BREACH OF PROMISE

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  He didn’t answer his cell phone. Nina listened partway through “Announcement One. Your call cannot be completed at this time. The cellular customer you have called may have reached his destination or . . .” and hung up. “This is never going to work,” she said. The Sly Boy felt hot as a live grenade in her pocket.

  At Sato’s restaurant, the phone was busy. She tried again and again for nearly forty-five minutes, but the phone continued beeping rapidly. Paul would be out of there any minute. Nina made up her mind. Grabbing her jacket, she went back into the reception room. “Sandy, cancel anything I have left this afternoon. I don’t have court and tomorrow’s Saturday. I’m going to see if I can catch up with him.”

  “You do that.”

  “Meanwhile, keep trying the restaurant just in case you can get through. Tell him to wait for me there. I’ll keep my phone handy. Call me if you get through.”

  Fortunately, the Bronco was gassed up. Pulling up to the front door of Sato’s, about to pull her parking brake, she spotted Paul heading for his van, which was parked across the street about a block behind her. Reversing quickly, she turned around and passed his van, backing up to parallel park smoothly in the slot behind him.

  “Nina?” He got out of his car to meet her at her door.

  “Who else, Paul?” she said, flooded with the emotion she hadn’t been able to express earlier, and with relief at finding him.

  “To say that I didn’t expect you is an understatement . . . unless you caved in to a sudden uncontrollable yen for sushi?”

  “Paul, just listen to me,” said Nina, shutting her car door. They moved to the sidewalk in front of the restaurant while she gave him an abbreviated version of the events of the morning, handing him the Sly Boy to examine. “What I want to know is, am I crazy to think this means anything? I like Winston. I don’t want him to be a bad guy.”

  “Then why don’t you just call him and ask him to explain?” he said. “Don’t you trust him?”

  “It’s awkward,” she said. “Me asking him, hey, did you plant a microphone in the jury room? Did you listen to the proceedings? Of course he’ll say no. It’s illegal for starters. And it’s not like he necessarily used the information to win our case. Maybe he just listened. Maybe he didn’t use it for that at all. I can’t believe he would hurt me like this, destroy me. . . .”

  But Paul was lost in thought. “What are you going to do?” he asked finally. “If he bugged that jury room, this may go beyond jury tampering. He would know Wright basically sabotaged Lindy Markov’s case. Did you find any peanuts?”

  For a split second, it was almost funny. Then she remembered what it could mean. “If he did anything to Wright, I’ll kill him! The case . . . my God, Lindy’s verdict will be in question. All the months of hell with this trial . . . Riesner! How he’ll crow! And oh, Paul . . .”

  “The money,” he said.

  “My money!”

  “If you don’t mind,” said Paul, “I’d like to talk to Winston with you. Is that okay?”

  She nodded. “Thanks. I didn’t feel I had the right to ask you. But . . . didn’t you say you had to get to Carmel?”

  “I can leave for Washington from Sacramento tomorrow. Skip the stop in Carmel. Where is Winston?”

  “I think he’s out on the lake somewhere.” She called Sandy on her car phone. “I’ve got Paul.” She hung up.

  “Does Genevieve know about this?”

  “I don’t know,” said Nina. “She came in and saw me holding the microphone. I wasn’t paying attention to her, I was so freaked out at what I was holding. And Winston’s too smart and too proud to tell her something like this.”

  A new implication hit her. She sighed unhappily. “Maybe she suspected something. It’s possible she recognized the microphone, come to think of it. She did look upset when she came in to say good-bye. I put that down to it being her last day.”

  Playing with the plastic lid on a Styrofoam cup in his hand, Paul digested this information. “Where’s Genevieve now?”

  “Why do you want to know that?”

  “Does it make sense to you like it makes sense to me that Genevieve might just run off and warn Winston that you found the bug? What if she did recognize it, Nina?”

  “She might.”

  “And how do you think Winston’s going to react to the information if she is reporting to him right now?”

  “Mad?” said Nina, light beginning to glimmer on the edge of her consciousness. “Threatened?”

