Eager to hear more, I leaned into Josey’s personal space, but she was eyeing the crowd and ignoring me. “Hey, that’s Mrs. Moody. Wonder what the missus is doing here?” she said, and marched over to her.
I watched them from my spot by the door. Their body language didn’t suggest dinner and drinks were in the offing. A moment later Josey sauntered back toward me.
“So, what’d she have to say?” I asked, like Josey and I were first-class buds, or partners. I liked it that she was unusually chatty for a cop.
“Blah, blah, blah, loosely translated, she’s with that guy with the big arms.”
“She’s on a date? With Mr. Big? What, two days after her husband is murdered?” Plus, I thought, who goes on a date to an antiphosphate rally?
“Yeah, well, the rich are different, you know.”
I eyed the good widow for a long moment, assessing both her facial damage and the clinging Capri pants she was wearing very successfully. “Is Mrs. Moody a suspect? I take it she’ll inherit M. David’s vast holdings.”
Josey ignored my question, and instead pointed toward the muscle guy. “The man with her, that’s Galleon Theibuet.”
“He’s one of the Antheus shareholders, isn’t he?”
“How’d you know that?”
I patted my pocket where I’d stuffed the papers Angus had given me outside the meeting. But what I said was, “Oh, we lawyers have our tricks.”
“Yeah, well, Theibuet’s part of the Antheus phosphate group. Reckon he’s here casing the opposition.”
I glanced back at grandpa-on-steroids. He still had his back to me as he bent toward Mrs. Moody, apparently listening to her.
“Yeah,” Josey said. “I’d say he spent some time lifting and punching the bag. Check those biceps.”
Before Josey and I could complete our girl bonding by discussing Galleon’s well-maintained body further, Angus John took the podium, and we stopped talking to listen to him.
Angus jumped over the requisite intro joke and right into denouncing the proposed Antheus Mines. Before long, Angus had the crowd stamping their feet and shouting, “No more phosphate! No more phosphate!”
Go, Angus, go, I thought, latent cheerleader instincts surfacing in me. Then I looked over at Mrs. Moody, who stood tall and held her formerly fine face straight ahead. I don’t know, but if I were her, bodyguard or not, I’d slip out the door and go home.
And just in case the crowd was not already riled up, Angus rallied it by his retelling of the Boogie Bog debacle. As a result of the company’s bankruptcy, huge phosphogypsum stacks—such as the one in which M. David was forcibly and against his will drowned—were left at the Boogie Bog site for the state to clean up. These gyp ponds contained millions of gallons of toxic sludge retained behind those earthen dams, which were at high risk of breaking or overflowing.
I leaned over to Josey. “Is that all true?”
“You don’t read the newspaper much, do you?”
“Okay, I’m real busy. I’m a lawyer. I have to read tons for my clients. Sometimes I miss stuff in the papers.”
“Yes,” Josey said. “It’s true. It’ll cost the state of Florida millions to clean up the site, that is, if the DEP can even figure out how to do it. Early estimate is around a hundred and sixty million. Right now, they’re talking about transporting the sludge by way of barges and dumping it out in the Gulf of Mexico.”
“That’s totally insane,” I said.
“Yeah. Isn’t it, though? The DEP will treat the sludge as best they can before they dump it, but it’ll still be a risk to the entire Gulf of Mexico and the marine life and the coral reefs. The fishermen are up in arms about the plan. But if the state leaves the gyp stacks like they are, they pose a worse threat. If the stacks overflow during our summer rains, the path of least resistance will be to take that poisonous sludge, untreated, straight into Bishop Harbor and then into Tampa Bay. Where we know for certain it will kill off the sea grasses and marine life, destroying the bay. God help us if a hurricane hits one of those gyp stacks.”
Appalled by the catch-22, I nodded.
“It’s like nuclear waste,” Josey said. “There’s nothing you can do with that gyp waste that won’t hurt something.”
Okay, Josey knew her stuff. I needed to introduce her to Olivia, let them preach to each other’s choir. Maybe I ought to listen more closely too. After all, Florida was my adopted home state. Okay, Lilly Belle, memo to internal file: Learn more about Boogie Bog, Antheus, and, actually, you know, start listening to Olivia. Oh, and actually read the whole newspaper once in a while.
