Surface Tension Read online

  “You haven’t told me yet what you think of my little scenario, Miss Sullivan.”

  I looked up, and over the detective’s shoulder I saw a familiar figure enter the bar. His sleek black hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and backlit as he was, his white teeth glowed almost neon white against his brown skin. He walked around Collazo, ignoring him, and wrapped me up in his huge arms, squeezing me tight in a warm bear hug. A little shiver ran up my body as the tension left me, and I kissed B.J. just at the hairline on his neck. He held me at arm’s length. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” I turned my head toward the detective. “Detective Collazo, this is B.J. Moana.”

  B.J. extended his hand, smiling. Collazo took it reluctantly, squinting at the big Samoan.

  Turning back to face me, B.J. said, “Sey, I’m so sorry.” He brushed fingers along the side of my head, attempting to tame some of my wilder hair. “We both know Neal would not go gentle. . . . I’m sure there’s reason to be positive, to hope.” He shook his head slowly, never taking his eyes off mine.

  I closed my eyes for a few seconds and swallowed. “The detective here has certainly put his positive spin on things. He has just been telling me his theory about how I killed Neal and his girlfriend.”

  B.J. turned to stare at the detective, inspecting him with those penetrating dark eyes. “A girl’s dead. That’s not something to joke about.”

  Collazo held his stare longer than most can. “I’m not laughing.”

  “You don’t seriously consider that a possibility, do you?”

  Collazo looked up at B.J., at his six feet two inches of lean, surf-hardened muscle.

  “I consider all possibilities, Mr. Moana.”

  “Well, consider this, then.” He took a step toward Collazo. “Seychelle Sullivan has devoted her life to saving people. She would no more hurt somebody than Mother Teresa would.” He moved in closer his nose not three inches from the detective’s. “There’s a real killer out there. I suggest you get out there and find out who really did this, and stop hassling Seychelle.”

  The detective stood and adjusted his tie, never breaking eye contact with B.J. I could practically smell the testosterone in the air. Then Collazo smiled. It was the first time I had seen him smile, and I couldn’t help but notice the huge gap between his front teeth. He could have slid his gold pen in there without touching enamel.

  “Oh, I’ll do that, all right.” He looked straight at me. “We will be waiting for your statement, Miss Sullivan. Tomorrow.” He picked up his jacket, turned, and walked out of the bar.

  When the door closed behind him, Wally called over, “I think you scared him off, B.J.” All the guys, including Pete, laughed.

  Jake said, “You beat the hell out of his karma there, man.”

  “Yeah,” Nestor shouted, “I think you threatened to meditate him to death and scared the shit out of him.”

  “Okay, guys, that’s enough.” I swiveled around on my barstool to face him. “I’m surprised at you, B.J. Bullying him like that.” I tried very hard to look stern, but my face broke into a grin. “Mother Teresa?”

  He shrugged and smiled. “A much sexier version.”

  I shook my head at him.

  We moved to a booth along the back wall. B.J. ordered grilled dolphin with rice and vegetables, and he shook his head in disgust when I asked for a basket of fried shrimp and chips. Normally, he would have told me that I was going to die of a heart attack by the time I was forty because I lived on beer, fried food, and takeout, but after the day I’d had, apparently he was going to give me a break.

  “I looked for you today before going out on this job,” I said. “I thought you were going to work on repairing that head. Where were you?”

  “Jimmy St. Clair came by on the river in his Sea Ray. He asked me to go down with him to Bahia Mar to give him a price on a boat he’s rebuilding. He’s got a nice old Chris Craft right there on A dock. A classic. You can see her when you’re driving by on A1A. She’s got a bad case of dry rot—enough to keep me busy into the summer.” He unfolded his napkin and carefully spread it on his lap. “But I wish I had been at the estate today. Do you want to tell me about it?”

  Pete brought a couple more beers over at that point, and as we drank, I told the story again. I was beginning to find it therapeutic to repeat the tale so many times.

