Wreckers' Key (21 page)

The direct question stopped me for a minute. This was the end result of what I’d been talking about, but I hadn’t really thought it through to that point. “Yeah, Pete, I guess I am. Thinking about it, anyway.”

Pete shook his head and headed down the bar to get the orders from two couples who looked like they were in the wrong bar. The men wore dark suits, and the women’s dresses sparkled with sequins. My guess was the guys had talked the ladies into some adventurous slumming before walking across the bridge and going to the theater—when, in fact, it was a way for the guys to score free parking.

The door at the end of the bar opened and a gust of cold air blew in around Neville Pinder and two other Ocean Towing captains. Pinder was in the middle of a story. Despite the bar’s noise, his voice rose above the interior volume. “And then she said, ‘I’ve never seen anything that size in my fuckin’ life.’ ” The two guys in the matching green shirts roared their approval. “Gimme three Kaliks,” Pinder shouted over the tops of the heads of the folks at the bar. The bartender on that side jumped to bring him the three Bahamian beers, and all the heads that had turned to watch his entrance, returned to their former conversations.

What’s wrong with this world, I asked myself as I sipped my beer. Everybody was looking for the deal, the scam, the few quick bucks. It was one thing to pretend you were eating at a restaurant in order to score free parking; it was something totally different to kill a man to preserve your cushy deal. And yet that was what Catalina insisted someone had done, and the only one making lots of money that I could see at this point was Neville Pinder.

I watched him at the bar, where he had now brought several other patrons into his group and was regaling them all with stories told at a volume that was, like the rest of him, big and rude.

“Hi, skipper, you’re watching my fellow islander.” Quentin had come up behind me and settled on the empty stool. I couldn’t figure out how I hadn’t seen him come in, and I noticed that he sure did get around well without a car.

“Hey, Quentin. That guy’s got nothing in common with you. Can I buy you a beer?”

“No beer, thank you. But I would like an orange juice.”
 

“Sure,” I said, lifting my hand to signal to Pete. When he made it to our end of the bar, I introduced him to Quentin.

“Pete, this is the guy who crewed for me coming up from Key West. He’s from down-island, Dominica.” The two men shook hands. “He’s a hell of a good crewman and he’s looking for work around here. Keep your ear to the ground for me, okay?”

“Will do,” Pete said. He gave me a little mock salute, then poured Quentin his juice.

I tapped my bottle to Quentin’s glass. “Here’s to us both finding work we love.”

After he drank, Quentin said, “I saw you watching him.” He inclined his head toward Pinder.

“Yeah, it seems to be the Neville Pinder Show.”

“I was starting to tell you that story I heard from Brian this afternoon, about the boat accident that caused that meeting today.”

“Oh yeah, what did he say?”

“Brian works for Ocean Towing in Hillsboro and he got a call to go out and pull off a seventy-five-foot motor yacht that grounded just south of the harbor entrance.”

“Sure, if people try to cut the corner going into Hillsboro from the south, they’ll be aground in a heartbeat.”
 

“Yeah, that must be the place. Brian said the weather wasn’t bad and it was a soft bottom. He got a phone call on his cell from Ocean Towing. His towboat was already offshore on another job. He said it took about an hour to tow the boat off, but his boss filed it as a salvage operation.”

“You’re kidding.”

He shook his head, and his dreads swung around his face. “The owner paid the salvage claim, then filed with his insurance company.”

“I’ll bet they went through the roof when they found it had just been a soft grounding with no damage.”
 

“Apparently so.”

“What’s the name of the boat?”

“
NautiBoy
—it’s spelled—”

“Yeah, I got it. I’ve seen that one a few times. Do you know where the boat is now?”

“He said it’s docked at a small marina just inside Hillsboro.”

“I think I might go over there tomorrow and talk to the captain. See if he noticed anything peculiar about his instruments like Nestor did.”

“You have an idea about these groundings?”

“An idea, yeah, but I don’t really know if it’s even scientifically possible.”

“What are you thinking?”

