Skinny Dip (7 page)

“I still can’t promise I won’t try to sleep with you,” he said. “That’s how I often behave when I meet someone attractive. It’s only fair you should know.”

“I appreciate the honesty. I do.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll see me coming about a mile away. I’m not real slick.”

“No?”

“French wine, moonlight and Neil Young, strictly acoustic. Don’t laugh, I know it’s hokey.”

“Depends on the wine,” Joey said.

She was remembering the way he’d kissed her hand while the Coast Guard spotter was eyeballing them from the helicopter. She was wondering if it had been more than a show.

Stranahan said, “If you were my sister—”

“Or daughter.”

“Christ, I’m not that old.”

“Go on,” Joey said.

“If you were my sister—honestly?—I’d tell you to get your butt off this island as fast as possible.”

“Because …”

“Because for all you know,” he said, “I could be president of the Ted Bundy Fan Club. I could be a serial killer-slash-rapist-slash-fill in the blank.”

“Now you’re just tryin’ to sweet-talk me,” Joey drawled.

Stranahan pulled in another snapper and declared they had plenty for supper. He got up and whistled for Strom to follow him to the fish-cleaning table.

“He loves to hassle the gulls,” Stranahan said.

“You eat fish every night?”

“No. Sometimes it’s lobster. Sometimes stone crabs.”

“You don’t get lonely out here?” Joey asked.

“Makes up for all the years of foolish companionship.”

Stranahan unsheathed a narrow curved knife and went to work. It was a delicate enterprise because the snappers were small, but the blade was steady and precise in his large weathered hands. Joey found herself watching with an odd sort of reverence, as if gutting a fish were some sort of mystic rite.

“One night maybe we’ll take the skiff up to Key Biscayne,” he was saying. “There’s a few decent restaurants—”

“Mick, do you have a gun?” she asked.

“This is Florida, darling.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I. The head of the Miami Chamber of Commerce used to keep a loaded Uzi under her bed,” Stranahan said. “So the answer would be yes, I own a firearm.”

“Will you show me how to use it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Just in case Chaz gets wise?”

“It’s too dangerous.”

“Okay.” Joey thinking: A half-wit baboon could learn how to shoot.

“What exactly does your husband do for a living?” Stranahan asked.

“I told you. He’s a biologist.”

“But doing what?”

“He works on the Everglades project for the state water-management district.”

“He any good?” Stranahan asked.

“I wouldn’t know. Science is another universe to me,” Joey said. “I was the jock in the family.”

“What do they pay him?” Stranahan tossed a handful offish entrails into the water. A gull dove on the splat, ignoring Strom’s fevered barking.

Joey said, “Chaz’s salary is sixty-two thousand a year. The only reason I know is because he got audited by the IRS.”

“Can he get to your money? This is important.”

She assured Stranahan that her inheritance was safe.

“And Chaz signed a pre-nup anyway. Every so often he’d hint around like he wanted me to tear it up, but eventually he gave up.”

“Doesn’t that seem strange?”

“No, because he had a nest egg of his own. I didn’t pry,” Joey said, “because he didn’t pry. Money wasn’t a huge issue in our marriage, if that’s what you’re getting at. We split the bills down the middle. Filed separate tax returns.”

“Money is an issue in every marriage, Joey. Ask any divorce lawyer.” Stranahan lobbed a glistening fish skeleton into the basin. It sank slowly in a wisp of crimson.

“Are Chaz’s parents rich?” he asked.

“His dad was the greenskeeper at a country club in Panama City,”

Joey said. “He got sick from all the pesticides and went insane is what Chaz told me. Woke up one day and decided he was Gen. William Westmoreland. Drove down to the docks and attacked a shrimp boat with a Ping putter and a bunker rake. The captain and the crew were Vietnamese immigrants—”

“Whoa. Chaz told you this?”

Joey nodded. “He saved the newspaper clippings. Bottom line, his father’s institutionalized. His mother works at Target and she’s remarried to a retired fighter pilot from England.”

