The Shark Club

by Ann Kidd Taylor

  Hazel wedged herself between me and Daniel.

  “I’m sure I could manage to leave work for a funeral,” he told her.

  “He’s right,” Nicholas said. “I really should get back.” He said his good-byes and headed to the double doors that led to the dining room.

  “Daniel,” I said under my breath. “Why would you do that?”

  “Why do you care so much?” he answered.

  I followed Nicholas into the dining room, where a handful of staff were setting up the tables for dinner. When I called to him, he stopped, but didn’t turn around.

  “I’m sorry. I was going to tell you. I just wanted to do it in person. I e-mailed you this morning to see if you were back and then the call came in about the shark, and you were there. I still can’t believe you were there.”

  He turned and his face was creased not with anger, but hurt.

  “It happened after you left for England,” I said.

  Nicholas shifted his gaze toward the windows that looked out on the gem-colored Gulf. I waited for him to say something, but he didn’t.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again. “You had an expectation . . . a reasonable expectation that we would . . .”

  “Maybe I should’ve seen this coming—you and Daniel. The way he looked at you at the market that day, the way he looked at me, like I was a threat to him.” He broke off. “The three of you, though, you look like a happy family.” I heard the bitterness in his voice and I felt ashamed.

  Glasses clinked nearby. The snap of a tablecloth.

  “Shit,” Nicholas said. “My car is at the marina.”

  “It’s getting late and we haven’t eaten all day. You stay at the hotel tonight—it’s on the house. I’ll take you to your car in the morning.”

  “I’m sure Daniel would be keen on that.”

  “Come on, I’ll help you get checked in.”

  “Maeve. Really, I can find the front desk.”

  He started to walk away, then turned back. “I could’ve competed with Daniel,” he said. “But not with his little girl.”

  “Nicholas,” I said, then stopped, not knowing how to respond to that. I didn’t want to defend how I felt about Hazel. I couldn’t help that Daniel had a daughter; I hadn’t expected to fall in love with her, too.

  He waited there a moment before striding off, leaving me alone in the now empty room. Watching him leave was harder than I wanted it to be.

  Twenty-five

  The television reporter and cameraman from WINK News in Fort Myers arrived at the hotel the next morning before sunrise, well before the breakfast hour. I met them outside the delivery entrance, while Nicholas and Perri waited in the kitchen, sipping coffee.

  I watched through a haze of darkness and humidity as the reporter, Leigh Davis, changed into a pair of on-air heels beside the news van, then clicked across the pavement to the delivery door, trailed by the cameraman, who lugged two cases of equipment. My stomach fluttered with nervous anticipation.

  Leigh had once covered Perri’s annual costume bash. Out of all the stations I’d called last night, she was the only reporter who’d called me back.

  “Thanks for coming so early,” I said as they reached the landing. “And I hate to rush this, but we really have to be done before the breakfast staff arrives.”

  “I think we can do this in twenty minutes,” she said.

  She had shown up camera ready, her face beautifully airbrushed, not a hair out of place. Despite my efforts with the hair dryer and cosmetic bag, the last twenty-four hours had left me both looking and feeling haggard.

  The night before, I’d called Perri to confess there was a shark in the freezer, relaying the whole gory story. The part about the finning had softened her, but she’d still wanted to hear my plan for “getting the poor thing out of the freezer as soon as possible.” She wasn’t thrilled about a news crew coming either, but I assured her the reporter had agreed to keep our location a secret. As an added precaution, Perri suggested we hang bedsheets over the freezer shelves to conceal the food.

  “By the way, I put Nicholas in the Thoreau Room,” she said.

  I was glad to know he wasn’t steeped in the atmosphere of Romantic poetry. Keats. Shelley. Or worse, Anaïs Nin again. “Thanks for that. See you in the morning.”

  “Right. I’ll be the one with the sheets and the duct tape.”

  As soon as we’d hung up, I screwed up my courage and called Nicholas. I hated the way things were left between us.

