Skinny Dip (28 page)

Spare me, Chaz thought. A photograph, taken when Joey was about eighteen, accompanied the announcement. Now the phone was ringing off the wall and that New Zealand nutcase, Corbett, had left a pushy message telling Chaz to write up a five-minute speech.

“You better damn well care what Red says,” Tool warned.

“Oh yeah?”

The deterioration of Chaz’s mental state had failed to shake his hope that the last will and testament in Detective Rolvaag’s possession was authentic, and that ultimately he’d be inheriting $13 million from Joey’s estate—at which point he could say adios to Samuel Johnson Hammernut, and thereafter never set foot in that godforsaken sump known as the Everglades.

“He says it’ll look real bad,” Tool went on, “you don’t show up at your own wife’s service.”

“I don’t care how it looks. I won’t go.”

Chaz’s nerves were still jangled from the helicopter blitz, which in his memory loop now seemed less like the chase scene from GoodFellas and more like the flying-monkey scene from The Wizard of Oz. Meanwhile, Red Hammernut had offered no response to Chaz’s accusatory phone call from the levee, and the uneasy silence only added to a cascade of anxieties. What a psychological pounding Chaz had endured since that night on the Sun Duchess—the creepy breakins at the house; the lurking detective; the witness turned smartass blackmailer; the Ricca crisis; and now mysterious spy choppers!

Chaz’s current game plan was not to leave the walled confines of West Boca Dunes Phase II until the rest of the fucking world stopped picking on him.

“I won’t go to the service,” he repeated with ill-advised defiance.

Tool capped the jug of Mountain Dew, calmly stepped up to Chaz and decked him with it. When he tried to get up, Tool bonked him again. The second blow busted a seam in the plastic bottle, unleashing a stinging green fizz that sprayed Chaz flush in the face. Tool jerked him off the floor and said, “Somebody’s ringin’ the doorbell. Get rid of ‘em.”

Chaz thrashed his head violently, collapsed to his knees and scuttled like a wounded crab beneath the kitchen table.

Tool sighed. “Swear to God, I wisht I’d had your sorry ass in one a my tomato crews.”

He trudged to the front door and flung it open. The cop was standing there, holding a briefcase. Tool nodded him inside.

“Is Mr. Perrone here?” Karl Rolvaag asked.

“In the kitchen.” Tool spun on a booted heel and headed to his bedroom for a snooze.

The detective found Chaz rocking in a fetal position beneath the table. “Bad day?” he asked.

“Stomach problems.” Chaz was relieved that his reflex to lie was unimpaired.

Rolvaag joined him on the floor. “I’ve got a couple of questions that can’t wait.”

“What else is new.” Chaz pawed miserably at his burning eyelids.

“Your wife had an American Express card.”

“So do the frigging Muppets.”

“Where is Joey’s?” the detective asked.

“Like I told you before, I got rid of all her stuff. Everything,” Chaz said. “It was too painful having it around the house. The credit card was probably in one of her purses that I threw away.”

“Which purse? The one she had on the cruise?”

“How should I know? I tossed ‘em all.”

“Any chance that the card and her driver’s license were stolen?” Rolvaag asked.

Chaz uncurled slowly and rose to a sitting position. He thought about the breakins—wouldn’t it be just his luck if the blackmailer had rifled through the boxes in the garage and found Joey’s AmEx?

“Reason I ask, the card has been used several times since your wife disappeared,” the detective said.

“Not by me!”

“Mostly for ladies’ apparel, makeup, that sort of thing.”

Chaz was honestly baffled. He hoped that it showed.

“Would any of your wife’s friends do something like that? Or any of your friends?” Rolvaag asked.

Chaz knew what the detective meant: girls Chaz might be boffing on the side. He said, “How would they get hold of her card? I’d have to be a complete idiot!”

Rolvaag’s expression indicated that the possibility had occurred to him.

It had to be the blackmailer, Chaz thought. Or maybe Ricca. Who else had been inside his house and could have swiped Joey’s American Express card?

“Hey. What about Mr. O’Toole?” Chaz blurted eagerly.

The detective smiled. “I can’t see him in a Burberry bikini, but you never know.”

“Well, maybe he’s got a girlfriend,” Chaz said, thinking: And maybe someday cows will play lacrosse.

“Hey, you know what? I bet Joey’s credit card got stolen on the cruise ship,” he said excitedly. “Those cabin attendants, they all had master keys to the staterooms.”

