by Jane Heller
“I don’t do ladders,” Sharon insisted. “I have a thing.”
“What ‘thing’?” I demanded. She was the reason we were even contemplating this foolishness.
“A phobia,” she said. “I’d take a Xanax, but my medications are back at Barry’s.”
“Then how do you expect us to get on this Titanic?” I shouted.
“No problem,” said Ray as he grabbed Sharon’s hands and lifted her petite body up onto the deck of the yacht. “Next.” He reached for me. As my body is not petite like my sister’s, it took him three tries before he managed to pull me up.
“Now what?” I said as I felt the yacht begin to move.
“I guess we’re taking a little cruise,” said Ray.
“Which means we’re stuck on a boat with a killer,” I said.
“Yeah, and he’s stuck on a boat with us,” said Ray. “It’ll be three-against-one. I like the odds.”
“What if he’s got a gun?” said Sharon, reality sinking in. “He has been known to shoot people.”
“No point in worrying about that now,” said Ray. “We’re underway.”
Sure enough, the gleaming white yacht was motoring out of the marina, into the harbor, out to sea.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Sharon moaned, as Ray opened the door to the main salon and waved us in.
“We’re doing it all right,” I muttered.
We stepped inside what was truly the most opulent, over-decorated room I’d ever seen, even for someone from Boca. The walls, the ceiling, the furnishings, the floor were all done in shades of burgundy—more bordello than boat—with enough gold accessories to rival the U.S. Mint. There were other grandiose touches as well—expensive artwork, sculptures, a gas-burning fireplace and, yes, a baby grand piano. Next door was a large formal dining room with seating for ten, and adjacent to it, a “galley” complete with granite counter-tops, a Sub-Zero refrigerator, and a butler’s pantry. If there’s one thing Barry Shiller isn’t, it’s quiet money, I thought.
“I bet he’s up there,” Ray whispered, after we’d spent too much time gawking and not enough time strategizing. We were now standing at the base of a plushly carpeted spiral staircase, which appeared to connect the yacht’s three interior levels.
“Or maybe he’s down there,” I suggested, pointing below to the staterooms.
“No, he’s got to be on the upper deck if there’s nobody else steering the boat,” Ray argued.
“Good guess,” boomed a voice, causing us all to jump. It belonged to Barry, of course. “I wasn’t really in the mood for company, but you might as well come up and make yourselves comfortable.”
Like timid children, we mounted the stairs. When we reached the yacht’s third level, Barry was there waiting for us, a glass of amber-colored liquid in one hand, a snappy little revolver in the other. There were still traces of scratch marks on his face, I noticed, courtesy of Sheldon. “Welcome to the sky lounge,” he greeted us.
The aforementioned “sky lounge” was yet another adventure in excess, with unspeakably gorgeous views. Fitted with an auxiliary steering wheel, Barry could pilot the boat in complete luxury.
He told us to sit down. He had the gun at our noses, so we sat down.
“Well, Sharon, honey. Your sister decided to pay us a visit, huh?” he said, running his eyes over my body. “She doesn’t have your fashion sense, but she’s nothing to sneeze at.”
Ray clenched his fist, testosterone coursing through his veins. “You’d better take a good look at her, buddy, because they don’t have women we’re you’re going.”
“Yeah? Where’s that, Mr—”
“Scalley. Ray Scalley. You’re going to prison, Shiller.” He glanced at his watch. “The police are due at Lyford any minute.”
“Too bad we’ll miss ‘em,” said Barry, not heartbroken. “We’re on our way to the Abacos. This baby can do forty knots, so we’ll be there in no time.”
“They’ll find us wherever we are,” I said as if I meant it. “They know what you did. Everybody knows what you did, you disgusting—”
“Hey, don’t get your tits in an uproar, Deborah,” said Barry, the essence of class. “We can talk about the unpleasant stuff later. Now I wanna brag about my yacht.” He caressed the steering wheel. “I bought her a couple of years ago. Had her custom built in Lauderdale. She’s loaded, naturally. She’s even got a helicopter landing pad.”
