Hell's Bay (7 page)

But Teeter had informed Rusty that he was sick of restaurants. The bickering, the competition, the steamy, obscene stress. So he'd defected from kitchen work and would be assuming culinary duties on the Mothership. He'd also accepted the role of chambermaid and security guard. Each morning when the anglers and guides headed off for the fishing grounds, it would be Teeter's job to clean and straighten the staterooms, wipe down the sinks and showers, make the beds, vacuum, and otherwise stand watch over the empty vessel.

He and I had an awkward relationship. Whenever Teeter was around, he was continually casting looks my way, just as he was doing at that moment from out on the beach. I wasn't sure what his fixation was about, but I'd steeled myself for spending an entire week in close proximity with him, and was pretty sure I'd have to confront him about the behavior if it continued.

“What'd you do to piss that girl off?” Sugarman nodded toward Mona.

“Didn't have a chance. She arrived that way.”

“And the kids? That's a majorly weird couple.”

“Rusty says they're not an item. Annette's a travel writer, doing a story for
Out There
. The guy's shooting photos.”

“Going to make Rusty famous.”

“She's hoping.”

I watched the light sweeten around us, a last bloom of orange on the horizon. Out over the Gulf some delicate pink clouds tangled their tentacles like mating octopi. A sky that was never still, never lost its power to amaze.

I finished the last of my beer, raised my hand to Tricia Murray, who was waiting on us, and pointed at my glass and Sugar's to save her a trip.

“I don't like this, Sugar. The guy drops the snapshot in front of me, steps back, and gives me a shit-eating grin.”

“Granted, it's weird. But consider the bright side: You'll learn who you are, who your parents were. What's wrong with that?”

“I already know who I am.”

Tricia brought the beers and fresh frosty glasses and took away the empties. Annette and John Milligan seemed to be hitting it off, laughing at each other's jokes. Holland was shooting film of two local hotties stretched out on lounge chairs in matching thongs. They were drinking margaritas and pretending to ignore Holland, who was a yard away, kneeling and bending at off-kilter angles, focused mainly on their long, tanned legs.

Mona stared out at the last shreds of sunset while Rusty threw anxious looks my way as if I was committing another egregious etiquette error by not coming over and joining in.

“The guy's dicking with me.”

“Oh, come on, Thorn. You're working yourself up.”

“If it was you, Sugar, is that the way you'd handle this? Zoom in out of the blue, no warning, spring it on a nephew you've never met? Hey, guess who I am? Your freaking uncle. I got an opportunity for you. It's a gotcha thing. A bully-boy trick.”

“Overreacting, Thorn. Making a big deal over nothing.”

“Would you do it like that, Sugar?”

He shook his head and glanced back at the purpling sky.

“Some people like surprises. Maybe he thought you'd throw your arms around him, give him a big hug.”

“I didn't read it that way.”

“Oh, man.” Sugar sipped his beer, set it down, wiped his lips with his napkin. “Your whole life, you never met any of your own flesh and blood. It's this big missing piece. Then, bam, it happens, and listen to you. You take one look at the guy—your uncle, your mother's little brother—you're around him all of five minutes and you got him pegged as a villain.”

I had no answer for that. He was right. My instincts were on red alert. I'd made a career out of reclusiveness, but at all too frequent intervals I'd been dragged into the world by violent men, treacherous women, but most often by my own impetuous folly. More than one innocent life had been damaged or lost because of me. I'd done plenty I wasn't proud of and only a few things I was. Lately I'd reached the point where I was having trouble telling the difference.

Distrust and wariness had become a reflex. In the last year the condition seemed to worsen. At the first sign of trouble, I found myself flinching and turning away. Anything could set it off—a defiant look sent my way across a crowded bar, or a woman's comeon smile. I'd duck my head and hustle back to my burrow, pick up my fly-tying gear, and disappear into the refuge of work. Whole weeks passed without human contact. Until Rusty challenged me that night in July, it suited me fine.

Sugarman claimed it was some version of post-traumatic stress. I'd passed some watershed and was sliding into a new state of mind. One too many catastrophes, too many innocent friends or lovers caught in the crossfire. Now I was shell-shocked down at some cellular level.

