The Deep Blue Alibi (27 page)

“Too many maybes. And Uncle Grif? Who knocked him out?”

“I don’t know yet. But remember that cruise ship that got smacked by a forty-foot wave on a calm day?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe a rogue wave hits the
Force Majeure
as Griffin’s going back up the ladder. He falls to the deck and is knocked out.”

“
Way
too many maybes.”

“Jeez, Vic. I’m just playing poker with ideas here. All I’m saying, we can toss Junior’s Speedos at the jury and create reasonable doubt.”

“Uncle Grif will never go for it.”

“You’re assuming he doesn’t already think that’s what happened.”

“If Uncle Grif thought all that, why wouldn’t he tell us?”

“Because he wants us to win the case without involving his son.”

When they hit Big Pine Key, Victoria turned left onto Long Beach Road. Before leaving Fowles at Paradise Key, Steve had called Junior, who was looking at dive boats for sale in Marathon. Then he was heading to the Polynesian Beach Club to unwind.

Unwind
from what? Steve wondered. The guy didn’t work. What would wind him up in the first place?

Junior invited them for lunch at the club, which he said served a fine grilled ahi. So now Steve looked forward to tuna followed by cross-examination.

Junior said the club was reachable only by a private bridge from the southern tip of Big Pine Key. He’d lowered his voice to tell Steve the password, “Kon-tiki,” which they were to say to a guard at the gatehouse. It was all a little too Skull and Bonesy for Steve’s taste. A rich man’s private retreat, fat cats congratulating one another over rum and colas. Junior chuckled on the phone, saying he was sure they’d enjoy the “ambience.”

Ambience, my ass. The phony bastard.

“So what’s your plan?” Victoria asked.

Steve gave her a smile. “I’m going to tell Junior to be a man. Save his father by turning himself in. Plead to manslaughter. Ten years, out in seven. Not too bad. Of course, he’ll lose his tan.”

The man in the gatehouse wore a pith helmet and a navy shirt with epaulets. He smiled broadly when Steve whispered, “Kon-tiki.”

“Have a good day, sir, ma’am,” the guard said. “And watch out for sunburn.”

They crossed the bridge, and Victoria parked the Mini Cooper next to a silver Hummer with a trailer hitch. Junior’s, she told Steve, as he unfolded himself from the little car. On the back bumper of the Navigator was a bumper sticker:
“Divers Do It Deeper.”

“Tacky,” he said. “Very tacky.”

“You’re one to talk. With those juvenile T-shirts.”

“Mine have meaning. They’re not idle boasts.”

“You’re all adolescents,” she said. “All of you.”

They headed toward a clubhouse with bamboo walls and a thatched palm roof. Standing by the front door was an eight-foot carved wooden tiki, the Polynesian god. A long red tongue hung from his open mouth, looking distinctly obscene.

Steve heard the
thwack
of racket on ball. He took a closer look, first seeing a flash of movement, then a flash of flesh. Half hidden behind a row of sabal palms was a tennis court, two middle-aged couples playing doubles.

“I think the laundry workers are on strike.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The tennis players aren’t wearing shirts. Or shorts, for that matter.”

Victoria peered between the trees.

A man shouted, “Out? Out, my ass!”

Then a woman’s voice, “C’mon, Al. It was out. Forty love.”

“They’re naked,” Victoria whispered, as if the tiki god might be eavesdropping.

“That’s what I’m telling you. Junior wants us with our pants down. You, anyway.”

“Don’t freak out. It’s got to be one of those clothing-optional resorts.”

“Nothing optional about it,” said the young woman behind the rattan counter in the clubhouse. Woven tapa cloths hung on the bamboo walls, and in the corner, a red-and-blue mynah was perched on an artificial tree. “Everyone’s in the buff. Members, guests, staff.”

The woman had one of those Disney World smiles, as if she’d overdosed on nitrous oxide. Her name tag said
“Honey”
and hung on a cord that snaked through the cleavage between her oversize, suntanned breasts. In Steve’s estimation—based both on firsthand experience and defending Dr. Irwin Rudnick on med mal charges—Honey’s grapefruit-shaped boobs had been surgically enhanced. “Once you cross the bridge, it’s all nude, all the time,” Honey emphasized. “Even the luncheon buffet.”

