Death in the Polka Dot Shoes (32 page)

“I'm in the boat,” I barked.

“Well, get your ass back here,” Vinnie said. “Half the people in town think you killed Simy and the other half thinks Simy killed you. Which is it?”

“Neither, but I think Simy was involved in Jimmy's death,” I said. “Tell Martha I'll be over just as soon as I get back.”

“When?”

“It's clouding up, but I should be back in a half hour. Meet you at the Bayfront.”

“OK,” Vinnie said. “Sun has turned to fog at my house. Hurry it up.”

“I'm on my way.”

I turned the
Martha Claire
to the west and started threading my way through the crab pot buoys. The fog was collecting just off the Holland Point oyster beds, forming a long wall of grey behind me. But I couldn't be more than a mile from the mouth of Jenkins Creek. I reached for the throttle and headed for the red channel markers.

Over my left shoulder I noted a speedboat, out early for a recreational boater, but bearing down on me from the open water. Must be trying to beat the fog home. His angle seemed wide and I calculated I would reach the channel ahead of him and he could fall in line behind me in heading for the marinas. It was near high tide and the water almost reached the lip of the jetty that protected the entrance to the harbor. I swung the
Martha Claire
a little wider to be sure I missed the rocks when I heard the first shot, like a firecracker, somewhere behind me.

I jerked my head around and the speedboat had changed course, heading directly for me. Two more shots and I reached for the binoculars to see who the hell was shooting. But the shooter was too close and I needed to escape. I let the glasses fall to the deck, grabbed the wheel with both hands, and swung the boat hard to starboard. Full throttle and the
Martha Claire
shuddered as her bow rose in the air. No way my old car engine could outrun a high powered speedboat. Actually, the
Martha Claire
probably couldn't hang together at a steady twenty knots, if I could even get her up to twenty knots.

The speedboat passed behind me and one shot rammed through the transom. A quick glance showed me a familiar face, black hair streaming over a light blue windbreaker. It was that bastard Blenny Man. It was still a quarter mile to the harbor. And this stupid guy might follow me all the way to dock. But at least I now knew the enemy. I figured a couple more shots and he might be out of bullets, assuming he brought the gun out just for this purpose. If he happened to store ammunition on the boat, I was out of luck, but that seemed unlikely.

I headed back out to the fog. I figured I couldn't really hide in the fog, or out run him, but at least he might have trouble aiming. The fog carried a slight mist and I figured that might work in my favor, so I started to circle into the wind. I hoped to put the wind and the mist in his eyes. I heard two more shots but there was no indication where they hit, if at all. I didn't hear any crash of the wood, or shattering glass, so I guessed he missed entirely. I had heard that sometimes in an adrenaline rush of this kind I might not even feel a bullet if it was a superficial hit, so I looked down at my legs and arms. Nothing. By my calculations, he had fired six times. Although I was a little uncertain about the first two or three shots.

I decided to take a chance and make a run out of the fog. I could hear the Blenny's engine revving behind me, so I looked at the compass and locked on the familiar heading that had taken me home so many times in the past, the one that should take me straight into the Jenkins. Blenny had moved off to my starboard side, maybe to cut me off when we cleared the fog. I figured that was good, probably meaning he was out of bullets.

I pushed the throttle down so hard I almost caught my finger on the dash. As I did, the fog thinned. I was almost at the edge. I strained my eyes, praying to miss the jetty and yet be close to the creek. Suddenly, I could see movement ahead, a line of white spots on the horizon, slowly taking shape in my vision. A line of work boats spread across my bow, like a row of swans, elegantly moving toward me like warships in the dawn.

“Yes!” I screamed. “Over here.”

The
Loose Goose
, the
Uncle Duck
, the
Free Wheeler
, the
Stormy
Petrel
, the
Sister Nancy
and the
Fish Forever
were lined up like the Sixth Fleet and racing toward me.

“Yes! Yes!” I screamed. I swung my arms wildly in the air, as if the boys of Parkers might miss me if I didn't.

