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by Randy Wayne White

  “You think he beat the shit out of you before? Wait ’til he hears about this. What you’re doing is stealing!”

  I hadn’t said a word to Augie, but now I did. “A friend of mine named Javier’s in the same situation. There ought to be a law, huh?”

  J eth had called ahead on the VHF, so there was a crowd of islanders waiting on the dock. It was an hour before sunset, so a lot of them would have been there anyway, but news of the Viking added a celebratory note. Spoils of salvage—it’s a whimsical phrase when used around a marina because it’s usually a pirate fantasy.

  Not this time, though. The boat was real, islanders wanted to hear what they expected to be an interesting story, and were eager to have a look at this big-dollar craft with luxury appointments that included a sunken tub in the master stateroom, full kitchen, a wet bar, a sophisticated Bose entertainment system, even a central vacuum station.

  Among those on the dock was Jeth’s wife, Janet, who appeared healthy, ripening, and happy from my vantage point on the trawler’s flybridge. Her man was back in business. She wouldn’t have to return to Ohio as one more casualty of the hurricane.

  It was a pleasant scene to watch, until Arlis launched into another one of his monologues.

  “See there? Jeth can’t get the boat docked because there’s not enough water. I told him that boat draws too much for Dinkin’s Bay. On this tide? You see herons standing on grass flats, that should tell you something!

  “Take it to Ferry Boat Landing, down on Lighthouse Point, I said. Or South Seas Plantation. But would he listen to me? Hell, no. I’ve only lived around here seventy-some years. Only driven every kind of vessel except for the space shuttle and a submarine. So why should he listen to an expert when he can make a fool of himself showing how bullheaded he is…”

  My impatience with Arlis now bordered on animosity. What had Hannah seen in this undersized man with his oversized ego? If he didn’t have information I wanted, I would’ve kept a boat length between us.

  But I still had lots of questions.

  I had waited until we were off the beach that fronted Chestra’s family home, Southwind, before asking about the escaped German prisoner of war. Maybe seeing the place would jog the old man’s memory.

  In reply, Arlis made a grunting sound of disinterest, and said, “Maybe what I need to do is put all my stories down in a book. If I do, I’ll let you buy the first copy.”

  Ask the man to talk, he wouldn’t. Ignore him and he wouldn’t shut up. There seemed to be an old-time horse trader’s dynamic at play: Information that I wanted was valuable. It went against his instincts to give it away. Information I didn’t want, though, was worthless, so he could ramble all he liked.

  Frustrating. I considered trying reverse psychology, but that only works when both parties want it to work and both think there’s something to gain. Arlis was too smart. I didn’t have the patience.

  So I tried again. Took the straightforward approach. Asked what he meant when he implied that one of the Dorn girls had helped the German POW. There was also a snide inference about a man named Peter Jefferson.

  Arlis loosened slightly. “There was no better family on the islands than Oscar Jefferson’s people. They got along fine with everybody. The Dorns and Brusthoffs owned that house right there”—he swung his eyes to the beach, where Southwind was fading from sight off our stern—“but they were still tourists.

  “Could be ol’ Peter got sweet on one of those pretty Dorn girls—not a smart thing to do in those times, mess with a white girl, no matter how fine a people the Jeffersons were. Then someone found Peter walking like a zombie down the sand road, skin hanging off him he was burnt so bad. The Kraut did it. Though Peter didn’t live long enough to say it was true.”

  If the murderer was a local, he said, the truth would have slipped out as the decades passed.

  “The Krauts had been sneaking around the island for a couple of weeks by then. Someone was helping them, giving them food. We found lots of their tracks going back and forth to the house where the Dorn girls lived—”

  I interrupted. “Their tracks?”

  “How many sets of tracks do you expect two men to make?”

  “I thought you said there was only one.”

  “No, I told you there was three escaped P-O-Ws from the Belle Glade camp. Not one. Three.” He exhaled noisily. Why did he bother?

  “Okay. All three POWs found their way to the islands, and you captured one.”

