Denny's Law

by Elizabeth Gunn

  ‘OK. You seem to have a feel for her so you ask the questions. I’ll stand around looking brave and strong the way I do and keep an eye peeled for concealed weapons.’

  ‘I really don’t expect any sneak attacks. But she is on edge about something. However, this woman went to Mexico with Fred on a sailboat and stayed there for a couple of years, so we’re not looking for any weenie.’

  ‘I’m looking forward to meeting Mabel. You’re sold on her except when you’re not.’

  ‘Which just means I don’t have a read on her yet. But we baited a hook with Bill McGinty and Mabel nibbled, so—’

  ‘Now – is this the Bill McGinty the ICE lady told you about?’

  ‘That’s what we want to know. Lois’s McGinty has a strange bio and possibly works for the Sinaloa drug cartel. But Mabel says she knew her McGinty in Mexico years ago when they were down there on a boat. So at this moment she’s a major person of interest.’

  ‘Good, this is interesting, huh? And look, what a beautiful day we have for going to Marana. Aren’t the Tortolitas pretty from here? This beats pulling coffee cans out of vent pipes by a mile.’

  ‘Can’t say we don’t get variety in our work, can we? This is it, I think – she said she’s the one with the red bougainvillea by the door.’ Sarah checked the number. ‘Yup, this is it.’

  ‘Wow, it wouldn’t do to come home drunk around here, would it?’ Ollie said. ‘All these cul-de-sacs look the same.’

  They were in one of the clusters of cookie-cutter houses by which Marana was growing, in lurches of development that burgeoned and paused in response to the state of the economy. This neighborhood had beige stucco walls, red tile roofs and two-car garages, all with terracotta or dark green trim. They walked up to Mabel’s door and rang the bell.

  The woman who let them in wore no makeup but appeared younger than Sarah had expected from the voice on the phone. Solid and fit, she looked as if she enjoyed three meals a day and plenty of mountain hiking. She swung the door open wide with no hesitation and said, ‘Come in. You made good time.’

  ‘Your directions were excellent. This is Detective Oliver Greenaway.’ They shook hands.

  She had a fresh pot of wonderful-smelling coffee. Ollie helped her carry the mugs in from the kitchen. Mabel brought along a plate of cookies, home-made, smelling like dates and nuts.

  ‘It’s a little too hot to sit outside,’ she said and offered paper napkins from a box on the dining-room table.

  All her surroundings were like her: worn, solid, serviceable. Many family photos, no art. A few books on a shelf and a quilting frame holding a work in progress.

  Sipping the fragrant coffee in the comfortable room, Sarah began to see Mabel Conway as a reasonable person who knew how to manage a good life. Definitely not a dingbat. If William McGinty gave her the jitters, he must be an odd one.

  ‘How long ago was it,’ she asked Mabel, ‘this trip to Mexico?’

  ‘Been trying to think,’ Mabel said. ‘I believe it must have been eighteen years ago. We met Jack and Molly just as we moved in here and that was twenty-two years ago in October. We were from Minnesota, they were from Wisconsin and we hit it off right from the start. But we’d only been settled a couple of years when Molly – oh, it was terrible, she got that fast-growing cancer and was gone in just a few months.

  ‘Jack kept her at home, nursed her like a mother, never gave up hope. Kept talking about the wonderful trips they would take when she was better. But it was obvious before long that she was terminal. When she died he was just beside himself. His grief was terrible to see. Fred and I tried to help him but there isn’t much you can do for a man in despair. We got through that dismal winter with him and in the spring Jack said he felt like he needed to get out of here for a while. He told Fred he knew of a marina in San Diego where he could rent a sailboat, a thing called a bareboat charter where they furnish everything but the crew, and he talked us into going sailing with him. “It’s just wonderful out on the water,” he said. “You and Mabel will have fun and maybe I can start to heal up.”

  ‘We didn’t really want to go – we were still getting settled in the neighborhood and there was plenty to do here. Fred said, “Jack, I’m not much of a sailor.” But Jack said he had plenty of experience and he’d help us with everything. And after all, the farm was sold and the kids were running the hardware store. We were free of responsibility after years of hard work. We looked at each other and said, “Well, we said we were out for adventure.” So we went.

