Black Widow (4 page)

Through the generosity of her new friends, Shay had spent two weeks skiing the Alps. She’d spent a jet-set summer attending parties in Italy, France, and Switzerland. During her travels, she established a reputation as a first-rate organizer, and it leap-frogged her several rungs up the corporate ladder when she went job-hunting.

The redneck girl with cheek had been transformed, but her core toughness remained. Or so I believed. I had never seen Shay lose control. Never saw her concede to weakness, nor look back in fear. Never saw her cry — until tonight.

A tenet of biology is that trauma catalyzes change. It’s true on a cellular level. It’s true on an emotional level. Something traumatic had happened that night on Saint Arc. What?

As I walked the boardwalk to my lab, I slipped my hand into the briefcase and confirmed the video was there. No . . . I did it because my first instinct was to borrow a Minicam, lock myself in a room, and watch the tape from beginning to end. It contained information. Maybe an answer.

What had the lens captured? Why was the tough girl so frightened?

The cassette was tiny, half the size of my palm. It was unsettling how easily the lives of four complex women had been harvested, digitized, and trivialized on a few ounces of recyclable plastic.

Put this videotape in the wrong hands, and touch
play
? Their futures would be erased.

TOMLINSON WAS IN THE LAB, barefooted, wearing a baseball uniform, jersey unbuttoned, hair braided Willie Nelson style. He was talking on the VHF radio when I pushed the screen door open, and he paused to wag a warning finger.
Quiet
.

He’d been as irreverent and optimistic as ever, but was also dealing with a loss of personal confidence, so I attempted humor. “Sorry. I thought this was the men’s room.”

I closed the door, crossed the breezeway to my quarters, and went inside, switching on lights. I use yellow bulbs near windows because mosquitoes have primitive eyes that don’t recognize the color yellow. The little bastards do not fly toward light they cannot see.

Mosquitoes come with the location. I live in what is known as a “fish house” — two small houses built over water on stilts, under a single tin roof. In the early 1900s, fish were stored in one house, fishermen in the other. I now own the property — outdoor shower, rain cistern, and wobbly boardwalks included. Shay was right. I like the place. It’s become part of who I am.

Dinkin’s Bay Marina, three hundred yards down the mangrove shore, is a neighbor. Another is Tomlinson, whose sailboat,
No Más
, is moored equidistant from the docks, although he behaves as if he owns my property, too — irritating, at times.

Tonight, though, it was okay. He’d been at the propane stove earlier — I could smell fried fish — and he is one of the few self-anointed gourmets who doesn’t overcook seafood. Just as uncommon, he cleans up after himself.

I walked beneath ceiling fans to the galley, where I found a platter of snapper, fresh lime, and mango slices. I squeezed lime on the fillets until they glistened, I squeezed lime on the mango, then went through the day’s mail as I ate.

There was a manila envelope from a medical lab in Tampa. It contained copies of an MRI brain scan my neurologist had ordered because of headaches that had become more than occasional. I assumed they were caused by a head injury. The doctor wasn’t convinced, so I spent half an hour in a tube that bonged and clanked while electron magnets scanned.

The neurologist had already called with the results, so I only stared at the envelope for a moment before I pushed it aside. Then I stacked bills atop it, separating envelopes that were addressed by hand.

There was a letter from an Iowa attorney that I knew would be distressing — it concerned my daughter, and visitation rights. Two other letters from women were of mild interest. A fourth letter, from a man, was of uncommon interest. I studied the labored handwriting. The return address read,
Merlin T. Starkey
.

Merlin Starkey had been a cop in the Everglades south of Sanibel. Years ago, he’d investigated the boat explosion that killed my parents, back when I was a kid. Officially, it was ruled an accident of “undetermined cause,” but Starkey and I both knew better. For years, I blamed it on a faulty fuel valve installed by my crazy uncle.

Wrong
, Starkey informed me awhile back. He knew who did it, he’d told me — but he wouldn’t share the name until after his own death.

I had read Starkey’s obituary in last week’s newspaper. Even so, to see the man’s shaky handwriting days after he, too, had gone to ground was unexpected, and I was momentarily flummoxed.

