Below the Surface

by Karen Harper

  Mark came closer behind Nikki. “We saw your lights and thought we could give you a lift over,” he said.

  “You know,” Nikki added, pointing to her stiletto-heeled sandals, “no one can walk far in these things. We’ll wait for you to change. Mark can drop us both off.”

  “Thanks, but I’m really not going. Enjoy yourselves.”

  Bree’s office phone started ringing. She’d had it on speaker earlier and forgotten to take it off. It might be Cole, and she didn’t want everyone to hear what he said.

  “Excuse me a second,” she said, but she didn’t get to the phone in time. A man’s voice—not Cole’s—spoke. “Bree, Dave Mangold here. I’m so sorry to hear what happened with Daria and that I wasn’t here to fly with the civil air patrol for the search.”

  It didn’t matter if Nikki and Mark overheard this, Bree thought.

  Dave’s voice went on. “I’ve been to visit my daughter in Memphis and I didn’t even learn Daria had been lost until I got back today. I got your messages on my phone here. I did see something strange when I was flying out that afternoon. Racing ahead of the storm, I saw a pontoon plane towing a boat that could have been your dive boat—not sure, but it was really weird. They were heading toward Marco Pass, I think…”

  His message continued, saying he’d call back later. The reality of what he’d said hit Bree like a rogue wave out of the dark. A pontoon plane, no doubt the very one she’d been in. She’d heard no motor when she was underwater because an amphibious plane’s motor was above the water.

  The timing could not have been worse. Nikki and Mark had heard everything, so there was no faking her response with them. Her stomach went into free fall as she turned to stare at them, standing close to each other now, intimately so.

  “Too bad we can’t convince you to go to the party, then,” Nikki said, her voice now solemn rather than solicitous. “The entire Clear the Gulf Commission will be there, I hear.”

  “My sister and her husband are going, so I’ll get a blow-by-blow from them,” Bree said, trying to find a way to brazen this out. “They’re stopping by to say hi any minute now.”

  “Nice try,” Mark said, aiming a small gun at her. “Nikki just talked to Josh on board and the Westcotts are already there, though he hadn’t seen your watchdog, Cole, yet.”

  Could Cole be coming back for her? How long would it take Manny to get here?

  Bree’s mind raced over possibilities. Were these two working with Josh or against him? She was furious with herself for not reading things right, for being sucked in by the Austins and their so-called bodyguard. And what was the real relationship between Nikki and Mark? Bree’s voice came sharper than she intended; it didn’t sound like her.

  “Have you decided to stoop to using a gun now instead of your more bizarre weapons, like a wrench or speargun—or a detonator cap?” she asked Mark. “You’ve set Sam up to be a suspect in Daria’s death, and with my help.”

  Mark’s grimace was more of a grin. “We were still trying to just scare you off at the Gator Watering Hole,” he said, his voice calm and controlled as he walked closer, hit the play button for Dave Mangold’s message again, then deleted it. “By the way, the piece of blasted stern from your dive boat has gone the way of your sad sea grass meadow. The same way you’re going to have to go now—bye-bye.”

  “Then after killing me, you’ll merrily go sailing with everyone?” Bree challenged.

  “You’re way off base again,” Nikki said as she pulled on a pair of white gloves and walked away to lock the front door. “Since you’ve missed the boat, so to speak, I’m afraid you’re going to commit suicide by drowning yourself out by the Trade Wreck where you last saw Daria. And we’re not going out on the casino yacht because in—” she glanced at the time on her cell phone “—less than sixty minutes, an underwater explosive attached to the boat is going to take it and everyone on board to the bottom of the gulf.”

  “You mean Bree’s not on board?” Amelia asked Cole. He’d been busy showing people his woodwork, especially after Dom Verdugo had pointed it out to everyone in his opening remarks. “I thought I’d get to spend some time with her.”

  “She’s really anxious to do that, but she’s exhausted,” Cole told her, raising his voice to be heard above the buzz of conversations in the main salon.