  ‘The three of us rented one sailboat together. A sloop, not that I knew what that was. The guys did all the sailing, mostly day trips out of San Diego harbor, and I had to learn how to keep house for all of us in small spaces. Actually that was kind of fun, almost like playing house. We were always in a harbor at night, so if I was too tired to cook we went to a restaurant.

  ‘About the most exciting thing that happened was that Fred fell overboard on the way to Catalina, which in a way was kind of lucky.’

  ‘Falling overboard was lucky?’ Ollie had obviously liked Mabel all along and now she’d really pleased him.

  ‘Yes, because he’d been getting feistier all the time; going to sea made him feel like a kid again. Jack was a very careful sailor and he kept warning us both to keep our life jackets on and to hook onto the lifeline whenever we were out of the harbor. But Fred hated the jacket and just despised being tied down to the boat, so he began taking the gear off whenever Jack wasn’t watching him.

  ‘The day we sailed to Catalina was very fair, smooth sailing, and when our course was set Jack went down for a nap while Fred stood watch. I stayed up on deck with him, enjoying the sights. Fred saw a line flapping loose up forward and just hopped up on deck in his shirtsleeves to tie it down.

  ‘Just then a much bigger boat passed us, going fast. It created a big bow wave that almost capsized us. Fred wasn’t holding onto anything and when we heeled over he flew off into the water like a flipped pebble, just a little splash and there he was, out in that big ocean.

  ‘I had no idea what to do. I just stuck my head down below and screamed for Jack. He flew up the ladder and got the sail down, started the motor and turned the boat around. Oh, and he threw the wand thing over, the one with the light that they’d practiced with in the harbor. Fred was a strong swimmer so he was able to reach it, and luckily the wind was calm so we were not making much speed when he fell off. He looked a long way away, though, by the time I spotted him, hanging onto that marker and yelling his head off.

  ‘It was the one time I ever saw Jack get mad at him. He rarely gets annoyed at anybody, actually, he’s a quiet, patient man. But that day – it was very scary. I hope I never get that anxious again.

  ‘We got Fred back on the boat, eventually. It took both of us heaving with all our might because Fred was getting too cold to help much. We piled blankets on him and I fed him broth by the spoonful – I was a long time warming him up. Jack had the sail furled by then and was running on the motor, back toward San Diego.

  ‘When Fred felt better Jack told him we were all done sailing. Said he would not stay on a boat with a man who was too stubborn to listen and insisted on taking stupid chances. “You didn’t just put yourself at risk,” Jack said. “Mabel and I could have been hurt or killed trying to save your stupid neck.”

  ‘Fred had to just beg him not to cancel the lease on the boat. My husband wasn’t usually much given to admitting mistakes but he loved being on the water, so he humbled himself. And from then on he was the most careful sailor you could ever hope to see. Anytime he wasn’t on the lifeline it was one hand for the task, one hand for the boat.’

  ‘That’s a terrific story, Mabel,’ Sarah said. ‘But now, about Bill McGinty? When did you meet him?’

  ‘Oh, well, yes, I guess you’d like me to get to the point. We went home a couple of months later but Fred and Jack just couldn’t settle for card games and hiking any more. They spent that whole summer planning the next boat trip. They w
ent back to California twice to shop for the boats they wanted. I wasn’t as crazy about the idea as they were but I went along because Jack was recovering from his terrible grief and Fred was just over the moon with joy. Every last turnbuckle and cleat, he loved it all. He told me once, “It feels like the reward I worked for all my life.”

  ‘Long story short, we went back to San Diego in October. That time we moved right onto the boats and began getting them ready – there’s a lot to do to prepare for live-aboard sailing. We named our boat Agnes Anne after our two daughters and finally left San Diego in late February.

  ‘That time, we went right down along the coast to Cabo San Lucas. Went south with the grey whales – they migrate down from the Bering Straits to Magdalena Bay every spring, mate and give birth there. Oh, it was exciting to see their spouts rising from the water all around.

