Skeleton Sea

by Dwiggins, Toni

Sandy said, softly, “I know you are.”

  Jake froze in the process of aiming his last dart. “Say what?”

  “I know you’re feeling second rate. I’m sorry. What would you have me do? About Lanny.”

  “Stop wiping his ass.”

  She suddenly felt close to tears. She would dearly love to stop wiping Lanny’s ass. Stop cleaning up his messes. Stop it all. She said, “Would you like to take over?”

  Jake let his throwing arm fall. “Christ Sandy, you really know how to take the righteous out of a guy’s argument.”

  She laughed, a short bark.

  He tapped his dart hand against his bare thigh. “So. You think he’s in big trouble, this time?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “How would I know?”

  She walked across the room and hitched herself up onto the billiard table. That’s all it was good for anymore. She regarded her brother. He was the best-looking of them all, even with the ridiculous green hair. She’d often thought his good looks were a curse, making life so easy for him he never felt the need to try. Grudgingly, she had to admit that wasn’t the only thing that messed up Jake Keasling. He was second rate, in their parents’ eyes. Didn’t work hard enough, didn’t show proper respect for the right things. Whether that was cause or effect of their parents’ judgment, it shaped him. And when they died, and she took over the estate and had to manage her brothers’ inheritances, she’d treated Jake the same way. As a screwup. And he played the role to a T.

  And here he stood playing at darts. Playing at whatever the hell he was playing at.

  She said, “You want to know why I brought Joao Silva to the cave, Jake?”

  His eyes widened. “Joao. Aren’t we Miss Portuguese Speaker.”

  “It’s his name.”

  “Get a little intimate, did you?”

  “You want the story? Or do you want to play the fool?”

  “Whoa, hard choice. Hmmm. The story.”

  She nodded. Smart choice. When it came to playing the angles, Jake always made the smart choice. She said, “I wanted to find out if what I thought I saw, I really did see. Which was Lanny taking something red out of Joao’s dive bag, on board my boat that day. When I confronted Lanny, he denied it. And that pissed me off. And worried me.”

  Jake nodded. She saw that he got it. Lanny was an innocent. Lanny didn’t tell lies.

  Except, he did.

  She continued. “So I tracked Silva down and talked him into coming back here. Told him I had his dive gear. Brought him to the cave. Scared him shitless about being an illegal. Fed him, watered him, dumped the porta-potty. Asked him about the red float.”

  “And?”

  “And he played dumb.”

  “So you got pissed and poisoned him.”

  She said, carefully, “What would that gain me?”

  “A diver who can’t talk. Who can’t report being kidnapped and held hostage by Sandy Keasling.”

  “A diver,” she said, “who now can’t tell me what kind of trouble Lanny’s gotten himself into.”

  She wanted another Coke. She needed the caffeine. Her headache was starting up. The Shitstorm again. Always. She had to admit she was playing her own angles, juggling The Shitstorm and her tugboat license and her growing fear that Lanny’s latest mess was going to blow back on her. The diver wasn’t the only one playing dumb. She’d been playing dumb for five years. Keeping that secret from Lanny—at least she bloody well hoped it was kept. She was playing dumb now, with Jake. She needed to know what Jake suspected. What Jake knew. What Jake had done.

  Maybe if she just told him everything. Honesty. And then he would tell her everything.

  She regarded her green-haired resentful brother.

  Honesty?

  He'd missed that boat.

  So play it the way it needed to be played.

  She said, “What about you, Jake? Did you find Joao in the cave? Maybe it was you who poisoned him.”

  “Me?”

  “You’re a Keasling! Keaslings do anchovies!”

  “Such a quick wit, Sandy.”

  She regarded him. He wore that green T-shirt with the Marine Mammal Research & Rescue logo. “Been out saving the mammals today?”

  He glanced down, as if he’d forgotten what he wore. “This morning. Another sea lion.”

  She said, “Red tide? Toxic chovies?”

  “Those of us in the know call it by its proper name. Harmful algal bloom. You interested in joining us?”