  The man certainly cleaned up well from the time he’d waited with her in the hospital, Amelia thought. He’d looked like a sea captain that night at their house, but he had stepped right out of the pages of GQ magazine tonight. If she were Bree, she’d have come along just to beat the women off. It certainly would do Bree good to have a man in her life—but then, maybe she wouldn’t need her older sister any more than she ever did. Bree and Daria, Bree and Daria—she could almost hear the way they’d chattered to each other from the moment they could talk.

  When other people came up to talk to Cole, Amelia took a shrimp appetizer from the circulating server—the shrimp had a small edible orchid perched atop it, no less—and wound her way through the crowd and out on deck. Ben was so busy talking to Josh Austin he wouldn’t miss her.

  Josh’s wife had just phoned him to say she had a terrible headache, that she was just going to lie down at their local campaign headquarters. Word was that the Austin power couple hoped to emulate Bill and Hillary Clinton someday. Now wouldn’t that be something? Maybe Josh would put Ben in his cabinet.

  As the boat left the harbor, Amelia ate her appetizer but saved the orchid. With a pink cosmo in her hand, she leaned against the wooden railing, then edged around the back of the yacht. As they left the shore lights of Turtle Bay behind, the stars popped out overhead, but she preferred looking down mesmerized, into the white wake in the dark water.

  This gulf had swallowed her sister, drowned her. If Daria had not been unconscious, would she have died or saved herself? And then, would she have blamed Amelia—hated her even more? If she told Bree what had happened that last day, would Bree ever forgive her? How did it feel to slip under the sliding waves to die?

  The buzz of voices and laughter floated to her, mingled with the murmur of the sea. Her drink glass slipped from her fingers and disappeared into the silvery wake.

  “A toast to Daria,” she whispered, and tossed in the tiny orchid. They seemed to be heading in the direction of the Trade Wreck where Bree and Daria used to dive together.

  Why had she always been so afraid of the waves and water? Amelia asked herself. But she’d been brave enough to go out in a boat to talk to Daria, who had told her to grow up and get over things. Dr. Nelson had said the same, in a more convoluted, quiet way. He’d said her perceptions might not be reality, at least for other people.

  Amelia leaned out even farther, looking down, down into the silken surface of the sea. Again, she assured herself that the coroner’s report stated that Daria had actually died from drowning, not from the blow to her head. And that had been an accident—she’d slipped, just slipped in the heat of their argument. But guilt pressed Amelia down, down, drowning her….

  Bree’s eyes darted to the clock on the office wall. A bomb to go off on the hull of the casino boat—no doubt under the waterline—in less than sixty minutes. Cole gone. Amelia and Ben. Verdugo. Josh and his opponent, Marla. All those others. Yes, these two had to be lovers or else Nikki would not let Josh die.

  Somehow, she had to do something, and fast. The minute hand of the clock was moving so quickly. If she could keep them talking, Manny might come, but how long would that take? She had to get to a phone and get the coast guard out there to intercept Verdugo’s boat.

  Bree said to Nikki, “I’m shocked to think you’re planning to get rid of Josh, your ticket to Washington and the halls of power.”

  “I would have been behind him all the way, before he betrayed me,” Nikki said as Mark handed her the gun and went into the back room, clicking on the lights. The man knew his way around here, but then, he’d probably been downstairs, as well as upstairs, searching Daria’s room.
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br />   “But it was best that Daria be eliminated,” Nikki went on, “and now Josh, too, for what he’s done. Haven’t you heard about the widow’s sympathy vote platform? Congressman Sonny Bono dies in a tragic, publicized skiing accident, and his widow gets elected in his place. Years before, Congressman Boggs goes down in a plane crash and his widow takes his office. The third time’s the charm.”

  Bree’s jaw dropped. Her gaze met and held Nikki’s. The woman looked rock steady and icy cold. Forget the tactic of trying to work on her emotions or sympathy.

  “If you’re thinking the explosive on the boat will make Sam a suspect, you’re mistaken,” Bree insisted. “He’s in Sarasota, so he has an airtight alibi.”

