The Pickle Boat House

by Louise Gorday

  “You started fooling around with him before you ever filed for the separation.”

  “You had someone watching me … taking pictures?” Van shouted, sailing the envelope back at Richard. The edge slid along his face and left a paper cut on his left cheek. “How dare you!”

  Richard winced and ran his fingers along the cut. As he lowered his hand it clenched into a fist. “That would only be a problem for someone who had something to hide. You’re just mad because I caught you with that son of a bitch.”

  “You damned hypocrite. If I had a picture for every person you cheated with, there’d be a paper shortage. There’s a big difference between spending time with someone and being romantically involved. He’s been a perfect gentleman, which is more than I can say for you. Once we’re divorced, I’ll enjoy whoever’s company I choose.”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s right. Those nights he spent at your house were strictly platonic. He just looked guilty as hell sneaking out early in the morning.”

  “Get out.”

  Richard grabbed Van by the top of the arm and yanked her closer. “Until we’re divorced, you’d just better remember who you’re married to.”

  “Ouch!” Van said, twisting her arm as she tried to pull free. “Let go, damn it! You’ve had too much to drink.”

  Richard responded by tightened his grip around her arm.

  “Stop it,” she said. “I’m—”

  “Hey, get your hands off her.” In two long strides, Ryan was in Richard’s face. He shoved him hard in the chest, forcing him to let go of Van as he went careening into the next table.

  “Do you know who I am?” Richard growled, getting to his feet as Van went to Ryan.

  “I don’t give a damn who you are. Nobody treats a woman like that. This is my bar. Now, get out.”

  “You don’t have to introduce yourself, you little fuck. Stay away from my wife.”

  Ryan froze in his tracks as his eyes darted to Van and then back to Richard again.

  As the eyes of Ryan and Richard met and locked, Van’s breath caught and time ceased. Neither man blinked.

  It was Ryan who broke the silence. “Get the hell out of my bar,” he said evenly.

  Richard turned to Van and said, “You’ll wish you hadn’t run out on me.” He turned on Ryan. “And you, you little nothing shit. Keep your miserable fucking dump of a cheap bar … and my cheap wife, too.”

  The words were hardly out of his mouth before Ryan caught him with an uppercut under the chin, sending him several feet backward, where he sprawled in a heap on the floor. A grimace shot across Ryan’s face as he drew his hand up and held it in his other hand. When Richard didn’t get up, Ryan wrapped his good arm around Van and pulled her with him into the next room.

  Cradling his injured hand, he headed to the kitchen, looking for ice. “Bennie, please have Officer McCall pick up the unruly drunk in the back room. He fell pretty hard. I think he smacked his face on a table when he passed out. Please ask him to be quick—it’s bad for business.”

  “Ryan, let me see your hand,” Van said. It was already beginning to darken and swell as she took it gingerly in both hands. “You probably broke something. You sit. I’ll find some ice.” He started to protest but gave it up as she pushed him down into a chair.

  Ryan’s eyes never left Van as she filled a plastic bag with ice, and when she nestled it over his hand he grimaced a little but said nothing.

  “Are you in a lot of pain?” Van asked, running her palm down the length of his back. He glanced up at her, and she was startled by the conflict she saw in his eyes.

  “It’s all relative, I guess,” he replied. There was a quietness in his voice that alarmed Van. “We need to talk, but I’m not sure now is the best time.”

  “Okay … are we talking about your hand?”

  “We’ll talk later,” Ryan said, picking up the ice bag and heading back toward his office.

  “No! You can’t keep running away every time we get into an argument.” Van grabbed him by the arm and pivoted him back around to face her. “Let’s talk about it now. Please.”

  Ryan rolled his eyes. “I didn’t realize we were having an argument. Fine,” he said, exhaling deeply. “Let’s do it here. I’m not sure you’ve been completely honest about the way you feel about Richard.”

  Van’s mouth dropped open. “What are you talking about? You saw what just happened.”

  “I saw the two of you earlier.”

  “Well, what exactly did you see?”

