The Scuba Club

by Rene Fomby

  “Yeah, I’m afraid I’m going to lose my deposit on that one. Someone decided I needed to take an impromptu swimming lesson and I forgot to empty my pockets beforehand.”

  “Swimming lesson?” Harry asked. “But you don’t—”

  “Swim. Right. Made even worse by the fact that I was weighted down with maybe twenty pounds of gunmetal and clothing. Let’s just say it was a big surprise to me, as well. But back to your call, what did you find out at Brett Cutler’s law office?”

  “You’re not going to believe this, Gavin. It only took me a split second to locate the drawer holding all of Cutler’s files on Mulcahey. It was his personal desk drawer, locked, but it only took another second or so to locate the key. And when I did, whammo! That drawer was jammed full, I’m telling you. Most of it just routine stuff, plus all the details on her will, the insurance policy and a small trust she had set up for her son. But then I came upon the file on her pending divorce, and guess what else was in it?”

  “You’re killing me, Smalls. Come on, out with it.”

  “There was another file folder shoved in right behind it, with an almost identical set of paperwork to Mulcahey’s. The divorce that is.”

  Gavin was confused. Two sets of divorce papers? “You mean Cutler had drawn up an alternative divorce petition for Katy? Why would he do that? Was she thinking of leaving more money to her husband or something?”

  “No, Gavin, the papers weren’t for Katy Mulcahey’s divorce. They were for Brett and Tara Cutler.”

  45

  Salon

  “Brett!” The name burst out of Gavin’s mouth like a Roman candle. “Are you saying—”

  “Yeppers. It appears Cutler was planning on cutting the cord with his spouse, as well. And the petitions were both signed and dated the same day, roughly one week before Cutler and Mulcahey and the others left on their little scuba trip. It appears our little Brett and Katy were lining up a neat little two-for-one divorce action. Probably planned on filing the papers as soon as they got back.”

  And just what else were they plotting? Gavin murmured to himself. “O-k-a-y,” he drawled out, spreading the word over several syllables, “and what did you find out about the money she was hiding out in the Caymans?”

  “Not a thing. I searched the place high and low, but couldn’t turn up a single thing. Although he did have a small safe, tucked back behind a cheap motel quality painting on the wall behind his desk. But I couldn’t locate the combination for it, and his office assistant claimed she didn’t even know it existed. I put in a request with the judge for an extension on the warrant, and then I made an appointment with a safe specialist to meet us back at the office first thing in the morning.”

  Espinosa had returned, and Gavin held up a finger to stave off any questions for the moment while he finished up with Harry. “Good idea. I can’t see the judge turning you down on that, not with Bob Sanders involved, so hopefully we’ll find out more when you finally get into the safe. Once again, Harry, I can’t thank you enough for all your help—”

  “Just glad I could be of service, Gavin.” Harry paused, suddenly remembering something. “Oh, by the way, Andy’s been trying to reach you. She called here about an hour ago, said she’s left all kinds of messages on your voice mail. I gave her the number to your satellite phone, but I guess that won’t be of much use now that your wireless service is underwater, so to speak. You might want to give her a call back, though.”

  “Thanks, I will. I guess I should have called her last night, but I got busy and—”

  “Never a good excuse when it comes to the ladies,” Harry suggested half-jokingly.

  “No, you’re right about that. Andy usually keeps me on a pretty short leash these days. Not that I’m complaining, mind you, a short leash just means I’m all that much closer to her. And most of the time that’s a pretty good place to be, if you know what I mean,” Gavin chuckled.

  “I hear ya, big guy. Love to have some of that going on in my life, but as you know, the timing with Samantha never seems to be right. You’re a lucky man, Gavin Larson.”

  “Yeah, well, timing is everything, I suppose,” Gavin agreed, checking his watch. “Look, thanks for all the info, Harry, but I gotta run. We have a pilot showing up on our doorstep in short order to row this boat ashore, and now I’ve got to sit down with my colleague from the local police to work out what, if anything, this new information means to our case. Would you mind texting Andy and letting her know I’ll be checking in with her in about an hour or so?”

