Adrift

by Micki Browning

  Mer drew her legs to her chest and wrapped her arms around her knees. “There really isn’t much to tell.”

  “Are you kidding me? I want to get to know the woman who pricked Selkie’s pride so much he had to call in backup.” Fiona clinked her glass against Mer’s. “Well done. This is the first time he’s ever deigned to ask his baby sister for advice on women.”

  “We kissed.”

  “Which, based on the goofy look he got on his face when he talked about it, was fine. It was the slap that he took exception to.” Fiona wrinkled her nose. “He was in quite a froth when he spoke to me. Cast all womankind into the indecipherable category. But he was quite impressed by your arm strength.”

  Mer slid back in her chair and took a big sip of the Pinot Gris. “I lift tanks all day.” Or at least she used to.

  “I have to admit, I was surprised. I was worried that he’d never be interested in another woman.” Fiona grew thoughtful. “He was married. They were very happy together. But that’s a story for him to tell. I’m just thrilled he’s met someone new.”

  “I don’t think I qualify as new. This isn’t the first time I’ve met your brother.”

  Fiona tucked her legs under her. “I sense a story.”

  Most stories had three parts. Over the years, Mer had managed to distance herself from the excitement of her and Selkie’s beginning, the joyousness of their middle. It was the ending that stood out in her mind. Now, with Fiona, she didn’t know where to start—or if she should begin at all.

  Mer angled her glass and the last rays of the sun shimmered through the golden liquid. “This is nice.”

  “You’re stalling,” Fiona said.

  Drawing a deep breath, she plunged back in time to that summer. “Selkie was friends with my brother Vito. Every year our family got together in August and rented a house somewhere. The year I was twenty, we had a beach house in Cambria, close to Hearst Castle in California.” Mer sipped her wine. “Vito asked Selkie to join the family. I met him there.”

  “How old was he?”

  “Twenty-six. Smart, witty, a bit mysterious, almost as handsome as he is now. Quieter, though.”

  “Was that the year he was recuperating from the crash?”

  “Yeah. We started every morning with a swim in the ocean. Took long walks. He didn’t want to sit still.”

  “The doctors didn’t think he’d ever walk again.”

  The memories became sharper. More cutting. Slow kisses, long conversations, wild dreams. “We were inseparable.”

  “So what happened?”

  Damned if she knew. The day before he was set to leave, he’d vanished in the morning fog before anyone else had risen. She took another sip of wine. “Turns out we weren’t inseparable after all.”

  “Did he stay friends with your brother?”

  She fiddled with her pendant. “He must have. He was the one who told my brother about this place. But I never asked.”

  How many times had she picked up the phone to call Vito and ask if he’d heard from Selkie? Something always stopped her. Pride, perhaps. She’d worried the pain the way a child worries a loose tooth, constantly poking at it until finally, one day, the only thing left was a big hole and something to put under the pillow and never think of again.

  “He’s a good man, Mer. And he hasn’t opened up to anyone since…well, in a long time. He’s strong, and stubborn, and full of pride. But, underneath it all, he’s wounded.” She put her hand on Mer’s forearm. “I love him, and I wouldn’t see him hurt.”

  Was it a warning? If so, Fiona was talking to the wrong person. Mer had no intention of opening that door again.

  Chapter 14

  How did one find a ghost?

  The question had awakened her and haunted her throughout the morning. She knew she should let it go. Lindsey’s threat of a lawsuit had made that perfectly clear. Yet her mind refused to turn off and a stew of what-ifs threatened to boil over.

  She’d tried to sleep in. That had lasted for about fifteen minutes of wakefulness before she couldn’t stand it any longer. Since then she’d started laundry, cleaned the apartment, and alphabetized her movie-soundtrack CDs by film title versus composer.

  Throughout it all, her mind resisted the task at hand and kept returning to Ishmael. She replayed the dive in her mind for the hundredth time, but nothing new materialized to solve the mystery. She still didn’t have the camera, Ishmael was still gone, and Amber still believed a ghost was involved. In light of Mer’s current lack of a plausible explanation, maybe Amber was right.

