Rising Tide

by Wayne Stinnett

  “Is that them?” she asked, hurrying back to the kitchen.

  I dumped another ten claws into the colander. “I think so. It has markings on the side, but it was too far away to be sure.”

  Grabbing the binoculars that were hanging by the door, I went back out onto the deck and around to the southeast corner. Savannah was right behind me, with both dogs trailing her.

  Looking out past Mac’s island, I saw the boat. “It’s a Monroe County Sheriff’s boat,” I said. “Four people aboard—Andersen, a uniformed deputy, a woman, and the boy.”

  “Stop calling him that,” Savannah said. “His name’s Alberto Mar.”

  “We think that’s his name,” I corrected her. “For all we know, that could be the name of the guy who built the boat.”

  Savannah shielded her eyes with her hand, looking out toward the far waters. “It’s his name.”

  I lowered the binos and glanced over at her. She looked anxious.

  Then she turned and caught me staring at her. “I need to get lunch ready,” she said, and started to turn.

  “Savvy, wait.”

  She stopped and faced me, her blue eyes a little glassy with moisture.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to get too attached to this kid. He’s probably only going to be with us for a little while.”

  “He just needs a little stability,” she said.

  “Stability? We’re taking him with us tomorrow. And when we fly to Bimini on Friday. That’s not stable.”

  “Stability doesn’t mean stationary,” she said. “I’m talking more about people than places.”

  “Still, I don’t want you to get too attached.”

  “He’s not a puppy, Jesse.”

  I dropped my head in defeat. It was too late. “Go ahead and get lunch ready. I’ll go down and give them a hand tying up.” I slapped my thigh. “Come on, Finn.”

  As I turned, she touched my arm. “You saw his face, too. You saw how terrified he was.”

  “Yeah,” I replied. “I saw.”

  “We have what it takes to help him,” Savannah said. “Two rational, stable people. And we have this beautiful place with so much for him to do here. Good things.”

  “I just don’t want you to get hurt,” I warned. “Like I said, he probably won’t be staying with us for very long.”

  “I know you don’t want me hurt,” she said, hugging me tightly. “That’s just one of the many things I love about you.”

  Savannah went back inside, and Finn and I started down the steps, taking our time. Finn was tall enough that I could scratch the furry spot behind his ear without bending over.

  “Why’d you let me get into this?” I asked him.

  I stood at the end of the pier as the patrol boat turned into my channel. The driver looked hesitant until he saw the deep turning basin in front of the house and the massive doors below the deck.

  Alberto sat with the woman in front of the console, on the forward-facing seat. He looked hesitant, but unafraid. She looked overbearing.

  “I didn’t know you owned a dog,” Andersen said, handing me a line.

  “Two dogs,” I said, then looked at the boy. “This one’s called Finn, like Huckleberry Finn. Do you like dogs?”

  The boy shrugged.

  The woman looked at Finn with some trepidation.

  “Finn likes everyone,” I said to Alberto. “And both of our dogs are highly trained. Tell him to sit.”

  Alberto looked at the woman, who just kept staring at Finn. Then he looked at Andersen, who nodded.

  “Sit, Finn,” he said.

  Finn glanced up to me and I nodded, releasing him to obey the boy’s command. He promptly sat on my foot, which made Alberto laugh.

  That broke the woman’s stare and she looked down at Alberto.

  “I think he likes you,” I said. “And our other dog, Woden…well, he likes anyone Finn likes.”

  The woman rose and extended a hand. “My name is Emily Delgado. I work for the Florida Department of Children and Families.”

  I looked at Andersen, arching an eyebrow as I shook her hand.

  “The Sheriff’s Department had to involve them,” he said. “Miss Delgado just wanted to check for herself that the conditions are adequate.”

  I squelched my normal response to authority.

  “Well, our house is a one-bedroom,” I told her. “But my wife has made a few changes and Alberto will be quite comfortable. We’re having stone crab for lunch. Will you join us?”