  ‘We stopped for one night in Mag Bay. I was sitting on deck after supper when a grey whale rose right alongside the boat, a couple of feet under my hand. She had her baby kind of tucked alongside and was covered all over with barnacles and seaweed. She was as big as the boat. I held my breath but she didn’t seem to mind us at all. Fred brought a blanket and wrapped us in it and we sat on deck till dark, watching mamas and babies out for their evening exercise.’

  ‘Wow, Mabel,’ Ollie said, ‘I’d love to see that.’

  She gave him a happy little nod and said, ‘Well, you can. And it’s worth all the effort it takes. I’ve never felt the same about the world I live in since that night. I know how lucky I am to have my tiny slot in the animal kingdom.’

  She glanced at Sarah, who was beginning to twitch. ‘Hang on, Detective, I’m getting to the main event. We anchored in the big bay at Cabo San Lucas and began to learn the ropes. It was a much simpler place then. I’ve seen pictures taken lately and it seems to be all built up with resorts. When we got there it still had vestiges of the fishing village it had been, though it was getting very touristy. We did the things you do, took clothes to the laundromat and swapped books with other boats. Went to town for what we called a “celebration dinner” and got roaring drunk.

  ‘That’s when we met the McGintys. Bill and his wife Poppy. They had a forty-two-foot catamaran named Pretty Baby, named after Poppy, Bill said. People had already pointed it out to us as the party boat in the harbor. The owners were at a long, noisy table with a dozen other people, drinking, eating dinner and telling hilarious stories about mistakes on boats. Bill was loud and funny, Poppy was pretty and sexy. She seemed to be close friends with everybody there. There was lots of hugging.

  ‘Jack kept looking over at the table and I could see that he wanted to join it. He saw a couple of boaters he’d met in San Diego while we were outfitting and pretty soon he went over to talk to them. Then he was back at our table, saying, “Come over and join up, these folks are fun.”

  ‘We told each other we’d go over for one drink and leave, but of course we didn’t. Tell you the truth, I don’t remember how we got back to the boat that night. By the grace of God is probably the right way to say it.

  ‘Fred and I were basically Minnesota farmers, definitely not swingers. Cabo has a lot of experience with drunken sailors and I guess they took care of us. We did more partying in the next couple of years than ever before in our lives, but we took care, after that first night, not to get carried away. Jack just went for it, all the way. He was coming out of that terrible depression he went into after Molly died – laughs felt very good to him and he wanted all he could get.

  ‘I knew, of course, that most of the party people were enjoying weed along with their drinks, and maybe some stronger stuff. But in that setting it didn’t seem like a very big deal. Or it wasn’t as long as we stayed in Cabo – six months, more or less. Then the McGintys said they were moving around into the sea of Cortez and going to hang out in La Paz for a while. Little by little most of the sailors who made up their merry band began to drift around the corner to join them and before long the three of us followed. La Paz is a very old city on a big sheltering bay. It’s been catering to adventurers of every description for eons.

  ‘Dozens of boats were anchored there ahead of us. We had to be careful about picking our spot because there’s a lot of swing every time the tide changes. Besides the anchorage there were boats in a couple of marinas and up in dry dock in a repair yard. Busy place. Even so, Pretty Baby was easy to find, especially in late afternoon when they turned up the music. Then the sailboards and dinghies began to raft up around it and the party animals climbed aboard clutching their jugs of margarita mix.

  ‘I didn’t go to the parties much in La Paz but I loved the place for other reasons. I learned to ride a sailboard there and took Spanish lessons. Made a couple of friends I’ve kept ever since. Fred changed too; he got serious about sailboat maintenance, bought many books and crates of tools. We spent so much time in the air freight office we made a friend there, took him to dinner in Pichilingue – that’s a whole other story. Fred was always Mr Fixit on our farm and at the store – he just reverted to type. The longer we lived on that boat the more he seemed to love tinkering with it as much as riding around in it.

  ‘By the second summer we began to notice Bill left his boat for days at a time and was very tired when he got back. Poppy used to say he was off playing macho games with a bunch of Mexicans and that he thought it was so cool to go native.’