“As if any of this is yours,” said Sharon. “You paid for it with funny money.”
“Not true,” he protested. “I earned every penny.”
“Sure, you just forgot to pay taxes on those pennies,” I said.
“Oh, grow up, all of you,” said Barry. “A lot of people put their money in offshore bank accounts.”
“Really? Do they kill their business partners too?” I said.
“I told you I didn’t want to talk about that.” He thought for a minute. “Since nobody’s impressed by my yacht, let’s talk about the Bahamas. Have you ever seen water like this? It’s the prettiest blue water there is, so clear and clean you can look down and watch the sharks swimming around. Can’t beat that, huh?”
“You’re sick,” Ray said. “You commit two murders and you act like you don’t have a care in the world.”
“He must be in denial,” Sharon whispered to me. “Thank God I never had sex with him.”
“That is lucky,” I whispered in response.
“Who wants a drink?” Barry asked, continuing to play the host.
“I’ll have a Perrier,” said Sharon.
“The bar is over there. Help yourself,” he said.
Sharon poured herself some fizzy water and returned to her chair.
“So tell us why you killed Hirshon and his nurse,” Ray tried again. “You’re planning to shoot us eventually. Why not entertain us in the meantime?”
“You’re not gonna let up on me, are you?” Barry sighed. “How far back do you want me to go with the story?”
“To the day you and Jeffrey decided to sell vitamins,” I said. “We’re not interested in the slimy deals that went before.”
He laughed. “Slimy to you, maybe, but your sister didn’t seem to mind the kind of life I’ve been leading. Did you, Sharon, honey?”
“Shut up,” she said.
“No, you shut up.” He took a sip of his drink, then belched. Nice. “Hirshon and I went to college together, as Deborah discovered without much effort. We knew each other, but we weren’t close friends, so we didn’t stay in touch after graduation. About ten years ago, we ran into each other in the Abacos, where we’re heading now. I used to make side trips from Nassau every once in awhile, and he used to take his boat over from Stuart for long weekends.”
“So you did hatch the plan while you were throwing back a couple of Goombay Smashes,” I said, recalling my earlier theory.
“They were Yellow Birds, but you’re close enough,” Barry conceded. “Hirshon told me he was a cardiologist in Stuart. I told him I was a lawyer in Boca. He mentioned that some of the doctors in town were selling private-label vitamins to their patients. I suggested he do it too. He said he didn’t have the money to make vitamins. I said, why don’t we go in on the deal as fifty-fifty partners? I was willing to put up the cash, oversee the manufacturing, and funnel the business through my corporation, if he would be the front man, hype the product through his medical practice, and handle sales of the pills to his patients. He loved the idea.”
“I bet he especially loved the fact that the profits would go straight into a Bahamian bank account, where the IRS couldn’t touch them,” said Ray.
“Yeah. That part was key,” said Barry. “He didn’t really want to be bothered with the product unless he could make a killing on it.”
“You ought to know about making a killing,” Sharon hissed.
“How did Joan Sheldon get in on the act?” I asked.
Barry shrugged. “She was a pain in the ass, always sucking up to Hirshon. But he lik
ed her, said we could trust her, and offered to cut her a piece of his share. I didn’t mind as long as she kept her mouth shut.”
“So what went wrong?” Ray said.
“Nothing. Not for years,” said Barry. “Then all of a sudden, Hirshon came to me and tried to muscle me into changing the deal. The guy had balls, I’ll give him that.”
“How did he want to change the deal?” I said.
“He thought we should go sixty-forty, since his name was on the vitamins and people only bought them because of him. Greedy bastard. He said if I didn’t go along with him, he’d tell the FDA that the vitamins were bogus, that I was behind the scam, and that he only found out about it by accident. I couldn’t let that happen, so I killed him. And when Joan started putting the squeeze on me, I killed her too.”
“Wait,” Ray said. “Go back a second. Hirshon was going to tell the FDA he found out about what by accident?”
“Yeah. And what do you mean the vitamins were bogus?” said Sharon. She, like my mother, had been a heavy user.
