“Thank you, dear.”
“What were you listening to?”
“I can’t read much anymore. My eyes tire too quickly. I listen to books now on audio.”
I smiled at her. “Should have known you wouldn’t be in here watching the soaps.”
“No, I’m listening to Treasure Island. I’ve always loved that story.”
“It’s good to know some things don’t change, Mrs. Sparks.”
“You don’t think I’ve changed?” she asked, the surprise evident in her voice.
“Sure, you look different. I expected that. But you still act the same and, as usual, that’s what puts a smile on other people’s faces.”
“I’m going to take that as a compliment.”
“Good, because I meant it as one. You know, I’m sorry I haven’t been by before now, but I didn’t know you were sick.”
“Well, now, why would you? You haven’t lived here in years.”
“But I should have been checking up on you. I’m sorry.”
“Dear, we old folks expect the young ones to grow up and move away.” Her eyes closed, and she sighed. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“But I only moved a few miles away and I feel bad. I mean, you were like a mom sometimes when I didn’t have one, and I should have been like a daughter when you needed one.”
It occurred to me then how capricious nature was— bestowing motherhood on those like the women in my family who make lousy mothers, and denying children to a woman like Sarah Sparks.
She shook her head and opened her eyes. It seemed to require a great deal of effort. “Seychelle, you were always so hard on yourself. You didn’t owe me anything. You children gave me more pleasure—”
She didn’t finish the sentence. Her breathing was slow and regular. She was asleep. I straightened the covers and set the cassette recorder on her table. “Likewise, Mrs. Sparks,” I whispered.
I found Arlen in the kitchen fixing himself a roast beef sandwich. He asked me if I wanted one, and then without asking he poured us both glasses of a dark Cabernet. He put the bottle on the table, too.
“She’s got this morphine pump,” he said. “When it kicks in it knocks her right out. She’ll just drop off in midsentence. The cancer’s in her liver now.”
“It must be really hard taking care of her. You look exhausted.”
“I should have taken them to court.” He reached for the wine bottle and refilled his glass.
“Who?”
“Motowave. It’s all their fault.”
“What do you mean?”
“When they canned me, I got depressed and there I was moping around, feeling sorry for myself. I didn’t pay any attention to the fact that my wife was sick again. We didn’t get her to the doctors quick enough because she was trying to take care of me.”
“That doesn’t sound like the best logic.”
“She wouldn’t be like this if it wasn’t for them. The bastards—” It sounded like he’d been about to say something more about Motowave, but when he spoke again, the anger was gone and his voice was flat. “I can’t stand just sitting here watching her die.”
He drank off the rest of his second glass and reached for the bottle again. He hadn’t touched his sandwich yet.
“Arlen, why don’t you eat your sandwich? I want to tell you about an idea I have.”
He took a bite and chewed with his mouth half open. “Okay. What is it?”
“I have a friend who is a nurse and she needs a place to stay. You have a three-bedroom house and you really could use some live-in help for your wife. You’d really like this woman, and I know your wife would love her.”
By the time I left, I had settled Arlen into his recliner to sleep off his lunch and Catalina had a place to stay.
I stopped by Sailorman on my way to Jeannie’s, to see if they had a manual for my little Nissan outboard. When I walked into the store, I ran into Tia from Offshore Marine Towing standing in line at the register.
“Hey, Seychelle. I’ve been trying to get hold of you. You haven’t been answering your phone or the radio.”
“I’ve been out of town. Just brought the Power Play up from Key West.”
She shook her head. “I heard about Nestor. That was awful. I didn’t know you were down there.”
“Yeah.” There wasn’t anything else to say about it. Certainly not anything that I wanted spread around as gossip.
“The reason I was trying to reach you is that there is something happening tomorrow I wanted you to know about.”
“What?”
“The Marine Industries Association is sponsoring a symposium on maritime salvage laws over at the International Game Fish Association headquarters. Starts at three. Think you can make it?”
“Tia,” I said drawing her name out into a long whine, “that sounds like something for the big corporate boys. I’m just a small business. I fall asleep when I go to business meetings.”
“Sey, this is for everybody. You’ve seen it. You know how our business has been growing. Not everybody who’s been jumping in lately knows the business like you do.”
“What you mean is, it’s a symposium on piracy.”
The woman who was ringing up Tia’s purchase at the register laughed out loud. Tia frowned at her and then continued. “I didn’t say that. It’s just that some operators in our business seem to be having trouble lately with the difference between what constitutes a tow and what’s salvage. We thought we’d bring in a maritime attorney, a representative from the Coast Guard, and then get all the towboat companies together and maybe we’ll be able to police our own industry.”
“That does sound interesting.”
“So I can count on you, then? You’ll be there?”
“I guess. But don’t expect me to get up and talk. I’m just coming to listen.”
XV
I cupped my hands on either side of my face and pressed against Jeannie’s front screen door, trying to see into the dark recesses of her apartment.
“Hello! Anybody home?”
