VIII
I had several jobs lined up over the next couple of days. February is the busy season in Fort Lauderdale’s luxury yacht world. Hundreds of huge power yachts from all over the world converge on this little corner of South Florida, and, boats being boats, they always need work done. The parade of yachts headed up and down the New River, into the Dania Cut-off Canal, or down to the Miami River, appeared endless. In the winter there was always more business than I could handle, but I needed to work every minute in order to make it through the slow months from May through October, when the yacht crowd headed off to Europe or up to Newport. They left us here in the heat and humidity, swatting mosquitoes and trying to stretch our savings until the next season.
By Wednesday morning the weather had warmed considerably after Monday’s cold front, and I was back in shorts and a T-shirt as I scrubbed down the boat from stem to stern. The wheelhouse VHF was squawking with the usual traffic, though these days it seemed I was just as likely to get calls from boaters’ cell phones, so I had my portable phone sitting on the bench outside the cottage door.
I’d come back late the night before, after midnight, from a job that involved towing in a sailboat with engine trouble that had sailed over from the Exumas. They were able to get to the harbor mouth with no problem, but they needed a tow up the New River to the dock behind their house in the Citrus Isles. They were worried that the wind would quit once they got in the lee of the condos on the north side of the channel, and since they didn’t fancy wallowing out of control in the channel off the rock jetties, they’d called me on their cell phone after nine o’clock to pick them up outside the breakwaters. Trying to get the towlines rigged outside the harbor entrance in the seaway left over from the previous day’s norther, I’d gotten salty spray all over the deck and wheelhouse. When I’d come out late this morning, the tug glistened like a sugary Easter egg with the thousands of tiny salt crystals that clung to her topsides.
I picked up the hose and sprayed the soapy suds off the windshield and the top of the wheelhouse. Abaco barked and I squirted her with the hose. This was the game she loved to play, barking and sticking her rump in the air, daring me to catch her with the stream of water before she darted off behind the cottage. Water dog that she was, she loved getting wet so much, she’d been known to leap off the dock to chase me in the dinghy when I left without her.
I was trying everything I could to keep myself busy and avoid thinking about Molly and Zale. That morning I’d wandered out in my sweats to get the paper, still half asleep from the late night’s work, and there on the front page of the Sun-Sentinel was another story about the shooting and the subsequent investigation. A photo of Nick, Molly, and Zale, all smiling, was centered above the fold on the front page. I’d refolded the paper and thrown it on the couch, unread. Then I’d fixed myself coffee and a bagel, dabbled with my paints for a bit, and come out here to wash down the boat—anything just to try to keep myself from thinking about it, from reading that story.
Maybe I wasn’t rich, and maybe they didn’t write stories about me in the paper, but I liked my life, dammit. And I liked it when I just went to work and did my thing and everyone out there left me alone. In Sullivan Towing and Salvage, I owned my own business, and what I did mattered to the people I worked for. Back when I was a lifeguard for the city, I saved lives on a regular basis, and I put in ten years at that. I’d paid some dues—more than most folks. And now, while my job often involved just helping rich folks move their toys around, it paid well and kept me in the business so that I could be there for the other times when I pulled people off wrecks, when boats would have sunk or people would have died if Gorda and I had not been there.
Now, though, I needed to get back to that place in my mind where I realized my job stopped when we reached the dock. Lately I’d gotten involved in a couple of incidents that stretched way beyond just salvaging boats. But I’d had enough. Things had been quiet for me ever since last spring, and I wanted it to stay that way. I’d had enough of getting involved with other people’s problems, enough of police and intrigue, enough of trying to salvage lives as well as boats. In the past year, I’d seen more dead bodies than I had in ten years of life-guarding on Fort Lauderdale Beach. I wanted no more of that.
