Below the Surface (12 page)

“But she took the accounting class alone,” Viv put in, starting to look miffed. “We were hoping you would honor her wishes.”

“I assume, since this so-called partnership was so far advanced, you have a contract or some sort of written agreement from her you could show me.”

“We were preparing one for her to sign,” Frank said, sitting forward on the sofa. “We can bring you a copy of that, of course, or amend it to suit you.”

“What would suit me is for you to leave now,” Bree said, rising. “Our family has already made burial arrangements, and I'm not interested in Shells Eternal.”

The couple stood, reluctantly, even angrily, Cole could tell. He couldn't believe their gall.

“It's not unusual, you know,” Viv said, “for someone as young as Daria not to want to upset those dear to her by talking about death.”

“And I assure you,” Frank put in as they moved toward the door of the apartment, with Bree leading and Cole bringing up the rear, “that this is not some sort of scam, though I can tell you think so. You can check our Web site, talk to the families of those who already rest under the sea.”

“Our search for Daria, and now her death—” Bree choked on that last word “—have made Daria quite high-profile. Anyone could read about her background.”

“I repeat,” Viv said, “we are sorry for your loss and deeply regret you cannot honor her wishes. I would have assumed she shared this with you.”

Cole figured the Hollimans were lucky Bree didn't just shove them down the stairs.

The bell gave a last jingle as she closed the door to the street firmly behind them and leaned against it.

“Do you believe that?” she asked, smacking her hands on her thighs. “If I wasn't so desperate for any lead about what could have happened to her, I would have thrown them out the moment they said their motto was Think Outside the Box.” As they went back upstairs together, she went on. “You don't think those people are bizarre enough that they would harm someone just to get publicity for their concrete shells, do you?”

“I can check them out online. They would hardly have said all that if it was totally bogus. My guess is the business is legit and they just thought they could use a high-profile former scuba-diver to give them sympathy and credibility. And they could get you, Daria's look-alike, to be in their emotion-packed ads.”

“They said they were in her accounting class, so that's easy to check.” At the top of the stairs, he put his arms around her and felt her shudder. “What scares me,” she said as she laid her head against his chest, “is that suspecting those off-the-wall people of harming Daria makes as much sense as suspecting anyone else. I don't think she had an enemy in the world—but if she did and if someone could possibly have hurt her, have I inherited them now?”

Being with her nephews lifted Bree's spirits, though both James and Jordan telling her they were going to miss Aunt Daria pierced her heart. “Now you and Mom get to be best friends, 'stead of you and Aunt Daria,” six-year-old Jordan told Bree. Amelia stopped stirring the spaghetti sauce; her eyes met Bree's over the steam.

“Yes, that's right,” Bree managed.

“Okay, you two,” Amelia told her boys, “go put those
Star Wars
action figures away, wash your hands and come back down for dinner. See if Daddy's off the phone yet, and tell him to wash up, too.”

“But we aren't done yet—Anakin is going to turn into Darth Vader and be really bad soon,” Jordan, the younger, protested. “See, Anakin used to be good but he's going over to the dark side.”

Amelia turned to face the kids. From her seat on a stool at the breakfast bar, Bree thought Amelia looked absolutely stricken by something they'd just said.

“I don't want to hear that kind of thing,” she told them, her voice as stern as her face. “Why can't you play with something that has good people in it?”

As if to defend his younger brother, James said, “Luke Skywalker and Yoda are good, and Chewbacca. Sorry, Mom, I know you been crying a lot.”

“Yes,” Bree said, reaching out to put a hand on each of their heads. “Your mother's tired and sad, so you two go do what she says, all right? And when she works hard on a meal like this, you can both help by eating really well.”

“And wash those hands until you've sung all the Birthday Song,” Amelia shouted after them.

“The Birthday Song? What's that about?” Bree asked. It felt good to be talking about little, normal things, though her pain and loss sat so heavy on her chest it was an actual physical pain. Surely, that was why Amelia was so strung-out.