Whatever its name, I had grown sick of it. Sick of hiding out, stiff-arming all human contact. So I'd heaved the boulder away from my cave door, staggered out into the sunshine, signed on to be sociable, a certified hale-fellow-well-met. Then John Milligan climbed aboard, laid the photo on the bar, and, Christ Almighty, the whole shitty cycle was starting again.

A short while later we exited the Green Flash Lounge and moved upstairs to Pierre's, the fanciest eatery on the island. As the group waited to be seated, a man appeared in the doorway behind us and Milligan swung around to greet him, then introduced him one by one to the rest of our party.

His name was Carter Mosley, the pilot who'd flown the Milligans down from Sarasota. A short man, not more than five-two, he stood very erect. After he shook hands with each of us, Mosley's pale blue eyes landed on my face and he took a moment to study its angles as if trying to fix me in his memory.

Mosley was silver-haired, mid-fifties, with a reserved smile and those alert eyes. He wore a sky-blue jumpsuit, a black T-shirt visible beneath. His face was unlined and, for such a small-boned man, his handshake was crushing.

“I can't stay,” he replied to Rusty's invitation to join us for dinner. “Got a mountain of paperwork on my desk. Just wanted to say hello, and wish y'all good luck on your fishing adventure. I'll be back in a week to pick you up.”

“Carter's the family's legal eagle,” John said, patting the small man on the back. “Old and dear friend.”

As Mosley made his exit, he gave me one more searching glance. Milligan ushered him out into the twilight, and they had a word on the landing before Mosley left.

The rest of the night sailed by with dishes of hickory-smoked free-range buffalo rib-eye with foie gras yuca cake and soy-lacquered sea bass and three bottles of a tasty red wine that Annette knew a good bit about. She'd visited the vineyard on assignment, met the owner. Told an amusing story about the guy. Everyone joined in the laughter except Mona. She moved the food around on her plate and looked up from time to time to frown at whoever was speaking.

Through most of the main course, Annette took charge, going one by one around the table and shining the spotlight of her attention on each of us. For a while she focused on Rusty and got her to confess that this whole houseboat enterprise had been such a long-deferred dream that she was having trouble believing it was all finally coming true. Plus she was nervous as hell that everything should go smoothly. When she was done, murmurs of reassurance passed around the table.

Then Milligan got his turn and told a brief, self-mocking story about taking up golf, beaning his caddy twice in one week, then buying him a hard hat. When Annette focused on Teeter, he mumbled something about a new recipe for scal-lops he'd invented, then looked directly at me as if I could save him somehow, and when I made a helpless shrug, Teeter shut his mouth and dropped his head, mortified by the attention he was receiving.

As we waited for dessert, Annette Gordon swung to Sugar.

“I understand you're a private eye.”

Annette was half the age of most of us at the table but seemed perfectly at ease directing the show. She had the casual moxie of a big-city girl who thrived in far more sophis-ticated circles.

“Sam Spade was a private eye,” Sugar said. “My world is a little duller.”

Annette prodded until Sugar gave in and told them about his latest case.

For several weeks this past fall, he'd trailed Julie Ship-man, the runaway daughter of a Delta pilot. Julie was six-teen, had stolen her daddy's Porsche, and made it to Atlanta, where the trail went cold. Sugar shoe-leathered the city for weeks, finally found a strip club where the girl had worked, and got the name of a bouncer who'd seduced Julie and whisked her off to Seattle for the dreamy life of a call girl. It took only two days in Seattle before Sugar located the agency she'd hired on with. He called and requested her by her description. Julie showed up in his hotel in a miniskirt with a bruise on her cheek—ready to perform.

Eight weeks start to finish. The girl despised Sugarman for dragging her home and made nasty claims about him taking sexual advantage in that Seattle motel room. Now the pilot was trying to chisel Sugar out of his fee, saying the shrink bills were eating him alive and his airline had gone into chapter eleven. Then he used his daughter's lies to threaten Sugar with legal action.

Sugar would've done the job for free, but now the thing was a point of honor, so he was heading to court.

