Death in a Wine Dark Sea

by Lisa King

  Jean rummaged through the medicine cabinet and found a vial of sleeping pills. She gave Diane three of them and lay down with her until she fell asleep. From downstairs came the faint sounds of people talking and moving around—the police, no doubt.

  Jean shut the door softly and crept down the stairs. The rooms she could see looked unscathed. Diane had decorated the house with sunny wallpaper and cheery blue and yellow fabric. The result was pretty and comfortable, but a little too Mario Buatta for Jean’s taste.

  Frank and Peter stood in the living room with a uniformed officer. Peter smiled wearily as she approached. “Diane all right?”

  “Not exactly. She’s asleep, though.”

  “Officer Norton here says they can wait until tomorrow to get a statement from her, but they’ll need one from you now. Officer, this is Jean Applequist.”

  She shook his hand. His iron-gray crew cut and square jaw made his head resemble a cube. Peter and Frank waited nearby while Jean sat in a corner of the living room with him. All she could tell him was that the man had been big and probably young, based on how easily he ran.

  “Do you think this had anything to do with Martin Wingo’s disappearance?” she asked when the officer had finished his questions.

  “Hard to say. It’s probably unrelated. We get a lot of burglaries where someone reads about a wedding or a funeral or sees an ambulance or coroner’s wagon at a house, and then goes in when they know everyone’s going to be out.”

  “That’s downright inhuman,” Frank said.

  “You said it. The strange thing here is there’s no sign of forced entry. We’ll check out the help, anyone who had a key and knew the codes. Have Mrs. Wingo call us when she figures out what’s missing.”

  When the police were gone, Jean, Peter, and Frank sank into overstuffed chairs. Frank rubbed his reddened eyes. “That poor girl,” he said. “How do you ever get over a thing like this? I hope they find him soon, for Diane’s sake. For all our sakes.”

  Peter nodded. “Amen to that.”

  The phone rang, startling them. Frank answered. “Hello? Oh hello, Kay,” he said, shaking his head to the question in Jean’s and Peter’s eyes. “No, they’re still looking . . . she’s just about as bad off as you’d expect. On top of all that, there was a burglar here when we got home.” He listened for several seconds. “All right, I’ll tell her.” He hung up. “Kay’s heard the news. She’s in Washington.”

  Jean had never met Kay, Martin’s ex-wife, but knew she and Diane were on civil terms.

  “Let me run you to your car, Frank,” Peter said, standing up. “I’ll be back soon.” He leaned over to kiss Jean and she felt the faint sandpaper scratch of his whiskers.

  After looking in on Diane, who was in a deep sleep, Jean checked the damage. The intruder had only gotten as far as Martin’s office and the den next door. Jean looked the rooms over, appraising them. The destruction seemed more like a search than a burglary. The upholstered furniture was cut up, all the drawers and closets had been ransacked, and books and CDs covered the floors. Jean thought it odd that he hadn’t gone upstairs after Diane’s jewelry.

  Jean saw that only the bottom drawer of a big dresser was pulled out—that meant the intruder was an amateur. He’d started with the top drawer so he had to close each drawer before going to the next one. A professional would have opened the bottom drawer first to save time. Amazing what you could learn from mysteries.

  Back in the living room, she noticed a big stack of wedding gifts in a corner. At least he hadn’t gotten that far.

  Jean’s stomach growled, so she went into the spotless blue and white kitchen for a snack. A search of the refrigerator and cupboards turned up nothing substantial—the newlyweds had planned to be gone for two weeks, cruising the coast of Baja. Their new chef had the time off and had clearly let stocks get low. Jean found a phone and dialed Peter’s cell.

  “Peter, it’s me.”

  “Any news?”

  “Not a word. But there’s no food here. Can you pick up something to eat? Maybe Chinese. And some breakfast, too. I’m starving.”

  “Sure, if I can find anything open.”

  Jean took off her shoes and curled up on the sofa to wait for Peter. As exhausted as she was, she couldn’t sleep. Her friend’s grief nearly overwhelmed her. Diane had been through a lot with Martin, and to have it end like this was brutally unfair.

