Death in the Polka Dot Shoes (14 page)

“Ned,” he said one morning as he poured coffee from his thermos, “the future is in charter fishing. The crabs are gone. You ought to convert full time.”

Pete pushed his hair back under his cap, as I straightened up from arranging the crab baskets in the stern.

“I'll be glad to help,” he continued. “We could clean up the
Martha
, give her another coat of paint, add a few rod holders, and you're in business. The hard part of this game is marketing, and Lil will show you how to do all that. Hell, she'll build you a web page, design you tee shirts, and probably fish with you if you buy her breakfast.”

Pete and Lil were fast becoming my best friends in Parkers, partly due to the circumstances of our boats being berthed together, and partly just due to their generosity. They were always helping people, and genuinely concerned about other's welfare. They could be intrusive. But they had the knack of backing off quickly if people didn't appreciate their interest.

“Pete, let's talk about this later,” I said. “Things are so complicated right now. Let me get my life in a groove, and then we'll see.”

“I understand,” Pete said.

It was a yellow sun that flashed across the water this morning, and gave a new color to the fishing boats. But it was bright and full of promise, no doubt contributing to Pete's expansive attitude.

“What have you found about your brother?” he asked.

I was reluctant to discuss this issue with Pete, or anyone for that matter, but he was my best friend on the water and I needed some help. Truth is, I didn't know where to begin. The circumstances of Jimmy's death seemed so far away because it all happened in Hatteras. Yet the roots of the problem had to be here in Parkers, and I didn't know the first thing about investigating crimes. My specialty was torts and liabilities. And I hated the idea of guys sitting around the Bayfront bar spreading rumors about the murder. I also knew that every time I asked a question, it would fly up and down the dock like a scalded seagull. But there didn't seem to be any alternative.

“Pete,” I began, “I need to ask you a couple questions. But I really don't want to start a bunch of rumors. Can you help me?”

“Sure, Ned,” he said. “What do you need?”

“You've got to protect me on this.”

“I will,” Pete said. “Don't worry, I won't say a word.”

“OK,” I said. “Here's my problem. I need to know any reason why Jimmy could have gotten into this trouble. Why would anyone hurt him? Do you know if he had any enemies, any strange activities, God forbid, any affairs or angry husbands? What was he up to?”

Pete pulled his hat down on his forehead, stared at the deck as if pondering a serious question, then slowly looked up.

“I don't know anything,” he said. “No affairs that I know of. Some said Simy, maybe. But that was before he got married.”

“Any fights?” I asked.

“Well, let's see,” he said. “There are always fights. But none that you'd take all the way to North Carolina. Maybe he got into something down there.”

“The autopsy said somebody hit him,” I offered.

“What about the tuna?” Pete asked.

Leave it to a waterman to ask about the fish. “What do you mean?”

“What about the fish?” Pete said. “I thought he caught the big one and it took him down.”

“The Sheriff down there isn't sure there was a tuna,” I said.

I didn't want to tell Pete what the Sheriff really felt. “He said there were some marks on Jimmy's arms that could have come from the leader line, but he suggested that the Captain hit him, threw him overboard about a mile off shore, and that's why the body surfaced.”

“Do you mean the Captain killed him on shore, and took him out to sea just to make it look like an accident?” Pete suggested.

This kind of speculation was my fear. Everybody immediately jumps to their own conclusions, their own conspiracies. I couldn't see how to walk the conversation back, so I decided to march it forward, away from the details of the crime.

“The key now seems to be to find that Captain,” I said. “The Sheriff is looking. But I haven't heard anything.”

Just as Pete was about to ask another question, Lil emerged from the Bayfront to say goodbye. She had joined Pete for an early breakfast, lingered inside while he readied the boat, and now was ready to leave. She saw us talking and gave her infectious wave with a big smile.

She walked to the stern of the
Martha Claire
and asked, “How's business?”

“I'm starting to get the hang of this,” I said. “Haven't made much money yet, but I can see how the water claims its victims. Crabbing is addictive.”