  Which brought her back to the original question: How did one find a ghost?

  She considered her resources. Her mom would glom on to Amber’s ghost story and that would be the end of any unbiased participation by the woman. Calling her older brother, Franky, would require an apology. The last time they’d spoken, she made a comment that managed to be profane, sacrilegious, and worthy of excommunication all in the same breath. As a professor of children’s literature, her father probably couldn’t lend much help, unless he’d read Nancy Drew.

  Only one choice remained: her brother Vito.

  Of course, asking a cop how to find a ghost probably wasn’t going to result in a lengthy discussion. He dealt in facts and evidence, the very two things she lacked.

  She backed her mind up further, to the first time she’d met Ishmael in the dive shop. Spooky eyes, condescending attitude, Rolex. Nothing that meant anything.

  A fine layer of dust frosted the framed photograph of her at the beach with her family, and she ran the cloth around the edges. It was one of the few photographs with them all together. Mer was clearly the youngest. Franky held her arms while Vito pulled her feet in a game of tug-of-war; their mother and father could only watch with the patient indifference that all parents were obliged to master as a survival technique. Mer traced the edge of the wave in the background. She replaced the frame on the bureau, stepped back, then aligned it so that it bisected the corner of the bureau.

  The hair at the nape of her neck prickled.

  She lobbed the dust rag into the laundry basket and dialed her brother.

  “What’s up, Doc?” He sounded out of breath.

  Mer cringed. “Bad time?” Belatedly, she glanced at the clock and calculated the time zones separating their coasts.

  “Not at all. Just finishing a short run.” Vito’s definition of short differed considerably from hers. To be honest, she thought any distance was too far to run, but she’d never played college football, either.

  “I need your help,” she said.

  “I told you a long time ago, I don’t fix tickets. You got it, you deserved it.”

  Falling backward on her bed, she briefly considered asking him about Selkie but decided that she didn’t want to have that conversation. “I didn’t get a ticket.”

  “Policy prohibits me from posting bail for anyone.”

  “Really, Vito? You’d be the last person I’d call if I got thrown in jail. I’d never hear the end of it.” She stared at the ceiling fan above her. She should have dusted the blades. “But to put your mind at ease, I am not currently in jail, nor do I have any future plans to languish in any of this county’s detention facilities.”

  “Glad to hear it.” His breath had returned to normal. “Now, what can I do for you?”

  She hesitated, no longer confident that her brilliant plan was all that sparkly. “I need you to run a print for me.”

  “No can do.”

  So much for the direct approach. “Have you talked to Mom lately?”

  “No.” His voice turned suspicious. “Why?”

  “I may have killed someone.”

  Silence.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “Meredith, what’s going on?” Vito snapped into cop mode. “And start from the beginning.”

  So she did. Ten minutes later, she finished. “Detective Talbot seems convinced that my involvement is somehow criminal.”

  “Do you get t
he impression he’s just trying to goad you into saying something?”

  Why did everybody ask that? There had to be a cop playbook that everyone had read but her. “I answered all his questions. What more is there to say?”

  “From a detective’s perspective, a confession is always nice.”

  Meredith rolled off the bed and retrieved the dustcloth. “I didn’t intentionally do anything.”

  “That makes it sound like you failed to do something you should have,” Vito said.

  “That’s the thing—I don’t know.” She climbed back on the bed and stretched to wipe the top of the fan blade.

  “What do you mean you don’t know?”

  Dust swirled like an apparition down to the duvet. “The only other witness thinks a ghost was involved.”

  “Do we have a bad connection? It sounded like you said ghost. As in not of this world.”

  “I did.” She attacked the next blade, disturbing more dust.

  He sucked in his breath. “Correct me if I’m wrong.” Some of the playfulness returned to his voice. “Which I know from past experience you will. But isn’t this more Franky’s jurisdiction?”

  Did Nancy Drew encounter this much resistance? “Maybe. But at the moment I’m more concerned with Detective Talbot. And he doesn’t believe in ghosts.”

