Mystery of the Tempest

by Sam Cameron

  “How much?”

  “Why do you have to be so annoying about it?”

  “Because whoever it belongs to might be tied to the boat that blew up, you idiot. What if they want it back?” Steven asked.

  Eddie straightened. “It’s not like that.”

  “It’s not? How?”

  “Because. It wasn’t a lot. Just like, a thousand dollars. Maybe two thousand. Small change.”

  Steven was getting a headache. “You didn’t report it to the police.”

  “Of course not! It’s ours. Lisa and I found it. Nobody else even looked into the bag. So what if we threw the clothes and keys away?”

  “What keys?”

  “Some car keys. But there was no car. So the whole bag was probably just something that got lost. Not everything’s got to be some criminal conspiracy you have to solve.”

  Steven didn’t answer.

  Eddie squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Maybe it’s not a lot of money to you. But my mom deserves a new TV, and we filled her prescriptions, too. So what if we spent the rest? No one’s going to come looking for it.”

  Except someone had, Steven thought. Someone had swiped Brian Vandermark’s hotel room key and searched his room because Christopher had gone on TV and announced seeing the explosion from Beacon Point.

  “You should have told the truth since the beginning,” Steven said.

  “Like you did?” Eddie asked. “Have you started packing for boot camp yet?”

  Silence stretched between them, taut and unhappy.

  “You don’t know what it’s like to be broke all the time,” Eddie said. “You don’t know what it’s like to have none of the answers. What am I going to do in September? Community college. Which I’m probably going to fail out of. Maybe later I can get a job at the Dollar Mart. You don’t have the SEALs but you’ve got options.”

  “I don’t know what they are,” Steven said.

  “But you’ll figure them out. You always do.”

  A shooting star crossed the sky. Steven wished he was on it, riding fire to the other side of the sky.

  “Come inside and watch a movie,” Eddie said. “I’ll send those other guys home. We’ll pretend it’s ninth grade, first time we ever had beer.”

  “First time you ever had beer, you mean.”

  “Show off.”

  Steven shrugged. “Is it my fault I matured early?”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Denny returned from Brian’s house to find Mom asleep and Dad sacked out in front of the TV watching a John Wayne movie. Dad liked John Wayne. Denny liked cowboys in tight jeans. When the credits rolled at midnight Dad said, “Call your brother and tell him he’s about to be grounded.”

  Ten minutes later, Steven came home looking sheepish. “Sorry. I was at Eddie’s and lost track of time.”

  Dad scrutinized him thoroughly. Denny knew he was looking for signs of being drunk or high. Sometimes Dad couldn’t turn off being a cop.

  “We were watching movies,” Steven said, unflinching.

  “And you missed curfew,” Dad said. “What’s your punishment?”

  “I could be home an hour early tomorrow night,” Steven offered.

  “Or you could be home all tomorrow night,” Dad said.

  Steven didn’t argue.

  Behind the closed door of their room Denny said, “Were you really at Eddie’s?”

  Steven stripped off his shirt. “You don’t believe me?”

  “Sure I do. Did you find out how he could afford the Pier House?”

  “There was money in that duffel bag.” Steven plucked a T-shirt out of the pile next to his bed and sniffed it. “A couple thousand dollars in cash. They blew it all.”

  “Wow.”

  “And there were keys, too. Some kind of car keys. He says they threw them in the water.”

  “Maybe that’s what the break-in was about in Key West.”

  “That’s what I think.” Steven flopped down on the bed. “I don’t know what to do about him.”

  Denny sat on his own bed. “I’ve got some news. I talked to Nathan Carter.”

  “About what?”

  “About SEAL training.”

  Steven gave him a narrow look. “What about it?”

  “About the vision test.”

  Steven sat up, looking thunderous. “You told him?”

  Denny backed away. Their bedroom didn’t give him much maneuvering room. “He said anyone who fails the military vision test can get a waiver from the Director of Military Medicine.”