“So where did Chaz’s ‘nest egg’ come from?” Stranahan had finished cleaning the fillets and was hosing off the table. “Is he a big spender?”

“Not usually,” Joey said. “But, like, three months ago he went out and bought a brand-new Hummer Hi. Not financed, bought. Bright yellow, too. Said he needed a four-wheel drive for his fieldwork out in the swamps.”

Stranahan chuckled. “Beautiful.”

“When I asked how much it cost, he kind of snapped,” Joey recalled. “And I wasn’t nagging. I was just curious about what he spent. The same way he’s curious when I come home with a new dress or a pair of shoes. But this time he told me to mind my own goddamn business. Called me a nosy bitch.”

“What’d you do?”

“I told him if he ever spoke to me like that again, I’d reach down his throat and pull out his testicles one at a time,” Joey said. “I’ve got a temper, okay?”

Stranahan promised to keep that in mind.

“So that night we’re lying in bed,” Joey said, “and Chaz says he’s sorry for blowing a gasket. This while he’s trying to climb on top of me. Tells me he won a big settlement from being in a car accident.”

“When?”

“Long time ago, before we met. He got T-boned by some drunk Kiwanian up in Tampa and seriously screwed up his back. Said he was on crutches for, like, six months.”

“And you’re married almost two whole years before he mentions this traumatic, life-altering event,” Stranahan mused.

“Maybe he thought … I don’t know.” Joey shook her head. “Maybe he was embarrassed because he got the money from a lawsuit.”

“I’m sure. Probably wanted you to think he’d won a Nobel Prize, or maybe a MacArthur grant.”

She was feeling more foolish than ever. “In other words—”

“Assume everything your husband ever told you was bullshit,” Stranahan said. “How much would you guess that new Hummer cost?”

“Nearly sixty grand, with all the bells and whistles. I checked on the Internet.”

They heard a yelp and turned around. Strom was floundering miserably in the basin under a swirl of teasing seabirds. Stranahan calmly jumped in the water and gathered the big dog in his arms. Joey hurried to fetch a towel.

Later, while the fish was frying, Stranahan opened a bottle of wine.

“Don’t worry,” he told Joey. “It’s from California, not France.”

“So this isn’t one of your smooth bachelor moves?”

“Give me a little credit.”

“But isn’t that Neil Young we’re listening to?”

“With Buffalo Springfield, that’s right. You’re pretty darn sharp for a youngster.” Stranahan filled her wineglass. “How about tomorrow we get off this rock?”

“Good idea. Wait’ll you see that Hummer,” Joey said.

“What I’d really like to see,” said Stranahan, “is anyone on a state salary who can pay cash for a sixty-thousand-dollar set of wheels.”

The petty officer’s name was Yancy.

“Here’s what I was talking about,” she said.

The four bales were laid out in a row on the floor of an empty holding cell. The sodden weed gave off a strong sickly-sweet smell.

Yancy was pointing at the third bale. Karl Rolvaag crouched to get a closer look.

“Weird, huh?” the petty officer said.

The wrapping was damaged in two places. Rolvaag carefully probed at the puckered fabric with the capped tip of a ballpoint pen. Each area was characterized by a series of slender longitudinal furrows, several of which were deep enough to have punctured the burlap.

“Can I ask a favor?” The detective motioned Yancy forward.

The petty officer did as she was asked. Rolvaag lifted her left hand and placed it over one of the divots in the bale. Then he took her right hand and covered the other. The alignment was nearly perfect, each of Yancy’s fingers matching a rumpled groove in the cloth.

“How about that,” Rolvaag said.

Yancy went rigid. “Sir, it wasn’t me. You have my word,” she said. “This is what it looked like when we found it.”

“Relax,” the detective said. “I believe you.”

“You asked us to report anything unusual that we saw or found,” she said. “Anything out of the ordinary is what you said.”

