Skinny Dip (6 page)

“Not again,” Stranahan muttered, kicking at a fallen coconut.

He sat down at the picnic table with a cup of coffee, Strom settling at his feet. Joey wasn’t the first woman to take off with Stranahan’s skiff, but she was the first he hadn’t already slept with, lived with and then driven away in a state of exasperation. When they made up their minds to go, melodrama seemed mandatory.

The last one to try the same stunt had been a successful patent attorney named Susan. She had professed to adore the isolation of the island, but in fact she was going batty because she couldn’t uplink her BlackBerry—whatever the hell that meant—due to unspecified atmospheric anomalies. Possibly other factors contributed to her restlessness, as well, Stranahan had concluded afterward.

One evening at sunset, Susan snapped. After lacing Stranahan’s rum-and-Coke with Ambien, she packed her bags, boosted his boat and promptly piled into the submerged rocks off the Ragged Keys. She cracked not only her collarbone but the shaft on the Evinrude, which set Stranahan back eighteen hundred bucks.

“For God’s sake, why didn’t you just ask me to give you a lift?” he’d said to her later in the emergency room.

“Because I didn’t want to upset you,” she’d replied. “I know how you are.”

That’s what they all said—I know how you are—and usually they were mistaken. They didn’t really know him at all. But since Stranahan wasn’t much good at revealing his sensitive inner self, the women who took an interest couldn’t be blamed for misreading the signs. The Susan incident had cast him into a mood of frank introspection, but in the meantime he’d taken steps to protect his humble vessel from future hijackings by disgruntled companions.

With a hunting scope he easily located Joey Perrone, adrift less than two miles from the island. “Wanna come along?” he asked Strom, who declined in favor of licking his privates.

Stranahan dragged the yellow ocean kayak from the shed and pushed it into the water. He stripped off his shirt, kicked away his flip-flops and climbed in. He paddled through the light chop with short, hard strokes, and the burn in his shoulders felt good. With the wind behind him, he reached the disabled skiff in twenty minutes.

Joey sat on the bow with her legs dangling. She said, “Twice in three days. How lame is that?”

Stranahan pulled himself aboard and secured the kayak to a cleat on the stern. “This one definitely doesn’t count as a rescue,” he said. “This is purely a fuckup.”

“Mick, I wasn’t stealing the boat. Honest.”

He opened one of the front hatches and with some effort inserted his head and arms inside.

“I was going to leave it tied up at Dinner Key,” Joey insisted. “Look, I didn’t mean to break the darn thing. I’ll pay for the damage, okay?”

From below he said, “What makes you think it’s broken?”

“No?”

“Actually, it’s working perfectly.” He got up, wiped his palms on his khakis and stepped back to the console. The instant he turned the key, the engine rumbled to life.

Peevishly, Joey asked, “How’d you do that?”

“I’ve got a manual valve on the fuel line, near the tank. Last night I shut it off,” he said. “Force of habit, I guess.”

“A cutoff valve.”

“Exactly. Whatever gas was left in the hose, that’s all you had to run on this morning,” he explained, “and that’s why the engine crapped out.”

“Clever.” Joey was working her lower jaw.

“See, I’ve had my boat swiped before.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.”

Stranahan motioned her away from the bow. She moved to the ice cooler and assumed a slump-shouldered pose, watching him as he spun the steering wheel.

He said, “I can’t blame you for being disappointed. You were expecting the pale rider and all you got was me.”

Joey rolled her eyes.

Stranahan took it easy on the trip back to the island, the kayak bouncing lightly in the backwash of the skiff. Leaning sideways, he said, “I would’ve gladly taken you to the mainland myself. What the hell were you thinking?”

“I was thinking you’re probably going to call the Coast Guard or the police, regardless, and that’s not what I want.”

“Where were you going?”

“To surprise my husband. To enjoy the look on his face when he saw I was still alive.”

“And then what—let him try to murder you again?”