  “Most detectives are funny that way.”

  A thick layer of gray coated the orange microfiber cloth she held. “So what do I do?”

  “Why do you want me to run a print?” Vito countered.

  Mer folded the cloth and wiped the third blade with a fresh section. “Because despite the fact that I spoke to the man who is now missing, I can’t find anything on him. No parents, no siblings, nothing.”

  “So who’s the ghost? The victim or the suspect?”

  “Good question,” she admitted.

  “I’m a detective. I’m full of them.”

  “Full of something.” Mer searched the cloth for another clean spot but realized that she’d run out of options. “I’m confused.”

  Silence stretched across the connection. “What are you sending me to print?”

  She collapsed cross-legged on the bed. In her mind she watched Ishmael straighten the framed poster of the Spiegel Grove the first time he entered the shop. “Just the print.”

  “You’re lifting it?” He groaned. “Don’t expect miracles.”

  “I’m a scientist. I don’t believe in miracles.”

  —

  Mer spent the hours since talking to her brother watching YouTube and educating herself on the finer points of fingerprint collection. It seemed a straightforward proposition, and she chalked up her brother’s nay-saying to sibling rivalry. Now, armed with pencil dust, an index card, and clear packing tape, she skirted the dock where Leroy hosed off the LunaSea and entered the dive shop unseen.

  The alarm chirped a countdown and Mer felt a pang of guilt as she typed in the code to disarm the security system. Moving quickly, she set her supplies on the counter and donned a pair of latex gloves.

  For a moment, she stood in front of the framed poster. The underwater shot captured the upper portion of the Spiegel Grove’s control tower. An American flag undulated in the current, and two groupers swam in the background. With luck, this photo held the clue to solving at least part of the ship’s latest mystery.

  Careful to place her hands far from where Ishmael had touched, she lifted the frame from the wall and placed it on the counter. Dive shops weren’t necessarily the cleanest places on earth. They tended to be neat, but Mer couldn’t remember the last time anyone had dusted the pictures or cleaned the glass. Perfect conditions for her mission.

  She’d never given much thought to fingerprints. Crime shows all touted their value, but according to the guy on YouTube the tiny grooves and ridges in the skin provided the necessary friction to keep things from literally slipping from one’s grasp—an evolutionary development that just happened to create a forensic goldmine. One she hoped to capitalize on.

  Waving her small penlight along the edges of the smooth metal frame, she searched for the clue to Ishmael’s identity. If she remembered correctly, he’d used both hands to straighten the photo, one on the left side about halfway down the poster and the other in the lower right corner.

  Nothing. Disappointment washed through her.

  She maneuvered the light so that it hit the frame at a more oblique angle. There. A print—or, at least, a smudge. Impossible to know until she blew some of the carbon shavings onto the surface.

  She dug her cellphone out of her shorts pocket and brought up the YouTube video. Following along, she sprinkled a pinch of pencil dust next to the smudge from above. Black powder stained the fingertips of her right glove. She’d planned to use a makeup brush to distribute the powder, but A, she didn’t own one, and B, the guy on YouTube warned that the brush bristles were too stiff and would ruin the detail of the fingerprint. Instead, she gently blew the carbon across the print. The dust adhered to the oils left by Ishmael’s skin, revealing a gray oval.

  The fingerprint guy finished and held up his fingerprint card for the camera. Show-off. Mer backed up the video. Retrieving the tape, she laid it atop the dusty print and promptly snared the tip of her glove between the adhesive and the card. She pulled. The tape slid sideways and folded against itself. Not a single line or swirl distinguished itself for identification.

  Mer mouthed a curse word and wiped her glove across her forehead to push her hair out of her face. The guy on YouTube made it look so easy. Plus, in her haste to follow his directions she’d completely forgotten to take a photograph of the print with her phone before lifting it—an important step, according to her brother, but completely ignored by Fingerprint Man.

  Vito would have a field day. She wadded the index card into a ball and started over.

