Death in the Polka Dot Shoes

by Marlin Fitzwater

  “I think so,” I said.

  “Well, here’s how you do it,” Effie said. “You start driving by those empty lots near the liquor store, and the First Methodist Church, and Flossies. Trucks for sale are parked there all the time.”

  “What about the Ford dealership over on the highway?”

  “You’re not gonna buy some fancy truck with leather seats and a stereo system. You want a used truck about three years old with a couple of scratches on the side that will carry a few dozen crab pots. You want a working truck that you can park with the rest of the boys down at the Bayfront.”

  “Is that necessary?” I asked.

  “This is as close as we come to image building in Parkers,” Effie said. “And you want to pay cash. You know why watermen pay cash; because they have to stay flexible. No mortgages.”

  “You mean don’t buy what you can’t afford?”

  “No, I mean storms, and broken legs, and red tide, and state regulations, and divorces, and all the other uncertainties of working on the water. Get yourself a good used truck and park that sissy convertible of yours under the house.”

  “You’re starting to sound like my business manager.”

  “Not a chance,” Effie said. “Just a friend.”

  Chapter Twelve

  A slim, silent figure dressed in blue jeans, black and white tennis shoes, and a black tee shirt walked quickly around the back of the Bayfront Inn, keeping in the shadows, heading for the dozen or so charter fishing and crab boats anchored along Jenkins Creek. He walked past the fish cleaning stand on the edge of the pier, put his hand assuredly on one corner of the scaling tank, and turned toward the Martha Claire. Plenty of clouds tarpapered the sky and the boat offered no reflection in the night.

  The visitor never broke stride, moving directly to the stern of the boat, hopping over the gunnels, and crouching beside the hatch cover that allowed access to the big diesel engine. He raised the hatch and braced it quietly open. He pulled a small flashlight out of one pocket, and a pair of wire cutters from the other. In seconds, he reached past the engine and clipped the electric wire to the automatic float switch, disabling the bilge pump that emptied any water that collected in the bottom of the boat. In another second, the hatch was closed and the intruder hopped off the boat and back on the pier. He reached for the garden hose wrapped in a circle where Ned had left it after cleaning his boat earlier in the day, draped it into the boat, and turned on the spigot. A steady stream of water slid across the deck, as deadly as poison in the blood.

  I was still asleep at 5:30 in the morning when my phone started ringing. Calls that early pierce the night like fire alarms. They usually mean problems on the water, or boats that won’t start, or other watermen who need a ride. I stretched, knowing the ringing would not stop, cleared my throat, and reached for the phone.

  “Ned, this is Mabel Fergus,” she said. “Somebody swamped your boat.”

  She didn’t hesitate to see if it was me, or give any details, or prepare me for disaster. In fact, she used the word swamped, which every waterman knows means a deliberate act against your boat. I simply said, “Thanks Mabel, I’ll be right there.” Explanations wouldn’t help. There is no official to call when your boat goes down, especially at the pier. Police can’t help. Firemen don’t raise boats. No one is threatened. And a hundred of your best friends can’t raise a boat. The only person who can help is someone who can be sympathetic. I would call Vinnie from my cell phone. He’s no doubt up anyway.

  I drove through Parkers in a haze of incomprehension. No one had ever committed a deliberate act of malice against me before, at least not a physical act, and not one I could instantly recognize. In law practice, there were times when a colleague undercut me with a partner, but that was an understandable move to advance someone’s career. Perfectly understandable in that world. I was mugged once on the streets behind the Capitol, but even that was less shattering. It was for money, not for the express purpose of hurting me. Swamping my boat was different, a singular act aimed at hurting me in some unspecified, yet meaningful, way. Somebody wanted me out of the crabbing business, or out of Parkers, or out of my law practice, or out of investigating my brother. This latter reason seemed the most likely, yet I wasn’t really investigating anything. The police in North Carolina were doing that. I kept asking questions about my brother, but mostly I just wanted to know his last years, what was he doing, how he ran his business. But I had offended somebody, or scared somebody. Hell, maybe it was an old boyfriend of Simy’s. Every kiss that has ever been stolen in Parkers has been passed around the bar like cold beer. Who knows what emotions that might stir from somebody thinking I was interested in Simy. And the fact is, of course, that sinking a boat with a garden hose is a childhood trick known by every boy on the Bay.