“We’re meeting a member,” Victoria said, and Steve refrained from making a really bad pun.

“Who would that be?” Honey inquired.

“Junior Griffin.”

“Oh, Mr. Grif-fin,” Honey purred. “He’s a big man around here.”

Again, Steve stifled himself.

“I’m an intern,” Honey volunteered. “Hotel management at Florida State. Mr. Griffin is my mentor.”

“You’re in good hands,” Victoria said.

“Both of them,” Steve remarked. A man can only resist so much temptation.

Honey pointed toward the locker rooms. After they disrobed—Honey confided that Junior-the-Mentor advised her never to say “stripped”—they should follow the Tahiti Trail across Volcano Bridge and the Koi Lagoon. They’d pass the swimming pool and find Junior Griffin on the croquet court.

“Mr. Griffin swings the best mallet at the club,” Honey breathed, dreamily.

“Golly, is there anything that man can’t do?” Steve said, agreeably.

“When he’s got a clean shot, he always scores,” Honey said, her eyes aglow.

SOLOMON’S LAWS

8. If a guy who’s smart, handsome, and rich invites you and your girlfriend to a nudist club … chances are he’s got a giant
shmeckel.

Thirty-one

SIZE MATTERS

“Do you think I’m flat-chested?” Victoria said.

“Absolutely not. You’re well proportioned.”

“Is that like saying a plain girl has a good personality?”

“You’re tall and sinewy and athletic with boobs that are perfect for the rest of your bod.”

“But small.”

“Not small, not big. Just the way I like them.”

“You’re sure?”

“More than a handful is a waste.”

“So why were you staring at Honey’s humongous bazooms?” she demanded, having trapped him on the road of cross-examination.

“Because looking away would have stamped me as a rookie.” Slipping out of the trap.

Naked and self-conscious, they passed a row of stone tikis that Victoria thought resembled the Easter Island gods. The path cut through a stand of mangrove trees, providing cover and a sense of security, for now.

“If a woman’s a nudist, she
wants
you to look,” Steve continued. “Proper etiquette requires a gaze. Not a long stare, but a look sufficient to appraise and appreciate.”

“Great excuse. You really
are
a good lawyer.” She’d been staring straight ahead, but now glanced at him. “What’s with the newspaper?”

“It was in the locker room.”

“And why are you holding it over your crotch?”

“No reason. I’ve been meaning to catch up on world affairs.”

“Really?” She grabbed the paper.
Diario Las Américas.
“What’s new in Tegucigalpa?”

A noise startled her. Just off the path, a woodpecker—as naked as they were—hammered at a bottlebrush tree. Victoria tried breathing deeply, inhaling the moist air laden with salt from nearby tidal pools.

She never considered herself an exhibitionist. If anything, she was shy about her body. But this posed a test, like competing for a spot on the law journal. She was determined to overcome her inhibitions, to win whatever was at stake.

I have a good body. And there’s nothing wrong with nudity, right?

She was starting to convince herself. What was there to be embarrassed about?

Junior.

Junior would be naked, too. One gorgeous hunk of a man. What would
he
think of her body?

God, why am I thinking of him?

Victoria tossed the newspaper into a trash receptacle and glanced at Steve, whose right hand covered his groin.

“Now what?” she asked.

“It’s shrinking.”

“Oh, stop.”

“Do you think I’m small?” Remembering Aqua-man in his Speedos. Knowing they were moments from encountering Junior’s jumbo Johnson.

“I think you’re well proportioned for your body.”

Touché.

“I mean it, Vic. Am I a little
… little
?”

“I don’t have a sufficient sampling to answer. But yours is fine. It’s cute.”

“Cute? Cute is for kittens. A man wants to be a monster. A leviathan. A colossus.”

“Okay, it’s a cute little colossus.”

“An oxymoron if ever I heard one.”

“It’s fine. You also have a great tush. You look terrific in jeans.”

“I’d kill for a pair right now,” Steve said.

The path ended at a rope bridge suspended over a peaceful lagoon. Lily pads and water flowers on the surface, fat Japanese koi swam below. From unseen speakers, music played. Dark and mysterious, heavy on the drums. Jungle music.

