The Scuba Club

by Rene Fomby

  Espinosa clicked his tongue sharply, a strange and harsh sound that echoed off the hard walls of the cabin like castanets. “The next year or so? That sounds rather optimistic, given the circumstances.”

  “Oh? What do you mean?” Trevor asked, his eyes narrowing slightly.

  “Why don’t we start over at the beginning?” Espinosa suggested. “But this time let’s all just drop all the mierda, shall we?” He leaned in menacingly. “We know all about your financial situation, Mr. Johnson. About how your business is failing, how you’ve been relying on handouts from Katy to stay afloat.”

  “That’s not—”

  Espinosa cut him off. “We also know all about how her rather sizable fortune has been maintained in a separate estate ever since the day you two were married, and even this boat and the cars you drive are all titled in her name. So now, with Katy gone, you quite literally haven’t got a single penny to your name. You’re broke, Trevor Johnson. Flat broke.”

  That news hit Trevor like a brick to the head. “That’s not true!” he insisted. “Look, I don’t know where the hell you’ve been getting your information, but—”

  “Let’s cut to the chase, Trevor,” Gavin told him with a deep growl. “You’ve got just one chance in hell of surviving this encounter, and it starts with the truth. We’ve got a bead on your net worth down to the penny, and we also know all about the insurance policy and Katy’s will.”

  “Her will? What are you talking about? And what policy?”

  Trevor looked honestly confused at hearing this news, and Gavin decided on the spot that Katy had probably kept him completely in the dark about all of it. “You saying your wife didn’t tell you she’d taken out an insurance policy on her life? Or that she’d had your old friend Brett Cutler draw up a will for her?”

  “No. No. Uh, and Brett?” Trevor’s eyes went wide as he tried to process what he was hearing. “But—why would she need an insurance policy? Katy was rich. Filthy rich, actually. She didn’t even have a policy on our cars or the boat. She paid for them with cash.” He paused. “But, if she had a policy, and a will, I guess that addresses the issue of whether I’m poor, now. Plus with my half of her estate—”

  Gavin shared a telling look with Espinosa. “I don’t think you should be counting those chickens before they’re fried, Mr. Johnson. It appears Katy may have had different priorities as far as her money is concerned than you might think. As for her will and the beneficiary of her policy—I think you may wind up being a little underwhelmed by her generosity, is all I’m saying.”

  “But at least I’ve got my half of the estate,” Trevor protested, his eyes now pleading for some kind of confirmation that he hadn’t been left completely out in the cold.

  Gavin shook his head even as the final pieces started to click into place in his investigation into Katy’s death. “I’m afraid I can’t give you much advice as to the intricacies of wills and estates, that was never my strong suit in law school, but I think the legal term of art I do remember is that you are now well and totally screwed.”

  “But it also seems you didn’t know that,” Espinosa pointed out. “Which means that you were clearly counting on inheriting hundreds of millions, if not billions, from her estate. And that, my friend, serves up a pretty convincing and powerful motive for seeing her dead, especially given the problems that were eating away at the very heart of your marriage.”

  “Problems? What problems?” Trevor looked shaken to the bone, his face flushed and sweating and his eyes seeming to struggle at focusing on anything before him.

  Gavin leaned back heavily before delivering his coup de grâce. “Why, it’s really quite simple, Mr. Johnson. You’ve been screwing around on your wife.”

  43

  Trevor

  The accusation hit Trevor like yet another brick, but this time the blow landed ten times harder. “I—I’ve always been faithful—”

  Espinosa leaned in for the kill. “There may be a great many things and causes to which you’ve been faithful, Mr. Johnson, but your marriage is not one of them.” He tapped his notebook with his pencil. “We’ve got names, times, places, all the sordid and damning details,” he lied. “You’ve been a very naughty boy, and Katy caught you at it red handed. It’s clear she never really trusted you, but now she finally reached the end of her rope, cut you out of the money, kicked you out of her bed and jump started the process of kicking you right out the front door. Given the fact that you still thought you could cash in on at least half of her fortune if you moved quickly before she cut you out completely, that is more than motive enough for me to charge you with Katy Mulcahey’s murder.”

