Ben was always struck by LuAnna’s fierce physical way of loving him. She was like an athlete. Subtle in her grace, with a champion’s adroitness. At other times, she was explosive with the beginner’s raw, fearless ardor.
Soon they rested in each other’s arms. Ben felt a sense of true belonging here with LuAnna, and nowhere else. He was a quieter sort of man. This cut him off from an island population that was itself disconnected from most of America, but he did not mind. Many tourists strolling the narrow paths during the summer season thought his reserve belied stupidity, venality, or worse: inbred foolishness. Even among Ben’s own people, diving for his oysters instead of hand-tonging, or using pneumatic patent tongs, seemed like cheating, and set him apart. Though diving was obviously more efficient, Ben endured what the Islanders called nominy, Smith Island slang for a low regard of eccentrics who would not, or could not, live by traditional rules. He knew they would all feel differently if they spent five minutes grubbing on the gloomy bay bottom with him in the cold. Ben was not money-hungry, but any hard-won financial advantage from diving was quickly socked away against the day when LuAnna would be his bride.
For LuAnna, a Smith Island girl born and raised, her defection to work for the Natural Resources Police was a treachery mean as the Kaiser, as her neighbors said of their quislings. She had finally moved off to the Eastern Shore and lived alone while Ben served in Gulf War One; there had been too much pressure placed on her by well-meaning neighbors to forget the unconventional Ben Blackshaw, and hitch to a more regular Island man.
While LuAnna dozed, Ben gazed on this remarkable woman. The last loom of day had long died in the west window. The early-rising moon fought through storm clouds in the window facing east. There was just enough light to see Officer Bryce was built lean. It was a wonder her slim hips held up a gunbelt. This is not to say she was not blessed topside. Adding to her beauty, she stood tall and straight, with none of the shame-hooked slump of a buxom girl raised in a small town with its fair share of lonely men. When not peacefully sleeping, her eyes were the brightest blue in the world. Eyes that flashed from a face that favored her mother. They had both lost their parents. At least LuAnna could visit her folks’ graves; they lay side by side on dry land in the burial ground of the Tylerton Methodist Church.
Though in her early thirties, years of Chesapeake sun had already made the corners of her eyes crinkle when she smiled, the way she was smiling just then. She had quietly awakened and was watching him contemplate her.
She murmured, “I believe you knocked my jingle-bean clean off.”
Ben smiled. “I’ve missed you.”
She stretched, then curled around him more closely. “Me too. But if I didn’t know better, I’d say you were chewing on something besides me.”
Ben said nothing about the feelings that his day of revelation had unleashed; the great wealth just within his reach, the loss of his father, and with that, losing the chance at a reunion with him. With his father accounted for, he also wondered where his mother had been all these years, and where she might be now. Answering one question prompted this other, and uncovered another deep well of pain.
Rather than lie, Ben told LuAnna another, older truth. “I’m thinking I don’t know what you see in this man. I don’t understand how in all my life of bad luck you came to be here.”
Her smile broadened. “You don’t want me thinking too much about that. I might not come up with a good answer.” She lightly kissed his lips to show she was teasing. “But I can tell you. It’s a mix of familiarity, stupidity and love. And a profound appreciation of what you do with that beautiful unit of yours. Not that you’re a bad kisser. Not that your smile doesn’t melt me to a puddle. And thank God you didn’t get short-changed in the chin department like a lot of boys on this island.”
“A close thing. My chin was nearly knocked off fighting over you.”
Chivalry tickled LuAnna. “When did you ever fight over me?”
“In the Martin Wildlife Refuge across the way there was this old billy goat with a crush on you—” In truth, Ben never pissed a circle around LuAnna. He did not have to. LuAnna smiled and bit him on the arm. What followed was her special brand of police brutality. Ben fully enjoyed it.
They drew in humid air redolent of hard-worked bodies from the sea. Ben wanted to allay LuAnna’s all-too-perceptive suspicion that things were not right with him. Though he loved her and wished to soothe her, he really needed her to leave. The storm was chopping Tangier Sound between Smith Island and the Eastern Shore, but her patrol boat could handle it. And she would want to go eventually. LuAnna still preferred waking in her own place before a tour. They reserved true overnights for the weekends she did not work.
Ben turned onto his side. Looked her in the eye and asked as he had a so many times before, “LuAnna Bonnie Bryce, will you let me be your husband? Will you let me be daddy to your babies, and pop-pop to theirs?”
LuAnna smiled at him but then looked away. She frowned and said, “You know I’m thinking about it. You know that don’t you, Ben? You’re my Number One Jimmy-crab. I’m your one true Sally-crab. Honestly, I don’t hear your heart in it this time.”
Ben stayed quiet. Despite his own secrets, he was certain LuAnna was hiding something, too. She was usually forthright. Curious as he was about her pensive mien, he still had to put her off, and ease her out the door.
The moon rose farther behind troubled clouds, and LuAnna rose with it to put on her uniform. She gave him a sidelong glance as she leaned forward to cup her full breasts in the bra. “Ben Blackshaw, there’s something on your mind.”
“Plenty of oysters today,” he disclosed, in the sideways Smith Island syntax. “Storm silted them over. Killing them. Speeding up what the farm run-off’s been doing for years.”
He wanted to tell her the rest of the truth. His native honesty demanded it. His love for her compelled it. The least secret between them blacked his heart with shadows until it was expressed. Yet he did not mention his dead father lying on the bottom of the bay. He said nothing of the sunken boat full of gold. The further she climbed into her uniform, the more she covered his own precious LuAnna with everyone’s Corporal Bryce. With a pang, Ben remembered what he loved about LuAnna most: he could confide in her. Tonight he felt he could trust her only with his better self. She was an honest woman, and an officer duty-bound to a fault. The lawful thing to do did not jibe with Ben’s gut instinct, which was issuing darker commands.
Though LuAnna seemed weighed down by her own thoughts, she still consoled her waterman. “You know what you’re doing down there. Tomorrow will be better.”
She did not sound so sure. Tomorrow was a long way off. The only thing certain was that when he kissed LuAnna good-bye at the pier, his night’s work was just beginning.
CHAPTER 7
Maynard Chalk settled slowly into his desk chair at the Right Way office. He unfolded a knife and scraped blood from beneath his fingernails before it dried. No Nytrile examining gloves for Chalk. He kicked his interviews old school. The chat with Nelly Vickers, his missing employee’s sweetie, had cost four precious hours; practically every minute a complete waste of time. Turned out Vickers had hardly known a thing about Tom Chase. They broke up a few months after the Right Way holiday party with her feeling suspicious of her beau, but none the wiser. Chalk knew this, but had gone ahead with chatting her up on the off-chance she’d heard something more.
It turns out she had. Now it was time for Chalk to shift his resources in gear and let out the clutch. Folding his knife away, he fished his encrypted cell phone from a breast pocket. He pressed a button. He gave the person on the other end the Vickers address. He said it once and hung up. Everything would be handled. None of Ms. Vickers’s neighbors would smell a funny odor at the door in three days’ time. Would not have to call the St. Mary’s City Police Department to ask for a well-being check on her. The police would not have a splashy crime scene to deal with. In about six hours, the house would be just like Chalk, Slagget, and Clynch had found it. It would be as if Nelly Vickers had never come home. She never would again.