“We don’t care, Doc. It’s better then letting someone else get out there first.”
That was true. I agreed to go, adding, “Here’s why—”
I explained what I planned to tell Jeth, anyway: my archaeologist pal from Key West had called. It was a brief conversation—he was en route to Madrid.
“In his opinion,” I said, “the state of Florida has no claim on your wreck because it’s twelve miles offshore—outside state boundary waters. There’s a federal statute, though, called the Abandoned Shipwreck Act. If we dive the wreck, draw some diagrams, and fill out the right forms, we can file a claim in federal court. That doesn’t mean we’ll own what we find. We’ll have to deal with the boat’s previous owner, or an insurance company, and try to come to some agreement.”
Tomlinson added, “If it turns out the boat’s owned by someone we can contact and get to agree to let us salvage the things, it’s not complicated.” He’d been in the lab when I got the call, Arlis Futch still jabbering away, and had agreed to do some research on admiralty laws. “Either way, it’s important we’re the first to dive it and bring up something, in case we need to file a claim. Salvage isn’t finders keepers. But that’s the way we need to approach it.”
“If someone else doesn’t dive it first,” Jeth said, meaning Heller’s bunch. “Maybe they’ll smarten up and use seasick medicine next time.”
I ’d also told Jeth I’d done preliminary cleaning on several more pieces. It wasn’t encouraging news, but I told him, anyway: There were some brass screws and a brass bolt. Nothing spectacular. There was also a bullet, a live round, which could be interesting once I got the brass clean enough to read the manufacturer’s stamp.
“Why’s that interesting?” Jeth asked, sounding disappointed. A couple of brass screws and a bullet?
“Because it’s a nine-millimeter cartridge. German Lugers fired nine-millimeter parabellums. That’s the pistol the Nazis used.”
“Oh, I get it. There could be some guns down there.”
“Well, if there’s ammunition…” I gestured with my hands: Could be. “Weapons from that era are valuable to collectors. But what kind of shape they’ll be in if we do find them?” Who knows?
Jeth looked in the direction of the marina store. His bride was there, Janet Mueller Nichols. She was waiting in the glow of security lights, the parking lot behind her. Even at that distance, Janet looked glossy and ripe in her pale maternity blouse. Judging from the way she shifted from one foot to the other, she was also impatient, ready to drive to their rental apartment in Iona.
Jeth noticed, too. “Well,” he said, “maybe we’ll have some luck for a change and the weather will break tomorrow. Doc? About the stuff you’ve already got cleaned—that diamond Nazi thing, the coins? Can I try and sell them now?”
Before we found out the boat’s identity? I told him it was risky. Also, the metal might disintegrate if we removed objects from the sodium solution too soon.
He shook his head, frustrated, and I watched him glance toward his wife again. After only two months of marriage, he already knew the importance of body language. “I wish we could make it faster because…well, with the baby coming and all. Janet, she’s worried…and, hell, I don’t blame her. What I’m saying is—”
Tomlinson decided to help. “Money’s tight, and Janet’s thinking it might be smart to move back to Ohio to be with her family. Jeth’s asking you for a timetable. When you think he’ll start seeing some cash.”
I said, “You two separating during a pregnancy,” then paused, realizing how judgmental I sounded. I tried again. “I wouldn’t do anything drastic until you talk to Mack. And until we get a look at what’s on your wreck.”
Jeth didn’t brighten much when Tomlinson tried to change the mood. “Tomorrow morning, we’ll pack ourselves a nice lunch, throw beer in the cooler, and have some fun. Maybe water visibility will be better when we get near the bottom. Hell, compadre, you could be a rich man and don’t even know it.”
I had another beer, but dumped the remainder into the water—no late-night drinking for me if we were diving in the morning—then looked up, checking weather: Stars were hazy with smoke from trash fires. In the jet stream, thirty miles above Sanibel, bands of stratus clouds filed southward. Wind currents were volatile up there on the rim of weightlessness, reacting to hurricanes now gathering power off Cuba. The precise arc of clouds reminded me of the incremental lines of magnetic power.
I listened to Jeth tell me he’d have the boat fueled, loaded, and ready to go by late morning, while also thinking about Chestra’s offer to pay him and Javier a salary. It would take a lot of pressure off two very good men, but what was her angle?
I checked my watch: 9:30. Time to find out.
19
I’d misjudged the woman’s age, possibly because of the tricky lighting on the second floor, with its Tiffany lamps dimmed and candle shadows flickering in the wind that had drifted through the open balcony doors.
The doors were open now.
Chestra Engle was younger by a decade. Or more. Soft light is supposed to be kind. Instead, it had contributed to yesterday’s misimpression—my first impression, which is why the snapshot had imprinted so convincingly: wrinkled face on the shrinking scaffolding of Mildred Chestra Engle.
Tomlinson had been surprised when I called her an old woman. I now understood why, sitting in the same room, with the same candles and lamps, but seeing her clearly for the first time. The woman had wrinkles—smile furrows; a sagging area beneath the chin—but her skin wasn’t a tragedy of lines, and she wasn’t old.
No. My amended guess: she was a few years beyond what some call middle age; a mature woman who, when the light was right, was still attractive. Handsome is a word commonly used to describe women her age. Lean, fit—some curves evident beneath the gold lamé gown she wore tonight. You didn’t need an imagination to know that she’d once been extraordinarily beautiful.
Chessie’s facial bones had the classic structure: cheeks that created shadow, large eyes staring out, a jawline that curved into hairline on a delicate stem of a neck…
I was thinking about that—facial subtleties, the structural dimensions of beauty—when I heard Chestra ask me, “When you disappear from the room, Dr. Ford, is someone special with you? Or are you all alone?”
“Sorry, Chess. What did you say?”
She repeated herself, laughing as she added, “Please be a dear and tell me I’m not boring you. I won’t be offended if it’s true. Why, at times I find myself a dreadful bore—”
“Not at all. I apologize.” I realized I’d been staring at her face, something that was impolite in her world. No…it was an indelicacy. Her word. I reached for my glass of soda water, lime twist. “I was thinking about tomorrow’s dive, wondering if I’d forgotten something.”
She looked at me for a moment, enjoying my dishonesty, before saying, “Really.” Said it with the familiar flat tone. Sat facing me, eyes searching mine, a woman who’d been stared at by men all her life, I realized, in exactly the same way I’d been staring, so knew when men were lying.
She seemed oddly pleased by my discomfort but didn’t press. The polite thing to do was change the subject. She did the polite thing.
Conversation is no longer considered a skill, but it is. Chestra was expert. Talking with her was effortless. She had the knack of asking questions that probed, but that also made me feel important. My opinion was valuable to her—she listened. I was interesting; the topics fascinating: sharks, water pollution, the dynamics of storms and open sea.