Wreckers' Key (17 page)

“That’s what you have insurance for. Even if you were to lose, and it’s not likely, you’d come out of it okay.”

“I don’t think so. Not if I got branded negligent. It would kill my business. Nobody’d hire me after that.”

 
“Listen, we’re not going to let it happen. In the next few days, we need to put together a case that proves this guy is a scam artist. Right now, he’s claiming that he can’t go back to work because he’s suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.”

“You’re joking.”

“Nope. I told you the man is no brain surgeon.”

“I wish I’d never answered his goddamn distress call. I should have known better.”

“Honey, everyone who knows you knows that you can’t walk away from someone in trouble. You might try to talk tough, you might say you’re going to look the other way, but it’s just not in your makeup.”

“Maybe not forever, though. I really am tired of this. I keep saying it and nobody seems to be listening.
Gorda
and I are not married. Let’s get through this lawsuit, and then I’m going to make a decision.”

“Right. I’ll get the proof that he has shown a pattern of making fraudulent claims like the one against McDonald’s. You need to take a look at his police statement here”—she picked up a photocopied document and set it on the table in front of me—“and find the places where he has lied. You need to find people who will swear that his boat didn’t have all that expensive gear on it, that he lied when he took out his boat insurance.” She dropped a sheet of notebook paper on top of his statement. “This is where he lives.” She reached into a file cabinet next to her chair, drew out a small camera, and set it on top of the pile. “Finally, this is a digital camera. If you could get me some photos of our dirtbag friend doing something that proves he is not disabled from post-traumatic stress, it would go a long ways toward convincing him that he wants to drop the lawsuit.”

“Okay, I can do that. It’s going to make me feel better doing something.” I put the camera and folded papers into my shoulder bag. “In the meantime, I thought you’d like to know that I found a place for Catalina to stay for a while. Remember last night when Molly and I were talking about the people named Sparks who live on our old street? I went over there this morning, and the wife needs a live-in nurse. Catalina’s a nurse, but she’s not licensed to practice here, so she can’t go out and look for a job. They get a nurse and Cat gets a place to live and a job. Pretty good, eh?”

“Yeah. Now what’s the real story about Nestor? What happened down there?”

I started at the beginning and filled Jeannie in on the whole story, from the wreck of the
Power Play
to everything that had happened afterward. “This morning, I promised Catalina I would talk to Ted Berger for her, but I swear I don’t know what to say to the man.”
 

“Why don’t you start by asking him when he’s going to pay you for the job you just did for him?”

“Hey, that’s good. Then I suppose I can segue right into,
By the way, did you kill Nestor Frias?”

“It’s not like this is the first time you’ve tried to get someone to talk to you. Just get a feel for the man. You know that he lied to you about where he was that afternoon. Try to get him to talk about that.”

“I know. It’s just that it seems to me that the incident with the
Power Play
is really only part of a bigger picture. I’ve never known so many high-priced yachts to go aground and need salvage as we’ve seen in the past few months. And it seems I’m not the only one who has noticed.” I told Jeannie about my conversation with Tia at Sailorman. “You know those old stories about the days of the wreckers, back in the nineteenth century? I can’t help but wonder, is it possible someone is causing these wrecks today?”

“Now, that’s an interesting concept, Seychelle. But it doesn’t rule out Berger’s involvement. This could all be some kind of insurance scam.”

I looked at my watch and was surprised to see it was already nearly three o’clock. “Look, Jeannie, I’ve got to go. I promised Catalina I would get back to her today, and now I need to get her over to the Sparkses’ place.”
 

“Okay, but before you go, there’s one more thing. About your insurance. I tried, honey, but you are not going to find any better rates out there. You’re going to have to live with this increase. With the hurricane seasons we’ve been having lately and the current stats on the number of boats that are getting into accidents, you’re not going to find anything cheaper. I’m afraid that’s just the cost of doing business these days.”

“And maybe it’s one more reason for me to get out of this business one day real soon.”