Still, I couldn’t help wondering how Molly and Zale were holding up. I remembered all too well the decisions that had to be made in the wake of a death in a family. I wondered if the new wife would be handling all the funeral arrangements, if she was letting Molly take part in the service, or if she was continuing to ostracize her as Molly claimed. She couldn’t leave the man’s son out of the picture, for Pete’s sake. And that got me started thinking about the way Molly had talked about the new Mrs. Pontus and Jeannie’s reaction to her comments. I reminded myself to ask Jeannie about her take on Nick’s widow.
After I washed down Gorda, I opened all the ports, doors, and hatches and aired out the interior. I spent some time in the engine room, cleaned out the strainer on the raw water pump, and checked my hoses and fittings with the visual I tried to do once every three months or so. There was a thick sheen of oil on the bilgewater that didn’t make me very happy, and I went through some service records to figure out when I should block out some time to get Archie, my mechanic, in to take a look.
It was when I was standing in the wheelhouse wondering whether to go get the Brasso to polish the ship’s bell that I decided I was being ridiculous. Enough of this “make work.” Might as well just go in and read the goddamn article.
I rushed into the cottage, saw that it was just past noon, grabbed a beer out of the fridge, and sat down at the table to read the story under the photo.
The beer was still untouched when I got to the end on an inside page. The author had written all about “maverick businessman Nick Pontus” and what he had done throughout the years to create his empire of restaurants, resorts, and casino gambling boats. There was some lurid stuff in there about how he and this Russian guy Ari Kagan had apparently tried to outsmart each other in the screw you department, and when Kagan seemed to be winning, Nick went to a grand jury and spilled his guts on some of the dirt he knew about Kagan’s misdeeds. The reporter had quotes in there from various Pontus Enterprises employees—including Leon Quinn, who had released an official statement. The paper said the bridge tender got a pretty good look at the car, and he said it was definitely a black Mustang, an older classic model, but he had been too high up to see the driver. He didn’t know if the driver had stepped out of the car—he didn’t see it. All of that, though, was not what made me forget about the St. Pauli Girl beading up at my elbow. It was when I saw Molly and Zale mentioned that I lost track of the world around me. The article stated that Molly had produced Nick’s will from a safe deposit box they still shared, and it named Zale as Nick’s primary heir to the millions in stock, real estate, boats, restaurants, and companies. In other words, this thirteen-year-old kid was soon to become the second-richest individual in Broward County.
I was still sitting there staring into space when the phone rang. I only have one portable phone in my cottage, and I tend to put it down wherever and whenever I finish using it. It was on the fourth ring and the machine was just about to kick in when I found the damn thing on the bench outside the front door.
“Hello. Sullivan Towing and Salvage. What do you want?” I said, breathing hard from the cursing I’d been doing during the search.
“You sound like you’re in a charming mood today,” Jeannie said, and I could hear the grin in her voice.
“Don’t start with me,” I said.
“What? What did I do?”
“I know what you’re up to. Forget it. You want me to do something for Molly Pontus, and I’m telling you forget it.”
“Molly? I didn’t say anything about Molly.”
“You didn’t have to. I know you. I know how you think. You think that I just can’t resist helping people who are in trouble. Well, let me tell you something. This time I can resi
st. After what she did to me and my brother, this time, it’s different.”
“You finished?”
“I guess.”
“Actually, the purpose of my call is to invite you and the ever-charming Mr. Moana over to my house for barbecue this evening.”
“Oh,” I said. When I’d thought about it for a couple of seconds, I added, “Jeannie, it’s February and it gets cold and dark by 5:30.”
“I didn’t say ‘a barbecue’ like I was going to be doing the barbecuing myself, did I? See, I’m in the mood for some of those good Tom Jenkins Barbecue ribs, and since the place is on the way from your house over here to mine, I thought maybe I could talk you into running by and picking up dinner on your way over here.”
“That’s low, my friend.”
“Is that a yes?”
“Are you sure this is not about Molly?”
“This is about ribs and that great tangy sauce of Tom’s.”
“How does 6:30 sound?”
“Excellent. And don’t forget the collard greens.”