I was saved. I felt the wind go out of my sails; my muscles relaxed as if a great storm had suddenly departed. But the pounding and gunning noise of the Blenny Man's boat was still in my ear. It had disappeared in the excitement of the six white apparitions ahead of me. When I saw them my head became dizzy and numb, crowding out all rational thought, eliminating any ability to assess my situation, and forcing my ears to hear only the six boats I willed to be at my side.

Now I looked up, and the Blenny's engine was louder than ever. He was coming for me and I screamed, “You bastard!” Then the bow of his boat raised up and over the side of the
Martha Claire
. I only saw it for an instant. There was a black stripe around the waterline of his boat that looked like a shark was rising to devour my boat. I thought I was in a movie, an unreal scene in which one boat tried to cut another in half. Then I was in water. Wood shattered and the cedar timbers, hidden for forty years by innumerable coats of paint, stuck up like a million toothpicks, as raw as the day they were cut from trees. It was as if someone grabbed my boat like an ear of corn and simply snapped it in two. The bow of the intruder stopped just short of my legs, but water was rushing in every corner, creating dozens of waterfalls over timbers and seats and debris. My last image was whitewater and foam shooting in every direction. The boat sank straight down and away from my body. I could hear people yelling about life jackets and nets and Neddie. They were shouting for me, I thought, and the world went dark.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Simy began to toss and turn soon after Ned left, pulling the silk sheet over her shoulders and stretching her legs after a night of exercise, but she could not shake the reality of her dreams, that unquenchable moment when she approached Jimmy Shannon in the stern of the
Scat-back,
swung the paddle from her shoulder, hitting him solid in the back of the head. He toppled into the water as easily and quickly as a toothpick off the shelf. The second his body hit the water, almost on top of the big tuna, she started screaming until she woke up. Thankfully. She stared at the ceiling, her mind frozen on the mental portrait of Jimmy struggling with the leader line and the gaff. She saw his feet clear the gunnels, and although this sequence had appeared in her mind many times, this was the first time she saw the shoes – her polka dot and plaid sneakers.

She raised her head and the memory flashed before her like a digital photo, of Ned looking in her closet, only for an instant, then he closed the door and the light extinguished. Oh no. What if he saw the shoes?

Simy rushed her feet to the floor, kicking aside the high heels so rapidly discarded hours ago, and she moved around the foot of the bed to the closet. She opened the door, hoping for a miracle, but it was not to be. The light clicked. There, in the back, were the shoes, and she knew her life was over. From that moment her morning flashed by in a rush of underwear, blue jeans, a tee shirt and sandals. She grabbed the phone, and dialed the number she could not forget, no matter the hour.

The Blenny Man answered on the second ring. He wasn't quite up this early in the morning, when the dark clouds still hid the stars and the moon peeked through the haze like a child in saw-grass. But he was always alert to trouble and a phone call in the dark was a clear signal.

“Hello,” he groaned.

“Ray, this is Simy. Ned knows.”

“Knows what?”

“Knows I was in the boat,” she said.

“What happened?” Ray asked, trying to clear his thinking.

“I just told you. Ned was here and I think he saw the shoes.”

“What do you mean?” Blenny demanded. “You said you trashed the shoes.”

“I did,” Simy said. “Jimmy's shoes. In the dipsy dumpster. But not my matching sneakers.”

“What matching sneakers? What are you talking about?” Blenny asked.

“Listen to me, you goddamn idiot. No don't. I don't even care if you can't figure it out. It's over.”

“Simy, what about the shoes?” Ray demanded.

Simy left the phone silent for a moment, enough to emphasize her impatience and disgust. Then she started.

“When Jimmy hooked into the tuna, he was pretty relaxed in the big chair with the rod holder. We had both kicked off our shoes and they were scattered about the deck. Jimmy grabbed the rod the second the tuna struck. He reeled in and let it out. Then he braced his feet on the rail of the boat and he fought the fish all over the damn ocean. But the rail hurt his feet so he stretched his legs to reach his shoes. He got mine instead. He never let go of the rod; he just drove his feet into my tennis shoes, and braced himself again.”

“Jesus Christ,” Blenny exclaimed.

“That's why I had his shoes when I left the boat. The problem is, I forgot I had another pair of those mix and match shoes at home.”

Blenny understood at that point. “How could you be so damn dumb?” he yelled. “How could you forget about a polka dot shoe? And what's Ned Shannon doing in your house?”