“Their idea of washing hands is zip, zip. If they sing ‘Happy Birthday To You' all the way through, they get some of the grime gone. Bree, that was really weird about the Eternal Shells stuff—bizarre. Had Daria ever, ever talked about cremation instead of burial?”

“Only in a general way, that for some people it might make more ecological sense, but I don't think she ever felt visiting Mom and Dad's graves was morbid. We always thought it was pretty and peaceful there. We went once in a while and left flowers, tried to concentrate on the good things and happy memories.”

Amelia pressed her lips together before she gave the sauce another swift stir and turned back toward the kitchen sink. Bree could see her face only in the reflection of the window. “It's good you two went,” she said quietly. “I—I just can't face that place any more than I could being under all that water when you two used to dive with Dad so much.”

The front doorbell rang, the chimes beautiful. But then, Bree thought, everything in this house was beautiful and beautifully kept. “Are you expecting anyone?” she asked.

“No, and if it's those Eternal Shells people trying to get to us now, they'll get a sieve of wet pasta dumped on them. Ben will get it. He said he'd man the phones and watch the door. The neighbors have been really nice about dropping things off to eat, but I just needed to make something myself tonight for us, for you. As if there's any such thing as comfort food at a time like this.”

Bree heard voices, a man and woman. Surely, the Hollimans had not come here. Ben appeared in the kitchen door, his face solemn.

“What? Who is it?” Amelia asked.

“Josh and Nikki Austin,” he said, looking at Bree. “Josh says he's been pushing the coroner for a fast decision and he has something to tell us.”

Bree's legs went weak as she followed Ben into the living room and Amelia followed. She went to the broad staircase and called up it, “You two can play a little longer, and I'll call you when you can come down!”

Bree could not read Josh's expression. All those years she'd known him, and she could not psych out what he was going to say.

Nikki looked as if she hadn't slept, with smudges under her eyes as if she'd been crying. Bree was touched that she was evidently taking a stranger's death so to heart, but then perhaps something else had upset her. Nikki's jaw was set hard, as if to keep herself from dissolving in emotion. Bree empathized with the woman; she felt the same herself.

Josh hugged Bree while Nikki hugged Amelia, then Bree. Nikki smelled of expensive perfume. She hugged quickly and lightly, then stepped back to perch on the edge of the deep leather couch beside her husband.

Some movement outside caught Bree's attention through the window behind the couch. In the gathering dusk, standing beside a dark car by the street curb, waited the Austins' jack-of-all-trades, Mark Denton, whom Bree had briefly glimpsed in the hospital. Was he their chauffeur, as well as PR man, pilot and bodyguard?

“As I told Ben,” Josh said, “he's not the only one who's been pulling strings with the coroner for quick answers, for all of your sakes, as well as to just get this settled.”

“We're grateful for your concern.”

Josh nodded. “At least I have some answers for you. There will probably be a few other results later—blood and toxicology tests, for example.”

“She wasn't drinking or on drugs,” Bree put in.

To her surprise, Nikki spoke, uncrossing then re-crossing her long legs. “Of course, Josh is always concerned for all his constituents, but as Briana and Daria were childhood friends, this is especially important to him.”

Daria was much more than a childhood friend to Josh, and Bree recalled that Nikki knew that. Marla Sherborne had said she'd mentioned that Josh had dated Daria.

“I admit,” Josh said, “because Briana and Daria have been at the forefront of the efforts to monitor the problems with the gulf water, I've gotten more deeply involved than I might have otherwise. I know you have a key report to unveil soon, Bree, and it would be best to have things settled and Daria at rest before that. And, for your sake, Ben, too. With the election coming up, you need answers and closure.”

“We all do,” Bree said. “Just tell us the coroner's ruling.”

Josh exhaled through flared nostrils. “Accidental death. The autopsy showed she hit her head very hard in the back. The shape of the skull fracture suggests she fell against the steering wheel and was knocked unconscious, perhaps in the rough sea. The medical language says, ‘a compression fracture in the occipital region of the skull with internal hemorrhages.' The exact cause of death, though, was drowning, no doubt when the boat drifted ashore, hit the concrete breakwater wall—they think they've found the place—and went down in the choppy channel of Big Marco Pass. They've decided not to raise the wreck, so it will remain there as a memorial of the tragedy. Officially, the wreck of
Mermaids II
is off-limits because of diving dangers in Marco Pass.”

