Below the Surface

by Karen Harper

  She realized she was still nodding. “No,” she said, and shook her head side to side. There was more to tell, but she was hoping that bleeding out this much of the festering poison would help her get through tomorrow. How ridiculous were those courtroom dramas or funeral scenes, where the guilty party shouted out what they’d done in front of everyone.

  “Dad, Mom! He’s looking at me really funny, and he’s splashing me!” Jordan shouted. “Make him quit it! It’s his fault.”

  “That’s it!” Ben told them. “I’m coming in to play policeman and the first one of you who messes up is going to his room!”

  He leaped up and cannonballed into the deep end to the squealing delight of their sons. Amelia stared at the big splash he’d made as her son’s words—“It’s his fault…fault…fault…”—echoed in her head.

  “I picked this piece of dark wood since black’s the color of mourning,” Bree told Cole as he came into his back workroom with the pelican float from his car. She loved the rich smell of this well-lit workroom, piled high with various exotic woods in long trays. His workbench looked out over the far end of the marina next to the Grog Shop Restaurant. Cole had told her he ate a lot of his meals there, when he didn’t get takeout or delivery. A man who was dedicated to his work, she thought, just as she had been.

  “African wenge wood,” he said of the stark piece. “That’s a good choice. It’s very hard wood with not much grain.” He took a minute to attach the peach and yellow hibiscus and blue plumbago blossoms to it so they wouldn’t break up, then they headed out the back toward the Streamin’.

  At least it was a cloudy day. Sometimes she thought her hearing was not as acute as it had been at first after the lightning strike, but she was still overly sensitive to light. Perhaps that helped her to see better in low-vis water—Briana Devon, the X-ray-eyed underwater superwoman. Maybe that was why she had spotted the broken piece of Mermaids II and then the wheelhouse with Daria inside, when the other divers didn’t see things as clearly.

  The Streamin’ headed out into the bay at a good clip, as if she yearned for a race. Bree didn’t doubt that Cole could make this sloop move, even if it was dead calm. Bree and Cole had life preservers nearby, but she didn’t feel she needed one with him at the helm. Still, she warned herself, as the sails bellied out and they moved from the bay into the gulf, after all she’d learned about Daria since her death, she should know better than to totally trust anyone now. Love might never change but the trust at its foundation could.

  The wind tugged at her hair and shirt; they were almost flying. She loved to escape the land and ride the waves, but she could hardly escape her grief at sea. In a way, her sister was and always would be a part of the deep and its mysteries. This great water had given Daria joy and purpose, but it had taken her life—or so the authorities said. She might have drowned, Bree thought, but she was becoming more and more certain that the sea was not the real killer.

  She wondered if she should have let Daria’s remains be buried at sea. She could have agreed with the Hollimans’ Eternal Shells offer, but she couldn’t trust them. Too much the shysters, but then, she wasn’t certain who wasn’t. Someone, maybe someone close to Daria, and to Bree, too, could have caused her death.

  “You said you can find the spot by heart now,” Cole called to her.

  By heart, she thought. Yes, she’d always be able to find the spot she last saw Daria alive by heart, a broken heart.

  “It’s right about here,” she told him. “Just a sec, and I’ll eyeball the land coordinates.”

  She looked back toward shore and picked out the Naples pier and Gordon Pass to the south, then triangulated those by the reddish roof of the Ritz Carlton Hotel to the north.

  “Yes, this spot is good,” she told him, “but go a little farther south before you anchor so you don’t catch the turtle grass meadow. Which reminds me, I’ll have to get someone to come out here to check it with me Tuesday morning before my report to the commission that afternoon.”

  “You think you can handle the dive and the report alone—without Daria, I mean?”

  “Yes, I can,” she said, her voice strong. “I have to see that all through. Maybe it will flush someone out.”

  “Not with you as the bait! And I won’t let you dive alone. I’ll go down with you, if you promise to stay out of the wreck.”

  She nodded, but he wasn’t looking as he furled and tied the sails and dropped anchor. As she readied the wreath, he came to help her. How sore she felt from the beating she’d taken yesterday. She was turning black-and-blue—even greenish-gold—in places she couldn’t show Cole.