  Steven grabbed a pillow and stepped toward him. “You told him I got turned down?”

  “Keep shouting and Mom and Dad will hear,” Denny warned.

  “I can kill you quietly.”

  “I told him it was someone I knew! Not you.”

  “You don’t think he can figure it out?”

  “And he said he’s gay. But whatever went on with him and Agent Garcia, he’s not saying.”

  Steven readied the pillow as if to shove it down Denny’s throat. “I don’t care about his love life. I tell you the most important thing in my life and you go blab it. Why don’t you put it on a billboard on the highway?”

  “When did you become King Melodrama?” Denny asked. “You’re not listening. You could get a waiver.”

  Steven dropped the pillow and shook his head. “Yeah, because a piece of paper is going to save my team one day when we have to defuse a bomb and I can’t tell the blue wire from the green wire.”

  “You’re not color-blind. I don’t know why you’re giving up so quickly.”

  Steven flopped down on his mattress and threw an arm up over his eyes. “Stop talking about stuff you don’t know anything about.”

  Denny wanted to strangle him. And he wanted to talk about Brian, and his books, and his bedroom overlooking the sea, and how it wasn’t a date if you just hung out with a guy, right?

  He threw himself into bed. It took a long, long time before he fell asleep.

  *

  “I should drive you boys up to Miami,” Henrik said just before Brian and Christopher were supposed to leave.

  Brian was filling two travel mugs with some of Mom’s fresh ground coffee. “No, it’s okay. I’m just dropping him off and coming right back.”

  Henrik had dark circles under his eyes. Although he usually dressed nicely for a man who worked from home, today he was wearing jeans and a polo shirt with a small stain on the front. Henrik never wore anything with stains.

  “It’s no problem,” Henrik said. “Maybe we could go shopping later. You’ll need things for school.”

  “I figured I’d buy stuff when I’m there,” Brian said.

  Mom was watching them quietly from her stool. She was wrapped in a fluffy pink bathrobe he hadn’t seen since the winter in Boston. “It’s not a bad idea to let Henrik drive, honey. You had an exciting weekend.”

  Brian chafed under the concern. “Quit with the worrying, okay? I’m eighteen. Not twelve.”

  Christopher wandered out of his bedroom with a Boston Red Sox cap pulled low over his eyes. “Don’t even tell me it’s time to go.”

  Brian got him and his stuff piled into the Honda and kissed his mom good-bye. He half expected Henrik to follow them anyway. Sometimes he wished they’d be a little looser. A little less hovering.

  “Wake me when we’re there,” Christopher muttered, slouching low in the passenger seat.

  Brian turned the radio up loudly.

  The first island after Fisher Key was Lower Matecumbe. Brian thought most of the Overseas Highway was boring—one flat key after the next, strips of modern concrete buildings interspersed with old tourist hotels, gas stations, and marine stores. Marshes and mangroves, lots of trees, lots of asphalt. The prettiest spots were off the highway, the best views from the long bridges spanning channels that connected the Gulf of Mexico and Straits of Florida.

  Looking at the blue and green water—shimmering under the sun, the infinite seas—made him think
of Denny and their snorkeling trip, and how he’d like to do it again.

  They stopped for gas near Theater of the Sea, where you could pay to swim with dolphins. Christopher bought two glazed doughnuts and shared one.

  “Did you have a nice time with your not-gay friend last night?” he asked when Brian was on the road again.

  “You don’t have to be like that.”

  “Being repressed doesn’t make him less gay,” Christopher observed. “Macho hero thing, I get it. But he wouldn’t be clinging to you if he was straight.”

  “I can’t have straight friends?”

  “You can have dozens of them. He’s just not one of them.”

  Traffic grew heavier as they passed through Plantation Key. Brian checked his gauges. The car felt sluggish. Like back up north, driving in winter snow—heavy and not as responsive as usual. He hoped he didn’t need to get it serviced.

