“I don’t know any more about it than you do.” “Seems Neal was mixed up with these people pretty deep. Wouldn’t make sense for you to protect him, after the way he treated you and all.”
He never was very subtle, my brother but I had always at least thought he would honor family loyalty. It appeared he had sold out loyalty to anybody but himself a long time ago.
“That’s it. Just shut up and get out of here, Maddy. I’m going to take care of it. If they ask again, you tell your ‘friends’ that I don’t know anything about Neal. In the meantime, I am going to come up with some way to get us all out of this. I can’t get you out of debt—that’s your problem—but I am not going to let anybody else get beat up or killed.” With that I shoved him out the door and shut it in his face.
I wished I could believe what I’d just said.
Through the closed door I heard him say, “Leave it be, Seychelle. Listen to me. Don’t fuck with them.”
It occurred to me I had heard almost those exact words from someone else. Burns. He, too, had told me that these were not people to anger.
I took my lukewarm soup out of the microwave and turned on the TV to catch the news. Suddenly, I was aware of the overpowering sensation of being watched. I glanced around at all three windows, thinking I might see the same glimpse of a head as I had that night with James.
I stood upright, opened the front door and scanned the grounds. Stepping outside into the sunshine, I listened. Mockingbirds singing, insects humming, no noises to trigger this sense that someone was out there.
The cops had seen Maddy come in here. They might even have been able to hear him shouting my name.
The back door to the Larsens’ swung open. I started to jump back inside when I recognized B.J. He waved at me.
“Hey, you fugitive, you.”
“What?” I crossed the yard to speak to him.
“You’re a wanted woman. A couple of police officers just came to the front door. I hadn’t worked on the library here in over a week, and I’d just started back to work when they began beating on the door. They’ve got a warrant for your arrest on burglary and evidence-tampering, and the only good thing is, they think you live in the big house—evidently these guys don’t know about the cottage.”
“Thank goodness for that.”
“But they did say they saw a man come back here.”
“That was Maddy. He just left.”
B.J. nodded. “Okay, I told them you weren’t home. I didn’t think you were until I saw you out the window just now.”
“I saw their car out there when I started to turn down the street, so I parked Lightnin’ on the cul-de-sac and walked down the seawall.”
He nodded. “Well, they’re still out there sitting in their car. You need to call Jeannie and deal with this, Seychelle, or you’re going to jail.”
“I’ve already talked to her, and I’m not going to jail, B.J. I didn’t do anything wrong—well, except a little breaking and entering, maybe.” I shrugged.
He shook his head and turned back into the main house.
The soup worked its magic as comfort food, and I felt myself growing drowsy. More than anything, I wanted to crawl under the covers and just sleep—probably not a good idea with the cops parked out front. As I washed my bowl in the sink, I figured I’d better call Jeannie back to let her know about the actual warrant and ask her what to do next.
Suddenly, the face on the TV screen looked familiar. I hadn’t been listening, so I didn’t really know what the story was about. The reporter was interviewing a man leaving a building, and I had seen that face somewhere just recently.
The reporter holding one finger to her ear, turned to face the camera. “Rick, Benjamin Crystal is refusing to answer any reporters’ questions about his arrest or release here at the Dade County Courthouse this evening. The prosecutor’s office has planned a press conference for later this evening, and we will be here to bring it to you live.” The camera panned back to the man climbing into the backseat of a large, dark-windowed car.
I snapped off the TV when the news anchor started in on a human-interest story about kittens. I remembered where I had seen that face. Harbor House. The photo on the wall with the three couples—Benjamin Crystal was the Hispanic man in that photo, standing next to James Long. Some things were starting to make sense.
I scooped up the papers I had found inside my copy of Bowditch, along with the coordinates from the Top Ten’s GPS, and walked out to Gorda. The alarm beeped when I punched in the code, and I slid the door to the wheelhouse open. The offshore chart for the coast from Palm Beach to lower Biscayne Bay was the best scale I could find in the chart table. My only large-scale charts were of the Intracoastal Waterway. Still, I’d be able to get an idea if I was right. I located the Hillsboro inlet on the chart. The Top Ten had been anchored south of there. Finally, I broke out the dividers and the parallel rulers and plotted the position of BAB. Latitude 26°09.52’N. I drew a pencil line. Longitude 80°04.75’W. Another line. I drew a dot on the chart where the two pencil lines intersected and chewed on the pencil eraser as I stared at it. I eyeballed the distance north of Port Everglades, and it looked just about right. I’d seen Esposito and Big Guy out there diving on what must be the Bahama Belle. The coordinates of the location of the sunken freighter were public knowledge. They knew where the boat was, so what was it that they still thought Neal could tell them?
I reached for Neal’s drawings. They reminded me a little of the reams of drawings I’d inherited from when Red built the Gorda. He’d had her designed by a professional naval architect, but Red sat in on every step of the process, bringing his twenty years of experience on navy ships to the task. He had saved all the drawings, which actually made things easier for me now when I needed to make repairs.
Neal’s drawing appeared to be of a compartment of some kind. Actually, there were two views, one overhead and one from the side. It could be a compartment in the bow of a ship. I could make out the bulkheads, the backbone that ran right up to the bow. In most ships, this part of the bow was where they stowed the anchor chain. But why hadn’t they found whatever it was they were looking for when they sank the the old rust bucket? It’s not like an anchor chain locker is a great hiding place.
I reached up and switched on the VHF radio hanging above the steering station. Taking the microphone, I waited for a break in the constant traffic and then called, “Outta the Blue, Outta the Blue, this is Gorda.”
Only a few seconds passed before he replied, “Gorda, this is Outta the Blue. Wanna switch to zero six?”
Once we were on the working channel, I asked Mike where he was. I could hear voices in the background.
“I’m just off Pompano headed south on a broad reach. I’ve got a charter of six legal secretaries celebrating one gal’s birthday. They wanted to know if it was okay with me if they sunbathed topless.” He held the transmit button long enough for me to hear his laugh.
“It’s a tough life you got, Mike. Listen, I hate to get serious on you, but I need to talk to you—but not on this open channel. Have you got a cell phone on board?”
“That’s a roger Captain Sullivan.”
“Could you call me at my place in about ten minutes?”
“Will do. This is Outta the Blue, clear and going back to channel sixteen.”
When I finally left the tug and started across the yard toward the cottage, the sound of the phone ringing caused me to trot. Just as I was about to pick it up, I thought that it could just as well be the cops calling from a phone out front. My hand froze for a moment, suspended over the phone. But I really needed to talk to Mike.