by Lee, Rachel
“You might be right. But he ought to be okay with Sara over there. Besides, they ought to realize that if he knew anything, he would have told the state attorney to get himself off. That ought to be as obvious as the nose on their faces.”
“That’s true.” She felt a bubble of tension within her collapse, but it was only one of the many bubbles of tension that were keeping her on edge.
Part of her knew she ought to step back from Chase right now, but she wasn’t able to. He smelled so good after his shower, a heady mix of man and soap. And he felt so good, so powerful and strong. It was also about the only comfort she had found in days and she didn’t want to give it up. When his hands started stroking her back, she felt herself relax into him, tension seeping out of her muscles… only to be replaced by a new tension, a more delicious one.
The phone rang. She felt Chase stiffen, and after a reluctant moment, he let go of her. She couldn’t remember ever having felt so bereft just from having someone step away from her.
“Mattingly,” he said into the phone. “Yes. That’s correct. I was one of the salvage divers who went down to The Happy Maggie. Uh-huh. Right. Yes, I can do that. I’ll be there.”
He hung up and looked at Callie. “That was Olaf Bruderson’s attorney. He wants me to meet with him and Bruderson this afternoon at five in Miami.”
Callie felt her heart accelerate. “I’m going with you.” Then she remembered Jeff. “No, I can’t leave Jeff.”
“Yes, you can. You’re not going to be able to do much to protect him even if you stay, Callie. Maybe he has some friends he can stay with? Or maybe he and Sara can take the afternoon and evening to do something fun in Key West. We’ll be home by ten at the latest. Or maybe he can come with us.”
But Jeff didn’t want to go with them. When they got over to the house, they found that Sara had arrived. She was a lovely young woman with hip-length black hair and smoothly tanned skin, enough to turn any young man’s head.
Callie started to explain about having to go to Miami, and not wanting Jeff to stay by himself at the house, without going into the reasons. But Jeff understood. “I’ll hang out in town, sis,” he said. “There’s lots of stuff for Sara and me to do. Maybe I’ll spend the night at Phil’s place.” Phil was a high school friend of his whose parents owned a bar on Duval Street. The two had been inseparable until Phil had graduated from school and had gone to work in his parents’ business.
“That would be good. Do me a favor and call Phil to see if that’ll be all right. Otherwise, I think you ought to come to Miami with us.”
But Phil thought it was a great idea, and the plans were made. An hour later, Chase and Callie were on US 1, headed for Miami.
The offices of Barton, Barton, and Wilhelm were located in a posh high-rise, but inside the offices were decorated to look like something out of a gentleman’s club. The leather chairs, leather tabletops, and hunter green damask wallpaper reeked money. It was a room for men, not for women. The only sign of the present era was a small window through which one could speak to the receptionist. Her office, in startling contrast to the waiting room, was full of gleaming modern equipment from the PBX to the latest model of collating copier.
Promptly at five, Chase and Callie were ushered into a large office with a view of the city. It, too, was appointed in leather, damask and brass. A wiry, sun-bronzed man in a suit sat on a sofa, smoking a hand-rolled cigar. A tall, gray-haired man in a blue pin-striped suit rose from behind the polished desk to greet them.
“Mr. Mattingly,” he said in the well-rounded tones of an orator. “And this is?”
“My assistant, Calypso Carlson.”
“I’m Peter Barton, Mr. Bruderson’s attorney,” he said, shaking their hands. “And this is Mr. Bruderson.”
Bruderson rose from the couch and shook their hands. “Do you mind my cigar?”
“Not me,” Chase said. Callie quickly shook her head, though she’d much have preferred not to smell it. She felt, though, that it wouldn’t be politic to object.
As soon as they were all settled in chairs, Barton took charge of the meeting. “Mr. Bruderson is naturally interested in your claim that the diamonds were still aboard The Happy Maggie.”
“Actually,” said Chase, “I believe they were still there at the time I made my salvage dive. I think they’re gone now.”
“Then what’s the point of this interview? I thought perhaps you might have the diamonds and be considering making a deal with us.”
Callie saw Chase’s cheeks darken. “I’m not that kind of person, Mr. Barton. If I had those diamonds, I’d give them to you.”
Barton studied him a moment, then nodded. “I still don’t see the point, then. Mr. Bruderson’s claim was denied by the insurance company. Without the diamonds, this is a total loss.”
“There’s more involved here than the diamonds, Mr. Barton. First, I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but Maritime is considering pressing charges against Mr. Bruderson for attempted insurance fraud.”
Barton lifted a brow, and Bruderson paused with his cigar halfway to his mouth. Barton spoke. “Where did you hear this?”
“From someone at Maritime.”
“They’d have a very weak case.”
“Maybe. But in addition to insurance fraud, there’s the matter of two young men who’ve been falsely charged with murder.”
“Why should that interest us?”
“Because I believe the murders were committed by two salvage divers who went down to Mr. Bruderson’s boat to get the diamonds. You might also be interested to know that Bill Evers, the diver who was assigned to get the diamonds on the original dive, has turned up murdered.”