  “You holding his face, kissing him.”

  “You most certainly did not. We discussed divorce. There definitely was no kiss.”

  “I saw the way you looked at him.”

  “Ryan, what do you want me to say? I was married to the man for a long time. I still care for him very much, but our relationship is over. And I’ve made that clear to you from the very beginning.”

  “I thought you had already made a clean break with him. Have I been naive? I told you, I don’t want to help drive a wedge between you two. It can’t be both of us. I’m not going to play second fiddle to him, waiting for you to decide what you want. I can’t do that—not with the way I feel about you. You have to make a choice, Van.”

  Van reached up and cupped his cheek in her hand. “I’ve made my choice. It’s you. You’re the only one I want. I don’t know how to make it any clearer to you. But if you expect me to have no feelings for Richard, then you’re going to be waiting a long time. I did, once upon a time, have a wonderful life with him. He gave me a beautiful son who was an absolute blessing. You wouldn’t be standing here talking to me otherwise.”

  “Yes, I would, but I would be someone else.” Ryan shook his head. “You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, like nobody else would.”

  “I only ask that you be sure. Trust has to work both ways.”

  “I know, and I am,” Van said as she tried to pull a reluctant Ryan toward her. “And actually, I’m pretty relieved that you two didn’t recognize each other. I was holding my breath when you came face to face. He never mentioned HYA or Nevis. I’m pretty certain HYA hasn’t approached him. I don’t know how I would have felt bringing Richard back into my life permanently. Certainly, your and my relationship would have ended.”

  She looked at Ryan, but he was playing with a button on her shirt. “Are you listening to me? Ryan, look at me!” He slowly looked up and held Van’s gaze. His look stopped her cold. “Oh, no … You did recognize him, didn’t you?” she gasped. Don’t turn away. Look at me. How could you deny your own father?”

  Ryan shook his head. “There was so much drunken hate in him. He would never have acknowledged that I was his son. I hate the way he treats you. I owe him nothing in this life.”

  “How can you say that? He doesn’t deserve to suffer needlessly. I don’t understand you. Are you jealous? That’s it: you’re jealous of your own father.”

  “My father was Edward Thomas,” Ryan said, and he turned on his heels and walked back out into the bar area. “Bennie, that drunk in the back goes on the top of our ‘special customer’ list. He’s welcome like any other paying customer, but limit him. If he doesn’t buy anything, throw him out. Got it?”

  “Sure thing, Ryan. Don’t give it another thought. I never forget a name or face.”

  *

  Ryan could walk away from the discussion, but walking away from these feelings wasn’t so easy He felt torn. He was in love with his mother and despised his father. God, Oedipus had nothing on him. He was the golden ring for shrinks everywhere.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  MIND YOUR Ps AND Qs

  Although business in the tavern was off to a good start, life in the personal sphere seemed to continue in an uncontrollable downward spiral.

  “Bad news,” said Ryan, sliding onto the stool next to Van and Jean. “Peggy just called. She’d been holding out, but she’s had to release her research to HYA. Ellen found a duplicate copy of the deed in the courthouse, and Peggy
couldn’t stonewall anymore.”

  Van put her head in her hands. “Oh, God, they’re going to hunt down Richard. I can’t face him again. It’s over. He’ll sell us out. He hates me. To think that someone I loved could be responsible for destroying all this.”

  “All these years,” said Jean. “I don’t understand how all this land could have been owned by one person and nobody even knew it. It’s a small town. Everybody knows everyone else’s business. For goodness’ sake, if they could remember that George Washington slept in this town, surely they could remember who owned the bloody place. “Nothing in all that stuff you’ve collected? There must be something. Have we looked through everything?”

  “Everything but the boxes Mrs. Morgan gave me.”

  Jean looked incredulous. “What the hell? You haven’t gone through them?”

  “Listen, I’ve known Mrs. Morgan for years. She’s a wonderful old lady, but—how do I say this politely?—she’s a hoarder. Every so often, she gives me ‘special’ boxes, and all they ever contain is nonsense: receipts, collections of advice columns from the newspaper. She’s never given me anything but junk. I don’t want to hurt her feelings, so I take the boxes, keep them for a while, and then toss ’em. This time it’s probably all her tax returns back to 1950.”