I knew better than to try to open the door. Jeannie had an alarm system on all her doors and windows, and I’d set it off more than once by just strolling into her place. I was standing on the landing at the top of the outside staircase hollering when I heard a dog barking behind me, and I turned to see Jeannie being pulled down the street by an enthusiastic and overweight beagle. She let go of his leash, and he beat her to the top of the stairs. As she climbed, she explained between breaths, “The boys talked me into dog-sitting this weekend while the folks who live downstairs are off on a cruise.”
She arrived on the landing and stopped to catch her breath. The dog was whining and scratching at the screen door. “You can let him in,” she said. “The alarm’s not armed.”
“Why aren’t the boys walking the dog?” I asked as we made our way into her kitchen.
“It’s a Sunday afternoon and the two of them vanished right after lunch. They’re probably over at their friend Jason’s house. The excitement of having a dog pales when a friend invites you over to play with the latest video game. So what brings you over here this afternoon?” She motioned for me to sit at the kitchen table. It was piled high with folders and stacks of papers. A laptop computer and printer were set up on the far side, and Jeannie sat in the rolling office chair located on that side of the table.
Lawyers are often characterized as money-grubbing scumbags; Jeannie was anything but. I admired the way she worked, doing just enough to keep their standard of living comfortable but never so much that she couldn’t be home when her boys needed her. Jeannie always valued quality over quantity, and she sailed through life doing the things that made her happy. Housework was not one of those things.
“I didn’t want to bring up our Seas the Day friend at the barbecue last night, but I do want to know what the status is.”
“Not a whole lot has changed. Except for the fact that we now have a court date. It’s this coming Thursday.”
“Jeannie, I couldn’t sleep last night thinking about this. I mean, what if that girl had drowned? Maybe there was something else I should have done when I agreed to tow him in. I shouldn’t have let them stay on their boat. I was towing, bottom line is, it was my fault.”
“Girl, watch your mouth. Don’t ever let me hear you say that again. Your fault, my ass—and that, my dear, is making a big statement.”
“Jesus, Jeannie,” I said, but she did know how to make me laugh.
“This Burke character has a history that goes way back. I’ll bet if you had asked him to get aboard Gorda, he would have refused. He needed to be aboard his little boat to open a valve and let her sink.”
“I don’t know. It’s possible he didn’t do anything. It was really rough out there. I should have known better than to leave them on the boat. I was in charge.”
“Seychelle, in the last two years the man has been in five automobile accidents and he’s sued companies three times for product liability. Then there’s the McDonald’s case that’s still pending. Seems he has a cousin who’s an attorney and they’re in cahoots. Doesn’t cost him anything to bring these suits and with you, he thinks he’s hit the jackpot.”
“But I told you to talk to him. To tell him I don’t have that kind of money.”
“Seychelle, you talk as though you think this is a rational man. This man almost let his daughter drown so he could get some money out of you.”
“Okay. You’ve got a point. But I need to know what’s going on. What’s the deal? Am I in danger of losing this lawsuit? Like I said, I couldn’t sleep last night. All I kept thinking about is what could have happened out there, and then what could happen now if I lose and I owe this guy millions of dollars.”
“That’s what you have insurance for. Even if you were to lose, and it’s not likely, you’d come out of it okay.”
“I don’t think so. Not if I got branded negligent. It would kill my business. Nobody’d hire me after that.”
“Listen, we’re not going to let it happen. In the next few days, we need to put together a case that proves this guy is a scam artist. Right now, he’s claiming that he can’t go back to work because he’s suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.”
“You’re joking.”
“Nope. I told you the man is no brain surgeon.”
“I wish I’d never answered his goddamn distress call. I should have known better.”
“Honey, everyone who knows you knows that you can’t walk away from someone in trouble. You might try to talk tough, you might say you’re going to look the other way, but it’s just not in your makeup.”
“Maybe not forever, though. I really am tired of this. I keep saying it and nobody seems to be listening. Gorda and I are not married. Let’s get through this lawsuit, and then I’m going to make a decision.”
“Right. I’ll get the proof that he has shown a pattern of making fraudulent claims like the one against McDonald’s. You need to take a look at his police statement here”—she picked up a photocopied document and set it on the table in front of me—“and find the places where he has lied. You need to find people who will swear that his boat didn’t have all that expensive gear on it, that he lied when he took out his boat insurance.” She dropped a sheet of notebook paper on top of his statement. “This is where he lives.” She reached into a file cabinet next to her chair, drew out a small camera, and set it on top of the pile. “Finally, this is a digital camera. If you could get me some photos of our dirtbag friend doing something that proves he is not disabled from post-traumatic stress, it would go a long ways toward convincing him that he wants to drop the lawsuit.”
“Okay, I can do that. It’s going to make me feel better doing something.” I put the camera and folded papers into my shoulder bag. “In the meantime, I thought you’d like to know that I found a place for Catalina to stay for a while. Remember last night when Molly and I were talking about the people named Sparks who live on our old street? I went over there this morning, and the wife needs a live-in nurse. Catalina’s a nurse, but she’s not licensed to practice here, so she can’t go out and look for a job. They get a nurse and Cat gets a place to live and a job. Pretty good, eh?”
