Bitter End (Seychelle Sullivan #3) (5 page)

I stood up and began to pace the floor in front of the coffee table. “Jeannie, look at her. Come on. How bad can this be? What is she, five-two? A hundred pounds? Does she look like she could even
lift
a rifle? Let’s get real. Could anybody suspect Molly of being a sniper?”

The words had barely cleared my lips when Molly’s doorbell rang.

“We’re about to find out,” Jeannie said.

I was the first to the door, but Jeannie was right behind me. And she was right about finding out, too. Detective Mabry was standing outside on the porch, and his stern face brightened considerably when he looked past my shoulder.

“Good afternoon, ma’am. Sure is a pleasure to see you again.”

He wasn’t speaking to me.

“Can’t say as the feeling is mutual, Detective,” Jeannie said.

Mabry lowered his eyes and his tongue seemed to be fishing out a piece of food in one of his back molars, stretching the skin of his cheek. When he looked up again, he said, “Is Ms. Pontus home? I’m afraid I need to speak to her.”

“Molly Pontus is resting at the moment, Detective. She’s just learned of the death of her husband of eleven years, the father of her son.”

“I can understand she’s upset, ma’am, but this is a murder investigation. I will need to speak to her. And by the way, he was her ex-husband.”

From the living room Molly called out, “Hell, Jeannie, let the man in.”

My opinion of Detective Mabry slid up a couple of notches over the next thirty minutes as he questioned Molly concerning her whereabouts over the last twenty-four hours. His questions were direct and yet showed a certain amount of sensitivity. Molly and Zale had gone to bed around 10:30, she told him, and Zale had gotten up at 8:30, when Molly woke him. As a young teen, he would sleep until noon if she didn’t wake him to do his schoolwork. She explained to the detective that she homeschooled her son, and he had been in his room working on a research project on his computer when Seychelle and Jeannie had arrived.

“So, just for argument’s sake, ma’am, it would have been possible for you to leave the house, say between 6:00 and 7:30 in the morning, and drive over to the Andrews Bridge, and your son would not even have been aware of it.”

“Yes, I suppose it is possible, but it didn’t happen. I didn’t leave the house this morning. And I certainly didn’t kill Nick. Ask any of the neighbors—they’re all snoopy enough.”

“I’ll do that, ma’am. I surely will.” Mabry dropped his notebook and pen into his lap and looked around like he was startled. “You know, I didn’t notice when I walked up to your front door. What kind of car do you drive, Ms. Pontus?”

“A Mustang.”

Mabry’s head jerked back. “A little thing like you? Now that’s a nice car. I didn’t see it out front. You got a garage?”

“Yeah, it’s an addition. My parents had it set back along the side of the house.”

“Mind if I take a look?”

Molly stood up. “Come on.”

When the two of them had gone out the front door, Jeannie heaved herself up and started after them.

I began cleaning up the tea fixings, then called out to Jeannie, “Hey, please, tell me her Mustang isn’t black.”
 

She shook her head. “Sorry.”

When they returned, Mabry was telling Molly that she would need to go down to the station to give a formal statement, the sooner the better. He wanted one from Zale, too, but he said it could wait a day or two. The detective was smiling at both of them, so it appeared that things hadn’t gone too badly out in the garage.

Jeannie said, “I’ll drive you to the police station right now if you want, Molly. I think it would be best to get it over with.”

Molly nodded and headed down the hall toward her son’s bedroom. She mumbled “I can’t leave him alone” before she disappeared from view.

“Well, ladies,” Detective Mabry said, nodding to each of us in turn, “I expect I’ll be seeing you later this afternoon, then.” He looked straight at Jeannie and smiled. “Thank you for your time,” he said, letting himself out the front door.

“I think he likes you, Jeannie,” I said.

“Me?” she said, her eyebrows forming an upside-down V. “Yeah, right.”

“Well, look, much as I love hanging out at the police station, I’ve got work to do. I need to file a salvage claim on the
Mykonos
, and,” I said, glancing at the dive watch on my wrist, “I’d like to catch the tide this afternoon to bring my tow down to Bahia Mar. Can you drop me off at my place first?”

“Sure.”

Molly and Zale emerged from the dark hall. She had her arm around the boy, but the way his shoulders were rounded, he looked like he was trying to fold himself in two.