“Just what I said. The vitamins were bogus. Vitamin E is an oil and is usually sold in transparent softgels. But we sold ours in capsules, as a powder. Bet you can’t guess why.”
“Joan claimed it was because some of Jeffrey’s elderly patients were oil-intolerant and he wanted what was best for them,” I said.
“Joan was a good liar. We sold our vitamins as a powder so we could fill the capsules with sand.”
“Sand?” said all three of us at once.
“Sand. Vitamins are expensive, kids. You put sand in the capsules, you can mark ‘em up like crazy and make a hefty profit, buy a yacht, a house at Lyford, whatever.”
“You’re telling me that my mother and I have been swallowing sand?” said Sharon, whose complexion was turning an odd color.
“It’s harmless,” said Barry. “Comes right out in the bowl with everything else you eat.”
“You gross pig,” Sharon said angrily, then tossed the contents of her drink at him.
The Perrier landed in his eyes, and the surprise of the gesture distracted him, allowing the gun to slip out of his hand, onto the floor.
Ray scrambled for it while Barry was still trying to clear his vision.
“Whoops. Looks like you lost something,” said Ray as he held the revolver against Barry’s temple. “Now, how about turning this tugboat around and taking us back to Lyford?”
Barry laughed mockingly. “I don’t think so, pal. This is my tugboat and I’m taking her to the Abacos.”
Ray pressed the gun deeper into the side of Barry’s head. “Not if I shoot you first.”
“Go ahead,” Barry goaded him. “Then the three of you will be up a creek without a paddle. You don’t know the waters of the Bahamas, do you, sport?”
“What’s there to know?” said Ray. “Your yacht has more electronics than Radio Shack. I’m sure I can figure out how to get us back to the marina.”
Barry moved away from the steering wheel. “Here. Have at it.”
“Sit down,” Ray ordered, tightening his grip around the handle of the gun.
“Can’t. Gotta stretch my legs.”
Before Ray could stop him, Barry bolted up from his seat and lunged for the gun. They wrestled over it, while Sharon and I stood by helplessly.
And then a shot was fired.
I held my breath, waiting for one of them to get up, waiting to see which one of them would get up. When it was Barry who emerged with the weapon, I rushed over to Ray.
“My God! Your leg!” I screamed. “He shot you in the leg!”
“I’ll be okay,” he said, grimacing in pain. “I’m just disabled, for the moment.”
Sharon knelt beside Ray too. “I brought some Advil, but it’s at Barry’s house, with the Xanax,” she said apologetically.
“Women,” Barry mused. “They’re useless creatures, huh?”
“You’re a truly evil man,” I said, shaking with rage. I was about to throw myself on him, pound him with my fists, gun or no gun, when I was nearly blinded by an intensely bright light coming off the water.
“What the fuck’s that?” said Barry, shielding his eyes.
“It’s the police!” Ray said, weary but jubilant, having spotted the official-looking boat motoring toward us.
“It must be ten o’clock!” I exulted. “Reggie, bless his heart, must have sent them!”
“Which means that Deborah and Sharon and I are safe,” Ray glared at Barry. “And you’re history, buddy.”
“Wrong.” Barry jabbed the gun into Sharon’s back and said, “You came to Nassau to rescue your precious sister, right, Deborah?”
“Damn right,” I answered defiantly.
“Then do as I tell you or she gets a bullet through her flat-as-a-board chest.”
Sharon flinched, either at his remark concerning an aspect of her anatomy about which she was extremely sensitive, or because he was stabbing her with the gun. The really awful part was that the scene I had conjured up in my imagination was coming true, I realized—that with the police’s arrival, Barry had become desperate, he no longer had anything to lose, and he intended to take Sharon down with him.
“I want both women on the upper deck with me. Now!” he commanded. “Scalley stays here. To bleed to death, with any luck.”
“I’m not leaving him,” I said, clutching his hand.
“Oh, yes you are.” Barry jammed the gun into one of Sharon’s kidneys.
“Go with him,” Ray urged, his voice growing faint.
