Surface Tension Page 11

  I decided I’d work first, shower later. Taking several big lawn-size garbage bags and spreading them around the cottage, I told myself to throw away everything I could live without, to clean out the debris that was cluttering up my life.

  I got my easel set back up and found my paints, which were intact. I found my telephone answering machine under a pile of books and papers and plugged it back in. I cursed myself for not having thought of it sooner. It was possible I’d lost a job or two because a client had been unable to reach me. I also dug my handheld VHF out of the debris and turned it on to monitor channel sixteen. With that payment to Maddy, I’d pretty well cleaned out my checking account, Neal had cleaned out my reserves, and basically, I was broke. I wondered how Jeannie was making out with the salvage claim. I picked up the telephone receiver and dialed her number.

  “I tried to call you last night, but there was no answer right up to midnight,” she said.

  I brought her up to date on the break-in, Burns, the guys on the beach, and Maddy’s unforgiving stance.

  “Jeannie, only one person on earth knew where I kept that money. I think he tried to make it look like a break-in and maybe got a little carried away, but I’m pretty sure Neal was the one who made this mess. It looks like he’s in trouble, and I’d like to think he’d help me out if things were reversed.”

  “You said those muscleheads on the beach thought he was alive, too.”

  “Yeah, and they seemed to think Neal would contact me.”

  “These guys are playing a rough game. I just wish we knew what it was. No wonder you’re not answering your phone.”

  “Actually, I spent last night on B.J.’s couch,” I said. I felt like I needed to talk to somebody about it. “I think I even messed up my friendship with him.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I kissed him.”

  “So?”

  “Well, he’s B.J.! And this wasn’t just a hello-goodbye kiss. I mean, Jeannie, he works for me.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Jeannie, B.J. and I have always just been friends. Buddies. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking.”

  “Maybe you were just thinking about being lonely. How long has it been since you and Neal split up? Six months?”

  “Closer to seven.” I didn’t let on that I knew the exact number of weeks, down to the day, since the last time I’d made love to a man. “I’m just not ready for another relationship, Jeannie. I like living alone. And B.J.—has he ever lasted more than a month or two with one woman? I don’t have any desire to join the ever-growing club of B.J.’s old girlfriends.”

  Jeannie chuckled. “The lady doth protest too much. I don’t think you know what you want. And as for B.J., my guess is that he hasn’t met the right woman. Well, I’m afraid I don’t have any better news for you. I haven’t been able to find out who owns the Top Ten. I traced it as far as an offshore corporation in the Cayman Islands, but I can’t find out anything from those goddamned island bankers. That attorney you said visited you, though, what was his name again?”

  “Hamilton Burns. A real blue-blood type.”

  “Let me see what I can find out through him, and I’ll see if I can get them to sign a salvage form. Then we’ll present them with our settlement offer.”

  “I need the money, Jeannie. As soon as possible.”

  “Don’t worry about my end. You just watch your back, girl.”

  “There’s one more slight little problem, Jeannie.”

  “I get worried when you talk about slight problems.”

  “Well, it’s just this cop, Collazo. I did say I would go give a statement yesterday, but with everything that happened, I didn’t have time.”

  “So get your butt over there, girl.”

  “I’ve got a job this morning, I can’t. And it’s a little more complicated. He said I should have my attorney present. He thinks I killed Neal and Patty.”

  “What?”

  “I know, it’s crazy, right?”

  Jeannie didn’t say anything at first. I could almost hear her thinking. “Seychelle, listen to me. Whatever you do, don’t talk to the cops without me. As soon as you’re finished with that job, we’ll go over there together. Do you hear me?”

  We said our goodbyes, and I got back to work. Soon the front room started to look habitable again. But the bedroom was another story. I didn’t own enough clothes as it was, so I couldn’t just throw all that stuff out. I sorted and folded and hung things back up in the closet. When I went to hang up my one and only long formal-type dress, I noticed something was missing. Normally, when I slid that dress—actually a bridesmaid gown I’d had to wear to the wedding of a fellow lifeguard—into the closet, I usually had to make sure I didn’t snag its lace on the valve on top of my scuba gear. But there was no tank in the closet, nor in the bedroom anywhere. I went out into the front room and looked all around again, thinking maybe I had somehow overlooked the gear out there. Nothing.