“Yes, and this is very helpful. I can’t thank you enough.”

“We’re glad to be of assistance, sir.”

“And whereabouts was this one found?”

“Angelfish Creek,” Yancy said.

“No kidding? That’s a long haul.” It meant that Joey Perrone had gone in the water long before her husband said she did.

“I need two small favors,” Rolvaag told Yancy. “You ordinarily burn the grass you confiscate, isn’t that right?”

“Yes, sir, we turn all contraband over to the federal task force. They incinerate it,” the petty officer said.

“This bale here? Tell them not to,” Rolvaag said. “Mark it as evidence and put it in a safe place.”

“Evidence. Yes, sir.”

“Also, have you got a pair of tweezers and a Baggie?”

“Let me check the first-aid station,” Yancy said.

While she was gone, Rolvaag sat down on one of the other bales and blew his nose fiercely. He was afflicted with numerous crop and pollen allergies, and wet marijuana rated a code ten.

The word Libertad! had been scratched on a wall of the cell, and the detective wondered who had done it and where the poor bastard had been deported. As much as Rolvaag disliked South Florida, it was useful to be reminded that there were infinitely worse places not so far away; places that made Hialeah look like the Emerald City of Oz.

Petty Officer Yancy returned with the requested items. Using the tweezers, Rolvaag began meticulously exploring each of the finger grooves on the burlap sacking. It didn’t take long to dig out the clue he was hoping for.

“Could you open the plastic bag?” he asked Yancy.

“Yes, sir. What’d you find?”

The detective held it up, pinched firmly in the beak of the tweezers, for her to see.

“Is that the tip of a fingernail?” she asked.

“It would appear so. A woman’s, I’m almost sure.”

“So she was trying to rip open the bale—is that what happened?”

“No.” Rolvaag dropped the nail fragment into the Baggie. “She was hanging on for dear life.”

As Petty Officer Yancy studied the clawings in the fabric, Rolvaag thought he saw her shiver.

“Sir, was this the woman … could these marks be from the woman we were trying to locate? The one missing off the cruise ship?”

The detective said it was possible.

“Weird,” Yancy said quietly. “Spooky weird.”

“Yes, it is.” Rolvaag turned back to the soggy bale. “Let’s see if there’s more.”

Seven

The development was called West Boca Dunes Phase II.

“Dunes?” said Mick Stranahan. “We’re fifteen miles from the beach.”

“Chaz tried to buy into Phase I because it’s on a golf course,” Joey Perrone explained, “but they were sold out.”

“Every house looks the same.”

“Oh, they’re identical. All three hundred and seven units in our modern Florida subdivision,” Joey said in a mock sales-pitch voice, “except that some feature the master bedroom suite on the east side and some have it on the west. Also, you can get a pool.”

Stranahan lowered the binoculars. “But you don’t have one.”

Joey said, “Chaz hates to swim.”

“Not you. That was your big college sport, right?”

“Ancient history,” she said.

“Still, it would have been nice for you. A swimming pool.”

“Yeah, well.”

“How about another fig?” Stranahan asked.

They’d stopped at an outdoor market in Pompano Beach and he had loaded up on fresh produce. Now the car smelled like two tons of Mediterranean fruit salad.

Joey Perrone said, “It’s lucky you’ve got that island thing going for you, Mick, because this”—she patted the dashboard—”ain’t exactly a pussy magnet.”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s a Chazism for a hot car.”

Stranahan said, “The Cordoba is an automotive classic. You’ll be pleased to know that your butt is sitting on rich Corinthian leather.” “Maybe once upon a time.”

For years Stranahan had kept the rusty car under a shady ficus tree near the Dinner Key marina, where he docked the skiff when visiting the mainland. Nothing on the Chrysler worked properly anymore except the enormous engine, which ran like a miracle.

Joey said, “We sit here much longer, somebody will definitely call the police.”