“I don't mean the crabs,” she said. “I mean the law. Are you gonna make it?”

“That's a little forward, isn't it?” I said in mock shock. “Of course I'm gonna make it.”

“That's the right approach,” Pete chimed in. “Everybody makes it at something. It's just that some ways are slower than others. Some of these boys go from crabs to oysters to rockfish and end up eating most of what they catch. But we all make it.”

“Now I assume you're talking about the water and not the law,” I said.

“Of course,” Pete said.

“Same is true of other businesses,” Lil said. “My dad would crab in the summer, carpenter in the fall, do a little plumbing if you needed it, and paint your house if times were tough.”

“Yeah,” I said out of professional pride. “But law is a little different.” “Not really,” Pete said. “It's just another service to put a few bucks on the table. Think of law as just another way to afford fishing. Hell, it doesn't take much money for that.”

I shuddered to think how my colleagues at Simpson, Feldstein and James would react to the firm being treated like a plumbing contractor. We had such high and mighty causes in the law firm that even defenders of killers would pose their trials in terms of high moral concepts like protecting the innocent, fairness, or everyone deserves a defense. I certainly believe those principles, and could not have defended so many scoundrels without that moral underpinning. Indeed, I assume my practice in Parkers, although now limited to buying houses, selling boats, and wills, might someday return to a criminal defense. But the reality of my practice today is mighty close to making a little money to go fishing. And remarkably, I feel rather good about it. Perhaps that's why Pete's insight had been so helpful with his charter boat.

Pete Wildman's success is largely due to the internet. He knows computers, developed his own website called
Miss Lil's
Charter Fishing, and writes a weekly column that chronicles the exploits of all his clients. It has the dual objectives of advertising his prowess at fish finding, and feeding the egos of customers he hoped to lure back for repeat performances. The website had almost replaced word of mouth as his best source of customers. Pete had paper place mats printed that featured a drawing of his boat, and a caricature of Lil. It was distributed to every restaurant in Parkers, none of which had tablecloths, and all of which accepted anything free. You couldn't sit down to lunch any place in town without reading that the best fishing in Maryland could be reviewed on
www.Lil.com
.

Lil also led Pete into a life of philanthropy. She understood instinctively that “giving” didn't require a lot of money, or a foundation, or a press release. It just required a big heart and tons of enthusiasm, which she and Pete certainly had, not to mention the most giving of instruments, a boat.

Lil invited me to go on their annual fundraising crab feast trip as a way to meet the other watermen, and a long list of their friends and clients from charters past. The money was to pay medical bills for Anna Mostelli, eleven-year-old daughter of an oysterman from the nearby village of Shady Side. Lil didn't seem to know much about Anna's disease, or how much the treatments cost, but she knew that no oysterman could ever afford his medical bills, and the Mostelli's needed help. She also knew that every time she asked Gus Mostelli about his daughter, he cried, long silent tears that slid through the cracks in his face like the gallons of bay brine that had gone before. He didn't even wipe them anymore; he just kept talking. It made Lil so happy to be helping that she couldn't wait to schedule another dance at the Elks Club or a blue grass festival at the ballpark. And Pete always offered a fishing trip as grand prize in the silent auction.

We boarded Pete's boat on a Wednesday night, bound for Teddy's Crabhouse on Poplar Island, about an hour's ride across the Bay. Six other Captains had volunteered their boats to the fleet, conveying about one hundred guests at fifty bucks apiece.

The last guests on our boat were Burlington and Marilyn Mansfield. Burl was wearing a seersucker suit of gray and white strips, a blue button down shirt, red tie, and panama hat. He could just as easily have been going to a steeplechase race. He seemed overdressed for eating crabs, a somewhat messy affair involving newspapers on the tables and rolls of paper towels for wiping the bay seasoning from your hands. This did not deter Burl, however, who had nothing to prove to anybody, and probably planned to eat raw oysters instead of crabs.