“Yeah. Now what’s the real story about Nestor? What happened down there?”
I started at the beginning and filled Jeannie in on the whole story, from the wreck of the Power Play to everything that had happened afterward. “This morning, I promised Catalina I would talk to Ted Berger for her, but I swear I don’t know what to say to the man.”
“Why don’t you start by asking him when he’s going to pay you for the job you just did for him?”
“Hey, that’s good. Then I suppose I can segue right into, By the way, did you kill Nestor Frias?”
“It’s not like this is the first time you’ve tried to get someone to talk to you. Just get a feel for the man. You know that he lied to you about where he was that afternoon. Try to get him to talk about that.”
“I know. It’s just that it seems to me that the incident with the Power Play is really only part of a bigger picture. I’ve never known so many high-priced yachts to go aground and need salvage as we’ve seen in the past few months. And it seems I’m not the only one who has noticed.” I told Jeannie about my conversation with Tia at Sailorman. “You know those old stories about the days of the wreckers, back in the nineteenth century? I can’t help but wonder, is it possible someone is causing these wrecks today?”
“Now, that’s an interesting concept, Seychelle. But it doesn’t rule out Berger’s involvement. This could all be some kind of insurance scam.”
I looked at my watch and was surprised to see it was already nearly three o’clock. “Look, Jeannie, I’ve got to go. I promised Catalina I would get back to her today, and now I need to get her over to the Sparkses’ place.”
“Okay, but before you go, there’s one more thing. About your insurance. I tried, honey, but you are not going to find any better rates out there. You’re going to have to live with this increase. With the hurricane seasons we’ve been having lately and the current stats on the number of boats that are getting into accidents, you’re not going to find anything cheaper. I’m afraid that’s just the cost of doing business these days.”
“And maybe it’s one more reason for me to get out of this business one day real soon.”
It took less than an hour to load Catalina’s possessions into my Jeep. There was her suitcase, Nestor’s duffel, and an old-fashioned trunk that contained books and photo albums as well as Cat’s wedding dress. One of the young guys staying at the house helped me hoist her gear into the back of the vehicle. As we climbed into the front seats, I asked her if she had other things at her family home back in the Dominican Republic, and she shook her head. She told me that her parents were both dead, that she and Nestor had had that in common.
“And now my child will have no grandparents and only one parent.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that. I knew life wasn’t easy for single mothers. Jeannie was sacrificing any hope of a ladder-climbing professional life to stay home and be with her boys. Another friend of mine, Celeste, had been willing to risk her life for her daughter, Solange. Mothering was a talent. There had been a time once when I had contemplated it. Long before I met B.J., back when I was younger and I made a mistake. Before I’d realized it was a talent that didn’t run in my family.
“Cat, remember when you said that my friends and I are like a big family?”
“Yes, I remember.”
“As far as I’m concerned, you and your baby are now part of that family.”
When we turned down my old street, I saw B.J.’s black El Camino truck parked in front of Molly’s house. I beeped my horn and when Molly came to the door, I told her that I was taking Catalina to the Sparkses’ house; she should get B.J. to come haul her stuff inside. The Sparkses’ house was only two doors down from Molly’s, and by the time I had opened Catalina’s door a
nd she had swung her legs out into the air, B.J. was there to offer her an arm and help her out of the high vehicle.
Arlen answered the door and while he showed B.J. where to put Catalina’s things, Molly and I took her in to introduce her to Sarah Sparks. I could see immediately that I had been right. They meshed from the moment Sarah took her hand and expressed her profound sorrow over Nestor’s death. She didn’t talk in euphemisms; she meant what she said. After a little while, Molly and I just backed out of the room. Catalina had found a home.
I drove Lightnin’ half a block up the street and parked in front of Molly’s. When I stepped through her screen door, the living room looked like it had been decorated with photos taken from a gynecologist’s examining room. Fetuses in various stages of development were on display, along with photos of instruments that must have come straight out of a torture chamber. B.J. was sitting cross-legged on the floor, leaning back against the couch, tapping the keys of a silver laptop computer that was set up on the coffee table. His face shone bright with excitement. I focused on him and tried to shut out any recognition of the pictures that littered the room.
B.J. would always be a student, no matter what his age. He already had a couple of degrees in classical studies or some damn thing, he had a black belt in aikido, and his last interest had been computers. He’d gotten this MacBook about six months ago and gone crazy talking about digital this and Internet that. While I did own an old laptop, I only used it for keeping the books for my business—like a slightly fancier adding machine.
“Hey,” he said without looking up. “We’ve just started a new online course called Antepartum: Embryology and Fetology. Molly’s got wireless so I can download all the photos we need right here.”
Molly’s long black hair was piled on top of her head and held in place with an enormous plastic clip that made her look a little like she had devil horns. She sat on the couch, and I couldn’t help but notice that her left leg was touching B.J.’s body from knee to ankle. She held up a color photo of a fetus. “See?”
Wreckers' Key Page 13