Mick Stranahan conceded that the Cordoba didn’t blend in with the late-model SUVs gleaming in the parallel driveways of West Boca Dunes Phase II. Joey told him to get busy while she found a place to hide the car.

“I might need to break a window,” he said. “There’s a spare key in a bird feeder in the backyard.” “How about an alarm?” “Broken. See you in ten minutes.”

Stranahan wore a short-sleeved work shirt from Florida Power & Light and a white hard hat. He went up to the front door and rang the bell. After a minute he circled to the rear of the house and pretended to examine the electric meter until he figured even the nosiest of Joey’s neighbors would have lost interest.

The bird feeder was hung in the only tree in the Perrones’ yard, a scrawny black olive. The key was covered with grackle droppings, which Stranahan wiped on the grass. As soon as he entered the house, he scrubbed his hands and put on a pair of rubber kitchen gloves. He was waiting by the front door when Joey knocked. “So, what do you think of my new look?” “I’m there,” Stranahan said.

She wore a cropped brunette wig and a gray knee-length house-dress, and she carried a worn Bible. All of it came from a thrift shop they’d found down the street from the produce mart.

Stranahan motioned her inside and shut the door. Her shoulders stiffened and she stood in the foyer for several moments without saying a word.

He took her by the elbow and said, “It’s all right.” “Is there anything I shouldn’t see?”

“I haven’t taken the grand tour, but this was on the kitchen counter.”

It was a section of the Sun-Sentinel that had been unfolded to an inside page.

Joey read the headline aloud: ” ‘Coast Guard Calls Off Search for Missing Cruise Passenger.’ Oh my God, there I am! ‘Local Woman Feared Drowned.’ Do you believe this?”

She dropped the Bible and seized the newspaper with both hands. “I knew it, Mick. He’s saying I got drunk and fell overboard!”

“That’s not in the story.”

“No, but it’s the obvious implication. ‘Perrone told police that he and his wife had shared several bottles of wine earlier in the evening. The couple had been celebrating their second wedding anniversary.’ The prick!”

Joey crumpled the newspaper and slam-dunked it into the trash can. “I’m calling Rose,” she said.

“Who’s that?”

“My best friend. She’s in our book club.”

Mick Stranahan waited in the living room, trying to figure out who had decorated the place. The sofa and two reading chairs were comfortable and smart-looking, probably Joey’s touch. Chaz’s contributions would be the plasma TV and the jet-black Natuzzi recliner. The tragic aquarium could go either way. Stranahan was struck by the absence of books and the abundance of golf magazines. No family photographs were on display, not even a wedding picture.

Joey stalked into the room carrying a cold beer in each hand. She gave one bottle to Stranahan. “Rose almost had a seizure. She thought I was calling from the grave—speaking of which, what’s that awful smell?”

“The aquarium, I’m afraid.”

Joey groaned as she approached the tank. “That frigging idiot forgot to feed the fish!”

They looked like shiny little holiday ornaments, bobbing in the clouded water. Joey turned away in angry disgust. Stranahan followed her through the house, room by room. Nothing more was said until they reached the master bath.

“Oh, cute. My stuff’s gone.”

“Everything?”

“My toothpaste, makeup.” Joey tore through the drawers and cabinets. “All my lotions and creams, even the tampons. This is unbelievable.”

She hurried to the bedroom and flung open the closet door and let out a cry. “My clothes, too!”

Stranahan opened the top drawer of an antique bureau. “Undies,” he reported, perhaps too brightly. “These he saved.”

“Asshole.” Joey slammed the closet door so violently that it came off the track.

Stranahan said, “Personally, I advocate cunning and stealth over mass destruction.”

He righted the door and set it back in place. Joey grabbed her bra and panties out of the bureau and sat down stiffly on the edge of the bed. “I’m going to cry now, okay, and I don’t want to hear a word from you. Not one damn word.”

“Crying is allowed. Go right ahead.”