  “No.”

  “My bad. You don’t do volunteer work.”

  “Neither do you,” she said. “Unless there’s an angle. What’s your angle?”

  “I like sea lions. And pretty girls. Pretty girls like sea lions.”

  “I like connecting the dots,” she said. “Joao Silva gets poisoned from eating anchovies. Sea lion gets poisoned eating toxic chovies. Jake Keasling joins the rescue group and learns all about harmful algal blooms and toxic chovies.”

  “Learned about toxic chovies the same way you did, Sandy. Way back when. From Dad.”

  “Who called a red tide a red tide.”

  “Dad didn’t have the benefit of mammal-rescue training.”

  “My point, exactly.”

  “You’re missing a dot there, Sis.”

  “No I’m not,” she said. “Your group has a research program and they rely on volunteers to collect red tide samples—and animals up the food chain that bioaccumulate the toxins. Quote, unquote. Like anchovies.”

  “Whoa. Junior detective Sandy Keasling.”’

  “They have a website. I wanted to find out who all can get their hands on toxic chovies.”

  “Try the bait shop.”

  “One option. Going out there and snooping around red tides is another. You do that, Jake? You on the collection team?”

  “I've gone a couple of times. It's an on-call deal. You get called, you go.” He shrugged. “Me and about a hundred other volunteers up and down the coast. You want to grill them all?”

  “Just you, Jake. You have access to toxic chovies.”

  “Shit Sandy, what would poisoning that diver gain me?”

  “Good question.”

  “Are you really asking if I'm capable of attempted murder?”

  “You asked me. About a minute ago.”

  They stared at one another.

  Finally Jake said, “So, Keaslings don’t do murder. I’m down with that. You?”

  The sea snake in her head stirred. She wanted to walk away from this. The two of them talking murder. Who is and who isn’t capable. She'd heard it said that anybody's capable, if push comes to shove. Jake was waiting for her answer, without his normal smirk. She said, through the pain in her head, “Yeah I'm down with that.”

  “Cool.” Jake turned to head for the door.

  “Hang on,” she said. “I told you why I brought Joao to the cave. Now you tell me why you took my boat and got it scratched up.”

  He stopped. Turned to her. “We talking about what we talked about on the dock last Tuesday?”

  “We are. We’re talking about Doug Tolliver and your hot geologist saying the Sea Spray got scratched up the same way the Outcast got scratched up. Same time Robbie went missing.”

  “Ah, that.”

  “Yeah, that.”

  Jake raised his dart hand. “Make you a wager. I miss the board, I tell you what you want to know. I hit the board, you don’t ask me again about it.”

  “Deal,” she said, “only make it the bullseye. You hit the bullseye, I won't ask you again.”

  “Christ Sandy, I'm a lousy shot. Give me a ballpark chance.”

  She got off the billiard table and went to the couch and extracted the dart stuck in the cushion. She took position beside Jake. “Then let’s turn it around. If I hit the bullseye, you tell me what happened.”

  “If you miss?”

  She wouldn’t miss. “If I miss, you give me a good reason why you don’t know what happened.”

 
“That's a lose-lose, for me.”

  “Think of it as win-win, for Lanny.”

  “How so?”

  “You and I figure out what he’s gotten himself into. We save his sorry ass, if need be.” She shot Jake a glance. “You down with that?”

  “Yeah, shit, why not? Sea Urchins forever and all that. On one condition, though.”

  “What condition?”

  “You advance me the money for the new double kayak.”

  She hesitated, for show. She’d regretted changing her mind about the kayak, yesterday on the beach. Now, she thought, wouldn't hurt to cut him a break.

  “Okay, revised stakes.” She aimed. “I hit the bullseye, I buy you a new kayak. You tell me what happened to my boat. Lanny survives. Win-win-win.”

  “You're a real hardass, Sis.”

  She threw.

  It was a bullseye.

  “For the win,” she said.