  “I didn’t say that, neither! How the hell am I supposed to know if all three come here? There was tracks from two men, but we only caught the one. Maybe the third one didn’t walk around much. Maybe he wasn’t a Kraut. Or maybe he was a Kraut and went to Key West and opened a perfume store, how would I know? You think I’m a mind reader or something?”

  Impossible to keep the man on topic. I said, “You think they got help at the Dorn house, though. Am I clear on that?”

  “That’s how we caught him. At night, waited outside the house. Which I thought had been torn down long ago. If Peter was sweet on one of them girls, he never got the chance to say good-bye.”

  I said, “Because he was burned so badly. He didn’t live long enough.”

  Arlis gave me the look again: Are you an idiot? “Of course he died. What I’m telling you, if you’d listen, is that they had to leave the island. People around here will accept damn near anything. But helping a Nazi who pours moonshine on a good man and lights a match? We didn’t want ’em here after that, and they knew it.”

  I had to risk it. “You’re talking about all three families. The Dorns, Brusthoffs, and the—”

  “Isn’t that what I just said!”

  “Then why didn’t they sell the house?”

  “The house we just passed? Them people did sell it. That’s why I thought it was long ago torn down.” Arlis shook his head, then rolled his eyes. “What else you gonna do when you leave an island and you can’t come back?”

  I wanted to call Chestra but realized I didn’t have a number. Had I even seen a phone in the house? If the family estate had been sold years ago, what was she doing there? Why were old family photos still on the wall?

  Arlis had to be wrong. There was no reason for him to lie, but he’d already demonstrated that his memory was faulty.

  Chestra, on the other hand, had lied—I felt certain of it. But she was much too smart to base an elaborate charade on such a flimsy deceit. Her reasons would become known to me. Lies are the DNA of diplomacy and good manners. I assumed her reasons were altruistic at best, self-serving at least. If they weren’t, I’d know soon enough.

  I much prefer lies to inaccuracies. Lies reveal themselves.

  It was nearly sunset by the time we got the trawler docked. Low tide was a little before 8 P.M., in synch with the rising moon. It was a spring low—all new and full moon tides are called spring tides—which meant water was lower than normal.

  It peeved me to acknowledge that Arlis was right, but Jeth couldn’t get the Viking into a slip. He churned up a lot of mud trying, but there’s a limestone base beneath the muck and it wasn’t worth bending a propeller.

  Jeth was still smiling, though, when he bowed up to the fuel dock and let Tomlinson scamper monkeylike off the pulpit railing, then backed away. He used the PA system to show off a little, saying, “You can find me with the other millionaires tying up at Ferry Boat Landing.”

  Arlis—right again. He let me know it, too, with his ragged smile.

  A ugie kicked a trash can as we docked. Crumpled his plastic cup and lobbed it into the water, before snapping at Oswald, “Grab your shit and let’s get out of here”—a couple of telling ticks of the bomb inside him. He was going to be trouble.

  I wanted to get the wooden sign, ark light, and other objects we’d found back to the lab and into salt water or sodium hydroxide as soon as possible. First, though, I made a quick detour to the docks, looking for Mack. The Sanibel Police Department is efficient and professional. If Augie mad
e a scene—I felt certain he would—they would deal with him in the whisper-quiet way of experts.

  Mack kept the department’s phone number above the cash register. A marina that rents boats is guaranteed to have the occasional outraged customer, and Mack had seven jon boats and two runabouts that he rented throughout the year—barring hurricanes. The police were no strangers to Dinkin’s Bay.

  As I stepped off the boat, the moon was ghostly silver to the east; the sun was westward, in slow, incendiary descent. Dinkin’s Bay, our small marina, was suspended in balance: a mangrove clearing, boats, buildings, and people.

  I was carrying our sopping dive bags, smiling hello at friends, asking them to wait until I returned from the lab to help Tomlinson tell our story of high seas salvage. There was also the not-so-small matter of refueling, unloading, and cleaning the Island Gypsy, then discussing a suitable present for owner Bill Gutek.

  The rules are unwritten: If you borrow a boat, replace anything you use or damage, leave it cleaner than you found it, with tanks topped off, and reward the owner for his generosity with a gift.