Mona leaned forward, planted her elbows on the table, and angled her head to look past me at Sugar.

“So, Mr. Sugarman?” Her voice was low and husky as though these might be the first words she'd spoken in days. “You ever kill anybody?”

In the prickly silence Sugar fetched for an answer.

Then Annette plunged in.

“What I want to know, Mr. Sugarman, are you any good? Do you always get your man? Or lady, as the case may be?”

“I'm okay,” Sugar said. “I'm no Sherlock Holmes, but I'm persistent.”

“I love those detective shows with the high-tech gadgets, those cool tweezers to pick up hair and tissue samples. Is that what you do?”

“Not really,” Sugar said. “I'm old-school. Don't even own a pair of tweezers. Wouldn't know what to do with them if I did.”

“But how do you solve your cases?”

“Talk to people, ask a lot of questions. It's not real glamorous.”

As Annette was about to press on, mercifully, the dessert tray arrived.

I thought I'd escaped her third degree, but later as Holland was ordering a cognac, Annette said, “So Mr. Thorn, I hear you're our resident curmudgeon.”

“Define please,” Holland said.

“Killjoy, wet blanket,” Annette said. Sounded like a routine they played.

I drew a breath, worked my lips into something of a smile.

“I'm a recovering curmudgeon. Been sociable for the last three days.”

“It's the next seven I'm concerned about,” Annette said.

While the others chuckled, John Milligan ticked his eyes around the table, landing on each face for a second, then moving on as if he was fine-tuning his assessments of his ship-mates.

“And you, Mona?” I said. “What's your story?”

It took a moment for her to surface from the shadowy place in her head.

She gave me a cold glare, then picked up her spoon, stared down at her untouched crème brûlée, and with a series of petulant jabs, broke the hard crust in several places.

“My daughter's suffered a painful loss. Actually we both have.”

“I'm sorry to hear that,” Annette said. “But this trip should help. All the clean air and sunshine. I always feel refreshed after a stint in the wild.”

“That's what I was hoping for,” Milligan said. “A little renewal.”

“Kumbaya, my Lord.” Holland raised his Nikon and snapped three quick shots of my profile.

“You think you could give that a rest, Holland?” I said.

Holland seemed about to make a witty comeback, but Annette sent him a pinched look and he closed his mouth, then made a production of snapping the lens cap back in place and slumping in his seat.

When his performance was done, I turned back to Milligan.

“What kind of loss?”

I knew it was rude to press on, but at that moment I needed to know just what the hell I was getting into. I was about two seconds from wadding my napkin, tossing it on the table, and stalking off. Virgin lakes be damned. Rusty would just have to snag one of her guide buddies as a last-second replacement.

“My mother died,” Milligan said. “Mona's grandmother. A few months ago, she drowned in the Peace River. That would be your grandmother, too, Thorn. Abigail Bates.”

Annette set her spoon down. The table fell silent. This was a good deal more confession than anyone had bargained for. I felt Rusty's leg pressing against mine, hard as concrete. Holland slurped his cognac, and Sugar absently fondled the stem of his glass. The awkward hush was becoming more awkward by the moment.

To my right, Mona spooned up bite after bite of crème brûlée, then while we watched, scraped out the remains. When she was done, she patted her lips with her napkin, folded it neatly, and set it beside her place mat.

“Grandmother was murdered,” she announced.

She stared at me for several seconds, then looked past me at her father.

“No, she wasn't,” Milligan said with a weary frown. “Her canoe tipped over and she drowned.”

He glanced around the table, and for the first time since I'd met him, he seemed less than certain.

“There was a thorough investigation,” he said, looking at each of us in turn. “State, local. All the forensics were done, one of the best pathologists in Florida. There was no evidence of foul play, none whatsoever. She drowned. She was eighty-six and had no business in a canoe by herself without so much as a life jacket or flotation device of any kind.”

“She was murdered.” Mona's tone was grimly matter-of-fact, as if the two of them had hashed this over so often the bitterness was rung out of it.

Rusty stared down at the tablecloth. Her face was pale. The evening meant to celebrate her maiden voyage was spinning out of control.