk with his old man.
The boy—who was past thirty and a family man, so he should stop calling him a boy—lowered himself into the rocker beside him. Their chairs were con
veniently located so that they didn’t have to look each other in the face, and Sly was glad for that. After a time, and not a long time because Joe had been waiting to ask this question for years, Sly heard his son take a deep breath and say, “How did my mother die?”
***
Faye was trapped, as surely as if she were a mouse who had wanted a suspicious hunk of cheese a little too much and had paid the price. If she came out from under the porch now, Sly would know she’d been eavesdropping on his talk with the sheriff. That might have been okay. The more pressing matter, the thing that was going to keep her lurking under the staircase until they quit talking and went inside, was this: She couldn’t interrupt Sly while he was answering the most important question of Joe’s life.
This was going to be a problem. Joe was a hunter, so his ears were as attuned to the sounds of animals as hers were attuned to the sounds of boats. And Faye, technically, was an animal. To keep Joe from hearing her, she was going to have to sit still and try not to breathe. Or to sneeze.
Oh no, now she’d thought about sneezing. She raised her eyebrows and flared her nostrils and did every other facial contortion that might distract the reflexive part of her brain that wanted to sneeze. Just as she thought the urge would never pass, Sly started to talk and she forgot all about sneezing.
***
“What do you mean? How’d your mama die? Son, you was there. Didn’t you hear anything the doctors said?”
Silence.
Sly only let the quietness hang for a second. “I guess you didn’t. Or you was too upset to pay any attention. Son, your mama had cancer. Of the ovary.”
“I never heard of anybody getting cancer and dying the same week. You were gone on a long haul. A real long haul. You came home and she went straight to the hospital and died.”
Isolation Page 12