It took less than an hour to load Catalina’s possessions into my Jeep. There was her suitcase, Nestor’s duffel, and an old-fashioned trunk that contained books and photo albums as well as Cat’s wedding dress. One of the young guys staying at the house helped me hoist her gear into the back of the vehicle. As we climbed into the front seats, I asked her if she had other things at her family home back in the Dominican Republic, and she shook her head. She told me that her parents were both dead, that she and Nestor had had that in common.

“And now my child will have no grandparents and only one parent.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that. I knew life wasn’t easy for single mothers. Jeannie was sacrificing any hope of a ladder-climbing professional life to stay home and be with her boys. Another friend of mine, Celeste, had been willing to risk her life for her daughter, Solange. Mothering was a talent. There had been a time once when I had contemplated it. Long before I met B.J., back when I was younger and I made a mistake. Before I’d realized it was a talent that didn’t run in my family.

“Cat, remember when you said that my friends and I are like a big family?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“As far as I’m concerned, you and your baby are now part of that family.”

When we turned down my old street, I saw B.J.’s black El Camino truck parked in front of Molly’s house. I beeped my horn and when Molly came to the door, I told her that I was taking Catalina to the Sparkses’ house; she should get B.J. to come haul her stuff inside. The Sparkses’ house was only two doors down from Molly’s, and by the time I had opened Catalina’s door and she had swung her legs out into the air, B.J. was there to offer her an arm and help her out of the high vehicle.

Arlen answered the door and while he showed B.J. where to put Catalina’s things, Molly and I took her in to introduce her to Sarah Sparks. I could see immediately that I had been right. They meshed from the moment Sarah took her hand and expressed her profound sorrow over Nestor’s death. She didn’t talk in euphemisms; she meant what she said. After a little while, Molly and I just backed out of the room. Catalina had found a home.

I drove Lightnin’ half a block up the street and parked in front of Molly’s. When I stepped through her screen door, the living room looked like it had been decorated with photos taken from a gynecologist’s examining room. Fetuses in various stages of development were on display, along with photos of instruments that must have come straight out of a torture chamber. B.J. was sitting cross-legged on the floor, leaning back against the couch, tapping the keys of a silver laptop computer that was set up on the coffee table. His face shone bright with excitement. I focused on him and tried to shut out any recognition of the pictures that littered the room.

B.J. would always be a student, no matter what his age. He already had a couple of degrees in classical studies or some damn thing, he had a black belt in aikido, and his last interest had been computers. He’d gotten this MacBook about six months ago and gone crazy talking about digital this and Internet that. While I did own an old laptop, I only used it for keeping the books for my business—like a slightly fancier adding machine.

“Hey,” he said without looking up. “We’ve just started a new online course called Antepartum: Embryology and Fetology. Molly’s got wireless so I can download all the photos we need right here.”

Molly’s long black hair was piled on top of her head and held in place with an enormous plastic clip that made her look a little like she had devil horns. She sat on the couch, and I couldn’t help but notice that her left leg was touching B.J.’s body from knee to ankle. She held up a color photo of a fetus. “See?”

The sight of the photo struck at me like a hot iron in my gut. Closing my eyes, I fought down the memory and the nausea. “Geez,” I said. I held my hand out in front of me. “Stop right there. I can’t take it. You know that. If you want me, I’ll be in the kitchen.” I walked straight through the living room.

I found my nephew standing in front of the refrigerator staring at the contents. I pointed a finger over my shoulder in the direction of the living room. “Is it always like that around here?”

“Pretty much,” he said without moving from his spot in front of the door.

“Doesn’t it gross you out? I just can’t understand what they think they’re doing. Do you get it?” I asked, looking over his shoulder, hoping to find something to snack on. He didn’t answer my question. We stood side by side staring at the little plastic tubs of sprouts and hummus, packages of some very dense-looking, dark bread, and

Baggies filled with an assortment of fruits and vegetables. “This is pitiful. Zale, you are seriously junk-food-deprived.”

“You’ve got that right.”