Barton and Bruderson exchanged looks. Bruderson spoke for the first time since they had exchanged greetings. “What do you want, Mr. Mattingly?”
“What I want is to find out what’s really going on here. I want to get those two young men off the murder charges, and if I can find out what happened to your diamonds in the process, you can get your money out of Maritime.”
Bruderson nodded. “How much do you want?”
“I don’t want anything except information.”
Bruderson searched his face. “An honest man, hmm?”
“That’s my reputation, Mr. Bruderson. I tend to guard it.”
“So what information do you want?”
“I want to know exactly what happened when your boat got into trouble. Before I went down there, all I had was a statement that you said the boat hit an underwater obstacle. I wasn’t especially interested in what you said because I was going down to look at it myself. My specialty is figuring out exactly what happened to cause boats and ships to sink. Unfortunately, the dive got interrupted.”
“I heard,” Bruderson said. “What happened?”
“I don’t remember. All I know is what I was told. But I’ll tell you something, Mr. Bruderson. I’m beginning to have serious doubts that it was simply an accident of some kind.”
The lawyer and the jeweler exchanged looks again, and Bruderson nodded.
Barton spoke. “We’ve been having a few qualms ourselves about what we’ve been told. In the first place, Mr. Bruderson didn’t sink his own boat. In the second place, he knows those diamonds were aboard. At first we thought maybe somebody had gotten down to the wreck before you made your dive, but we’ve started wondering.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because their description of the damage doesn’t fit with Mr. Bruderson’s recollection of events.”
“I felt the boat hit something,” Bruderson said. “Then we started taking on water really fast.”
Chase nodded. “An explosion could feel that way.”
“But there was no fire. They said there was a bilge fire.”
“I believe you. Did you tell anyone you were carrying those diamonds?”
“I was required to let the insurance company know every time I did. So yes, they knew I was carrying diamonds, and they knew exactly what
course I was planning to follow. They said they needed to know in case something went wrong. So they’d know where to look.”
“How come you didn’t stay in the Intracoastal Waterway?”
Bruderson shrugged. “I wanted to do something different. I wasn’t all that far out beyond the reefs. Nobody objected. It wasn’t as if I was planning to sail into really deep water.”
Chase nodded. “How long did it take the boat to sink?”
“About as long as it took us to figure out we were taking on enormous quantities of water and get the life raft inflated and over the side. By the time I had my wife and daughters on the raft and was thinking about going to get the diamonds, it was too late. I figured if I stayed aboard any longer, I was apt to get sucked down when she went under. By that point her stern was rising out of the water.”
“So the damage was in the bow?”
“Apparently. Like I said, it felt exactly as if we’d run into something.”
“That’s a strange place for a bilge fire.”
Bruderson leaned forward and stabbed the air with his cigar. “That’s what I thought. I’m no weekend sailor, Mr. Mattingly. I knew that boat inside and out. There’s no way I could have built up fumes in the bow of that boat. And it had to be damage to the bow, because she didn’t heel over as she was sinking.”
“The bilge exhaust was working?”
Bruderson nodded. “Up to that point.”
“Interesting. I assumed the conclusions in the report I saw were from Bill’s observations down there. I’m not so sure anymore.”
“I’m convinced he lied,” Bruderson said flatly. “Barton and I have been discussing this for weeks now, but we haven’t been able to come up with any way of challenging the report, short of hiring our own divers. We’ve been discussing ways to do that that wouldn’t just turn this all into a swearing contest. However, since this is your area of expertise, and since you usually work for the insurance companies, you might be just the person we need. Mr. Mattingly, would you like to dive down to the Maggie and find out what really happened?”
“If I do that,” Chase said, “I’m going to do it on my own. I’m not going to be on anybody’s payroll, not yours or Maritime’s.”
Bruderson nodded. “I can understand that. Free agent. That’s fine by me. What do you want me to do?”
“Don’t tell anybody at all we’ve had this discussion. I have reason to believe that someone is getting nervous about what I might remember, or what I might find out.”
“Not a word outside this room,” Bruderson agreed. “Anything else?”
Chase looked at Callie. “Yeah,” he said. “You could hire some investigators. We need to find out who the two divers were who went out on the Island Dream the day George Westerlake and Jimbo Rushman were killed. If you can find them, you might find your diamonds.”
Bruderson’s eyebrows lifted. “I read about that. So you think it’s related?”
“Absolutely. Coincidences are getting deeper than manure in a cow barn.”
The expression brought a faint smile to Bruderson’s lips. “Consider it done. Just give us all the information you have.”
On the one hand Callie was elated that Olaf Bruderson was going to hire a private detective to find those divers. A full-time investigator with money and resources behind him could do a lot more than she and Chase could.
But on the other hand, the thought of Chase diving again made her blood go cold. “You can’t seriously be thinking about making that dive again,” she said as they wended their way along a seemingly endless two-lane stretch of US 1, where signs in sequence periodically announced, “Patience Pays. 3 Minutes to Passing Zone.” It always took longer than three minutes, and traffic always seemed to back up behind some slow vehicle that for whatever reason couldn’t do more than forty. She was used to it by now and hardly noticed it.
