Hell's Bay (8 page)

Milligan pushed his chair back and stood up. Rusty rose, too. She laid her hand on my shoulder, tightened it, and dug her nails into my flesh.

“Isn't it time we were getting under way, Captain Stabler?” Milligan said. “That is, if we're still planning on fishing tomorrow.”

“She was murdered.” Mona stood up, stared across at me for a second, then shifted her fierce gaze to Sugarman. “Murdered, goddammit.”

“Why do you think that, Mona?”

“Thorn, that's enough,” Rusty said.

“I don't think it,” Mona said. “I know it.”

“Based on what?”

“I don't have to justify anything to you.”

She blasted me with a scowl and stalked toward the exit.

John Milligan crowded up to my shoulder.

“You might as well hear it from me,” he said. “Mona thinks I was behind Mother's death. She can't bring herself to say the words aloud, but that's what she believes. That I'm a killer, or that I hired one.”

“Did you?”

Milligan allowed himself a faint smile. “What do you think?”

“I just met you,” I said. “But so far I wouldn't rule it out.”

“Goddammit, Thorn,” Rusty said, “back off.”

Milligan reached out and gave me a hearty clap on the shoulder.

“That's a good one, Thorn. You're a ballsy son of a bitch. Must be the Milligan in you.”

Rusty stood aside and shook her head slowly as though she wasn't sure what she'd just witnessed. She wasn't alone.

On the way out of the restaurant, I caught Sugar's eye. What he saw written in my face caused him to nod twice. In all our years of friendship, I'd never asked for Sugar's professional help. But now, without a word passing between us, I'd just engaged him to investigate my grandmother's death.

 

 

 

 

The night sky was bristling with stars as I headed the Mother-ship west out the Intracoastal to the intersection with the Yacht Channel, then turned north by northwest and ran outside of Sprigger Bank, Schooner Bank, and Oxford, then past Sandy Key.

I watched our slow progress on the GPS screen, a green arrow plowing through the quiet black sheen. From the galley just below the wheelhouse I could hear the laughter, Milligan amusing Annette, and Annette amusing back. Rusty's coughing chuckles. She was getting a little drunk. The stress of the trip, the unforeseen tension at dinner.

I looked out at the water. The cone of light from the over-head spot shone on the calm seas. On our starboard side a dolphin rolled, basking in the foamy wake. Then another smaller dolphin appeared beside him, two slick shiny creatures hitching a brief ride, tickling their hides in the artificial surf. The twin Mercury outboards were running smooth. Four hundred and fifty horses pushed the big barge at a cruising speed of nine knots, which would make it a ten-hour haul to our anchorage.

It was a journey I'd made countless times, in good weather and foul, outrunning storms and sometimes overtaken and slammed. Many times I'd motored my ancient Chris-Craft up this way, cruising slowly with a variety of friends, male and female. Days of sun and rum and fresh grilled fish, swimming naked in the transparent waters. Nights lying flat on the deck watching constellations wheel across the sky, trying to absorb the magnitude of the heavens, our tiny place in it all. The ache of longing to say the unsayable. Hours touching the flesh of lovers, being touched. The rambling talk, the beer, the wine, the bad jokes. Our laughter echoing across the empty waters. I'd stashed some good memories along nearly every mile of that route.

Beyond Sandy Key, up to Cape Sable, then Middle Cape, Northwest Cape, past Big Sable Creek, into Ponce de Leon Bay, and into the marked channel of the Little Shark River. The Shark was a complicated river system with multiple mouths, several of them dead ends, but I knew every turn. South through Oyster Bay, through Cormorant Pass and into Whitewater Bay where tomorrow around dawn we'd ease into the side bay along the western edge of Whitewater that bordered Joe River.

The unofficial name of the cove was “Cardiac,” so christened because years before a tarpon guide friend of mine lost a client there to a heart attack. Among my buddies the name was meant as both respectful and a dark joke. What a perfect place, and a perfect way to go, a giant tarpon jumping three feet in the air. The line tight, the heart seizing up.

Cardiac Bay was a comfortable spot, protected from the wind, with a good rocky bottom that would hold the anchor. By the time we arrived there Teeter would be cooking breakfast.