Merlin Starkey was an old-time Southern cop: Stetson hat, boots, string bow tie with ingratiating manners that masked a nasty disposition. He’d bait punks with his slow, dumb drawl — “You tellin’ the truth, young captain?” — professional enough to baton the big city out of them without leaving a bruise. But the man kept his word.

Here was proof, the letter he’d promised. Inside was the name of the person responsible for the deaths of my mother and father . . . the person who’d murdered them, or so Starkey had insinuated.

I am not sentimental. Even as a child I was impatient with the ceremonies of childhood. By the time I was nineteen, I’d logged too many miles to abide unnecessary baggage. But I have a sustained interest in learning the truth. Not a driving interest, but an interest. As a biologist, assembling puzzles is what I do.

Finally, here was a puzzle’s last piece.

Who did it?

So why did I now find myself reluctant to open Starkey’s letter?

Strange.

I held the envelope between thumb and index finger, as if it were evidence, then held it to the light. It was inexpensive paper, taped at the back, stationery folded inside, no writing visible. I shook it, sniffed it, and nearly smiled. It smelled of horse stalls. Distinctive. Starkey had used Copenhagen snuff until the end.

He’d written my name and
Sanibel Island, FLA
with a fountain pen. But my address was squeezed between in blue ballpoint, a woman’s hand — the old man had sealed the envelope, but didn’t know my address, so a nurse or maybe an attorney’s secretary had added it later.

What did these additional fragments matter? I was stalling. Why?

Did I fear the truth? Or treachery? The same crazed uncle I’d blamed for the explosion was guilty of swindling Starkey, and Starkey had nursed a grudge for fifty years. Maybe duping me, a nephew, was a way of finally getting even. What if the note was blank? Or Starkey had named an innocent person?

Or . . . did I fear something else?

Enough.

I placed Starkey’s letter on the counter by the stove with the rest of the mail. I’d waited a lifetime to learn the truth. I could wait another hour . . .
if
there was truth to be learned.

There were more pressing matters. I opened the letter from the Iowa attorney I’d hired — distressing, as expected, and out of my control. So I turned my attention to things I could control. I’d promised Shay that her video would be safe. My past was past. Her future was bright. Maybe brilliant.

I washed the platter, then carried the briefcase to my sleeping quarters and pushed the bed aside. Beneath was a recent addition: ship’s carpentry. By turning two flush-set brass locks, I could remove a section of flooring and access a locker that was roomy, dry, and difficult to find.

From the locker, I took a fireproof box, swung it onto the bed, and unlocked it. Inside, I hid the evidence of Shay Money’s secret weekend among mementos of my own secret life: notebooks, counterfeit passports, emergency euros, emeralds, and Mayan jade from the jungles of Central America.

There was also a gold locket engraved with a smiling full moon. I held the locket for a moment before sealing the box away.

AT THE LABORATORY DOOR, I called, “Permission to enter?”

Once again, Tomlinson raised an impatient finger. He turned from the radio’s mic and said, “You’re not gonna believe this one. Something very weird’s happening out there tonight.”

I asked, “Weird on the Tomlinson scale, or by amateur standards?” as I placed my briefcase on the dissecting table, and crossed the room to a row of saltwater aquaria. The aquaria were glowing rectangles inhabited by fish, squid, octopi, and predatory shells that I’d collected from local waters. There were also a couple of new specialty tanks.

“That’s what I’m trying to find out. There’s a lady in distress. But I lost contact.”

“Why am I not surprised? I bet she’s beautiful, too. So hail the lady again.”

“I just did. I’m giving it a few seconds.”

I’d stopped to inspect the new aquarium systems. They were unconventional. One contained poisonous shrimp. The other, venomous jellyfish. Both were projects recently contracted. The research was interesting. My new employer, less so. It was a State Department intelligence agency that had offered me a fat, full-time contract to work as a “preemptory specialist.” My task was to anticipate ways the bad guys might attack the U.S. economy through tourism and saltwater food products.

The offer was not unexpected. A man named Kal Wilson had asked me to say yes if the agency came knocking. When a former president of the U.S. asks a favor from his deathbed, how can you refuse?

So I’d signed the contract. Tomorrow morning, three supervisors were coming to inspect my work, and to discuss my PATEE — Personnel Attitude and Task Efficiency Evaluation.