  “Damn it!” said Jean, pulling Van off the barstool. “I can’t believe you didn’t look. Come on. I hate it when bastards win.”

  “All right, we’ll look,” said Van. She couldn’t argue with Jean’s sentiment, although, truth be told, she had very little hope of finding anything. With a heavy heart, she followed Jean out. She hated I-told-you-so’s.

  *

  Their biggest fear glided into the Phoenix right after Van and Jean left, with a quiet smile that charmed the patrons at the neighboring table and prompted Bennie to press the silent alarm button connected to Ryan’s office. Hector’s and Ryan’s eyes locked briefly, but this particular evening, Ryan was of little interest to Hector. He was keen on the activities of one Richard Hardy, who had arrived ahead of him and sat in the corner, sullenly nursing his bourbon. Information traveled swiftly at HYA, and the sharks had begun to circle.

  Hector sat across the room from Richard for quite a while, studying every movement and mumble he made. As if attuned to an inner clock or some other subtle sign, Hector suddenly picked up his glass and approached Richard’s table.

  “May I join you?” he asked in a voice that was equal parts polish and authority. He didn’t wait for a reply—just pulled out a chair and sat before Richard could respond.

  Richard looked up but didn’t seem to care that he’d gained a friend, or at the very least, a drinking buddy. His eyes were beginning to show the effects of one too many drinks, and he narrowed them to stare across the table at Hector. “Something I can do for you?” he asked as he drained the last of his drink.

  “Not really. But perhaps there is something I can do for you. You are Richard Hardy, aren’t you?”

  “Depends on who’s asking. You a damn lawyer my bitch of a wife hired to divorce me?”

  “No,” Hector said, chuckling. He loved to see someone get drunk and make an ass of himself, especially when it made business easier. “How would you like to make a boatload of money and stick it to your wife, all at the same time?”

  Richard’s mouth slowly morphed into a sly, goofy smile, and he leaned his head a little closer toward Hector. “I’m your man, sir. Let’s stick it to her,” he said, emphasizing each word with a jab of his finger.

  Hector smiled and pulled out a carefully folded sheet of paper. “I would like to give you a fair price for the land you own in Nevis.”

  “I don’t own any land in Nevis.”

  Hector raised his eyebrows and feigned surprise. “You mean your wife didn’t tell you? Well, I guess I’m not really all that surprised. If she finds a way to prove you own it, she could take half of it in a divorce. You, on the other hand, could quietly sell it to me now. She would get nothing.” Hector leaned in close. “I can prove you own it.” He tossed the paper across the table. Richard studied the page, squinting as if to squeeze the drunken double images into one. His face sank into a deep frown.

  “What is this?”

  “It’s a land rent agreement your ancestor signed about three hundred years ago. It documents your family’s ownership of most of the land here in Nevis. You are the only direct descendant of the man who signed this. The land in Nevis belongs to you. The people that think they own it are just renting it from you.”

  “Sure, it’s yours. How much?”

  “Six million dollars.”

  Richard’s mouth dropped open as the words penetrated his drunken stupor. “No shit? Ha, ha, ha! Where do I sign?”

  “I thought you’d be interested. This sells your land holdings in Nevis to my company. All you have to do is sign at the bottom. I know someone who can notarize the document for us.” Hector leaned back in his chair and motioned for a friend on the other side of the tavern to join them. A little bald man with big ears scurried over and, in a few short minutes, notarized the legal documents. “It’s a pleasure doing business with a man who understands the bottom line,” Hector said as he pulled the paper back across the table.

  Richard slapped his hand down on the paper, stopping its progress across the table. “The money,” he said.

  “Oh, yes, thanks for reminding me. I almost forgot,” Hector said with a snicker, pulling an envelope from his coat pocket and handing it to Richard.

  Richard took the envelope and frowned at the size. “What the hell is this?”

