by Glenn Ickler
“Well, you can’t do it over the side,” I said.
“Wouldn’t bother me,” Roxie said.
“I’m not worried about you,” I said. “It’s the other boats.” One of them had given up and departed, but two were still close enough to require discretion, especially the one that carried a woman and a little girl.
“There’s a point sticking out on the south end of the island,” Al said. “How about we putz around behind that to where those boats can’t see us? Maybe there’ll even be a place we can land and I can go pee in the woods.”
“Okay. Reel in your line,” I said.
“Can I sit up now?” Roxie asked.
“Not until we get around the point and out of sight,” I said. “You’ll have the boat with two guys following us if you flash those titties.”
“Maybe I can line up some business for tonight.”
“Not while I’m running the boat. Keep those hooters down.”
Al reeled his line in and I opened the throttle gradually so the roar of the motor wouldn’t attract attention to our new course. We eventually reached cruising speed and I took us around the point and turned to run parallel with the shore on that side of the island. There were no boats in sight so I told Roxie to turn around and watch ahead of us for obstacles or shallow water. She knelt on the bow seat facing forward with her bare breasts sticking out, like the figurehead on the prow of an old-time sailing ship.
The shoreline of the island looked too rocky to risk a landing. Al was asking me to slow down so he could pee over the side when I spotted a small patch of open sand. “Keep your fly zipped,” I said, pointing toward the miniature beach. “It looks like we could slip in there.”
“Hurry up and do it or my fly is going to get wet,” Al said.
I swung the bow toward the strip of sand. “Here we go, just like D-Day, except nobody is shooting at us.”
“Yeah, only this is P-Day and the danger is from within.”
“You guys are just plain nuts,” Roxie said.
“Don’t worry about us. Just keep your eyes open for rocks and stuff,” I said.
“I’m watching,” she said. And then she screamed, “Turn right. Quick.”
Ignoring the grammatical malfunction, I turned right quickly, and we skimmed past the tip of a rock six inches below the surface on the left side. “Good call,” I said.
“I told you I’m watching,” Roxie said.
We reached the beach without any further emergencies. I cut the motor and lifted the propeller out of the water about ten feet before the bow hit sand and we slid to a stop. We were actually still moving when Roxie leaped out over the bow and dropped her bikini bottom onto the sand. “Me first,” she yelled, running naked into the trees. “I gotta pee worse than you do.”
Al clambered out and trotted to a different part of the woods. I took my time getting out of the boat and dragging it a couple of feet further onto the sand. Although I could feel nature’s beckoning, the call wasn’t urgent enough to require leaving the beach before Roxie came back to get her bikini bottom.
Soon she appeared, dodging rocks and fallen sticks on tiptoe like a barefoot naked nymph. She picked up the swatch of yellow and waved it at me. “On or off?” she asked. Before I could reply the cell phone in my pocket played its tune. I pulled it out and checked the caller ID. It was Mom. I punched the button to answer.
“Leave it off for all I care,” I said to Roxie.
“Leave what off?” said my mother.
“That wasn’t for you,” I said. “There is another, um . . . there are other people here.”
“What are they leaving off?” she asked. In full frontal nudity, Roxie was walking toward me swaying her hips from side to side. She was displaying a complete bikini wax job with a gleaming silver stud decorating the denuded area.
“Uh, the radio,” I said to Mom. “One of them asked about playing the portable radio.”
“Where are you?”
“Al and I are fishing,” I said. A more detailed and accurate response would have included the words “dangerously close to a naked female.” Roxie was almost upon me, waving the bikini bottom above her head and rotating her physical bottom in a manner that inspired my manhood to respond and beads of sweat to emerge all across my forehead.
“Your message said you’d call me again but I haven’t heard from you,” Mom said.
“Look, Mom, I can’t talk right now,” I said. “I’m trying to hold a fishing rod and steer the boat and I’ll drop something into the lake, probably my phone. I’ll call you back in a little while, okay?” Roxie pressed her naked tits against my shoulder, giggled and kissed my unoccupied ear.
“Was that a woman laughing?” Mom asked.
“It was the radio. Al turned it on. Say hi to Grandma.” I shut off the phone and tried to push Roxie away. She clamped her teeth onto my earlobe and pulled the bikini bottom over the top of my head and down over my eyes. I shut my eyes and I was trying to peel the bikini off when I heard Al’s voice. “Having fun, you two?”
“Get her off me,” I said. The bikini slid up and off, and when I opened my eyes I saw that Al had both hands clamped around Roxie’s waist, trying to pull her away from me. Luckily, she released the dental grip my earlobe before he gave a yank that sent them both sprawling onto the sand, Al on his butt and Roxie in his lap. The thought of taking a picture with the cell phone in my hand flashed briefly through my mind but I decided that provoking my rescuer could be counterproductive.
Al pushed Roxie off and she rolled in the sand, still clutching the bikini. They both sat up and looked at each other. Roxie was laughing but Al said, “Quit playing games and put your clothes on. I found something in the woods that we need to look at.”