  She appreciated how he let her guide the placement of the wreath, just lifted it to keep its weight off her hands as she balanced everything on the side of the sloop. When the boat listed a bit toward their weight, he leaned farther aport, leaving her to bend over the side of the sloop alone.

  For one moment, Bree wasn’t sure she could bear to let it go. How would she ever get through the funeral if she couldn’t even let go of a wreath she’d made?

  She gently placed it on the water, threw the pelican float’s sixty-foot tether line in, then dropped the round metal anchor she had tied to the piece of wood. The float bobbed to the surface, its red Day-Glo rings bright and bold. The wreath looked lovely on the wood. It started away, then bobbed almost in place as it rode the waves.

  She was grateful that Cole gave her this moment alone, yet she longed to cling to him. Staring down into the gray-green depths, she mouthed the silent words, I love you, my Daria. I’ll always love you, but what did you do? What did you get mixed up in?

  She remembered again that she hadn’t heard a motor in the water that day. How had someone approached Mermaids II? Maybe in a sailboat?

  At that thought, she jumped when Cole came close again. They sat on the floor of the sloop with his back against the stern seat. He’d been sailing that day of Daria’s death, she thought. Others could have been, as well. That could be why she hadn’t heard a motor.

  When he pulled her into his arms, she leaned against him, grateful for his concern and strength. “Did you see any other sailboats out last Tuesday?” she asked. “Since the weather guys were really off that day, others—especially people with big sailboats—might have gone out.”

  “I saw a few, at least early. But they seemed pretty distant.”

  “From you or from this position?”

  “I get where you’re going, but I’m not sure how we’d check into that. Area marinas seldom keep track of when vessels permanently moored at their facilities put out, and a lot of sailboats, just like power boats, are in private berths up and down all the canals.”

  “I suppose,” she said with a sigh, “I could inquire of the civil air patrol, but they already put in so many hours. When Dave Mangold, my pilot friend from the patrol, gets back in town, I can have him ask around if any planes were flying the day of the storm and saw any watercraft of any kind. It all just seems like such a long shot. Cole, she must have known whoever approached her. I’ll bet whatever boat came up to her, she recognized someone and let them board our boat or get too close to her. It’s creepy to think of her out here in this exact spot, while someone crept up or tricked her somehow…”

  “Don’t think about it now. You’re here to honor her memory today. You need to relax before tomorrow.”

  She nodded fiercely and turned so she had her back against the inside of his knee for support. He had one arm around her waist; her bent legs were draped over his other one. It eased her lower back pain to lean into him, and it eased her heart just to touch him.

  “Cole, my voice of reason,” she said, putting her head on his shoulder. She knew she was setting herself up to be kissed: she hoped so, the cut on the inside of her mouth and sore muscles notwithstanding.

  “I don’t ever feel very reasonable about you,” was all he said before he bent to cover her mouth with his.

  It was their first real kiss of mutual, meshing needs and des
ires. He’d comforted her before; he’d protected her. Now she wanted more.

  The boat moved under them in a rhythmic cadence, and they seemed to roll with it, first one way, then the other, their weight toward her, then him. He slanted his mouth over hers and his hard hands pulled her closer. As she wrapped her arms around his neck, his free hand skimmed over her, shoulder, arms, waist, hips, thighs, back up to cup her breast. She arched under him, breathing with him. His merest touch seemed to heal all her body’s aches and pains, if not those of her heart.

  The Streamin’ yanked against its anchor and dipped its masts. The lines creaked and the waves rustled incredibly loudly.

  A ship sneaking up on us? Bree thought. As she jerked bolt upright, her head bumped his chin. She twisted away from him to look all around.

  “What?”

  “I just—sorry. I thought I heard something, that there was another boat. Sorry.”

  “Yeah, me, too. I wasn’t sure if that was the boat rocking or the entire world. I’d better bring her around.”