“So maybe it wasn’t the smartest idea I’ve ever had,” Joey said. “I’m just so damn furious—I was going to wait ‘til he was taking a shower and then sneak in the bathroom and yank open the curtain. I thought maybe I could give him a heart attack.”

“Great scene,” Stranahan said, “but not a great plan.”

“I thought of a better one. Want to hear it?”

“Nope,” he said.

“It came to me all of a sudden while I was floating around out here in your boat,” she said. “I think you’ll approve.”

“Doubtful,” said Stranahan. “And for what it’s worth, I keep my promises. There was no need to run away—I wasn’t going to call the cops until you were ready.”

Joey tugged the rubber band out of her ponytail. “What if I’m never ready?”

“That’s the new plan? You want everybody to keep on thinking you’re dead?”

“Mainly my homicidal shithird of a husband.”

Stranahan played along. “And this is so you can disappear to someplace far away, right? Take a new name. Start a new life.”

“Oh no,” Joey said, “this is so I can ruin his.”

“Ah, sweet revenge.”

“Justice is a better word for it.”

“Please.” Stranahan laughed. She was a fireball, this one.

“Joey, what about your folks and your family? Your friends? You really want to put them through that sort of agony?”

She informed him that her parents were dead and that her only brother lived on the other side of the world. “Him, I’ll tell,” she said. “He’ll be cool with it.”

“And your boss? The people you work with?”

“I quit my job when I got married,” she said. “Also, you might as well know I’ve got money, a ridiculous amount—more than enough to do what I have in mind for Chaz.”

“Christ, you’re serious.”

“Of course. I’m surprised you can’t understand.” Joey turned away, raising an arm to shield her eyes from the sun.

When they pulled up to the dock, Strom wet himself in exuberance. Stranahan tied off the skiff, stowed the kayak and went inside to make omelettes. Joey changed into somebody’s yellow sundress and an oversized straw hat.

Breakfast, which included fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice, was served on the deck under partly cloudy skies. Stranahan waited until they were done before finishing his lecture.

“Listen to me, please. You can’t kill your husband and get away with it,” he said, “just because everybody thinks you’re dead. That kind of nonsense only happens in the movies.”

She peered from under the brim of the immense hat, her expression one of broad amusement. “Mick, I don’t want to kill Chaz Perrone. I just want to screw with him until he screws himself. Can’t you see the possibilities?”

Stranahan was alarmed to find himself intrigued by the idea. He hoped Joey wouldn’t notice.

She sat forward intently. “Has anyone seriously tried to murder you? Tell the truth.”

“Yes, as a matter of fact.”

“And what’d you do about it?”

“That was different, Joey. I was in law enforcement.”

Triumphantly she banged her hands flat on the table. “I knew it! I frigging knew it!”

“Was,” Stranahan said. “Long, long time ago.”

“Answer the question, Mick. What did you do to the guy who tried to murder you?”

He took a slow breath before answering. “I killed them.”

She sat back as forcefully as if she’d been shoved. “Wow,” she said.

“Want a papaya?”

“Them? You’re talking dead guys plural?”

“I was in the military, too,” Stranahan said. “Be right back.”

He went to the kitchen and returned with two bagels and a platter of glistening papaya slices.

“Tell me everything,” Joey said, her eyes shining.

“Under no circumstances.”

Stranahan’s two least favorite topics of chat were, in order, the women he’d married and the men he’d killed. Of the latter, Raleigh Goomer, the crooked judge, was the most well known, although others had come before and after. All the killings were by most moral standards justified, from the North Vietnamese Army regulars he’d shot in a firefight to the slow-footed hit man he’d impaled with the sword of a stuffed marlin. They made for colorful stories, Stranahan supposed, but none he wished to share with a young stranger.

Joey said, “I guess I should be scared of you.”

He shook his head. “Other way around.”

“I told you, Mick, I don’t want to kill Chaz. I can’t even squish a darn palmetto bug without feeling guilty. But he needs to pay for what he did.”