By the time B. J. and I drove into the yard in front of Jeannie’s place, it was dark and the temperature was back down into the fifties. I had spent the remainder of my afternoon doing odd jobs on Gorda, then taking the Larsens’ kayak on a long paddle upriver, and finally working on the business’s books and paying off some bills. There was nothing I hated more than that kind of paperwork, and I knew when I resorted to that, I was desperate to fill my time.
Jeannie lived upriver from me in a neighborhood called Sailboat Bend. In the early twentieth century, when the New River was the trading grounds for Seminole Indians and pioneer families, the S-shaped bend that passed through this part of town was particularly difficult for sailors to navigate. Today the area was home to some of the city’s oldest houses, as well as some of the ugliest. In between the cute little rehabbed gingerbready wood cottages built by Bahamians and shipwrights were these cheap concrete block buildings that had gone up in the sixties. The one Jeannie lived in wasn’t as bad as some of the government-subsidized housing. Her place was one of the four fairly large apartments into which her building was divided, and the surrounding grounds were beautifully landscaped with large old oaks, bromeliads, and ferns.
I had my arms full of warm white paper bags, and as B. J. held out the corn bread bag and raised an eyebrow, asking if I could carry that, too, I heard Jeannie’s voice from up on the landing.
“Ummm, um. I smell that heavenly smell. And you’re late.”
“Hold on. We’re on our way up,” I said, as I balanced the pile of bags and navigated the concrete stairs. “Seems the upper crust has discovered your favorite barbecue place. Parking lot was full of SUVs the size of tanks.”
When I reached the top of the stairs, I heard the sound of the television coming through the open screen door. The screeching laughter from a sitcom was drowned out by one of her son’s yeowls.
She stood at the door wearing purple stretch leggings and a huge tropical print tunic with flowers the size and color of eggplants. I looked at her in alarm as the hollering in the house continued.
She shrugged. “I leave them alone, they work it out. I go in there, and it will just get worse.” Her eyes flicked past me, then her whole face lit up with a wide grin. “Ah, here’s that man of yours. I don’t know which is yummier-looking—him or the ribs.”
B. J. kissed her on the cheek, and we went into the kitchen to get the food onto plates. I wasn’t sure how I felt about Jeannie referring to B. J. as “that man of yours.”
As a lawyer who worked out of her home and was raising her twin sons alone, Jeannie had a thirst for adult conversation. She set her boys up in the playroom to eat on TV trays in front of the tube while the three of us ate at the table that was in a corner of her living room—after I had stacked the table’s piles of file folders and books on the floor. I pulled three bottles of Corona out of her refrigerator, opened them on the bottle opener permanently affixed beneath her kitchen counter, and set the bottles on the table.
Throughout the meal we talked about my recent jobs, a good book B. J. had just read, and a divorce case that Jeannie was working that involved a Hollywood Beach restaurateur and his wife, who had once worked for him as a prostitute. We laughed and the conversation would have sounded comfortable and contented had we not all three known that we were talking around the one thing we really wanted to discuss.
It was B. J. who finally brought it up. He had made us tea, and we were sitting in the living room in front of Jeannie’s television, which was usually on and competing in volume with the kids’ set in the back room. Tonight, what with her having company, it was dark. I checked out the clock over the kitchen sink. I was thinking that in fifteen minutes the local news would be on, and I was wondering if the cops had any leads or suspects when B. J. asked the question I had been wanting to ask all night.
“So Jeannie, how’s Molly handling everything? Is she doing all right?”
Jeannie raised her eyebrows, drew a deep breath, and stared into the bottom of her empty mug. “Depends on what you call ‘all right,’ I guess.”
B. J. nodded. “Yeah. I see your point.”
“I don’t know that you do.” She looked directly at me. “Either of you. Every time she leaves the house, some reporter accosts her somewhere—outside her door, at the grocery store, or when she goes to take care of business at Pontus Enterprises. The cops have been back twice to go over her Mustang.” She shook her head. “And she gave them permission to search the garage without consulting me.”
