When the Coast Guard arrived in their forty-foot utility boat, I dried my eyes on the backs of my hands and handed the young crewman a bow line. Ted had taken out his spotlight and was shining it on the windsurfer and sail so the Coasties would know to come alongside on the other side of his boat. His spot cast a stark light on the bright sail and the neoprene-clad body, which I could now see was tangled in the lines from his mast and harness. A young man in a blue uniform wearing a bulky life jacket leaned over the rail of the Coast Guard boat and took several flash photos of the body. At first, I was offended, thinking he was just taking souvenir shots, but then when they hoisted the body aboard, Nestor’s head turned, and I saw the discolored and swollen contusion at his temple. I realized the photos would likely be needed as forensic evidence.
It was a somber procession that headed back into the harbor. We’d been told the police would be waiting and that they would want to talk to us. We were to follow the Coast Guard to their dock, so Berger cruised back slowly in the big boat’s wake.
“So what do you think happened?” Berger asked.
I didn’t look at him. I kept my eyes on the white stern light of the Coast Guard boat. I was angry and embarrassed that this stranger had seen me sobbing, had witnessed that raw grief. I couldn’t wait to get off his boat and away from him. “I don’t know. Maybe a strong gust, maybe it flung him headfirst into the mast, knocked him unconscious, then he drowned?” I turned to look at Ted’s profile. “What do you think?”
He was nodding slowly, mulling over my theory. “What you said sounds about right to me. I think that’s it,” he said as though it were up to him.
I watched the lights of the hotels and condos at what used to be the old Truman Annex. There had been many times when I wished I could turn back time, but now I just kept thinking that maybe if I had done something differently—if I had gone back to the Power Play with them and we had watched movies all afternoon, anything. If I had just done one thing different, Nestor would be alive. Much as I wanted to get away from Berger, I started up another conversation to quiet the accusations in my mind. “It’s a good thing you decided to search farther east. We were the only boat over there. Never would have found him before nightfall if not for you.”
He shrugged. “It was just a hunch.”
It was almost eight o’clock by the time we were finished with the Key West detective who questioned us about how and where and why we’d found the body. His name was Lassiter, and while he was built like a bodybuilder above the waist, he had one of the most extreme cases of bowleggedness I’d ever seen. He wore his iron-gray hair in a crew cut, and I would have had an easier time picturing him in the tight clothes of a motorcycle cop than in the ill-fitting suit and tie that he kept tugging at.
“I don’t understand it,” he said. “Why the hell anyone would think it’s entertaining to go out on a little bitty board when it’s storming. I’m from Nebraska.”
“Have you been in Key West long?” I asked.
“Long enough.”
“Because that wasn’t really a storm,” I said. “Just our usual strong winter winds.”
He shrugged. “Been here about twenty-two years. That don’t change how I think, though. Wind’s blowing like it was today, I don’t go out in the water. Fact, I never go out in the water. Hate the water. I don’t even know how to swim.”
I wondered briefly why he had come here and stayed on in this place that was surrounded by water, but I didn’t ask. I felt tired, too weak to really care about this cop and his chatter. I took the card he offered with his cell phone number scrawled in black ink on the back and said good night. I had an errand to see to, an errand I dreaded.
Berger offered to run me back out to my boat since I didn’t have my dinghy ashore, but I told him no thanks and assured him I would find a way back to my boat later. Once out on Caroline Street, I flagged a cab and gave the driver the name of the Stock Island boatyard where the Power Play was hauled out. The yard watchman let me through with a look of sympathy. Word traveled fast in these islands. I suspected he already knew the skipper of the Power Play was dead.
The boat looked like a debutant in a bikers’ bar, propped up in the dirt among the shrimpers and fishing boats that made up the rest of Robbie’s clientele. Bright lights illuminated several boats where workmen continued their jobs in the dark. I stood in the shadows a moment, wondering if she knew yet. If not, I was about to destroy her world.