Jeannie jingled her keys. “Okay, gang, let’s go.”

When Jeannie told Molly in the car that they were dropping me off first, Molly said, “Sey?”

I swung around to look at her sitting next to her son on the backseat. “Yeah?”

Her eyes were on her lap where her hands clasped her son’s, and she faltered as though she were afraid to speak. “Could—could you do something for me?” She looked up. “I know I have no right to ask after—”

For years, I had imagined this moment. How I would turn away and make her suffer as I had suffered. Now, all I could think of was how I could make the pain in her eyes go away.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Could you take Zale with you today? I don’t want him to have to talk to the cops just yet.”

“No problem. I’ve got a sailboat to get downriver, and from what I hear he’s pretty good around sailboats.” That comment won me a weak smile from the boy. I’d often read about Zale’s big wins in the youth sailing division at the fancy Lauderdale Yacht Club. He was making a name for himself, and I’d even heard talk about Olympic hopes for the kid.

“Is he going to be okay going by his dad’s office?” Molly turned to look at the boy and he nodded his head once without looking up.

She turned to me, her once lush lips now compressed into two thin lines. “Thanks,” she said, and I turned around in the front seat and watched the streets of my city go by. There was still so much we were leaving unsaid. But this was a start.

Abaco, my black Lab, jumped up, put her paws on the kid’s chest, and gave him a doggy kiss as soon as we came through the side gate after Jeannie had dropped us off on my tree-shaded street in the Rio Vista neighborhood where I lived.

“Abaco, down girl,” I said, and she jumped off him and did a neat one-eighty in midair. She landed facing the river and dashed down the walk ahead of us.

“I grew up on the same street where you and your mom live,” I continued telling the boy, “and when we sold my dad’s house, I moved in here.” We had arrived in front of my riverfront cottage, and I pointed back at the tall sprawling house set back on the lot. “The Larsens own that house. It’s something, isn’t it?”

I wasn’t sure how much of what I was saying was sinking through the haze of grief that was wrapped around him. I remembered what it was like, but I just kept talking. “This is one of three or four houses they own all over the States. They knew my dad before he died, and they invited me to live here for incredibly cheap rent in return for keeping an eye on the place when they’re not here—which is pretty much all the time. There’s no other way I could afford to live in this neighborhood. It’s been a really good deal for me.”

Zale was still looking back at the main house, his hand shading his eyes as he looked up at the sand-colored stucco and red-tiled monstrosity with its various towers and turrets. “It looks kinda spooky,” he said.

“Yeah, I guess it does. But no ghosts, as far as I know. The main house was built a long time ago, though, back in the 1930s, and it’s had lots of different owners. Each one had to remodel and put on a new addition or add another tower, and they all
sorta
kept to that old-Spanish style. That’s why it looks so weird. Like nothing fits or goes together. But check this out. This is where I live.” We were standing at the fork in the brick path—one way led to my front door, the other to the wood dock where
Gorda
was normally tied up. I held my arm out to display the squat stucco structure with a red tile roof. “This is my cottage. It used to be a boathouse. They could drive powerboats right into the slip under the roof. Back in the sixties, someone decked over the slip and turned the place into a cottage. Sometimes when a boat makes a big wake, I can even hear the water sloshing under my living room.”

“Cool,” he said as I unlocked the door and we walked in. I took that as high praise from a thirteen-year-old.

“It’s not very big, but I like it. I’ve got the best river view, and I can dock my boat practically right outside my door.” I waved my hand toward the couch. “Make yourself at home. I’ve just got to grab some paperwork for the salvage claim on the
Mykonos
.” I opened the window to let in some air, then pulled a standard form salvage contract out of the file cabinet I used as an end table, sat down at the kitchen table, and started to fill it out. Even though I would be able to make a salvage claim against the
Mykonos
without a signed contract, and the form was usually signed before the salvage was performed, getting a contract after the services have been rendered would give both parties more protection under the law.

Out in the yard, Abaco began barking and yelping her happy bark. Zale went to the door, looked out, and said, “There’s a man out there playing with your dog.”

“Yup. And I can tell from her bark who it is. Hey B. J.,” I hollered. “Come here a sec.”

