Duby's Doctor

by Iris Chacon

  On Commodore Plaza, in Coconut Grove, a small art gallery displayed – and often sold – Jean’s paintings and sketches. Mitchell knew Stone had undoubtedly forced the gallery owner to cooperate initially, but when Jean’s art began selling, the owner was happy to be his exclusive representative.

  Frank Stone was familiar with the owner of the Barnacle Gallery because Frank had arrested her once upon a time. That had been all the leverage Frank needed to get Jean’s work into the gallery. The owner had started a new life in a new city; she needed Frank’s continued silence about her mottled past.

  The arrangement had turned out to be surprisingly profitable for the Barnacle. Stone had no further communication with the gallery after his single conversation with the owner. No further coercion had been necessary. In fact, since that ominous conversation had taken place elsewhere, Stone had never actually visited the Barnacle Gallery. Until this day.

  On this day, he stood on the sidewalk outside and looked through the Barnacle Gallery’s plate glass window at a Jean Deaux original watercolor: “Girl With Rabbits.” Stone studied the painting, marveling at the accuracy and beauty of the likeness. Then he sauntered into the store.

  The snobbish saleswoman inside was not the owner, which suited him just fine. He was pleased to remain anonymous while he made his purchase. He asked the saleswoman about an artist named Jean Deaux. She led him to a section of the gallery where a number of Jean’s works were featured.

  “Yes, he is one of our newest discoveries, and he is already quite popular,” the saleswoman intoned. “Such a refreshing innocence in his work, don’t you think?”

  Stone glanced over the selections on the wall. He saw the same girl on many of the canvases, but none of them were as imposing as the larger painting he had seen from the sidewalk.

  “How much for the one in the window?” he asked.

  The saleswoman quoted a figure that might have shocked a lesser man, but Agent Stone did not react.

  “Hmm,” said Stone, mentally calculating his checkbook balance and Visa card credit limit. “How much without the frame?”

  The saleswoman looked at him as if he were a cockroach in her soup. At the Barnacle Gallery, there were no price tags and few vulgar negotiations. Price was not a consideration for true collectors of fine art. Only an uneducated tourist or a common lowlife would try to finagle a bargain, in front of God and everybody, right there in the gallery.

  And frames were not for sale at the Barnacle Gallery, just the art. Collectors preferred to have their purchases framed by their own framers in accord with their own interior decorator’s specifications, so that the decor of the edifice maintained its harmony of design.

  The saleswoman refused to haggle with this ignorant troll.

  Sometime later, Frank Stone emerged from the gallery with a scowl and a tubular package containing a carefully rolled canvas. “Girl With Rabbits” had disappeared from the gallery’s display window.

  CHAPTER 12 – DO BEE

  Weeks of hard work, since his graduation from St. Luke’s Daycare, had transformed Jean’s room into the studio of a full-time artist. Somewhere in there, a bed sank beneath a sea of sketches and canvases. Jean would have to dig himself a place to sleep later tonight, but until then, he stood near his south-facing window and added careful brushstrokes to the painting on his easel.

  Downstairs, the front door slammed and Mitchell called, “Mommy’s home!”

  Jean heard mail dumped on a table, footsteps crossing a tile floor, the refrigerator opening and closing, and the pop-fizz of Mitchell opening a can of soda. Moments later, Mitchell entered his studio carrying a diet soda and unbuttoning her white lab coat. She commented on the watercolor on his easel.

  “Ah, that’s what I like to see: the working artist turning out more inventory. What is it this time?”

  “Boats. The gallery says all the tourists want boats.” Jean continued to paint.

  Mitchell studied the canvas. Something seemed familiar. “Is that the marina at Dinner Key?”

  “Dinner, breakfast, lunch, I don’t know. I just thought of boats, and this is what came.”

  “Hmm,” she said. “Oh, I talked to Hector. He says he’ll help us build our booth.”

  “Great!”

  “Yeah,” said Mitchell and sipped at her soda. “So, I’m going down to the library on Saturday to get the paperwork finished. Arts Festival, here we come!”

  “Dan wants to help, too.”