  “Not a problem. But you better put a timer on your phone right now, if you know what’s good for you. She won’t be very happy if that one hour stretches into three.”

  “Good idea, I’ll do that for sure. And let me know if you turn up anything out of Cutler’s safe.”

  “Will do. I’ll give you a call first thing in the morning either way.”

  “Thanks, buddy.” Gavin hung up the phone, then paused to pull up the clock app and set an alarm for one hour before turning back to Espinosa and filling him in on the new updates.

  Espinosa was skeptical. “So you think Mulcahey and Cutler were planning on running off together? How does that make any sense? There’s really no evidence at all that they’d been spending any significant time together since those first few months back in high school. And a girl like Katy Mulcahey, she could have had anyone in the world, so settling for a small-time lawyer, and one who wouldn’t exactly turn all that many heads on ladies night, I’m just not buying it.”

  “Okay, maybe he started drawing up the papers for Katy, then realized it might be a good move for him, as well. I mean, if his wife back at home is anything like the way she’s been behaving over the last two days on this boat, I can see where a guy might get a little tired of dealing with her. Plus, with no kids to fight over, making a fresh start with a new woman in his life isn’t all that hard a trick to pull off.”

  “Then we’re agreed,” Espinosa said, looking off in the direction of Trevor’s cabin.

  “Yeah, I can’t wrap my head around it being anyone other than him, any more than you can. You ready to make the arrest?”

  “Let’s wait until we’ve got confirmation that the harbor pilot is on his way. No need to have to deal with all that drama any sooner than we have to.”

  “Works for me.” Gavin walked over and scrummaged around in the galley. “Beer? Looks like they’ve got two left. And it has been a really long day.”

  “Sure, why not. I’ll be happy to take a bottle of your cerveza mas fina, or anything else you’ve got down there that’s cold and wet, for that matter.”

  Gavin tossed him a low-carb beer, the only choice available at this point, and they both twisted off the tops simultaneously and took a long swig.

  “So what’s next?” Gavin asked, mostly making idle conversation.

  “With the investigation?” Espinosa scoffed. “My friend, this investigation is over and done with. As soon as we can get this boat moored safely in the harbor and Trevor Johnson is just as safely tucked away in police custody, I’m ready to release everyone else on board and let them all go their separate ways. And as for me, I plan to grab the first flight out of this place to somewhere, anywhere, far, far away from this damned hurricane.”

  “You’re right. Of course.” Finally caving in to the inevitable, Gavin reluctantly turned his attention to the storm. The relentless violence of the wind slamming into the starboard side of the boat rattled in his bones, and the almost constant lightning barrage flooding in through the cabin’s large picture windows on every side etched the wretched memory of this moment deep into his retina, probably leaving behind a permanent reminder, like the result of staring at the sun for too long. Rainwater had started to force its way through the woefully inadequate window seals and was pooling on the floor all around him. Gavin shivered involuntarily, and quietly prayed that the harbor pilot would arrive very soon. He didn’t think he could possibly survive a
nother hand-to-hand battle with the ravenous monster that lay in wait for them just a few short feet away, with little else but a few layers of fiberglass keeping it all at bay. And he came to a quick conclusion that whatever he’d left behind in the berth up front could just stay there, unless somebody else volunteered to go retrieve it. No way was he ever again stepping foot that close to where he’d been tossed overboard like a worn-out rag doll and almost drowned. He thought again of Trevor Johnson, and decided that whatever horrors might await him in the Mexican prison system, he had earned every single one of them.

  In the meantime, he owed his wife a call back. He pulled out the borrowed phone, checked the display to make sure he had enough juice, then dialed the number for her cell. She answered almost immediately.

  “That you, Gavin?” she asked, sounding a bit breathless.