  “If he is gay, which he’s not, it’s his business and not ours,” Brian said. “Maybe he has good reasons for not telling anyone.”

  “Yeah, he’s scared. In denial. Homophobic.”

  “You can’t just go labeling people you don’t know.”

  “Sure I can. I do it all the time.”

  The road had widened to two lanes, but would soon be narrowing again. A black Toyota was tailgating Brian. He hated people who tailgated. And he hated Christopher’s casual indictment.

  “If you had spent any time with him at all you’d know he’s not like that,” Brian said.

  “I didn’t spend any time with him because he was all over you, trying to get his tongue down your throat.”

  “Are you jealous?” Brian gaped at him. “Is that it?”

  The black Toyota gunned past them. The tinted windows hid the driver. Maybe some hyperactive businessman late for a meeting in Miami.

  “I am never jealous because I—” Christopher said.

  Brian missed the rest of that sentence. He missed it because the Toyota had barely cleared him before swerving back into the narrowing northbound lane. Brian braked hard. The pedal locked and the car spun out.

  “Stop!” Christopher yelled.

  As if he had a choice.

  They crashed hard into a railing right before the next bridge. It gave way in splinters of metal and wood, plummeting them down a short embankment into the sea below.

  The long, frantic blast of the car horn filled the air.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Denny and Steven ran four miles that morning, looping around the island shortly after dawn turned the sky gold. Steven set a breakneck pace to punish Denny for telling Nathan Carter about the vision test. Denny hung in there, though, never once complaining. Afterward they swam out to the channel marker, came back in, and sprawled at the end of the deck in the morning sunlight.

  “You’ve got that stupid look on your face again,” Steven warned.

  “What look?”

  “Thinking about your gay not-boyfriend look.”

  Denny scowled at him. “I thought you wanted me to hook up.”

  “I want you to do it or stop moping about it.”

  “I think you should concentrate on your own love life, Romeo.”

  Steven kicked up water with his dangling feet. Gulls flapped overhead, reflecting in the placid water.

  Denny squinted at the sky. “Think about that duffel bag. Clothes can be replaced. Two thousand bucks isn’t really that much. Maybe whoever broke into Brian’s room at the Casa Marina was looking for the only other thing in that bag. The keys.”

  “For what? If you can blow up a boat, you can hotwire a car.”

  “Maybe Eddie was wrong. Maybe they weren’t car keys at all, or there were more than just car keys on the ring. There could have been keys to a safe deposit box, or a home safe, or another boat.”

  “All of those can be replaced.”

  “If you have the time. But not if you’re in a hurry, or you don’t want to draw attention to yourself.”

  Steven snorted and kicked up more water. “You mean like impersonating an FBI agent? Whoever that Agent Prosper was, he interviewed Brian when he should have been interviewing Douchebag.”

  Denny stared at him. “What was his name?”

  “Prosper.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t believe I didn’t see it.”

  “See what?”

  Denny rushed up the dock to their house. The bookcase in their room needed some serious culling—too many beloved books from their childhood now forgotten—but he found what he was looking for.

  Steven had followed him in. “What do you need Shakespeare for?”

  Denny opened to the list of characters for The Tempest and pointed.

  “Prospero, duke of Milan,” Steven said. “So what? It’s a coincidence.”

  “Is it?” Denny asked. “I think we better go over to Beacon Point and look for those keys.”

  “I’ll get Dad’s metal detector,” Steven said.

  *

  It took forty minutes of searching with the underwater metal detector before Steven found a silver key ring buried in some silt.

  “I win!” Steven immediately said.

  “Win what?”

  “Whatever I want.”

  Denny snatched the key ring away and dangled it in mid-air. Two matching car keys hung off the ring.

  “Master key and valet key,” Denny said.

  Steven asked, “Mr. Personality said no cars were parked here Thursday night. You think he was lying?”

  Denny scanned the parking lot, the tree line, and the road nearby.