  “And then when I finally made it back to the cottage, I had a message on my machine from Maddy. He wants me to sell Gorda so he can get his money out of the boat.”

  “Whoa! That’s kind of sudden, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. But Maddy can lose money fast. He used to be a regular at the track.”

  I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until Lil set the plate down and I inhaled the tangy sea smell of the fried shrimp. B.J. wrinkled his nose when I drowned my fries in catsup, but he didn’t slow down his eating. He’d always been ultra picky about food. He insisted on healthy

  food, but when it came time to eat, he was like a machine. He didn’t shovel it in or look gross, but he ate with an incredible economy of movement. I would look up and suddenly realize that he had cleaned his entire plate. I always had to concentrate to keep up with him. I didn’t dare try to talk while eating, and we’d been friends long enough that silence at the table didn’t feel uncomfortable to either one of us.

  When he finished, he wiped his mouth with his napkin and leaned back, spreading his arms on the back of the booth. Unlike most Samoans, he didn’t have wavy hair. His was straight and shiny, nearly the same length as mine. Because of his hair, his lean, muscular build, and his almond-shaped brown eyes, I suspected there was some Chinese or Japanese somewhere in his family tree.

  “I’d met her,” B.J. said.

  For a minute I wasn’t sure who he was talking about. He must have seen the blank look on my face.

  “The girl, Patty Krix. One night a couple of weeks ago, I came into the Downtowner, and she was here with Neal.”

  I pushed away my basket of soggy fries. He’d conjured up that picture of her again, with the knife and the pool of congealing blood. I couldn’t face catsup anymore.

  “Did you talk to her?”

  He shrugged. “A little. She told me there was some girl at her other job that she would like to introduce me to.”

  It was always that way with B.J. Women were drawn to him like flies to a bug zapper always flitting about him and trying to get closer to the source of the heat. Luckily, attraction to B.J. was never fatal. There were no broken hearts. In the years I’d known him there had

  been lots of short-term girlfriends who became long-term friends. I’d never known one of them to go away bitter, but they always went away. They seemed to understand that they would never play a larger part in B.J.’s life.

  I, too, was thankful for our friendship, but in a different way. Ever since I had shot up in height in the fifth grade, I’d felt awkward around incredibly handsome guys. This made it a challenge just talking to B.J. He worked for me as a handyman and mechanic, yet he had a couple of degrees in classical lit and Asian studies, so not only was he gorgeous, but he was damn smart. Being friends with B.J. put us on a different level; sometimes he made me feel like a complete idiot, but at least I didn’t need to play any boy/girl games with him.

  Apparently, even though Patty Krix had already teamed up with Neal, she couldn’t let irresistible B.J. be. She figured she’d fix him up with her friend. I was beginning to get an idea of who Patty was.

  “But I thought Pete said she used to work here.”

  “That was just part-time. She was also a dancer at that Top Ten Club.” B.J. smiled. “I’d have liked to see that.”

  I felt my jaw sag. “What? You’re kidding.”

  “No. She was really built.”

  I tapped my forehead with my fingertips and shook my head at him. “I mean, I had no idea she worked at the Top Ten Club. Don’t you think that’s kind of odd?”

  “I’ve never understood why a woman would wa
nt to dance around naked for a lot of strange men.” I could tell by the sparkle in his eyes that he was teasing me, pretending not to understand. But it still made me mad.

  “According to Pete,” I said, “the day she met Neal, it was almost as if she was looking for him. And she worked for the same outfit that used to own the boat she died on.”

  “What, you mean you think she might have been some kind of Mata Hari or something?”

  “I don’t know. Neal was the one who was more likely to see conspiracies everywhere, not me. You should have heard him carry on about that Crystal character he worked for. I’d mostly just tune it out, attribute it to too many years in the big-govemment machine. But now . . . I don’t know.”