Marilyn followed closely, dressed in chiffons and silks flowing in the breeze like fireflies in the night. As a couple, they floated where others stumbled. They stepped off the dock, toes touching the edge of the boat as someone's outstretched hand guided them into the party.

“Hello Ned,” Marilyn said. “So nice to see you.”

“The news about your brother is quite alarming,” Burl said. “Any new developments?” Burl was essentially a no nonsense conversationalist. With fifteen or so people on the boat, Burl shook hands all around and returned to where Marilyn and I were discussing the weather. He edged around so he was facing me, and shielded himself from lip readers.

“Nothing new on Jimmy,” I said. “Still looking. They're now thinking bar fight. So who knows?”

“I need to talk with you about the CRI,” Burl said. “You tell those boys we might go for a scaled back version of the resort. Build it as a replica of Captain Amos Song's house so it's consistent with our architectural history. No bricks. No neon signs. Not more than one hundred guests.”

“Burl,” I said, throwing up my hands in exaggerated disbelief. “How can they make money? Even at seventy to eighty percent occupancy, that's not enough to pay the mortgage, run the restaurant, and build a pool.”

“Why do they need a pool?” Burl asked. “They have the Bay.”

“Why do you environmentalists think you can prescribe every window and table in the place?” I said.

“Because the devil is in the details.”

“No,” I said, “it's because you want control. You want to tell people how to live. You want us all carrying recycling bins on our boats.”

“No Ned,” he said, “we just don't want your pollution.”

“I hear you want to outlaw those little ski boats because they make too much noise,” I charged. “What's next?”

“Ned, my boy, you haven't been here long enough,” Burl said. “I respect you because of your father. But don't think just because you're a lawyer, you can start running things in Parkers.”

I realized it was time to lighten up. I also realized I had better get over to Burl's house some afternoon soon and pour a new foundation for our relationship. I wanted his friendship and I enjoyed the country gentleman nature of his home. Burl had a tobacco barn which anchored sixteen acres of waterfront on the West River, with four hundred feet of bulkhead built by R.T. Smith, the oldest and best pier builder in Jenkins County. R.T. charged a hundred dollars per running foot for a new dock and bulkhead, with pilings topped with copper that glistened brown when installed and turned green with age. Apparently Burl was ignoring the environmentalists who claimed that pretreated pilings killed the fish and led to depletion of the oyster beds as well.

Tobacco barns dotted Southern Maryland, remnants of a vibrant past. The agriculture that had flourished for two hundred years, fed generations, and spawned a reliance on slavery and cheap labor, was passing. In 2002, the State adopted a buyout program that paid farmers not to grow tobacco, and the auction houses closed for good. Some of the older farmers grew small patches of tobacco, just for a little cash and a good memory, but they had to truck it nearly a hundred miles to St. Mary's county to sell. That practice would not survive long.

The tobacco barns were bought by developers, moved to new home sites, and considered ambience for gated communities called Plantation Village or Tara. They were never called Tobacco Way, however, because public attitudes toward smoking were the executioner that eliminated tobacco in the first place. People want to be reminded of the bucolic joys of plantation life without the painful side effects of smoking, cheap labor, and segregation. The innocence of a tobacco barn was the perfect symbol for a twenty first century Levit-town featuring five-acre home sites and white fences that set off a riding ring or a three stall horse barn.

Burl's barn at least was not an ornament. A thriving farm had once flourished on the banks of the river before it was broken into irregular parcels of fifteen or twenty acres back in the nineteen thirties. Tobacco barns were open just above the foundation, by perhaps a foot or two, to allow a free flow of air to dry the leaves. Similarly, the side boards were loosely fitted, so large cracks allowed air from all directions. Only the roofs, usually tin, were built to keep out the elements. Even when they became rusted and twisted, they kept the barn dry as a bone. Burl renovated one corner of the structure to serve as a tool shed and carpentry shop. No more moisture. He wouldn't have rusty tools, and kept his wood chisels clean. He even polished his favorites. In the main part of the barn he had built the
Lady Marilyn
, a thirty-four-foot skipjack that now rolled in the soft eddy of waves at his dock.