  “Or maybe it wasn’t parked where they would notice it,” he said. “Where does Dad’s office tow all abandoned cars?”

  Ten minutes later they were on the road north to Plantation Key. The impound lot was a few acres of dirt and grass located behind a chain fence with rusty NO TRESPASSING signs on it. The attendant was old Will Soames, who’d spent most of his life sponge diving until a crippling stroke. He looked like someone who’d spent most of his life underwater—pale, wrinkled fingers twisted up like pieces of driftwood.

  “What kind of car you looking for?” Soames asked.

  “We don’t know,” Denny said. “Something towed in since Friday morning.”

  Soames leaned back in his wobbly chair. The chair, his desk, and a battered filing cabinet were the only furniture in an office wallpapered with pinup calendars. A marine radio decorated one shelf, next to a police scanner and an old ham radio.

  “You boys working a case for your dad?” Soames asked.

  “Working a case,” Steven agreed.

  Denny added, “For a friend.”

  “I don’t know, boys.” Soames heaved a sigh. “If there’s a car here, you’re going to want into it. And if you get into it and there’s some kind of trouble, I’m the one they’re going to hang.”

  “There won’t be any trouble,” Denny promised.

  “And we’ll make it worth your while,” Steven added.

  Soames laced his hands over his belly and grinned toothlessly. “Let’s discuss what that would take.”

  A few minutes later, after agreeing to take Soames out tarpon fishing on the day of his choice, Denny and Steven were standing in front of a silver Ford SUV, late model. From the outside it looked clean, with no suspicious smells emanating from it.

  “Look here,” Steven said, crouching next to the Florida license plate.

  Denny saw a faint seam running down the middle of it. “Someone welded two different plates together.”

  “Bogus plate,” Steven said.

  The key opened the door. Careful not to leave any fingerprints, Steven searched under the seats and Denny checked the glove compartment. Only two items were inside.

  “Payday,” Denny said.

  “What?” Steven asked.

  “One portable computer hard drive,” Denny said. “And one paperback copy of The Tempest.”

  Steven whistled in appreciation. �
�We were meant to find these.”

  “Someone was meant to find them,” Denny agreed. “I wonder what’s on the hard drive?”

  “One way to find out,” Steven said.

  They went back to the office to say good-bye to Soames. He waved them quiet and bent closer to his police scanner. “Car accident at Snake Creek,” he said. “Some kids went into the water.”

  Denny immediately thought about Brian, on his way to Miami.

  “What kids?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. A silver Honda. They already took them to the hospital. Why? You know them?”

  But they were already out the door.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Mariner’s Hospital was a long, low building that Denny and Steven both had seen too much of over the years. A patrol car was already in the parking lot. The officer standing in the ER lobby was Sergeant Bonnie Howell, a formidable woman who’d been to barbecues at their house before.

  “Is it Brian Vandermark?” Denny asked. “The car accident victim?”

  “You know him?” Bonnie fished for the pencil over her ear and noted something in her logbook. “He could use a friend right now.”

  Denny held his breath as she walked him and Steven back to one of the examination cubicles. Brian was sitting alone on a table, clad in his pants and a paper gown. His right arm hung in a splint and there was a bandage on his forehead.

  Denny started toward the table, then stopped. “You okay?”

  Brian looked stricken. “Christopher. I think he’s hurt badly.”

  Howell said, “He’s in surgery right now.”

  “I’ll go check, if you want,” Steven volunteered.

  Brian nodded. Steven left, and Denny moved closer to the table. “What happened?”

  “Some guy cut us off.” Brian sounded more bewildered than angry about it. Denny would have been livid. “Black Toyota, that’s all I know.”

  “They’re fishing your car out of the creek and your parents are on their way up,” Howell said. “Steven, do you want to keep him company?”

  “I’m Denny. Sure I will.”

  Brian glanced glumly at the splint. “They think it’s broken. I’m right-handed.”