Having thus chastised myself for my ignorance, I nodded thoughtfully at Josey, but then the angry increase in volume from Angus at the podium made me turn back to him.
“Let those Antheus people think long and hard about what M. David’s body in that gyp pond means,” he said. “There’s a message there to those who would wreak similar havoc in this county.”
Oh, not good, not good at all, I thought. Championing violence is not a desirable trait in a client I was defending, even if his case was just stupid orange libel. I waved my hands frantically at Angus. But before he saw me, Josey pulled out her steno pad and started jabbing down little notes.
Angus kept talking in a threatening way. Desperate to shut him up, I kicked over a folding metal chair in front of me, and the clatter drew everybody’s attention. In the ensuing break, I saw Miguel grab Angus and physically pull him away.
After wrenching Angus’s arm and whispering something in his face, Miguel took the stage, introduced himself, and apologized for the disorder. Angus stomped off out of my line of vision.
Miguel, in all his regal male beauty, talked peace and love and patience and petition signing, no doubt as an attempted antidote to Angus’s tirade. He did one of those love your enemy, but teach them the error of their ways with letters to the editor speeches. Sweet, I thought, but naively ineffective in today’s world; at least Josey didn’t jot down notes during his little pep talk. What she did was smile, smile bigger, and start swaying to the rhythm of Miguel’s speech. So, yeah, right before my eyes, Miguel worked his magic on Josey too. But before I could contemplate what that might mean in either her quest for a murderer, or mine for Miguel, the object of our mutual admiration stepped down from the stage. After that the meeting ran down, and I was glad of it.
When we spilled outside in the dusky, early dark, Miguel and Angus shook a lot of hands, while Josey watched, her eyes seemingly taking notes. Finally, people drifted off, but not before some overweight woman with a flowered dress told Miguel to take the remaining drinks and snacks. “I don’t need them,” she said, and laughed. Then she patted his flat stomach and giggled. “Anything else I can do for you, honey?” she asked.
“You’ve already done more than your share,” Miguel said, and leaned over and kissed the woman on the cheek. She turned red, giggled again, and left us.
Dutifully, Miguel went back inside and gathered up a box of the leftover snacks and loaded them in the back of his red pickup, while I said good night to Josey.
As Josey walked off, Miguel walked back to me and took my hand. “Nice try with the chair. Damn, I don’t know why that boy can’t learn when to shut up.” Then he smiled his slow, Jesus-Feeds-the-Poor smile, the one that seemed soul deep and real. I leaned into his space, his hand still holding mine, and I started to melt.
“Join us for supper? On my sailboat?” Miguel asked.
Oh, sure, I’d join him for supper, that night, the next couple of weeks. Just let me take a shower first, I thought. But what I said was a conventional, “Yes. That would be nice.”
“Okay, we’ll have to stop at Publix and grab something from the deli.”
Uh-oh. Food phobias kicked in. I wanted a nice, big, organic salad. “Where’s the closest health food store?”
“There’s a health food store on the way to the island, west of town, on Manatee Avenue. They have a deli, but it’s a long drive,” Miguel said. “Publix
has a good deli.”
“Why’d you knock that chair over?” Angus said, joining us and scowling at me.
“To shut you up. Advocating violence when you’re a defendant in an orange-defamation case isn’t a good idea,” I said.
“Or when a deputy sheriff is listening,” Miguel added.
Oh, yeah, that too.
“I’m not a suspect,” Angus said.
“Well, you probably are now,” I added, and then turned to Miguel. “Publix is a great store. I buy stuff there all the time, but let’s go to the health food store, and get some organics.”
“They have organics at Publix, and it’s not ten miles out of the way,” Angus said. “We’ll go to Publix.”
“Oh, yeah, who put you in charge?” I said, my ire rising.
Miguel stepped physically between us, all peace and love, and said, “It’s not that far out of the way.”
Angus glowered and muttered all the way to the health food store, which, as it turned out, was a hell of a long way out of the way.