“Go to hell, Ray!” she screamed.

“Shut up Simy!” he yelled with croaky morning voice. “I'll take care of Ned Shannon. You get out of town. Go and don't come back.”

Blenny slammed his phone, and Simy slammed her phone. Then she slumped on the edge of her bed and cried tears of anger that she had ever accepted Blenny's blood money to commit a crime. How had she ever gotten involved with this murdering little bastard? How incredible. Now she was the murderer and calling Blenny names. She had told herself it was murder, over and over, but it didn't seem to stick. Yes, she hit Jimmy and knocked him overboard. She got the check for ten thousand dollars. And she missed Jimmy on Monday morning when his boat never left the Bayfront slip. But murder? It just wouldn't compute.

She thought she understood why she did this thing. She liked Jimmy, and hell, she liked Martha too, from their years together in Parkers School, in the Methodist Church, at the bar. This was just a case of her needing the money, and Blenny recognizing her position.

She wondered why she seduced Ned. Was there some dark and ugly demon that drove her to take risks, some love of danger that lurked in her personality? She had completely forgotten about the matching shoes, of course, but even without them how could she make love to the brother of the man she destroyed?

Simy raked the two shoes out of her closet and put them on the edge of her bed. They were like new. Barely worn. Perhaps never. She remembered putting them together just for the trip with Jimmy. She thought they would be unique, clever, for a man who owned his own boat and had a thriving business. Now they sat on her bed like headstones inscribed with the word, Murder, on each toe.

I don't deserve this, Simy thought. I don't deserve to go to jail, to be humiliated in front of my friends.

She knew that by mid morning, in just a few hours, everyone at the bar would be expressing their disbelief. She even thought about that idiot “Schooner,” who sat at her bar every day and slobbered his vicious views right and left down the bar. He would be there soon, wearing a white tee shirt with Schooners Electric on the front and a two-masted ship on the back. She could hear him yelling, “Do you believe it, that bitch was serving me beer right here. For ten years. She could have killed me, and shoved me overboard. My God, who can you trust these days?” And all the boys would laugh, but they would be nervous, knowing that any one of them would have gone fishing with her, and more. And they would be more thoughtful than Schooner, at least until the beer flowed more freely later in the day, then they would grow belligerent and brag about knowing all along that the bitch was a man hater, their favorite term.

Why run? Simy thought. Where to? I have no family, no money for hotels, the cops will always find me.

Her mind lingered on every option, and they all seemed hopeless. Maybe she could get a day, but little more. And as each idea was rejected, the recurring dream of knocking Jimmy off the boat filled her head, the one that first surfaced when she returned from Hatteras.

She had hidden herself on the
Scatback
while the Coast Guard searched the sea for Jimmy's body. And when the
Scatback
berthed she had slipped off just before the Coast Guardsmen climbed aboard and started their search of the boat. She figured the Captain would tell on her. He was only a boy. But running was the only option, and she took it, through the marina parking lot to a nearby convenience store. She took off Jimmy's shoes that she had put on at the last moment, and threw them in the dumpster. She walked into the store barefoot, bought a pair of flip flops for less than three dollars, and headed for a bus stop, willing to go anywhere. It took her three days and four buses to get back to Maryland. And every time her eyes slipped shut, she dreamed of Jimmy and running, running so fast she fell, and then her legs would grow heavy and she couldn't move. Each step was as if chained to the ground. And then she would wake up. But at least then she had a goal, to get home, and she knew she could do it. Now, this morning, all certainty of anything was gone.

She just sat on the edge of her bed, as the first awareness of a barely audible siren floated to her ears. It was for her and she knew it. She breathed a sigh, pulling in the stale air from her bedroom. Escape seemed impossible. She knew it would be a local boy in the squad car. Probably Steve or Mort, both high school classmates wondering what on earth Simy had done now. When the Arrest-on-Sight warrant came in, they were both on the night shift. But it was like seeing a family name come across the ticker. They knew Simy all right, personally and well. They had both driven their cruiser past her house, not for an arrest, but for a glimpse that might lead to a conversation. Now they were screaming through the fog under orders to be alert for an armed and dangerous criminal.