“I don’t know much about electronics, but the thing is, most of these boats that have gone aground have been relying on their GPS for navigation. It’s possible that there’s a certain unit that’s malfunctioning in all these boats. But I’m wondering about something else—if such a thing is possible. I’m thinking about how much money a salver could make if he could make a boat’s nav systems go haywire when he wanted them to.”

“That is a very interesting question.”

“Isn’t it?”

“You have been very good to me. If there is anything more I can do for you, I would like to help.”

“Just keep your ears open and let me know if you hear anything that doesn’t sound quite right. You’ve got an interview with Pinder tomorrow, right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, start there. I don’t mean for you to specifically ask any questions, just listen. And be careful. I’d especially like to know if there was any connection to Ocean Towing before these boats wrecked. If anyone from Ocean Towing went on board for any reason.”

He smiled and raised his glass to me. “I can do that.”
 

“I have one more favor to ask, too.”

“What is that?”

“I liked working with you, Quentin. Wednesday morning I’m supposed to tow a forty-three-foot sailboat for an out-of-state owner. Boat’s name is
Wild Matilda
. I’m just taking it upriver for the annual haul-out. My usual crew guy can’t make it. He’s taking a class. Do you think you could give me a hand?”

“No problem.”

I told him where and when to meet me. Quentin then finished off the last of his drink and said good night. Watching him head for the door, I caught Neville Pinder staring at me from the other side of the room. When our eyes met, he nodded at me, and then turned back to the thirty-something woman with eye-popping cleavage who had cozied up to him at the bar. She sat on a stool, her brown legs crossed and her elbows resting on the bar behind her. He leaned in and whispered something in her ear, and when she laughed, her whole torso bounced.

Did he have it in him to kill? Being a jerk and a loudmouth doesn’t necessarily mean you have what it takes to bash a man’s skull in. And why? Why did Nestor have to die? I thought about my conversation with Neville in Key West and remembered his words about Nestor disrespecting him. Would that have been enough? I didn’t think so. No, this was about the money. It was about the
Power Play
and all the other yachts with competent captains that had grounded recently. It was about a three-hundred-dollar tow becoming a half-million-dollar salvage job.

I was trying to decide whether or not I wanted to eat when I saw Ben walk in. I waved when he looked my way, and he joined me at the bar.

“Did you see Quentin out there?” I asked him.

“No, was he here?”

“Yeah, he just left. He was at the symposium, too.”
 

“Really?”

“Yeah, he’s got some job leads. So, first lunch, now dinner. Have you spent the whole day around here?”
 

“No, I had to run some errands this afternoon, but I decided to come back here—in the hope I might find you here. Have you eaten?”

“No, but I was thinking of heading home.”

He put his hand on the back of my neck, and I was certain my face flushed as I thought of B.J.’s hands and where they had been a few hours earlier.
 

“Stay,” Ben said. “Have another drink with me. I’ll buy you dinner. I’m heading back to Key West in the morning.”
 

The way he smiled, I was certain Ben thought he had been responsible for the sudden rise in my body temperature—and in a way, he was right. Not for the first time, I wondered what was wrong with me. Why was it that I couldn’t just settle down with B.J., get married, and feel the same things I assumed other women felt? Why was it that I could be so crazy about B.J. and yet still be attracted to other men?

I hiked my bag up onto my shoulder and said, “I really ought to go.”

Pete walked by on the other side of the bar, and Ben pointed to my beer bottle and shouted, “We’ll have another couple of these.” Pete nodded, delivered the two drinks in his hands, and before I knew it I had another bottle of beer in front of me.

“Ben, I’m going to make this fast. All of a sudden, I just don’t feel like being here anymore.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Him,” I said, indicating Pinder and knowing that it was really only half the truth. I felt I needed to leave before I got myself in trouble.

“Why? What did he do?”

“Quentin just told me the story behind the meeting we had this afternoon. There was some yacht,
NautiBoy
, and Ocean Towing took a simple tow where there was no peril to anybody involved—just a little grounding on a sandbar—and made it a salvage claim. It seems to me that Neville Pinder represents everything I’m coming to dislike about this business.”

“Tell me about it.”