  Espinosa fumbled for the handcuffs he had stuffed in the small of his back, and that set Trevor scrambling to explain everything, the words flooding out of his mouth like a dam had suddenly broken.

  “It wasn’t like that! I mean, yeah, sure, I messed around on Katy. Who wouldn’t? Yeah, okay, on the outside she was all hot and desirable, but get her back home alone and it was like she might as well have been my spinster aunt. She moved me out of our bedroom—me, not her!—and shut me out of anything even remotely resembling romance. Had me begging for the smallest scrap of affection, or even the money to pay the bills for the business. Who wouldn’t feel like their balls had been cut off?”

  Gavin’s first thought was that Trevor’s squirmy protests weren’t helping his case one iota. Quite the opposite, actually. “So Katy had you feeling completely emasculated, is that what I’m hearing?” he asked.

  “Yeah! Uh, I mean, no. I mean, what I’m saying is, it wasn’t a one way street is all. I get you judging me about maybe cheating on her once or twice.” Trevor didn’t notice Gavin’s amused smirk at that lie. “But the truth of the matter is, I’ve got rock solid proof that Katy had her own guys on the side. Or at least one guy. And the proof of that is in her kid, Paxton.”

  “Her kid?” Espinosa asked, suddenly intrigued.

  “Yeah, Paxton is her kid,” Trevor answered. “Not mine. Not by a long shot.”

  “How do you figure that?” Gavin asked, pushing hard for more fodder for the indictment.

  Trevor bit down hard, his arms crossed tightly over his chest, his hands clenched white on each bicep. “My mother used to have a saying, the first kid can come at any time, but the second one takes nine months.”

  Gavin frowned, trying to understand what Trevor was saying. “I’m afraid I’m not following you. Are you saying Paxton didn’t take nine months?”

  Trevor went silent, chewing on the inside of his cheek, trying to work out what details he should and shouldn’t share with the two agents. Finally he spoke up.

  “You know that Katy had almost unlimited access to money. That was true ever since I knew her, but after her father’s death she no longer even had to ask him or anyone else to get pretty much anything and everything her little heart desired. And part of that entailed underwriting various trips here and there for her and her friends. Kind of like what we were doing for Billie and the others on this trip. And I never once questioned what she was up to. Well, as you are both now obviously well aware, I was never in any position to question how she wanted to spend her money. It’s not like she ever had a job to tie her down, and until a few years ago she didn’t even have to worry about someone watching the baby, so she would just pack up and take off whenever the mood struck her.”

  “So what does any of this have to do with Paxton?” Espinosa asked impatiently.

  “I’m getting to that,” Trevor snapped, then seemed to realize the folly of his angry response and rubbed a hand across his forehead to settle his nerves. “I’m sorry, it’s all pretty raw right now. I mean, Katy—”

  “We get that,” Gavin assured him, “but please answer the question. What does any of this have to do with Paxton?”

  “Yeah, sorry. As I was saying, Katy would take off on these random trips with almost no prior warning, and when one day she told me she had to go to
Vegas on a girls’ trip, a bachelorette party for some chick I’d never even heard of before, I said sure. You know, what else could I say, it was her money, right? Anyway, she took off on a Friday and got home late Sunday night. I never knew exactly what time she crawled home because I was sleeping in one of our guest rooms, which had become a semi-permanent arrangement by that point. I only knew she was back when I saw her luggage sitting inside the entry when I went downstairs to make breakfast the next morning.”

  Espinosa was starting to fidget with his handcuffs again, and Gavin twirled his right hand, urging Trevor to move the story along.

  “Okay. The thing is, somewhere around a month after the trip Katy invited me back to her bedroom and attacked me in a way I hadn’t seen since the first days of our marriage. Mind you, I wasn’t complaining, at least not at the time, but it was all kind of a one-and-done thing, then we were back to our old pattern and I was exiled back to the guest bedroom. Where I’ve remained ever since, without a single exception. That was the last time Katy and I ever shared a bed.”