  “Hear me out,” I said. “You once told me we could go back to being colleagues.”

  He paused for a long second. “You’re using my words against me?”

  Relieved, I heard the familiar teasing in his voice. “I guess I am.”

  “Colleagues it is, then,” he said.

  “In that case, I’ve got a news crew coming tomorrow morning—”

  “Seriously?”

  “And I want you to be there.”

  After everything he’d done, he deserved to be part of the interview, but I suppose I was also driven by guilt. I hadn’t treated him well, and I didn’t want our last good-bye to be the angry one in the dining room.

  “We’re starting very early,” I added.

  “How early is early?”

  “Five A.M.”

  “Anything at that hour makes me more than a colleague.”

  After we hung up, I lay in bed exhausted, but unable to close my eyes. My thoughts churned. I repeatedly eyed the clock, incapable of shaking the sight of the mutilated shark or the sound of Nicholas’s voice as he’d said my name out on the beach, trying to rein me back from my episode of righteous indignation. I felt the phantom weight of Daniel’s arm draped around my shoulder, remembering the look on Nicholas’s face, and then how he’d walked away, the finality of it.

  I hadn’t called Daniel, and apparently he had been too occupied to call me. I did e-mail him, though, to say the shark funeral would start at 8:00 A.M. at the Palermo Marina and offered to pick up Hazel if he wanted to skip it. I didn’t mention Nicholas or the TV crew that would be arriving before dawn in his kitchen. I hadn’t heard anything back.

  I stumbled into the kitchen in the morning to find Perri and Nicholas already there and on their second pot of coffee.

  “Remind me again how soon you leave for Mozambique,” Perri said, making a joke, but after everything that had happened, I wondered if it was totally in jest.

  The corner of Nicholas’s mouth lifted slightly, despite the mention of Mozambique.

  He’d shown up this morning freshly showered, somehow wearing clean clothes, though his shirtsleeves landed an inch above his wrists and the cuffs of his pants skimmed the top of his ankles.

  “Where’d you get the clothes?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I know. An atrocious fit. Perri sent them up to me. They might belong to your brother.”

  More likely Marco, I thought.

  He rolled the sleeves to his elbows. “Not much I can do about the pants.”

  My first thought was to tease him: maybe they can shoot you from the waist up. But I refrained. I could feel the tension between us, hovering like one of those giant, rogue waves known to capsize ships.

  In the kitchen, I made introductions. Perri wasted no time in telling Leigh to keep the Hotel of the Muses out of the news. “Health code violations would be very bad for business. I’m sure you can understand.”

  “I’ll say I’m reporting from an undisclosed location. It’s more dramatic that way, anyway,” Leigh said. “We’ll get some B-roll first. You want to show me this shark?”

  Inside the freezer, I uncovered the frozen shark and stepped back so the cameraman could get his shots. A few moments later, with the lens and light pointed on me, he counted down with his fingers. Three, two, one.

  “What can you tell us about the sh
ark’s injury?” Leigh asked.

  My voice came out trembly. I wanted to think it wasn’t nerves, that the cold inside the freezer was to blame, and maybe that was what Leigh thought. Bending down, I pointed to where the shark’s dorsal fin used to be and to the stubbed end of the body, missing its tail, my voice growing strong as I described in grisly detail exactly how the shark had been finned.

  “The thing is, there are a lot more sharks just like this. Around eighty million a year are finned for profit.”

  Leigh resumed the interview with Nicholas and me inside the warmth of the kitchen with our backs to the freezer door. We told her finning sharks was a crime, a multibillion-dollar business, and that the fins often ended up on menus right here in Florida. When I brought up the hotline the Conservancy had set up for people to call and gave out the number, Leigh jumped on it. “We’ll get that number on the screen for people, and you’re encouraging them to call if they see anything at all suspicious.”

  I said, “Yes, if you’re out on the water and something looks off or feels off, be vigilant. Even if you see people shark fishing, just pay attention. Maybe there’s more going on on the boat than meets the eye. We don’t want anyone to approach a boat, but take a picture.”