I dreaded it. There was a lot of paperwork to finish before they arrived at 10 a.m.

“How was the trip?” Tomlinson was looking at the briefcase, eyebrows raised. He’d been in the lab four nights earlier when Shay asked me to fly to Saint Arc. Fly to Saint Lucia, actually, and then take the ferry four miles to Saint Arc.

I told him, “Smoother than I’d hoped. They’re pros. But instead of helping her, I think I only dug the hole deeper.”

“You mean
we
dug the hole deeper.” He was shaking his head, instantly mad at himself. “A Zen master’s supposed to have balls, man. Lately, I couldn’t find mine with a magnifying glass and a hammer.”

I said, "Huh?” After a moment, I said, “Oh.”

Tomlinson had tried to resist. He had warned Shay about deception and negative energy. I’d warned her that negotiating with an extortionist was like asking a cannibal to change the menu. Yet, she’d won us both over.

“Shay’s persuasive.”

“No. Shay’s a steamroller. She didn’t give us time to think it through. Start her marriage with a lie? It put me in such a karmic spin, I’ve already started the grunt research because I know the kimchi’s gonna hit the fan.” I followed his gaze to the office computer where he’d stacked articles on the desk. “Did she finally tell you why she’s being blackmailed?”

I nodded. “The basics. But it’s up to her to decide—”

“I’m not asking. I figured it out on my own. Caribbean islands aren’t exactly free with their crime stats, but I mixed Google with some of my old psychic-viewing techniques. Take a look.”

I went to the desk. For all his recreational excesses, chemical and otherwise, Tomlinson is an academic at heart. The research was methodical. He’d compiled stats and articles on Caribbean crime, along with figures from the wedding industry — average costs, median costs — all unrelated data until I picked up the yellow legal pad where he’d made notes.

Tomlinson’s handwriting is an eloquent dance of loops and swirls — Spenserian script, he calls it. He credits it to his former life as a shipping clerk in eighteenth-century London.

I read:

On the Island of Saint Joan of Arc, in the Caribbean, where crime against tourists is seldom prosecuted, someone may have created a niche industry by targeting women for blackmail.
Statistically, victims are U.S. citizens, eighteen to sixty, women traveling alone or with other women ...
Preferred targets are engaged to be married, and on holiday during the chaotic weeks prior to their wedding. These women are easy prey because: 1.) They are emotional wrecks. 2.) They have access to bank accounts that can be emptied quickly. 3.) Their wedding day adds the fear of public humiliationto the risk of personal humiliation ...
Women in this demographic are viewed as raw product by the industry — not unlike harp seals in the fur industry. Entrapment using corrupt police, drugs, sex, hidden cameras, staged events, and phony arrests are likely methods.

I looked away from the legal pad. Tomlinson was adjusting the squelch on the radio. “How’d you come up with the connection between blackmail and wedding bank accounts?”

The best guess he and I had mustered was that Shay had pissed off some government official, and I was traveling to Saint Arc to pay off the cops.

He said, “Intuitive reasoning. It’s no secret I haven’t been at peak strength, but my paranormal powers aren’t completely on the fritz. So I gave it a shot.”

“It’s shrewd. Maybe brilliant.”

“No kidding?”

“No kidding.”

He appeared pleased and surprised. I could also tell that he was very stoned. “Well, the data provided indicators. Behavioral patterns can be predicted even if statistical interactions are vague. A statistical etching appeared, but I let Universal Mind fill the blanks. Universal Mind is all-knowing energy that—” He drifted. His focus shifted. “Are you stroking my ego? Or do you really think I’m right?”

Tomlinson had suffered a loss of confidence in the last few months. It happens.

“I think you nailed it. Shay’s a perfect candidate. It’s possible they started tracking her the day she made reservations.” I was reviewing the figures. “These numbers are accurate? It’s insane what people spend on weddings.”

“Spoken like a determined bachelor — outrage mixed with secret relief. I agree, even though, prorated, my own wedding cost about a hundred bucks a week. Unless you tally the pounds of flesh taken by that Japanese succubus I married—”

I stopped him before he could get going. “You were telling me how you made the connection.”