"Thanks, Mr. Leicester. I might just do that."
George came striding up from the restaurant, a grin on his face. "Forgot to pay your parking tickets, did you?"
"Something like that."
"Toby Bruce."
"What?"
"Toby Bruce. He owns that old derelict of a sailboat you asked about."
"Toby Bruce," I repeated, putting the name in the back of my mind.
"Harbor Master says he wants to sell her, only he's having a hard time, being the rundown condition she's in."
"Did he say how much Mr. Bruce was asking?"
"Nope. Nobody would want that old boat."
"I'd give anything to own that old sailing vessel. Let's get back to Cat Island."
George eased the Mako out through the exit of the harbor and turned west into a giant conflagration. The sunset spread across the sea with a fiery red so intense it seemed to feed on the water. The traffic of the harbor and the sky, shrimp boats, ferryboats, aircraft, birds, all seemed to be in peril of being consumed into its mist.
Glancing back at George, I could see a big smile on his face. Pointing in the direction of Cat Island, I made the motion to throttle up. The little Mako was up on a plane in an instant, running gently on a glassy sea.
Twenty minutes later we rounded into the narrow channel leading to the dock. Anna was standing at the end, pacing back and forth, arms folded across her chest, a worried look on her face. Whatever was wrong could not be good.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Before George could get the Mako fully stopped, I leapt on the dock. Taking Anna gently by both arms, I looked deep into her tearful eyes. There was an exigent plea riding on the watery surface.
"It's Vickey," she said shaking her head. "She's been drinking heavily since you left. I've never seen her this way. You can't reason with her."
"What's the matter?" George asked, stepping up beside us.
"It's Vickey," I said looking from Anna to him, then back to Anna. "She's drunk."
"Is she okay?"
"Yes. She's sitting in the den drinking from a bottle of cognac. She refuses to talk to me. Rants on about someone lying. Says they had gone beyond lying. That they weren't just a liar, they were a lie. Then something about syllogism, whatever that is."
Putting my arm around Anna, we all three started toward the house. "Vickey's probably numbing herself with alcohol from Sabado's death. Sometimes the realization that a person is not who we think they are can be a painful thing. I'm sure she'll be fine tomorrow after sleeping it off. George and I will take care of her."
During the walk up the winding path, I wondered idly how it was that brilliant young women like Vickey Fourche often end up with worthless characters like Bob Sabado.
The night was dark, the moon not yet up. The air was still, birds and surf quiet. There were no sounds coming from the house. A single light shimmered dimly in the big living room with the stone fireplace. Anna sat in a rocker on the eastside porch. George and I entered the den. Vickey was sitting in one of the big leather chairs staring into a flickering fire. She looked small and childlike.
"Vickey," George said.
She turned and looked at us, head weaving. She held up the bottle she'd been drinking from, then looked away.
"You alright?" I asked gently.
She stood up, reeling drunkenly and, with a sibilant sound, hurled the cognac bottle at us. It missed George's head by inches, crashing through a window. Without saying a word, she turned and staggered to her room, and slammed the door.
"That little girl has a mean temper," George laughed. "She's just venting steam. I've seen it before. I'm glad she's drunk, if not she would have hit me."
George went outside and started cleaning up the broken windowpane. Anna and I sat in front of the fireplace. The light was dim, the day gone. I could see the irregular shadow of her disfigured face reflecting from the dancing flames. The dark eyes were watching me. The stare was vague, but its direction purposeful.
Hoping to ease her tormented thoughts, I said, "Vickey will be okay, Anna. She's sleeping it off. We'll check on her during the night."
"I've never seen her get drunk, or display such anger."
"Let's all get some rest."
"Are you going to tell me what this sudden trip to Biloxi was about this afternoon? It must have been pretty important." She leaned forward, studied the multicolor of the small fire.
"In the morning, we'll take a walk on the beach."