“Maybe we should freak out your mom and order a meat lover’s pizza.”

“Naw, I think they’re doing some stir-fry thing tonight. It’s not too bad.”

They this, they that. I’d thought I was past being jealous of Molly in a lover’s sense. But now she and B.J. had entered into this buddy phase. They were always studying together, cooking together, hanging out together. Was I being naive to think it meant nothing?

“Zale, I just don’t know about you. You actually eat their cooking? All this healthy food just might stunt your growth.”

He looked over his shoulder at me and screwed up one side of his face into an ugly grimace. “I just want to be a real boy,” he said in a goofy falsetto, then he grabbed two apples out of the crisper bin, tossed me one, and strolled out of the kitchen, his long legs taking him around the corner in an instant. I tried to reach him to pinch his ear, but he was too quick for me.

In the year since I’d first met Zale, he had grown nearly three inches in height. Now, as a fourteen-year-old, his voice was starting to change and he seemed to be all arms and legs, but he had a confidence and a sense of humor that made him seem much more mature than other teens his age. Pit and Zale had both shown a love of sailing early on, but for Pit it had started with surfing and then windsurfing. For Zale, it was competitive dinghy sailing, and he took it all much more seriously than my brother ever had. Qualifying for the Laser National Championship series up in North Carolina might have had something to do with that, too.

I took my apple and went out to Molly’s screened-in back porch. A flock of wild parrots were circling overhead, screeching and squawking, sounding like a chorus of squeaky hinges. A gray squirrel was playing hide-and-seek with me, peering first around one side of the trunk of the huge oak tree, then disappearing and popping up on the other side a few seconds later.
 
Late afternoon sunlight was casting a golden aura over the scene, making Molly’s backyard look like a magical place from a fairy tale.

When we’d first moved to this neighborhood here in Shady Banks, my family and Molly’s used to enjoy summer-evening cookouts in this backyard. It was mostly families that consisted of parents and children who lived in the modest sixty-year-old cinder-block houses on the street. Molly’s family sometimes included her Gramma Josie, but in the Sullivan household, we’d been told all our grandparents were dead.

I’d learned recently that it had been my grandmother Faith who had worked behind the scenes to find the waterfront house my family lived in and make sure it was available at a price my parents could afford. My mother, Annie, never knew. She wouldn’t have accepted help from her mother. They’d argued when she’d married Red and never spoken again, and of course once my mother died it was too late for Grams to apologize to Red. So we three kids grew up thinking our grandparents were all dead—until last year.

I was slowly getting to know Faith Wheeler. Even now, after almost a year, I was still working on getting comfortable with the way my family had grown. My brother Pit was trying to transition from friendly uncle to father, while I was spending one night a week eating dinner at my grandmother’s house. And I was learning about the family’s long line of mothers who had pretty much struck out in the mothering department. There wasn’t a reason in the world to think I’d be any different.

I liked the extended family I had now—Grams, Zale, my brothers, Molly, Jeannie, B.J. And I didn’t have to give birth to have this family.

I heard footfalls behind me and then felt fingertips slide over my shoulders, his firm chest pressed against the back of my head. He kneaded the muscles on either side of my neck, and though I know it should have made me feel more relaxed, given my current circumstances, it made every little nerve ending in my body start screaming for sex. It was as though every place where his body touched mine, pure heat flowed from him. He bent down and kissed my ear, and I bolted out of the chair.

“Jesus, B.J., unless you think it’s a good idea to tear our clothes off right here, you’d better slow down and—” When I turned around he was laughing.

“You are funny, Sullivan.”

“I hate it when you laugh at me.”

“I know. Do you want to talk about what’s bothering you?” He was leaning against one of the frames that supported the screened-in porch. I noticed the light dusting of black hairs on his forearms, the clean white half moons on his fingernails, the promise of strength in the breadth of his chest. At that moment, talking wasn’t really what I wanted to do with the man. I wanted to be the one sitting on the couch with him, snuggling, not Molly.

“No.”