“Bo managed the car.”
“I said they were watching us. I didn’t say they were real good at it.”
“And if I’d been caught, Uncle Deke? What then?”
“A poor, heartbroken schoolteacher who just lost his mom and sister? You’d get the benefit of the doubt, same as Mel Bennett did. What did the D.A. call it?”
“A Valhalla verdict,” I said slowly.
“Exactly,” Deke grinned. “Sometimes, livin’ in a town where folks cut one another a break ain’t such a bad thing, Professor. C’mon, the family’s at the park and you need to be with your people. Damn it, Paul, we’ve won for once. And it was long overdue.”
I couldn’t argue with that. Trotting down the steps, I slid into the car beside my uncle. Breathing in the aroma of wood-smoke and whiskey. Reading his wolfish smile as he gunned away from the curb.
I knew he’d played me. All the way. Maybe he had the right to. Maybe it was the only way we could get justice.
Still, I couldn’t help wondering... about those flowers.
Did Mel Bennett really send that wreath to my mother’s funeral?
But I didn’t ask. Uncle Deke was my mother’s brother. She loved him and that was good enough for me.
And it’s best to give people you love the benefit of the doubt.
Even when you know better.
Permission To Climb Aboard
by Perri O’Shaughnessy
Sisters Mary and Pamela O’Shaughnessy first saw print (under their pseudonym Perri O’Shaughnessy) in the June 1995 EQMM, as the second-place winners in MWA’s 50th Anniversary Short Story Contest. They’d already sold a book by that time, and after 13 successful books in thirteen years, they decided to take a year off. Now they’re back, with Show No Fear (Pocket Books).
Aerial view: A yacht drifts in a vast turquoise sea speckled with small, distant islands.
Closer view: A man and a woman, both very good-looking, sparsely dressed, oiled with suntan lotion, sit together on plush cushions lining the deck of the yacht.
Even closer view:
“Where’s that go, Tom?” Carolina pointed at a trapdoor she had just noticed on the deck.
“Sail storage.”
She adjusted the strap on her swimsuit. “I guess you know boats. You were a Navy Seal, right?”
He nodded. “Yeah, but not on ‘boats’ like this. This is a fifty-two foot Tanaya yacht. The brochure calls her an eye-stopper. And so she is.”
She smiled at him. “Two bedrooms below. Impressive.”
“You mean two staterooms.”
“I don’t know much about boats, or yachts, for that matter.”
“If you knew me well, you’d know that I know you know about yachts and boats and I’m guessing much more obscure things, too.”
She yawned. “Just trying to get a dialogue going.”
“Bored?”
“Funny, isn’t it? I mean, we’re in paradise. You see it on magazine covers, thinking, oh, that’s life worth living.”
He scanned the horizon. “It’s going to be a beautiful evening, and let me remind you, we’re deeply into the good life.”
Taking a deep breath and closing her eyes, Carolina relaxed her face in the long rays of the late afternoon sun. “Stopped in at the post office in Roadtown lately?”
“No.” He picked up binoculars and put them to his eyes.
“You know that wall where they post pictures of the families that have disappeared off their boats — yachts?”
He nodded.
“Well, they’ve updated it. There are new ones, recent ones. Photographs of tousle-haired kids, tanned parents. Grinning dogs. Imagine people taking their dogs on long boat trips. I mean, where do they poop?”
He laughed.
“Seriously. That’s some sad stuff.”
They sat in silence while Carolina leafed through a magazine and Tom continued his scrutiny of the empty horizon. After a while, she put the magazine down, put a white canvas hat on her head, and pulled her ponytail through the back. She squeezed some sunscreen from a soft plastic bottle and rubbed her stomach.
“Any good?” he asked, sniffing, setting aside the binoculars. “Smells nice.”
“SPF thirty-five. No worries, no burn, baby.”
“Make me hot, sweet thing. Call me names.”
Carolina punched his arm. “Pay attention, here. Grow up.”
He studied her. “I am paying attention, here. You in a bikini: brown and beautiful.”
She blushed. “You’re cute in those surfer shorts, too. It’s sure a different look for you.”
A few minutes passed in silence. Then Tom picked up the binoculars again.
A huge yacht skidded by. The wake rocked them.
Tom swerved his binoculars that way. “Gotta be sixty-five feet.”
“Here be rich folk,” Carolina said. “They devour catered strawberries and pineapple with whipped cream and jump into the sea looking monstrous, loaded with gear, never more than ten meters from yet another of the world’s most dazzling coral reefs.”
“Hey, you snorkeled yesterday. You thought that parrot fish making those nibbling sounds on the coral was awesome.”
“He looked like a rainbow.”
“Check this out.” He handed her the binoculars.
She took them and squinted. “Two people. A girl and a guy, I think.”
“In trouble?”
“Pretty long way off, but I’d say so.” She handed them back.
“A Boston Whaler.” He watched. “Engine sputtering.”
“If they need help, they’ll signal us somehow.”
“The guy’s looking at us through his binoculars.” He put his arm around her and held her close. “I say we ignore them until they let us know they want us involved. What do you think?”
“Maybe they’re waiting for help from someone they radioed already,” Carolina agreed. She popped open a couple of bottles, handed him one, and nuzzled his neck.
He set the powerful binoculars down and pulled her into a long, slow, showy kiss.
After they parted again, she drank from her bottle, turned away from the approaching boat, and made a face. “Ugh. What crap.” She set the bottle down.
“Won a prize in a blind taste test.”
“You mean a tasteless taste test.”
“We’ll crack out some champagne later, and that’s a promise.”
She ran fingers through the hair on his chest.
He nibbled her ear. “They’re heading our way. He’s pretty stuck on those binoculars. What a voyeur.”
She pushed in close to him.
“You’re trembling. Nervous?”
“Actually, I’m excited. Tired of sitting out here with nothing happening, no offense to you. You can be entertaining.”
He laughed, and kissed her again. “It’s just two kids on a rental boat that’s running out of gas or something.”
They watched the boat approach, its motor roaring intermittently. The pair chugging toward them in the boat, now more visible to the naked eye, appeared youngish, twenties.
“They need bailing.”
“The nearest island is Jost Van Dyck, and that’s got to be, um, seven miles away?” She accepted a long kiss, which took place more on her cheek than her mouth, and took the binoculars, studying the couple. “Tom, he’s got two arms up, trying to get our attention. They want help.”
Tom stepped up to the yacht’s shiny wooden wheel. He turned on the motor, and aimed for the Whaler.
A bead of sweat on Carolina’s forehead dribbled down her cheek. She brushed it away and turned her face into the wind, watching the little boat get bigger. Her hat flew off and she rushed to retrieve it before it went overboard.