“I am thinking about it,” he replied.
“No,” she said. “No. I’ve heard you’re not supposed to dive again after you’ve had the bends really bad.”
“You’re not supposed to dive again too soon. It can take a long time for all the bubbles to get out of your system. It’s been over two months, Callie.”
“I still think it’s insane.”
“Maybe.”
“How can you even be sure you’ll find the boat? Even with the exact position, it’s got to be like looking for a needle in a haystack out there.”
“There’s a buoy attached to the boat. Or there should be.”
“Oh, God.” Fear and horror were welling inside her combined with a sense of impending loss. “Chase, please…”
“I said I’m thinking about it. And right now that’s all I’m doing, Callie.”
“What’s the point of even going down there? So what if you find out that Bill’s description of the damage was a lie. What good will that do for you?”
“It might answer the question of what went wrong down there, Callie.”
She looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“Maybe I didn’t do anything wrong after all. Maybe somebody did it to me.”
“Meaning?”
“Maybe somebody tried to disable me. Maybe I didn’t have heliox in my tanks at all.”
CHAPTER 16
They stopped for dinner at a fast-food place along the way, and reached home at about ten in the evening.
“My place or yours,” Chase asked as they drove down the narrow road leading to their houses.
Her heart thudded. “What do you mean?”
“I mean you’re not staying alone tonight. There’s too much craziness going on.”
Now that she thought about it, she had to admit she didn’t really want to be at home alone. What’s more, she really didn’t want Chase to be home by himself either, not after having his house broken into. In fact, she realized suddenly, she was as afraid for him as she was for Jeff. More afraid than she was for herself.
“Let’s go to my place,” she said. “As far as we know, nobody’s been creeping around there.”
They stopped at his house, though, so that he could get a change of clothing and his toiletries. Nothing was out of place, and other than the fingerprint dust left in a number of places by the crime-scene team, everything was as it should be.
“Cleaning this stuff up is going to be a job,” Callie remarked, touching the black powder.
“It’s not so bad,” he said. “They were kind of half-hearted about it, don’t you think? They could have made a real mess in here.”
“It was like they didn’t expect to find anything and didn’t even want to.”
“What would they do with the fingerprints anyway? Unless they already have them on record, they’re virtually useless.”
“Unless they catch the guy. It would prove he broke in here.”
“Right. But they don’t think they’re going to catch the guy. And they probably won’t unless he pawns the gun somewhere around here.”
It felt odd, though, to have Chase in her house when Jeff wasn’t around. She was used to the place being silent and empty when her brother was gone, used to being able to racket around however she wanted. Having company was not something she was really comfortable with anymore.
It made her feel awkward, and she didn’t know quite what to do. Finally, she settled on making a pot of decaffeinated coffee so she at least felt she was fulfilling the role of hostess.
Chase put his things in her parents’ room, where he had spent the previous night, and joined her. “You don’t have to treat me like a houseguest, Callie.”
She gave him a forced smile. “Southern hospitality. Nobody ever crossed this threshold without being offered food. That’s what Momma taught me.”
He leaned against the counter and folded his arms, watching her make the coffee. “That’s what my momma taught me, too. I always noticed that while every guest was greeted like long-lost kin and stuffed with food, that didn’t keep anyone from talking nasty about them when they were gone.�
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Callie laughed, and her awkwardness began to ease. “That was the best part of having company, wasn’t it? All the things you could say after they were gone?”
“Sometimes I got that feeling. My mother was a wonderful woman, but I swear she lived for gossip and talking about other people. She knew everything about everybody in the neighborhood and had a memory like a steel trap. None of it was malicious. Humanity was just her favorite parade, and every individual was a float to be talked about and critiqued.”
“That was about the size of it.” She paused, feeling wistful for her lost parents. “I never knew if my dad was as interested, but I can definitely remember Mom filling him in on everybody when he came home from sea. She’d tell stories over dinner, and he’d sit and listen and ask questions, and then linger after dinner while she kept on talking and I did the dishes. It usually took the better part of a week for her to catch him up on everybody in church and in the family.”
“He probably enjoyed it. She was the way he kept in touch.”
“Maybe. I never thought about it like that.” Her wistfulness was growing into an ache. “I miss them,” she said simply. “And I wish I could remember my mother better. I remember things she did, things she said, but I can’t see her.”
“Maybe all you need to do is look in the mirror, Callie.”
Startled, she looked at him. “What?”
“I have a feeling you’re very much like your mother.”
“How would you know?”
He shrugged a shoulder. “Who taught you to be a mother to Jeff?”
“That’s true.” She grimaced. “I don’t seem to be doing such a good job, though.”
“I don’t know about that. You got him growed up in one piece.”
She hadn’t heard that Southern “growed up” since her dad had died. He used to say, “You’ll get growed up soon enough, Calypso.” Or “Wait’ll you get growed up, Jeff. Life gets better.” So far it hadn’t, but as she remembered him saying that, she wondered how he could have told Jeff that after his wife died. And yet he had said it countless times during Jeff’s early teen years, when her brother had been rebelling over almost everything.