Skeleton Sea

by Dwiggins, Toni

And sought by a ransacker aboard the Outcast on the night Donie disappeared.

  I presented the scenario to Walter.

  “Entirely plausible.”

  I said, “You think Donie's gods would mind if we remove it?”

  “I think Detective Tolliver would mind if we didn't.”

  We gloved up and set to work. Walter took a plastic garbage bag from our field kit and laid it on the ground. Then he shined the flashlight inside the shrine to illuminate it, and I took several cell phone photos to document the scene. Then Walter removed the float and placed it on the garbage bag. I took two closeups.

  The float was molded plastic—the kind of durable material used for everything from auto parts to kiddie pools—and other than a few scuffs this float appeared to have weathered its life in the sea fairly well.

  Of more interest was the nylon rope. It was braided and embedded with a few bits of seafloor material.

  We got our hand lenses and bent in for examination.

  I focused on the mineral grains embedded in the braid. Just eyeballing it, the grains looked volcanic. Perhaps a basalt of the Franciscan Complex. Not out of the question that these grains were similar to our pebble, the pebble caught in the holdfast entangled on the Outcast’s anchor. Way too soon to say. Definitely worth a closer look in our lab.

  Walter said, “See those purplish bits? At the end of the rope.”

  I looked where he pointed. They were a gaudy pink-purple. I put my lens to them. The hatch marking on the bits looked, if I had to guess, like coral. I said, “Coral?”

  “Or perhaps bits of shell.”

  I nodded. I was getting very interested.

  We moved on to examine the fasteners. The float had a metal eyebolt and the rope connected to it by means of a snap hook. The free end of the rope had another snap hook. It was bent. Twisted.

  We looked at one another. The question now became: what had the float's rope been attached to? And how had the snap hook broken?

  I said, “You know what would be nice? Getting that red float Lanny took. See what it has to say about what went on out there at sea.”

  “The red item you thought you saw in the diver's bag, the item Lanny might have taken.”

  “You quibble.”

  “Always,” he said.

  We turned our attention to the float at hand. The grains were firmly embedded in the rope, which explained how they had survived transport from the source to the shrine, and so Walter used the point of his field knife to pry them loose. I secured the evidence in specimen dishes. Walter wrapped the denuded float in the plastic garbage bag and stowed it in his pack.

  We were heading back onto the bouldery fan when we heard the shout. It seemed to come from somewhere on the far side of the rock. We listened. Pounding of the surf. Cry of a seagull. Nothing more.

  As we rounded the hip of the Rock and the jetty came into sight, we saw the man in the sweatshirt. He stood in the parking lot, head tipped back, scanning up the flank of Morro Rock.

  CHAPTER 14

  Sweatshirt guy saw us approaching and came to meet us, hand extended.

  He waited until we clambered down off the rocky fan onto the solid ground of the parking lot. “Hi there!” he said. “Name’s Fred Stavis.” Hand still extended.

  Walter met him first, shook hands, introduced us.

  Stavis turned to me and we shook. He had a strong handshake, vigorous but not crushing. He held my hand long enough to establish that he’s the type who sets others at ease. Hi there—I see from your faces that I’ve surprised you, and there’s nobody else out here but the three of us this early, and I want you to know I’m a friendly sort. That kind of handshake. But not so long as to imply over-familiarity.

  And I didn’t know why I was analyzing sweatshirt guy’s handshake. Maybe just because I’d been hallucinating him for the past hour and now I found him perfectly ordinary, in the flesh.

  Stavis was a pleasant-looking man, regular features, average height, on the stocky side. Brown hair mussed, like he'd just lowered the sweatshirt hood. The black sweatshirt had a big white logo: DIVE SOLUTIONS. He wore cargo pants in a green-black camo print—one pocket sagging with binoculars—and white sneakers streaked with fresh dirt.

  Dressed to hike.

  I said, “You know it's forbidden to climb the Rock?” I hadn't meant it to sound so accusing but it rather did. So I smiled to show, no offense.

  Stavis smiled in return, no offense taken. “Yes yes, it's forbidden for good reason, it's dangerous, but I've lived here all my life and I'm very careful.”

  Walter said, “Were you waiting for us, here?”