Nikki put in, “Of all the terrible, possible scenarios for the accident, that ruling seems the best, at least.”

Nothing was the best, Bree wanted to shout, but at least now, surely, with this accidental ruling, she could put her mind at rest.

I
t was nearly ten o'clock that night when Bree entered Daria's room. She had phoned Cole to tell him the results of the autopsy. He'd told her not to do anything until after the funeral, now scheduled for Monday, and had volunteered to put off driving to Miami to check out Dom Verdugo's casino boat tomorrow so he could be with her.

She had insisted he go ahead with his plans. She knew she had to let him get on with his life, though she didn't want him to go back to a life without her in it. If anything good had come from the tragedy of losing Daria, finding Cole was it. And, perhaps, a better relationship with Amelia down the long, tough road without her twin, her other self.

“I'll see you when you get back. I'll be here and I'll be just fine,” Bree had assured Cole, though the truth was that she was anything but fine.

As Bree began to go through her sister's possessions, she felt her presence so strongly it was as if she were in the room. She could almost believe Daria would appear in the mussed bedsheets still shaped to her form. When Bree glanced through the medicine cabinet, she felt as if her sister might emerge from behind the shower curtain, her hair soaked, as if from the sea.

Bree gasped when she caught sight of herself in the bathroom mirror. Her mirror image, indeed! It was as if a distraught Daria stared at her from beyond the fragile barrier of the glass.

She forced herself to look away and put both hands on the washbasin to steady herself. “Dead woman walking,” she whispered. A shiver snaked up her spine. She shuddered, recalling the old superstition that people felt a chill when someone walked over their grave. Ridiculous, absolutely crazy and in her own head, she scolded herself. But, in a way, the image of her dead sister would always be with her, aging, changing. What would Daria have looked like at age forty or fifty or sixty? All Bree had to do was glance at her reflection in a mirror or lean down to look at the surface of the water.

She got hold of herself and started in earnest with the dresser drawers. The top one was the catch-all junk drawer and held the usual: extra truck, car and boat keys; some dollar bills; a few old photos, including a faded copy of their parents' wedding picture; a pair of earrings that hadn't made it back into her jewelry box; sunglasses; a few souvenirs of places they'd been; and a coaster advertising an unfamiliar bar, the Gator Watering Hole, a bit north of Turtle Bay on a back road off the Tamiami Trail on the edge of the Glades.

One side of the round cardboard coaster had a dancing alligator wearing sunglasses, with a cigarette in one hand and a beer bottle in the other. The place claimed to have “Great domestic beers, fried grouper and gator sand's, and the Old Florida Laid-back Feel.”

Bree pictured Daria's last note. She'd be studying with friends and might be back late. But at a place like this?

Daria had often said she preferred the wine bar scene in Naples to the seedy bars Manny talked about. The Gator Watering Hole sounded like a hangout for Glades fishermen and hunters. Bree looked it up in the phone book; it wasn't even listed. So strange—Daria was gone and it was as if this place no longer existed either. What had the place meant to her that she'd kept this?

Bree flipped the coaster over. A list of beers, all domestic. Scribbled in small print on one side was the message,
“Luv ya,”
and opposite that, written in the other direction, as if each were to be read by a person across a table,
“Ditto, babe!”

Tears blurred Bree's vision. The
“Luv ya”
was in Daria's writing. It must have been a happy, swiftly forgotten moment of fun in her too-short life. Daria had dated several guys in the last few years, but no one seriously and no one lately. And no one, as far as Bree knew, who she'd write
“Luv ya”
words to, even in fun.

Blinking back tears, she put the coaster back in the drawer and went through the rest of the bureau, including her cluttered jewelry box. Nothing unusual. She looked in Daria's purse and found their dentist's name, number, and an appointment time—the morning after the storm—scribbled on a piece of paper. Since the accident had been so public, evidently the dental receptionist had not phoned to remind her of this appointment nor, afterward, to ask why she had not come.

