Castle Cay (24 page)

“I hope I’m not interrupting your work,
Susan,” Julie said, apologetically. “I just felt like getting out
of the house after all that rain, so I went out for a drive. Marc
told me so much about this old house and the way you restored it.
By the way, it’s beautiful! Anyway, I was driving by to see it, and
I thought I might as well drop in and say hello. But, if you’re
busy… that’s okay…I can let you get back to your work.”

“No, no. That’s fine…I’m glad you stopped by.
I was just getting ready to frame one of the paintings I picked up
the other night. I’m trying to decide on a frame. What do you
think? Gold? Black? Wood? I’m thinking gold.”

“Oh, I love this painting,” said Julie,
looking at the canvas on the table. “Definitely gold.”

Susan held the little painting up. “There’s
so much gold in the sunset here…it has to be a little darker than
the deepest gold tone. Antiqued, I think.”

“Yes. I think that would be perfect.”

“So,” said Susan, returning the painting to
the easel, “would you like some coffee, or tea?”

“I’d love some tea. I’ve had so much coffee
lately.”

Susan filled the teakettle with water and
turned the gas on under it. “Do you mind if I finish framing that
while we visit, Julie? It’s the last one I have to do, and I’d like
to get it out of the kitchen.”

“Please…go right ahead.”

“Okay. This is a small size canvas,” said
Susan. “I’ve got a frame in the den that I think will work, if I
have all the pieces. I’ll be right back. The tea and the cups are
in the cabinet next to the sink, if you want to get them.”

“Sure.”

Julie went to the cabinet and took out two
cups and a box of Earl Grey tea.

Only one teabag...

She opened two cabinet doors, looking for
another box of tea.

Dishes, glasses...

She opened a door...a pantry.

There it is, past the coffee...

There was a tall narrow crate in the middle.
She slid it to the side.

AVRAM SOLOMON

Julie sucked in her breath. The top of the
box wasn’t sealed up. It was filled with loose Styrofoam. She
quickly brushed some aside exposing the top of a canvas
.
There were three letters on top: SFN

Suddenly she realized she was reading the
letters on the canvas frame backwards. It was NFS…Not For Sale. And
there were two.
Marc’s Castle Cay paintings that he said he’d
never sell.

•

Julie’s eyes drifted upward to a large
Waterford decanter that sat on the shelf behind the crate. With a
sickening feeling, she recalled what David had said about the
dinner party the night of Marc’s death:

“
I usually get up during the night, but we
finished off a whole decanter of wine and I slept right
through…”

* * * * *

“
W
ant some dinner, Joe?”

“Sure, I’m starved.”

David began to pull out pots and pans, happy
to escape any conversation related to his earlier, tearful
retreat.

“Hey, David, did you get the photos of Castle
Cay in your email from my friend, Will Sawyer? Julie said to send
them here.”

“You know…I haven’t checked my email for
days. It’s probably
miles
long. Let’s go see.”

Joe followed him into his bedroom, and David
sat at his desk.

The computer finally booted up.

“Was I right, or was I
right?”

“You were right,” said Joe, laughing.

David scrolled through until he came to
sawyerphotos.com.
He opened it up, and there were all the
photographs.

“Oh, it’s
gorgeous
,” said David. “I
didn’t realize how beautiful it is. All I’ve ever seen are those
two dismal paintings upstairs.”

“See the wall and the airstrip here, David,
those little block buildings? That’s what we were talking
about.”

“Is this the Atlantic side? Where’s the area
that’s in Marc’s painting?”

“That’s it, I think,” said Joe.

“It can’t be. There’s a little point of land
sticking out with water shooting up. It’s right in the middle of
the painting, with moonlight shining on it. Sort of the focal
point, you know?” said David. “Marc told me it was where Julie’s
husband died.

“I’ll be right back; I’m going up and get
that one.”

Joe was about to say that drug traffickers
doing that much building wouldn’t have much of a problem
straightening out the island’s edge to accommodate a sea wall…but
David had already sprinted upstairs to the studio.