  All of these possibilities raced through my mind, and clouded my vision, leaving Parkers a cold and lonely place, smudging the rouge of warmth that had always coated the place. Even the familiarity was gone. The trash in the ditch, fast food wrappers thrown from truck windows, plastic bags from the grocery, seemed luminous and disgusting, signs of a trash community I had never noticed before. Why was I here? What about this horrible threatening town had ever attracted me? I passed the grocery and it seemed foreign. There was no longer the anticipation of meeting friends, of seeing neighbors, of discovering relationships. The town was just buildings, and pickup trucks, and I almost missed the parking lot for the Bayfront.

  Several crabbers were readying their boats for a day on the bay, putting their bait buckets in place, stacking the bushel baskets for the catch, and checking oil, water, and hoses on their engines. Most of these Captains had already checked out the sunken Martha Claire, her outlines just visible beneath the water. A couple still stood on the edge of the dock, peering down at the wheel house that emerged from the water, signaling shipwreck in a backdrop of normalcy.

  All I could do was join them, and stare.

  “I’m sorry, Ned,” one of them said. “You better get her up fast. Less time in the water, the less damage.”

  “Who do I call?” I asked, which seemed like the only useful information I needed.

  “Call Johnny Noonan over at the Marina,” the Captain said. “He’s got a salvage business. Knows how to raise boats. I don’t see how somebody could claim salvage rights on your boat right here at the dock, but stranger things have happened. I’d get that crew working for you as soon as possible.”

  “Then what?”

  “Well, once you get her up, then you have to check the engine and the wiring. You can repair the wood, dry her out, and repaint her. But the engine and the electronics; that’s the problem.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I seemed so helpless. Actually, that’s a common feeling on the water. I remember other situations, when the motor goes out in the middle of crabbing, or when crab pots have been emptied by a yellow jacket or even another waterman, when another boat is bearing down on you, or an island appears that isn’t on the charts. There are just so many ways that the Bay can overwhelm you. But I never even considered my boat sinking at the dock.

  “Thanks boys.” I turned to go in the restaurant, only to be confronted by faces pressed against the window, not looking at the boat, but peering at the owner to see his reaction. Word had spread that Ned Shannon was here to see his boat, and people actually left their scrambled eggs just to see the look on my face, the desperate fear in a waterman’s eyes when he sees his livelihood under six feet of water. They misjudged me, of course, because crabbing isn’t my life. But it’s still a difficult and fearful time. In addition, word had spread quickly that it was a deliberate act. From the moment the first waterman arrived this morning, found my boat, and pulled the garden hose out of the stern, everyone in Parkers knew I had been the victim of a threatening act. And they had a hundred reasons for why this could have happened: stolen crab pots, infringement on another’s fishing area, a girlfriend, money or bad debts. It could be anything. And they wanted to see how I
would respond. This incident would be passed on by Bayfront customers and Parkers watermen for years. The only unwritten part of the story was me. How would I react? And my response was to visit the oldest and most knowledgeable friend I had in Parkers, Mansfield Burlington.

  Burl was working in his barn, standing tall and erect at his woodworking table, with classical music floating softly through every grain in the wood. I stopped for a minute outside the door, watching him make calculations on a piece of scrap paper. He was slow and deliberate, deciding the angle of the wood he was about to cut. To make a mistake would be to waste wood, and lose time. Burl was careful to do neither.