I climbed the wooden ladder propped against the aft swim step and called out to see if I could raise anyone. The young man and woman who peered down from the bridge deck identified themselves as Drew and Debbie, the mate and stewardess, and they invited me into the main salon saying they would be right down.
The Sunseeker is really a production yacht, if you can call any vessel that sells for more than five million dollars such a thing. The layout is pretty standard on all of them, and I had towed one up the river before. There wasn’t anything particularly outstanding on Ted’s yacht from my point of view. There was the usual bar just aft of the inside steering station, the round table booth up by the windshield, and the opulent salon aft before exiting onto the dining deck area. The sleeping cabins were belowdecks, the crew aft, the captain’s cabin below the galley. The formal dining table was exactly the same as the one on the other boat I’d towed, and this one had the same dory-shaped coffee table. So much for the thought that you’d get anything very special for your five million. It was up to the buyer to customize, and aside from the huge flat-screen monitors on almost every bulkhead, it looked like Berger hadn’t paid much attention to the furnishings.
Yes, Drew said, when he and Debbie arrived in the salon wearing matching navy shorts and white Polos with the name Power Play stitched over the pockets. They had all heard it on the radio. Catalina had been napping in her cabin. Here, at the interior steering station, Drew and Debbie had been working together, trying to get the bloodstains from Kent’s injury on the reef out of the upholstery. Drew explained that Kent had been the original mate, injured on the trip down from Fort Lauderdale. The compound fracture had pierced his skin, and the carpet and upholstery were badly stained.
“It was so gross,” Debbie said, wrinkling her little nose.
When they heard the call on the VHF radio, they explained, both had immediately thought of Nestor, but they’d just stood there, as though riveted to the deck, staring at the radio, waiting for their fears to be proven wrong, unaware that Catalina had been standing behind them, leaning against the bar for support. It wasn’t until Ted Berger’s voice broke in on the Coast Guard transmission to announce that he’d found the windsurfer and the body of a man he recognized that Catalina cried out and ran for her stateroom where she’d been ever since, locked inside.
I tapped lightly on the stateroom door. “Hey, Cat, it’s me, Seychelle. Open up, okay?”
Silence.
“Catalina, I want to see you. I know what you’re going through. Believe me, I do.”
Silence.
“Cat, please.” I put my ear to the door. “I loved Nestor. I’m hurting, too.”
The lock clicked and the door swung inward. The stateroom was dark, but I could hear the sound of her clothes sliding against the upholstery as she lay back down on the bunk. As far as captain’s cabins went, this was not one of the better ones. The inward-opening door barely cleared the bunk. From the little light that spilled through the doorway, I saw a lamp on a side table. I clicked it on.
She was on her side, her legs curled up, her hands hiding her face from the light. “It was him, wasn’t it?” she whispered.
I tried to keep my voice strong but failed miserably. “Yes, it was. I saw him.”
The small moan that came from the bed sounded like the weak cry of a child. That was followed by staccato, voiceless sobs. Her body shook, and I was afraid of what this kind of grief might do to the child she was carrying.
I rested my hand on her shoulder and tried to pat her in a soothing moti
on. But what I really wanted to do was throw something or hit someone. I wanted to scream.
“Catalina, is there anything I can do for you. Anything I can get?”
She didn’t respond at first. It was as though she hadn’t heard me speak. I was about to repeat my question when she pushed her body up into a sitting position and wiped her face on the pillow in her lap. After several ragged breaths, she whispered, “Tell me about it.”
“There’s not much to tell.”
“Start at the beginning,” she said, her voice stronger now. “Tell me everything that happened.”
I eased my body down on the bunk next to her. Tired. I just felt so tired. People I loved kept dying, and there didn’t seem to be any sense or reason to any of it. I’d heard the platitude about how only the good die young, and it wasn’t true. That would imply that there was some sort of logic to who dies—and there was none. Others always chimed in that when it’s your time, it’s your time. Bullshit. I’d seen too many good people die senselessly, as well as those I considered downright evil. Death is as random as it gets.