  Before the heart attack, Diane had often complained to Jean about Martin’s cold, callous behavior. Diane finally broke off their affair, only to spend time in his hospital room every day after he got sick. He then divorced Kay and proposed to Diane, who was convinced he’d become a kinder, gentler person. Jean had never believed in his deathbed conversion, but now all she wanted was for him to walk through the door and restore Diane to her earlier state of euphoria.

  Jean thought no one deserved happiness more than Diane, whose early life had been a ghastly soap opera. Her mother was a major-league alcoholic and minor-league hooker who’d accidentally produced two children; Diane had never known who her father was. The family lived in a trailer near Fresno, and Diane had worked at after-school jobs since she was twelve.

  When Diane was sixteen, her younger brother died at home of rheumatic fever because their mother was too drunk and indifferent to take him to a doctor. At this time, Diane worked as a file clerk at Frank Johansen’s construction company. He and his wife had taken an interest in her and fought to keep her out of foster care. She went to live with the Johansens and discovered that comfortable, predictable middle-class life agreed with her. Two years later, at U.C. Berkeley, she was assigned a room with Jean.

  Jean was a refugee, too, but not from poverty—from Indiana. She was the youngest of a large, close-knit religious family that she felt was suffocating her. She had persuaded her parents to send her to college near her mother’s eccentric but respectable brother in San Francisco. She’d soon found out that her bachelor uncle, who owned a Victorian house in the Castro district, had been living with the same man for several years, but she didn’t tell her parents.

  The two women had been good friends ever since, and while Jean cut a wide swath through the straight male population of the greater Bay Area, Diane got her heart broken by a series of prosperous older men.

  Diane had stayed close to Frank, and met Martin when he and Frank went into business together. Nothing had clicked until last year at Frank’s annual Fourth of July barbecue, when Martin arrived alone and spent the evening wooing Diane. Frank, who thought of Diane as a daughter, was furious about their affair, but after Martin’s heart attack he relented and gave his blessing to the marriage.

  Jean’s reverie was interrupted by the phone. She answered on the third ring, bracing herself for bad news. “Hello?”

  After a brief pause, a man’s voice said, “Is that Jean?”

  Jean came fully awake at once, her heart pounding. “Martin!” she shrieked. Then, more tentatively, “Martin?”

  “Yes, it’s me. Let me talk to Diane.”

  “Are you OK? Everyone thinks you’re dead.”

  “Not quite. Put Diane on.”

  “Just a minute.” Jean ran upstairs, phone in hand, to Diane’s room, calling her name and shaking her by the shoulder. Diane made a faint noise but didn’t stir. After a few seconds Jean gave up. “I can’t wake her,” she told Martin as she walked back downstairs. “She was such a mess when she thought you drowned that I knocked her out.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “No, she’s not all right. She started out weepy and then went catatonic. She’s shattered.”

  “Is anyone else there? Frank, or Peter?”

  “No, just me and the widow.”

  “Then you’ll have to do. Now listen: I was pushed overboard—”

  “By who? I mean whom?”

  “You don’t need to know.”

  Jean’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t need to know? You owe me. You’d be dead now if I hadn’t thrown you that life preser
ver.”

  “Thank you for saving me. Now shut up, Jean. For once in your life, shut up and listen.”

  Jean gave a satisfied smile—this was the old Martin talking, imperious and accustomed to command. She shut up.

  “I got a lift to the small craft harbor at Marina Green,” he said. “I’m calling from a pay phone near there.”

  “You mean another boat picked you up?”

  “Yes, a fellow pirate. He gave me dry clothes and food.”

  “Where have you been all this time?”

  He made a sound somewhere between a chuckle and a giggle. “My rescuer had an appointment he couldn’t miss. Since it won’t matter to Diane, I’m going to do something first. Call the police and tell them to meet me at the house in two hours.”

  “Sure, but who—”

  “Stop asking questions. I’ll tell the police everything.”

  “What do you have to—”

  “Just do as I say.”