  “Wrong again,” Nikki countered. “He’s been called back by Josh to speak at a luncheon tomorrow about saving the gulf. Briana, I know you and Sam don’t get along, but you should know he’s spoken out for your sea grass stance. But I’m glad you suspected him as the mastermind behind Daria’s death, just as we had hoped.”

  Bree just gaped, stunned anew. She’d tried to blame him for all of this and now she might not be around to testify when he took the fall for Nikki and Mark. “Then Ric’s working for you?”

  “Oh, yes, he’s working with us and for us. He’s worked closely with Mark.”

  “Shooting a speargun at Cole and me. Helping Mark break into this place and search Daria’s room—and tamper with our computer?”

  “It is quite a list, isn’t it? But we have to end it all now. Ric won’t talk, because he’s an accessory. Besides, Mark’s going to be my chief congressional aide—at least until we can find the appropriate time to get married. So I’ll need a new strong arm, and Ric’s agreed to become that.”

  Bree could have sunk through the floor. She’d assumed Ric was talking to Sam about a detonator cap and explosives on the phone yesterday. But if Nikki and Mark had killed Daria, were they purchasing those items from Ric on the sly? Josh had said he’d arranged for Sam to get the job blowing up a bridge in Sarasota. He’d probably told Mark or Nikki how Sam had a vendetta against Bree, or maybe Ric, their supplier, had filled them in on that.

  A damn spiderweb, but one that looked like it would hold. Bree felt not only helpless but furious. Think! Think, she told herself.

  “How did it happen—with Daria? Did you and Mark know she’d be alone on the boat?”

  “She brought it on herself—with Josh’s help, of course. I don’t totally blame her. Blame fate, if you must. I just happened to overhear Josh take a call at our home in Tallahassee when she called him on his business phone. She probably thought I’d never intercept a call coming into his office. But I picked up on the line and heard her tell him she was pregnant—pregnant with his child, when two of mine had died!”

  The gun shook in Nikki’s hand; she gripped it so tightly her fingers went white. Bree could hear Mark in the back room. What was he doing? She almost wished he’d come back to calm Nikki down. Surely they didn’t want to shoot her, at least not here. But Nikki seemed to get hold of herself as she spoke again.

  “You were such a smart girl to grill Josh at our little getaway in the cane field by the pond. You were on the right track.”

  “You didn’t go back to the house,” Bree accused. “You eavesdropped from that thick cane. It was all a setup.”

  “You were trying to set Josh up. Mark and I both heard every word you two said. Well, you can guess why I got off the handsome, the clever, the lying Josh Austin’s bandwagon, when he lied to you. Believe me, he’s lied to me for months. And, in the middle of a key election, managed to spend time with your sister. Looking at you right now makes me sick—Daria revisited, Daria déjà vu.”

  “I may look like her, but I am not my sister. I didn’t even know her as well as I thought.” Bree meant every word she said. Daria had not deserved to be killed, but she’d made a mess of things.

  “Mark had told me of Josh’s affair earlier—or let’s say, I managed to entice it out of him,” Nikki went on, as if she had to rid her soul of her guilt in this defiant confession. “But neither of us knew about Daria’s pregnancy until I overheard that phone call. Daria told Josh she was going to make up a story to get you to dive alone while she just stayed with the boat. Here’s a good one for you—the rocky sea didn’t make her ill, but Josh’s baby did. Anyway, she was surprised that it was me in the plane, with Mark, instead of Josh. She thought her lover boy had come to surprise her. Mind you, she’d fallen and hit her head and was barely conscious when we arrived. Mark set the detonator and we towed her into Marco Pass before it went off in that fierce storm. I knew she wouldn’t resist our plans when she called me by your name and said she was glad you were there.”

  Tears blinded Bree. If Daria thought her twin sister was with her at the end, maybe it was some comfort to her. It comforted Bree, though it came from the demented woman who had caused Daria’s death. Bree hugged herself around her waist as if to hold herself up. “But when you and Mark became lovers, that was the same deceit you detested Josh for.”

  “His was worse! He deserted me because I can’t have children. Mark and I joined forces to clean up the mess Josh had made.”