  “Thanks, no,” she replied, stepping up to the dock a bit unsteadily. “I have other appointments.” She turned to Alberto. “Come along, young man.”

  Maybe they hadn’t been calling him Alberto at the hospital.

  I winked at the kid. “That just leaves more for us.”

  Finn punctuated my remark with a bark, which startled Emily. “Are you sure it doesn’t bite?”

  “He bites a lot,” I replied. “But he only bites people if I tell him to.”

  Her glare told me she didn’t appreciate my wit.

  “Finn and Woden are protection-trained,” I said, then looked down at my big yellow lab. “Take Alberto up to the house, Finn.”

  He rose and moved alongside the boat, waiting.

  Alberto climbed over the side, a lot less clumsily than the welfare lady. He put his hand on Finn’s head and Finn leaned into him, turning his big head so the boy’s hand was on his ear.

  “He likes to have the area behind his ears scratched,” I told him.

  Alberto gave Finn an ear scratching, then Finn took a slow step. When Alberto moved to go along with him, he picked up his pace, and the two of them started toward the steps.

  “That’s a pretty good trick,” the uniformed deputy said.

  “No trick,” I replied. “Dogs understand a lot of words, besides simple commands, and ours are intelligent enough to put words they understand together and figure it out. He knows the words take, up, and house, and I guess he just figured out on his own which one of you was Alberto.”

  “Your house is very pretty,” Emily said. “But I will have to inspect.”

  “Welcome to our island,” Savannah announced from the top of the steps, Woden standing beside her. “Please come on up and get out of the sun.”

  “I’ll wait on the boat,” the deputy said, taking a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. “Okay to smoke here?”

  “Your lungs,” I said. “Pollute ’em all you want, just don’t put anything in the water.”

  The other two joined me and we followed Alberto and Finn up the steps, catching up to them quickly. The boy stopped halfway up and looked at Savannah.

  “Are you the lady who found me?”

  Savannah’s face registered her surprise, and she squelched a gasp. “You remember that? Yes, yes. Jesse and I found you and got your boat to land.”

  He looked back at me and I nodded.

  “Come on,” Savannah said. “I want to show you something.”

  He hurried up the steps, with Finn right at his side.

  Woden must have picked up on Finn’s attitude toward Alberto and his little stub of a tail wagged a welcome.

  “That’s a Rottweiler,” Emily said, hesitantly.

  I knew there were people who had irrational fears of big dogs, and even some whose fears were rational. The sight of a large Rott was all it took to send them into a panic.

  When Alberto reached the top of the steps, both dogs danced around him, vying for attention.

  “You don’t have anything to fear about our dogs,” I reassured the woman. “They’re like toddlers, just a little bigger.”

  Once we reached the deck, Savannah put a hand on Alberto’s shoulder and guided him to the other side, which looked out over the island’s interior.

  “Wow!” he exclaimed, climbing up on the rail for a better look.

  “You’re free to explore anywhere you want,” Savannah said. “Finn and Woden can show you around.”

  “Can I go
look now?”

  “Sure,” I replied. “Just be careful out on the other pier. Can you swim?”

  I realized it was a dumb question, even as the words were coming out of my mouth.

  Alberto turned and looked at me, a sadness in his eyes. “I don’t know.”

  “No problem,” I said. “We can find that out later easy enough. Finn’s a great swim coach. Go ahead and look around.”

  He and the dogs disappeared down the back steps and I turned to Emily. “He’s perfectly safe. And you probably have some questions he doesn’t need to hear.”

  “Shall we go inside?” Savannah asked. “You’re staying for lunch, right?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Andersen said. “Miss Delgado needs to get back and I have a lot to do.”

  “And Miss Delgado is…”

  “I’m with the Florida Department of Children and Families,” Emily replied, extending her hand.

  Savannah shook it and we went inside. The welfare lady looked around. I wasn’t worried she’d find any fault, other than the bed in the living room.