  I was standing in the middle of the room in that sort of dreamy far-off space of deep contemplation when the phone rang. The noise startled me back to the here and now. I had to reach across three fat black trash bags in the kitchen to pick up the phone. I was beginning to think that maybe everybody should get their home ransacked periodically—it forced you to do a really good spring cleaning.

  “Hello.”

  “Miss Sullivan. Detective Collazo. I’ve been trying to get in touch with you.”

  This guy sure was persistent. “Look, Detective, I’ll go in and make a statement as soon as I have the time.”

  “Today. You will make the time.”

  “I’m getting ready to do a job this morning, and—”

  “But that is not the main reason I called this morning.”

  “Okay. So?”

  He paused. “You knew a young woman by the name of Elysia Daggett.”

  I drew in my breath sharply and felt a prickly sensation creep up my spine. He had used the past tense. No.

  “Yes,” I said. “I know her.”

  “This morning, at approximately six-thirty A.M. . . .” I could hear the sound of paper rustling as he flipped through the pages of his notebook. When he began again, it was clear he was reading directly from his notes. “A Fort Lauderdale resident, riverfront home, raised an anchor used to prevent his boat from damaging itself against the dock. Lodged in the prongs of a—” I heard the rustling of paper as he turned a page in his notebook. “—Danforth-type anchor was the upper right arm of a nude body. Female. Body was partially wrapped in a blanket. Rope binding the ankles attached to a broken piece of cinder block.” He coughed, and I could hear the sound of him snapping the notebook closed. “We won’t know the exact cause of death until we get the M.E.’s report.”

  No, no, no. I just kept chanting the same word over and over in my head. I was hearing what he was saying, but it wasn’t registering in my mind. The words were searing straight through to my guts.

  “Miss Sullivan, are you still there?”

  “Yes.” No, no, no.

  “We ran the prints and made the ID. She had a record. The brick tied to her ankles was not heavy enough to prevent the body from moving in the current. We assume it was dumped somewhere upriver and the outgoing tide carried it down until she snagged on this anchor. We checked with her last known residence, a facility called Harbor House, and they gave us the name of her employer. I am here at the Bahia Cabana at this moment, and the manager tells us she left work with you yesterday.”

  I couldn’t speak. My hands were shaking so, I could feel the phone vibrating against the side of my head.

  “Miss Sullivan.”

  She was so beautiful. The little sailor suit. The white heels that clicked so authoritatively on the tile floors. I could see her laughing, laughing at being alive, her auburn curls splayed out in the back of B.J.’s El Camino, kicking her bare feet in the air. Stop shaking, Seychelle. This isn’t so. It can’t be. Oh, child, Ely. No.

  “A
t Harbor House, they say she never returned last night. You were the last one seen with her, Miss Sullivan.”

  “No.” The word finally seemed to explode out of my mouth.

  “Start with when you left the restaurant.”

  “No. I wasn’t the last one to see her.” Finally, something I could focus on. “We dropped her off at Harbor House last night. We waited until she went inside. She got home. I saw her go inside.” I was gulping air. My lungs couldn’t seem to process the oxygen, and my chest hurt. “It must be someone else. It can’t be Elysia.” Maybe if I kept talking, didn’t give him a chance to say any more, it would all turn out to be a big mistake.

  “The body has been identified.” There was more paper crinkling. “A James Long, executive director of Harbor House. Said he’d known Miss Daggett more than two years.”

  “There has got to be a mistake,” I said. Elysia had mentioned that name just last night. What had she said?

  “No mistake. At this point we are unable to determine if it was an accidental overdose or intentional. We haven’t ruled out suicide, but due to the marks on the body, it appears unlikely at this point. And I doubt very much she tied the brick to her own ankles.”

  “Overdose? Ely wasn’t an addict, Detective. Not anymore.”