George came in from the porch, dumped the shards in the waste basket beside my chair. "I'm going to hit the rack. You want me to check on Vickey?"
"No, Anna and I will do it. Get some rest."
"Good night, all."
"You think she'll be alright, Jay?"
"The hangover will be rough, but the young have remarkable recuperating powers. Why don't we look in on her?"
Vickey's door was shut, but not locked. Anna tapped softly, then opened the door. She was lying on her side, facing us, curled in the fetal position, and snoring gently. We eased out of the room.
"In the morning, right after breakfast, I want to know what's going on."
"Promise."
Undressing in the dark, I thought that maybe I should have told Anna what we suspected, but maybe unconsciously I was putting it off as long as I could. Lying on the bunk, and turning to where I could see the stars rotating across the small window, I thought that I was in motion, also. Scudding along under complex pressures and even more complex controls toward something sinister and evil.
* * *
The same dream again. I tried to force my brain in another direction. It didn't work. I was back on the submarine, next to the conning tower. The water was cold and cloudy. Visibility was restricted so that I could not see my hands. My leg was tangled in a mass of steel cable. I pulled and it held. I pulled again and it got tighter.
Awakening with a jump, I saw the vague outline of a form at the foot of the bunk, my leg firmly clasped in its hand. Reaching slowly under the pillow, I felt for my magnum.
"Easy, Leicester. I'd hate to break your leg." The voice was calm, just above a whisper, and one I recognized. He had dyed the hair.
My eyes were adjusted to the dark, but I was barely able to make out his features. He did not smile and the face looked inanimate. Only his eyes appeared alive, active with a brilliant clarity of perception.
He held up my magnum in his left hand, let go of my leg, and silently eased up to where he could whisper in my ear. "George Lenoir is your boy. He used the Sabado kid for the dirty stuff."
"What?"
He said it again, calmly, in a voice so low that I could barely make out the words. "He had Sabado attempt the hit on you aboard Picaroon. Only he botched it, and killed the Weems woman. They did the whole shark attack thing on the Yillah woman. Poured some kind of chemical on her wet suit that makes sharks hungry."
"How did you find out…?"
He put a hand over my mouth. "The Fourche girl wasn't involved." He released the grip on my face. "Go check the surf line, a hundred yards south of the lab. Do it now." With that, he was gone, melted into the shadows.
Hebrone was good, but what he felt about the things he perceived, no one would be permitted to know, perhaps even himself. My watch glowed four a.m. His information was in line with what we suspected, the same thing W.W. and Guy knew from our meeting yesterday. We still had no way to prove any of it. We didn't even have a motive.
The surf line? What was it he wanted me to see? Pulling on my pants, I slipped into sneakers. Easing out the door, I noticed the piece of cardboard George had placed over the broken window. It stood out like an old wound in the dim moonlight.
Standing for a moment on the edge of the porch, I acclimated myself to the surroundings, the smell of scrub pine, sounds of night birds. The sky was hazy, obscuring the stars. A quarter moon cast an eerie glow on the winding shell path leading to the beach. Taking a deep breath, I tasted the salt air. It was damp, and I
wished that I'd worn a shirt.
The sea looked dark and empty from the top of the dune. It was the same one Anna and I took shelter behind the day I told her about Bob Sabado and Vickey Fourche. The wind was calm, the tide slack. I was a hundred yards from the water, yet I could hear the soft pulsing sound of the surf, remote yet intimate, like the pulsing of my own blood through my veins.
Materializing as if by magic, the body came into view. It was at the high tide line, half buried by sand, like someone lying on a soft feather bed. My heart began to pound, my mouth went dry. The cold soaked into my skin. Who, my brain cried? Anna? Damn you, Hebrone.
Covering the distance from the top of the dune in seconds, I knelt beside the form. She was lying face down; arms folded as if in sleep. Water lapped at her feet. The crabs were already there. I brushed them away.
Without seeing the face, I knew instantly who it was. I recognized the callused feet, the baggy khaki shorts, and the scraggly hair.