  Leigh tilted the microphone toward Nicholas. “With an operation like this,” he said, “there can be quite a few people involved—there are those doing the actual finning, of course, but also these fins are being dried and stored and transported, so if you know anything about any of this, please call.”

  I was seized suddenly by a kind of desperation. “The Gulf Marine Conservancy where I work is giving a five-hundred-dollar reward for information that leads to the capture of the people responsible for this.” I’d completely made that up of course, but I wanted to give them a reason to call. How many were going to dial the hotline out of a love for sharks? If Russell balked at the reward, I would have to take it out of my own pocket.

  “Dr. Donnelly, why do you think people should care? Why do you care so much?”

  Why do you care so much? It was the same question Daniel had asked me yesterday right before I’d followed Nicholas out of the kitchen.

  I looked at him. “I’ve always cared,” I said, then, turning to Leigh, “Sharks matter. Everything swimming in the oceans matters. Dolphins, stingrays, the tiniest sea horses, and the smallest crabs.” The smallest, purplest crabs, I thought. “The thing is, without sharks our oceans will die, and if the oceans die, we’re next, but they don’t matter just because they benefit us; they matter simply because they exist.”

  Leigh waved her hand at the cameraman and the light on the camera flicked off. “Thank you,” she said. “We’ve got some good stuff. We’re going out to Teawater to get some footage. I’ll call if I have any follow-up questions.”

  Perri put her arm around me. “Good job. When will it air?”

  “It should be on the five and the eleven o’clock news today,” Leigh said. “And possibly on the noon news tomorrow.”

  When they had packed their equipment and left, Nicholas said, “Since when is there a reward?”

  I shrugged. “Since five minutes ago.”

  Perri said, “You managed to get the interview done before a single one of the kitchen staff arrived. Now for the shark.”

  “It’s as good as gone,” I told her.

  “And me, too,” she said, and excused herself.

  “Thank you for this,” I said, turning to Nicholas. “Especially after what happened yesterday. And don’t worry. I’m going to wake Robin up, and he’s going to help me move this shark—you’ve done enough. Anyway, just . . . thanks.”

  He gazed at me for a moment without speaking. “You’re welcome.”

  “Can I at least take you to the marina to get your car?” I asked.

  “Perri reserved the shuttle for me.” Nicholas looked down at his feet, then into my eyes. “I did this interview for you and for the shark and because I’d like to help find the miserable piece of shit who cut off its fins, but I hope you can understand that as much as I’d like to spend time with you—in a car or a boat, in Mozambique or here right now—I’m going to do myself a favor and not see you.”

  There had been no harshness in his voice as he’d said it. Only resolve.

  Twenty-six

  Later that morning at the Palermo Marina, I waited at the dock beside the Conservancy skiff, wondering if Daniel and Hazel would show up for the shark funeral. It was 8:20 A.M. I didn’t know how much longer I should delay. A couple of workers at the marina had helped me load the shark into the boat’s hull, and for the last twenty minutes the skiff had bobbed on the water, gassed and ready to go.

  Ten more minutes. I’ll wait ten more.

  It had barely been light out when Nicholas had taken the hotel’s shuttle to his car. He was probably in Sarasota by now. I’m going to do myself a favor and not see you.

  I had just climbed into the boat and was about to toss the ropes when I saw them hurrying along the dock, Hazel waving her arms almost frantically, shouting “Wait for us!” and Daniel following behind her with his Tampa Bay Rays cap pulled low on his forehead. Hazel was wearing her dinosaur field bag stuffed with who knows what inside of it. What does a person bring to a shark funeral other than a shark?

  “Somebody was late,” said Hazel, aiming her thumb at Daniel.

  He held up his hands in surrender. “Sorry.”

  “What do you have in your bag?” I asked Hazel, as Daniel lifted her over the side.

  “You’ll see,” she said, and then asked to drive the boat.