“I was on Gorda late in the afternoon when I heard the first call on the VHF. I saw Ted Berger going by in the Power Play’s tender, and he invited me to help with the search. We saw that most of the rest of the others were headed out to Sand Key, so Berger suggested we search farther downwind and down current. His hunch paid off.” Catalina buried her face in her hands and drew a deep breath. When she lifted her head, her face, aside from the puffiness around her eyes, looked as blank as a freshly swept sidewalk. “Tell me what he looked like,” she said, her voice a monotone. “Tell me exactly what you saw.”
I closed my eyes, and the image appeared as detailed as though I had captured it on film. I opened one eye. “Cat, are you sure you want to hear this?”
“Yes,” she said, and her mouth was the only part of her that moved. Her body was so rigid, it looked as though she had been cast in concrete.
I nodded, pulled in a long breath, and closed my eyes again. The image was still there. “Okay. His body was facedown on the sail, his head half underwater, his face submerged. I knew immediately that he had to be dead. I didn’t recognize the wet suit or the windsurfer, but from the hair and the shape, I was certain it was Nestor. I reached down, grabbed a corner of the sail, and pulled him to me. A piece of line was wrapped around his far arm and tangled in the harness he wore. I reached for the arm closer to me, and his skin felt cold. There was no pulse. He’d been like that for a while. Later, when the Coast Guard got there and lifted his face out of the water, I saw a big contusion on his temple. Here.” I touched my head at my hairline. “I think he hit his head on the mast, was knocked unconscious, and then drowned.”
Her spine stiffened and she turned her head, locked her eyes on mine. It was like looking down the twin shafts of an abandoned mine. “No,” she said. She started shaking her head. “No, no, that’s not possible.”
“Cat, that’s exactly what happened.” I put my hand on her shoulder.
She shook off my hand and stood up. “No, that’s not what I mean.” She began to pace the cramped room, speaking to herself in Spanish, her hands gesturing wildly. I got the feeling she was speaking to Nestor.
“Catalina, come here, sit down.” I patted the bunk beside me.
She spun around to face me. Her back was straight, her eyes flashed, and she looked like a very pregnant African warrior queen. “No, do not patronize me. What you are describing to me was not an accident. Someone killed my husband.”
VI
By nine o’clock Monday morning, I’d already been into town to walk Abaco, grabbed coffee and some breakfast taquitos at the Turtle Kraals Restaurant, and I was back out on Gorda trying to whittle down a few more jobs off my to-do list. I hoped that immersing myself in some mundane tasks would allow me to take my mind off Nestor, but it wasn’t working. I found myself throwing tools around and spouting tears over the least little problem. The starboard diesel tank had developed a small leak, and I was hanging upside down in the bilge with a flashlight trying to see the fitting where the hose exited the aluminum tank when I heard someone call my boat’s name on the VHF.
“Gorda, Gorda, this is Power Play. ”
With a shower of curses, I shimmied my body out of the crevice under the aft deck and headed up to the wheelhouse to answer the radio. I recognized the voice. It was the mate, Drew, the guy I’d met yesterday on the big yacht.
“I’m calling to give you a message,” he said. “Mr. Berger has been trying to reach you. He sounded kind of pissed when he found out you didn’t have a cell phone.”
“The VHF works fine as far as I’m concerned.”
“He’s staying at the Hyatt. Told me to tell you to stop by his hotel this morning to discuss towing the boat back to Lauderdale.”
“Thanks, Drew. I’ll head in there soon as I clean up a little out here.”
“From what I’ve seen of him, he expects people to jump when he says so.”
“Well, I’ve never responded well to folks like that. I jump when I’m ready.”
After we signed off, I went into the head to wash off the diesel and dirty bilgewater. I kept thinking about Catalina and her insistence last night that, based on my description of Nestor, someone must have arranged the body, entwining his hand in the lines.