“What have you got against prisons?” Stranahan asked. “Trust me, ten years at Raiford will rock your husband’s little world worse than anything you can dream up.”

Joey popped a crescent of papaya into her mouth. “Assuming he’s convicted,” she said, “which ain’t exactly a slam dunk. Not without eyewitnesses, or at least a motive. Am I right?”

“There’s got to be a motive, Joey. There’s always a motive.”

“Look, I haven’t got all the angles figured out. But let me tell you—Chaz is slicker than pig snot on a doorknob, or however the saying goes.”

“Close enough,” Stranahan said.

“The thought of me against him in court, it’s too scary. I can’t take that risk.”

Stranahan appreciated Joey’s misgivings. Trials in South Florida were famously unpredictable.

“Before I met Chaz, he worked for a cosmetics company,” she said. “He was their big scientific hotshot, the one they’d trot in to testify how safe their perfumes were. He showed me a tape of himself on the witness stand, and you know what? He was good, Mick. I can totally see a jury buying his act.”

Stranahan knew that he should tell her to trust the system, but he couldn’t say the words with a straight face. He’d seen more than a few cold-blooded monsters stroll out of a courtroom scot-free.

“So where do we stand?” Joey asked him. “What’re you going to do with me now?”

He was pondering a reply when he noticed a blaze-orange helicopter approaching low from the ocean. Strom spotted it, too, and began barking insanely, leaping in circles.

Joey’s hat fell off when she tilted her head to see the aircraft, which flew directly over them and slowed to a hover. Stranahan could make out the Coast Guard spotter, positioned at an open door. The man was wearing a white helmet and aiming binoculars, and almost certainly he was searching for Mrs. Charles Perrone, believed lost at sea.

To end it, Stranahan had only to stand up, wave both arms and point toward the woman in the yellow sundress—the one who had hastily ducked back under her floppy hat and was now eyeing him anxiously.

How easy it would be, he thought, and how tempting, too, because honestly he was too old for this shit.

Yet he didn’t wave or point or signal to the chopper in any of the usual ways. Instead he reached for Joey’s left hand and brought it to his lips, lightly but long enough for the Coast Guard spotter to see him do it.

So that the searcher would conclude, as any observer might, that the woman in the sundress wasn’t a castaway but obviously the wife or girlfriend of the lucky middle-aged guy at the picnic table.

And, sure enough, the helicopter buzzed away. They watched until it was a bright dot in the soft blue distance. Satisfied that he’d done his job, Strom stopped barking and curled up. A flock of perturbed gulls materialized overhead.

“Thank you,” Joey Perrone said to Stranahan. “Does this mean I can stay?”

“I must be nuts,” he said.

Six

The call from the Coast Guard came at noon sharp.

“I can’t believe you’re giving up!” Chaz said. His bags had been packed for an hour. “My wife’s out there in the water somewhere— what if she’s still alive?”

“The odds are very slim. I’m sorry, Mr. Perrone.”

Chaz checked out of the Marriott and drove home feeling relieved and emboldened. He had committed a flawless crime. Thirty-seven hours had passed since he’d heaved Joey overboard, and not so much as a single hair had been found. The ocean had done its job.

Entering the house, Chaz experienced a wave of—what was it?— not remorse, but more of a carnal longing. The place smelled lightly of Joey’s favorite perfume, a scent that never failed to arouse him. It was much more subtle than the fruity slop that Ricca wore, Chaz thought. Maybe I can talk her into switching brands.

He listened to a score of choked-up phone messages from friends of Joey who’d read about her disappearance in the paper. Chaz pondered his good fortune to have wed a woman with practically no family, extended or otherwise, to make a fuss. Chaz had never even met his wife’s only brother, and he wondered if the news of Joey’s death would dislodge the reclusive Corbett Wheeler from his beloved New Zealand.