  “In the flesh,” he answered. “Well, I’m in the flesh here, that is, but for you it’s a little more virtual—”

  She laughed, a light sound that reached him easily over the phone and left him feeling more than a little homesick. And not for the first time. “I guess that’ll have to do,” she said. “I was kinda thinking you’d forgotten me when you didn’t call, and then kept ignoring my messages. A girl gets a little crazy when she’s abandoned like that. Dropped in the trash bin like yesterday’s news.”

  “Yeah, well, sorry about that, honey. My fault. My regular cell phone can’t get a signal out here, something about a tower that got knocked down in the storm.” He remembered where he was, then lowered his voice and turned away from Espinosa’s prying ears. “Then my second phone got—water damaged, you might say. Right now I’m using a third phone I borrowed from the Mexican police. And it reminds me a bit of that little ant you were looking for in the desert that one time.” Gavin was trying to send a subtle coded signal to her to be aware that the phone was being bugged, just in case any of Espinosa’s men were still listening in.

  “Gotcha,” Andy said, with a tone in her voice that indicated she had indeed caught his underlying message. At the end of the day, she was, after all, a spy. “So, I got a chance to catch up on your ongoing international exploits with Harry, but please tell me he got it wrong and you’re not sitting on a tiny little boat out in the middle of the Caribbean with a full-blown hurricane headed your way.”

  “Uh, I’m not exactly up on the weather report, but the boat part is pretty much dead on.”

  “Really? With your psycho issues? Do you really think that’s wise?” Her current tone strongly suggested that she didn’t think it was at all wise.

  “Not much choice, Andy,” he almost whined in response. “It is what it is. But I can say that I’m doing a little better in that department at the moment. Even went for a swim a little while ago. That’s how my phone got wet. I plum forgot to put it away before I jumped in.”

  Her silence hung palpably in the air between them before she finally spoke up. “Well, that would make it the third phone you’ve tanked since we got married. Must be some kind of record. Good thing Sanders gave me a raise.”

  “Yeah, well, this time it wasn’t my fault. Honestly, it wasn’t,” he insisted, knowing Andy’s response even without her saying it. “Anyway, what news do you have about the storm? Is it officially a hurricane yet?”

  Andy sounded deadly serious as she answered. “It’s swinging around Cuba now, already building to a Category 3 and expected to hit Category 4 sometime tonight or in the morning. The forecasters are literally all over the map about what path it’s going to take, with about half thinking it’ll make landfall in the Yucatan where you are, and the other half thinking it will start swinging north toward Houston sometime tonight. In other words,” she said, sounding somehow even more serious, “you need to get your butt out of there, like yesterday. And you damn sure have no business, Buster Brown, sitting out there in front of this beast on a teeny tiny sailboat.”

  “I will assure you I agree with that sentiment one hundred percent, Andy. We have a harbor pilot on his way to us right now to power our boat into the Cozumel harbor. By tonight we’ll be safely tucked away out of the storm, I’m guessing some place further toward the main part of town, well away from the coastline.”

  Andy let out a long sigh. “Good to know. Okay, so where are you with the investigation? When do you expect to be back home?”

  Gavin glanced over at Tony Espinosa, who was trying to give Gavin some privacy. Or at least was trying to give off that appearance, since Gavin had little doubt his people would be playing back a recording of the call to him just as soon as he could sneak away. “Unless something changes dramatically, we’re 99 percent certain we’ve got the right guy. So now it’s just a matter of waiting out the storm and catching the first commercial flight out of here. Maybe a day or two?”

  “I’ll call Sanders and ride his butt about sending you out into the middle of a hurricane in the first place. That should be more than enough incentive for him to redirect some Navy jet to get you home a lot sooner than that. He owes you.”

  “Yeah, well, this whole operation is pretty much off the books as far as the government is concerned, it’s all coming straight out of his own wallet, so a Navy jet may not be doable. Besides, you’re pretty much stuck at the office until that bird of yours blasts off, anyway.”