  The flashlight didn’t pick up anything else on the left side of the frame no matter how extremely she angled the bright beam. That meant she had only the lower right corner left. Screw it up, and she’d have nothing.

  Mer drew a deep breath and tried to recall exactly where Ishmael had touched the photo.

  She closed her eyes. He had formed a reverse L with his right index finger and thumb and laid them along the corner to straighten the photo. She opened her eyes again and focused the penlight at the join. She didn’t see anything. Putting her faith in the carbon, she sifted some powder along both the side and the bottom rails then blew a soft breath to move the dust.

  Eureka! The print distinguished itself from the shiny frame. Vito’s voice echoed in her head: Don’t expect miracles. Well, she’d show him. Based on the position and size, she’d found a full print where Ishmael’s index finger had touched and an incomplete oval where part of his thumb had contacted the metal along the bottom rail. Surely Vito could find out something with two prints.

  She tapped her finger against her nose and analyzed the situation. Start with the partial. If she botched it, maybe she’d gain the experience to successfully lift the remaining print.

  But, first, a photograph. She snapped two photos of each print: one with flash, one without. With her left hand, she grabbed another index card. She yanked the bottom of her right glove, tightening the fit across her fingers, then tore off a piece of tape and smoothed it across the partial print. Careful to keep her glove out of the way this time, she lifted the image and transferred the tape to the unlined side of the card.

  Vito’s nay-saying aside, she’d done it. A partial print. Saved for all posterity. Feeling smug, she squinted at the index card and her stomach fell. A smear, some lines, a bifurcated arch. At most, she had half a print. She hoped it was enough.

  Well, if she could do it once she could do it again. She shifted the frame into a better position. Even her untrained eye detected ridges and whorls that made the last print distinct from the earlier ones. Oval-shaped, perfectly situated on a flat portion of the metal frame. The money shot.

  A thrill started in her toes and r
an through her until even her hair tingled. “Gotcha.”

  She held the wide packing tape over the image and adjusted her stance, careful to position herself to ensure that she covered all the print. Beautiful. She lowered the tape fractionally. The door chime jangled, and Mer dragged the tape across the surface of the print, smearing the oils into oblivion.

  “Jesus H. Christ.” She stared aghast at the ruined print.

  “Nope. Just me,” Leroy said.

  Chapter 15

  The midday sun beat down on Mer’s Subaru. On the list of places she’d like to be, few things ranked below meeting with Lindsey and her attorney, but her future depended on this meeting. The only way to influence the outcome was to participate.

  Coconuts hung in clusters from palms that formed a barrier between the parking lot and the dock of the Aquarius Dive Shop. Morning glory and bougainvillea spilled across a chain-link fence in a riot of color. Mer unbuckled her seatbelt but continued to stare at the blooms.

  The fence was meant to constrain, but the flowers grew right over the top, stretching toward freedom. One of the fragile blossoms blew across her windshield, rising and falling in a delicate swirl. She tracked it until it disappeared over the edge. Gone. Just like that.

  She stepped out of the car and her sandals made little crunching noises as she walked across the crushed coral and rock. The media must have found something else to chase, because only one satellite truck remained in the lot this afternoon. She recognized the reporter reading a magazine in the passenger seat and stumbled. Wendy Wheeler. That couldn’t be good.

  As if aware of Mer’s regard, Wendy peered over the magazine.

  Mer lowered her head and barreled toward the office, weaving between the dark SUVs belonging to the Spirited Diver fleet. Amber and Lindsey would both be upstairs. Waiting. For her and Bijoux.

  From deep within the recesses of her backpack, Mer heard the feeble bleat of her cellphone. By the time she dug it out of her bag, it had gone to voicemail. Her mother, again.

  Mer climbed the final steps and pushed through the Aquarius’s door. Clad in her crew shirt, Taylor helped a customer at the counter. Amber, Lindsey, and Bijoux clustered around a man in a dark suit standing in the center of the shop, their bright clothes a burst of hope compared with his somber attire.