“I will,” Tolliver said.
He went up the beach, ducked under the yellow tape, and disappeared into the slot that led to the cave. We all waited, silent. Sandy was stone still, arms folded, staring out to sea as if she had no doubts whatsoever that Tolliver would find only bagel crumbs and apple cores in the cave. Jake, though, was not so sanguine. He struck a waiting pose, hands on the backs of his hips, thumbs tucked into the waistband of his low-slung board shorts, a Captain Kayak pose but for the hiked shoulders and tension in the cords of his neck. He stared down at Silva.
Silva had now gone still, collapsed on the backboard.
And then Tolliver returned. He held a plastic evidence bag containing a clamshell food container. “Sandy,” he said, pulling up to the group, “look at this.”
We all looked. The clamshell was open. There were the oily remains of some fish, bits of flesh and tiny translucent bones. Anchovies, I assumed. If they were rancid, the odor was contained within the plastic bag.
She said, “That’s not mine. I never brought him fish.”
“You bring him any kind of food in one of these clamshells?”
“Peanut butter sandwiches. So sue me, I use environmentally-unfriendly clamshells. Lots of people use them. Check the trash bins around town. Hell, check the parking lots. Check everybody who's got a Costco membership — you can buy them there.”
“I'm interested in the ones you use, Sandy. You mind if we have a look in your kitchen?”
She glared.
“Do I need to get a search warrant, Sandy?”
“Go ahead. I've got nothing to hide. I told you everything I know.”
“No you didn’t. In fact, there are quite a few things you didn’t tell. You didn’t tell me about the diver’s missing float, and…”
“There was no float.”
“…and you didn’t tell me the real reason you were hiding Silva. So who — if not you — brought him a container of anchovies?” Tolliver peered up at the cliff face. “Cave's not a place somebody just stumbles across. Of course, if somebody knows it’s there, that’s a different story.” Tolliver’s focus shifted to Jake.
Jake tried for a grin.
Tolliver lifted the clamshell. “We’ll see what the lab has to say.”
Or Joao Silva, I thought. I watched the paramedics strapping him down again, checking his vitals. Silva’s eyes flickered. Open, shut. He could save us all a lot of trouble if he could talk. Tell us what he was diving for, what happened to him. Tell us what the float meant. Tell us why Sandy was hiding him in her cave. Tell us who fed him bad anchovies. I asked Sandy, “Would Lanny have brought him the container? To help?”
“My brothers never come to the cave.”
“Well thanks for the vote of confidence, sis.” Jake’s stance shifted, from tense back to languid. Recovered now. He said, “Hey Doug, there’s another way into the cave. You can get to it from the bluffs. There's a hole in the cave ceiling. I used to climb in and out that way, when I was a kid. We all did. So somebody could have been hiking the bluffs, heard noises in the cave, gotten curious, had a look. Maybe told somebody else. Word gets around. And somebody else with an interest in the guy in the cave brings him the 'chovies. Somebody other than a Keasling.”
Somebody like Fred Stavis, I suddenly thought. Who runs a dive business and hires divers — although, he insists, not this diver. Whose business was funded by Sandy Keasling, who hid — there’s no other word for it, I thought — this diver in her cave. And then I wondered what Jake thought about Sandy using the family inheritance to fund Dive Solutions. Was that how he got her to go in on the squid charters? I tried to make it all connect. Any of it.
Jake added, “And I can name you two other anchovy fishers on the docks right now. You can buy chovies at any bait shop. Buy them at the market if you’ve got the taste.” He moved to Sandy and draped an arm across her shoulders. “As for us, we got fed way too many chovies by the parental units. Never touch ‘em now.”
Sandy was awkward in her brother’s embrace, as if she’d like to shake him off but didn’t want to risk it.
“Hey,” one of the paramedics said. “He’s awake.”
We all looked.
Joao Silva gazed up at us through reddened eyes. His face was pale, sweaty, and there was a film of dried froth around his mouth. His hands, restrained by the straps, clawed at his stomach. His eyes jumped, like he was searching for someone. Desperation in his eyes. He let out a sound, ahhhhh. His tongue flicked out, licked his lips. “Onde?” he whispered. Breathing fast. “Quem?” Eyes jumping from one of us to the next. “Quem e voce?” Voice like sandpaper.
“Sandy,” Tolliver said, “you got enough Portuguese for that?”
She said, softly, “He doesn’t know where he is. Who we are.”
The paramedic leaned in close. “Who are you, sir? Tell me your name.”
Nothing.
“Sandy?” Tolliver said.
“Nome?” she asked Silva.
He stared at her. Blank.
“Looks like he doesn’t know shit,” Jake said. His stance relaxed even more.
Sandy studied her brother for a moment and then slipped out from beneath his arm. “Looks like.”
CHAPTER 19
We’d run out of coffee.
This day had been a two-carafe day, courtesy of a morning at Morro Rock followed by a session in the lab and then a late afternoon with the Keaslings and a poisoned diver. Courtesy of an evening in our lab, again, establishing that the few grains of soil we’d extracted from the eyelet holes in the diver’s sneakers matched the soil we’d sampled in Sandy’s cave — which told us the diver had been in the cave, something we already knew. Doug Tolliver had hoped that the diver’s sneakers would provide a map of his whereabouts since he’d left the hospital. But his footwear was worn smooth, without any indentations to collect and preserve soil. There was no soil map.
At ten P.M. we called it a night.
But the thought of tomorrow morning without coffee was intolerable.
I volunteered to drive into town to buy the beans.
In town, in line at Peet’s, I glanced out the window and saw Lanny pass by. His hurried pace, and the knapsack on his back, was simply too much to ignore. I abandoned Peet’s to follow Lanny.
By the time I reached the sidewalk he was two blocks ahead of me, heading toward the waterfront. He turned left at the main drag and disappeared from my sight.
I ran.
It was a warm beachy night with a waxing gibbous moon in a clear starry sky and all of Morro Bay seemed to be out enjoying it. The main drag was clogged with people, in and out of shops and restaurants, bunching on the sidewalk, in the street. I wove through the throng. Four blocks south I nearly gave up. The fifth block, I glimpsed in the distance a figure with a pack. I picked up my pace. The figure dodged into a parking lot.
I knew that parking lot. It abutted Captain Kayak’s shop.
I thought, Lanny’s going to visit his brother.
But of course he wasn’t. When I reached the kayak shop I found it closed and dark. There were no lights on the stairway that led down to the dock, no lights on the dock, but by moonlight I saw a slim figure in a kayak push off from the dock. No pack in sight. I guessed he’d stowed it in the cargo compartment.
My mind raced, calculating sizes. The yellow float was about two feet long and, in my estimation, the red object I'd glimpsed in the diver's mesh bag was similar in shape and size. The pack Lanny carried tonight was backpack-style, not the duffel bag he’d had on the boat. Nevertheless, roomy enough to accommodate a two-foot float.