Ten
Excavating
What are we going to look at?” I asked as Al started toward the trees.
“You’ll see when we get there,” he said.
“Wait for me,” Roxie said. “I gotta get my shoes.” She had put on the bikini bottom and was running on tiptoes across the sand toward the boat.
Al and I waited at the edge of the woods and watched her slip on the sneakers and snuggle her boobs into the bikini top. When she caught up to us Al continued leading the way through the trees and underbrush. About thirty feet in from the beach he stopped and pointed to a small patch of ground that had recently been disturbed.
“Something or somebody was digging here,” Al said. “I almost started to piss on it.”
“It looks like somebody might have buried something,” I said.
“What would anybody bury here?” Roxie said.
“No idea,” Al said.
“Maybe somebody caught too many fish and buried what was over the limit,” I said.
“If that’s what it is, the fishing must have been a hell of a lot better on this side of the island than it was on ours,” Al said.
“One way to find out,” I said. I dropped to my knees and began removing hands full of sandy soil from the burial spot. Al got down beside me and started to dig while Roxie stood over us watching the excavation project.
I looked up at Roxie. “You could help, too,” I said. “Busy hands are happy hands.”
“No way I’m getting down on my bare knees on that rough ground,” she said. “I’ll be your rooting section.”
“That’s good because I just hit a root,” Al said. He scraped away another inch of sand. “No, wait. It isn’t a root. It’s something bigger.”
He had uncovered a patch of khaki canvas fabric. We both continued to scrape and dig and the object grew in size until we realized what it was.
“It’s a lifejacket,” we said, speaking in unison for the third time that day.
“Looks like an expensive one, like you’d get from a place like L.L. Bean,” Al said
.
We resumed scraping, our hands moving so fast that we created a sandstorm until the entire jacket, which was folded double, was uncovered. A small REI logo was showing above a breast pocket. And on the pocket flap were three letters printed with a black magic marker.
“Are those somebody’s initials?” Roxie said. Bare knees or not, she was on the ground beside me. “What are they?”
“A.R.G.,” Al said. “‘ARG,’ like all the pirates say.”
“Or could they stand for Alex R. Gordon?” I said.
“They could,” he said. “If his middle name started with ‘R.’”
“The guy that drowned?” Roxie said.
“That’s the one,” I said.
“Jeez! What’s his lifejacket doing here?” she asked.
“A very good question with no very good answer,” Al said. He grabbed a corner of the lifejacket and started to pull it out of its resting place.
“Don’t move it,” I said. “Leave it just the way we found it and don’t put any more of your fingerprints on it. We need to get hold of the sheriff.”
“It’s Sunday,” Al said. “You can’t get him, remember?”
“If I tell Shirley what we’ve found, I bet we can talk to the sheriff. I’m glad I plugged his office number into my phone this morning. Why don’t you shoot some pix with your cell phone while I make the call?”
“I can do a lot better than cell phone pix,” Al said. He stood up, pulled a small, flat digital camera out of a pants pocket and started shooting.
“Lucky you brought that camera,” Roxie said.
“It’s not luck. It’s called being prepared. I’m like a Boy Scout. I never go anywhere without this little guy.”
“Sheriff’s office, Shirley speaking,” said the voice on my cell phone. “How can I help you?”
“Hi, Shirley, it’s reporter Warren Mitchell again,” I said. “This time my problem is a little more urgent.” I told her what we’d found and she agreed that I should talk to the sheriff. But she still wouldn’t give me his home number. She said she would call him and have him call me. I gave her my number and ended the call. Less than three minutes later I was talking to Sheriff Val Holmberg.
The sheriff listened to my story without interrupting. When I’d finished, he said, “That’s pretty damn weird. You say the initials are the same as the guy who drowned?”
“The first and last are right; I don’t know about the middle one,” I said. “And yesterday our guide told us that he’d seen Alex wearing a lifejacket that didn’t come from the resort on Thursday, the day before he died. The guide was wondering why he wasn’t wearing it when he fell out of the boat Friday morning.”
“At first I was wondering why the victim wasn’t wearing a lifevest myself,” Holmberg said. “Then I figured he was one of those smartass government guys who don’t think the laws are meant for them. But what the hell is his vest doing buried out there?”
“I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure Alex didn’t put it here,” I said.
“Then who the hell did?”
“Looks like your accident investigation just became a little more complicated.”
“Well, now wait a minute. We don’t know for sure that it’s his jacket.”
“I’d say the odds are pretty good that it is. Are you coming out to look at it?”
“I guess I got no choice,” he said, sounding less than enthusiastic. “Don’t you guys move anything or touch anything. I’ll round up a couple of deputies and we’ll see you as soon as we can get there.”
“How long will it be?” I asked.
“By the time we get to the lake, get the boat in the water and get out to the island, it’ll be at least an hour.”
“Good. That means I have time to call my mother.”
“What? Call your mother?” He sounded like that was the craziest idea he’d ever heard.