  It hurt to think about it. I wanted to talk about something else, anything—the weather, the sea conditions, the job B.J. was working on this week. But Neal’s absence loomed between us, and I could feel myself dancing around the periphery of this big dark place. Like a scuba diver’s blue hole, the depths gaped invitingly, taunting me with the unknown, daring my curiosity. It was too dark down there to see what lurked in the depths, but I knew somehow that I wasn’t ready to go there yet.

  By the time we walked out to the parking lot together, it was nearly eight o’clock. The lot backed onto a street across from which rose the high, nearly windowless walls of the big new Broward County Jail. There were no lights working in the lot. B.J.’s perfectly restored jet- black El Camino was parked in the pale light that was cast by the restaurant’s bathroom windows. We stopped next to his truck, and he asked if I wanted him to follow me home.

  “Thanks, but I’ll be fine.”

  We stood for several seconds facing each other, neither of us certain what to do next. I was intensely aware of the way his royal blue T-shirt was stretched taut across his pecs and then fell loosely around his narrow waist. He smelled faintly of coconut soap. Buddies though we were, I couldn’t not be aware of B.J.’s sexiness. Part of me wanted to bury my face in that chest, wrap my arms around his waist, and hope the events of the day would vanish. Another part of me wanted to be sure I never depended on a man again the way I had depended on Neal.

  “When you didn’t show up this morning, I took the head apart myself. It doesn’t seem like just this morning—more like days ago.”

  B.J. leaned down and gave me a brotherly kiss on the cheek. “I’ll take care of that tomorrow. And please, don’t hesitate to call me for anything else.”

  I turned, ready to climb into the Jeep, but I paused, my hand resting on the door handle. “I wonder if he’s out there somewhere in the dark, hurt and wondering when they’re going to find him.” I didn’t want to cry. It was too soon. We didn’t know anything yet. That would be like giving up. “You’re right about one thing, though, B.J.—he’s a tough one, that’s for sure. He won’t go easy. But I just keep thinking, if only I’d got there sooner . . . maybe none of this would have happened.”

  “This is not your fault, Seychelle.”

  I turned halfway and tried to smile at him over my shoulder. “Easy for you to say.”

  When I pulled Lightnin’ into the drive at the estate, I shut off the engine and just sat there in the Jeep for a few minutes listening to the slow ticking noises of the cooling engine. I felt achingly tired, like some kind of big vacuum had just sucked every ounce of energy out of my body. Collazo’s words—“We know where to look: family, friends, ex-lovers”—kept replaying in my head. The way he told the story did make a certain amount of sense. I was certain that if I had ever seen that gorgeous body alive and draped across Neal, I’d have wanted to kill her.

  It took an effort to open the Jeep door, go through the gate, and walk back to my cottage. Abaco met me at the gate and danced up the path ahead of me, turning to look back as though wondering why I wouldn’t stop to pet her. I just wanted to fall into bed. When I tried to push my key into the doorknob, the door swung ajar, and although I thought it a bit odd, no alarms went off in my head. I pushed open the door and switched on the overhead light, and my brain was so fuzzy, it still didn’t register the mess that was all that was left of the inside of my cottage.

  I stood and stared, confused, wondering for just a second if I had somehow come home to the wrong place. Then I saw the photo of my mother with all three of us kids, a picture that was taken when I was eleven, the summer she died. It rested on a pile of books that had been pulled off the shelves, and there were several shards of broken glass remaining in the frame.

  I stepped into the room, dropping my keys to the floor, and gravelly bits of glass and pottery ground into the soles of my shoes. In the center of the room, I surprised myself when I let out an audible little gasp as I turned around surveying the damage. My cottage was really only two rooms: the front room, a combined living room, kitchen and dining room, and a small bedroom with bath in the back. A bar separated the kitchen from the living area, and now all the contents of the kitchen drawers—utensils, pot holders, towels, and toothpicks—had been spilled across the counter. There wasn’t much food in the place, but what little was there—a few cans of Campbell’s soup, fruit cocktail, catsup and other condiments—had been dragged out of the cupboards and tossed onto the floor, in many cases breaking on the white tile. I had kept an easel in a corner of the living room that generally had a work in progress on it. Painting was something I’d learned from my mother: one of the few happy memories I had of her. I normally had my watercolors and brushes set up on the TV tray next to the easel. Now the easel lay broken like kindling, the paints were probably somewhere in the mess, and the intruder had taken the time to tear my painting of the historic old Stranahan House into pieces.