Joe was opening a message from
jsoldano
when David returned.

“They’re not there! I can’t believe she took
them!”

“Who? Susan?”

“Yes! Marc specifically told her
not
to show them, that they weren’t for sale!”

“Wait a minute, please, David…”

The email Joe was reading was sent on the
21st of September:

Julie,

I found a brochure from Marc’s show and it
had a picture of his agent. She’s the woman we saw with Avram. I
remembered her because I was trying to look at the Castle Cay
paintings and they were blocking my view.

We feel like dopes! I don’t know what made
us think she was his date!

LOL,

Joan

Joe knew; it was their body language.

* * * * *

“
Y
ou have caused me
such
a
problem, Julie,” said Susan, standing at the pantry door with a gun
in her hand. “Come out of there! Sit at the table, while I figure
out what the hell I’m going to do with you!”

“Susan. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. I
was just looking for tea bags.”

“It doesn’t matter now, Julie.”

“It doesn’t
mean
anything
,”
said Julie, desperately, “just because you’re sending paintings to
Avram doesn’t mean…”

“Oh, SHUT UP!”

Susan was pacing back and forth.

“What about Rolly?” asked Julie.

“What about him? The dumbass is probably out
there, drowned, eaten by sharks! Who gives a shit?”

Susan, frowning, stroked her chin with her
left hand.

She’s worried; I’m a monkey wrench.

Susan raised her eyebrows and lifted her chin
slightly.

Uh-oh. She feels back in control.

“Get up. We’re going out for some fresh
air.”

Julie got up and Susan got behind her, poking
her in the back with the gun.

“MOVE IT! Through there!”

She pushed Julie through the darkened house;
through a dining room and a living room walled with big windows
looking out on the sea…to a glass paned door.

“Open it!”

Julie opened it, stumbling forward on the
threshold. She fell on her hands.

“Get up!” said Susan, whacking her in the
back with the gun.

The pain tore through her, as she staggered
to her feet.

They were on a wide wooden deck. In front of
Julie were a few stairs going down and a long…very long…dock.

“Go on, hurry up!” said Susan, poking her
toward the stairs.

“
What are you doing?”
said Julie,
unable to keep the panic out of her voice.

“Shut up and walk! FASTER! I haven’t got all
night! I still have to get rid of your stupid car, you bitch!”

Susan angrily pushed her again.

It was dark and the tide was high, rough from
the storm. The angry black water stretched ominously before
her.

Julie ran like hell and jumped in.

* * * * *

“
Y
es! RIGHT NOW! Her life is in
danger!” Joe yelled into the phone.

As soon as he realized it was Susan Dwyer who
was connected to Avram, he had immediately called the Key West
police. He told them to call Chief Sanders at home and then hung
up.

Joe was scared to death that it was already
too late.

It had all come together for him, as he sat
at David’s computer. It was about drugs.
Avram Solomon was still
involved in the trade, even though they weren’t currently using
Castle Cay.
The construction there was damning. As long as the
island was under his aegis, it implicated him. He wanted to get rid
of it, especially to a company that would erase all traces of drug
trafficking.

Joe and Julie had given Avram too much credit
for rational thinking.

Marc had dated the paintings of the island
and created a time frame for the illegal activity. Avram wanted
them, just like he wanted Marc out of the way. It was about
obsession and pathological control.

Joe didn’t know how Susan Dwyer had gotten
involved in all of this. But one thing was certain:

Susan wasn’t rational, either.

* * * * *

T
he crack of the gun was the last
thing Julie heard as she sank in the sea. It was opaque, full of
sediment, and maybe twenty feet deep. She had jumped straight down,
and now she stayed on the bottom under the dock, holding her breath
in water that was moving violently and as numbing as a full-body
ice pack.

Julie clung to the thick, slimy piling,
thanking God for the barnacles that gave her something to grip. All
the same, she tried not to cut herself, scared stiff to
bleed
in that roiled, muddy water. It was terrifying not to
be able to see beyond arm’s length! But she quickly realized the
murkiness was a
good
thing because it meant that Susan
couldn’t see her, and
Susan
was far more dangerous than
anything in the water.

