Isolation (14 page)

Chapter Twenty

Faye had thought about going into the house. She really had. She had sat under her own porch and listened to her husband and his father rip the patches off their torn relationship, and considered how she could make sure that they never knew she'd been there.

The basement door behind her had been an option. She could have backed quietly through it. Their bedroom was a few feet down the hall. She could have crawled in bed and let Joe presume that she'd come home to take a nap, although she couldn't recall ever having done that so early in the day. Maybe she'd done it when she was pregnant or when she had the flu. If Joe found her napping, he'd probably think she had a terminal illness. Not a good thing, considering the conversation he'd just had.

No, she needed an unobtrusive way to communicate, “Who me? Eavesdrop on the most intimate moment in your life that didn't involve me? Why would you think I'd do
that
?” A fake nap wasn't going to work.

She could have backed through that basement door and walked all the way down the hall into the kitchen. Joe would have found her there, chomping on a sandwich. Or she could have crept up the sneak staircase and pretended to have been sitting in the cupola for hours, looking out to sea.

The problem with any plan that took her inside the house was that it would require her to look Joe in the eyes while he wondered what she might have heard. There was no way she could do that without giving herself away. He would know. He would know that she'd heard his father's story, and Joe needed to tell her that story himself, in his own time.

So she had ruled out the basement door and stayed put until she heard their rocking chairs slide against the wooden porch floor above her head. She had listened to Sly give the slight groan of a man stretching out his aging ankles before walking into the house. She had listened for the non-sound of Joe's moccasins as he followed his father without a word. Then she had waited.

***

After a time, the rain eased. Gerry's crew arrived and started unloading the day's supplies at the dock. Faye took the opportunity to walk swiftly in their direction. Unless Joe or his father was watching at the exact moment she stepped out from under the porch, there would be nothing odd about her presence among these busy workers.

She had been ready all morning to walk across the island and watch them work. She had loaded her satchel with all the usual things. Field notebook. Pen. Gloves. Camera. A few small, light tools, like brushes and dental picks and tongue depressors.

As usual, she carried her trowel in a scabbard at her waist, but she otherwise traveled light, knowing that she could walk back to the house if she needed something. A couple of bottles of water had gone into the satchel, too, and enough calories in the form of a banana and a protein bar to keep her alive, but probably not enough calories to maintain her body weight.

She was ready to go watch the environmental scientists work.

Since Gerry and Nadia and their contractors had started their environmental cleanup, she had spent most of her days doing just that—watching them work. If she was going to be paying for this project, she wanted to fool herself into believing that she was its manager.

For days now, she'd also been carrying a copy of Cally's oral history and, today, she added another research source, her tablet computer, because she wanted more convenient Internet access than her smartphone gave her. She also wanted a bigger screen and she wanted the wireless keyboard that made the tablet so much more functional.

The laptop she used at home would be still more functional, but she shared that computer with Joe and this was research that she didn't want him to see. Using it would require her to believe that its “clear history” command worked flawlessly, and she didn't.

It was time to see what the Internet could tell her about Sylvester and Patricia Mantooth. And, because she had decided that Sly was innocent of Liz's murder—granted, she had no proof—and that Oscar was a suspicious character who deserved investigating as a possible suspect—again, no proof, just intuition—she planned to see what the Internet could tell her about Oscar, too.

Faye plopped to the ground and opened her tablet's case, typing “Sylvester Mantooth” into the browser's search bar. It was an unusual name, so Faye got a dozen or so hits that all referred to her father-in-law. As usual, it was amazing to see how much information the various “white pages” sites offered for free. She quickly confirmed Sly's age, fifty-eight. She learned that the World Wide Web knew that he had been married to Patricia, even though she'd been dead more than ten years. Her throat closed when she realized that Patricia had died when she was hardly older than Faye was now.

The web also knew that Sly's son's name was Joe Wolf. She found several addresses in for Sly in Oklahoma and she knew that one of those addresses was probably the house where her husband grew up. She was relieved to find that her father in-law was not a registered sex offender.

Probing a little deeper and paying a search site to get more closely held information, she learned that Sly's conviction had been for transporting drugs across state lines. If Joe ever wanted to know the name of the penitentiary where his father had served his time, Faye had the information. She found no other convictions.

There was a bankruptcy Sly hadn't mentioned, but there was no deceit in not answering a question no one had asked. Based on its date, the bankruptcy had occurred when Joe was six, so he might not know about it but he would have seen the financial belt-tightening. He would also have seen the kind of stress-fueled money arguments that broke open marriages.

Sly and Patricia had stayed married twelve more years after the bankruptcy. It was anybody's guess whether this was because they loved each other or whether it was because they were too scared to split. Maybe it was just because it was too expensive to live in two houses when they couldn't even afford the one they were in.

These things were sad, but they didn't speak to the question of who killed Liz. They just confirmed that Sly was who he said he was.

Faye closed the browser and walked over to kill some time with Nadia. The environmental chemist didn't take many breaks but she was standing at the waterline, relaxed and holding a cup of coffee.

“You're willing to drink coffee so close to an environmental disaster?” Faye asked.

Nadia laughed. “We're outside the exclusion zone. It's safe to eat and drink here.”

“And breathe?”

“Oh, yeah. Your nose is a pretty decent detector for airborne petroleum-related chemicals. Do you smell anything?”

“Nope, but you can't smell arsenic, can you?”

The Spanish-inflected laugh took the edge off Nadia's talk of nasty chemicals. “I wouldn't worry about the arsenic, not unless we find a lot more. Gerry just wants to find out where it's coming from, because it's his job to make sure that we're not missing a bigger problem nearby.”

“Where is he, by the way?”

“Chasing criminals with the sheriff. He was not happy to leave this job for the day, but he's a worrywart. I can manage these people just fine.”