  “Whoever dumped her probably assumed it would be a long time before anyone even missed her.”

  “She’s not like that.”

  “You did see her last night. You left her work with her.”

  “Yes. And the last time I saw Elysia, B.J. and I dropped her off in front of Harbor House and watched her walk in the door. Somebody buzzed her in around, oh, I don’t know, eight o’clock last night. I know she made it home last night.”

  “You are coming in to make a statement today about the Krix case.”

  I stared at the phone, my stomach suddenly nauseated, the remains of my morning bagel threatening to revisit.

  “Miss Sullivan?”

  “Yes.” My voice sounded to me like that of a ten- year-old.

  “You are coming to the station today.”

  “Yes, okay.”

  “We’ll speak more about the Daggett girl then. And Miss Sullivan . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “The Coast Guard has suspended the search for Neal Garrett’s body. It has been over forty-eight hours.”

  I didn’t say anything at first. The silence dragged on, broken only by the occasion pops and crackles from the phone line. “What do you want from me, Collazo?”

  “I want to know what really happened out there.” He paused expectantly, but I just let the silence drag on. “And perhaps you will be able to explain something to me: Why are so many people connected to you turning up dead?” He hung up the phone.

  I slowly settled the receiver back in its cradle.

  It didn’t feel real. Surely I could get in Lightnin’ and drive over to Harbor House and she would be there, laughing, telling me that it was all a goofy mistake. Her curls would be bouncing, her eyes sparkling.

  In the distance, the Jungle Queen, a popular tourist cruise boat, tooted her horn for one of the bridges. I stared out the window at the estate across the river. The main house was shuttered and blind-looking. Closed up against the ravages of weather and crime and time. I wanted to close my own shutters, block out the world. I shut my eyes, and fat tears dropped to my cheeks. It was real, wasn’t it? And it seemed Collazo had finally asked me a real question. This time, I wanted to know the answer, too.

  X

  Galen Hightower bought the Ruby Yacht six years ago when the seventy-five-year-old ketch lay abandoned and half sunk in an estuary in Rhode Island. A podiatrist, Hightower had come up with the idea for the Happy Feet franchises. He was hoping his name would push Dr. Scholl’s off the map, and he was making more money than a person that tacky had a right to make. Granted, he didn’t pay much for the seventy-two-foot steel hulk when he bought her, but he had sunk over half a million into the boat since. He thought she was gorgeous, and there was some dubious connection to Errol Flynn and a few other 1920s film stars that he was using to make his investment in “historical preservation” tax deductible. He talked on and on about the history of the boat, and I had a tendency to tune him out because there was no avoiding the fact that, historical or not, the boat was just plain ugly. Squat and tubby with a ridiculously high wheelhouse and short, stubby masts, she didn’t even look like a sailboat. The interior boasted two claw-footed bathtubs and several carved teak cherubs, and Hightower had added garish orange-red velvet upholstery. The whole thing was a case of too much money and far too little taste colliding on the waterfront.

  I had agreed to tow the Ruby Yacht up to River Bend Boatyard for Hightower’s annual haul-out at eleven that morning. The boat had a dangerously small rudder, and the first time he had tried to take her upriver himself, the incoming tide had carried him right into the Andrews Avenue Bridge. He lay there listening to his mast and rigging scrape and grind against the steel bridge for ten minutes before the irritated bridge keeper finally opened the span.

  I pulled myself together by showering and dressing in clean blue jeans, a T-shirt, and sockless deck shoes. I didn’t have time to wash my hair, so I just tucked it inside a black baseball cap.

  The ride down the river seemed different; the colors of the broad lawns, empty swimming pools, and barrel-tiled roofs were less vibrant, less alive, but I knew that what had really changed was me. I piloted the Gorda through the bridges and the turns, past the buoys and the traffic of the waterway, but I saw little of it. The world had become a dull and empty place, and I felt a certain numbness inside. Keeping busy might keep the tears at bay, but it didn’t fill the hollowness in my heart.

