I reached up again and got the key. I looked around to make sure nobody was on any of the other slipped boats watching me—just in case I might be lying to myself. Then I slid the key into the lock and pushed the door open and hurried inside.
The cabin was as neat as the deck. Square room with pecky cypress walls hung with framed photographs of sea and shore life. Single bench bed covered by a quilt neatly tucked in. Immaculate galley kitchen with an eating bar. Shoved against the wall, a long wooden table with two drawers on its outer side. The top was loaded with careful stacks of Sports Illustrated and Reader’s Digest. I didn’t know what was in the drawers.
Three things were obvious: One, Harry wasn’t home. Two, I was doing something that any court in the world would say was a violation of the law, not to mention just plain bad manners. Three, I wanted to know what was in those table drawers.
Their contents were as organized as everything else. The first one held checkbooks, boxes of printed checks, a hand calculator, a package of AA batteries, and a collection of pens and sharpened pencils. The second drawer had a phone book, some warranty papers for a boat motor, a digital camera, and a box of nice linen stationery. I opened the box. It didn’t look as if Harry had ever used the stationery because the display envelope was still under a flat ribbon tied around the paper. The box also held a square pink envelope like greeting cards come in. My fingers trembled when I pulled out the paper folded inside it.
Even after fifteen years, I recognized the loopy handwriting, the humpbacked letters, the little open circles for dots on the i’s. I suppose people who don’t grow up keep the same handwriting they had when they were teenagers. As I read it, I could hear Maureen’s voice.
Mrs. Salazar, we have your husband. If you want him returned alive, put a million dollars in small bills in a duff el bag and leave it in your gazebo at midnight tomorrow. Do not call the police or tell anybody. We will be watching you, and if you talk to anybody, we will kill your husband and feed him to the sharks.
Under my breath, I whispered, “Oh, Mo.”
Now I knew why Maureen had been so sure what the kidnapper had said on the phone. She had written the script. Probably made several drafts before she’d decided on the final one, then gave it to Harry to read when he called her.
She had also sullied my memories of an innocent time that had been precious to me, a time before she chose money over love, and before I learned that choosing love doesn’t mean you get to keep it.
The question was: What should I do about it?
Some old friendships are like cozy nests you can crawl into when you need comfort. Others are like giant squid, with tentacles lined with toothy suction cups that attach themselves to you and leave permanent scars.
I had let Maureen use me because her father had abandoned her and her mother had been a shrew. I had understood her, and I’d let compassion make me a martyr. So which one of us was the dumb one?
I pulled out my cellphone and punched in Guidry’s number. His voice mail answered, which allowed me to be brisk and businesslike.
I said, “Maureen Salazar wrote the script that Harry Henry used when he called her to demand ransom money for Victor’s kidnapping. If you should happen to get a search warrant to look for it on Harry’s house boat, you’ll find it in a drawer in a long table.”
I put the cellphone back in my pocket. But before I could replace the note in its stationery box in the drawer, the door to the cabin opened. I jammed the note in my pocket and turned around.
Maureen was dressed for rain. She wore a pink knee-length vinyl raincoat with matching shiny boots and a broad-brimmed hat. She looked cute and ridiculous and repellent.
With water still running off me onto Harry’s immaculate floor, I said, “I know what you did.”
She batted her eyes, all innocence. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, can it, Mo. I’ve had it with your lies.”
She seemed to weigh her response options, and went with woman-to-woman confidential.
“Dixie, Victor wasn’t a good husband like I always said. He used me like a toy—one of those ball-hitting things with the Ping-Pong paddle and the ball on a rubber band. You know? Well, he hit me one time too many, and my rubber band broke.”
She paused and smiled, so pleased with her metaphor that I could see she was memorizing it so she could use it with the next person she met.
She said, “I tried to leave him, believe me, but I could never go through with it. He would cry and beg, and then he would hit me. And then when I promised not to leave, he’d give me a big piece of expensive jewelry. Harry thinks I stayed because of the jewelry, but that’s not true. Victor was just a lot stronger than me.”
Through cold lips, I said, “So you killed him?”
Her pink lips parted in surprise. “Is that what you think? That I killed my own husband? I can’t believe you’d think that!”
The smart thing would have been to pretend to believe her. But I was beyond smart. I had gone into honest.
I said, “I don’t know what to believe anymore. If you didn’t kill him yourself, you know who did. So who was it, Mo? Who killed Victor?”
While I steeled myself to hear her name Harry, she studied her manicure. “I don’t know his name. Victor never introduced us.”
If that was going to be her story, Harry was doomed.
I said, “Victor didn’t leave with some old buddies from South America, did he? You made all that up.”
“We can’t all be strong like you, Dixie.”
“Being honest isn’t a muscle test, Mo. It’s a choice, like whether to wear underwear.”
She tried for an arch smile. “I don’t like underwear.”
“Listen to me, Mo. Unless you can explain how Victor was killed, there’s a very good chance that you, or Harry, or maybe both of you are going to be charged with murder. So start explaining and maybe I can help you avoid a lot of trouble.”
She looked hopeful. “It was because of his business. Like I told you, he had a lot of enemies because of his business.”
“His oil broker business.”
“It wasn’t exactly oil.”
“Victor sold drugs, didn’t he?”
“No, silly, he imported drugs. You make it sound like he was some street pusher. He dealt directly with the supplier—Colombia, Afghanistan, places like that. He had it delivered to men called captains, like in the army, and they passed the stuff out to people under them. He was a businessman. He didn’t hurt anybody.”
“You’re talking about heroin and cocaine?”
She avoided my eyes. Even Maureen wasn’t dumb enough to believe those drugs were harmless.
I thought of Jaz and all the other kids whose lives have been distorted by drugs. I thought of young men like Paulie and his friends, boys who sell drugs that people like Victor bring into the country. The guys at the bottom get money for fast cars and cool shoes before they end up dead or in prison. Men like Victor get megayachts and trophy women like Maureen and millions in cash in their home safes. It was cold comfort that Victor had ended up dead too, because for every “businessman” like Victor who disappears, a line of others are ready to take his place.
I said, “Tell me what happened when he was killed. The truth, please.”
She said, “He was meeting somebody down at the gazebo, somebody who came in a boat. He did that a lot, so I didn’t think anything about it. I heard a gunshot and then I heard a boat going away real fast. I knew something bad had happened so I went down to the gazebo and Victor was lying there dead.”
She looked up at me with puzzled eyes. “There wasn’t much blood. That surprised me. And it wasn’t like his head was blown open or anything. It was just a neat little hole in his forehead.”