Once there, to continue his protest, Angus waited in the car. Miguel and I flirted our way through the produce and the deli, and practically licked each other in front of the frozen-dessert freezer, and finally sauntered back to a sullen Angus, simmering in the pickup.
On the long drive back to his sailboat, Miguel put one hand on my neck and rubbed, while he steered with the other. “You need to let me Rolf you. It’ll help you relax and breathe better.”
“I breathe just fine. I’m alive, aren’t I?” I didn’t mean to be so snappy, but Angus was poking the sack of groceries into my thigh and I thought he was doing it deliberately. I pushed the sack back toward Angus.
“I can get rid of that sore neck,” Miguel promised.
“I don’t have a sore neck.” Oh, yeah, that was a whopper. Every trial attorney I’ve ever known has a sore neck. Tension, stress, bending over desks and reading small print—it would be freakish not to have a sore neck in my business.
“Yes, you do. I can tell by the way you hold yourself.”
Before I could respond, Angus dumped the grocery sack in my lap with some force. Something popped, then squished, and I felt cold and damp soak through my jeans. I didn’t want Miguel thinking I was a quarrelsome person, so I took the sack from Angus.
“So what do you do, sail from port to port and Rolf the needy of neck?” I asked, trying to get my Flirty Girl voice back.
“Basically,” Miguel said, “but I’ve been in Manatee County long enough to buy a truck and develop a steady client base. Getting Rolfed on a sailboat adds a certain allure that helps me attract clients.”
Jealousy kicked me in the gut, just about where the deli package Angus had squished was leaking junk on me. I’d just bet those clients were all women.
“Yeah, and Rolfing on a sailboat lets him charge more, you know,” Angus the still-pissed-off said.
“So what exactly is Rolfing?” I asked.
“Sometime real soon, I’ll show you,” Miguel said, and my heart thumped so loud I was sure they could both hear it. Miguel chattered on, but my ears had disconnected from my brain. I was in fantasy overload.
By the time we finally got to the Bradenton Pier, where his boat was docked near the neck of the Manatee River and Tampa Bay, I was hungry enough to eat the paper sack, but this was all but overridden by the thought of Miguel Rolfing me—I mean, wasn’t Rolfing like a massage? Didn’t that mean I got to get naked and he would rub his hands all over me?
We scrambled out of the truck, me all eager to wash stuff, eat, see the sailboat, and then get naked.
“I live here on the boat too,” Angus said, as if he were reading my mind and wanted to thwart me.
Well, damn, he was the chaperone from hell.
“Just temporary, till I get a new house,” Angus added, as if I cared unless he was moving out by midnight.
Thus, brought back from my fantasies, I looked around me. The lights on the pier gave off a ghostly glow in the heavy mist from the river and the humidity of a subtropical night. Boats of different kinds and sizes lined the pier. Here and there, some murmurs of voices floated out toward us, but I didn’t see anybody else on the pier or on the boats. Under the pier, the water slapped at the pilings in its rhythmic ebb and flow.
While I listened to the water, Angus snatched the groceries from the front seat where I’d left the sack, and, grunting like it was too heavy, glared at me. Miguel took my hand as Angus stomped past us and headed down the pier, toward the end.
“Come on, I’ll show you my boat,” Miguel said. We walked hand in hand, saying nothing. The inside of his palms felt rough, almost calloused, like a man who had done a lot of hard work. They would feel wonderful on my skin.
For a moment, walking side by side through the river’s mist with Miguel, I wondered if what I felt was more than just primitive, animal lust. Miguel was a man of great passion, I thought, admiring in retrospect the care with which he’d faked a second panther on the Antheus property and how he seemed to believe he could save the world by curing sore necks and having people sign petitions.
“This is it,” Miguel said, and pointed to a sailboat.
Boats I don’t know, having grown up landlocked in Bugfest, Georgia, where a Jon boat or a bass boat was about as fancy as anyone got. But this sailboat looked small. Maybe a tad junky. While I was trying to wordsmith my reaction into something pleasant, Angus started to climb onboard.
“Hey, Lilly,” Miguel said, “I forgot the snacks and drinks in the back of the truck. Come back with me and help me bring them in?” He smiled in a way that seemed to suggest we might stop on the way to make love.