  “Threatened enough to want to shut her up? He probably figures he could convince you of anything. He’s got to know you’re dying to be convinced. You’ve got a fortune at stake. But he knows she of all people can nail him good. She probably knows more than she thinks she does, and it’s all beginning to make sense to her.”

  “But,” said Nina, “even granting that Winston isn’t who I always thought he was, granting he might even be dangerous,” she thought out loud, “how could she catch up with him today if he’s on an island in the middle of Emerald Bay?”

  “Same way we can,” he said, picking up her sunglasses from the backseat, pulling her by the hand, opening the passenger-side door on his van, and pushing her in. “Motorboat, motorboat, go so fast . . .”

  Nina got into the van with him and made some quick phone calls. “Okay, head for Meek’s Bay. I called Richardson’s Resort. They refused to rent us a boat. It’s too late in the day, and the wind’s up, they say. The bad news is, they rented the last one of the day to Genevieve, so we know she probably followed Winston. Oh, God, Paul. By now she’s a good hour ahead of us.”

  “Why should we go to Meek’s Bay?”

  “Matt offered us his boat, and that’s where it’s docked.”

  “You’ve had some unkind things to say about that boat.”

  “Last time it went dead out in the middle of the lake I swore I would never ride in it again, but it’s our only option. He gave me some tips about starting her up.” They pulled into the parking lot. “Look for the one called the Andreadore.”

  “Catchy name. Didn’t another ship ram that boat?”

  “You’re thinking of the Andrea Doria.”

  “Your brother has a strange sense of humor.”

  “Tell me about it. Usually he’s docked down by Heavenly, but luckily for us, a friend was working to get it ready for the summer season. Some kind of trade. Meek’s is closer to Emerald Bay.”

  They found the scarred twenty-two-footer easily. “Nina,” Paul said, untying the ropes that held it to the dock. “I know you don’t really think Winston killed Clifford Wright . . . but let’s just admit the possibility.” He jumped in, fiddled with the ignition, and started the boat.

  “I just can’t.”

  “But if he did . . . he’s not just dangerous to Genevieve, Nina.”

  “There’s an explanation. There has to be.”

  “Just don’t let friendship blind you. Watch yourself, okay?”

  His words evaporated behind the rattle and roar of the Andreadore as she set off for Emerald Bay.

  Paul ran the engine at full throttle for about ten minutes. Immediately, the cool wind of late May gusted inside Nina’s clothes to chill her limbs and bite at her neck.

  A heavy spray flew off the choppy water below. “Would he swim to Fannette in this weather?” she said.

  “I believe Matt told me once you can pull up to the rocks in a kayak,” Paul said. “You might be able to get there without even wetting your feet.”

  “I wish we weren’t doing this,” said Nina. “I’m freezing already. The lake is getting really wild. And look at those clouds coming in.”

  Paul didn’t reply, seeming lost in his own thoughts.

  The wind rushed by. Ten thousand white caps adorned the vast expanse of lake. “And I’m scared,” she shouted over the motor and the wind. “Slow down.”

  “We’re in a hurry, remember?”

  She remembered. She remembered that she should be sitting at a safe desk
somewhere, in a warm room, with everything in control, not out here on the lake with the afternoon wind coming up, in control of nothing, with Paul, who was supposed to be gone. . . .

  “What’s this?” she said, stopping a leather case that was rolling across the deck. “Oh, good, Matt’s binoculars.”

  “Here,” Paul said. “Wrap yourself in the blanket.” He threw a picnic tablecloth to her and she put it around herself.

  She pulled out the binoculars and adjusted them to her eyes. For several minutes, she scanned Lake Tahoe for as far as she could see, almost across its entire twelve miles to the eastern shore. “Anybody who was out here today was smart enough to dock before now. There’s nothing out there, not even the ghost of the drowned sailor.”

  “What drowned sailor?”

  She told Paul the story Andrea had told her about the sailor who ended up at the bottom of Lake Tahoe instead of in the tomb he had built on the island.

