And her own boat scratched up.
What’s going on?
Her brother Lanny was suddenly a thief and a liar.
She faced Jake.
And her brother Jake was, as always, a liar — and looking, as always, for an angle to play.
And fixing the problem was going to fall, big surprise, on big sister Sandy. Her two brothers were, let’s face it, screwups. She had a twenty-seven-year-old child-man and a thirty-two-year-old alcoholic with goddamn green hair and good luck keeping either one of them out of trouble. And herself — she wouldn’t let herself off the hook — a thirty-six-year-old screwup who drove a pathetic whale-watching bird-watching bucket.
Fix the problem? She didn’t know what the problem was, any more than she knew what was going on in the ocean. All she knew was, it smelled like trouble.
CHAPTER 7
We watched the Sea Spray head out for the afternoon trip. Lanny stood at the back of the boat, waving. We waved back.
“He’s a nice young man,” Walter said.
“Yes,” Tolliver said, “everybody likes Lanny.”
Walter, Tolliver, and I sat on one of the long fiberglass lockers outside the Sea Spray office. The three of us in a row, Tolliver in between. Waiting for the Morro Bay Police Department van to come collect the dive gear to take back to the department to store in the evidence lockup. Eating sandwiches from the café at the head of the dock. It felt good to be hungry.
We saw Captain Keasling stick her head out of the wheelhouse, and shout. Lanny went to her.
“As much as Sandy’s a pain in the keister,” Tolliver said, “she’s a good sister to him.”
Walter and I exchanged a look, surprise. Knowledge gained. Now that I knew, I recast Captain Keasling’s churlishness. Overprotective big sister looking after vulnerable younger brother. Was that it? Or was there something more? She hadn’t liked giving us access to her boat — or, it seemed — access to her brother. Perhaps she worried that Lanny would tell us something he shouldn’t. I asked Tolliver, “You think Lanny knows something about what happened to the Sea Spray?”
“Not that he admitted to. With Sandy hovering.”
The police van appeared, driving up the dock, parking near the pile of dive gear. Tolliver was officially using the term 'suspicious circumstances'.
I said, “Lanny didn’t seem to know what was happening out there today.”
“That makes two of us,” Tolliver said.
“So, you’ve never seen fish acting like that? And those crabs…” I shuddered.
“The very deep did rot,” Walter said, in that voice he adopted when quoting poetry. He turned to Tolliver. “A line from a poem about a mariner who, quite stupidly, kills a good-luck albatross, cursing his ship to sail into a strange sea. It’s an allegory about humanity’s relationship with nature.”
“Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Tolliver said.
“Ah, you know it.”
Tolliver nodded. “It crossed my mind, too.”
I tossed the remains of my sandwich into the trash bin. “Allegories aside, maybe we should talk to somebody who knows something.”
“I’ll ask around,” Tolliver said.
The door of the police van opened.
We shifted our attention to the pile of dive gear. We watched the tech open the back of the van. Big-shouldered guy, he picked up the dive tank like it weighed next to nothing. We watched him place it inside the van with a forensic tech's fastidiousness.
Tolliver said, “I’ll be a happy man if my techs can lift any prints from the tank, and if they belong to someone other than the diver. I’ll happier still if the prints are in the database and belong to a perp with a grudge.”
Walter said, “You’re hoping for foul play?”
Tolliver gave a rueful smile. “Not hoping. Considering.”
Walter said, “I was hoping for a grain or two of something interesting caught in the gear. Assuming the diver encountered some subsea geology.”
“We'll know more if the diver's boat is found.”
The Coast Guard had dispatched choppers to hunt for a boat adrift, for any more stranded divers. So far, without success.
What we had, I thought, were two oddly mirrored mysteries. A diver without a boat. A boat without a fisherman.
The tech came back for the wetsuit.
I stared at the diminishing pile of dive gear. Something was bugging me. I wasn't a stranger to diving — Walter and I had both been in the water, learning to dive at a conference in Belize last summer. I knew a buoyancy compensator from a weight belt. I could certainly ID the gear in this pile. I watched the tech pick up the mask and fins. All that remained were the BC and the mesh dive bag. The dive bag was empty. I swore that there had been something in it, something red, when Lanny had held it with that stricken look. I considered what divers normally put in dive bags. Gear. Seashells. When Walter and I dived in Belize we hadn't used dive bags. It was a marine sanctuary — strictly forbidden to collect pretty seashells on the seafloor.
The reddish thing I'd seen in the mesh bag was cylindrical, maybe a couple of feet long. Not a seashell. Or so I thought. It was just a glimpse.
The tech loaded the rest of the gear in the van. Closed the door.
“All right,” Tolliver said, “let's get back to the boats we do have. Can you give me anything on the stuff you took from the Sea Spray scratches? Compared to what you took from the Outcast. Different? Same?”
I said, “I'll give you the quick-and-dirty answer. Under the hand lens it looked like hematite.”
“So, the same?”
“When we get it under the scopes, we'll confirm.”
“All right. Soon as you can. I don't know how you two triage your evidence but I'd also like to get some feedback about the sand from Donie's duffel. Soon as you can.”
Walter said, “There's fast, and there's thorough. They sometimes coincide.”
“Soon as you can.” Tolliver rubbed his face. “Look, I'm sorry. I know the drill, I subscribe to thorough. But something damn strange is going on out there and it's throwing me. That's pretty much my ocean out there, as far as Morro Bay boats go out in it. Not only do I have Robbie missing and the Outcast marked up, now I've got the Sea Spray. And that's got me looking at Sandy as a possible suspect, which I goddamn hate because I goddamn inexplicably like her. And we go out on her boat and I commit her logbook to memory, and then we end up with that hubbub out at Birdshit Rock, and then we find that stranded diver. I want to know what's going on. That's my diving ocean, too, I've dived it since I was a kid. I don't know what happened to that diver or Robbie but if it happened out there in my patch of ocean then I mean to find out.” Tolliver held up his hands. “All right, I'm done. Sorry. Shouldn't have dumped that on you.”
Walter said, “No, I must apologize. At times I get didactic.”
I said, “We all know what it's like to watch out for our home town.”
“All right, then.” Tolliver raked his pompadour. “Appreciate it.”
Walter said, “We have the sand evidence queued up. Once we characterize it, we'll get some ideas of possible sources around here.”
“Doug,” I said, “what would a fisherman keep a duffel on board for? I mean, other than carrying his lunch or something. Some purpose that would place the duffel in a sandy environment. Any ideas?”
“I have an idea right now. While you're here. Might be worthwhile to grab a sample.” Tolliver was looking at the neighboring dock. It was low tide and there was a thin strip of beach visible. “Fellow runs the kayak shop.”