  Bree steadied herself as he scrambled for the tiller. She saw that the wreath took the push of the waves but stayed firmly in place. That’s what she would do, too, she vowed. Cole brought up the anchor and unfurled the mainsail. “Watch out, or you’ll see where we get the saying, Lower the boom.”

  She ducked and he brought the ship about and headed them back in. He’d handled both the sailboat and her skittish behavior smoothly. Amazing that she’d only been with this man off and on for five days, and yet felt she knew him. The same mistake she’d evidently made with Daria.

  15

  It was a blessing that the day of the funeral was cloudy with a sea breeze, or it would have made the temperature in the little church where Daria’s family stood in a receiving line unbearable. So many attended that the line came up the center aisle and snaked around the side, leading past the closed casket.

  “This funeral brings back memories of someone lost too young,” Sam Travers told Bree.

  She instantly felt on alert. Ric and Lance were with him. Bree stared hard at Ric, trying to see if he avoided her gaze. He didn’t, but his left cheek had a cut on the same side where she’d hit her attacker with the bottle. Of course, it could be from anything, and salvage diving was too often a contact sport.

  “Yes,” Bree said to Sam, deciding not to give in to his subtle badgering. “Very happy memories of my life with Daria, which I will always cherish. I wouldn’t want to let bitterness consume me. And I do thank you for all your help in the search for her.”

  “Oh, so nice of you to come…” she said to the next people in line as she turned away before Sam could fire another salvo. As if she had sent Cole a mental SOS, he suddenly appeared, shouldering Sam slightly aside and offering her a glass of water.

  “Thanks for being so thoughtful,” she told Cole as Sam glowered and moved on.

  “I heard,” Cole said, speaking quietly and quickly, “that Sam’s firm has taken a job in Sarasota to help demolish the supports of an old bridge, so he’ll be out of town for the next few weeks.”

  “Good! Sam would go anywhere in the state for a demolitions job. Ted used to talk about how his dad was a Vietnam War hero, setting charges to destroy bridges and underwater barriers to troop movements. His specialty has always been combat or commercial explosives. That’s probably made it much harder for him to accept that Ted’s death was from a bomb. I wish he could let it go, but I am starting to understand his pain.”

  Cole took her water glass and moved away again. He seemed to be everywhere in the room, yet kept an eye on her. Anytime she looked his way, he was watching, even when he had her two nephews practically hanging on to him in their mutual admiration society, which they had formed swiftly. That had deeply touched her. Cole was good with kids. Everything about him seemed so good.

  “Mayor Dixon,” she said, greeting the next person in line, “thank you so much for coming. Daria would have been honored…”

  During their wait to speak with the family, visitors viewed photos Bree had selected of high points in Daria’s life. It was hard to find ones that she herself wasn’t in, too. She made sure most of the early pictures had Amelia in them.

  “Josh and Nikki, you’ve been a great support through all of this,” she greeted the Austins as they exchanged hugs.

  “It’s the least we could do for an old friend of Josh’s,” Nikki said. “And for you, too, Briana. Oh, I’d like you to meet my father, Cory Grann from Clewiston. And I believe you’ve met his friend, Marla Sherborne.”

  Politics might make strange bedfellows, Bree thought, but this was quite a crew. Cory Grann was extremely handsome. He would have made a good Marlboro man, and he would have fit in a Clint Eastwood gritty Western. Yet he was dressed like the captain of a yacht with white slacks, a natty navy blazer and an ascot, no less. More than anyone else here, he seemed to be cool and collected as he gave his condolences. This, she thought, was the so-called sugar baron ecologists loved to blame for pollution runoff.

  “Oh,” Nikki said, gesturing toward a thirty-something man who brought up the rear of their group, “and this is Mark Denton, our campaign aide and pilot.”

  Bree shook his hand. His shake was so firm she fought to keep from wincing. She was still sore and had covered several bruises with makeup today. She noted that Nikki left out that Denton was also a bodyguard, but then others were leaning in, trying to hear what the celebrities of the gathering were saying.

  “Sorry for your loss,” he told her. His lips barely moved when he spoke, as if he was the master of the stiff upper lip. If he was skilled at PR, it was probably all in written releases and sound bites.

