Rough Justice raa-5

by Lisa Scottoline

  "He can have it, Momma," Dennell said helpfully, but was ignored.

  Rasheed strode to his closet in his oversized T-shirt and Champion sweatshorts. He was tall and thin, with wiry calf muscles knotted in long legs. He slid the closet door aside on a broken runner and reached in the messy closet to the top shelf. "I was saving it."

  "You were keepin' a secret."

  "I was savin'. You're always sayin', 'Save, save, save.' " Rasheed shoved a shoe box aside, revealing another tucked way back. It said ADIDAS on the hidden box. "I was savin' in case I didn't get those sneakers for my birthday. The Air Jordans."

  His mother looked pained and her body sagged with resignation. "You know I can't get you those sneakers, Rasheed. They're a hundred dollars. I don't have that kind of money, boy."

  "I know it, that's why I'm savin'. To get 'em myself."

  "You can't get 'em yourself!"

  "Yes, I can. You're always sayin', 'Try, try, try.' 'Save, save, save.' Now I'm doin' both and you're rip-shit."

  "Rasheed, that's enough. Why didn't you tell me about the money?"

  He shrugged. "I don't know."

  Judy watched in silence. She felt like an intruder, but was thrilled that her search was leading somewhere. She held her breath as Rasheed grabbed the shoe box from the shelf, plopped it on the bed, and lited off the lid. Dennell sat up and tried to peek in the shoe box, and his mother peered inside. "God help me," she said in a hushed tone, and Judy looked in the box.

  A thick roll of money nestled in the corner of the shoe box, coiled like a snake. There was a twenty-dollar bill on the outside, but Judy had no way of knowing how much was on the inside. Where had all that come from? Underneath the money was a bright white notebook, and it caught Judy's eye. She was dying to know what it was. "Rasheed," Judy asked, "is the white notebook yours or did that come from Darning, too?"

  "He gave it to ME!" Dennell chirped up, sitting cross-legged on his bed. "He tol' me to keep it. So it don't get stole."

  "Can I see it?" Judy asked, and Rasheed handed it to her. She opened the notebook. Its pages were filled with lists of numbers written in pencil. What did the numbers mean? Was the handwriting Darning's?

  "There must be a hundred dollars here," the mother said, astonished as she plucked the money roll from the box and flipped through it.

  "Only eighty-two," Rasheed corrected.

  "Only eighty-two?" she repeated, shocked. "You took eighty-two dollars from a man on the street?"

  "I didn't, Dennell did."

  "He don't know better, you do," she shot back as her surprise turned to anger. "You don't take money from nobody on the street! You don't take money from nobody. You know what they want for their eighty-two dollars, boy?"

  Rasheed looked down. "The man didn't want nothin'."

  "I work for my money, son. So will you."

  "I work. I was gonna shovel—"

  "You're damn right you're gonna shovel! You'll shovel all winter, for free. I'll loan you out. Then you'll remember. You don't take money from nobody. And you don't keep secrets from me."

  "What was I supposed to do? Tell you?"

  "Yes, tell me." Veins bulged in her slender neck. "Tell me, so we could give it right back."

  "Give it back?" Rasheed started to laugh. "Are you crazy?"

  "Yes, I am. Watch this!" Suddenly the mother peeled a twenty from the roll, ripped it in two, and threw the pieces into the air.

  "Mom!" Rasheed shouted. "What are you doing?" He scrambled for the money as the pieces sailed to the bed and landed on his brother, who, incredibly, remained asleep. "Stop!" Rasheed pleaded, but his mother was already ripping up another bill, then another, and the one after that, throwing them into the air, setting the pieces flying around the shabby bedroom like snowflakes.

  "You think I'm crazy?" she grunted to tear a stack of ones. "This is what I'll do if I ever, ever catch you taking money again!"

  Dennell clapped in delight at his mother's adventure while Rasheed scurried to fetch the money falling to the carpet. The mother kept tearing until all the bills were gone and the room a blizzard of cash. "Get the point, boy?" she shouted, her expression grim and satisfied.

  "Wha?" asked the middle son, waking up. He rubbed his eyes in bewilderment as money floated around his bedroom. "Is this a dream?"

  The mother laughed, and Judy did, too. But Judy's smile was because of what she had in her hand. Eb Darning's notebook.