  “Now you listen, Martin,” Jean said sharply. “What about hypothermia? Peter can pick you up. You don’t want to have another heart attack now that you’ve risen from the dead.”

  “No. I warmed up and rested on the boat. Take good care of Diane till I get there.”

  “But Martin, what . . .” Jean stopped when she realized she was talking into a dead line.

  CHAPTER 5

  Jean hung up the phone. “Holy shit,” she said aloud. What a perfect end to a nightmare—she imagined Diane waking up to find Martin alive in the bed next to her. She phoned Peter.

  “Peter, listen: Martin’s alive. He just called. He was pushed, all right, but he wouldn’t say who did it. Another boat fished him out and took him to Marina Green. He wants the police to meet him here in two hours.”

  “Wait a minute. Are you sure it was him?”

  “Of course I’m sure. He was snarling and giving orders, just like old times.”

  “Is he all right? Is he hurt?”

  “He sounded fine. In fact he giggled.”

  “Alive. This is incredible. Hold on a minute.” Jean could practically hear the gears turning in Peter’s head. Finally he spoke: “Why two hours? He could be home in twenty minutes. I should look for him.”

  “He’s probably gone by now. He said he had to do something.”

  “Do what?”

  “He wouldn’t tell me.”

  “How did Diane take the news?”

  “She’s out cold. So what do I do? Call the cops?”

  “Yes, call Hallock and Davila. Tell them what you told me. I’ll drive by the marina and see if I can spot him, then come over.”

  “OK. See you soon.” Jean went in search of her purse. She would rather call Davila but only had Hallock’s card. She phoned and told him about the call.

  Jean wanted a stiff drink and a good night’s sleep but forced herself to get up, walk back to the kitchen, and splash cold water on her face. She started a pot of coffee—it was going to be a long night.

  Just over an hour later, as Jean poured herself a third cup of coffee, Peter knocked lightly on the kitchen door. He carried a white bag from a Chinese restaurant and a pink bakery box tied with string.

  “Oh Peter, you’re a saint,” she said, wrapping her arms around him.

  “I drove over to the marina and looked around but didn’t see anyone,” he said. ”Now tell me again what Martin said.”

  They sat on tall stools at the counter drinking coffee and eating lukewarm Szechuan food as Jean recounted the phone call.

  Peter shook his head. “The man is amazing. This’ll make twice he’s survived when he should have died. What do you suppose he meant by a fellow pirate?”

  Jean shrugged. “Maybe he got picked up by a personal injury lawyer.”

  “Imagine what it must have been like, swimming in water that cold in the dark, with only a life preserver, all the time knowing someone he considered a friend had tried to kill him.”

  “I’m sure that’s what kept him going,” Jean said. “Visions of revenge.”

  “And visions of Diane waiting for him.”

  The doorbell rang and Jean admitted Inspector Hallock and Officer Baker. “He here yet?” Hallock demanded.

  “No, but we don’t expect him until nearly six o’clock,” Jean said. “Want some coffee?”

  “Thanks.” They followed her to the kitchen. “I sent a car over to the marina,” Hallock said, “but there was no sign of Wingo.”

  “I was there about an hour ago and he was already gone,” Peter said.

  Hallock nodded. “I’ve got an APB out on him, too—we don’t want him confronting whoever it was tried to kill him.”

  The night crept by, punctuated with Hallock’s phone calls to monitor the search. Jean checked on Diane periodically, and once, passing through the living room, she couldn’t resist lying down on the sofa for a moment. When she opened her eyes again, sun shone in the windows. She sat up abruptly; the wall clock said seven fifty-two.

  In the kitchen, Hallock talked into his cell phone and Peter sat at the table with his head on his arms. He looked up when he heard her come in. “Morning,” he said. “No sign of Martin yet.”

  “Oh, great.” Jean still felt exhausted.

  “OK, keep me posted,” Hallock said into the phone. He closed his phone and turned to Jean. “We’ve got a problem,” he told her. “Wingo’s nearly two hours overdue, and there’s no sign of him anywhere, no evidence that he ever came ashore.”

  “What do you mean? I talked to him.”

