Away with the Fishes (32 page)

“Objection, Your Honor!” Glynray shouted. “The Defense is engaging in speculation. Pure, vile speculation!”

The crowd was in an uproar, half of them cheering on Monday Jones, the other half galled, and complaining on Glynray’s behalf.

Judge Samuels hammered away with his gavel. “Order! Order!” he cried, but it took Raoul and his megaphone to get the islanders to hush.

“Members of the jury,” the judge said, “I will allow the remarks of Mr. Jones, but only insofar as they represent his personal theory regarding the night in question and not insofar as they necessarily refer to the events as they actually transpired.”

The jury members looked at each other perplexed, and Raoul, behind his megaphone, resisted the urge to speak up. He wasn’t satisfied one bit with the way the trial was being handled, and as the officer in charge of the proceedings, he took the mishandling to heart.

Without giving Madison an opportunity to say another word, Monday called out, “Nothing further,” and Glynray was back at bat.

Glynray redirected a series of questions at Madison to counter the Prosecutor’s so-called personal theory. He brought to light the fact that two days went by before the boat was ever confiscated, and that a guilty man would have gone back to the beach to make sure nothing was amiss. Madison had not, because he was too busy looking for Rena. Too busy scouring Oh to be bothered scouring his boat. (That Madison had scoured the island in a motor vehicle was an unfortunate coincidence for Glynray’s case.)

Having drawn from Madison all the useful information he could, Glynray’s defense was reduced to the character witnesses he had lined up. He planned to exhaust the court with dozens
of them, before resting his case. That day alone, he managed to get three or four on the stand, among them Randolph Rouge and Branson Bowles. The former had attended secondary school with the accused, and was one of his closest friends; the latter, in his capacity as teacher at the Boys’ School, could attest to the fact that Madison selflessly volunteered his time there every year, for a fishing demonstration on Career Day.

After Glynray finished with Branson, the judge adjourned the trial for the evening. Stepping down from the dais, Branson found May waiting for him, beaming. Despite the bad turn the trial had taken, in terms of worms and boats and vehicles, it appeared that she was happy with what Branson had said on the witness stand. Soon Randolph, Trevor, and Patience joined them, and together they reassured one another, Randolph and Branson repeatedly complimented for their articulate testimony.

Taking advantage of May’s good mood, Branson put his arm around her waist and escorted her away from the court. Trevor shot him an admonitory glance, which Branson pretended not to see. He had May in his arms and that was all that mattered. He would testify for Madison a hundred times if he could.

As the Rouges left to go back to the bakery, chattering along the way about the day’s ups and downs, Bruce and Raoul bumped into each other in the crowd that still milled about. Although Bruce wasn’t to blame for the failings of the court, Raoul couldn’t help but be upset with him for ever suggesting that a trial would yield the truth—a theory to which Raoul had let himself helplessly cling.

“It’s not going very well, is it?” Raoul said sharply.

“It certainly isn’t,” Bruce agreed. He didn’t say it out loud, but he had come to the same conclusions as Raoul: Madison was innocent and the trial was hurting more than it was helping.

The pair of them stood there silently, each wondering what he might do to change the tide of the trial. They watched the outdoor court empty and enjoyed the evening air. It was a perfect island night, the kind that only Oh could fashion. A not-too-warm breeze carried the scent of frangipani and of oniony swordfish stewing for someone’s supper. Crickets and frogs chirped and whistled in time with a reggae love song that sifted from a distant radio. The island felt contented and still. Soon the stars would come out, if only to marvel at the peace the moon commanded.

So incongruous was the stillness with the tenor of the day nearing its end, that both Bruce and Raoul were moved, simultaneously, to action. All the trial talk of fishing boats had got Raoul to thinking about Dagmore Bowles again. He harbored little hope that a visit to Mrs. Jaymes would help, but at least it was something to do, something to try. If he hurried, he could chat with her for an hour or two before she went to bed. Bruce, on the other hand, had a more immediate something to try and—smiling his strange bakery smile—bid the already departing Raoul a good night.

41

I
t was well into evening when Raoul reached Mrs. Jaymes’s house. He apologized for troubling her so late and, without any pretense as to his presence, simply asked her if she might spare an hour or so to tell him more of Dagmore’s story. He told her he’d like to hear about the fishing boat, particularly. Mrs. Jaymes replied that there really wasn’t a lot to say in that regard, that the boat hadn’t amounted to all that much in the end, but she was certainly delighted to continue her tale.

She invited him in and started in on her story, which Raoul continued to take down in his notebook, just in case something salient emerged.

“You said something about the Captain and a girl last time, too,” Raoul reminded her. “Do you remember?”

“Oh, yes,” she said with a disgusted puff. “I couldn’t forget
that
one any more than the Captain could.”

As the months went by, Mrs. Jaymes warmed more and more to the Captain’s fishing boat. It was still an old wreck, if you
asked her, but it was taking shape, as was the Captain himself. He devoted hours every day to sanding, smoothing, and sealing, and by the time the boat was ready for its first coat of paint, the Captain was cheerful, muscular, and tanned the color of pure dark chocolate. He looked so good, it got Mrs. Jaymes to thinking. The Captain had already tried everything to busy his body and mind, from communing with family ghosts to hosting timorous violinists. What he needed next wasn’t a boat of his own but a woman. A fine island girl!

It was a doubly good idea, because Mrs. Jaymes would recruit Hammer Coates’s help in finding the Captain a wife. For years she had wished to broach any subject with the handyman that wasn’t related to nuts or screws or weeds in need of pulling, and had always chickened out. Thanks to the Captain’s fishing boat, Hammer was at the villa every day from sun-up to sundown, and with the excuse of the Captain’s wellbeing, Mrs. Jaymes would finally have a reason to pull him aside for a private chat.