  Mitchell stopped in mid-sip. “Dan Kavanaugh?”

  “Oui.”

  “The guy who beat the stuffing out of you – and vice versa – at the Daycare? That Dan Kavanaugh? Are you nuts?”

  “He’s okay. He’s in counseling.”

  Mitchell had no response.

  All she could think to do was drink her soda and enjoy the scenery: the tight shorts made from cut-off jeans, the sleeveless muscle shirt, and the muscles under it. Personally, she liked the shaggy hair and the five o’clock shadow. Professionally, she appreciated that the rebuilt left knee was itself a work of art.

  He painted, and she watched him, until the light from the window began to fade. Then, while he cleaned his equipment and brushes, she went downstairs to prepare dinner.

  Saturday morning found Mitchell, true to her word, parking her car at the Coconut Grove Public Library near the broad lawn and palm trees of Peacock Park. A placard taped on the library window advised of Arts Festival Applications, Room 23.

  Mitchell stepped from her car and looked at the library. Then she turned 180 degrees and looked across the park to the Dinner Key Marina.

  She shook her head, locked the car, and walked toward the library entrance.

  Halfway there, she reversed course and headed for the marina instead, suppressing a mental picture of mechanical ducks abruptly switching direction in a shooting gallery.

  She walked along the marina seawall and scanned the crowded anchorage until she saw what she had only half expected to find: a sailboat moored many yards from shore. A sailboat exactly like the one in Jean’s most recent painting. She aimed her phone and snapped two pictures of the distant vessel. Then she searched for a way to get out there.

  The way turned out to be a marina employee, putt-putting past the seawall in a Zodiac boat with an outboard motor. Mitchell smiled and waved until she captured his attention and influenced him to steer in her direction.

  Flirtation as strategy was a new concept for Dr. Mitchell Oberon, workaholic wallflower. As fate would have it, she turned out to be a natural. Remembering every cheerleader, aerobics instructor, and prom queen she had ever known, Mitchell channeled them with all her might. She pulled the hairpins from her chignon and let her hair down into a shoulder length pony tail.

  “Need help?” the marina hand called as he pulled his Zodiac close to the seawall at Mitchell’s feet.

  “How did you know?” she teased, with just enough giggle in her smile and wiggle in her hips. She bent forward at the waist so that she could hear him and he could see a whole lot of her. “If you hadn’t come along when you did, I don’t know what I would’ve done!”

  “What do you need, darlin’?” he drawled with a mischievous wink. It was a quick wink. No sense wasting an opportunity like this one by looking with only one eye.

  “Well, first of all,” she simpered, implying that he could fill subsequent needs later, “I have to get out to that boat right over there.” She pointed toward the Do Bee 2, moored many yards away. She could have pointed at the moon and it wouldn’t have mattered. The man’s eyes were glued to her scoop-necked top and all it was revealing at that moment. “Do you know how I can get there? Is there, like, a water taxi thing or something?”

  “You could swim,” he said, unhelpfully, still preoccupied with her cleavage.

  “But, I didn’t bring a swimsuit,” she said, pretending to be shocked. She stood up and cocked one hip while she patted her foot and tapped her chin with a finger, thinking. She gave him time to scan her from
tapping toe to curvy hip to luscious lips before she turned wide eyes upon him and asked, “Could you take me?”

  “What?” he said, entranced, but certain she wasn’t making the offer he wished she was making.

  “Could you give me a ride?” she crooned, smiling innocently.

  “What?” he said again. Surely, she wasn’t saying what he hoped she was saying.

  “Could you, like, take me out there with you, in your boat?”

  “Oh!” he said, returning to reality. “Sure, I can get you out there in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

  She squealed with delight, mentally cringing at her impersonation of a living brain donor. “You are so wonderful!” she gushed. “Thank you so much!”

  “No problem,” he said, and offered her a hand. “Let’s get you down here, and we’ll take off.”

  Mitchell had never in her life shown so much skin to someone who was not her mother. She forced herself to stay in character, giving him a vacuous smile and plenty of leg and midriff to view as he helped her from the seawall down to the water, where the Zodiac bobbed.