  “You don’t really think I’d be carrying around six million dollars in cash, do you? Do you have any idea how much that amount of money weighs? No, probably not.” Hector tapped the envelope with his index finger. “Inside you’ll find the name of a bank in the Cayman Islands, and an account number. The account is in your name. A call from me, when I leave here, will initiate a deposit into the account. You can draw from the account, but don’t try to transfer the money in large amounts to a U.S. bank. Keep the deposits under ten thousand dollars to avoid triggering an alert to the Treasury Department. We’d like to keep this below the radar. Any questions?”

  “Nope.”

  Hector extended his hand. “A pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Hardy.” Hector slid the notarized document into his jacket pocket and, together with the little bald fellow, disappeared just as quickly as he had arrived.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  SURVEYING THE SITUATION

  Across town at the pickle boat house, Van and Jean started working their way through Mrs. Morgan’s boxes.

  Van yanked several notebooks out of the box and handed one to Jean. “Dig in,” she said. “Now, you know what you’re looking for, right? Just don’t get disappointed if it’s really goofy odds and ends.”

  About an hour later, they had emptied the boxes—boxes full of charming notes about local sightings of bluebirds and hummingbirds, what the Morgans did on their vacations over the course of their extraordinarily long marriage, and other random observations—all meticulously documented in Mrs. Morgan’s lovely old-fashioned handwriting.

  “Well,” Jean said a little peevishly, “I was hoping for a little more excitement: antique jewelry, stocks, bonds, maybe a treasure map or two …”

  “We’re talking about Mrs. Morgan here, remember?” Van replied, refilling the last box of junk. “I didn’t expect to find anything, but thanks for the motivation. At least now we can say we looked everywhere. Come on, let’s get out of here. It’s much too depressing right now.” They pushed the boxes back against the wall and were halfway down the hallway when they heard a dull thud upstairs.

  “What the hell was that!” Van gasped, pressing herself back against the wall and backing away from the staircase.

  “Who’s up there?” Jean hissed, tripping over her own feet in her haste to get out of Van’s way.

  “Shh.” Van pulled her grandfather’s walking stick out of its pl
ace in the umbrella stand, and before Jean could grab hold of her, she tiptoed quietly up the stairs. She hesitated at her bedroom door. “What the … Why is there plaster and horsehair all over my bedroom floor?” Her heart beat wildly as she crept slowly forward. “And a huge hole in my ceiling?”

  Jean peered around Van’s shoulder but looked ready to hit the stairs at a gallop if necessary. “No one’s here? All this water—it looks like a water balloon exploded.”

  Van crept farther into the room until she could look up through the hole. “Oh, my God. I see blue sky and a tree branch. There’s a tree branch sticking out of my roof!”

  “The derecho? The branch that hit the deck—it bounced off your roof first? Oh, sweet relief! I thought someone was robbing you.” Jean wrapped her arm around Van. “It’s okay, hon. That’s what insurance is for. I’ll get a mop.”

  “Ew, look, there’s even shingles in this mess,” said Van, getting down on the floor. “And a box. Where did this come from?” she asked, peering back up into the ceiling.

  “The attic?”

  “Pickle boat house doesn’t have an attic. You don’t suppose that …”

  “That you have an attic you don’t know about?”

  “Nah, not possible, but maybe a space just big enough to store a few things. I’ll get the ladder. There’s a lock on here. See if you can figure out how to open this box.”

  Van’s ladder gave a bird’s-eye view of the poplar branch impaling her roof. “It’s wet up here. Rainwater must have puddled between the rafters until the plaster couldn’t hold the weight.” Van waved her flashlight around in the space and let out a low whistle. “There’s other boxes up here. Jean, I’m not sure I can get to them. You’re gonna have to help me. Climb up and hold on to me.”

  “Not happening.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m afraid of heights. There’s no chance I’m coming up that ladder.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Jean, get up this ladder before I come down there and make you wish you had. I am so serious. Don’t make me come down there after you; it won’t be pretty. Now, sister!”