Turning her over, I brushed the damp, sticky sand from the youthful face. It had a peaceful expression, except for the eyes. Coal-black, intelligent eyes that had once danced and sparkled with life were now dull and vacant, staring, unseeing, and uncaring at the black ocean they once loved so much.
Vickey…Vickey, I said, aloud to an empty sea. Tell my why? What is a lovely, young woman like you doing dead on a stinking sand spit in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico? Why, Vickey, tell me why?
Picking her up gently in my arms, I walked slowly along the winding shell path to the big house in the center of the pine trees. I heard no night sounds, only the crunching of shells under my feet.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The autopsy report came back death by drowning. Vickey's lungs were full of salt water, and the blood alcohol was .25, which is more than twice the legal amount to be considered drunk. No other traces of drugs were found in the blood or tissues.
Vickey's death made headlines in the Biloxi newspaper and local television. The cause of death was listed as accidental drowning. At her funeral, several people muttered that she could swim like a dolphin. How could she have drowned? Impossible.
Anna moved aboard Picaroon with me. George would remain on Cat Island and look after things. It took some convincing, but we had to separate her from George until we could get the proof we needed that he was the one trying to kill her.
We told her what we suspected about George, and what Hebrone had found out. How logical thinking and, the fact that everyone else had been eliminated, pointed directly to him. She fought it, arguing that if he had wanted her dead there were plenty of opportunities to do so. Finally relenting, she moved aboard Picaroon the day of the funeral.
The pathologist said Vickey drowned. Sure, there was water in her lungs, and she was drunk, and drunk people do strange things, and there were no bruises or scratches on the body suggesting a struggle. My gut feeling was that Vickey did not wake up from a cognac drunk and decide to go for a swim. Even inebriated, she knew the kind of fish that came inshore to feed just off the beach during the night.
George exhibited a great deal of emotion at Vickey's death. He was convincing. It was one of the strong points Anna used in her argument against him being involved. But good performances sometimes deserve just rewards. George Lenoir was going to get his.
* * *
After the funeral, we went back to Picaroon, which was moored stern-to in slip 117 at the Broadwater Marina. The hazy sky obscured the sunset. A spring thunderstorm blossomed like an atomic explosion over the marshland to the west. Lightening flashed with an incredible display of fire and thunder. It was one of those isolated storms wise pilots have learned to deviate around with a wide margin.
Guy handed us both champagne, and asked, "What reason did you use when George was informed that Anna was staying aboard Picaroon?"
"Anna told him that she had to get away from the island and Vickey's memory for a few days, and that there was a full day of paperwork in your office concerning, insurance, liability, and possible law suits."
"You could have told me you were using my office as an excuse. It might have helped if he checked."
"That's why we're telling you now, counselor."
Anna did not smile at the banter. Her expression was sad, a drained, unfeeling look, the pallid face of a person past thinking.
Hoping to shake her out of the depression, I said, "Cheer up, Anna. It's going to be alright."
She looked up at me; the expression did not change. "Maybe it would have been better if the tiger shark had killed me. Susan would not be dead, poor Vickey would not have drowned, and George would not be the object of this horrible suspicion." Her mouth was half-open; her eyes half-closed in helpless expectation.
Remembering the all night sail with Anna, the eerie, blood-curdling scream, I hoped that this would not be a repeat performance.
Guy saved the moment. "Anna that's nonsense." He stood up. "I won't have you saying such garbage." Going to her, he put his arm around the frail, scarred shoulders. "None of this is your fault. We'll have none of this Polynesian hogwash. If there are two things that I've learned in thirty years of practicing law, it is that everybody hates lawyers and everybody blames himself or herself for their friend's untimely death. One is justified, the other isn't."
Anna smiled. It had worked. There are times when I want to hug Guy's neck. He always comes through.
We sat for awhile, silent, watching the lightening display from the weakening thunderstorm as the upper winds blew the top off into a wide, fan-shaped overhang.
