Death in the Polka Dot Shoes (16 page)

“I have been working right here all my life,” Simy said. “Sure, I left for a while. I had big jobs in Baltimore, and down in Miami. But I came home. They didn't work out.”

“Did you like Florida?” I asked.

“I loved it,” she said. “I drank a lot of beer and spent a lot of nights on the beach. But after a few years I realized I hadn't met one boy with long-term intentions, and no job ever lasted more than a few months. High turnover everywhere. No future down there.”

“When did you come back?”

“A few years ago,” she said. “I got a great job with an insurance company in Washington. But it wasn't much different than Florida really.”

“Everything temporary,” I suggested.

“No. Everything about sex. I worked for three bosses and they all propositioned me. I said no and I never got promoted. One day I called my mom and said I want to come home. She made one call to Mabel here at the Bayfront and here I am.”

I was getting tired and decided to let the conversation drop. It was quiet as I reached for my last drink. Simy said nothing, but she lifted the bar top that allowed her to escape the barmaid's pen, walked behind me and sat on the stool to my left. I hadn't noticed that she had left a bottle of beer on the bar, almost directly in front of her present location. She slid the bottle closer, drank, and then wiped the condensation from the bottle. She wiped her face with the bar rag, possibly leaving more stain on her face than she removed. But she had been sweating, and small beads remained on her forehead. I was a little surprised by the feeling of familiarity, of sensuality in the darkness of the bar, but it was there. I tried to look at her closely, sitting just inches from her face, to judge her age and the hard times that must have lodged in her pores. But she was pretty. Her skin was smooth, and I wondered why she looked more attractive up close than from a distance. Most times it's the other way around.

“Promise me you'll be careful,” Simy said. She looked directly in my direction, although it took a few seconds to make the eye to eye connection. She moved her hand to my leg and slowly stroked my thigh. I couldn't tell if it was sexual or just out of friendship, and I didn't really know which I wanted it to be.

“I promise,” I said.

She stared at me with warmth. “Neddie, you're so sweet. And here's my promise to you,” she said. She moved her hand to cover the zipper of my jeans, and rapidly flicked one finger to record the unmistakable offer.

“Goodnight Ned,” she said, moving quickly off the stool and back behind the bar.

Chapter Eleven

I was working on a little property dispute involving a small waterfront community of cottage dwellers who claimed ownership of a thirty-yard tract on the water. The Community Association also claimed ownership, so now I'm trying to sort out the history of competing claims. Community children would put their crab pots in the water at the end of the tract, and in the past, when most of the homeowners liked each other, there were picnics on the property overlooking the Bay. But since the issue of ownership was raised, the ensuing squabbling and animosity between the Community Association and homeowners bordering the property pretty much ended the picnics.

Unfortunately, my clients were the two families who lived on either side of the easement. They got together one Sunday afternoon and decided that they owned the property, and that it wasn't community property at all. At least not the legal kind. They examined their deeds and discovered that the two of them owned the property, no easement was recorded, and that in fact the community was using the property due to the largess of their deceased relatives, who had invited in the neighbors some fifty years ago. Their first step in reclaiming the land was to notify the community. Their second step was to ask Pippy Plotkin for a real estate appraisal of the value of the property, which they excitedly learned was several hundred thousand dollars. And their third step was to hire me. Not that reversing that process would have changed things. But I would have preferred to have been first.

I was going over their deeds when the Calico Cat, Effie Humboldt, pushed open my office door.

“Effie,” I said with some surprise. “Come in. I was just thinking of you.”

“Ned,” she said, “you come and go so fast, I never get to see you. But I hear about you all over town. The watermen think of you as an apprentice. I think they waiver between fearing you'll be lost in a storm, or leave town over anguish about your brother. They don't get many newcomers in this business and they hope you'll make it.”

“Thanks Effie,” I said. “They've been very helpful.”

“How's the law business?” she asked.