  “Unfortunately, that’s not exactly true at the moment. We ran into a little snag at the office. The project’s been put on indefinite hold for now.”

  “Snag? What kind of snag?” Gavin asked, suddenly sorry for having brought the subject up.

  “The private space company that was providing the delivery vehicle lost one of its birds yesterday, the danged thing blew up on the pad down at Kennedy just seconds before ignition. They need to figure out why and how, and in the meantime every other launch using that delivery system has been put on indefinite hold. Which means your sweet little newlywed wife is stuck at home with nothing much to do and no one to do it with. So, with that in mind, I am going to make that little call to Bob Sanders after all, thank you very much. And in the meantime I expect you to do everything in your power to make sure you come home to sweet little old me, and not wind up somewhere near the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, or the Caribbean, or wherever it is you’re floating around right now. I have absolutely no idea how to use Fender, and I don’t intend to figure that out anytime soon, mister.”

  “I think you mean Tinder, and I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to swipe left to choose someone. Or is it right?”

  “I’m happy to know you’re just as confused about all that as I am, dear hubby of mine. Anyway, is there anything I can possibly do to help you, now that I have nothing but time on my hands?”

  “Actually, maybe there is. I was supposed to get a forensic report from the coroner’s office in Houston, but it got sent to my work email, and I’m not sure if I can or should try to access it on this loaner phone. You know, log into an official government email account using the phone of a foreign government, that sort of thing. Are you home, or are you headed that way anytime soon?”

  “As a matter of fact, I was just about to slip into a hot steamy bathtub when you called. I’d be a little more graphic, but with the ant problem we’ve been having—”

  “Yeah, probably best left to the imagination.”

  “Exactly. Anyway, I’m walking into our office right now.” She hesitated, wondering if she should bring it up. But he’d find out soon enough, just as soon as he walked through the door himself, and a little foreknowledge might keep him from sending his kids any awkward and embarrassing emails or texts in the meantime. “Uh, by the way, UPS returned the package you sent your daughter. Seems it was never claimed.” Reading his thoughts in the long silence that ensued, she paused in the doorway to their office. “You know, I’m pretty sure it was just your ex, playing her little reindeer games. I mean, what little girl would turn down a birthday present, you know? But her mother, she would send it back in a heartbeat, just to drive another
wedge between you and your kids, make them think you didn’t remember them.”

  As soon as she said it, Andy realized that her words probably just made the situation worse for Gavin, and tried to cover them up by making light of the situation in their office, instead. “Oh my God, Gavin! It’s a good thing I came upon this crime scene first, and not one of your superiors. I can see from all the way across the room that your computer is turned on and still signed into all your accounts, a flagrant violation of military security protocols if ever I saw one. But still, rather convenient under the circumstances, wouldn’t you say? Hmm, let’s see if I can—”

  Gavin could hear typing and mouse clicks in the background as Andy scrolled through his email. He was still trying to process the issues with his ex-wife and daughter when evidently she found something. “Aha! Here it is. Let’s open it up and take a good look, if that’s all right with you.”

  “Please. We’re just minutes away from arresting the guy, so it would really be helpful to be able to check off that last little box before we pull out the cuffs.”

  “I understand completely. Okay, lots of preliminary bureaucratic nonsense, followed by a description of the body—really gross looking pictures, by the way—then it goes pretty much organ-by-organ, breaking down all the sordid details. Notes about fish and water damage to the skin and eyes, heart looks okay, liver and kidney fine, lungs in good shape, then—oh my!”

  “Oh my?” Gavin didn’t like the sound of that one. “What is it, Andy, what did they find?”

  “I have a sneaky suspicion you’re going to want to spend a little more time with this one before you make the arrest. This could very well change everything.”

  “Yeah? What is it?” Gavin was suddenly feeling so nervous he worried for a second he might actually wet his pants, the second time today they’d been drenched.