  “And you’re the only one who heard his voice after he went into the bay. The telephone company’s tracking system for that area was down during the time in question, so there’s nothing to support what you say.” Hallock looked at her with his weary cop’s eyes. “I’ve been asking myself, how could a man with a serious heart condition survive in water that cold in a storm?”

  “Have you forgotten about the life preserver?” Jean said. “And he didn’t have to survive for long—another boat found him.”

  Hallock yawned. “Are you absolutely certain the phone call wasn’t a dream based on wishful thinking? That sort of thing happens after tragedies.”

  “Just a goddamn minute. I know the difference between a dream and reality. I spoke to Martin.”

  “How much did you have to drink at the wedding, and after?”

  “Not nearly enough.”

  “She wasn’t drunk, Inspector,” Peter said.

  “Then there’s another possibility,” Hallock said. “I know you’re a good friend of Mrs. Wingo. Maybe you’re trying to cheer her up. But if you’re putting us on, you’re doing her more harm than good.”

  “You officious ass, how dare you accuse me of making it up! Do you think I’d do a thing like that to Diane?”

  “Jean, Jean,” Peter said gently, “you have to hold your temper.” He turned to Hallock. “Inspector, this line of questioning is premature. There are several other possibilities that could explain his absence. He may have called a cab. Have you checked the taxi companies?”

  “We have some people on it.”

  “What about the boat that picked him up?” Peter continued, all calmness and reason. “I’m sure you can find out who was on the bay at the time. Or suppose that after he called he had another heart attack. He may be in a hospital somewhere as a John Doe.”

  “We’ve been looking into all those possibilities,” Hallock said. “So far, nothing.”

  “Did you say he was in a hospital?” Diane said softly from the doorway. She looked frail and bruised in a white quilted robe. “That he’s alive?”

  “Honey, sit down,” Jean said. “This is going to be hard for you to hear.”

  “Then tell me fast,” she said, sinking into a kitchen chair.

  Jean sat beside her and put an arm around Diane’s shoulder. “Just before four A.M., Martin called here.” Diane gasped and closed her eyes, but said nothing. Jean continued. “He wanted to talk to you, but you were out cold. He said he had
to do something and then he’d come home. But he’s still not here.”

  “My God,” Diane said. “He survived. I can’t believe it. I’d given up hope. Did he sound all right? What did he say?”

  “He sounded fine. A boat rescued him and brought him ashore. He wouldn’t tell me who pushed him.”

  Diane turned to Hallock. “Where is he? Why can’t you find him?”

  “Mrs. Wingo, we’ve been searching for him since about four-thirty, and besides Ms. Applequist’s story, there’s no evidence that he came ashore.”

  “So,” Diane said slowly, “you’re suggesting that Jean made the whole thing up. Well, you can be sure that if she says he called, he called.”

  Hallock rubbed his chin. “Ma’am, I understand how you feel. But the evidence isn’t adding up.”

  “Inspector, I hope you won’t abandon the search for him on land just because you have doubts,” Diane said.

  “Mrs. Wingo—”

  “Because if necessary, I’ll call some of Martin’s friends and ask if they can help you free up more officers. You’ve seen their names on the guest list.”

  Peter and Jean looked at each other in surprise. They had never before heard Diane throw Martin’s weight around.

  Hallock looked grim. “You can call whoever you like, Mrs. Wingo. We’re already doing everything we possibly can.”

  “I’m sure you are, Inspector. Now excuse me while I get dressed.” She stood and walked carefully out of the room.

  CHAPTER 6

  Inspector Hallock went home, leaving an officer in a patrol car in front of the house. Jean took a shower and put on a pair of Martin’s sweat pants and one of his T-shirts.

  Diane paced nervously, staring out the front window, jumping at the sound of every car that drove by, every phone call, every knock on the door.

  Peter, in tuxedo pants and a rumpled white shirt, sat at the dining room table on phone duty, fielding calls from concerned friends and nosy reporters. Frank arrived soon after Peter called him; he’d cut himself shaving and looked exhausted. Jean let him in the door and gave him a hug.

  “Any sign of him?” he asked.