More walking in the mist hand in hand, who was I to refuse? Though it did seem to me that he was perfectly capable of carrying the junk food by himself. We walked off, leaving Angus struggling with a bag of health food and a latch on the boat.
We were almost back to the pickup when I heard a big boom. A very big boom. Before my brain could process it, Miguel threw himself on top of me, knocked me down on the ground, and covered me up with his body.
The wooden pier seemed to vibrate beneath me, and the lights popped and crackled, and then went black.
I had a sexy man lying on top of me in the dark, but all I felt was fear.
Chapter 7
Something close by had just blown up in megadecibels that would be the envy of any punk-metal rock band; a man was lying on top of me; buzzy, indistinct sounds ricocheted about my ringing ears, and I was beyond dazed and confused, and hungry to boot.
Little sprinkles of hot, flighty things rained down on me, burning tiny spots on my hands, which were splayed out beside me, the only skin not covered by Miguel’s spread-eagled bodily protection.
The night wasn’t turning out well.
But as Miguel climbed off me, and I shook my head and struggled to stand up, it still hadn’t hit me what had happened.
Until I heard Miguel scream.
A long, inarticulate sound that crashed against my already wounded ears.
Then I looked at the space where Angus and the sailboat had been, and I saw smoke and fire and black things floating up and down in the strange air currents of river mist and destruction.
Miguel grabbed my shoulders. “Get out of here. Now.”
With that Miguel jammed his keys into my hands. Though the streetlights on the pier had blown out, the fire and the background city lights illuminated the area in a netherworld sort of gloom.
I stood there stupidly, trying not to vomit.
“Go!” he yelled at me. “Get out while you can.” With that, and a small shove, Miguel turned and ran toward the fiery debris.
Then my head melted. That’s exactly what it felt like, something warm and wet oozing down inside my skull. I stumbled back against a bench on the pier and almost lost my footing. Something wet trickled down my chin and I realized my nose was bleeding, and I rubbed my hand across my face, smearing it. My purse lay on the pier, and when I stooped
to pick it up, I threw up, missing my purse by mere inches.
When I righted myself and looked around, I saw that people were coming out on the decks of the other boats.
Clutching my purse in one hand and Miguel’s keys in the other, I wondered: Why should I run? Dizzy, I leaned back against the bench. What had Miguel said?
“Get out while you can.” That’s what he’d said, and Miguel’s command was clear. Maybe he knew something I didn’t. Could I be in trouble? I mean, more trouble than ringing ears, bleeding nose, and the banging-head contemplation of the great hereafter that nearly being blown up had just wrenched up from my gut? Trouble from the police? From the bomber?
Then I thought of Angus. Could he possibly still be alive?
People began to dash past me in the poor light. Against the glow of the fire, I saw Miguel dive into the smoke and water where his boat had recently been.
Please, God, let Angus be alive, I said. There didn’t seem to be anything else useful I could do.
No one was paying attention to me—yet. For reasons wholly unclear to me, I started sprinting like a track star on meth and yanked open the door to Miguel’s red pickup and squealed the wheels backing up and spinning out of there. Nobody tried to stop me, and before I could inhale, I was several blocks down the road, heading for the relative safety and open spaces of the Tamiami Trail.
In the evening traffic, I slowed down, and I cried.
By the time I was nearly back at my little concrete-block great-starter-home in Southgate, my ears were still ringing, but my head was clearing—a little, anyway. Enough that I didn’t think parking Miguel’s red pickup in front of my own house was a good idea. I still wasn’t sure why Miguel had commanded me to run and thrust his keys at me, but now that I had, I didn’t think I wanted to advertise the fact that I had fled the scene of a felony, if not a murder.
Running away doesn’t look good to Official People.
It didn’t feel so good to me either.
Nonetheless, I rubbed at my nose again with my sleeve, not having anything else, and I parked the truck in the lot at the Southgate Community Center. Full felon-in-flight mode took over—I don’t quite get this part of me, like I was a major criminal in a past life, oh, yeah, well, and that minor criminal phase in the youthful part of this life—but I was usually good at things like breaking and entering and remembering to wipe off my prints.
Bone Valley Page 7