Kate slid around the curved desk in my small office, appearing almost giddy about my potential writing career. Maybe that had to do with some semblance of stability in her life. Her daughter, Macayla, began sharing more emails with Kate, and Kate even asked her if she’d like to spend a little of her summer vacation at The Lost Cat. So far, Macayla hadn’t answered.
I inserted a new ink cartridge into my printer while Kate prepared the mailing forms to ship out my package.
“Can’t you keep this ring as a booby prize?” Kate flipped her choppy blonde hair to one side. Her feisty mocha brown eyes and pursed ruby lips betrayed her unwillingness to seal the final edge of the box that would commit the diamond to a coffin, headstone courtesy of Federal Express.
“I thought about it, but Adam knows the law too well and he made me sign a pre-nup.”
“The law sucks.”
“I don’t want anything to do with that ring but you’re right. The law sucks. And often.” I looked over at Benny, and remembered the child-molestation victim that was his namesake. Little Benjamin, from somewhere in heaven, helped me write my manuscripts.
“Have you thought any more about staying on here in spite of everything?”
“What do you mean?”
“Duh? I mean, if someone is trying to make good on his threats to get you out of town or kill you.”
“One day it sounds ludicrous. The next day I’m looking behind my shoulders, double locking my doors and carrying a can of mace.”
“You’re the attorney. You know the facts. Did it ever occur to you maybe it was Adam?”
“Adam?”
“Not so much that he wanted you out of Trinidad. He wanted you back with him.”
“Jesus.”
Kate placed the FedEx box in front of me. “Maybe now this is all he wants back.”
“I’ve sub-let my D.C. apartment and all my stuff should be arriving here next week.
“That sounds pretty permanent to me. Good.”
“I’d rather store it nearby here than leave it in D.C., meanwhile I’ll ask Ari to extend my lease.”
“He always needs the rent money,” Kate said.
“I don’t think you’ve been around him very much lately. He’s flashing a wad of big bills everywhere he goes.” I looked up at the decorated high ceilings of the turret and realized how much I felt like I was home. The lawyer in me wouldn’t relax until I had the signed extension on my lease.
“What about the whacko in the basement?”
“I asked Ari how that man could have possibly known to congratulate me about all this,” I nodded toward the typed manuscript ready for my agent. “He was quick to fess up he was the one that told Jonathan about my agent.”
Kate wrinkled her Grecian nose. “Don’t share any secrets with Ari, but it does beg the question. How did Ari know?”
“Because he’s a snoop when the mail comes in. And in Jonathan’s defense, that’s a very good reason why he uses a post office box. Something maybe I should consider.”
My phone rang. Caller identification displayed a D.C. area code.
“Ms. Lemay? You don’t know me but I’m your private investigator’s assistant,” she rambled through deep sobs. “My boss has been working on your cases. I’ve been helping him.”
Once she pulled herself together, the woman gave me the pertinent details in a matter of minutes. My private investigator was off the case, permanently. A single bullet through the roof of his mouth. The police ruled it suicide in spite of any missing ceremonious suicide note.
My ongoing background investigations were handed down to his heir-apparent, a junior detective. That’s when they found several case files missing, including mine. And a sample of unmatched human blood on the handles of his file cabinet.
“How could they rule it suicide with the other blood evidence?”
The woman sighed, “I don’t know. I just know no one from the police department is taking it any further. I don’t know why they seemed to have just dropped the case into a cold file.”
If someone wanted to kill me, did that same some one see to it my P.I. received an early one-way excursion pass to the Pearly Gates? Too many coincidences were piling up. Adam didn’t want to involve the investigator in the first place. Was Adam trying to protect the man, or was he trying to protect me from what the man turned up?
I obtained a copy of the police report. It concluded several files were missing. Mine just happened to be among them. And the blood? Not a single mention.
Just over two weeks had passed since Naomi had left me the message, which meant she would be gone another one to two weeks. Whatever it was she had to tell me, I was going to have to wait.
Dad had said, ‘you have to be willing to go beyond the letter of the law’. What the hell did that mean? Had he himself gone beyond that letter with the revolver he kept hidden?
I doubted I would get any more answers out of him. He was sick of me drilling him. I was just as sick of his ongoing demands I patch things up with Adam.
George Baird had asked Kate to join him for a long weekend in Mexico. He was piloting his King Air, and she was so excited about the trip that for a moment, I was excited for her. Until I remembered it was George Baird.
And of course, I wasn’t about to call Adam for solace.
Not content to nuke a frozen dinner in my apartment, and with no one around I cared to dine out with, I sauntered toward the main kitchen in search of comfort food. I pulled the containers of my leftover minestrone and lasagna from the freezer, grabbed two heavy copper pans Ari regarded as decorating hoopla, and brought both the oven and a burner up to a medium heat.