“And don’t you dare put your arms around me and stroke my hair and give me all that wise fatherly-brotherly bullshit. Not unless I tell you to.”

“Fair enough,” Stranahan said.

“This was my house, Mick. My life. And he’s just sweeping me out the door like I was dirt.”

She closed her eyes and oddly found herself thinking of the night that Chaz had begged to tie her to the bedposts. He had chosen Alsatian scarves but had cinched the knots so tightly that her fingers and toes immediately went to sleep. It had been one of the rare times with Chaz that she’d had to fake it, but what made the night more memorable was that he’d passed out on top of her in a creepy sexual stupor. For nearly an hour he had lain there, snoring between her breasts and drooling like a Saint Bernard, yet remaining solidly erect inside her. Joey had felt as helpless as a butterfly pinned to a corkboard.

Upon reflection she realized that the bizarre interlude had been a telling lesson about her husband: Conscious or unconscious, he was completely dick-driven.

“The guy’s an animal and I never saw it,” she said disconsolately. “A primitive with a Ph.D. And I was a fool for marrying him.”

“Joey?” Stranahan was standing at the bedroom door, spinning his hard hat in his hands.

“Yeah?”

“If you’re going to cry, then cry. We need to be moving along.”

“Give me five minutes alone.”

“You got it,” Stranahan said.

“Five minutes. Then come back and put your arms around me and tell me everything’s going to be okay. All that cornball crap.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, let’s give it a shot. But first, take off those ridiculous gloves.”

Later they found the rest of her belongings crammed in three cardboard boxes, stacked in the garage next to her Toyota. As Joey began sorting through the depressing inventory, Stranahan warned her that Chaz might become suspicious if items disappeared.

“And don’t even think about taking your car,” he added.

Glumly she held up a pale orange handbag. “This is what I brought on the cruise.”

Chaz had obviously overlooked her wallet, which contained $650 and an American Express card. “The plastic I’m keeping,” she informed Stranahan. “We’ll need it.”

“The cash, too.”

“Come here and dig in.” Joey pointed to one of the other boxes.

“May I ask what we’re looking for?”

“Something saucy,” she said. “Something to catch the eye of my worthless troglodyte husband.”

Dawn brought a thunderstorm and the screeching of rats. Karl Rolvaag’s pythons had awakened hungry.

For ten minutes the detective stood under a cold shower, a ritual meant to thicken his blood in preparation for the return to Minnesota. Rolvaag believed that living in South Florida had turned him into a weather wimp.

Captain Gallo had told him to take the day off as comp time, but Rolvaag had nothing else to do but work. By the time he’d shaved and dressed, the snakes were finished and Mrs. Shulman was pounding on the door. She lived across the hall in unit 7-G and held the title of acting vice president for the Sawgrass Grove Condominium Association. Her current mission was to evict Karl Rolvaag from the premises. “Good morning, Nellie,” he said.

“I heard it, that god-awful screaming again, you sick bastard!” “They’ve got to eat,” the detective said, “same as you and me.” “If you weren’t a cop, they’d throw you in jail for animal cruelty!”

Mrs. Shulman, who weighed at least ninety pounds, acted as if she intended to punch Rolvaag in the chest. Her bony mottled fists were clenched and trembling.

The detective said, “The condo association paid how much for rodent extermination last year—three or four grand, wasn’t it?”

Mrs. Shulman sneered. “Don’t get snide with me.”

“There’s nothing in the rules says I can’t keep reptiles.”

” ‘Dangerous pets,’ it’s right on page one nineteen.”

“Your dog’s bitten four people,” Rolvaag pointed out. “My snakes haven’t hurt anybody.”

“Disturbing the peace, then. Those helpless mice screaming and moaning while God’s breath is strangled out of them—it’s horrible. I had to double up on my Xanax, thanks to you.”

“They’re big fat rats, Nellie, not Stuart Little. And, by the way, that poison your exterminator uses? It makes their little tummies explode.”