After the anchor was set, I was planning to head to my cabin for a nap while the others woke and dressed and ate breakfast. I'd sleep for an hour, then when everyone was fed, we'd head out, take the two skiffs and four anglers north into the labyrinth, using our laminated photograph.

Rusty would go her way and I'd already picked the spot I wanted to explore. Three lakes joined by narrow channels. About a half mile of mangroves to fight through, but once inside, if the photograph wasn't lying, we could fish all day in those waters, moving from one lake to another. Could be schools of tarpon back there, snook, redfish, sea trout, or grouper. Since the water was brackish—freshwater coming out of the Everglades mingled with the Gulf's brine—there might even be a few bass. Or there might be nothing at all.

I was going over the day ahead, the fishing. Running through the gear we'd need, how best to load my skiff. Trying to occupy my mind, though now and then as I shifted my feet, swaying with the rock of the Mothership, I could feel the weight of the snapshot in my shirt pocket.

I wasn't ready to examine it yet. I wanted the voices down below to die out—for the party to break up and for everyone to head off to their cabins. When they were all asleep, I'd take another look at the young blond country girl with the strong features and the wide shoulders. At the two older folks sitting on their front porch. I'd study the image and try to extract details I'd missed on my first two looks. I'd try to read my mother's face, my grandmother's. I was girding my-self for that.

I gazed out at the darkness, a long narrow path of flickering moonlight on the flat seas. A single vessel glided along the horizon, a slow-going sailboat under power.

The Mothership was handling well, a big lazy vessel, slow and sloppy through the turns, but stable and smooth on a straight heading.

On impulse, I plucked the photograph from my pocket and laid it on the console before me. The low lights provided just enough illumination to read charts without throwing a glare on the windows, enough light to see the photo. But I didn't look. It lay there on the flat dash beside the throttle levers.

I shifted my hands on the wheel, nudged us a few degrees north, heading into a light breeze and a few quartering swells. With the forward motion of the Mothership combined with the freshening breeze, there was probably a fifteen-knot wind out on the decks.

I reached through the side window to check, and the rush of air pushed against my open hand. I was starting to regret asking for Sugar's help. This was none of my business. An old woman's drowning, a granddaughter's fury and grief. These people were strangers. They had nothing to do with the life I'd shaped for myself, or this new course I'd set. Some accident of flesh and blood connected us, perhaps, but that was all. No cause to become entangled in their poisonous affairs.

Without looking at it again, I picked up the photo and held it out the side window. Pinched between thumb and finger, it fluttered in the wind and the rattling noise it made was carried off into the darkness. I held it there for several moments, working up the resolve to let it go.

“You sure about that?” Mona had entered the wheelhouse from the starboard door. She moved across the cabin to stand near me. “Just toss it away like you can't stomach it? Is that who you are? Some chickenshit?”

I looked at her through the dim light, then drew in my arm and set the photo back on the console.

She gave a dry laugh.

“Daniel Oliver Thorn,” she said. “My famous cousin.”

“My name is Thorn.”

“Yeah, yeah. Okay, Thorn. Tough guy extraordinaire.”

“What the hell do you know about me?”

“A good deal more than you know about me.”

She picked up the photograph and took a long look. Her clothes gave off the scent of sweat-soaked leather with a faint undertone of wood smoke, as though she'd been sitting around a campfìre all evening after a hard day on horseback. She shifted her feet and brushed her hip against mine then stepped a few inches out of range. The contact wasn't accidental. As if she was grazing me as cats do to leave their scent, mark their territory.

Mona laid the photo back on the console and stared out the windshield into the cone of light, the slapping seas. The dolphins were gone.

“You think I'm a self-absorbed bitch. That's your first impression.”

“Actually, I haven't given it a lot of thought.”

She was silent for a while, staring ahead into the darkness.

“That's us, huh? The green arrow.” She tapped the GPS screen.

When I didn't reply, she laughed again, though there was no humor in it.

“I guess it should be reassuring. A device to tell you where you are. Never get lost again. A blinking arrow. Blink, blink. Now any idiot can find their way through the wilderness. Just follow the arrow.”