Julie’s lungs were exploding; she had to have
some air! Slowly, she let herself rise to the surface.

“...ARE YOU, BITCH? YOU CAN’T STAY
DOWN...”

Quickly, Julie sucked in the deepest breath
she could manage and pulled herself down again beneath the dark,
frigid water. Susan’s garbled voice instantly faded away.

Clinging again to the thick piling, Julie
hung on for dear life against the powerful, swirling current that
threatened to tear her away. She waited and waited until she
couldn’t hold her breath a moment longer and was forced to come up
for air.

Hand over hand, she rose to the surface,
garbled sound becoming more distinct. There was tramping and
yelling, men’s voices. She broke the surface of the water out of
sight under the dock, gratefully gulping a lungful of the salty
air.

“...DOWN! PUT THE GUN DOWN! DO IT NOW! NO!
DON’T...!”

Gunfire cracked again and there was a thump
on the dock right over Julie’s head.

“OH, SHIT!”

“IS SHE DEAD?”

She? It was Susan. Susan was shot! Julie
moved to the outside of the piling, straining to see.

“HERE! I’M HERE! HELP ME!”

Suddenly, Joe appeared above her.

“MERLIN! HANG ON! WE’LL GET YOU OUT!”

It was Joe…

* * * * *

J
ulie wasn’t the only one the sea gave
back that day. The other was Rolly Archer. Over two hundred miles
south of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico, fate intervened on his
behalf.

The ultra-deep drilling rig had automatic
“thruster” engines on the four corners of its floating platform.
The thrusters kept the drill on station, in spite of the ocean
currents. They were constantly in play, reacting to the GPS system
that controlled them, moving the giant rig as necessary.

As the
Miranda
approached, propelled
by the surface swells, the huge platform had responded to an
ordinary GPS adjustment. The giant rig shifted just enough for the
Miranda
to scrape past.

Rolly was identified and taken to a Louisiana
hospital. The Louisiana State Police announced that he would be
returned to Key West in a day or two. As for
Miranda,
she
was shipshape, requiring nothing but paint.

It seemed that Rolly knew seaworthy when he
saw it.

* * * * *

I
t was the 28th of September, three
days later, and Julie sat out on the pool patio at Twelve Gulf Wind
Drive across the table from Rolly and Joe. David had prepared a
sumptuous “welcome home” breakfast for Rolly to celebrate his safe
return. As for her and Joe, they were headed back to Orlando around
noon.

It was a perfect day, and Julie was admiring
the yacht anchored in the canal. It looked pristine in the sun, at
least on the side facing David’s house. It rocked ever so gently
now, in sharp contrast to a few days ago.

Julie reflected on the power and the mystery
of the sea. It had provided her with an escape and hidden her from
a killer.

Julie realized now that the sea had saved her
before…all those years ago on Castle Cay. It had been impulsive and
foolhardy to dive into that deadly current after Dan, and Julie had
barely managed to get herself out of it. But when the adrenalin
subsided and her own strength was gone, it was the breakers that
held her up and deposited her on the shore.

The other side of the coin.

She sipped her orange juice and glanced over
at Joe. He was chatting with Rolly. It struck her how handsome the
two men were. Joe was taller, a little more muscular. Julie felt a
warm glow in places the sun didn’t reach.

David had gotten up...
again
...to see
if the newspaper had been delivered.

“I just
hate
it when I can’t read the
paper with my coffee in the morning!” he had said, on the way to
the front door. “Oh, good…it’s here, everyone!” David called from
inside the house.

Joe shook his head at David’s theatrics and
smiled at Julie.

David brought the paper out on the patio, and
they each helped themselves to their favorite section.

“Anyone else want more coffee?”

“Yes, please,” said Joe.

“Thank you, my dear,” said David. “I’ll have
some more, too.”

Julie refilled their cups, and then picked up
the front section. There was a headline on page two that read,
“DRUG RING BUSTED IN BOSTON”
.