“The police suspect her?” B. J. asked, setting his mug down, and then sliding his hand over the top of his hair. “What are they, nuts?”
“B. J., don’t be naive. It’s standard procedure,” Jeannie said. “They always look at the family first.”
“But Molly Pontus? I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman who exudes such a strong sense of virtue. She has an inner beauty that—”
He paused to try to find the right word. B. J. never had trouble finding words, I thought. Obviously, Molly had made quite an impression on him.
“And the new merry widow Pontus, according to Molly, is acting like a bitch extraordinaire,” Jeannie continued.
“Jeannie,” I said, “what’s going on there?” I hadn’t shared Molly’s odd comments about the phone call with anyone, but I wanted to get Jeannie’s take on her state of mind. “Molly seems to be a little over the top when she talks about her.”
“A little, ha! Molly’s usually an exceptionally bright and sensible woman—except when it comes to Janet Pontus.”
“So what’s the deal? Have you met Janet?”
“Yeah, she’s young, beautiful, self-centered, and not too bright. But I don’t see her as the hard-bitten, conniving, evil bitch Molly makes her out to be.”
“But Molly wouldn’t lie,” I said.
“See, I don’t think it is a lie—exactly. It’s like when there’s a car accident and all the witnesses describe something different. It’s a perspective thing. For example, yesterday Zale wanted to get some things out of his room in his father’s house, and according to Molly, Janet told her everything inside the house belongs to her, Janet—including the contents of the boy’s room. Molly said Janet threatened to call the police and have Molly arrested if she tried to go in and get her son’s things.”
“Wow, that’s brutal.”
“Wait a minute. When I called Janet late yesterday, she told me they were just doing an inventory of the contents of the house for the estate, and Zale could come get his things as soon as they were through. I asked her straight out if she had threatened Molly, and she sounded genuinely surprised by the question.” Jeannie shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I believed Janet. Molly has always looked at that beautiful woman and seen a train wreck. She sees what she wants to see. Look, Molly and Nick were married for what, eleven years— and he and Janet had been married just over a year, yet because she is the widow, Janet’s making all the decisi
ons about the funeral service. And of course, Molly feels left out and stressed over that. She’s realizing she’s going to have to raise her son all alone now, too. But this story she told me last night has me really worried.”
“What story?” B. J. asked, scooting his chair closer to the table.
“She called last night, woke me up around two in the morning. She said Janet was creeping around outside her house, in the bushes outside her bedroom window making spooky noises and trying to scare her.”
I’d been tipping back the dregs of my beer, and I nearly sprayed the room. I choked it down, then said, “What?”
“Yeah, that’s what I said.”
“Did you go over there?”
“No. I asked her if she’d actually seen anything, and she admitted she hadn’t. But she said she had heard strange rustlings in the bushes, and then this moaning sound. The more I asked her about it, the weirder the story got. Listen you two, Molly’s trying to deal with this all alone, and I’m afraid she’s not handling it real well. She feels completely abandoned since nobody has called or stopped by or said boo. Aside from all that, though,” she said, looking up with a tight smile, “Molly’s doing just skippy.”
“Jeannie, I had no idea,” B. J. said. “If you think it would help her out, I’d be glad to stop over, spend some time with her.”
Yeah, I thought, I’ll bet you would. Aloud I said, “B. J., the one Jeannie’s trying to point the finger at here is me.” Jeannie pushed forward with a grunt and grabbed the remote off the coffee table. “I’m not trying to point fingers, Seychelle. I’m just answering the man’s question.” She aimed the remote at the television and the screen lit up with the face of a local newscaster. There was a small photo of Nick in a corner of the screen, and she was telling us that the story about Nick Pontus would be coming up right after the commercial break. Jeannie pointed the remote at the TV again and muted the sound.
Bitter End (Seychelle Sullivan #3) Page 7