Faye believed her. She asked, “Do you see a lot of sites like this one?”

“Yes and no. I spend most of my time at petroleum sites, but this one is tiny compared to my ordinary jobs. If it weren't so close to the Gulf, I think we could have sold the department on leaving the kerosene leak alone. But the arsenic…now that's weird.”

“Because of the low levels?”

“Yeah, sort of, but I've seen levels like these lots of times. It always turned out that the arsenic was a natural part of the soil, but not here. The background samples came up clean. Also, when we find arsenic and it turns out not to be natural, we can usually figure out where it came from. Agricultural chemicals. Wood preservation treatment. Electronics manufacturing. Those kinds of sites are likely to be huge and heavily contaminated. Here? We just have a little spot of arsenic with no reason to be here. It's interesting.”

Wishing Nadia had found interesting work on somebody else's property, Faye excused herself and focused on her tablet again. She wondered if she could be as successful at digging up Oscar Croft's secrets as she had been at peering into her father-in-law's past.

***

Tommy Barnett hit the end button on his cell phone, hanging up on a call that had brought the possibility of financial gain. He enjoyed calls like that.

Wilma Jakes, the worn-out hag who had operated the marina's fueling operation for Liz, had been on the phone, saying “I have a proposition for you.”

She might have meant to say more, but Tommy had butted in. “You're old and ugly. I ain't listening to any propositions from you.”

“Well, I ain't a hooker. You might consider giving a second chance to a girl who don't have any diseases to give you.”

Tommy said, “Don't talk about Lolita like that,” but Wilma knew what she knew, and Tommy didn't know how she knew it.

Yeah, Tommy and Lolita had each received a course of antibiotics at the county health department, not six months before. And it wasn't the first time. Tommy had no reputation to ruin, so having this information was of no direct value to Wilma, but knowing his medical secrets established Wilma as a woman with eyes in the back of her head. She wanted him to know that it wasn't safe to double-cross her.

Her witchy voice slithered out of his phone again. “About my proposition.”

“I'm listening.”

“I'm thinking that you need that marina running again, or your maintenance business is shot. And I need it running again, or I'll never put another gallon in another boat. I'm also thinking that there's not all that much money in fueling up boats or fixing their motors. We should think bigger.”

“I said I was listening. But if you know so much, you know I'm looking at jail time. Or a big fine from the environmental people, at least. And there's some that's trying to say I killed Liz.”

“Lucky you. You got me on your side. I'm willing to lie my ass off to say you didn't do it.”

Tommy liked the sound of this, but he only said, “Why would you do that?”

“We need to buy Liz's place off the bank. Nobody else wants it. I think we can get it cheap and I think we can make money with it.”

“What part of ‘Maybe I'm going to jail' didn't you understand?”

“First of all, I can get you off the top of the sheriff's list of suspects for Liz's murder.”

This would be nice if Wilma could make it happen. “I said I was listening.”

“I live right by the marina. I see what happens there. I can tell the sheriff that I saw a real big man hanging around the parking lot at about closing time on the night Liz died. I'll say I've been afraid to speak up, because I live alone right here next to where she got killed.”

Tommy was five-foot five in his work boots. He was built like a fire plug, but he wasn't a big man. He saw the value in this offer.

“Nobody's questioned me. Not the police. Not the environmental people. Nobody,” she went on. “So it ain't like I'm changing a story I already told.”

“Seriously? How did they miss you?” Tommy had thought they questioned everybody, and Wilma's house was right next door to the marina. She should have been high on the cops' list.

“It's damn shoddy detective work, if you ask me. Granted, maybe they didn't come to my house because it looks like nobody lives there. Well, maybe I let it look that way on purpose. Maybe it's a good way to get the cops to keep their distance. Anyway, if I tell them about my imaginary big dude, it'll get 'em off your back long enough for 'em to find the one that really did it. It wasn't you, was it?”

“No! Hell, no.”

“Well, then, let's move on to your other problem, which we need to solve if you and me are going to go into business together.”

Tommy had that sick feeling he got when he was missing something. “My other problem? You mean that environmental dumping charge? How you planning to solve that one? They're talking big fines. They're talking jail time. I never thought dumping a little waste oil now and then was that big a deal when I was doing it.”

“That shows how brilliant you aren't. If it wasn't that big a deal, people would have been dumping their own waste oil, instead of paying you to do it. You got anything left that you didn't get around to dumping?”

“As of yesterday, no.”

“You got records of how much you dumped and who you did it for?”

“Now, why would I keep something they could use against me?”

Tommy thought Wilma should be happy with that answer, because she had availed herself of his services on occasion. Sometimes a customer had spilled a gallon of something that she'd soaked up with kitty litter. Why would Wilma want to pay to get rid of the stinking kitty litter? And also, every now and then, she had to empty a tank and the sludge that came out of the bottom needed to disappear. Any business dealing with petroleum had waste sometimes. If Tommy had kept a list of his clients, she would have been on it, so she should be glad that he didn't.

“I ain't a lawyer, Tommy, but it seems like maybe you could've spread the blame around if you'd kept records. But it's too late, so never mind that. You still got a chance to spread the blame around. Tell 'em that you was working for Liz. Tell 'em she paid you a little salary and kept the rest of the money. Liz did a big cash business in the bar and the bait shop. If she'd been running a dumping business on the side, it would have been easy for her to hide it, don't you think?”

“You think I should tell 'em that I was the little guy? Took all the risk, didn't make much money?”

“It's worth a shot. And I'll back you up.”

“Why?”

“Because we're going to put all our money together in one big pile and put in a bid on the marina. The bank don't want it. Nobody else wants it. It'll need to be in my name, so the law can't tap it to pay your fines, but I'll pay you a fair share. Thirty percent.”