  “No—did it look like I was? No, I'd just finished what I came for and you happened to show up.”

  “Ah,” Walter said. “My mistake. Earlier, you were watching us with binoculars.”

  “Well well well, you are observant.” Stavis gave another smile, a touch less friendly. “Actually I was looking for someone—not you—and I made a thorough search. My man likes to come here. I tried calling his cell but he lets his battery get low. I don't suppose you've seen him out here? He’s about five-six, slim, hair about the color of mine, in his twenties but looks like a teenager. Real outgoing but a little...” he tapped his head, “slow.”

  Walter and I exchanged a look. Small world. Well, small town. It struck me that Stavis used the same gesture that Captain Keasling had used to explain Lanny’s mental capacity. I said, “Lanny Keasling? The deckhand from the Sea Spray?”

  “Yes, Lanny. So you've met him?”

  “Whale watching,” Walter said, “day before yesterday. Haven’t seen him since.”

  I asked Stavis, “How do you know Lanny? You work on the Sea Spray?”

  “Good golly no! I work underwater, not above.” Stavis patted his sweatshirt logo. “And Lanny works for me, when he’s not on the Sea Spray.”

  “So he didn't show up to work for you today?”

  Stavis cocked his head.

  “You said you're out here looking for him.”

  “Yes, of course, I am.” Stavis paused. “A silly mix-up. Actually, he was at work this morning and then his sister phoned to ask if he could have the afternoon off—some Keasling get-together—and things are slow at my shop today so I just gave him the whole day off.”

  “That was nice.”

  “I try to be flexible, especially with Lanny. And, uh, my mistake this morning, I let him head off in possession of a key to a storage cabinet. I knew he was coming here—he likes it out here. He comes to get fennel, his cure for seasickness.” Stavis pointed to the patch of vegetation just beyond the parking lot, at the base of the rock. “That light green stalky plant. Grows here and there, around the rock. Up there, too.” Stavis pointed to the vegetated higher reaches.

  “I got the impression,” Walter said, “that Lanny is a rule-obeyer. Why climb up there when he could pick the fennel down below?”

  Stavis smiled. “He gets carried away when he's on one of his missions.”

  I wondered about his mission this morning. Fennel grew on the seaward side of the Rock, too, right near a micro beach. Right near Robbie Donie's shrine. I said, “Well I sure benefited from his fennel on the Sea Spray.” I glanced at Stavis's sweatshirt logo. “So he works as a deckhand for you, too? On a dive boat?”

  “He’s one of my divers.” Stavis chuckled. “I know, I know, what’s a kid like Lanny doing diving? But, you know, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist. Lanny learns mechanical tasks very well—if he takes it step by step. And I tell you, Lanny can name every widget on every piece of dive gear we’ve got.”

  Lanny could certainly handle the barrel-lock fastener on a mesh dive bag, I thought. I considered asking Stavis about the float but then I could not say with certainty that what Lanny took—or might have taken—was the same kind of float that we’d just found in Donie’s shrine. Or what that would mean if it was the same. I felt the way I’d felt on the Sea Spray, putting in a good word for Lanny with his captain—onl
y this time I didn’t want to rat him out to his dive boss.

  “Diving is dangerous,” Walter said. “Don’t divers need the wit to adapt, in case something goes wrong?”

  “Absolutely.” Stavis gave a vigorous nod. “I’ve taught him how to handle the usual mishaps. But I wouldn’t send him down on anything tricky. And never alone—I don’t send any of my divers alone. And I’ll usually check up on the job he does.”

  “What kind of job?” Walter asked.

  “Commercial diving. We do contract work, up and down the coast. Mooring installation, pier repair, piling wraps, hull cleaning, seawall construction. Offshore, inshore. We're a small outfit but we keep busy. And I gotta say, I only put Lanny on the straightforward jobs.”

  “You work with him on those?”

  “I’m not currently diving.” Stavis tapped his right ear. “Diving cock-up, ruptured eardrum. Meanwhile, I have a man who works with Lanny.”

  “If he needs that much supervision,” I said, “why hire him to begin with?”

  “We go way back. Played together, in fact, as kids.”

  “And now he works for you and his sister.”