At first the sight of Joey’s clothes in the closet unsettled Chaz. He felt better after sweeping the hangers clean, and better still after expunging the bathroom of all her soaps, creams, scrubs, moisturizers, exfoliants, lotions and conditioners. Methodically he went around gathering his wife’s belongings and piling them on their king-sized bed. He took everything except one intriguing lace bra and a pair of panties, which looked as if they might fit Ricca if she dropped a few pounds. Also exempt from removal was Joey’s jewelry, worth at least ten or twelve grand.

Chaz had no containers large enough to hold all his wife’s stuff, so he drove to the delivery bay of a nearby BrandsMart and scored some jumbo cardboard boxes. Upon returning, he saw a gray Ford sedan in his driveway, and Karl Rolvaag waiting on the front step.

To avoid the appearance of embracing widowhood, another murderous spouse might have left the boxes in his car, out of the jaded detective’s sight. Chaz, however, was resolved not to let himself be intimidated or thrown off course.

“Whatcha got there?” Rolvaag asked. “Is that one of those new Humvees?”

Wordlessly, Chaz unlocked the front door and backed inside with the boxes. He went directly to the bedroom, the sallow cop following at a courteous distance.

“I can’t stand to see all her things here. It’s just too damn painful,” Chaz said. He began tossing Joey’s dresses and blouses into a box that had once held a forty-inch Sanyo. “Everywhere I turn, there she is,” he went on somberly. “I can’t even bring myself to unpack her suitcase from the cruise.”

Rolvaag looked on thoughtfully. “Everyone reacts different to a shock like this. Some people, they won’t touch anything in the house. They leave every single item exactly as it was before, and I mean everything—linens, dirty laundry. You’d be amazed. Won’t even throw out their loved one’s toothbrush—they keep it standing in a cup by the sink. Sometimes for years this goes on.”

Chaz continued to fill the box. “Not me. All these things to remind me, I’d be too depressed to get out of bed.”

“What’re you going to do with all of it?”

“I haven’t decided. Give it to charity maybe.”

The detective reached in and picked up a tortoiseshell hairbrush. “May I take this?”

“Be my guest,” Chaz said automatically. Then, after a moment’s thought: “Can I ask what for?”

“Just in case.”

“Yeah?”

“In case something turns up later,” Rolvaag said, “a body part or whatever. I don’t mean to be graphic, Mr. Perrone, but it occasionally happens.”

“Oh, I see. You want a sample of Joey’s DNA.”

“That’s right. The hair on this brush should be enough to establish a match, if necessary,” the detective said. “Do you mind?”

“Course not.” Without missing a beat, Chaz snatched a couple of purses off the bed and dropped them into the box.

Rolvaag slipped Joey’s brush into an inside pocket of his suit jacket. He said, “There’ve been incidents here in Florida where a fisherman hauls in some huge shark and it’s flopping around the deck of the boat and all of a sudden it regurgitates part of a human body. And this can be, like, weeks after the person has gone missing. Meantime, the shark might’ve swum two or three hundred miles—”

Chaz interrupted with a queasy grimace: “I get the picture.”

“Sorry, Mr. Perrone. You probably studied cases like that at Rosenstiel.”

Chaz’s gaze flickered briefly from the box to the detective’s face. “Yes, we did.” He heard an edginess in his own voice. Rolvaag had been checking up on him.

“Take whatever you need,” Chaz offered, motioning toward the pile of Joey’s things. “I’m willing to do anything if there’s a chance to bring closure.”

The detective gave a smile that Chaz chose to read as sympathetic. “Closure would be good,” Rolvaag said. “Painful sometimes, but still a step forward. I’m sorry to have intruded on your privacy.”

Chaz walked him to the door and said, “The Coast Guard called. They quit searching at noon.”

“Yes, I know.”

With simulated chagrin, Chaz added, “Three thousand square miles and they couldn’t find a damn thing.”

“Oh, they found something,” Rolvaag said, freezing Chaz with one hand on the knob. “Four bales of marijuana. That’s it.”