In Daria's purse she also found a calendar the size of a checkbook, one she hadn't seen before. She flipped through its pages. Blank but for big stars drawn on certain dates—oh, yeah, these were the days she had her accounting classes. Now, why hadn't Daria put her dental appointment in here? Daria had worked really hard at learning the financial ins and outs of keeping small business records, but big stars? And then she noted there were several times scribbled on a couple of the starred pages. Not the time of the classes, though—these were later.

“Oh, probably when she studied with the others after class,” she said aloud. Had she met someone from the class she liked—or “luved”—and studied with? But why wouldn't she have mentioned that?

As Bree sat down at Daria's computer, she saw a brochure for Eternal Shells half-hidden by the mousepad.

She gasped. Had the Hollimans been telling the truth? She began to shake again. What else hadn't Daria told her? It was a beautiful glossy brochure. The Hollimans must have indeed assumed that Daria had shown her this.

More frustrated than ever, Bree tried to read Daria's e-mail and check sent and deleted mail, but the password she was sure Daria used—Mermaid2, instead of Mermaid1, because Bree had been born first—didn't work. She'd evidently changed her login info and hadn't mentioned that, either. Well, of course, she tried to tell herself, passwords were personal, but even that had not been a secret between her and Daria—until now.

She got off the computer. Maybe she could find a techie who could get around the password. From reading about one of Ben's high-profile prosecutions, she knew that even deleted documents could be recovered. Bree searched the rest of the room, but she was so exhausted she felt near collapse.

She lay down on Daria's bed and stared up at the whirring ceiling fan as her sister must have so often done. Of course, there were probably things she hadn't told Daria, too, but something was very wrong. That Eternal Shells brochure. That coaster from a place she'd never mentioned…and those haunting, even if brief, words,
Luv ya.
Those times scribbled down for after class. Bree had prided herself that she'd known her twin sister almost as well as she'd known herself. And now she was supposed to accept that Daria had evidently hit her head, and the storm had taken the boat and crashed it into a concrete breakwater and she'd drowned.

What was true and what wasn't? She should just go on with her life after Daria's burial. Get back to building the business and, hopefully, build a relationship with Cole. Resurrect ties to Amelia. Present that important environmental report and not let dreadful, doubtful thoughts torment her.

But had she really known her sister well? Had Daria died in a freak accident? Am I my sister's keeper? a voice in her head taunted Bree. Am I my dead sister's keeper?

“Yes, I am,” she whispered to the cluttered but very empty room. “Yes, I am. Was she seeing someone? Was Daria hiding something? And was her death, for sure, an accident?”

The huge, white canvas sign swagged across the port side of Dom Verdugo's one-hundred-eighty-foot casino boat,
Fun 'n' Sun,
tied up at the Miami marina read, “A fabulous time with great food, entertainment and gambling—You Can Bet On It!”

To Cole's surprise, there were no goons on guard, and Verdugo himself greeted him. Cole had thought Verdugo was over at Turtle Bay, but he'd heard the man owned a private plane that took him coast to coast in a flash. He still could not shake the feeling the man bore watching.

“Hey, Cole, my man,” Verdugo said with a firm handshake as he stepped aboard. “Sorry to hear they found the body and boat of that Turtle Bay scuba diver. Please give my regrets to the sister.”

Again, Cole thought, Verdugo had
heard something.
It worried him that the man was aware of Briana and seemed to know that Cole would be seeing her.

“Where are your guards?” he asked.

“This is my territory,” Verdugo said with a shrug. “In Turtle Bay, not yet. But I'm fine here with just my onboard staff.”

“It will obviously be worth millions if you can get the Turtle Bay venue.”

“Oh, yeah, for sure. I make no bones about the fact it's big biz, and I'm glad you are—literally—on board,” he said with a tight grin.

“As I said, I'd like to see the extent of the job first.”

“Sure, that's partly why I'm here. I'll give you the personal tour. Anyway, you think that girl's death will delay the report on the quality of the gulf water?”