  He looked up, and beckoned me in. I closed the door gently, not disturbing the music, and felt the immediate warmth of the place. A small cast iron stove was burning wood and casting off considerable heat on a fall morning. Coupled with the two overhead lights dangling from the ceiling, and the music, the room had a special softness in which the light settled into nooks and crannies of cobwebs and darkness. There were no sharp edges or shadow lines associated with corners or excess lighting. I was aware of organization, every tool aligned in its shelf, or holder, with perhaps fifty screwdrivers at soldierly attention along the wall. A band saw, and a wood press, and a butcher block no doubt retrieved from a yard sale, stood as room dividers as I walked to the work bench.

  “Nice to see you Neddie,” Burl said, reaching for my hand. There was an incongruity between Burl’s starched blue work shirt and his broken fingers, cut and scarred with physical labor, black fingernails from accidental pinches between lumber, and darkened hand lines from the dust and grease of daily work. Burl made nearly everything in the barn, from hoe handles to saw blades, and he had gadgets that were invented for measuring, or drilling, or marking when he was building the skipjack. Yet his voice was elegant and smooth, refined with words from the volumes of his reading.

  “I hear you had a little trouble this morning,” he added.

  “Burl,” I said, “thanks for seeing me. I need a little help figuring this thing out. I just can’t understand why this thing happened.”

  I kept calling it a thing, because what do you call a physical attack on your property, and an implied threat against your existence. An assault. A threat. It was sure as hell more than a bump in the night, which is what my mother might have called it. She always took the long view of matters, and predicted that most everything would pass. She would take the position that the sinking of my boat was an act of God, because somebody lost their faith and their goodness, deciding to commit this violence against my boat. Certainly, she would never discuss the motives involved, or an investigation of any kind. We would simply raise the boat, repair the engine and electronics, give it a new coat of paint, and continue catching crabs as if nothing happened. To her, this would be an aberration, never to be repeated. I could never understand this logic, except that it must have come from her abiding belief in John 3, verse 16, a biblical direction that according to my law experience was almost never followed. Indeed, this seemed like a defining moment to me, as the politicians in Washington might say, and I had offended someone mightily. Most likely, someone in Parkers had a hand in my brother’s death, and now I might be included in their plans.

  “Burl,” I asked, “have you heard any animosity toward me? Have I made anybody mad?”

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “You charge too much for wills, but that hardly seems like a boat sinking offense.”

  “How about your work at the CRI?” he continued. “What are you doing for them these days?”

  “Not much really,” I said. “I have to go to a cocktail reception in Annapolis next week. Meet the Governor. Pretend I’m a real waterman. Probably don’t have to say anything.”

  “Ned,” Burl said, “you are a real waterman. You go out with your pots; all kinds of weather; sell your crabs to the buyer, or anybody who shows up at the dock. That’s a waterman. Maybe not an honored waterman. After all, this is your first boat to sink. But you’re a waterman, so don’t make sport of it.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Do you think it’s a waterman who did this?”

  ‘No, I don’t. You’re not a threat to watermen. Do you think those few bushels of scrawny crabs you catch are going to empty the bay? You’re not fighting over a girl. You don’t owe anybody money. That takes care of the great motivators for malice in Parkers. So look elsewhere.” “It must be my brother.”

  “Maybe, but this place is hard to figure,” Burl said. “Just last week a good ole boy waterman from down on Broom’s Island killed his ex-girlfriend for going out with another guy. Thing is, the waterman hadn’t dated this girl since high school. Hadn’t even seen her in a couple of years. In fact, last time he saw her, he beat her up, was arrested, and ordered by the Judge to never go near this girl again. But he was a good ole boy, came from a long line of Parkerites, ran a little crab house on the island to sell his own crabs, and made his daddy proud. Hell, he’d been in trouble with the law over and over, but the judge was his uncle so all he ever got was probation.

  “Couple weeks ago, he runs into his high school sweetie at the grocery store, and she’s with a new boyfriend from Washington. That night he went to her house with a shotgun and blew her head off. Said he couldn’t stand to see his true love with a yellow jacket. Now with that kind of rationale, any damn fool in the county could have swamped your boat.”