“Not bad,” I said. “Parkers may be the luckiest town in America. They haven't needed many lawyers. A few spats between neighbors, but not many lawsuits and very few contracts. People here don't seem to worry much about getting things in writing. They build houses without contracts. They even die without wills. Actually, it could be a gold mine for me.”

“Have you had any bad experiences?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I didn't mean that. Just different experiences. I had a guy come in yesterday who had built a new bulkhead on his waterfront property. He hired old Sam Sharpe from over at West River, who's been building piers here for fifty years. Most people say he's the best. Anyway, it seems Sam pulled on to my client's property in his beat up 1973 pickup truck, looked over the job, then walked from one side of the waterfront to the other, turned around and said, ‘It's a hundred feet and I'll do it for fifteen thousand dollars.'”

“My client said that sounded fine, and asked Sam if they needed a piece of paper of some kind, a contract. Sam said he never used a contract, so my client observed that fifteen thousand was quite a bit of money and he would like a piece of paper. Old Sam seemed a little baffled, but he smiled and said sure. Then he walked over to his truck, which had papers of every kind stacked on the passenger seat, on the dash and the floorboard. He fished out a small pad of paper and pencil, walked back to my client and wrote the number, fifteen, on the pad, tore off the page and handed it to my client. My client was laughing so hard he didn't even mind when Sam asked for five thousand as a down payment.”

“But six months later old Sam came in with his rusty crane and a bull dozer, dug out the old bulkhead, set about twenty pilings in place, and finished the job in every way except replacing several tons of dirt between the new bulkhead and the yard. Then big as you please, he walked over to my client and asked for another five thousand dollars to replace the dirt.

“What could my client do? It might take weeks to get someone else to replace the dirt. And they might not do it right. So he paid. Now he's coming to me to get some of his money back. And, he didn't even keep that little piece of paper with fifteen written on it. That's business in Parkers.”

“Have you talked to Sam about it?” she asked.

“Not yet,” I said. “My guess is that Sam was so mad about being asked for a contract of some sort, that he just decided to screw the guy. And my guess is he still feels the same way.”

“Who's the client?” she asked.

“I can't say,” I replied. “But he tore down a cottage and built a big glass house on the property, and I suspect old Sam saw all that and said to himself, this guy can afford it so I'll show him how things work in Parkers. And he did. I doubt we'll ever get a penny back. But new people are coming here, and their lawyers are coming with them.”

“You're not like that Ned,” she said. “You're a good and fair man.”

“Effie, I love you for that. And that's why I have a special request.”

“Remember, my husband's a judge, so don't you make any indecent offers,” she joked.

“Nothing like that,” I said. “I'm told you are a very successful business woman. Your shop is well stocked and beautifully decorated. And I need help.”

Effie got a worried look on her face, fearing a request she didn't want to deal with.

“How about managing my office,” I said carefully. “Not phone calls or daily stuff. I'll do that. But how about part time, see that bills are sent out, taxes paid, cleaning lady shows up, and files are kept in order?”

“Why Ned Shannon,” she said, a smile of appreciation on her face, “thank you. But I have a shop of my own to run. I don't have time to be keeping your books.”

“Well, let me try one other track,” I said. “I just bought a little piece of property overlooking the Bay down in Osprey Cove.”

“Congratulations!” she shouted. “You're a Parkerite.”

“Not yet. You see, there's no house on this property. It's only a quarter acre overlooking a little marshland, but I figure I don't need a dock cause I have a slip at the Bayfront. And I don't want a yard to take care of. And I don't have kids who need space. I just need a view, all the way to the edge of the earth. I want to see the curvature of the planet under a pale blue sky.”

“You get all that with a quarter acre?” she asked.

“I do if I build a little house on pilings. I want to put it about 15 feet in the air, overlooking the marsh and anybody who walks between me and the mud.”

“Can you afford this?”

“I can if we do it right. The land cost ninety-nine thousand dollars. And I can spend another hundred thousand for the house.”

“That's not going to do it,” she said. “You didn't let that Pippy Plotkin sell you property with the idea that one hundred thousand would build a house on it.”