  40

  Marta shined her flashlight through the snowy cyclone fence at the LBI Marina, where Steere's bills had showed he docked his boat. The marina was tucked in a harbor on the bay side of the island, ringed by shuttered summer homes and protected from the brunt of the snowstorm at sea. Next to the fence sat a flat-topped wooden building, apparently a small office. On its wall was a faded JET SKI RENTALS sign. A frayed basketball hoop fluttered in the breeze.

  Marta poked her fingers through the fence and leaned closer to get a better look. Snow fell steadily, but the bay was calmer than the ocean and rippled with choppy whitecaps that washed onto the docks at the ends. There were no boats in the water, which looked frozen in spots. Wooden slips covered with snow jutted into the empty water. Next to them stood a tall boat lift with a canvas sling. The marina was vacant, deserted, and dark except for a boxy security light on the outside of the office. Where were the boats?

  Marta cast the flashlight through the snow flurries to her right, behind a covered section of the fence. Boats stood on dry land, in racks. There were motorboats and sailboats, their decks and awnings blanketed with snow. Marta estimated thirty hulking white outlines in the boatyard but didn't know if any of them were the Piratical. She had no idea what Steere's boat looked like even when it wasn't covered with snow. She'd have to get inside the marina to read the names.

  Marta tucked the flashlight into her pocket and squinted up at the fence in the snow. It was tall, about eight feet high, and she tried to remember the last time she had climbed anything. The memories came back only reluctantly, they had been so long buried. She'd climbed oak trees in the woods, and rail fences. Onto a pony, bareback; even into her father's lap. Marta used to be a tomboy before she became a lawyer, a grown-up version of a hellion anyway. If she had to climb, she could climb.

  She hoisted herself up and tried to wedge the tip of her boot into the cyclone fencing. Her boot was too large. Marta kicked the fence, driving her toe in. The fence jingled and shook. Snow tumbled onto her head. She brushed it off, pulled up her hood, and began to scale the slippery fence. Her parka weighed her down; her snowpants felt clumsy. She almost lost a boot but she made it halfway up and kept plugging.

  When Marta reached the top she was panting. She threw a puffy leg over the bar and stopped to catch her breath. Wind gusted through her hair, freezing her ears. She blinked against the snow as she looked around her. No alarm began clanging and the marina wasn't ritzy enough to have a silent alarm. Marta felt safe.

  Then she fell off the fence. The flashlight slipped out of one pocket and the pritchel slipped out of the other.

  Marta replaced both without comment and lay for a minute in a snowdrift beside the fence. The pile of snow wasn't as soft as advertised, and Marta's body ached. She wiggled her arms and legs, taking inventory. Her head hurt but she couldn't remember when it hadn't. So far she had survived a car accident, a killer, a fall, and psychotherapy. Marta was beginning to think she was invincible, if not entirely professional.

  She got up and brushed herself off. The dock was slippery, covered with snow, as were the empty boat slips. They looked like five capital I's facing her. Marta grabbed the handrail because she wasn't sure where the dock ended and the water began. She tramped over to the large boatyard in the snow, flicked on her flashlight, and began reading the names of the boats on the racks.

  Free 'n' Easy, Skipperdee, Weekend Folly. The names were legible in the blowing snow because the letters were so big. The wind whistled off the bay as she read. My Girl, Showboat, Slip and Fall. The
boats were all out of New Jersey, but none of them was Steere's. Marta hurried to the next rack.

  Our Keough. Molly's Deal. Semicolon, but no Piratical. She bit her lip. Steere's boat had to be here; Marta had seen the docking bills. There'd been no other bill that showed Steere paid anybody to move his boat, or that he'd put in a claim for its loss. It was here and she would find it and whatever was hidden on it. Papers, a clue, whatever.

  Rate's Bait. Huggybear. Amazing Paul. Some of the boats were registered in Maryland and a couple were from points north: Camden, Maine, and Marblehead, Massachusetts. Marta squatted on her haunches and read the last line of names. It was dark on the far side of the marina, less protected from the sea. Saltwater lashed the fiberglass hulls, and Marta turned her face to avoid a drenching. Mandessa, Ebony, and Go Below. She reached the end of the row of boats and stood up. Where was the Piratical? How could Steere hide a boat?