When I placed the lasagna in the oven and flipped the door closed, the scratching noise started from behind the back door. I saw the knob jiggle, but it didn’t open. The harsh sound of metal on metal. Still, the door didn’t open, but the knob turned and twisted as someone grappled and jimmied it.
The butcher’s knife found its way into my hands the way my mother used to say butter found its way to her hips. It was just there. Breathing wasn’t as natural, and came only with exaggerated effort.
All the menacing warnings flooded my vision. The dead rose. The venomous note. Benny missing from my apartment. The snake. I re-lived the jolts of electricity surging through my limbs as my fingers tightened against the grain of the wooden knife handle.
There was no telephone. Ari had pulled his hard-wired services when he ordered the wireless Internet. He had told me when I signed the lease, ‘No one will be tempted to slip in a long distance call on my tab.’
I could run, but whoever was out there would see me through the greenhouse window over the sink. Better the element of surprise, I told myself, tucking in closer against the stone wall, feeling the sweat as I pressed tight against the cold surface.
The chamber of the lock engaged, and I watched, breathless, as the brass knob turned and the door opened.
“Jesus Christ!” Jonathan raged.
The knife in my hand had found its way to within inches of his throat.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I cried. Once again, my Benny was in Jonathan’s arms. “What the fucking hell do you want from me?”
“I’m trying to open the goddamn door with a freaked-out cat in my arms. I’ve told you to keep this guy inside,” he said.
“You’re trying to scare me.”
“I may do a lot of things, but scaring women doesn’t float my boat.” Benny was still firmly in his hands. The knife—still firmly in mine.
“Give me my cat, you fucking shrine-o freak.”
Jonathan Marasco looked up at me, and despite all of my profiling experience from umpteen jury selections, I couldn’t get a read on him. He seemed dazed. His voice faltered. “You’ve been in my apartment? My private apartment?”
Best defense was an offense. “It was innocent enough. But I’m not sure about you, now. Rumors have it you might have been responsible for a couple of deaths.” Namely, your
wife and your child. I shuddered at the reality of my own thoughts. And I worried it was a grave mistake to lash out at him before I had Benny safely back in my arms.
His eyes searched mine, locked behind the same opaque shadow that separated his secrets from the steel knife, still clenched in my hand.
I watched as the involuntary gulp climbed through his throat. His voice was a whisper entwined with a warning. “That’s not a rumor. That would be the truth.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
An Admission of Guilt
Benny shimmied his head deeper into Jonathan’s arms as I struggled to take hold of him.
“Maybe he doesn’t like the knife,” Jonathan said.
I considered the situation in light of what the man had just admitted. I wondered how Benny could have gotten out again, but Jonathan was bringing him back inside. I slid the butcher’s knife across the countertop next to me. Jonathan then urged Benny into my empty arms.
“I’m a little curious,” he said. “Could you delineate about just what you’ve heard? I mean, these rumors about me. I didn’t realize I was newsworthy.” Anger was absent. Instead, his voice broke with hint of pain.
I remembered Ari telling me Marasco was a harmless loner. “You don’t seem the type to give a damn, but okay. I’ve heard you were once a Wall Street success story, at least of some measure, then your wife and child got..., died. Soon afterward, you became a recluse, which is the person I’m most familiar with.”
Benny squirmed and I released him to the floor. Even though we’d been in the room less than a dozen times, as a creature of habit he sought his revered corner of the kitchen. I looked up in time to see tears welling somewhere behind the veil of Jonathan Marasco’s dark eyes. He diverted his gaze and removed his windbreaker. Still not looking at me, he pulled on the neck of a wine bottle resting in the wooden bin. If he was embarrassed for his tears, I was truly sorry for causing them.
“I’d have some,” I said. So far I’d attacked him with a knife, and even sharper words. I doubted he would appreciate my offer to share in his wine.
“Sure you will.” He uncorked the Merlot as I retrieved two glasses from the cabinet. I watched as his fingers rubbed across the grain of the cork and he brought it to his nose. A vague trace of smile crossed his lips and for a fleeting moment dimples formed behind his unshaven face. He filled the balloons precisely to the middle of their crystal bellies, took one in his hand and began swirling it. He inhaled the bouquet, examined the trickling legs, and took a chair at the far side of the table. The second glass remained on the counter and I wondered if it was a hint I was welcome to Jonathan’s wine but not his company. I dismissed the thought, slipped the knife back into the butcher block, grabbed the glass and slid into the chair across from him.
There was no awkward pause. Jonathan started talking before I’d taken my first sip. “I was realizing my dream. I had money, success, and time to enjoy it all. Plus, I had a wife that would follow me to Pluto and back. We checked out of mainstream when one of my clients handed me the rights to his Swan sailboat. Like that, we were off to explore the world. Maybe not the world, but we had one year blocked off the calendar with no itinerary and nothing but a rough list of seaside towns and coves we might want to explore.”