  Before I found Mack, though, I was intercepted by Rhonda Lister, who lives aboard the venerable old Chris-Craft cabin cruiser, Tiger Lilly. She and her longtime partner, JoAnn Smallwood, had arrived on Sanibel years ago, both of them broke, and on the run from abusive husbands. They’d pooled their meager funds and started an advertising sheet they called the Heat Islands Shopping Guide.

  The shopping guide is now a full-color weekly newspaper worth a ton of money. The women have demonstrated their entrepreneurial genius by expanding into real estate, and also investing in a couple of restaurants, including a gourmet sports bar that was Tomlinson’s brainchild: Dinkin’s Bay Rum Bar and Grille, located only a few miles away on the road to Captiva, near the wildlife sanctuary.

  The women own a beachfront condo, and a home near Asheville, but they prefer to live where they have always lived: on their roomy old hulk of a boat, Dinkin’s Bay Marina, where they have become maternal icons in our small community’s hierarchy.

  Rhonda sounded motherly now as she took my arm, stood on tippy-toes to inspect my face, and said, “One more scar on that mug of yours, you’re gonna look like a Japanese haiku. That hack job someone did on your forehead, those stitches should have been removed a week ago.”

  The hack job had been done in the field, with monofilament fishing line, by the wife of a man who had an unpronounceable name.

  Rhonda was right. I should have removed the stitches myself days ago.

  She touched her finger near where I’d been head-butted, then where the driveshaft had caught me. The cut wasn’t as deep or long as the one on my forehead, but it needed attention.

  “If you’re not going to take care of yourself,” she said, “I will. I tried to corner you last night, but you disappeared. Why’d you leave the party so early?”

  “We dove today. I didn’t want to stay out too late.”

  She gave me a knowing, concerned look. “That’s the same sort of baloney Tomlinson tells us when he sneaks off to see his mystery women. She has you on the hook now, too?”

  In a marina community, well-kept secrets are as common as well-kept fences.

  “Her name’s Mildred Engle. She doesn’t have me on the hook, and there’s nothing mysterious about her. She’s going to finance our salvage project—which means Jeth has a job.”

  Women are as territorial as men but more subtle. “No kidding? Then we’ll finally meet her. She’ll come to the marina and say hello to the friends of the men she’s dating, just like any woman would do if she’s got nothing to hide.”

  I was smiling, surprised by the heat of her disapproval. I said, “We’re not dating. And I’m sure Ms. Engle will make an appearance some evening, eager for the Dinkin’s Bay ladies to vote on whether—”

  I stopped and turned, because I heard men arguing. Augie was standing nose to nose with Arlis, yelling at the old man. Arlis looked to be enjoying himself—maybe because a half-dozen fishing guides formed a semicircle behind him.

  I told Rhonda, “Mack should call the cops, and I need to get back to the lab.”

  The woman said, “Meet me aboard Tiger Lilly in an hour so I can take care of those cuts. I mean it. Or I’ll come looking for you. Seriously, we need to talk.”

  Through the marina’s office window, I could see Mack on the phone, already aware of what was going on. The fishing guides could look after Oswald and Augie until the police arrived.

  I put my hand on Rhonda’s shoulder and squeezed. “Make it half an hour.”

  It was nearly 8:30, and I was eager to knock on Chestra’s door, tell her what we’d found, and say, “Okay, it’s time for the truth. What happened the night of October 19, 1944? Really.”

  32

  I told Rhonda, “I don’t know how old the woman is. And I don’t understand why you’re so concerned.”

  Rhonda had my head in her lap, a washcloth in her hand. She’d already snipped the stitches and pulled them out with tweezers. Now she was using the cloth to scrub the cut beneath my eye with Betadine, the two of us on a settee in the main salon of Tiger Lilly.

  She replied, “JoAnn thinks she met her one night, walking on the beach. The big gray house that you couldn’t see until the storm knocked the trees down? With the gray gables?”

  I tried to nod, but she was holding my head tight.

  “JoAnn said she tried to talk to her—this was right after the hurricane when everyone was chatty. JoAnn said the woman was pleasant enough until she found out Tomlinson was a friend. After that, it was like a curtain dropped. An ice curtain—JoAnn’s words.”