I shook my head, watching Pinder. “Look at him. You know what he makes me think of?”

“No.”

“The wreckers. You know? The old Key West wreckers.”
 

“Like my great-great-grandpa.”

“Sort of. Not necessarily him—your relative, I mean— but guys like him. There were so many of them for a while there. Guys who didn’t know what else to do with their lives were flooding into Key West from all over the country after the Civil War, come to make their fortunes. Sound familiar?”

“You mean like the salvage business here today?”
 

“Yup. You ever hear about what happened down there when the government started putting up the lights on the reefs and the number of ships started declining, when they put the transcontinental railroad through, and ships began to have engines?”

He smiled as though he knew the story well, but he rested his chin in his palm and focused all his attention on me. “Tell me.”

“It was the pressure of the marketplace. All of a sudden, there were too many wreckers and not enough ships wrecking on the reefs. There’s no real proof that it happened, but the legends say that some enterprising individuals came up with a plan to make wrecks—which back then meant paying off the captains or messing with the lights. What I keep asking myself is what would a modern-day wrecker do to—”

A glass crashed to the floor and a woman’s voice rose above the noise of the crowd. “You goddamn son of a bitch. Buying me one drink does not give you the right to put your filthy fucking hands there.”

The woman who had been laughing with Pinder was now screaming and making a scene. The way she slurred her words made it clear she’d had too much to drink. Pinder was just smiling at her, making no attempt to apologize. One of the waitresses ushered the screamer out the door, and Pinder moved down to join the other captains at the far end of the bar.

“Ben, that’s it. I’m out of here. Have a good trip back to Key West.”

He wrapped his hand around my wrist. “Please, Seychelle, stay. We have so much to talk about.”

I looked at his hand then lifted my eyes to his face. I didn’t like myself much in that moment. I was really tempted to push B.J. out of my mind and stay. Stay all night. And if I didn’t? Then once again, I hadn’t been playing fair with Ben. In a way, I’d been using him when I felt that B.J. was ignoring me. “Ben, no. I just want to go home.”

He released my arm. “Okay. I’ll walk you to your car.” He reached for his wallet and threw some bills on the bar. Then with his hand on the small of my back, he steered me toward the door. Once outside, he draped his arm around my shoulders. We walked to the parking lot in silence. At my Jeep, he slid his fingers under my chin and pressed his lips against mine.

I pushed away, startled. “Ben, no. I’m involved with somebody else.”

“You said you didn’t really call him your boyfriend. I was under the impression it was a sort of open relationship.”

For just a moment, I wondered if that was what B.J. thought, too, when he was studying cheek-to-cheek with Molly.

“No, Ben, I’d have to say we’re pretty monogamous.”

I looked at him as he stepped back away from the Jeep. He didn’t take those eyes off me. I knew then that Molly had been right about Ben and me. About how he’d felt back when we were kids. There was more to this than just tonight.

XIX

The last thing I needed at that point was a balky vehicle. Through the plastic side window, I saw him standing in the yellow-orange glow of the street lamp, his hands buried deep in his pockets. Under my breath I whispered to the statue on the dash, “Jesus, don’t fail me now,” not really expecting anyone to be listening, but covering all my bases just the same. I turned the key one more time and finally Lightnin’s engine roared to life. Dark smoke pouring from my exhaust pipe, I pulled out of the parking lot spewing water and gravel out of the puddles that had accumulated with the late rain.

I felt the tension ease out of my body the more distance I put between the Downtowner and myself. At Andrews and Sixth, I caught the red and my Jeep sputtered into stillness.

Shit.

The red light reflected on the slick wet pavement, turning the entire intersection crimson. I glanced up at the rearview mirror. Mine was the only vehicle within sight. What was I expecting? That he would come charging after me? Not his style. He was better than that. I just hated myself for causing Ben Baker any more pain than he had already experienced in his life. He hadn’t had it easy as a kid—not by a long shot—and here I was putting him through more crap.

I turned the key again, and the engine ground but would not catch. The light changed the pavement to a sea of green and I turned the key again. On my third try, just as the light turned yellow, the engine caught. I roared on through as the light turned red.