  Stavis stared, and I thought I'd said something wrong, touched on some rivalry, maybe something that went back to when they were kids. Like the Jake Keasling Robbie Donie rivalry. Small-town contentiousness.

  Stavis seemed to realize his lapse. “Yes, poor Lanny, two masters. Anyway, it works out.”

  I wondered. Lanny dives under Stavis's tutelage, Lanny works on his sister's boat and steals a float from a mysterious diver, Lanny hides the float from his sister—or so it seemed to me at the time. Loose connection, but for one thing: Fred Stavis runs a company that hires divers.

  I said, “Did you hear about that diver the Sea Spray pulled out of the water?”

  “Oh yes. But he wasn’t one of mine.”

  “Did you know him? I’d think divers around here would know each other.”

  “Was he from around here? Maybe a sport diver? Remember, I’m commercial. Look, I get divers coming around looking for work. I’ve turned away a lot of them, over the years. Not experienced enough, didn’t match the job, that kind of thing.”

  “If you get so many divers looking for work, easy to forget one.”

  Stavis held up his palms. “Is this an interrogation?”

  “Not at all,” Walter said, jumping in. “We simply have a backlog of unanswered questions and when we run across someone with expertise, we tend to ask. We’re working with Doug Tolliver...”

  “Doug! Good man. So you two are cops.”

  “Forensic geologists,” Walter said.

  While Walter explained what it is we do, Stavis nodded, and I figured he must have already heard of us. What we do. Small-town gossip, if nothing else.

  “Boy oh boy,” Stavis said, when Walter finished, “sure hope you find out what happened. That’s a real shame about Robbie.”

  “Did you know him?” I asked.

  “Somebody else I grew up with. Now, we all share the waterfront. Everybody knows everybody.” Stavis checked his watch. “I’d better get back to the shop. If you come across Lanny, tell him I need a key from him, would you?”

  Walter said, “I doubt we'll come across him, if he's still up there.”

  “He sure could be!” Stavis chuckled. “He's a monkey! He'll climb all over this rock.”

  All over to the other side? I wondered. Down to the gully that ran to a little beach that was fringed with fennel? Hunting fennel, following his nose, finding Robbie Donie’s shrine? But Lanny leaves the sulfur-yellow float in place. And yet, on the boat, he steals the starfish-red float from the diver’s mesh bag.

  It made no sense.

  What made sense, I thought, was to ask him.

  CHAPTER 15

  Sandy Keasling was ready to scream out the tides.

  It was a two-point-five low tide, a higher low tide, and they had less than an hour before it turned. Timing was tight.

  “Jake goddamn it,” she yelled, “shovel.”

  Jake’s shovel was speared in the sand. He lifted his Bud Light to Sandy in a salute, and drank.

  Lanny put down his trowel. “I’ll shovel, Sandy.”

  “No Lanny, you keep trenching.”

  Sandy was ready to goddamn give it up. This morning she'd been on fire with the idea. She'd taken the day off, handing off the bucket-runs to her assistant. It was Lanny's day working with Fred and she'd arranged with Fred to send Lanny home by three. She'd phoned Jake, who'd said sure, long as his nitwit assistant wasn't going surfing. And Jake was ‘down with that.’ Surf might be up—whaddya gonna do?

  Lanny showed up early—turned out Fred gave him the whole damn day off—but Jake hadn't gotten his sorry ass over to the hacienda until nearly four.

  And the tides waited for no man. No Keasling. This whole idea was hopeless. The sea snake in her head was already squeezing. This was Sandy Keasling now: a middle-aged woman whose sharpest feeling was pain. Who drove a pathetic whale-watching bucket, who despaired of ever driving a real ship again. Who’d lived in fear for five years that The Shitstorm would blow back in. Who needed to get back in control.

  All she needed now was one quick visit to the past.

  She watched Jake drain his beer and toss the can and then stretch his arms high over his head. Still wiry but nursing a beer belly that edged over the waistband of his flowered green board shorts. Lanny wore shorts just like Jake’s, only in blue. But Lanny kept his T-shirt on, the one with the Sea Spray logo—he was so damn proud of working that bucket. She watched her little brother on his knees, trenching the bulwark line like his life depended on it.