  As I began to reply, she muttered, “This thing’s not as long as the cut on your forehead, but it’s deep. Almost to the bone and only an inch from your eye. Gad. The guy who beat you up did this?”

  “He didn’t exactly beat me up—”

  “You don’t have to lie to me. The story’s all over the island. Then you got another knock on the head while you were diving?”

  I said, “Minor. It doesn’t hurt.”

  “Three severe blows to the head. A guy like you who uses his brains for a living. Minor?” She expected a response. Began to scrub harder when she didn’t get it.

  “Does this hurt?”

  I said, “Yes! You could take varnish off wood, the way you’re digging. It burns like hell.”

  “Good! Serves you right for behaving like a damn schoolkid. No”—she pushed my shoulders back when I tried to sit—“you’re not going anywhere until I get you patched up. Afterward, you can help me decorate for tomorrow’s party—out of gratitude.”

  “A party?” Friday was the traditional night for marina parties. Tomorrow was Sunday.

  “Why not? We’re making up for lost time.”

  A marina party hosted by the ladies of the Tiger Lilly. The first since the hurricane. Also the first I’d heard of it.

  Tiger Lilly is a forty-one-foot Chris-Craft Continental, a wallowing, teak-and-mahogany hulk, party-sized and homey, which is how she’s decorated: potted plants and Japanese lanterns strung along the weather bridge, full bath, staterooms fore and aft, stereo speakers all around. A boat that’s rigged for socializing, not open sea.

  A few years back, after a run of bad luck, the ladies had had a ceremony and changed the boat’s name to Satin Doll. Things kept getting worse, however, until they reversed the ceremony, and it’s been Tiger Lilly ever since. It’s moored at the deepwater docks, Dinkin’s Bay Marina, neighbor to a dozen or so other live-aboard vessels—houseboats, sailboats, and trawlers.

  Four weeks earlier, there’d been twice that number.

  Lucky.

  Aside from a Danforth compass, the only navigational equipment aboard Tiger Lilly is a brass plate that points toward the ship’s toilet. The ladies installed it as a precaution against confused and desperate drunks.

  “Doc,” Rhonda continued, her tone severe, “we worry about you. That’s why I asked about your ne
w lady.”

  I repeated myself patiently. “Mildred Engle is not my new lady,” I said, and fought the urge to check my watch. I didn’t want Rhonda to know that I was eager to get to Chestra’s house.

  She said, “It doesn’t matter what you think. It matters what the woman thinks. You’re a dear, sweet guy, Doc, but forgive me for saying this—you’re pretty damn dense when it comes to women.”

  I wasn’t going to argue.

  “Same when it comes to fighting. That’s just dumb. Especially with some low-life marina punk—we heard about the fight so don’t even bother to deny it. Some freak named Heller? You don’t think a jerk like that can’t take one look and know you’re the scientific type, not a fighter? That’s what I’m trying to get through your head. You’re an easy target for a punk like that to show off. And also for a certain type of woman.”

  Rhonda’s hair was colored Irish copper instead of the usual brown…a stylish new wig. She was wearing shorts and a dark blue blouse that was buttoned one notch higher than normal. She’s tall, heavy-hipped, and busty—busty until a recent illness, anyway.

  She was one of the friends who’d been hospitalized.

  Rhonda had been scolding me about the fight, fussing about Mildred Engle, but something else was on her mind.

  Her encounter with cancer and the black void was recent. She deserved my patience.

  Rhonda said, “You got about as many scars on your face as I got on my belly and boobs,” She was done with the washcloth and opening a tube of antibacterial cream. “Get a few glasses of wine in me tonight, maybe we can compare.”

  “Tempting,” I replied.

  “I’d like to think you’re serious. Since the operation, I’m worried you and other manly man types won’t be interested. As if the hysterectomy didn’t make me feel self-conscious enough.”

  Self-deprecating humor, typical of her. But it contained an underlying truth. A few months before, she’d found a lump on her breast. Her physician had removed the tumor after assuring her that the biopsy report could have been a lot worse. Rhonda had finished her last week of chemotherapy just before the hurricane.