  She carried on bravely with the parties – of course by then she had a host of friends who were glad to help. But gradually it became taken for granted that her most reliable helper on party nights was Jack Ames. In fact, more and more, party nights got to be mostly on the nights when Bill wasn’t there. When he came back from one of his trips it would take him a couple of days to get his game face on. And even then he wasn’t the anything-for-fun guy he had been when we first knew him. Poppy never talked about where he was going or what he was doing. She didn’t seem to want to and we didn’t really want to know.

  ‘Jack was always on Pretty Baby on party nights, and then I began to see Poppy on Jack’s boat on quiet afternoons. I told Fred I was afraid Jack was getting pretty cozy with Poppy. Fred just snickered and said, “Yeah, I think he’s recovered from the blues, don’t you?”

  ‘I said, “I just hope he doesn’t end up in a big fight with Bill – that Poppy’s kind of a wild one.”

  ‘Fred was down in the sole, bent over some coupling – I was having this conversation with his bare back, as usual those days. He stood up so his head came out of the hole in the deck and said, “He’s a grown-up, Mabel. Keep out of it.” He wiped sweat off his face with an oily rag and spread brown stains down his cheeks. That made me laugh and we dropped the subject.

  ‘But the subject didn’t go away, of course. The more Bill McGinty stayed away from his boat, the more time Jack Ames spent there. I forgot about all three of them for a while though because Fred and I got snorkeling gear, learned how to use it and left La Paz to run up further into the sea. We hooked up with a group exploring bays and islands, snorkeling every day and learning the names of fish and birds. Then a hurricane came into the bay and we ran further north to get out of the way. We went as far as Loreto and a little beyond, found a quiet bay where several big spotted rays were living and floated around watching them for a few days – it was kind of an enchanted time for us.

  ‘Jack spotted the Agnes Anne as we came back into La Paz harbor, and as soon as we got the anchor down he pulled alongside in his dinghy. He came aboard for lunch and we had a big happy reunion and told him about our adventures. Before he left, he told us where to go on the beach that night for a picnic.

  ‘“Couple of guys are going to roast a goat – bring whatever you want to eat and drink with that,” he said. We were happy to see him again, all smiley and tanned. And late that afternoon we followed the noise to the picnic. The usual rowdy crowd around a big fire with a goat roasting on a spit and everything you could imagine to eat and drink on a long table nearby. Bill and Poppy were there,
cool and jolly at first, Poppy looking adorable in a coral outfit that showed off her wonderful body. There was lots of laughing and story-telling, but after the drinks had been flowing a while Bill and Poppy began sniping at each other. Gradually it turned into a serious argument that none of us wanted to hear. But they wouldn’t stop; I think Poppy had been waiting to have this fight when there were plenty of her friends around to referee. Bill said they were leaving day after tomorrow, period – nothing to make waves about.

  ‘“Headed back to San Diego,” he said. “I got things to do, people to see.” Poppy said he always thought he should decide everything and it wasn’t fair. He just shrugged and said, “It’s too bad, baby, but business is business and I gotta go.”

  ‘Poppy said she wasn’t ready to go so he should just go do his business and come back for her. The goat was dripping grease into the fire by then, flames shooting up; we all wanted to carve it up and eat. But there they were by the fire, yelling at each other, waving their arms, and then Poppy threw her drink in Bill’s face. The guys running the goat roast got seriously annoyed at that point and told them to take their fight someplace else.

  ‘Bill was always kind of a mouth, even sober. That night he tossed off some insults about goat herders that don’t know their place. One of the roasters picked up a rock and threatened to bash his head in with it, and then you know how these things go – Poppy flew to Bill’s defense.’

  ‘That happens to cops a lot,’ Ollie said.

  ‘I bet. Jack was standing nearby in great distress, wanting to help Poppy but not seeing a way to do it without making things worse. Fred put his arm around Jack’s shoulders and said, “Steady, Sport, you don’t want to get in the middle of this.”

  ‘He handed three plates to me with some pieces of goat on each. I piled about nine kinds of beans and potato salad alongside and found us a nice quiet rock to sit on. Jack was somber but he ate. Bill and Poppy had disappeared somewhere and the rest of the party went on, a little fragmented now.