  In moments, they were putt-putting toward the Do Bee 2.

  They were nearly at the sailboat when the marina hand seemed to recall the protocols of client security. “Say, beautiful, how do I know you’re allowed to be on this boat? I mean, you got any ID you can show me, like a driver’s license or somethin’?”

  “Allowed!” she laughed ingenuously. “Of course I’m allowed, silly. It’s Daddy’s boat.”

  The man looked puzzled. “This one right here? The Do Bee 2? That’s your daddy’s boat?”

  “Yep.”

  “Huh,” he said. “I thought the guy that owned this boat was a younger guy, you know – twenties, maybe. Not old enough to be your dad.”

  “Oh, you’ve probably seen my uncle – Daddy’s youngest brother. He’s been using the boat as sort of, like, an apartment, like.” She dropped to a stage whisper, “He’s going through a divorce. She got all the money, y’know.”

  “Ah,” said the marina hand. “Been there, done that. Woulda got the tee shirt, but she took that, too.” He chuckled at his own joke.

  They drew closer to the Do Bee 2, and Mitchell could see the smaller words below its name, indicating that it was registered in Quebec, Canada.

  Quebec. Where the lingua franca was French. She became more and more convinced that this boat was connected to Jean.

  “Looks like you won’t need a ride back to shore,” her pilot said, gesturing to a small rowboat tethered to the rail of the sailboat. It had not been visible from the seawall.

  “Sorry,” she cooed. “I don’t know how to drive one of those things. Can you, like, come back for me in a little while? Please?”

  He nodded and lent her a hand as she scrambled awkwardly aboard the Do Bee 2. Then the man reached beneath a seat in the Zodiac and produced an aerosol horn, which he tossed to Mitchell.

  “Two shorts and two longs when you’re ready, and I’ll come back to pick you up,” the marina hand called to her, already reversing away from the sailboat.

  From behind Mitchell, a man’s voice boomed from the sailboat, “It’s all right. I’ll give her a lift.”

  Mitchell spun around, nearly tipping herself into the water. She grabbed the nearest safety line and stared at Frank Stone’s head protruding from the forward hatch of the sailboat’s cabin.

  Stone pointed to the rowboat bobbing at rope’s end beside the sailboat. “You could never be a cop, Doctor. Don’t you know a car in the driveway usually means somebody’s home? Give the man back his horn.”

  Mitchell turned and tossed the air horn back into the Zodiac and cheerily waved the marina hand on his way.

  Her cheer disappeared when she turned to face Stone again.

  For a moment, they simply stared at each other. She leaned toward fury, while he seemed satisfied with dour resignation to her presence.

  “Well, come on inside,” Stone said. “There might be some coffee in the galley, but I doubt it. Duby likes that wimpy chai tea.”

  His head disappeared into the cabin below, and Mitchell picked her way across the cockpit deck to what seemed to be the main cabin door.

  Later, as they sat across the dinette table, with mugs before them, Stone offered Mitchell a refill. She said no. He got up and stepped to a teakettle resting on the galley’s small, gimbaled stove.

  “So, I get out here once every few weekends, to be sure it’s all shipshape,” he said, continuing the conversation they had been conducting. He held up the teakettle. “Sure you don’t want some more?”

  She shook her head.

  Stone poured another cup for himself as if it were his disagreeable duty to empty the pot. He set the empty teapot in the sink and rejoined Mitchell at the table.

  “So, this was his home. I never imagined him living on a sailboat,” Mitchell said. She surveyed the furnishings and the construction of the small, well-organized cabin. “Would it be safe for him to come back here now? You said they’d be watching it.”

  “Why? Is he coming back here?” Stone looked at her and reached a conclusion. “You think he remembers it.”

  Mitchell reached into her pocket and produced Jean’s Arts Festival registration form, with photos of several paintings included. She folded the paper to display Jean’s painting of the Do Bee 2, although, of course, the boat in the painting had no legible name on its stern. She pushed the paper across the table to Stone. He studied the picture and then the entire registration form.

  “Something in him remembers it,” she said.