I followed Jonathan’s lead and twirled the wine in my glass. “And your child?”
“Emily. She was only six. My wife had everything she needed to home school her for the year abroad. We both agreed if we could keep up with the fundamentals, Emily would learn more at sea than in the first grade.”
I glimpsed at his chest. He still wore the gold mariner’s cross. Visions of the movie, Dead Calm, jangled my nerves. Did something happen to disable his boat? Had he gone mad at sea? No water. Drinking sea salt. I’d read that somewhere.
“My client offered me the services of his skipper if I picked up his wages, but I said no. I wanted to be alone with my family, and I probably was too cheap to pay for a job I thought I could do. We did some trial sails—day trips through the Florida Keys. We worked out a few kinks and I became impatient for blue water. Meg, my wife, was less enthusiastic. She couldn’t swim and wasn’t thrilled about a year out on the ocean. Meg did beach like no one else could. In her bikini she looked like...”
He took a small sip of wine. “Never mind it all,” he said. “Why am I telling you this?”
I spoke with a hushing quality. “Maybe because I just held a knife to your throat? You’re trying to break the ice.” He’d already spoken more words to me in ten minutes then he had in months.
Jonathan raised his glass as if to toast me. “We headed for Belize and had three days of fantastic sailing. After the first uneventful night at sea, even Meg started to enjoy herself. Still, we were novice sailors. When we reached the coast we took a break to re-supply, rest, and enjoy the island life for a few days.”
“Sounds intoxicating.”
“Well, we quickly realized sailing wasn’t a glamorous life; rather more like camping on water, but we were having a ball. We decided it was time to sail on.”
The oven timer went off. Without thought, I filled two bowls of minestrone, sat them in front of us, and brought the pan of lasagna over to the table. Jonathan seemed to take the time to find solace in the quiet. When I brought the plates to the table and sat down, he continued.
“It’s a little over two-hundred nautical miles from Belize to Honduras. I thought that once we got there we’d spend another couple of days on the quiet beaches of Tela, then set sail down toward the Mosquito Coast. Meg was worried about the high winds. On the other hand, I figured they’d take us from sailing one-hundred nautical miles a day, to one-hundred fifty or more. I’d already realized that keeping a six-year old entertained onboard a yacht was no easy feat, so I welcomed the weather forecast.”
“Are you saying there were warnings out?”
He wrestled in his chair. “Small craft warnings. My ego didn’t let me put myself in that category. The warnings seemed to be more for the Cayman Island region, further northeast.
“I swear to god, the squall appeared out of nowhere and waves started to swell. We were tossed around like Frisbees, only with no one to catch us. Meg was making us fish tacos when I heard her pans crash to the floor. My daughter started crying.
“We’d drilled Emily a thousand times on how to put on her lifejacket and lifeline, but she froze and just kept screaming. It didn’t take me thirty seconds to get her into the jacket. That’s when we hit the reef that broke through the hull.” Jonathan’s voice faltered.
I nodded to him to take a sip of the soup. I replenished the wine.
“The bilge pump worked, but no way could it pump fast enough to keep up with the water flooding in. I still don’t know why the radio didn’t work. Maybe the antenna broke off. Maybe the damn ocean swamped it. I tried. Over and over again, calling out maydays, trying not to scare Meg and Emily, but it was hopeless. I got no answer. I tossed an EPIRB out hoping someone would pick up the distress signal, but I realized it would be too late before any help could arrive. She was sinking fast. The damn deck under my feet was already buckling and breaking up under the crushing seas.
“That’s when I saw the faint line of shore. I got everyone into the dinghy but the oars were gone and the wind was blowing us in the wrong direction, back out to sea. I knew I could make it to shore. I’m a strong swimmer. But no way could the girls make it. Neither of them could swim.” He stopped, again, lost somewhere in the memory of that day.
I kept the pace of silence with him. He allowed me to place a small square of lasagna on his plate.
“I helped get my family into the dinghy and prayed I could get to shore and get quick help, or find something that would work as oars. The waters were so crazy. But I saw shore ahead of me, Belize was behind me, and across from us, they might even reach safety on one of the Bahia Islands.”
I could almost watch him trace the nautical charts in his tortured mind.
“My daughter
kept screaming, begging me not to leave her. But I did. I started swimming. I left them. My daughter’s screams were the last thing I heard. And that’s the last time I saw them. So you’re right, counselor. You and all the town gossipmongers are absolutely right. I killed my wife and daughter.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
What the Hell Does He Have In There?
That evening I realized I’d gone from a legal defender to prosecutor. I was equally undeserving of either positions.
I later learned from my own investigation, a.k.a. snooping around, that the authorities recovered the bodies of Jonathan’s wife and daughter but firmly requested he not be allowed to view them.
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