Chaz waited for the rush of nausea to subside. “Whoop-de-doo,” he said. “I’m sure they’re scared shitless down in Colombia.”

“Actually, the stuff was Jamaican. But you’re right, they’ll never figure out who dumped it, or even where. The Gulf Stream probably dragged it all the way up the islands.”

Chaz snorted. “From Bermuda, maybe. Not Jamaica.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Gulf Stream? It flows from north to south.”

Rolvaag’s blond eyebrows crinkled. “Not the last time I was out there,” he said. “I’m pretty certain it goes the other way, Mr. Perrone. To the north.”

Chaz lapsed into an unplanned coughing jag. What if the lame-ass detective isn’t wrong? he wondered despondently. That meant the ocean currents had carried Joey’s body from the remote perimeter of the search-and-rescue zone into the bull’s-eye.

“Heck, you might be right.” Chaz cleared his throat. “My brain’s so scrambled today, I couldn’t tell the sun from the moon.”

“I understand completely. You get some rest,” Rolvaag said, and headed out to his car.

Chaz shut the door and leaned wearily against it. Of the millions of people who weren’t sure which direction the Gulf Stream ran, he was probably the only one to hold an advanced degree in a marine science. He had a fleeting urge to phone one of his former professors and settle the question, but that would have invited scorn that Chaz was in no mood to suffer. It was one of the rare times that he regretted having been such a slacker in school.

Quickly he returned to the chore of removing his late wife’s belongings, consoling himself with the knowledge that sharks off the coast of Miami Beach were as indiscriminate in their feeding habits as the ones in the Keys. Joey undoubtedly had been gobbled by one, the strongest evidence being the absence of a corpse.

When Ricca phoned, though, Chaz couldn’t restrain himself from asking, “Honey, which way does the Gulf Stream go?”

“Is this a quiz? What are my choices?”

“North or south,” Chaz said.

“I got no idea, baby.”

“Shit.”

“Well, don’t get mad at me” Ricca said. “Aren’t you the one s’posed to be the big-shot scientist?”

Which is exactly what Karl Rolvaag was thinking about Charles Perrone on the way to the Coast Guard station.

Corbett Wheeler had moved to New Zealand at the age of twenty-two, believing that if he stayed in America he’d spend the rest of his youth battling to hide his inheritance from his gummy-fingered aunt.

Corbett had begged his younger sister to flee the States with him, but Joey’s heart had been set on Florida. He had not been surprised when she married Benjamin Middenbock, but he was astounded when the stockbroker proved to be an upright, honest fellow with no overt interest in Joey’s money. It was only later, after Benny had been flattened by the sky diver, that Corbett learned his sister had never educated her adoring husband about the family fortune. Corbett then began to suspect that Joey could take care of herself.

By that time he’d grown to love New Zealand, which was as vast and glorious as California, though without the motoring hordes. He had developed an improbable interest in sheep farming during a period when the East Friesian breed was being introduced from Sweden. East Friesians were the most prolific milking sheep in the world, and crossbreeding with New Zealand strains produced a bounty of chubby, fuzzy lambs. Corbett Wheeler had done very well for himself, though profit had never been a motive; he simply possessed an innocent fondness for the husbandry of sheep. Nothing gave him more joy than sitting on the porch of his farmhouse, toking on a joint and gazing out upon verdant slopes speckled in pewter with rams, ewes and lambs.

One night, Joey had called excitedly to report that their late mother’s twin sister—the avaricious harpy who had raised them—was being sent to prison for authoring fraudulent insurance claims. Dottie Babcock had been working in Los Angeles as a professional accident victim, racking up two or three imaginary collisions per month in league with a crooked physician. For every alias used by Dottie Babcock, there was a corresponding crushed vertebra, shattered hip or detached retina. A newspaper had tracked her down and plastered on the front page a photograph of her Rollerblading with her Pila-tes instructor in Santa Monica. Authorities had been obliged to take action, and a judge slapped Dottie with eight to twelve years. Joey had delivered this bulletin in the hope that her brother might consider a return to the States, but Corbett had declined. From such a distance (and filtered through the leery eye of the BBC), American culture appeared increasingly manic and uninviting. Moreover, Corbett Wheeler couldn’t imagine a life without lambing.