  “But, he didn’t tell you where it was.” He tapped the picture with his index finger. “This is how you found it.” He sat back and smiled at her. “Very sleuthy, Doctor. But that’s not why you’re here. You’re looking a little desperate, Doctor. He’s got your juices flowing, don’t he, and you want him out of the house!”

  Mitchell shook her head. “This,” she gestured around her, “is the boat in that picture. That’s why I’m here. Why are you here, Agent Stone?”

  “I told you. Keeping the place up, in case Duby returns. Making sure the place is shipshape, no water or gas fumes in the bilges. Wouldn’t want it to blow up while he’s gone.”

  “What was he to you?” she asked. “How were you using him? How are you using him now?”

  “All you need to know is: this was Duby’s place. I’m taking care of it until Duby comes back. Period. Butt out, Doctor. This is no game for amateurs.”

  Mitchell stood, crossed to the galley and put her empty mug in the sink. She picked up an aerosol horn stowed near the cabin door and lifted it before Stone’s face while raising an eyebrow in question.

  Stone nodded, allowing her to borrow the horn to summon her ride to shore. Clearly, she did not wish to share the rowboat with him.

  Mitchell had one foot on the exit steps when she turned to speak to Stone. “Your man, Dubreau? He’s dead. If anyone comes back to this boat, it won’t be your French-speaking Terminator – oh, yes, let’s don’t kid ourselves – we both know he was your undercover muscle with tons of evidence stored in his memory. But, he’ll never be that again. So, you can stop planning whatever you’re planning for him to do.”

  Stone was unmoved. “Even if he never remembers, he can still be useful to me.”

  Mitchell wanted to curse at him. She blew a loud horn blast toward his face. Then, she opened the cabin door, thrust the horn outside, and blew the four blasts necessary to call the Zodiac.

  When she shut the cabin door behind her and stormed into the cockpit of the sailboat, she stumbled over a tangled mound of scuba cylinders, regulator hoses, spear guns, and fishnets. Stone, in his frustration over lack of progress in the Averell investigation, had not been his usual tidy self when he searched Duby's cockpit bins for hidden notes or recordings the undercover agent may have kept there.

  “Keeping the place up?” she shouted toward the cabin door. “Well, you’re doing a lousy job of it!”

&n
bsp; Angry and compulsively neat, Mitchell opened a cockpit seat and began stuffing the scuba gear into the bin beneath. She continued to clean and organize the deck until the marina’s Zodiac pulled up alongside to take her away.

  She tried not to think of Jean's hands lifting these same tanks, his mouth covering these same regulators, his feet slipping into these same open-water swim fins. She tried not to wonder whether he would ever make use of his boat and his diving gear again. She tried not to envision him killing something, or someone, with that spear gun – or with any other weapon, or with no weapon but his bare hands. She prayed he would never return to some of his former activities, even if he had been, ostensibly at least, on the right side of the law.

  PART II – BEFORE

  CHAPTER 13 – DUBY

  A few weeks before the discovery of a naked, unconscious John Doe on Elliott Key.

  At a Key Largo fishing pier, divers, fishermen, boat crews, and tourists milled up and down the planks amidst dozens of docked and moored boats. Above their heads a banner stretched, proclaiming the “25th Annual South Florida Spearfishing Rodeo.”

  A few miles out into the Florida Straits, in the waters above a coral reef, a boat rode at anchor, flying a smaller banner that read, “Spearfishing Rodeo.”

  Red-and-white “divers down” flags bobbed in the blue-green seas surrounding the boat. A wet-suited diver, carrying a spear gun, leapt from the boat into the water and disappeared beneath the surface.

  On the same day, in a cemetery two highway hours north of Key Largo, a somber caravan of automobiles wound its way between old trees and mildewed headstones. A long, black hearse led the cortege, followed by two black stretch limousines and, bringing up the rear, a battered 12-year-old sedan.

  The hearse stopped at the foot of a grassy knoll. Trees, grass, granite monuments, all were dripping from an earlier heavy rain. Freshly turned earth lent its husky aroma to the sweetness of a rain-cleansed breeze and the delicate scent from a nearby hedge of jasmine.