We’d been met at the door by a woman in her late thirties with black-walnut hair that was unashamedly straight out of a bottle. She introduced herself as Jen and her older brother as Jon and waved at her father as we drew near, saying, “Hey, Dad, what you been up to? The cops are here! Have you been drag racing again?”
Walter Ireland’s laugh was a weak, wheezing thing that shook his chest like an earthquake nonetheless. Judging by his thin, olive green aura, the oxygen bottle strapped to the back of his chair, and the way the riot of pillows propped him up, we’d get more of our answers from his kids, not because he was going to hold out on us, but because he simply didn’t have the breath to speak for long.
We introduced ourselves to Walter and he gestured to us to sit down with the family. The table had enough mismatched chairs to seat eight, so we picked one on each side near the poker party. I sat on the side next to Jon—a tall man in his early fifties with receding hair the color of dust and a mustache stolen straight off a cowboy in a cigarette commercial. Solis took the seat next to what must have been Jen’s currently empty chair, judging by the cards facedown on the table.
“You want anything?” Jen asked, still standing between the table and the doorway and glancing around at everyone. “Dad is going to have his go juice.”
Walter shook his head and made a face.
“Oh yeah, you are,” Jen replied. “It’s after noon and the doctor says you have to drink it twice a day. I know it’s gross, but, hey, it could be worse—it could be blendered liver powder and wheatgrass like Dotty drinks. Num num!”
Walter’s mouth turned down and he coughed out, “All right. Nasty gunk.”
“I want some of that red stuff,” Jon said. “We’ve still got red stuff, right?”
“You mean red-red or pinky-red?” Jen asked.
“Red-red. Pinky-red is that dragon-fruit goop. Pfah!”
She looked at us. “We have Vitamin Water in whatever color you like and soda and plain, old-fashioned tap water. Or I can make some tea if you want.”
“Water is fine,” I said.
Solis nodded to indicate the same.
Jen raised her eyebrows at us. “Ooo . . . living on the edge—drinking tap water.”
“I hear fish fart in it,” Jon said with a wink at me.
Jen hustled around the open-plan kitchen that adjoined the dining area and fetched the drinks. She brought her father a small plastic bottle of some thick orange liquid and plopped down a bottle of purple Vitamin Water next to it before she sat down beside him and pried the lid off the orange goop. She pushed it into Walter’s hand, saying, “There y’go, Dad. Slug that crap down and then you can have the good stuff to wash away the taste.” She shot a look over her shoulder at me and Solis. “Acai and blueberry. I think it’s horrible, but Dad likes the stuff.”
“Better’n this,” Walter mumbled, lifting the small bottle in a shaking hand.
“My theory is that the combined tastes must be much better than the individual ones,” Jon added, “because that acai berry stuff is kind of weird.”
Walter started to offer him his orange glop. “Wanna find out?” It came out as a near whisper.
Jon waved him off. “Nope. You drink it, Dad. You’re a better man than I am.”
Walter wheezed another laugh, then guzzled his drink with a downturned mouth and a scowl.
“OK, so . . . what’s the question of the day?” Jen asked, turning to us as her father reached for the bottle of purple liquid.
“We have some questions about your sister, Ruth,” Solis replied.
Jen blinked and Jon scowled. Walter looked stunned.
“Ruthie?” Jen asked. “She’s been gone a long time. What kind of questions could you have? Have you found her?”
“No. But the boat on which she disappeared has been found and we wish to know more about the passengers.”
Jen blinked a little, her mouth working like a fish’s, and couldn’t quite form a reply.
Jon leaned forward, helping his father with the lid on the bottle of Vitamin Water, but keeping his focus on us. “What sort of thing do you want to know?”
“Did she talk about the trip?”
“Not a lot that I remember,” Jon replied. “But I wasn’t around much then. I suppose she would have been excited, though.”
Jen snorted and Walter shook his head.
“So she wasn’t looking forward to the trip?” Solis asked.
“She wanted it like fire,” Walter mumbled, wheezing.
Jon reached over the wheelchair and adjusted the valve on his father’s oxygen bottle. “Ruthie was boat crazy, so if she was going to go out with those high-roller types, of course she was excited. She loved that stuff.”
“Well, she liked her friends, too. I don’t think she’d have been as excited about it if they weren’t going along,” Jen added.
“Which friends, specifically? Do you remember?”
“Oh, Janice, of course—they were BFFs.” She looked at her brother. “What was that other girl’s name? The crazy one.”
“Which one? Half of Ruthie’s friends were crazy.”
“The one with the funny hair.” She turned her gaze back to me and Solis. “One of those blondes whose hair goes all green in the swimming pool. You know. Kooky. She was like a deckhand or something.” She looked back to Jon. “What was her name?”
“Sally?”
“Nooo . . .” Jen said, shaking her head. “That’s not right.”
Walter coughed around a word. Jen and Jon both leaned close to hear.
“What, Dad?” Jen asked.
I could barely hear the whispering of his breath as he repeated the word.
Jen looked up again. “Shelly. Dad says her name was Shelly.” She looked at her brother. “Does that sound right to you?”
Jon nodded. “Oh yeah. Now I do remember her. Shelly Knight. Which I remember because Janice didn’t like her as much as Ruthie did and she called her One-Night Shelly. They used to argue whether Shelly was a friend or a floozy.”
“Like I would remember that. I was, what, twelve?”
“Well, you might if you’d paid attention.”
“What came to my attention was the way you mooned around after Janice Prince.”
“Mooned around? I never moon—unless I drop my pants first.”
Solis cut into their developing argument. “Do you believe Shelly Knight was on the boat when it left?”
“I’d be really surprised if she wasn’t,” Jon said.
Jen nodded. Walter seemed to nod, too, but it could just have been that he was tired, since the energy around his head and body was very low. “Shelly,” he whispered, a slight scowl on his face. He motioned to his children and Jon leaned in to listen before Jen could turn around from looking at us.
Jon nodded for a few seconds at what his father was saying, then raised his head, frowning. “I think Dad’s really tired and he’s not making sense. He says he saw Shelly the last time we were down at the marina. But that couldn’t be right.”
“Why not?” I asked. “When was he last at the marina?”
“About a year ago. Before he went into the hospital this last time. We went down with the broker to finalize the sale of Dad’s fishing boat—nothing fancy, but he wasn’t going to use it and we kind of needed the money for the medical bills. But, anyway. He’s sure he saw Shelly sitting on the dock when we were there. I don’t remember that but he says he did. I think he’s imagining things, myself.”
Jen smacked him on the arm. “Don’t say that. Dad’s not senile.”
“I didn’t say he was. I just don’t think he’s remembering quite right. It was a year ago. A lot’s happened since then.”
“How could you misremember a girl with green hair?”
“These days there’s a lot of them I’d like to misremember. Ecch. Green hair.”
Jen made a face at him. “Bigot.”
“I don’t make fun of you for dyeing your hair.”
“That’s because I look good.”
“That’s because you dye it a nice color, not green. You look like a femme fatale from an old movie.”