Walter and I exchanged a look. Small world. Well, small town. It struck me that Stavis used the same gesture that Captain Keasling had used to explain Lanny’s mental capacity. I said, “Lanny Keasling? The deckhand from the Sea Spray?”
“Yes, Lanny. So you've met him?”
“Whale watching,” Walter said, “day before yesterday. Haven’t seen him since.”
I asked Stavis, “How do you know Lanny? You work on the Sea Spray?”
“Good golly no! I work underwater, not above.” Stavis patted his sweatshirt logo. “And Lanny works for me, when he’s not on the Sea Spray.”
“So he didn't show up to work for you today?”
Stavis cocked his head.
“You said you're out here looking for him.”
“Yes, of course, I am.” Stavis paused. “A silly mix-up. Actually, he was at work this morning and then his sister phoned to ask if he could have the afternoon off — some Keasling get-together — and things are slow at my shop today so I just gave him the whole day off.”
“That was nice.”
“I try to be flexible, especially with Lanny. And, uh, my mistake this morning, I let him head off in possession of a key to a storage cabinet. I knew he was coming here — he likes it out here. He comes to get fennel, his cure for seasickness.” Stavis pointed to the patch of vegetation just beyond the parking lot, at the base of the rock. “That light green stalky plant. Grows here and there, around the rock. Up there, too.” Stavis pointed to the vegetated higher reaches.
“I got the impression,” Walter said, “that Lanny is a rule-obeyer. Why climb up there when he could pick the fennel down below?”
Stavis smiled. “He gets carried away when he's on one of his missions.”
I wondered about his mission this morning. Fennel grew on the seaward side of the Rock, too, right near a micro beach. Right near Robbie Donie's shrine. I said, “Well I sure benefited from his fennel on the Sea Spray.” I glanced at Stavis's sweatshirt logo. “So he works as a deckhand for you, too? On a dive boat?”
“He’s one of my divers.” Stavis chuckled. “I know, I know, what’s a kid like Lanny doing diving? But, you know, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist. Lanny learns mechanical tasks very well — if he takes it step by step. And I tell you, Lanny can name every widget on every piece of dive gear we’ve got.”
Lanny could certainly handle the barrel-lock fastener on a mesh dive bag, I thought. I considered asking Stavis about the float but then I could not say with certainty that what Lanny took — or might have taken — was the same kind of float that we’d just found in Donie’s shrine. Or what that would mean if it was the same. I felt the way I’d felt on the Sea Spray, putting in a good word for Lanny with his captain — only this time I didn’t want to rat him out to his dive boss.
“Diving is dangerous,” Walter said. “Don’t divers need the wit to adapt, in case something goes wrong?”
“Absolutely.” Stavis gave a vigorous nod. “I’ve taught him how to handle the usual mishaps. But I wouldn’t send him down on anything tricky. And never alone — I don’t send any of my divers alone. And I’ll usually check up on the job he does.”
“What kind of job?” Walter asked.
“Commercial diving. We do contract work, up and down the coast. Mooring installation, pier repair, piling wraps, hull cleaning, seawall construction. Offshore, inshore. We're a small outfit but we keep busy. And I gotta say, I only put Lanny on the straightforward jobs.”
“You work with him on those?”
“I’m not currently diving.” Stavis tapped his right ear. “Diving cock-up, ruptured eardrum. Meanwhile, I have a man who works with Lanny.”
“If he needs that much supervision,” I said, “why hire him to begin with?”
“We go way back. Played together, in fact, as kids.”
“And now he works for you and his sister.”
Stavis stared, and I thought I'd said something wrong, touched on some rivalry, maybe something that went back to when they were kids. Like the Jake Keasling Robbie Donie rivalry. Small-town contentiousness.
Stavis seemed to realize his lapse. “Yes, poor Lanny, two masters. Anyway, it works out.”
I wondered. Lanny dives under Stavis's tutelage, Lanny works on his sister's boat and steals a float from a mysterious diver, Lanny hides the float from his sister — or so it seemed to me at the time. Loose connection, but for one thing: Fred Stavis runs a company that hires divers.
I said, “Did you hear about that diver the Sea Spray pulled out of the water?”
“Oh yes. But he wasn’t one of mine.”
“Did you know him? I’d think divers around here would know each other.”
“Was he from around here? Maybe a sport diver? Remember, I’m commercial. Look, I get divers coming around looking for work. I’ve turned away a lot of them, over the years. Not experienced enough, didn’t match the job, that kind of thing.”
“If you get so many divers looking for work, easy to forget one.”
Stavis held up his palms. “Is this an interrogation?”
“Not at all,” Walter said, jumping in. “We simply have a backlog of unanswered questions and when we run across someone with expertise, we tend to ask. We’re working with Doug Tolliver…”
“Doug! Good man. So you two are cops.”
“Forensic geologists,” Walter said.
While Walter explained what it is we do, Stavis nodded, and I figured he must have already heard of us. What we do. Small-town gossip, if nothing else.
“Boy oh boy,” Stavis said, when Walter finished, “sure hope you find out what happened. That’s a real shame about Robbie.”
“Did you know him?” I asked.
“Somebody else I grew up with. Now, we all share the waterfront. Everybody knows everybody.” Stavis checked his watch. “I’d better get back to the shop. If you come across Lanny, tell him I need a key from him, would you?”
Walter said, “I doubt we'll come across him, if he's still up there.”
“He sure could be!” Stavis chuckled. “He's a monkey! He'll climb all over this rock.”
All over to the other side? I wondered. Down to the gully that ran to a little beach that was fringed with fennel? Hunting fennel, following his nose, finding Robbie Donie’s shrine? But Lanny leaves the sulfur-yellow float in place. And yet, on the boat, he steals the starfish-red float from the diver’s mesh bag.
It made no sense.
What made sense, I thought, was to ask him.
CHAPTER 15
Sandy Keasling was ready to scream out the tides.
It was a two-point-five low tide, a higher low tide, and they had less than an hour before it turned. Timing was tight.
“Jake goddamn it,” she yelled, “shovel.”
Jake’s shovel was speared in the sand. He lifted his Bud Light to Sandy in a salute, and drank.
Lanny put down his trowel. “I’ll shovel, Sandy.”
“No Lanny, you keep trenching.”
Sandy was ready to goddamn give it up. This morning she'd been on fire with the idea. She'd taken the day off, handing off the bucket-runs to her assistant. It was Lanny's day working with Fred and she'd arranged with Fred to send Lanny home by three. She'd phoned Jake, who'd said sure, long as his nitwit assistant wasn't going surfing. And Jake was ‘down with that.’ Surf might be up — whaddya gonna do?