  “This will be the boy’s bed?” she asked, walking toward it.

  “Yes,” Savannah replied. “Alberto can stay as long as he likes.”

  “I’m only agreeing to this because Detective Andersen thinks the boy might be in danger.”

  I could see Savannah’s jaw muscles tighten. She obviously didn’t like this woman. I knew I didn’t much care for her institutional manner, myself. She might have gotten into her line of work to make a difference, but that had likely worn off.

  “His name’s Alberto,” I said, saving Savannah the confrontation. “At least that’s what we’ll call him until we know better. I can assure you, he’s perfectly safe with us.”

  “Detective Andersen gave me a brief bio on you, Mr. McDermitt, but it only went back twenty years. He said you were a charter fisherman, but you don’t look like one, and if you don’t mind my saying, this island looks a lot more substantial than a fisherman could afford.”

  I knew what she was angling toward. A lot of boat captains scored big bucks bringing contraband into South Florida.

  “Did he also tell you that I retired from the Marine Corps about twenty years ago, or that I worked with Homeland Security after that?”

  “Er—no, he didn’t.”

  “And I bet he didn’t say anything about my dad and grandfather also being Marines, did he? My dad was killed in Vietnam when I was Alberto’s age.”

  I was getting angry and needed to dial it back.

  “Look, Miss Delgado, I was raised by my grandparents and was their sole heir. I inherited enough to buy this island and my charter boat. I’m partners in a security firm in Key Largo, which does some training and consultations with Miami-Dade PD. I don’t do drugs and I certainly don’t smuggle them into the country.”

  “I wasn’t implying—”

  “Perhaps not,” I said, cutting her off. “But you were thinking it.”

  She looked toward Andersen for support.

  “To be honest,” he said, “I didn’t dig very deep into the McDermitts’ backgrounds. The sheriff himself vouched for them.”

  “Then I guess there’s no problem with them,” she said. “But a bed in the living area is out of the question.”

  “By the end of the day, I’ll build a wall around it,” I said. “It will be a small room, but Alberto will have privacy.”

  “We’re not placing him here permanently.”

  I grinned at Savannah. “Then my wife will have that walk-in closet she’s wanted. Look, there are four houses on my island, and just below our feet is a boat with two staterooms. Alberto has plenty of room for privacy.”

  She looked at each of us in turn, ending with Andersen. “Then I suppose he can stay.”

  Andersen turned toward me and offered his hand. “Thank you, Mr. McDermitt. We’ll get out of your hair now.”

  I walked them down to the waiting boat as Savannah went down the other steps to find Alberto.

  “One last thing, Mr. McDermitt,” the welfare lady said, when we reached the patrol boat.

  “What’s that, Miss Delgado?”

  “If someone found out the boy was staying with you and your wife, and wanted to hurt him, how hard would it be to find this place?”

  “Look around,” I said, waving a hand to the south. “From the water, all these keys look the same. Unless someone had my GPS coordinates, they could search for days and not find this place.”

  “I can attest to that,” the deputy added. “I know these waters very well and had no idea anyone lived out here. I didn’t even see this dock until we got within a quarter mile.”

  “Besides,” I said, “finding my island and getting ashore are two vastly different things.”

  After Andersen’s boat left, I went to the foot of the pier and waded through the ankle-deep water to shore. I found Savannah in the middle of the clearing with Alberto and the dogs.

  The boy was throwing sticks for Finn and Woden to fetch. Finn was better at the game than Woden, who liked to hang onto the stick and play tug-of-war instead of dropping it at the thrower’s feet.

  “Are y’all hungry?” I asked.

  “I am,” Savannah replied. “How about you, Alberto?”

  “I guess so,” he replied, shrugging his shoulders.

  Then let’s go up to the house and have lunch,” I offered. “When I was your age, I was always hungry.”

  He frowned up at me, his brows knitted in thought. “I don’t remember anything before they took me to the hospital. But I’ve been hungry since I woke up there.”