  I could not believe that Elysia had intentionally used drugs. Someone had done this to her. Someone had decided that she needed to die. I didn’t understand how or why anyone could have taken the life of such an innocent kid. She deserved so much more. She had worked so hard to pull herself together, for this? Collazo had said her death was either suicide, accidental overdose, or homicide. And he thought somebody had either killed her or tried to hide the fact that she’d killed herself. Me? Surely he didn’t really suspect me on this one, too. He was just fishing, but he always seemed to be headed in the wrong direction. He believed them over at the Harbor House, and he evidently thought I was the one who was covering up. I owed it to Elysia to find out what really happened.

  The Ruby Yacht was normally tied up near the end of Pier C, and when I saw the T-pier open, I pulled alongside and tied up Gorda at a couple of minutes after eleven. I was surprised that Galen Hightower wasn’t out pacing the deck looking for me. He was usually so tense whenever his boat had to leave the dock, and he panicked at the slightest deviation from routine. I walked down to Ruby Yacht's slip, and there, tied to the aft quarter of the steel ketch, was Perry Greene’s twenty- eight-foot open towboat, Little Bitt. I couldn’t miss Perry’s white-blond hair in the cockpit of the big yacht. He was handing a clipboard down the companionway, no doubt with a towing contract on it.

  “Hey, Perry, where’s Hightower? What’s going on?” Perry looked up and squinted through the smoke coming from the butt hanging between his thin lips. When he recognized me, he plucked the cigarette from his mouth and walked over to my side of the cockpit. He was wearing his trademark hole-ridden and paint- stained cutoff jeans and a too-tight faded Florida Marlins T-shirt.

  “Hey, baby,” he said.

  He was trying to irritate me, I knew. I was determined to remain professional, although I couldn’t repress a shudder. “What are you doing here, Perry?”

  Dr. Hightower climbed out of the companionway at that point, glancing at his watch. He stood several inches taller than Perry. “You finally decided to get here, eh, Sullivan?”

  “What’s going on here, Dr. Hightower? What’s he doing here?” I pointed toward Perry as I spoke. Perry leaned back out of the doctor’s peripheral vision and puckered up, making like he was kissing me as
Hightower spoke.

  “I tried to contact you all day yesterday, Seychelle, but no one answered your telephone. I sent you e-mails, but you never replied. I was afraid you would be late again, as usual, and this time I took precautions against such a problem.”

  “Late? You’ve never said anything about having a problem with my being late. I tied up Gorda here at two minutes after eleven. The tide won’t shift until twelve- thirty. We’ve still got plenty of time.”

  “I’m dealing with Mr. Greene now, Seychelle. I found his Web page when I was searching for your e-mail address, and it was very impressive.”

  “Perry has a Web page?”

  “You better believe it, baby,” Perry said. “That’s the way to go these days. You know, Seychelle, you can find anything your little heart desires on the Internet.”

  “And when you’re looking, I’m sure that desire and little are the key words, Perry.”

  “That’s enough, boys and girls. I’ve signed a contract with Mr. Greene. End of story.” He turned his back to me and busied himself at the helm in the wheelhouse.

  I spread my hands wide. “Just like that? You’ve hired this redneck pervert and I’m fired?”

  Hightower reached down and turned the key. The old boat’s diesel rumbled to life. He walked out and around the deckhouse and jumped to the dock. He looked like an idiot in his pale blue polyester slacks, white shirt with epaulettes, brand-new Top-Siders, and Greek fisherman’s cap.

  “Miss Sullivan,” he said, raising himself up to his full six feet and trying to look down at me, “I made the effort to contact you after I spoke to your brother.”

  “What do you mean, after you spoke to my brother?”

  “I happened to see your brother at Gulf Stream yesterday.”

  “Oh, great. My brother was at the track.”

  He nodded. “We got into a casual conversation, and when I mentioned that you were going to be towing the Ruby Yacht today, he told me that you had been having financial difficulties. You hadn’t been meeting your responsibilities, he said, and I would be well advised to find myself another towing company. Well, I’ve done that, Miss Sullivan.”