  “I can understand how you felt betrayed—especially because of your two losses.” Stunned by all this and desperate to warn those on Verdugo’s boat, Bree knew she was struggling for words.

  Mark came back out into the office, carrying a big salvage net with a long handle and a length of cord he must have cut off a lift or buoy. “That’s not going to work,” Nikki said, pointing at the rope. “We can’t have ligature marks on her if she went out in her boat and drowned herself. Take off your shirt and tie her wrists with the sleeves of it.”

  Bree’s mind seemed to clear. She kept a dive knife under the backseat of Mermaids I, but it would do her little good with her hands tied behind her. After Mark shed his sports jacket and stripped off his shirt, she thrust her wrists out in front of her.

  “Turn around,” he said, and shoved her toward her desk. She had no choice but to obey, though she knew it might be better to take a bullet here that could be traced. A shot from the distance Nikki was standing couldn’t be construed as a suicide, whereas her drowning would. She could see the headline now: Despondent Over Sister’s Loss And Failure Of Sea Grass Project, Briana Devon Drowns Self Same Night Casino Boat Is Blown To Pieces. And there would be no one—Cole, Amelia, Ben, even Dom Verdugo—to say different about her.

  Then Bree heard the distinctive sound of Manny’s old truck. He was here! Could she warn him, or would they shoot her to shut her up? Her heart pounding, she strained to hear his footsteps and his key in the lock. What was taking him so long?

  When Bree heard him approach, she opened her mouth to scream. Mark must have heard something, too, for he jammed a handkerchief in her mouth and shoved her to the floor.

  “Get over here—cover her,” he ordered Nikki, and darted out from behind the desk. Nikki knelt behind Bree, pressing the gun to her neck. The woman’s hand was shaking. Bree dry heaved, choking into her gag.

  Manny unlocked the door and the familiar bell rang.

  “You upstairs or in the back room, partner?” he called out. “Light’s on back in th—”

  With a sickening thud, Bree heard Mark strike Manny and his body crumple to the floor.

  It was hard to slip away, but Cole finally managed it. Verdugo probably expected him to keep pretending to be part of the Fun ’n’ Sun team, but he was done with that. He wondered if the guests were swallowing Verdugo’s promises of no pollution from this boat half as easily as they were swallowing free drinks and the lobster and lamb entrées.

  Keeping an eye out to be sure none of Verdugo’s lackeys were on the lower level, Cole went below decks. As far as he could see, the coast was clear.

  A glimpse out a porthole he passed revealed a calm night. Stars, no moon yet. He wished he was with Bree to enjoy it and wondered what she was doing. Waiting for Manny or Lieutenant Crawford’s call? He was t
empted to phone her, but he needed to check out this storage room first, then decide if he was going to search further. He’d have to calculate the timing, the risks.

  The storage room was locked, but there was a closed flat cabinet on the wall with keys. Yes, this one was for that storage space. Twice he’d seen Verdugo’s goons take keys from here and go into the room. Glancing up and down the corridor, he unlocked the room and darted in. Even when he found the light switch and clicked it on, the small, windowless room was dim. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust.

  Not a storage room, but a bedroom. And a naked, Latina-looking young girl was gagged and tied to a single bed, her eyes wide with fear.

  24

  “Her man coming in here is an unfortunate complication,” Mark told Nikki.

  Bree strained to listen. As far as she could tell, Manny hadn’t moved. Was he unconscious or dead?

  “Since we’re eliminating anyone who might get in our way, what’s one more?” Nikki said, standing and taking the gun barrel from Bree’s neck. “It’s still best if she commits suicide. Maybe he tried to stop her, and she hit him over the head?”

  “Let’s go with that. Or maybe Sam came back, stumbled onto this guy and knocked him out.”

  This was all her fault! Bree had to get them talking to her again, but they ignored her muffled protests as they dragged Manny behind her desk and relocked the front door. Bree tried to catch a glimpse of him as they pulled her to her feet. He lay facedown, a dark pool of blood spreading under his head. When he’d come in, he’d called her partner. They would have worked things out, and he would have worked things out with Lucinda.