A man and woman, both naked, both in their sixties but fit and tanned, padded across the bridge, headed their way. They would all have to pass sideways.

Okay, good test, Victoria thought. Act normal. Reach a comfort level.

“Hullo there!” the man called out.

“Hi! Hi!” Victoria was too loud.

The woman looked them up and down, and Victoria felt herself reddening. “You two need some sun,” the woman advised.

Victoria told herself to keep her eyes above waist level, but maybe Steve was right. If you’re going nude, you
expect
people to look. As they scooted sideways, she let herself check out the man. The rope bridge was swaying back and forth and,
omigod,
so was the man’s oversize scrotum. A low-hanging, loose sack that resembled a burlap bag with a couple onions inside. Victoria turned away so quickly, she could have suffered whiplash.

What am I doing here? This isn’t me.

On the other side of the bridge, the path opened onto a wide expanse of grassy lawn. The pool was fifty yards away, and they could hear the yelps and cheers from a water volleyball game. They passed nude couples on chaise lounges, soaking up the afternoon sun.

A panorama of bare butts. A smorgasbord of exposed navels and glistening loins. Breasts heavy and pendulous, perky and firm, round and conical. Nipples puffy and nipples flat, nipples like raisins, nipples like raspberries. Forests of pubic hair, some wild and untamed, others as carefully tended as a putting green. Then the slack penises, draped on thighs like dead squirrels on logs. An array of sleeping male organs, ludicrous in their frailty. Did God play a trick on mankind with those distended pieces of droopy, feeble flesh?

As they approached the pool and refreshment stand, smells of coconut oil mixed with grilling meat from a barbecue pit. An aroma both sensuous and carnivorous.

Then Victoria felt the beginning of a piercing headache. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying. Junior’s trying to throw us off. How can we cross-examine him when …”

Just then, two petite women in their twenties with taut gymnasts’ bodies jogged toward them. Perfect bods, Victoria thought. Slick with oil, defined deltoids, small breasts barely moving with each powerful stride.

Steve, of course, was mesmerized.

“When what?” she said.

“Huh?”

“You were saying something. How can we cross-examine Junior when … something.
When
what?”

Steve turned to watch the women’s perfect tight butts disappear into the foliage. Ten million years of evolution, Victoria thought, and men still act as if they had just crawled, web-footed, from the swamp.

“We’re fine here, Vic. Just fine.”

Several couples played cards at poolside tables. Others waded through the shallow end of the pool toward a waterside bar. People were staring at them, Victoria thought. Staring at her. Appraising her.

This is insane.

“Steve, I’m really not comfortable here.”

He was looking around at the nude women sprawled on the chaises. “I’m not shrinking anymore. I might even be growing.”

“I just feel so strange.”

“We have work to do.”

But his voice wasn’t in work mode. Deeper now, his mellow mode.

How could he have relaxed just like that? To her, it seemed like a thousand eyes were drilling into her, and she felt herself blushing.

“Thank God my mother can’t see me now.”

“Princess! There you are.”

That voice. It couldn’t be.

“Join us for a piña colada, darling. Then for God’s sake, get some sun.”

In the second row of chaise lounges, reclining like royalty, there she was. The Queen held half a coconut shell festooned with two straws and a little purple umbrella.

Naked! In front of all these strangers.

Just look at her! An all-over tan. Her tucked tummy flat as an ironing board, her siliconed breasts as buoyant as floating beach balls, her skin tighter than the head of a snare drum. The Queen’s bare legs, stretched out on the chaise, were slim and evenly bronzed, all the way up to…

Omigod. My mother, my fifty-eight-year-old mother, has shaved her pubic hair into a champagne-colored stripe the width of an emery board. At the spa, they had a name for it. What was it?

“Wake up! Look’s who here.” The Queen issued commands to the heavyset older man with hairy shoulders on the adjacent chaise. “Grif, wake up and say hello.”

Uncle Grif! God, this can’t be happening.

Victoria felt her throat constrict. Could she even speak? “Mother, what are you doing here?”

“Oh, don’t act so surprised. I was going nude in Monaco when you were still in boarding school.”

Landing strip.

That was the name of the neat little swath of pubes. Perfectly groomed in every way, her mother proudly displayed a landing strip, while she still had a jungle, a woolly rain forest.