  I let her steer through the slow zone practically by herself, wishing Daniel and I had broken the ice the night before. He’d barely looked at me when he’d boarded.

  When we got out into the Gulf, Daniel called Hazel back to sit with him and watch for dolphins. The skiff bounced across another boat’s wake, sending spray over the side, and Hazel, buckled to her chin in a lifejacket, squealed and wiped the lenses of her sunglasses on her lavender terry shorts. There’s the child in the life jacket, the one who shakes oranges loose from the tree. There’s the man who waits for us in the kitchen. It was what I’d always wanted, wasn’t it? It should have been the perfect picture. Except for the tension. Except for the shrouded dead shark at our feet.

  I slowed the speed and turned off the engine, which created a sudden vacuous quiet. We were nearly a mile off shore, far enough out that we wouldn’t be overrun by Jet Skis, and more important, the shark wouldn’t get pushed to shore again by waves.

  The water was full of chop from the wind. The boat swayed on the surface. How did one begin a shark funeral?

  “Where’s Nicholas?” Hazel asked, so out of the blue it startled me.

  Daniel tugged on the brim of his cap, then moved his arm from behind Hazel’s shoulders.

  “He went back to Sarasota this morning,” I told her.

  “Oh,” she said. “I like him—he sounds like a Wiggle.”

  “A what?” I asked.

  “The Wiggles,” Daniel said. “They’re a group of guys in Australia who sing kids’ songs.” He shook his head as if marveling he possessed knowledge such as this.

  “Is Nicholas from Australia?” Hazel asked.

  “England,” I told her, hoping Daniel didn’t detect how uncomfortable I was becoming at all this talk about Nicholas.

  “Like the Pilgrims,” she said. “Wait.” A tiny gasp escaped her mouth. “Is Nigel Marven from England?”

  “Yes, probably,” I said.

  I could almost see Nicholas ticking even further upward in her estimation. “Why did Nicholas leave?”

  Daniel sighed. So loud I heard it over the wind.

  “He had stingray work to do,” I said. “So, let’s talk about how we want to do the funeral.”

  “Good idea,” Daniel said.

  “Are you rea
dy to see what’s in my bag?” Hazel asked.

  “Ready.”

  She emptied it onto the seat beside her. Binoculars, rolled up sun hat, apple juice box, and a hibiscus blossom with a paper towel wrapped around the stem. She picked up the flower and studied it. The petals were a bit wilted, but still vibrantly orange. At its center, a blood-red stain.

  “It’s very pretty,” I told her.

  “There were flowers at Mom’s funeral. I took one home and Grandma Van put it in a book.”

  “She pressed it,” Daniel said.

  “Yeah, she pressed it,” Hazel whispered.

  I shot Daniel a look, worried suddenly that holding a shark funeral had been a colossal mistake, afraid that a funeral of any sort might throw her into a tailspin of grief for her mother. Seriously, how many funerals did one six-year-old need to attend?

  Seeing my concern, Daniel said, “We talked about it last night.” He looked at his daughter. “We said it was like the shark was going . . . where?”

  “Going home,” she said, filling in the blank.

  “That’s a good way to think of it. It is going home, isn’t it?” I offered, wanting to say the right thing, but unsure really what that was.

  “Yeah, so we don’t have to be sad,” she said.

  “And you know what? You’re actually doing an important task by helping me return the shark to the Gulf. You’re kind of like a biologist in training.”

  Hazel liked that and looked up at her dad with a goofy grin.

  The three of us gathered self-consciously around the shark, wobbling a little on our feet as the boat undulated. Hazel poked at the blanket with her index finger and grimaced as it hit against the hard, bloated body beneath the blanket. Just visible in the high V of her life jacket was her shark tooth necklace.

  “I would like to say we’re honored to send this shark home,” I said, and for want of anything better to do, held out my hand like a fin, the way we did for the Shark Club motto. Hazel’s fin went up, and lastly, Daniel’s.