  Gavin’s face showed his own growing impatience, and he checked his watch quickly, wondering when the harbor pilot was due to arrive. It was abundantly clear by now that Trevor Johnson was destined to be a passenger on the ferry heading back to the harbor, as an involuntary and almost certainly long-term guest of Gavin’s newest colleague, Espinosa.

  He leaned forward, one hand unconsciously going to the bulge under his left breast pocket. “With all due respect, Mr. Johnson, you’re not the first husband who’s ever had to deal with the whole ice queen business. Happens every day, with I don’t know how many marriages.” Including my own first marriage, Gavin noted silently to himself. “So unless you have something earthshattering to share with us right about now—”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you!” Trevor shouted, and again instantly regretted the outburst. “I’m sorry, it’s just that, Paxton was born about eight months after Katy and I had, you know…”

  “So, what you’re saying is, Paxton was born premature,” Espinosa suggested, reaching back again for his handcuffs.

  “Well, at least that’s the story Katy told about it. But the thing is, Paxton weighed in at a little under eight pounds at birth, pretty damned big considering his mother’s petite size. And his birthday is almost exactly nine months to the day after her girls’ trip to Vegas.”

  “Meaning?” Gavin asked, as if he couldn’t easily work through the implications himself.

  The panic finally seemed to have disappeared from Trevor’s face, and in its place was a fierce look of resolve and anger. “Meaning I’m not really Paxton’s father, after all. His real dad is whoever Katy managed to hook up with on her trip out to Sin City. I may have cheated on her once or twice, but at least I didn’t try to foist off another woman’s bastard baby on her as her own child.”

  Gavin gave him a wry smile in return. “Yeah, no one can ever say you lack integrity, that’s for sure.”

  44

  Salon

  They exiled Trevor back to his cabin until the harbor pilot arrived so they could review the shocking new revelations in private.

  “I don’t really see how it changes anything,” Espinosa insisted. “Everything else clicks into place perfectly, plus he clearly expected to inherit half her estate after she died. That’s one mighty powerful incentive for killing her. And unless you know of somebody else stashed away on this boat that we haven’t interviewed already, none of the other passengers makes any sense as the killer.”

  Gavin was busy reviewing his notes to see if he had missed something, but so far he had to agree with his colleague, even if somewhat reluctantly. Trevor was realistically the only possible suspect they had. “There’s still the chance that someone was working with him, that he wasn’t trying to pull this off alone. I mean, think about Casey. Sure, it would have taken an act of God for him to have sneaked off and killed Katy, but he could have—”

  “Tried to murder you in the middle of making mad passionate love to his girlfriend Jillian? Is that what you’re saying? Or is dear sweet Jillian in on it as well? No, Agent Larson, I’m not buying into Trevor dragging any of his friends into his evil plan. First of all, if you’re going to involve a third party in the murder of your wife, the last thing you want to do is to risk shining a spotlight on that person as a possible suspect. No, you’re going to do everything in your power to make sure your accomplice stays completely anonymous, out of the picture entirely. Second, if you’re willing to drag a friend into the whole conspiracy, why come up with a plan that’s so exotic? Why not just hire a hitman to pop a bullet in her head in a seemingly random killing somewhere, make it look like a carjacking or something? If Johnson felt he had close to a billion in serious money at stake, trusting a buddy to help him pull off an intricately orchestrated plan on a may-or-may-not happen night dive just doesn’t make all that much sense. Especially given Katy’s money. The stakes are way too high here to take any risks of word getting out. And Trevor Johnson is way too smart to not have figured that out as well.”

  “No, you’re right, Tony, this had to have been a one-man job for sure. And you’re also right about Johnson. A scheme this perfectly drawn up, it took a real Brainiac to work out all the angles. It was a perfect murder, one you very seldom see these days.” He held up one hand and started ticking off the points on his fingers. “Out on a night dive with your best buddies, with almost no way to sort out Jack from Jill given the conditions and all the other dive groups hanging around, with a wife who everyone knows always likes to bring up the distant rear, all while swimming along the edge of an undersea cliff that drops off all the way to China, in a strong current that could grab a limp body like a bat out of hell and drag it off to the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, and on top of all that with a storm brewing up above that would make any search and rescue effort nearly impossible? I’ve got to hand it to him, the plan was absolutely perfect.”