“Well, maybe. But that's what I need you for. How about helping me with the plans? Maybe a little decoration and general oversight.”

“Ned Shannon, I don't know beans about building a house. And I don't decorate for bachelors, whether they're lawyers or watermen.”

“Here's what I want to do, Effie. I want to build a two bedroom, two bath, French Colonial, with one big room for living and dining, and the bedrooms above it. And here's the coup de grace. I will park my truck under the house, right beside an elevator. How about that, an elevator to the top floor, and French doors on the main floor that will let the Bay breezes blow through every room.”

“Ned, you are nuts. It sounds clever, and beautiful, and I can just see the sunsets from the balcony. But this is Parkers, not Paris. Are you crazy? Nobody in Parkers has an elevator.”

“Why not me? What woman in Parkers wouldn't want to come home to see my elevator?”

“I will not be a party to debauchery,” she said. “But I would love to have an elevator. And I'm happy to see you're settling in. I also caught that remark about parking your truck under the house. Does that mean the Saab is about to be history.”

“I think so,” I said.

“Well, here's how you do it,” Effie said. “You start driving by those empty lots near the liquor store, and the First Methodist Church, and Flossies. Trucks for sale are parked there all the time.”

“What about the Ford dealership over on the highway?”

“You're not gonna buy some fancy truck with leather seats and a stereo system. You want a used truck about three years old with a couple of scratches on the side that will carry a few dozen crab pots. You want a working truck that you can park with the rest of the boys down at the Bayfront.”

“Is that necessary?” I asked.

“This is as close as we come to image building in Parkers,” Effie said. “And you want to pay cash. You know why watermen pay cash; because they have to stay flexible. No mortgages.”

“You mean don't buy what you can't afford?”

“No, I mean storms, and broken legs, and red tide, and state regulations, and divorces, and all the other uncertainties of working on the water. Get yourself a good used truck and park that sissy convertible of yours under the house.”

“You're starting to sound like my business manager.”

“Not a chance,” Effie said. “Just a friend.”

Chapter Twelve

A slim, silent figure dressed in blue jeans, black and white tennis shoes, and a black tee shirt walked quickly around the back of the Bayfront Inn, keeping in the shadows, heading for the dozen or so charter fishing and crab boats anchored along Jenkins Creek. He walked past the fish cleaning stand on the edge of the pier, put his hand assuredly on one corner of the scaling tank, and turned toward the
Martha Claire
. Plenty of clouds tarpapered the sky and the boat offered no reflection in the night.

The visitor never broke stride, moving directly to the stern of the boat, hopping over the gunnels, and crouching beside the hatch cover that allowed access to the big diesel engine. He raised the hatch and braced it quietly open. He pulled a small flashlight out of one pocket, and a pair of wire cutters from the other. In seconds, he reached past the engine and clipped the electric wire to the automatic float switch, disabling the bilge pump that emptied any water that collected in the bottom of the boat. In another second, the hatch was closed and the intruder hopped off the boat and back on the pier. He reached for the garden hose wrapped in a circle where Ned had left it after cleaning his boat earlier in the day, draped it into the boat, and turned on the spigot. A steady stream of water slid across the deck, as deadly as poison in the blood.

I was still asleep at 5:30 in the morning when my phone started ringing. Calls that early pierce the night like fire alarms. They usually mean problems on the water, or boats that won't start, or other watermen who need a ride. I stretched, knowing the ringing would not stop, cleared my throat, and reached for the phone.

“Ned, this is Mabel Fergus,” she said. “Somebody swamped your boat.”

She didn't hesitate to see if it was me, or give any details, or prepare me for disaster. In fact, she used the word swamped, which every waterman knows means a deliberate act against your boat. I simply said, “Thanks Mabel, I'll be right there.” Explanations wouldn't help. There is no official to call when your boat goes down, especially at the pier. Police can't help. Firemen don't raise boats. No one is threatened. And a hundred of your best friends can't raise a boat. The only person who can help is someone who can be sympathetic. I would call Vinnie from my cell phone. He's no doubt up anyway.