Verdugo was a smart guy and a smart guy wouldn't bring that report up so blatantly if he'd had something to do with Daria's death—would he? Or did he figure he already had Cole in his hip pocket? Probably. Not many people said no to Dom Verdugo. But the whole idea of this man bringing gambling, an addiction that ruined some people's lives, ruined families for years to come, into Turtle Bay sickened him. Hell, panel the luxury gambling salon on board? He'd really like to sabotage the whole boat.

“I'm only asking,” Verdugo said, “'cause I hear you're on the Clear the Gulf Commission. I don't want you to think I've offered you a lot of money to do this job as a sort of bribe about how that all comes out. I don't operate that way.”

Cole was suddenly more furious with himself than with Verdugo. He'd been so obsessed with helping Bree he hadn't even thought of how it would look for him to take Verdugo's lucrative contract. But even if he turned him down in the end, maybe he could first determine whether Verdugo had had anything to do with scuttling the
Mermaids II
to derail the Devon twins' damaging report. If he could prove that, it would also set back the gambling in Turtle Bay. He was flooded by memories of his parents fighting over his mother's debts, his own struggle to continue to pay them off over the years—

“You still game?” Verdugo interrupted his agonizing as they walked along the deck and turned into the gaming salon.

Cole just nodded. He was game, all right, although he was risking his reputation if he accepted. But strangely, nothing mattered more than trying to help Bree. He must, he figured, either be insane or in love.

Bree was horrified to wake up snuggled in Daria's bed. Light was streaming in the window, and she sat up abruptly. She had so much to do today. If Manny had called about Lucinda, she hadn't heard the phone ring. Or was he downstairs in the shop, waiting for Bree to appear? She'd been so exhausted—how late was it?

She rolled over and groaned to see the bedside digital clock said almost ten o'clock. Though she'd been drained since her swim during the storm, she could not believe she had fallen into a dead sleep. She'd slept almost ten hours!

She rushed into her own room, jumped in the shower, then ran a brush through her hair. Pulling on capris and a
Mermaids II
T-shirt, she called Daria's dentist to explain why Daria had missed her emergency appointment.

“Sorry, Ms. Devon,” the receptionist said, after offering her condolences, “but the appointment you're referring to was to get her teeth whitened. It wasn't an emergency appointment, but one she'd had for a while.”

“Daria Devon? Teeth whitening?”

“Definitely. I remember the call.”

“Thank you,” she said, feeling foolish. Perhaps Daria had just decided to use her whitening appointment to get her toothache taken care of, but that wasn't what she'd told Bree. It was so unlike Daria to give a darn about whiter teeth. Besides, both of their smiles looked good—at least, Bree thought so, and Daria had never said any different.

She went downstairs in a daze. Manny was not there. The place was silent, but the message lights on her and Daria's desks were blinking. Her phone said twelve messages; Daria's just one. For a moment, Bree imagined the lone message could be Daria, saying,
Come get me. I want to come home.

“Are you going nuts?” she scolded herself. “Stop it!”

She punched Play on Daria's answering machine.

“Bree, Manny here. I called in on Daria's line, 'cause I figured my message might get buried on yours with all that's going on, just like on your cell. Didn't want to call the 'partment case you trying to get some sleep. Lucinda came back, says 'cause she heard about Daria. I know we closed the shop till after the funeral, but I'll come in after lunch, try to do what I can to help. Juanita stood up for her, but Lucinda's grounded for the rest of her life, far's I'm concerned. Tell you more later.
Vaya con Dios. Adios.
”

At least, Bree thought, Daria's death had brought Lucinda back. She bent to scribble a note to Manny:
Gone out for a while. Don't worry about me. Take care of your own—life is short. B

She ran upstairs to grab her truck keys and purse, took a breakfast bar and her water bottle and copied the address to the Gator Watering Hole off the coaster before returning it to the top dresser drawer. She rushed back downstairs. First, she was going to Daria's accounting class. The group met at different flex times, some mornings, some afternoons, some evenings, so working people could attend at least some lectures. She wanted to see what else the Hollimans or anyone else knew about Daria, and then she was going to check out the Gator Watering Hole.