Zale stepped back, his mouth open as B. J. came trotting through the open door, then jumped, spun in midair like a quarterback, and hurled the bright green tennis ball back out into the yard.

“Close the door before she brings that slobbery ball into my house,” I said.

B. J. ignored my request and instead came up behind my chair, slid his arms around me in a quick hug, and kissed me on top of the head. “Good morning, Captain,” he said.

I heard the front door close, and I figured Zale was much better at following orders than B. J. Without looking up from my paperwork, I said, “B. J., I’d like you to meet Zale Pontus. Zale, this is B. J. Moana, my good friend and sometime first mate on the
Gorda
.” I could have said my sometime bedmate as well, but that was more than the kid needed to know, and it certainly didn’t do justice to our friendship. Or relationship. Or whatever you wanted to call it. It was the problem I always had when introducing B. J. to people. I loathe the word “boyfriend” to describe a grown man. Besides, it implied a permanency that I didn’t feel. These days, B. J. and I were taking things one day at a time.

When he let go of me and crossed to Zale, I took a sneak peek at the two of them shaking hands. B. J. was wearing a beige long-sleeved T-shirt with some surfboard company logo on the back and a pair of cargo pants. He was the only person I knew who still wore his Birkenstocks without socks on cold mornings like this. That was the Pacific Islander in him. B. J.’s mother was mostly Samoan, his father mostly Japanese/American, and the combination had produced this man with skin the color of oiled teak, straight black hair that he wore pulled back with a rubber band, and torpedo-shaped brown eyes—a man who would go barefoot in a snowstorm rather than wear shoes and socks.

B. J. stepped back from the boy and looked him up and down. “Aren’t you that hotshot sailor kid? I read about you.”

Zale blushed, his mouth turning up in a hint of a smile, and he nodded. “I’m not really that good yet.”

“That’s not what I hear,” B. J. continued. “People are saying they’ve never seen anyone your age with that kind of instinct, helmsmanship ability, and logistical intuition. Didn’t you take the state championship title last year?”

“Yeah, that was in the Optimist, though. I’ve been racing Lasers this year, and I’m not doing as well.”

“I’d say you will, once you grow a little more and gain about thirty pounds.” B. J. touched the boy lightly on the side of his head. “What matters most is that you’ve got what it takes up here and,” with three fingers he pushed on the left side of Zale’s chest, “in here.”

“Hey guys,” I said, slipping the salvage paperwork into a manila envelope, “I love the sailing chitchat, but I’ve got a living to make.” I picked up my shoulder bag and got the keys to my Jeep out of the side pocket.

“Listen, you two want a chauffeur this afternoon?” B. J. asked, and then he turned to Zale and said, “Trust me when I tell you, you’d rather ride in my truck in this weather. Her Wrangler is ancient. Feels like a wind tunnel and sounds like a locomotive.” B. J. imitated the rumbling made by the Jeep’s engine and the boy laughed.

“Leave Ol’ Lightnin’ alone,” I said. “She’s been good transportation, and she starts when I turn the key.” When I passed in front of Zale to reach for the doorknob, I saw the color of his skin fade to pale. Tears began to pool in his eyes, and in a barely audible voice, he said, “I forgot.”

“Forgot what?” I asked, thinking at first that he needed something from Molly’s house.

The skin sagged on the bones of his face as though it were melting. “I was laughing,” he said, choking on the words.

I reached out for him, and he collapsed in my arms. He pressed his face into my shoulder, pinching my skin with the metal frame of his glasses. With B. J.’s help, I got him to the couch, and we sat on either side of him while his torso shook and convulsed. It was as though the grief he’d held inside just this past hour had already grown too big to be contained in such a small body. I wasn’t sure if B. J. knew what had happened that morning, so I said, “His father was Nick Pontus, and—”

“I know,” B. J. said before I could go any further. He closed his eyes for a few seconds as though forcing something down, back inside himself, then he reached out to rub the boy’s back. “I heard.”

V

Zale sat between us on the front seat of B. J.’s 1978 black El Camino pickup as we drove out of the Rio Vista neighborhood. He was quiet now, sitting very still with his hands resting on his thighs, staring out the front window of the truck, but I had the feeling he wasn’t seeing any of the tree-lined streets we drove through.