“Don’t you know it’s Mother’s Day?” I said.
“Oh, yeah, that’s right. I sent my mother flowers a couple of days ago.”
Now why hadn’t I thought of that?
* * *
We went back to the beach and sat on the warm sand to wait for the sheriff. Roxie took off the bikini and stretched out naked on her belly with her shorts rolled up for padding under her chin. Al called Carol to tell her about our new discovery. I got on the phone to my mother and grandmother. The former made me feel guilty for not calling earlier and the latter gave me holy hell for not seeking heaven by going to church.
“Maybe I did go to church,” I said. “How can you be so sure that I didn’t?”
“Because you called here and left a message during the time that all normal churches have services,” Grandma Goodie said. No sense trying to fool the old girl. “You need to start thinking seriously about saving your soul, Warnie Baby.”
“I’m counting on your prayers to do that,” I said.
“Well, I won’t be around forever, Warnie Baby. It’s time you thought about that.”
I didn’t want to think about that. I told her I loved her and ended the call. Al was still talking to Carol, so I called Martha Todd and told her what we’d dug up.
“I hope that doesn’t mean you’ll have to stay up there even longer,” Martha said.
I hadn’t thought about that. “Me, too,” I said. “Maybe we’ll find out that it isn’t Alex’s lifejacket. Or maybe there will be an explanation that doesn’t lead to a homicide investigation.”
“Do you really think either of those maybes is a real possibility?”
“Not really. But maybe I can cover the story from the office by phone.”
“I certainly hope so. We’re getting married in six days, remember? Plus I’ve got to deal with Grandma Mendes’s legal problem this week. I need you here for moral support.”
“Is that all you need me for?”
“You know darn well what I need you for. And Sherlock misses you, too.”
“Is he still snoozing on my pillow?”
“Twenty-three hours a day,” Martha said. “I’ll never get all the cat hair off that pillowcase.”
When our conversation ended, it occurred to me how surreal it had been to talk to Martha while staring steadily at the soft pink mounds of Roxie’s bare ass. Next it occurred to me that as much as I enjoyed the view, it wouldn’t be appropriate to share it with company.
“Hey, Roxie, it’s time to put your shirt and shorts on,” I said. “The sheriff could be here any time now.”
“Would you be embarrassed if I was still tanning my tush and titties?”
“Yes, and you would be, too. I don’t think you’re a total idiot.”
“Wow. You sure know how to flatter a girl.”
“You know what I mean,” I said.
Roxie rose and, with a series of grand flourishes, brushed the sand off various parts of her body and put on both bits of the bikini. “The sun’s getting low anyway,” she said as she shook the sand out of her shorts. She stepped into them and walked back to the boat to get her shirt.
“Carol says hi,” Al said as he put his phone away.
“Is that all she says?” I asked.
“She also says we better not get stuck up here covering a murder investigation.”
“That’s funny, Martha said basically the same thing.”
“So what are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that I wish you’d never had to take that piss.”
“Me, too, but that’s water over the dam.”
“Really? I thought it was water under the trees.”
The sound of a distant boat motor turned our attention toward the lake. The Crow Wing County sheriff’s boat carrying three men was rounding the point. We walked to the water’s edge to wave them toward our narrow wedge of b
each. For the first time, we saw the V-shaped mark of another boat’s bow carved into the sand next to ours.
Eleven
Hush Money
The available space for landing on the beach was wider to the left of our boat than the opening on the right, so the left side was where the sheriff’s driver wanted to land. Unfortunately that was also the side bearing the mark of a previous landing. With much yelling, waving and pointing, we persuaded the new arrivals to take the spot on the right, which forced the driver to squeeze into a tight space between our boat and a large, jagged rock that jutted out from the beach. He made it with inches to spare on both sides.
With his boat safely on the sand, the sheriff’s first question was obvious. “Why in hell are so determined to run us onto that rock?”
“We’re trying to preserve evidence,” I said. “Come and look.” Sheriff Val Holmberg climbed over the bow of his boat onto the beach and followed me. I pointed to the groove in the sand, which Al was photographing. “That mark was probably made by the person who buried the lifejacket.”
Holmberg walked slowly along the beach, studying the mark and the area around it. “That footprint one of yours?” he asked, pointing to an almost indiscernible disturbance in the sand.
“No, I don’t think so,” I said. “We all jumped out on the other side of our boat and never even looked over here until we came back to the water to wave at you.”
“Not much to go on. I’ll have my forensics guy photograph the boat mark and the footprint but I don’t think they’ll tell us a whole hell of a lot. The footprint is weak and boat bottoms are pretty much all alike. Now, where’s this buried lifevest?”
“Follow me,” I said. I led him into the woods and as he and his two deputies followed me through the trees he said, “I see you boys brought along a little playmate for the afternoon.”
“She invited herself along.”
“I’ll bet she did. What’s she charging? Is she giving you a special two-for-one rate?”
“It’s not what it looks like,” I said. “We’re not buying and she’s not selling.”