“There's more to knowing where you are than that.”

“Oh, is there? Are we getting philosophical?”

I reached for the toggle and turned off the GPS. I flicked the main control switch and the instrument panel also went dark.

“You wanted to talk about something?”

I could feel her staring at me, but I didn't turn her way.

“She was murdered. Grandmother was murdered.”

“Why?”

“Why do I believe it, or why was she murdered?”

“Your choice.”

“Same answer for both,” Mona said. “Family business.”

“And what's that?”

“What're you, drunk? It came up at dinner. Bates International.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Yeah, yeah, Thorn, the hermit. No radio, no TV, no Internet. Gets all his news from pressing conch shells to his ear.”

“Why don't you go back below? Give your contempt the rest of the night off.”

Mona raised her hands to her temples and combed her fingers back through her tangled hair, then lifted the mass off her neck for a moment before letting it drop. The movement released another cloud of scent into the wheelhouse, the sharp musk of her flesh after a long day of travel, wine, and sweat mingled with a quirky blend of spices that must have been her body's aromatic signature. Something like a strong green tea spiked with citrus.

“You have a road map up here?”

I didn't reply.

“A map, a Florida road map.”

“We don't have much use for road maps out on the water.”

“Where would it be if you had one?”

I flipped on the console lights and drew open the chart drawer.

Mona pawed through the stash and after a minute, to my surprise, came up with a folded Florida map. She opened it on the console, flattened it and refolded it so only the center of the state was exposed. No Panhandle, no South Florida.

“You have a quarter, Thorn?”

“A quarter?”

“Twenty-five cents. A coin.”

I checked our position, scanned the darkness for passing vessels. No more lights out there tonight. Everyone safely back on land, watching TV, reading their kid a story, doing what ordinary people do. We were still holding steady on our north-by-northwest course, heading into increasing sets of swells.

I dug a quarter from the change in my pocket and held it out.

Mona plucked the coin from my palm and laid it on the map. She positioned it just east of Sarasota and a few degrees north, then tapped it a fraction farther east and looked at me.

“Bates International,” she said. “Or one of its many sub-sidiaries.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Almost every square mile under that coin. The land, the rivers, the streams, the ranches, the pinelands. What Bates doesn't own isn't worth owning.”

“So?”

“Abigail Bates, your grandmother, was the second-largest landowner in the state. The sweet hot center of Florida belongs to our family. Put that in your seashell, beach boy.”

I stared at the map, the glittering coin, the thousands of square miles it covered. Not as much land as St. Joe Paper Company controlled, or Barron Collier in his prime. Both owned close to a million acres of the state. If Mona was correct, Bates International's property looked to be less than half that. Still, it was a vast chunk.

Over the years I'd driven through the region many times. Had friends who'd grown up there, most of whom fled as soon as they could. It was tough terrain. Orange groves, cattle ranges, some light farming. Raw and brown and harsh, full of sandspurs and armadillos and vultures. A few gorgeous rivers twisted through the countryside, a little shade here and there, some pastureland.

Mulberry, Pierce, Brewster, Ft. Green, Ona, Wauchula, Bowling Green, Pine Level, Fort Lonesome. The hard-luck towns were usually composed of little more than an aging gas station, a Food Mart, and three or four churches. Mobile homes scattered through the piney woods. Some prefab houses and the occasional rotting remnants of pioneer homesteads with a chimney rising from rubble. Here and there was one of those fifties ranch styles holding sway on a promontory, where the boss man lived. The rough narrow roads that crisscrossed that area shot like bullets straight through the countryside, flat and mostly empty. It was mining country, phosphate. Big ugly pits gouged deep into the Florida prairies.

Not exactly primo real estate, and not the Florida land-scape that most stirred my heart, but it had a rugged dignity. And some of the folks I'd met up there had much in common with the dwindling supply of old salts who settled the Keys. Both had cracker toughness and a hard-shell self-reliance. People who'd give you their last crust of bread or could turn mean as a rattler if the occasion required. Hard-eyed men and women without patience for frills or blather.