  Marta looked around. Next to the marina's office, close to the water's edge, was a cinderblock building large enough to house boats. Maybe Piratical was inside. She hurried to the building. She reached it and shone the flashlight through its garage doors, pressing her nose against the cold glass like a kid at an aquarium.

  It was dark in the building and there were no security lights. Marta squinted, her nose a refrigerated pancake. She could make out vague outlines of more boats on racks, but there was no way she could read the names from here. She had to get inside. She eyeballed the panes of glass. They were large enough. Marta drew back her rubber boot and with a technique only a lawyer could envy, drove her toe through the brittle glass. It cracked with a tinkling sound and she kicked until she had broken the pane completely, then squeezed through the jagged frame and scrambled onto the floor inside.

  The floor was paved cement, dry except where pools of water had leaked under the door. Marta grabbed the flashlight and stood up among the glass shards. She dusted off quickly, leaving a tiny pile of snow behind Pigpen. It was quiet inside and it felt good to be out of the snowstorm, sheltered and protected. Just her and Jail Bait, Bet Thrice, and Ain't Nobody's Business. Where was Piratical?

  Marta cast the flashlight around the warehouse. Its roof was of a corrugated metal and its steel reinforcing showed. The air smelled musty, and the building had the windless, still cold of a large, unheated space. It was full of boats, maybe owned by those with the money for indoor storage. She headed for the boat racks.

  Marta hustled up the aisle, shining the flashlight on the boat names. First Edition, No Nonsense, SSCP. She rose on tiptoe, craning her neck to see the highest racks. Philly Boy, Compuboat, Hi-De-Ho. They sounded like a racing form, with name after stupid name. A grisly Sucker Punch. A boozy Mai Tai Time. The intellectual Einstein's Dream and its dinghy Feinstein's Dream.

  Marta sloshed with dripping boots down row after row and read twenty more boat names, none worth repeating. She went down the aisles with the flashlight as fast as she could, left to right, bottom to top. The garage was silent except for the squeak of her boots as she turned. Finally the jumpy circle of light fell on Piratical. Marta almost dropped the flashlight.

  * * *

  The Piratical was a sleek motorboat and looked larger than its twenty-four feet because it was up on a rack. It was painted a bright white and made a huge wedge in the row, like a generous slice of birthday cake. It sat on the bottom rack, probably because it was the heaviest. There was a shiny gray outboard motor mounted next to the boat's stairs. Marta climbed aboard excitedly.

  The boat's upper deck had a large sitting area shaped like a horseshoe, and elevated from the general seating was a padded driver's seat behind a steering wheel; the helm, Marta guessed it would be called, though she knew nothing about boats. She stood by the helm, taking it all in as it fell under the flashlight beam. She was learning fast.

  In front of the helm was a compass with a clear plastic bubble over it. Marta could see through it to a floating red needle. Every surface on the Piratical was neat and clean everywhere she looked. There was something strange about it, though; Marta couldn't quite put her finger on it. She stood, puzzling, then checked her watch. Almost three o'clock in the morning. In a few hours the jury would reconvene. Marta had to hurry. She flicked the flashlight around the helm, but there was no place to hide anything.

  Wait. There. On the left near the floor was a storage compartment. Marta squatted and opened the recessed cabinet. Papers! She pulled them out so she could see them better. A blue pamphlet that said THIS IS YOUR BOATING HANDBOOK and a packet of waterproof maps of New Jersey and the Chesapeake. A black Boating Almanac. Fuck! Maybe there was something stuck in its pages?

  Marta flipped through the almanac, accidentally cracking its spine. Ouch. She loved books and never cracked their spines. But this time, it told her something. No one had read this book. She looked again at the maps. They were neat and unwrinkled in the flashlight's beam. None of these references had been consulted. The boat was clean. Marta wondered if the Piratical had ever been used.

  She straightened up and scrutinized the boat next to Piratical for comparison, Atta Boy. Its cup holders were lined with dirt and its driver's seat was worn, with a worn pillow at the helm. The coiled yellow wire in Atta Boy's storage was dirty, but in Piratical it was spotless.

  Piratical had never been used. Sailed, driven, whatever. Had Steere bought the boat and never used it? Why? Did it mean anything?

  Marta had to keep searching. She stepped over the maps and went down the couple of steps to the living quarters below. It was dark and she ran her fingers against the wall until she found a switch. The cabin was cleaner than a hotel room and smelled like a new car. A sink and microwave were to the left; a tiny refrigerator sat under a sparkling counter. Marta opened the refrigerator door, but it was empty and its racks hadn't been put in. Its vinyl odor confirmed her suspicions. Never used. Did it matter?