“Seychelle,” she’d said, “he is an amazing windsurfer. He could have turned pro and made money doing that, but he got it into his head that he wanted to captain big yachts and it was not possible to change his mind. He took me windsurfing a few times and taught me to stand up and sail a little in light winds. It just would not happen that he would get tangled with his uphaul rope or the harness line. Even I know enough to see that. If he really had been thrown into the mast by a gust, he would have been catapulted into the water and drifted clear of the sailboard. What you are describing to me sounds arranged—like a tableau. Somebody hit him in the head and then purposely tangled him in the lines of that windsurfer. They wanted to make it look like an accident, but they did not know what they were doing.”
“But why?”
“You mean why kill him?”
“Well, yes, that too, but why try to make sure the body is found with the board? Why purposely tangle him in the lines?”
“I cannot answer that. I just know that someone did it.”
“It’s only that it’s so hard to believe, Cat. Who’d want to kill Nestor? The guy couldn’t have had an enemy in the world.”
We had gone back and forth on it for several minutes, and I knew perfectly well the suspect she had in mind. A multimillionaire entrepreneur offing his boat captain? The very idea seemed so far-fetched that I left before she had the chance to say the name out loud.
As I was tying up my dinghy to the dock in front of the Turtle Kraals Restaurant, the older waitress who had taken my order earlier that morning signaled me that she wanted to speak to me. I met her just inside the heavy wooden doors, and she handed me a piece of paper.
“Lucky for you, I grabbed the phone right after you left this morning. Your friend was asking if I’d seen this woman, and I knew right away it was you. Told her I’d keep an eye out for you. Says she needs to talk to you.”
“Thanks, Glenda,” I said, reading her name off the plastic badge she wore. “You got a pay phone around here?”
She pointed me toward the restrooms up by the bar. Knowing full well that she’d bitch about it, I called Jeannie collect.
“Hey, it’s me,” I said when she answered.
“Calling collect? Don’t you know how expensive that is? I’ve given up trying to get you to buy a cell phone, but you could at least buy a calling card.”
“Nice to hear from you, Jeannie.”
Jeannie Black was both my lawyer and one of my dearest friends. I suppose she would be categorized as a “plus-size” woman since her weight hovered close to three hundred pounds. I would also categorize her as the smartest woman I had ever known, and I measured her
worth more by the size of her brain than the size of her ass. “So what’s up?” I asked her.
“It’s about the lawsuit.”
“You mean the guy with the Grady-White?”
“Seychelle, just how many people are suing you? Of course, I meant him. The boat’s name was Seas the Day— you know, spelled s-e-a-s?”
“How original.”
“I’d call it prophetic. I think the guy is trying to scam you. Probably pulled the plug on his own boat.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I’ve been checking up on him. Last year he tried to sue a McDonald’s restaurant, claiming he’d found a cockroach in his burger. Half a cockroach, that is.”
“Why try to sue me? I don’t have deep pockets like Mickey D.”
“Well, your name has been in the paper quite a bit these past few years on some pretty big salvage jobs. And besides what you’ve done, there’s been a lot of press for the salvage business in general. It makes all salvers look like they’re making out like modern-day pirates, getting awards of twenty, thirty percent of these big yachts. I’ll bet this guy thinks you’re worth millions.”
“Maybe you’d better educate him then, Jeannie. Get on the phone and talk to him. Explain it. Maybe he’ll drop the suit.”
“Fat chance.”
“Why?”
“Because even if you don’t have super deep pockets, your insurance company does. You’ve got a mighty high limit on your liability because you deal with these millionaires, and our friend Melvin Burke knows it.”
“You’d know. That’s the stuff I pay you to take care of. Okay, so our friend Melvin isn’t going to go away anytime soon. Man, I’m really starting to hate this guy. I can’t believe he did this on purpose. He had his daughter along, and if he put her at risk like that for some con, he’s an even bigger dirtbag than I thought.”
“It is looking that way.”
“Shit. But I don’t suppose that’s what you called me to ask me about.”
Wreckers' Key Page 4