  There was a time, thought Sandy Keasling, when the Sea Urchins thought they ran the sea.

  “Sea Urchins!” she bellowed. “Let’s get this thing built!”

  Jake belched.

  She leveled a glare at him.

  He turned and strolled up the beach.

  She panicked, then, because there was nothing at that end of this beach but the cliff that held the cave.

  Jake never went there anymore because he was too cool for caves. Lanny never went there anymore because she’d told him it was now her place. But back when the three of them were the Sea Urchins who ruled the beach along with the sea, they had their headquarters in the cave. Now, it was her jail. Not that she physically forced Joao Silva to stay there but she’d sure played mind games on him. By moonrise last night the diver was rooted like a crab in its crevice. Nothing was going to pry him out. She fed and watered him, she loaned him her Kindle and her iPod, she even emptied the goddamn porta-potty. She plied him with tales of cops and illegal immigrants. She learned a few more words of Portuguese but he still went stupid when she questioned him, asking what that red thing was he’d had in his dive bag, that thing that was missing—that thing Lanny stole. Silva just shrugged. Nao compreendo. Before bed last night she’d brought him the vinho he’d begged for—cheap rotgut—and it made him weepy instead of confiding. She’d come back this morning to start again but he was sound asleep: in her down sleeping bag, on her air mattress, goddamn drooling onto her down pillow. Water bottles and half-drunk wine and foam food containers scattered about. She’d said his name. Joao, wake up. He snored. Suddenly she'd had enough of him. Ready to strangle him.

  Ready to strangle Lanny too, because this was all Lanny’s fault and like always—always—she was the one who had to clean up his mess. So now she had a Lanny problem, and a Joao-nao-compreendo-Silva problem lodged in her cave.

  And then, staring at the snoring stranger in her cave, she'd had a brainstorm. Let Silva snore and stew all day and she bet he'd be more talkative when she brought him dinner. Meanwhile, she would tackle the Lanny problem. She knew just how to get Lanny to talk.

  Raise the Sea Urchins from the past.

  Only now, watching Jake heading up the beach toward the cliff, she saw what a mistake she’d made. Yanking Jake into the past, where going into the cave was as regul
ar as the tides.

  She bellowed, “Jake!”

  Jake looked back and gave her the Sea Urchin high sign: raised hand, fingers splayed, shake of the wrist.

  She didn’t buy it. He might as well have flipped her off. “Get your ass back here!”

  Now Lanny was off, running to his big brother, grabbing his arm, yammering, and Jake just stood there laughing.

  Sandy wanted to cry.

  But then suddenly the two of them were working together, digging through a pile of kelp, coming back with ropes of thick-knobbed bull kelp. They dumped it at her feet.

  Lanny said, panting, “For the moat.”

  She smiled, weak with relief. “Better than perfect, Lanny.” She turned to Jake. “What did he offer you?”

  “Ten bucks,” Jake said.

  She met her brother’s greedy eyes. “I’ll pay half on that new tandem kayak you want. But I want to see the bill. Deal’s off if you take Lanny’s ten.”

  Jake stroked his chin. “Ooookay, let’s see what we’ve got on the table. Ten bucks, payable soon as Lanny gets his butt up to the house and finds his wallet. Versus half the cost of a tandem, payable only if Sandy approves the bill. What if I choose the pricey Necky model? She gonna haggle? History says, yes she will. Trot out the spreadsheet, bitch about the debit side, moan about the cost of living. Course that’s why the elder Keaslings—may God rest their dear parental souls—made Sandy executor of the estate. Left Lanny and me beggars. Left us to suckle at the teat of big sis.”

  Lanny went red.

  Sandy hissed, “Knock it off, Jake.”

  “Okay.” Jake smiled. “I’ll take your offer.”

  She wanted to kill him. She really did.

  Jake turned to Lanny. “Go back to trenching, little bro, gotta hold back the tide. And I’ll get my ass in gear and shovel us up a big pile of sand so we can build ourselves a fucking fine castle. And Sandy will start with the corner towers. Just the way we used to do it. All for one and one for all, three for three. Sea Urchins rule.”

  Lanny raised his hand and gave the Urchin high sign.

  They set to work.

  Within fifteen minutes the sand was knee high and the trench was calf deep.