I wanted to get the wooden sign, ark light, and other objects we’d found back to the lab and into salt water or sodium hydroxide as soon as possible. First, though, I made a quick detour to the docks, looking for Mack. The Sanibel Police Department is efficient and professional. If Augie made a scene—I felt certain he would—they would deal with him in the whisper-quiet way of experts.
Mack kept the department’s phone number above the cash register. A marina that rents boats is guaranteed to have the occasional outraged customer, and Mack had seven jon boats and two runabouts that he rented throughout the year—barring hurricanes. The police were no strangers to Dinkin’s Bay.
As I stepped off the boat, the moon was ghostly silver to the east; the sun was westward, in slow, incendiary descent. Dinkin’s Bay, our small marina, was suspended in balance: a mangrove clearing, boats, buildings, and people.
I was carrying our sopping dive bags, smiling hello at friends, asking them to wait until I returned from the lab to help Tomlinson tell our story of high seas salvage. There was also the not-so-small matter of refueling, unloading, and cleaning the Island Gypsy, then discussing a suitable present for owner Bill Gutek.
The rules are unwritten: If you borrow a boat, replace anything you use or damage, leave it cleaner than you found it, with tanks topped off, and reward the owner for his generosity with a gift.
Before I found Mack, though, I was intercepted by Rhonda Lister, who lives aboard the venerable old Chris-Craft cabin cruiser, Tiger Lilly. She and her longtime partner, JoAnn Smallwood, had arrived on Sanibel years ago, both of them broke, and on the run from abusive husbands. They’d pooled their meager funds and started an advertising sheet they called the Heat Islands Shopping Guide.
The shopping guide is now a full-color weekly newspaper worth a ton of money. The women have demonstrated their entrepreneurial genius by expanding into real estate, and also investing in a couple of restaurants, including a gourmet sports bar that was Tomlinson’s brainchild: Dinkin’s Bay Rum Bar and Grille, located only a few miles away on the road to Captiva, near the wildlife sanctuary.
The women own a beachfront condo, and a home near Asheville, but they prefer to live where they have always lived: on their roomy old hulk of a boat, Dinkin’s Bay Marina, where they have become maternal icons in our small community’s hierarchy.
Rhonda sounded motherly now as she took my arm, stood on tippy-toes to inspect my face, and said, “One more scar on that mug of yours, you’re gonna look like a Japanese haiku. That hack job someone did on your forehead, those stitches should have been removed a week ago.”
The hack job had been done in the field, with monofilament fishing line, by the wife of a man who had an unpronounceable name.
Rhonda was right. I should have removed the stitches myself days ago.
She touched her finger near where I’d been head-butted, then where the driveshaft had caught me. The cut wasn’t as deep or long as the one on my forehead, but it needed attention.
“If you’re not going to take care of yourself,” she said, “I will. I tried to corner you last night, but you disappeared. Why’d you leave the party so early?”
“We dove today. I didn’t want to stay out too late.”
She gave me a knowing, concerned look. “That’s the same sort of baloney Tomlinson tells us when he sneaks off to see his mystery women. She has you on the hook now, too?”
In a marina community, well-kept secrets are as common as well-kept fences.
“Her name’s Mildred Engle. She doesn’t have me on the hook, and there’s nothing mysterious about her. She’s going to finance our salvage project—which means Jeth has a job.”
Women are as territorial as men but more subtle. “No kidding? Then we’ll finally meet her. She’ll come to the marina and say hello to the friends of the men she’s dating, just like any woman would do if she’s got nothing to hide.”
I was smiling, surprised by the heat of her disapproval. I said, “We’re not dating. And I’m sure Ms. Engle will make an appearance some evening, eager for the Dinkin’s Bay ladies to vote on whether—”
I stopped and turned, because I heard men arguing. Augie was standing nose to nose with Arlis, yelling at the old man. Arlis looked to be enjoying himself—maybe because a half-dozen fishing guides formed a semicircle behind him.
I told Rhonda, “Mack should call the cops, and I need to get back to the lab.”
The woman said, “Meet me aboard Tiger Lilly in an hour so I can take care of those cuts. I mean it. Or I’ll come looking for you. Seriously, we need to talk.”
Through the marina’s office window, I could see Mack on the phone, already aware of what was going on. The fishing guides could look after Oswald and Augie until the police arrived.
I put my hand on Rhonda’s shoulder and squeezed. “Make it half an hour.”
It was nearly 8:30, and I was eager to knock on Chestra’s door, tell her what we’d found, and say, “Okay, it’s time for the truth. What happened the night of October 19, 1944? Really.”
32
I told Rhonda, “I don’t know how old the woman is. And I don’t understand why you’re so concerned.”
Rhonda had my head in her lap, a washcloth in her hand. She’d already snipped the stitches and pulled them out with tweezers. Now she was using the cloth to scrub the cut beneath my eye with Betadine, the two of us on a settee in the main salon of Tiger Lilly.
She replied, “JoAnn thinks she met her one night, walking on the beach. The big gray house that you couldn’t see until the storm knocked the trees down? With the gray gables?”
I tried to nod, but she was holding my head tight.
“JoAnn said she tried to talk to her—this was right after the hurricane when everyone was chatty. JoAnn said the woman was pleasant enough until she found out Tomlinson was a friend. After that, it was like a curtain dropped. An ice curtain—JoAnn’s words.”
As I began to reply, she muttered, “This thing’s not as long as the cut on your forehead, but it’s deep. Almost to the bone and only an inch from your eye. Gad. The guy who beat you up did this?”
“He didn’t exactly beat me up—”
“You don’t have to lie to me. The story’s all over the island. Then you got another knock on the head while you were diving?”
I said, “Minor. It doesn’t hurt.”
“Three severe blows to the head. A guy like you who uses his brains for a living. Minor?” She expected a response. Began to scrub harder when she didn’t get it.
“Does this hurt?”
I said, “Yes! You could take varnish off wood, the way you’re digging. It burns like hell.”
“Good! Serves you right for behaving like a damn schoolkid. No”—she pushed my shoulders back when I tried to sit—“you’re not going anywhere until I get you patched up. Afterward, you can help me decorate for tomorrow’s party—out of gratitude.”
“A party?” Friday was the traditional night for marina parties. Tomorrow was Sunday.
“Why not? We’re making up for lost time.”
A marina party hosted by the ladies of the Tiger Lilly. The first since the hurricane. Also the first I’d heard of it.
Tiger Lilly is a forty-one-foot Chris-Craft Continental, a wallowing, teak-and-mahogany hulk, party-sized and homey, which is how she’s decorated: potted plants and Japanese lanterns strung along the weather bridge, full bath, staterooms fore and aft, stereo speakers all around. A boat that’s rigged for socializing, not open sea.