  I noticed that he spoke quite clearly and used proper grammar. That was unusual in kids today. Wherever he came from, someone had taken the time to teach him well.

  That made me think of something else. It was April. He should have been in school. Savannah had home-schooled Flo. They’d called it boat-schooling. I made a mental note to make sure that there was learning material on Ambrosia if he was still with us at the end of the week.

  Alberto didn’t pay a lot of attention to the salad. He nibbled on some carrot sticks and tried a couple of slices of cucumber. But after I showed him how to crack open the big crab claws, he murdered half a dozen of them.

  “Did you call Chyrel?” Savannah asked, as Alberto and I helped move the plates and utensils to the sink.

  “Yeah, she said she’d call Julie and ask her what size Trey wears. They’re about the same size.”

  “How long am I going to be here?” Alberto asked.

  I knelt down and looked him in the eye. “Here on our island?”

  He nodded.

  “Just tonight, for now. In the morning, we’re going for a boat ride.”

  “Like in the police boat? They let me turn the lights on.”

  “My boat’s a lot bigger,” I said. “And Savannah’s boat is even bigger than mine.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Really?”

  I grinned. “Yeah, really. And both boats even have two bedrooms, a kitchen, and everything like a house.”

  I could see in his eyes that he was struggling to comprehend. I didn’t know much of anything about amnesia. I often wondered why a person afflicted with it could talk, since that was something learned over time. I assumed all memory wasn’t lost.

  Did Alberto even know what a bedroom and kitchen were?

  “Want to go see them?” I pointed toward the stairs. “My boat’s just down there.”

  “You boys go ahead,” Savannah said. “It’ll just take me a few minutes to finish up here.” She scraped all the shells into a small pot and handed it to me. “You can dump these while you’re down there.”

  I rose and went with Alberto to the steps, where I flicked on the lights for the dock area below the house.

  Alberto scooted down ahead of me but stopped halfway.

  “Whoa!” he exclaimed again, gazing at all the polished fiberglass and chrome rails.

  He hurried to the bottom of the steps and
stood alongside the Revenge, looking up at her high bow flare. “Maravillosa,” he breathed, scanning the length of the forty-five-foot hull.

  I dumped the shells from the pot and left it at the foot of the stairs. Then I led him to the stern and helped him over the gunwale into the cockpit.

  “This is my fishing boat,” I said, then pointed at the fighting chair in the middle of the cockpit. “And that’s called a fighting chair. It’s where the fisherman sits to catch the really big fish.”

  He looked up at me, quizzically. “How big?”

  “Bigger than you,” I replied. “Sometimes bigger than me.”

  I opened the door to the salon, and we went inside.

  Alberto stood just inside the hatch, looking around. The interior of the Revenge often left visitors speechless. It was done in light maple and holly, with tons of natural lighting.

  Even though Alberto didn’t have anything to reference the experience to, I could see that he was awestruck.

  “This room is called a salon,” I said. “Sort of like a living room in a house. And what we call a kitchen in the house is a galley on a boat.” I went past him to the refrigerator and opened it. “Care for a juice?”

  “Yes, please,” he replied.

  Good manners, too.

  I gave him one of Jimmy’s mango juice bottles. He thanked me and struggled to open it. Finally, he looked up to me for help. I twisted the cap off and handed both back to him.

  “Always recap a drink when you’re on a boat,” I said. “They’ll spill pretty easy.”

  He took a swallow and licked his lips, then recapped his juice.

  “Come on down here,” I said, flicking on the lights to the passageway and leading the way.

  Opening the first hatch on the right, I turned on the light. “Up in the house, you’d say this is a bathroom.”

  He looked up at me with recognition in his eyes. “What’s it called on a boat?”

  I smiled. He was a bright kid. “It’s called the head.”

  Turning, he opened the hatch on the opposite side and looked in. The guest stateroom had three single beds. The two lower ones could slide together to create a double, with a pull-down, Pullman-style berth above.