Mrs. Shulman wailed, backpedaling.

“Why don’t we leave this to the lawyers,” Rolvaag said.

“You’re a sick, sick, sick bastard. No wonder you’re not married anymore.”

“And no wonder your husband went deaf.”

Somewhere in the parchment fissures of Mrs. Shulman’s face, her eyes narrowed. “You’ll be gone by July, smartass.”

“Keep Petunia on her leash,” Rolvaag advised, “and you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

After a late breakfast he drove to the office and showed Captain Gallo the letter from the police chief in Minnesota.

“Very humorous,” Gallo said. “Where the fuck is Edina?”

“Twin Cities area.”

“Didn’t they write a song about it? ‘Nothing could be finer than to be in your Edina in the morrr-ning!’ “

Rolvaag said, “I’m serious about taking the job.”

“Cut it out.”

“I want to live somewhere normal.”

“And die of fucking boredom. Sure you do.” Gallo handed him a scrap of paper. “Guy name of Corbett Wheeler called. That’s his number.”

“Mrs. Perrone’s brother.”

“One-thirty in the morning, kangaroo time, he’s wide-awake,” Gallo said. “Wants to talk to someone ASAP. Says it’s important.”

Rolvaag had been trying to locate Corbett Wheeler since Saturday afternoon. “I’ll call right now,” the detective said.

“Make it collect.”

“You’re kidding.”

Gallo shrugged. “That’s what the guy said—’Be sure and call collect.’ “

Somewhere in the hills of New Zealand, Joey Perrone’s brother picked up on the first ring. Karl Rolvaag half-expected him to sound like the flaky Aussie who wrestles crocodiles on TV, but Corbett Wheeler hadn’t lost his flat American accent.

“Are you the one in charge of the case?” he asked.

“That’s right,” Rolvaag said.

“Then listen up: My little sister did not get drunk and fall off that cruise ship,” Corbett Wheeler declared, “no matter what her husband told you. And she didn’t take a dive, either.”

The connection was fuzzy, and Rolvaag heard his own voice reverberate when he spoke. “I understand this must be hard for you. Would you mind a few questions?”

“It was in the Boca newspaper. That’s how I found out—a friend of Joey’s called to tell me.”

Rolvaag said, “We’ve been trying to get hold of you since Saturday. Your brother-in-law gave me a couple of phone numbers, but they were no good.”

“Just like my brother-in-law,” Corbett Wheeler said. “He is a fuckwit and a reprobate.”

“When’s the last time you saw him?”

“Never met the man, or even spoke to him. But Joey’s given me an earful—I wouldn’t trust the guy alone with my bowling ball, that’s what a horndog he is.”

Rolvaag had heard similar opinions from Joey’s friends, though none of them hinted that Charles Perrone was deeply involved with anybody but Charles Perrone.

“You’re suggesting that Chaz had something to do with your sister’s disappearance?”

“Bet the farm on it,” said Corbett Wheeler.

“It’s a long way from adultery to homicide.”

“From what Joey told me, he’s capable of anything.”

Rolvaag heard sheep lowing in the background.

“Maybe we should talk in person,” he suggested.

“Honestly, I don’t travel much,” said Mrs. Perrone’s brother, “but I’d fly all night to see that little whorehopper strapped into the electric chair and lit up like Dodger Stadium.”

“These days most of them opt for lethal injection.”

“Are you telling me they get a choice?”

“I’m afraid so,” Rolvaag told him. “What’s that noise?”

“One of my ewes, trying to pop triplets.”

“Can I call you back?”

“No, I’ll call you,” said Joey Perrone’s brother, and the line went dead.

Fuckwit, reprobate, horndog, whorehopper—an impressive litany of contempt for Chaz Perrone. Rolvaag reported Corbett Wheeler’s suspicions to Captain Gallo, who shrugged and said, “Hey, nobody wants to believe their little sister was a clumsy lush. Did he know about the DUI?”