  “Until it wasn’t,” Espinosa pointed out. “We got lucky with this one, Agent Larson. Damned lucky. If those American tourists hadn’t risked the weather to take one last dive the next day, and if Mulcahey’s body hadn’t hung up on that coral outcropping at almost the absolute limit of anyone’s visibility, and if she hadn’t been wearing those yellow swim fins instead of the usual blue or black, you and I would be home right now sharing a glass of Cabernet with our women, instead of sitting here staring into the face of a full-on hurricane and praying to God we can get someone to steer this boat safely to shore before we join her at the bottom of the sea. And Trevor Johnson would probably be back home trying to figure out what happened to all the millions he thought were coming his way when Mulcahey died.”

  “Yeah, either way this story wasn’t going to turn out well for him, that’s for sure.” Gavin sighed. “Well, I can’t come up with any realistic argument that ties any of this to the other six members of this cozy little scuba club, so I guess it’s time to wrap this one up. You gonna handcuff him now, or leave him be until the boat gets here with the harbor pilot?”

  Espinosa’s eyes traveled to the stairway leading down to the owner’s suite in the starboard pontoon. “I’m conflicted. Normally I’d want to get him hog-tied at this point and hang him off the back of the boat, drag him along behind us as we motor into shore. Especially after that stunt he pulled with you. But that takes effort, and to be honest with you I’m feeling pretty exhausted right about now. He’s not going anywhere, unless he wants to jump overboard and take his chances with surviving out in the open ocean in the middle of a hurricane, and you and I have the only guns on board this boat, so I’m thinking we can put off pulling out the handcuffs for a little while longer.” He paused and pointed a finger at Gavin’s left breast pocket. “Speaking of which, amigo, how’s your gun? Do you need me to place a call to my people on shore to send a cleaning kit out along with the pilot?”

  “Thanks, but I’m okay for now,” Gavin said, patting the holster absently w
ith his right hand. “I broke it down as soon as I got back inside and managed to rub some Canola oil over all the parts, so that should be good enough for now.”

  “Canola oil? Does that work?” Espinosa asked.

  “I wouldn’t say it was ideal, although I used Canola oil all the time back when I was stationed out in Morocco, given a lack of any better alternatives. It does need a proper cleaning, though, using brushes I just can’t find in this kitchen. But I’m not planning on shooting anyone in the meantime, so I’m good for now.”

  “Okay, I guess it didn’t exactly blow up in your face when you fired it the last time, with a barrel full of saltwater in it to boot, but I’ll still see if we can hunt something down for you. And in the meantime, I think I may be having some of your problems down below decks, if you know what I mean. I’m going to go hit the head. I assume you’ll be here when I get back?”

  “Yeah, no way I’m going to brave another trip out to my cabin up front, especially after what happened to me the last time I was out that way. I’ll be here.”

  “I’m with you on that. Staying in the cabin, I mean. All right, then, I’ll make the call to shore to let the locals know about the arrest and prepare a special little room for our friend, then head to the toilet. After that, we probably have a little time to kill. Maybe we could pop in a movie or something to fill the time while we wait.”

  “Sounds like a good idea. I’ll see what I can dig up.”

  Espinosa pulled out his phone and spoke briefly to someone on the other end, then pocketed it and headed for the guest bathroom downstairs. Gavin took the opportunity to check in with Harry using the phone Espinosa had loaned him. The satellite phone was now toast, thanks to Gavin’s unscheduled dip in the ocean.

  Harry’s voice sounded bright and chipper over the phone, and Gavin could easily visualize him grinning from ear to ear. A fairly routine look for Harry, now that he thought about it. “Hey, Gavin, I tried to call, but your phone went straight to voice mail.”