  Stepping carefully around the broken dishes, papers, clothes, and trash, I squatted down and reached for the photograph. The frame hung loose from one side. I slid the print out of the frame. We looked so happy, the three of us kids mugging for the camera, and my mother’s lovely slim body in a white one-piece suit. I wondered what she would have looked like if she’d had a chance to grow old. Thankful the photo had not been damaged, I slid it into the zippered side pocket of my shoulder bag. My brothers and I had very few photos of her or of Red.

  From the center of the room I could see, through the open bedroom door, that the chaos was no less in the other room. Standing, I started to step across the debris and into the bedroom, and then I noticed that the seat tops were missing off the bolted-down marine barstools on the far side of the living room.

  “No!” I trampled across my possessions and peered down into the hollow pipe that served as the base for one of the stools.

  “Shit!” I picked up a spatula off the bar and threw it at the wall. It fell soundlessly onto a pile of file folders. Somehow, somebody had figured out where I kept my cash, in a hollow compartment in the base of one of the stools. The stools had come off a fancy sportfisherman B.J. did a remodel on, and aside from the fact that they were free, they took up less space in the little cottage. Sometimes I worked for folks who owned big custom boats and preferred to pay in cash. I didn’t ask any questions, and I didn’t always deposit it in my bank account. What a mistake. My emergency money, two thousand dollars, was gone.

  I shoved aside several corkscrews and linen dish towels and pressed my forehead against the cool Formica of the bar. Shit. Why me? Here I lived in one of the richest neighborhoods in the country in what is obviously the littlest, cheapest, poorest house in the neighborhood. Why would a thief think there would be anything to steal in here? Two thousand dollars was nothing in this neighborhood. But it had been my safety net. I stared into the empty hole. I’d always been convinced that most burglars wouldn’t even know that that type of marine chair base could come apart. I looked around the room. The TV and VCR were still there. That didn’t make sense. No crackhead or petty thief would have left them. Leaning against the side of my desk, I could see the laptop computer Neal bought me as a gift was still there in its carrying case. Curious.

  There was only one other person wh
o knew where I kept that cash stash.

  Cleaning up was something I just could not contemplate at that point. Stepping over the food and debris on the kitchen floor, I opened the refrigerator door and reached for a cold beer. At least he hadn’t trashed the little bit of food and drink in there. As I pulled a can out of the plastic ring on the six-pack holder, it occurred to me that one beer was missing. When you’re single, the only one in the house doing any eating or drinking, you remember these things. I had bought that six-pack yesterday. I hadn’t drunk a single beer. But somebody had.

  It was that beer that was the clincher. That and the fact that whoever had trashed my place didn’t really seem to be searching for anything, but rather had destroyed my property purely out of anger and meanness—a passion of sorts. That sort of angry passion was familiar to me, too familiar.

  I fished around in my pocket for the card Detective Collazo had given me earlier, and I reached for the phone. At first I hadn’t intended to call the cops, since I’d already spent hours with cops that day, and I didn’t really see what good they’d do. On most break-ins in the neighborhood, they as much as told folks not to go on hoping they would ever see any of their stuff again. But this was different . . . apparently my home had just been trashed by somebody the cops thought I had killed.

  "Of course. It had to be him, Detective.”

  Collazo stood in the center of my living room looking around at the mess with a slack, almost bored expression on his face.

  “Miss Sullivan, we will take your report, and we will investigate, and we will draw our own conclusions.”

  I walked over to the laptop computer picked it up, and held it in front of his face.

  “Does this make any sense to you? Or the TV there, or any of the other stuff in here that would be so easy to sell?”

  He turned his back to me and walked over to the easel and my torn painting.“This is your work.”