I said, “Mildred Engle isn’t that old. It must have been someone else,” but knew she was talking about Chestra.
It allowed JoAnn to be less guarded. “I hope so. A woman who won’t risk meeting a man’s female friends? That’s a danger signal. Always trust a woman’s instincts when it comes to other women. The one I met is cold. The kind of coldness that’s hiding something. So I’m glad it wasn’t the same woman.”
Her tone said she suspected it was.
They still weren’t done with me. This wasn’t just about Chestra, or the fight. What was on their minds?
I listened to JoAnn talk about how hot it was and that they needed to get a new air conditioner, the old one was so noisy, before she finally started getting to it. “Maybe we shoulda tried to talk some sense into him earlier, huh? Maybe he’da thought twice before getting mixed up in a brawl.”
“Probably should’ve,” Rhonda said. “Someone needs to find out why our old buddy seems to have a death wish.”
I removed the washcloth from my forehead and sat up. “Death wish? Okay, ladies, what’s this about?”
Rhonda said, “It’s about you staying in that rickety old piling house of yours when everyone else in their right mind evacuated the island. And it’s about—”
“Hold it,” I said, and began to explain that I’d been on a trip, returned late, didn’t realize how bad the storm would be. But she cut me off, saying, “It’s not just the hurricane, Doc. And it’s not just you getting into a brawl—”
“It was worse than just a brawl,” JoAnn put in, “a lot worse,” her tone saying she had additional information.
“It’s about the risks you’ve been taking,” Rhonda continued. “At least, risks that some of us around the marina think you’re taking. We’re not stupid. We pay attention to what goes on in this weird little fishbowl of ours and some of us are worried. Worried about you.”
I became more focused. Uneasy. Wasn’t certain that I needed to respond cautiously but did. “Risks?” I said. “I don’t know what you mean.”
The women exchanged looks again, Rhonda’s expression telling JoAnn to take over.
“Let me go down the list,” JoAnn said. “A couple months back, you went for a cruise on the Queen Elizabeth. A guy like you on a cruise ship. Wearing a tuxedo, shopping in tourist dumps like Jamaica? No way. Then you come back with a big bruise on your neck like someone smacked you with a sledgehammer—”
“The Queen Mary 2,” I corrected her. “There’s nothing risky about that because she didn’t stop in Jamaica. No one in their right mind intentionally visits Jamaica. Not me, not the Queen Mary. I took Ransom because she needed a break. Ask her, she’ll tell you.”
My Bahamian cousin, Ransom Gatrell.
“That’s my point,” JoAnn said. “We did ask her and she didn’t tell us. Hardly said a word. You didn’t, either, the both of you hush-hush, like you didn’t want to talk about it. That woman, you’re closer than brother and sister. She’ll say whatever you tell her to say. But wait. I’m not done.
“A month or so before that, you took off to God knows where. South America, you said. But your tan was nearly gone when you got home, so I don’t know where in the tropics that would be.
“A few months before, you came back from a trip with a big gauze bandage taped over the meaty part of your right side.” She raised her voice when I tried to interrupt. “Don’t deny it, I saw the dang thing. I was out for a walk and watched you taking a shower.”
My outdoor shower has no curtain, but it’s located at the back of my stilt house, out of sight unless someone’s willing to stand in the mangroves off Tarpon Bay Road. Or arrive by boat, like Arlis.
“You watched me shower?”
“Only five minutes or so, yeah.” In reply to my expression, she added, “Doc, almost every woman on this island has seen you showering at one time or another. Some nights, we could sell popcorn. As if you didn’t know—but don’t change the subject. Point is, you came back injured. Again. Maybe a gunshot wound, that was one of the rumors.”
“A gunshot?” I was shaking my head, smiling. “Unbelievable. I didn’t realize my pals had such good imaginations. No…I was diving off St. Martin. A biologist friend wanted my opinion on something, and I got sliced up by a chunk of coral. You can see the scar, if you want.”
Which was close to the truth. I’d been cut—but not by coral. A knife.
I said it again, “A gunshot wound? Boy oh boy,” then waited. Made an effort to appear relaxed, indifferent. I was worried that JoAnn and Rhonda had correlated the dates: When I left. When I returned. And that they had associated my visit to St. Martin with an incident that occurred while I was there. A small item in the national news: the unexplained disappearance of Omar Muhammad, prospective head of Abu Nidal, a fundamentalist terrorist organization.
Muhammad had vanished while snorkeling on a shallow reef off St. Martin. His body was never found.
I relaxed a little when JoAnn pressed ahead, saying, “Then there was the time you said you had to go to Key West for a few weeks, but I know damn well you went to Colombia or someplace like that, because Sandy Phillips mentioned she saw you at Miami International, the TACA gate, and…”
“We also know how Tomlinson makes his living,” Rhonda cut in severely. “That’s what we’re getting at. I don’t know why he didn’t stick with his Internet meditation school, Ransom did such a great job setting that up. He was making plenty of money. Bought the Harley, and the cool minivan. But now he’s back to importing and selling what everyone knows he’s always imported and sold, and, well…Doc—”
“Doc,” JoAnn said, “we love Tomlinson. You know that. But if that crazy old hippie has somehow talked you into helping him smuggle marijuana and God knows what else…sending you off to foreign countries to do the dangerous stuff while he hangs out here getting stoned and working on his tan—” The woman paused and looked at me. “Why are you laughing, Doc? What’s so damn funny?”
After several more seconds, Rhonda said, “Doc. Stop it. We’re not joking. Today, you show up with a fancy new yacht you say you got as salvage. We’re not dumb. That’s the sort of thing men buy with drug money. Now you’ve got Jeth involved?”
JoAnn said, “We know a lot of people are hurting since the hurricane. If you need cash, we can turn you on to some good investments. But smuggling is poison, and it’s bad for Dinkin’s Bay—”
Thin-lipped, Rhonda said, “He’s not listening. I don’t know why we’re bothering.”
I couldn’t talk. I was laughing that hard.
33
I knocked on Chestra’s door. No answer. Placed my ear near the window and heard music, the piano. I tested the knob. Unlocked. Considered sticking my head in and calling her name but decided I didn’t know the woman well enough.
Instead, I took a business card from my billfold, and wrote, “We’re in the salvage business. Back at 9. MDF,” and wedged it at eye level inside the doorjamb.
I’d ridden Tomlinson’s gaudy beach bike, which was now propped against a gumbo-limbo tree. From the basket, I took my foul-weather jacket and walked to the beach.
I’d spent the day on the water, but weather changes quickly in the subtropics and I wanted to have a look at the Gulf. At the lab, I’d listened to NOAA weather while connecting the flask-sized object and the gun-sized object to the electrolytic reduction circuit. The other artifacts—the German coins and the diamond swastika—were already cleaner, more detailed. The cigarette lighter wasn’t much improved—the engraving only slightly more legible. Yes, the first letter was an M.