  Jake went over to the fridge and got himself a Coke, groaning for show. He took a seat in the stained beanbag chair. He stretched out his legs, crossing them at the ankles. He popped the lid on the can and drank. Made a face. “This stuff’ll rot your teeth.”

  Sandy resumed her seat on the billiard table. “Beer rots your brain.”

  “Story time!” He belched. “Last Saturday night I was at Pedro’s knocking back some brewskies and I saw a lovely lady go outside to the balcony and so I followed her out, just to be sure she didn’t fall into the water. Turned out she already had company. So I found myself a lonely spot at the rail. While I was brooding on my sorry love life, I saw a boat heading out into the channel. The Outcast. I thought, that little shit Robbie is going out after squid. I thought, he must know where they’re running. So I abandoned all thoughts of beer and chicks and ran to the parking lot and jumped in my Jeep and drove to our docks.”

  Sandy said, in some disgust, “You drove drunk.”

  “A little buzzed.” He drained his Coke and crushed the can. “I couldn’t follow Robbie in a kayak so I borrowed the Sea Spray.”

  “Where’d you get the key?”

  “Where you hide the spare. Taped to the underside of your Captain’s chair.”

  She resolved to find a new hiding place.

  “So I put-putted our boat up the channel and out the harbor, figuring the Outcast had a head start. I couldn’t find her with a visual in the fog so I switched on your radar. Another thing I don’t have on a kayak.” He grinned. “There was only one radar target right where I figured Robbie to be. I followed. When I saw the Outcast blip on my screen stop, I stopped. Shut off the engine. Not close enough to see what Robbie was doing. Couldn’t see shit through the dark.”

  “You realize the Outcast would have radar too. Would have known you followed.”

  “Do I have idiot written on my forehead?”

  She refrained from answering that.

  “Yeah Sis, I realized Robbie might have a fix on me. He probably shut off his radar when he stopped—he sure didn't yell who goes there.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “Squid jigging, I guess. There was some noise. Thrashing around in the water noise.”

  “Any voices?”

  Jake hesitated. “Maybe. Low voices. Could have been his radio.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I sat there freezing my ass off debating if I should go back to harbor and get another beer at Pedro’s or go home and eat leftover pizza.”

  “What did you decide?”

  He tossed the crumpled Coke can toward the trash basket. Missed.

  Normally she'd tell him to pick it up but now she just waited.

  He said, “Finally heard the Outcast engine start up. I waited until he left then decided to go see whassup in Squidville.”

  “What was up?”

  “No more squid.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing.”

  “How’d you scratch my boat?”

  “Beats the hell out of me.” He gave her a straight-ahead look. He waited for her to buy it. “There might have been an old buoy in the water. Rusting. I might have bumped into it, looking for squid.”

  “Might have?”

  “Okay yeah, sure, there was. I didn't see it in time.”

  She stared at her brother. She didn't buy it. She didn't not buy it. “What about Robbie's boat?”

  “Same place. I assume he was as shitty a driver as I was.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I decided on the pizza. Headed for the harbor.”

  “No sign of the Outcast, along the way?”

  “Nope.”

  “Next day when you heard about the Outcast adrift, about Robbie going missing, didn’t you wonder?”

  “Yup. Didn’t really give a shit, to be honest. I assumed he went off looking for more squid and tangled with Moby Dick or something.”

  “Why didn’t you report what you saw to Doug?”

  Jake hesitated. Then said, “I didn’t see anything Doug could use. I didn’t know where the Outcast went after leaving Squidville.”

  “Why didn't you tell me?”

  “Didn't think you'd approve of my joyride.”

  “So you deleted the trip from my GPS track log?”

  “Yup.”

  “That’s it?”

  “You have it all now.” He mimed throwing a dart. “I’ll send you a link to the kayak soon as I get to my computer.”

  She nodded. A deal’s a deal. But she thought, he's holding something back. She could keep asking. And he'd keep saying you have it all.

  Jake got out of the beanbag chair and went to the closet.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Looking for something.”

  She said, “It's not there.”

  “The red float's not there.” He waded into the stuff on the floor and picked up the Checkers box. “This is.”