  Something she said must have verified something he was already thinking. “This damn lake. This whole place. It’s so beautiful on the surface.” He looked out at the uneven waves, and hung on to the wheel with fingers so tightly clenched they had turned white. “But underneath . . .” As if to help him make a point, the engine sputtered, then reengaged.

  Before Nina could ask if the comment had some hidden double meaning only a literature major could figure out, he said, “We’re almost at the entrance to the Bay. Get those binocs up.”

  And there it was, a boat with the figure of a woman at the helm. “It’s Genevieve,” she said, handing over the binoculars so Paul could look.

  “What’s she doing over there? That’s not the way into Emerald Bay,” he said, and for the first time Nina realized that the irritation in his voice, his absorption, probably masked a certain amount of fear. Paul didn’t spend all his time messing with boats either, she reminded herself. An equivalent to her five-minute lesson with Matt probably constituted the bulk of his boat lore.

  But he had never failed her, had he?

  They tried to hail Genevieve, but in the wind, she could not hear them.

  “Damn and blast!” said Paul. “She didn’t even look this way. She’s headed straight out to the middle of the lake. Is she trying to get to the other side? Where on God’s blue water is she going so fast?”

  “We can’t catch up to her, now. Her boat’s in better shape than this old rattletrap. Anyway, she’s alone, Paul. She’s okay. I don’t even see Winston.”

  “Don’t knock Matt’s boat. You don’t want her taking offense. We’ve got a long way to go. And we don’t know what’s going on. It’s possible Winston’s in that boat somewhere. Now let’s just give her a little gas“—he pushed the throttle—”and we’ll just see who’s a rattletrap.”

  He got the boat up to top speed, which wasn’t fast enough to overtake Genevieve, but felt very fast to Nina. Holding on to the windscreen with one hand, she stood up and waved the paper bag in the wind. Genevieve’s boat rumbled purposefully ahead, jumping and dipping in the waves, sometimes heaving to one side or the other, looking dangerously unstable. At one point she turned her head, and Nina saw her lips moving, as if she was saying something, but she continued at full speed, apparently blinded by her resolve. Then, suddenly, about four miles out from land, she shut the engine off and bent over out of sight.

  “What’s she doing?” Paul said, adjusting the motor down, trying to close the gap between them without running into the other boat.

  “I can’t see her.”

  When they were as close as possible, he cut the engine down to low. The noise made no impression in the wind, apparently, because the next thing they knew, a startled Genevieve almost fell over at the sight of them.

  “What the hell!” she called to them. “Where’d you come from?” She had a somnolent Winston caught by the arm, and as they watched, she propped him against one of the seats. He was sitting on the deck of the boat, eyes closed.

  They pulled in next to Genevieve, and Paul kept the engine running, so that he could move away quickly if the wind pushed them in too close.

  “We need to talk to you, Genevieve,” said Nina.

  “You followed me out here to talk to me? Must be awfully important. What’s happened?”

  “What’s the matter with Winston?” Paul said.

  “Oh, man,” Genevieve said. “Winston. He’s drunk. God. He’s a maniac. He took it in mind to drive this dang boat all the way across the lake! I told him it was too late in the day, but he was beyond listening.”

  “But you’re driving,” Nina said.

  “Just for the past few minutes. He was so determined. Shouting at me. Jesus, I never saw him like this before,” she said. “He just now passed out.”

  “What are you doing here with him?”

  “After I finished up at work, I realized I had some time before I had to leave. You probably noticed Winston and I . . .” She flushed. “Well, we didn’t agree about how things ought to be between us. I wanted to keep seeing him . . . he thought we needed to make a clean break. So I wanted to talk to him. It seemed like a perfect, intimate little opportunity. I knew he was kayaking so I rented this boat, and surprised him on the island with a picnic I picked up at Cecil’s on the way out of town.

  “We laid out a blanket on the island. We were celebrating with champagne, but I hardly drank anything. Turns out, he’s a mean drunk,” Genevieve said, and she started to dab at her face with her sleeve. Her light hair streamed out behind her in lank strips. “You can’t tell someone like that what to do. I guess he was drinking before I arrived. A little of the champagne and he was over the top. Then he practically forced me. We got on the boat. I wanted to go back, but he had this cockeyed idea . . . it was easier to give in. And then, just a minute ago, he finally passed out. I was just going to sit him up so he wouldn’t vomit and choke on it or something. Then I figured I’d head back.”