  She crossed to the eating area, which had a blue-striped seat around an oval Formica table. Shipshape and untouched. It didn't make sense. Why buy a boat if you hate the sea? Why buy it and never use it? Marta sensed she was looking at a $40,000 file cabinet. Something was here. She would find it. She was getting close. She had to be.

  She went into the living area and feverishly upended all the seat cushions. There was nothing. Behind the living area was a sleeping area in a matching fabric. She turned over all the cushions and clawed at the rug sections underneath to see if any would reveal some sort of hidden compartment. She found nothing.

  Marta thought a minute. There had to be an engine, right? The boat didn't run on baking soda. She remembered the gray outboard Evinrude she'd seen and hurried to the top deck. If there was an engine, it had to be up there somewhere.

  She aimed the flashlight at the deck. On the white floor in front of the seating area were two aluminum handles. She swept the maps aside with her hand and yanked on the handle. The deck of the seating area opened up and underneath was a square-cut hole. A light went on automatically inside the hole and Marta set the flashlight on the deck.

  VOLVO PENTA was written on the black engine, which looked like a car engine. She knelt down and felt around. There was no grease anywhere and no glop built up on what looked like a battery. The Piratical had never even been turned on. Turned over, who cared. Marta felt around in the engine and the other black things there. God knew what they were, but it didn't matter. They weren't hiding the papers she wanted.

  She let the lid slam closed, plopped onto the deck, and picked up her flashlight, flicking it around aimlessly. The circle of light jitterbugged over books, maps, and the spotless deck. Marta had to be missing something. She wasn't thinking clearly. Something had to be here, or all was lost.

  She unzipped her jacket with a sigh and stretched out her legs like a stuffed teddy bear. Ice from her boot dripped onto one of the maps, and she watched the water drop. Drip. Drip. Wetting the map. Marta was suddenly too tired to figure or plan. To search or break in. She watched the water drip onto the map. It was a nice b
oat. Piratical. A pirate's boat. A map. A map.

  Marta sat bolt upright.

  A treasure map? Could it be? She leaned over and grabbed the wet map. FIGHT POLLUTION TO KEEP YOUR WATERWAYS CLEAN! proclaimed the top map. Marta unfolded it with excitement. Pirates. A map. The treasure. The boat's never being used. It all made sense. The Piratical was a logical place to store a map. A hiding place under everybody's nose, yet almost impossible to find. The boat was in inside storage so the map wouldn't get wet.

  LITTLE EGG HARBOR TO CAPE MAY. Marta squinted as she read the map. The Atlantic Ocean was at the top in white and there were numbers everywhere. 24, 27, 37. Marta had no experience with nautical maps and guessed they were depths of the sea floor. It was land she was interested in, on a hunch that a man who hated the sea wouldn't bury something under it, even if he could.

  Marta's eyes traveled the shoreline on the map. How like Steere. He was in real estate. His true love was land. It had made him his fortune, now it kept his secrets. And judging from his boat's name, Steere thought of himself as a pirate. That meant the treasure would be buried on land, near the beach house Steere loved. Marta just sensed it.

  She scanned the map left to right, looking for Long Beach Island. Ocean City, Sea Isle City, Seven Mile Beach. Where was Long Beach Island? She flipped the map over. There. At the left of the map it said Long Beach Island, over a tan length of land. The towns were Beach Haven and Holgate, then the island ended. It was the southern tip. Where was Barnegat Light? Marta wanted the north.

  She threw the map aside and searched through the other maps. Maryland, Virginia, the Chesapeake. Nautical maps for waterways Steere would never sail. Decoys for the real map. She picked up NAUTICAL CHART 12324. SANDY HOOK TO LITTLE EGG HARBOR. Marta unfolded it and spread it out on the deck of the cruiser. It took up most of the floor.

  On the map, two skinny strips of tan beach came from either side to meet in the center, like the claws of a hard-shell crab. At the center was the bulb that was Barnegat Light, and Marta traced with her finger where Steere's house must be. She saw the lighthouse she had spotted in the distance, then the stretch of dunes, but there was no X for buried treasure. Was it too much to ask? A little help now and then?