  She could not endure another game.

  He unhooked the bungee cord that held the box closed and flipped open the lid. There was no board, no game pieces. Instead, inside, swaddled in bubble-wrap, there was a pistol.

  She stared. “Where’d you get Dad's gun?”

  “In his dresser drawer. After they died. You told me to go through his stuff and take what I wanted. I took. Father-son legacy.”

  “Why did you hide it here?”

  “I didn't have any use for it.”

  Her headache went full sea snake. “And now you do?”

  “Uh, once you start wondering if your pizza is poisoned you get a little defensive.”

  “Do you know how to shoot?”

  He smiled. “Practice.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Doug Tolliver ushered us on board the police boat.

  “Your choice, port or starboard, ocean view from either seat.” Tolliver smiled at his own joke.

  Walter took port, I took starboard.

  Joining us was Tolliver’s sergeant, a taciturn young woman who headed for the cabin to take the helm. “Faith James.” She gave us a nod. “Yes, Faith’s my real name. No, you don’t need it to ride with me.”

  Walter chuckled.

  I appreciated the good humor. I had nothing to offer.

  Tolliver settled himself on the jump seat at the back railing. He planned to give us diving tips on the way.

  The police boat was a thirty-footer painted in crisp blue and white, everything in its place, antennae and nav gear bristling atop the cabin, ropes tightly coiled along the steel rails, bench cushions spotless, deck gleaming, tank rack shipshape, the rest of the dive gear stowed in a locker. The Breaker was a neatnik’s boat.

  As we left the harbor Tolliver explained that the boat had been named in a contest at the local middle school.

  As we motored into open sea, the Breaker showed its moves.

  Brawny and fast, at least with Faith at the helm.

  Tolliver beamed, his pompadour quickly destroyed by wind and sea spray.

  Walter hooked an arm over the railing and s
tuck his face into the wind, looking nearly as happy as Tolliver.

  I chewed fennel seeds.

  It helped that the day was warm and sunny, unlike the chilly fog on our last outing aboard Sandy Keasling’s boat. I preferred seeing where I was going. Today I could see ahead to the far horizon. I turned to check on the view behind us. The coastline was shrinking. The seascape was expanding, boats here and there.

  Next time I looked back, the boats were specks and the coastline had shrunk to a thin brownish line.

  I watched until the line disappeared.

  Blue sky, blue sea, nothing in the world but two blocks of blue.

  And us.

  “Couldn’t ask for better seas,” Tolliver said.

  We had waited two days to make this trip.

  Day before yesterday, after leaving the CalPoly campus and the inimitable Violet Russell, Walter and I had returned to our motel lab and put the final pieces of the puzzle together.

  We had Franciscan basalt that pointed to several areas on Cochrane Bank, we had Stylaster californicus that narrowed the range to a pinnacle and a reef, and we had Macrocystis pyrifera, giant kelp, that pointed to a small patch of kelp forest spanning the two targets.

  Today, the time had come to pay our targets a visit. Faith James had fed the coordinates into the Breaker’s Garmin chart plotter.

  Tolliver was talking diving and I was watching the view behind us when another speck of a boat appeared. I waited for it to grow into a recognizable shape. Sailboat, cruiser, harbor patrol, fishing boat, whale-watching boat?

  It maintained its pace, at a speck-like distance.

  After awhile I said, “Is that boat following us?”

  Tolliver went into the cabin and checked the radar display. He came back and took his seat. “Okay, we’ve tagged the target. We’ll watch its direction of travel.”

  “A big boat?” Walter asked. “A small boat?”

  “Hard to say. The material and shape of the target affects how large the onscreen blip appears. I’ve seen hundred-footers look smaller onscreen than fifty-footers. And then you get into the math, and that’s where I bail.” He shrugged. “Faith will keep an eye on it.”

  Sometime later I saw a new speck on the horizon, this time ahead of us.

  As we advanced, the speck expanded into a thin line.

  It put me in mind of the coastline when it had shrunk to a thin line.