  “Genevieve,” Paul said. “Would you toss the floats onto the side of your boat? You know, the ones you put down to protect the boat when you dock.”

  “Why?”

  “Did Winston say why he wanted to go out into the middle of the lake?” Nina asked. Winston was completely passed out, obviously not a danger at the moment.

  “No,” said Genevieve. “He was way beyond reason, just pushing and demanding. I was afraid. . . .” She was half-shouting over the wind.

  “Genevieve, listen,” Nina said. She explained as quickly as she could what they thought the microphone they had found in Winston’s office meant. “It’s just possible he wanted you out here where no one would find you. If there was an accident.” The Andreadore pitched, and Nina reached for the windshield to prevent herself from falling.

  “That’s ridiculous!” Genevieve said. “You’ve lost your marbles! How can you think that of him?”

  “There may be an explanation. But you have to look at the facts. If Winston eavesdropped on the jury, there’s also the possibility . . . the remote possibility he has something to do with the death of Clifford Wright.”

  “I . . . I don’t know what to say. I’m just flabbergasted. After all he did for you! And he would never intentionally hurt me. He cares about me.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Paul implacably. “Why don’t you ride back with Nina. I’ll take Winston.”

  “No,” said Genevieve. “I’ll take him back. He’s out cold. Even if what you’ve said is true, and I think it’s the biggest hunk of wet cow dung I ever met, I’m in no danger now. Tell you what. I’ll head back to the dock. You two could help me by goin’ back for his kayak.”

  “Forget the kayak!” Paul exploded.

  They argued back and forth for a few minutes as the sky continued to lower until the clouds nearly touched Nina’s shoulders, and the fading afternoon was darkening by the minute.

  Genevieve finally clinched it. “How are you going to feel when he wakes up, huh? He’ll have a perfectly reasonable explanation for everything, and then he’s going to want to s
natch you bald-headed for leaving his kayak behind!” She was very upset, and had slipped into her most exaggerated Southern accent.

  “Paul, the island is only a few minutes out of the way. We could get his kayak,” Nina said.

  Paul quit haggling. Pulling the Andreadore swiftly up beside Genevieve’s speedboat, he motioned to Nina to take over the helm, perched on the edge of the boat, and leaped before Genevieve had time to react, arms akimbo and legs flailing over a five foot stretch of lake, landing with a curse inside the other boat. He stood up and took Genevieve’s arm. “You be a good girl and get the hell out of this boat,” he said, guiding her over to the edge. “Nina, come in closer.”

  Nina obeyed, moving gingerly in. Ignoring her noisy protests, Paul lifted Genevieve neatly into the Andreadore.

  “I’ll go back for the kayak. We’ll meet you two at Richardson’s landing in twenty minutes. You two start back. Meanwhile, Genevieve, got any rope on this rig?”

  Genevieve stood next to Nina, watching Paul and Winston recede as Nina steered Matt’s boat away. “You’re going to tie him up?” she said.

  “Just maintaining the peace,” said Paul. “You said he was upset.”

  “I don’t believe this.”

  “Tell me,” Paul said sternly, “where the goddamned rope is.”

  Looking unhappy or uncertain or both, Genevieve finally said, “I think there’s some inside that hatch Win’s lying on.”

  “Paul, be careful,” said Nina, waving and steering the Andreadore to the southwest. She waited until they were far enough away not to cause a wake and swamp the other boat before accelerating away.

  She could see that he was trying to move Winston’s dead weight to one side, but the big man flopped around, ungainly as a marlin.

  Nina and Genevieve covered a couple of miles in blessed silence, Nina just delighted to be going home and feeling tremendously relieved. They had Winston. Now he could explain. He could dispel this cloud of doubt about her case. They were about halfway to the resort before Genevieve said, “Oh, damn. Damn, damn, damn!”