Rolvaag conceded it was possible. “In any case, you might want to notify American Express and cancel your wife’s account.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Chaz said, although he’d never get around to doing it. In idle moments he would find himself daydreaming about the many slender, dark-skinned beauties who worked aboard the Sun Duchess, and wondering which of them was now lounging on a beach in Aruba, sunning herself in a new Burberry two-piece.

When Rolvaag returned to the office, Captain Gallo intercepted him at the door. “Mrs. Perrone’s brother is here. He looks like he’s auditioning for an Outback commercial.”

Corbett Wheeler stood in the waiting area, chatting earnestly with a spindly, gap-toothed woman whose crack-addled offspring had just been caught stealing the air bags out of a marked police cruiser. Wheeler wore a wide-brimmed hat and a long cowboy-style coat, and he carried a wooden staff that looked sturdy enough to pound fence posts. When Rolvaag walked up and introduced himself, Wheeler thrust a large brown envelope at him.

“My sister’s will,” he said. “The real will” “Let’s go back to my desk. You want some coffee?” Joey’s brother idly leafed through a book of mug shots while Rolvaag studied the old will. It divided Joey’s fortune among several charities and conservation groups, the largest share going to the World Wildlife Mission. The detective took out the document that had been sent to him and carefully compared the two signatures. Although they were not identical, they weren’t so dissimilar as to rule out the newer one as a forgery.

Corbett Wheeler held up the mug-shot album and asked, “Who are these people?” His expression was that of an anthropologist who had stumbled upon evidence of a lost tribe.

“Known burglars,” Rolvaag replied.

“That’s amazing. These are only the known ones?”

“Just the ones who work the beaches. We’ve got four more volumes that cover the rest of the county.”

Corbett Wheeler closed the album. “That lady I was talking to earlier—is her son’s picture in here?”

“If it’s not, it will be.”

“Lord. How do you do this every day without going mad?”

“Actually, I’m moving back to Minnesota.”

“Good for you. And they’ve got no crime up there?”

“Sure, but it’s seasonal,” Rolvaag said. “Breaking and entering is hard work when it’s twenty below. The crowbar tends to freeze to your fingers.”

He laid the two wills side by side on the desktop, so that Joey’s brother could examine the signatures. “I’m no expert,” Corbett Wheeler said, “but yours looks like a trace job.”

“A pretty good one, if it is.”

“Well, Chaz Perrone has had plenty of opportunity to practice.” Corbett Wheeler was well aware that the fake will had been drawn up by Mick Stranahan’s shyster brother-in-law, then signed by Stranahan with deliberate though subtle imperfections. Corbett had a role to play, as Stranahan did.

“Joey wouldn’t leave a penny to Chaz. Take my word for it.”

“I wish I could,” the detective said.

“Meaning you haven’t got enough to arrest him.”

“Correct.”

Corbett Wheeler shrugged. “Too bad. But you know something? I’m a firm believer that what goes around comes around.”

Rolvaag thought of Chaz’s dicey status with Red Hammernut, but he said nothing. “Would you mind if I came to the service?”

“Noon tomorrow. Be my guest.” Corbett Wheeler leaned closer. “The bereaved widower will be delivering a eulogy.”

“I can hardly wait.”

Joey’s brother stood up and shook Rolvaag’s hand solidly. “Thanks for trying.”

“It’s been a tough case, unfortunately.”

“What happened on that cruise ship was no accident, believe me. That lowlife yuppie turdhopper shoved my little sister overboard.”

Rolvaag said, “That’s what I think, too. Proving it is the pisser.”

He accompanied Corbett Wheeler to the waiting area, which had been taken over by a troop of visiting Boy Scouts. Rolvaag himself had been a Scout when he was a teenager, back in the Twin Cities. His most enduring memory was of the day he’d nearly sliced off his thumb while whittling a miniature totem pole.

“They do any sheep farming up in Minnesota?” Corbett Wheeler asked.

“Yes, I believe they do.”

“You should give it a try, Karl, if you ever burn out on police work. The lamb is a universal symbol of innocence, you know.”

With that, Joey Perrone’s brother raised his burl walking stick, pushed open the door and walked out.