“I don’t want to,” I said, my eyes pricking with tears. “You risked your life for me. There’s no way I can—”
“Go with him, Deborah,” he said hoarsely. “Please.”
With the police boat drawing closer, Barry was frantic, out of control. He pulled me away from Ray, onto my feet, and threatened to kill Sharon on the spot if I didn’t follow his orders.
I was paralyzed with conflict—should I go with my sister or stay with Ray?—and was, therefore, no help to either of them. Sensing my anguish, Ray nodded at me, once again reassuring me that he would be all right, that the three of us would be all right. “Go,” he whispered.
“I’m not mad at you anymore,” I said. “About Holly.”
“Go, Deborah.”
“I’m going, I’m going,” I said reluctantly.
I took a final look back at Ray as Barry shoved Sharon and me out the door of the sky lounge, up onto what was a spectacular sun deck and entertaining area at the stern of the yacht.
“Now what, you dirtbag?” I challenged Barry, my fury overriding my terror.
“We’re gonna stand right over here, where the cops can get a good view of us.” He pushed us up against the yacht’s shiny brass railing, high above the swirling sea. I suspected that Sharon’s fear of ladders was nothing compared to what she was experiencing at that moment. “You. Stand on this side of me,” he shouted, waving me to his left. “You. Stand on my right side. My better side.” He laughed demonically as he pulled Sharon to him and moved the gun to the front of her body, the barrel targeted at her heart.
“Police!” came a voice over a loud speaker. “The owner of this vessel is under arrest!”
“If you arrest me, one of these bitches dies and her sister gets to watch!” Barry yelled back.
“Lay the weapon down!” the policeman warned. “I repeat: Lay the weapon down!”
“Up your ass!” was Barry’s pithy retort.
“Again, you are under arrest!” said the policeman.
“Again, up your ass!” said Barry. “I’m holding these women hostage, do you understand what that means? Unless I get a helicopter, a pilot, and a couple of cases of scotch, they’re dead!”
“You are under arrest, Mr. Shiller!” was the cop’s response.
God, this could go on for hours, I thought. One of those ridiculous standoffs. I had to do something. Sharon and I had to do something. We had to act, had to take charge of our own lives. After years of estran
gements, we were finally in the same boat—literally. If we couldn’t work together as a team at a time like this, we never would. The question was: What could we do as a team? We’d never been a team. We’d been enemies. That’s all we knew how to be.
I felt utterly powerless until my words triggered an idea.
Enemies! I thought. Bingo!
I quickly began crafting a plot, a script, a breakdown—a scene for which Sharon and I would need no rehearsal.
Yes, I decided. Yes. I will provoke her into a big fight, the battle of the century, the spat to end all spats. Our bickering will turn violent. Well, not horribly violent, only a little slap, a little hair-pulling, something along those lines. And then Barry will just happen to get caught in our crossfire, taking a punch that will send him hurtling over the railing.
It was worth a try, wasn’t it?
“Sharon,” I said while Barry was bartering with the cops. “This whole situation is your fault. If you weren’t such a ditz about men, so desperate to get married, so obsessed with snagging another husband, Ray wouldn’t have gotten shot.”
“A ‘ditz,’ you called me?”
“A ditz. A bubble-head. A dim bulb. Take your pick.”
I waited. She didn’t say anything. If we’d been on the phone, she would have hung up on me.
“Actually, I have been overly focused on getting married,” she conceded, “and I swear I’m going to change if we escape this nightmare. I’m so grateful to you and to your friend Ray, so ashamed that I put you both in jeopardy. I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Deborah.”
Huh? Who wanted to be told how sorry she was? I wanted her to have a hissy fit, to be the witchy Sharon I’d always known and hated!
Okay, I told myself. Calm down. Just think of something else that’ll push her buttons.
“Of course, men aren’t your only problem,” I said. “Your most unattractive quality is your petty resentment of me and my accomplishments. When I was working in daytime television, you made nothing but snide remarks about From This Day Forward, even though I was proud of it, even though I gave a hundred percent to it, even though the show enriches the lives of millions of viewers, as opposed to your business, which enriches no one but you.”