In the beginning, Hammer didn’t much fancy the idea of butting into the Captain’s affairs, but the thought of butting into Mrs. Jaymes’s intrigued him, and so he agreed to go along. They began taking strolls through town to evaluate the pool of pretty girls, and in a few months Mrs. Jaymes had compiled a list of over two dozen candidates to work her way through. She hadn’t yet figured out how she would introduce the females into the Captain’s house, but once she did, surely from a pool so deep he would find at least one that was pleasing.

While Mrs. Jaymes elaborated her bride plan, the Captain, clueless, busied himself with his boat. It had become his newest obsession, and for it he abandoned even his precious piano temporarily. Once he and Hammer had finished the basic renovations,
the Captain began to embellish his boat with glossy varnish and brass touches, and gadgets for every purpose. It was the most kitted-out boat of its size on Oh (it held no more than two persons at once). Dagmore painted it, and repainted it as soon as its sheen was faded by the salt or the sun. He spent more time in the boat on sand than he ever did at sea.

This doesn’t mean the boat wasn’t a seaworthy craft. It was. He and Hammer had taken it out to ascertain as much, having first had it blessed by a Baptist pastor, and they both came back dry as bones. After that, the Captain took it out alone now and then, but being at sea made him sad, while the
possibility
of setting sail excited him. So in the end, sea-captain Dagmore enjoyed his boat more on land than on water.

Try though she might during the early months of the Captain’s boating, Mrs. Jaymes couldn’t coax him to invite some fine island girl for a day at sea. She had offered not only to make up their picnic lunch, but to provide the woman as well.

“Row her up the coast a piece and lunch on the shore,” she suggested, but Dagmore only looked at her like she was mad.

Having failed to hit the mark by direct strike, Mrs. Jaymes opted for a subtle, sneak attack. Suddenly she was demanding more help at the villa (something the Captain had always promised her, she reminded him) and parading in front of him every day candidates for the positions of dishwasher, laundress, flower-gardener, and assistant cook. Still, the Captain didn’t bite. A good year and a half went by, maybe more, and Mrs. Jaymes had recruited every fine girl she and Hammer could find at the market, in church, and in line at the Island Post. Captain Dagmore, though, preferred to buff his boat alone. Mrs. Jaymes had all but decided to throw in the beach towel, when fate gave a push to her plan.

Although the Captain was not the sort of man you could tell what to do—he had to make his mistakes for himself—you could plant a seed in his soul that, over time, would bloom. Mrs. Jaymes had done just that for years, when she complained about his troublesome visitors. He knew deep in his heart she was right all along, but not until the bad barracuda and his guests’ near demise had he acknowledged the raging blossoms in his bosom. The germ Mrs. Jaymes had lodged in his heart
this
time around had taken root far more quickly, unbeknownst to her or to the Captain himself.

As he walked to Higgins in town one day, where he planned to purchase some brass cleaner and extra-soft cloths, he pondered Mrs. Jaymes’s incessant matchmaking and how problematic he was sure a woman would be. Far more so than a boat, he reasoned, which required only a bit of scrubbing and polish. He could prop it in the sand and forget about it; if he never got it wet, it wouldn’t complain.

Dagmore decided to stop at the Savings Bank before he did his shopping. He liked to check on his accounts from time to time, to make certain the island bankers had his interest at heart. There was a long, slow line, as usual, which Dagmore would normally have forgone in favor of a rap with his knuckles on the Bank Manager’s office door. On this particular day, it so happened the Captain found himself waiting behind a pretty young thing (at least from the back), with an hourglass shape clad in tight white cotton. Her dress was dotted with dainty purple flowers and cinched at the waist with a shiny black belt that matched the shiny blackness of her high-ish heels.

Dagmore found himself staring at her, amazed. It wasn’t desire that determined his interest but awe. Mrs. Jaymes must be
completely mad, he told himself, to think a creature as complicated as this could solve a man’s problems. “Imagine!” he scoffed.

“Pardon me?” the creature, hearing him, turned back and said. She was as tall as Dagmore, but because of her shoes and the way her cotton dress propelled her chest upward, he found himself face to face with her ample cleavage.

“Did you say something, sir?” she tried again, calling Dagmore’s attention to her face. Its features were regal, strong cheekbones and full, humid lips. Her eyes were black pools, deeper than any sea he had ever peered into.

“No. No, I didn’t,” he managed to whisper and she smiled at him, then turned around again.

Dagmore’s heart was racing. He couldn’t remember what he was doing at the Bank, and he had no idea which account was his. It seemed to him that all that mattered in the world right then were the purple blossoms raging over the poorly contained bosoms of the girl that stood close enough to touch.

To think, a creature as complicated as this could solve a man’s problems.

Imagine!

Before Mrs. Jaymes could reveal the identity of this creature that was sure to cause more problems than she would solve, Raoul decided to call it a night. It was enough that he saw Dagmore’s son, Branson, mooning over May Fuller all day in court. Raoul wasn’t up to hearing about the Captain in love, not with murders and missing women to sort out. He said goodbye to Mrs. Jaymes and went home on foot. He wondered, as he walked, if he ought to
ask Branson Bowles about his father. He tried to remember how young the boy would have been when his father killed himself. Ten maybe? Raoul supposed the suicidal Captain was a sensitive subject for Branson, and he decided to leave it alone. Besides, hope how he might for some clue in the Captain’s story, there didn’t seem to be a single one.