After sleeping with Mick Stranahan, Joey concluded that her physical relationship with Chaz Perrone had not been as exceptional as she’d thought. While Mick wasn’t as robotically durable as her husband, he was far more attentive, tender and enterprising. For Joey it was something of a revelation. With Mick, there was no furtive peeking at his own clenched buttocks in the mirror, no collegial exhorting of his manhood, no self-congratulatory rodeo yells when he was finished. In Chaz’s embrace Joey had often felt like a pornographic accessory, one of those rubber mail-order vaginas. With Mick, she was an actual participant; a lover. The orgasms had been quake-like with Chaz, but then he would immediately demand to hear all about them; he was always more interested in the reviews than in the intimacies. With Mick, the climax was no less intense, but the aftermath was sweeter, because he never broke the mood by asking her to grade his performance. It wasn’t only because he was older and less egocentric than Chaz Perrone. No, Mick had manners. He knew how to stay in the moment.

Joey lay her head on his chest. “It sure was nice of Corbett to leave us alone for the afternoon.”

“A gentleman and a scholar,” Stranahan murmured sleepily.

Corbett Wheeler had taken the Boston Whaler up to Virginia Key. From there a car service was supposed to ferry him to Fort Lauderdale for a meeting with Detective Rolvaag. Joey had offered Corbett the keys to the Suburban, which was parked in Coconut Grove, but he’d said no thanks. He feared that he might maim or murder somebody in a traffic altercation.

As soon as the skiff had slipped out of sight, Joey and Mick jumped into bed and camped there. They remained comfortably entwined even when a squall blew across the bay, banging the warped wooden shutters of the house and whipping rain through the window screens.

“I could live out here forever,” she said later, when the sun peeked out, “not that I’m inviting myself.”

Stranahan said, “Consider yourself invited. But think about it first.”

“You don’t want me?”

“More than anything I do. There’s just not much to do around here. Some people find they need more than a sea breeze and a Kodak sunset.”

“Some women, you mean,” Joey said.

“Hell, I don’t even have a dish for the TV.”

“Then that’s it, buddy. We’re through!”

Stranahan tugged her close and kissed the bridge of her nose. He said, “Think about it first. Please?”

“Geezer.”

“Hey, I meant to tell you. That was a brave thing you did, getting back on that ship the other day.”

Joey told him not to change the subject. “But, I admit, you looked damn sexy in the blue blazer.”

“An historic moment,” he said, “never to be repeated.”

“Well, I appreciate the sacrifice.”

“You looked pretty hot yourself in that silky little number.”

“Dirty old man,” Joey said.

Boarding the Sun Duchess again had been nerve-racking and eerie. The deck was lower than the one from which Chaz had tossed her, but the view staring down was the same—terrifying. Joey was still amazed that she’d survived her plunge to the sea. She had never been a religious person, but ever since that night the concept of a beneficent and all-seeing God seemed not so implausible.

“Sometimes I can still feel Chaz’s hands around my ankles.”

“I wish I could make you forget,” Stranahan said.

“They were so cold, like he’d held them in a bucket of ice,” she said. “Mick, is this brilliant plan of ours really going to work? Because I’m not so sure anymore.”

“It’s not too late to pull the plug. From what I saw of Chaz in the canoe, he’s pretty much off the rails already.” Gently, Stranahan rolled Joey over onto her back. He propped himself on one elbow and looked down at her. “We could go see that detective tomorrow morning. Take our chances in court.”

She shook her head. “I can’t risk it. Chaz is way too slick.”

“He could’ve fooled me.”

“Get a couple of women on the jury and watch out,” she said. “He’s got a way of working on the fairer sex. I’m living proof—barely living proof.”

Stranahan said, “Okay. Then we go ahead like we planned.”

“Right.”

But Joey was queasy with doubt. What would her husband do when she surprised him? Try to bullshit his way out of it? Run away? Break down and blubber like a baby? Keel over from cardiac arrest?

Attack her?

Chaz’s reaction was impossible to predict, but Joey knew exactly what she intended to say; the questions had been gnawing at her since that long night at sea. She had come to believe that rage was what had kept her afloat all those hours, kept her clinging to the bale of pot— furious at Chaz, furious at herself for marrying such a beast.

“Did I tell you about the poem?” she asked Stranahan. “It was the night he proposed. We were doing dinner at my apartment. He brought me a love poem that he swore he’d written himself. And me, the classic airhead blonde, I believed him.”

Stranahan said, “Let me guess where he stole it. Shelley? Keats?”

“Get serious, Mick.”