  Surprised that Josh hadn’t spoken, Bree turned to him. It wasn’t like him to be so quiet. He looked ashen. Either he was ill or he was grieving for all he and Daria had once shared. Tears in his eyes, he clasped her hand until Nikki put her arm in his and he abruptly let go.

  “We’re staying for the funeral,” Nikki told Bree. “And we’d love to have you visit us someday, especially if you want a change of scenery for a while. At our retreat near Clewiston, I mean—in Tallahassee we do nothing but run around in circles, both in different directions. But we have a house on my father’s grounds near Clewiston and Lake Okeechobee. Nothing but boring sugarcane for miles, but it’s amazingly relaxing. We could even send Mark to fly you over.”

  “It is just lovely there,” Marla put in.

  “That’s very kind,” Bree told them, deeply touched.

  “Sure, no problem, picking you up,” Mark Denton said as if to fill an awkward moment when Josh still didn’t speak. “My employers’ wish is my command.” Marla and Cory Grann were already talking to Ben and Amelia, and the line moved on.

  Friends and friends of friends went by in a blur. Bree had a chance to ask Daria’s accounting instructor if any of the students went out together after class, but he said he didn’t think so. She asked the same of Viv and Frank Holliman.

  “We suggested it once—twice, didn’t we, Viv?” he said.

  “But Daria always had to get home and left very promptly, though we did spend time chatting with her before class, when she was there.”

  “I saw her copy of your brochure,” Bree told them, still embarrassed she hadn’t believed them at first. “Eternal Shells looks like a fascinating opportunity, but I really needed to pass on it for my sister.”

  “After all, our earthly shells are delicate and we need to think in terms of eternal ones,” Frank said, quoting exactly a line from their brochure. “Well, keep it in mind for yourself—someday.”

  Bree could not shake her instinctively uneasy feeling around them. Despite what they had said about never meeting Daria after class, Frank was built a lot like her attacker—and perhaps like the man Daria had met out in the Glades. He could have worn a wig to help disguise himself, and he could have cheated on Viv. But surely Daria couldn’t have been attracted to him—at least, the Daria Bree thought she knew.

&
nbsp; After greeting guests, who must have numbered at least two hundred, and making sure that the reporters at the front of the church were kept at a distance, the family led everyone outside in back for the funeral itself.

  It was standing room only, after the family and closest friends filled the chairs that church volunteers had set up. The view of the gray-green bay and gulf beyond the coffin, then the pewter-hued horizon, was magnificent. Bree had left the photos inside, for they would just blow away, but she’d placed some of Daria’s favorite seashells and her diving mask on the casket next to the family’s spray of white roses, with the ribbon which read Beloved Sister and Aunt.

  James and Jordan were on Ben’s far side, swinging their little legs and shifting in their wooden seats. Briana was on the center aisle at Amelia’s right side, with Ben on Amelia’s left. Bree thought that Pastor Wallace said all the right things, comforting things, uplifting things. But she still felt so lonely and low.

  “I’ll read now from Psalm 107,” the pastor said as his simple black-and-white robe fluttered in the breeze.

  “Those who go down to the sea in ships,

  Who do business on great waters,

  They see the works of the Lord,

  And his wonders in the deep…”

  He went on reading about those at the mercy of the sea, who cry out in their troubles. He said everyone was grateful that they had not lost Briana that dreadful day, too. Was everyone grateful for that? she wondered.

  The pastor segued into a message on Daria’s too-short life, on the gifts she took from the sea and the gifts she gave the sea, including a mention of the report that would be made public tomorrow. “Daria’s sea grass project endeavored to protect God’s great and precious sea, just as God now protects her soul forever. Daria—with her twin sister at her side—loved God’s creation, both above these waters we see even now and far below their surface.”

  When Amelia kept fidgeting more than her sons, Bree realized she should have asked the pastor not to overplay their twinship, but then, he knew little about the third sister. So many people had remarked about how much Bree looked like Daria, how it was as if she still moved among them, and Amelia had looked more shaken each time she overheard that.