“What else?” said Paul.
“We don’t know it’s drugs,” said Dennis.
“Who owns that house?” said Paul.
“The Becks,” said Marse. “Marcus and Kathleen. They’re hardly the type.”
I thought of Kathleen Beck in her floral sundresses, and of the stork-shaped cookies she’d brought when Margo was born. Every so often I saw her in the parking lot of Margo’s school, picking up her twin daughters. I’d thought she and Marcus had planned to be on the water that weekend, but they must have changed their minds.
A hatch door opened beside the cockpit. “Here we go,” said Marse. We waited, and then a package dropped into the water ten yards off the Becks’ dock. There was a small splash and the bright white package bobbed immediately to the surface. The Cessna circled once more and headed southeast, away from land.
We stepped onto the porch. There was little current, and any movement of the package was almost imperceptible. “What are we waiting for?” said Paul.
Dennis watched the package through the binoculars. It seemed to be heading toward the Becks’ house; if so, it would slip under the dock, past the pilings, and out to sea. The whole process would take three hours, or five at the most. “Could be messy,” said Dennis.
“We can’t just leave it there,” said Marse. “We should call the Coast Guard.”
“Why would we do that?” said Paul.
I said, “Calling the Coast Guard isn’t a bad idea.”
“I’d rather not,” said Dennis.
“Why?” I said.
He didn’t look at me. “Because the registration on the boat is—well, it’s lagging.”
“I don’t think they’ll care about our boat registration, honey. Besides, the Coast Guard is federal.”
“They could call the marine police.”
Paul said, “How well do you know these people, the Becks?”
“Fairly well,” said Dennis.
“Kathleen’s a Girl Scout troop leader,” said Marse.
“Marcus plays the tuba, for goodness’ sake,” I said. “This has nothing to do with them.”
Paul took the binoculars. “Someone could be in there,” he said. We all looked at the Becks’ stilt house, which was a smaller version of our own, painted white with blue shutters. “They could be waiting until dark to make the pickup.”
It had become apparent that all the cloak-and-dagger talk was just that. But I was glad the men had found something to occupy them. Weekends at Stiltsville—our little island, our weekend oasis—tended to stretch out when we entertained guests. “Let’s just keep an eye on it, see what happens,” I said. “I’ll finish breakfast.”
“I smell adventure,” said Paul.
“You always smell adventure,” said Marse.
They were not a demonstrative couple; I’d rarely even seen them kiss. Dennis and I had set them up after years of having said we should; we’d had them over for dinner, and the following weekend they’d attended an office party at Marse’s firm, and after the party—I knew this because Marse told me—they’d gone for a midnight cruise in her boat, and wound up having sex on the deck. For a time, Marse had been smitten. A month before the weekend at Stiltsville, though, she’d told me they were through—something about an argument at a wedding, where friends of his had not known who she was, or had mistaken her for someone else—but then he’d popped back into her life and their relationship had resumed. I didn’t know the particulars. When it came to her love life, if nothing else, Marse was reluctant to give details. I could count on one hand the number of men she’d introduced me to. That’s not including Dennis, of course.
When we’d arrived at the stilt house the day before, it had taken half an hour to dock. Our boat, which we’d bought after Dennis had been invited to join Grady’s yacht club, was a nineteen-foot Mako with a single outboard engine and a center console—a boat for skiing and day trips, not serious seafaring—and the current kept fighting us off. I stood on the gunwale, knees buckling with the waves, prepared to jump to the dock—but every time we came close, Dennis shifted too soon into neutral and the tide pulled us away. The downtown skyline shimmered in the heat, supporting the sunset on its shoulders. Night advanced from the east. If we didn’t dock soon, I thought, we’d have to open the house in the dark.
Marse climbed onto the gunwale beside me and stood there in her bikini, her hair wet with spray from the choppy ride. “I can make it,” she said. “No offense, but I’m lighter than you.”
I moved out of her way. “Be careful.”
“Don’t sweat it,” she said, crouching. I was afraid she would slip off right then, while Dennis was bringing us around again. The dock was yards away, and the water in the channel was soupy with roiling sand and seaweed. I planted my feet. Dennis stood at the console, sweating and gritting his teeth, his too-long hair spiking into his eyes, and his beard—which he’d cultivated over the last year—dark with perspiration. He was a good captain. Over the years, we would upgrade to a twin-outboard sports fisherman, then to a thirty-six-foot Hatteras with a tuna tower. Now, though, in the midst of the docking fiasco, with only 175 horsepower at his disposal, Dennis was dejected. “This has never happened before, I swear,” he called out. Marse laughed, and Paul slapped Dennis on the shoulder.
“Don’t sweat it,” said Paul. “We’ll get there when we get there.”
Paul was a pink-cheeked man, fleshier than Dennis but more muscular as well, with thick black hair that had started to recede. He and Dennis had sailed together during high school, and after graduating they’d spent six months together in Spain, traveling, and though this was a trip Dennis remembered fondly, they had not continued to be quite so close. I’d been around Paul many times, but almost always in a group setting—a dinner party, a luncheon at the yacht club, a day of boating with friends. He struck me as the type of man who believed himself more handsome and charming than he was.
Dennis gripped the throttle, his jaw sharp. The boat started toward the dock again. The engine sputtered as Dennis eased back on the throttle, then hummed as he shifted into neutral. I hoped our momentum would be strong enough to fight the tide until Marse had her chance.
She jumped earlier than I would have. Maybe my timing had been our problem all along. She landed on the dock with a slap and grabbed a piling for balance, then stood as we drifted away. “Here,” I yelled, throwing her a line. She caught it awkwardly, hands splayed at knee level, then wedged a foot behind a piling and pulled us in. I felt her pride, her sense of strength. The men hooted and I clapped. When the boat reached the dock, Paul stepped off and took Marse in his arms. Over her shoulder, he winked at me.
I unlocked the gate and sent Marse to unlatch the bedroom shutters and crank open the windows while I lugged the rocking chairs onto the porch. Dennis started the generator and retied Marse’s cleat knots, then lit the pilot lights on the refrigerator and stove—both of these ran on gas, and we used the generators as rarely as possible, for overhead lights—while I unloaded the groceries. On my last trip, Paul intercepted me at the bottom of the stairs. He took a bag from my arms and put it down. “You’re bleeding,” he said. He reached for my hand and held it between us. There was a shallow slice along the outside of my thumb, a ridge of blood. “You should get something on this,” he said. “It might get infected.”
“Yes, doctor,” I said. I meant to tease, but he glanced up sharply. “It’s nothing, really,” I said. There was a bead of sweat or salt water on his nose. Already, the day’s whiskers darkened his jaw. I wondered if he was the type of man who never shaved on weekends, if by Monday morning he would have a beard as thick as Dennis’s.