  “What do I do now Burl?” I asked.

  Burl looked at his lathe, glanced up at me, then returned to sharpening his saw blade. I guess he wanted to see how I was taking this whole affair, decided I really was in the dark, and started again.

  “Well,” he said, “here’s what I’d do. First, call the police. Somebody else will, if you don’t. Fact is, they are probably with the boat right now, or will be by the time you get back to the Bayfront. So let them know you called. They won’t find anything, of course. Won’t spend a minute looking. They’ll figure it’s just some kind of fight between two watermen and forget about it. But you need that police report for insurance, and just in case this is some nut who just likes to sink boats.

  “Then, my advice is forget about it. Get insurance money if you can. Forget the police. Raise the boat, put it back together, and get back on the water. You got to show your stuff. These old boys around here have been on the water for four or five generations. They’ve seen every natural disaster known to man, and they’ve seen boys like you wilt in the midday sun. Don’t wilt Neddie. Just get back on the water.”

  “Burl, you’ve been a great help. Thanks,” I said. “You just gave me the same advice my mother would.”

  “One other thing, Ned,” he said. “Find out what happened to your brother. That’s family, and that’s different.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Martha Claire Shannon’s nickname, and the only name her high school friends called her, was Marti. I always thought it was a good name because it conveyed her wonderful spirit, a sense of irony and humor that was quick to rise, and a youthfulness portrayed by optimism, even innocence. She never believed the worst in people. If she saw evil, or cynicism, she just ignored it. And her chirpy little girl voice, even in her thirties, enhanced all of these qualities. First time phone callers thought she was Jimmy’s daughter. And other women liked her because she never threatened them, and always lifted their spirits with an infectious laugh that was a part of her basic fiber.

  That day at the Bayfront bar was the lowest I had ever seen her, preoccupied with her husband’s death, fearful of the future, wading into the unknown world of single motherhood. But I had seen her many times since, always up, planning her future and her daughter’s. There was something special to learn from her, about honesty and loyalty. And I started looking forward to her visits because she treated me like a real brother, with confidences and secrets that only a family can keep.

  It was Sunday morning, and we often went to brunch together, the only time most of Parkers’ restaurants served breakfast. Usually
she called to suggest a place to go. Today, she just asked to come over, and we would decide later on food. Coming up the sidewalk she carried Mindy under one arm, and a large manila folder under the other. It was a cool fall day, and she wore a dark maroon sweater, with the usual four or five gold bracelets and a simple necklace with a pearl. She had a sense of style that suggested wealth, even with blue jeans, and even without an education. The bracelets were uncommon among working women. They get caught on tablecloths, or clothes, or boats. But Marti would simply take them off in those situations, and put them back on later. They weren’t expensive jewelry, mostly purchased from the kiosks at the Annapolis mall, but they said hello. Marti often said her mother advised her to wear clothes that said hello. And she did. I met her at the door, and she looked worried.

  “Ned,” she said, “I want to talk about something.” She moved to the couch, arranged herself cross legged, and held the manila folder tight to her chest.

  “A couple weeks ago,” she began, “I went to the doctor to see why my legs hurt. Sometimes they would jerk involuntarily. My doctor took some tests, and stuck little needles in me, but nothing turned up, so she recommended an MRI. I guess she thought, ‘Let’s get a picture of her brain and work down.’”

  At this point I’m beginning to feel quite nervous. An MRI on the brain usually meant cancer. I had met a waterman with brain cancer just a few weeks ago. He was a big strong guy, who had retired from the water, but worked tirelessly in the community for church and civic affairs. He was diagnosed with a brain tumor, had an operation on the back of his neck of some kind, and came home to recover. I saw him at the grocery store a few days later and he seemed pretty healthy, a little pale from the hospital, but walking and talking like normal. Two weeks later he was dead. I never knew the details, but it left me fearful as Marti mentioned the MRI.