He had come back only once, for Benjamin Middenbock’s funeral, and had lasted barely forty-eight hours. The blinding vulgarity of South Florida was too much; total sensory overload. Corbett had flown home to Christchurch, resolved to hunker down and tend his flock. He spoke regularly to his sister, and in that way had learned of her growing doubts as to the faithfulness and rectitude of her second husband, Dr. Charles Perrone. Still, Joey had said nothing in those conversations that even hinted she feared for her safety.

“He actually pushed you off the ship?” Corbett Wheeler’s hand was shaking as he gripped the telephone. “How? And why, for God’s sake?”

Joey told him the story of what had happened that night. He managed to laugh when she got to the part about the bale of grass.

“Who found you—the DEA?”

“Not even close.”

“But you’ve been to the police, right?”

No reply.

“Joey, what’s going on?”

“It would be my word against Chaz’s,” she said, “and he’s a good actor, Corbett. Better than me.”

Corbett Wheeler thought about that for a few moments. “So, is there a plan?” he asked.

“There will be. I might need your help.”

“You name it,” he said. “Where are you now?”

“On some island,” she said.

“Oh, that’s terrific. Are you alone?”

“I’m staying with the man who rescued me.”

“Aw, Joey, come on.”

“I trust him,” she said.

“You trusted Chaz, too,” Corbett Wheeler said. “I’m chartering a jet first thing in the morning.”

“No, not yet. Please.”

His little sister had her weak moments, Corbett knew, but deep down she was a tough cookie.

“What exactly are you up to?” he asked.

After Joey got off the phone, she went outside and found Mick Stranahan fishing from the seawall, Strom dozing at his side.

“How soon can Chaz have me declared legally dead?” she asked. “We’re talking, what—weeks? Months? When there’s no corpse, I mean.”

“State law says five years,” Stranahan said.

Joey was glad to hear it, although she didn’t intend to spend that much time stalking an asshole husband. She was looking for something quick and dirty.

“Corbett is calling the sheriff’s office,” she said, “to tell them it wasn’t a suicide or an accident.”

“You want the cops leaning on Chaz so soon?”

“The more the merrier. Besides, they can’t prove he did it. You said so yourself.”

“Not without your testimony, they probably can’t.”

“So they’ll just ask lots of questions and make him a nervous wreck, which is fine by me.”

“Him lying awake every night, wondering what’s next,” Stranahan said.

“Yeah, exactly. Staring at the ceiling.”

“But then how does it finally end?”

“I’m not sure,” Joey said. “You got any nifty ideas? I’ll bet you do.”

Stranahan reeled in a snapper and tossed it in the bucket. He said, “You’re entitled to some hard feelings. The guy tried to kill you, after all.”

“Mostly, I need to find out why,” said Joey. “Whatever else happens with Chaz, I can’t walk away until I know the reason he did it. Did I mention he was younger than me?”

“No.”

“By almost five years. Big mistake, marrying an arrested adolescent.”

She paused, worrying about one possible implication of what she’d said. Pointedly she added, “That doesn’t mean I’m going to suddenly start dating older guys.”

“Oh, darn my luck.” Stranahan never took his eyes off the water.

Joey frowned. “Sarcasm is not attractive. Chaz specialized in it.”

“Grand larceny isn’t exactly my idea of a turn-on, either.”

“What!”

“You stole my boat, remember?”

“For heaven’s sake,” Joey said.

She was trying to lay down a few simple rules, that’s all. She didn’t want Stranahan to get the wrong idea about their relationship. The cornerstones of her revamped approach to men would be candor and clarity, and Stranahan was the first test case.

“Mick, I want to pay you for your help. Plus expenses, of course, including room and board.”