"Why did you suspect George?" Anna asked, looking directly at me. "Anyone could have been a suspect, even me, or Guy."
Delaying my answer for a minute to put the reasons in a semblance of chronological order, I said, "George had access to your lab notes on the progress of the development of the repellent. He was aware of the fame and fortune that would come with its perfection."
"But Vickey had access to the lab notes. So did other visiting scientists. I never locked my work away."
"George knew you were close to perfecting the repellent. As long as Susan Weems was working at the lab, making a move was out of the question. When she left, he saw an opportunity. Maybe with you out of the way, he thought he could finish the formula. We do know there is a link between him and Bob Sabado. It was no coincidence that Sabado was dating Vickey Fourche."
"That's why Vickey was one of the main suspects," Guy said holding up the champagne flute, watching the tiny bubbles.
"Exactly. If George is as smart as I think, that's what he planned on everyone surmising. Fourche and Sabado kill Anna Yillah for the repellant formula. If the shark had killed Anna, George was going to suggest her wet suit be tested for attractant. He would have then cast suspicion on Vickey and Sabado. But the attack failed, and he had to think of another way. This is where most amateurs run into trouble."
"Such as?" Anna asked, the tick of a frown wrinkling the corners of her mouth.
"George convinced Sabado that if he helped with the plan, it would make all three of them rich. He insisted Sabado not tell Vickey. He knew Vickey would not hear of such stupidity. Even at that time, he was planning to get rid of both of them."
"Then it was Sabado who made the call from a shrimp boat giving the coordinates to the sub," Guy said.
"Yes. It was he who soaked Anna's wet suit with the attractant the night before the dive on the sub. He sneaked on and off Cat Island several times. George showed him what chemical and what wet suit. George knew it would be too hard for him to do it with the visiting scientists in and out of the lab. He had Sabado slip in, do the job, and slip back out. Simple."
"But why wait two and a half years before trying again?" Anna asked.
It was a good question.
"This shows a bit of genius. Having the patience to wait until the time was right again was amazing. It kept throwing me off for a long time."
"What about the threats sent to my office?" Guy asked. "That I don't under
stand."
"I think Vickey sent them to get the investigation reopened. She somehow found out about George and Sabado's little plan. Maybe it was only a suspicion. It could have been some mistake Sabado made. He was not too smart, or patient. He certainly let the cat out of the bag somewhere, because Hebrone Opshinsky was able to find out some information about it. When Anna hired me, it threw George into a panic. He did not want me digging around, so he goaded Sabado into killing me. Susan Weems was in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Anna shook her head, her ruined hair swayed with the jerking movements, then stood still as she bowed her head.
"When my death was botched, George didn't have any choice, he had to act. If I had exposed his plan, it would have all been over. He then started to make mistakes, kept trying to adjust to events as they unfolded. When we decided to make the dive on the sub to force someone's hand, George saw a good opportunity to blame things on Sabado. He no longer served any purpose for him. Remember, George thought that what we brought to the sub was the repellent, and he managed to convince Sabado that it had been perfected and now was the time to put in a claim for its discovery."
"George just didn't know that the chemical wasn't repellent," Guy said.
"Exactly. Remember who suggested we needed more help on the dive? George did, knowing that Vickey would volunteer Sabado. He had Sabado insist to Vickey that he would like to help out the next time the lab needed an extra hand. I saw the familiarity between George and Sabado on the trip out to the sub. They were supposed to have never met, yet it was obvious they knew each other and knew each other well."
"I didn't pick up on that." Guy said
"You didn't notice because as soon as I took over the helm that morning you went below deck. I also saw George going over Anna's lab notes the day I was to tell her about the relationship between Vickey and Sabado. He tried to make some excuse, but I saw the notes, and recognized the letterhead."
Guy stood and stretched. "So you're saying that Sabado's death, though accidental, still worked right into George's plan."