Seduced

FIFTEEN

When the door to the church bus hissed shut, I headed for the dock but stopped halfway. The black catamaran skiff was drifting just off the channel, while the driver leered at me over his Yosemite Sam mustache. When he was sure I saw him, he thrust out his arms, as if inviting a tango partner, and yelled something about cold weather, then, “Wanna dance instead?”

His name was Larry Luckheim, according to my deputy friend Birdy, who had shared the information over a glass of wine. He’d moved to the area from Canada via Okeechobee, where the Bass Pro circuit had dumped him for cheating. Quaaludes might have also played a role. Now he was fishing light tackle out of Placida and trying to rebuild his reputation as Buddy Luck, Native Guide.

Birdy had told me some other details as well. Twice, women had filed restraining orders against him. There’d been several assault charges related to bar fights, and a court order had mandated two weeks of psychological evaluation. It was three months before Luckheim was released. Bipolar disorder, was the vague diagnosis.

Equally as disturbing, Birdy’s background check turned up zero information prior to the man’s twenty-fifth birthday. No driver’s license or voter’s registration, and no arrests.

On the bright side, it was illegal for Luckheim to buy, own, or possess a firearm.

What Birdy didn’t have to tell me was, the man was a bully. I strode toward him, determined to establish the boundaries of my personal world-the dock, my skiff, and the boat that was beginning to feel like home.

“I bet you’re more of the clogger type, aren’t you?” he hollered. “You’ve got the look of hillbillies and whiskey in those legs of yours. Oh… and catfish. I bet you’re death itself on saltwater cats.”

I ignored him, while battling to keep my skirt down and my demeanor aloof despite the fact I was barefoot.

“Hey, I found my copy of Florida Sportsman. Those pictures don’t do you justice, but at least you were wearing shoes. Hell… I’ll buy you shoes-if you give me your autograph, and let me take you dancing.”

He twirled an invisible partner and attempted a sultry looked as “they” dipped. The effect was grotesque.

This was not the first man I’d dealt with who was jealous of magazine pieces written about me, a woman guide who taught fly casting and whose clients had won tournaments. Thanks to good photography-and, for all I know, Photoshop-the stories had gotten a lot of attention, most of it pleasant, some not. But this, by far, was the craziest man to take offense.

I went into my cabin, locked the door, drew the curtains, and changed clothes. When I came out, I was wearing khaki shorts and a navy blue sweatshirt. The man was still there, within casting distance of the dock, separated only by the cleaning board and a gooseneck lamp. I took out my phone, let him see me do it. As I dialed Birdy, he grabbed a bait-casting rod and freed a fishing lure that rattled with treble hooks. “Who’re you calling? You’re not the only one who’s got cops as pals. You’ve been checking on me, girl. That’s not right, us being in the same profession and all.”

We were close enough now, he didn’t have to yell. Instead, he spoke in a cheery, conversational way-then suddenly snapped a sidearm cast. The lure, with its silver gang hooks, came at me like a bullet, threading the space between the lamp and the cleaning board. Before I could flinch, he thumbed the spool and stopped the lure inches from my face. The lure plopped into the water at my feet while I finally did react in a lurching, clumsy way. Embarrassing-which is what he wanted.

“Why’d that scare you? Hell, I’d choose a Shimano over any sniper rifle in the world. You’ve never seen an expert fisherman cast before, have you? Here, honey, watch this.”

He did it again. Again, I ducked away from the lure. It was a reflexive reaction I couldn’t control, yet I kept the phone to my ear while Birdy’s recorded voice said, “You know the drill.”

I straightened to my full height and pretended as if she had answered. “Deputy, yes, it’s me again. You were right about that restraining order. Yeah… same guy, but on my own property this time. Threatening me, he sure is… Hang on.” I covered the phone. “Your name’s Larry Luckheim, right? Or would you prefer to be arrested as Buddy Luck? Give it some thought-your picture might finally make the magazines after all.”

The insult took some air out of his swagger. To compensate, he deployed his fake Cracker accent. “You got a mouth on you, girl, but ain’t your lips a tad too round for jokes? Here’s what’s funny-take a guess how many clients you lost to me this week. Two. An old married couple who wanted to pick oranges, not fish. Like I said, it’s all about marketing. I told them, ‘The only reason you prefer fruit to snook is because you never fished with a real guide.’” He aimed a hairy, bulldog grin at my stunned reaction. “Don’t ask their names. Us pros don’t give out shit like that.”

Underhand, this time, he flicked the lure. Something in me snapped. I threw my arm out and caught the line as treble hooks whistled past my ear. I stepped back and yanked. There is no stretch to Dacron fishing line, and that’s what Larry had spooled. The rod flew into the water while steel hooks pierced the back of my wrist. I pretended not to notice. Hand over hand, I towed the rod to the dock, then picked it up, with all the cool I could muster, and began cranking up slack.

“The magnetic spools on these Shimanos,” I said, “they’re okay for beginners, but don’t you lose distance when you cast? I can teach you how to avoid backlash, if that’s the problem. You know how to reach me, don’t you, Larry? What with stealing my clients, I assume you looked me up.”

The man recoiled with benumbed expression. “Goddamn, lady… you’re nuts, that’s what you are. I could’ve ripped your arm off, if I wanted to-”

I talked over him. “Not out of kindness, you didn’t. You could’ve blinded me, you idiot!”

“Damn right, that too. Next time, maybe I will. Any fool who grabs a MirrOlure bare-handed deserves whatever they get. Don’t make me come up there and get my fishing rod. More than just your hand will be bleeding if you cross me.”

My wrist, not my hand, was dripping blood, but the hooks weren’t barbed, and only one had bit deeply. Good-let the man believe I was crazy. Much depended on the question I asked next. “Larry, answer me. Did you look me up on the Internet? If you did, you know I don’t tolerate bullying. Not from the likes of you-or anyone else. There were plenty of articles a couple years back that prove it.”

He’d seen the news stories. What he’d read was in the nervous pretense of his denials.

“If you ever threaten me again,” I said, “I’ll do whatever it takes. That’s your choice.”

He puffed up his ego enough to answer back, “You’re saying that story about you shooting some criminal down in the Glades is true? I don’t believe it. Never read a newspaper yet I believed. He wasn’t much of a man if he stood still for your nonsense.”

“If my aim was better,” I replied, “he’d be less of a man now. Ask his friends about it your next trip to Raiford prison.” I clipped the lure free of the line and stepped aboard the Marlow as if in a hurry to fetch something.

I heard the cat’s twin engines fire up, the clank of gears, and felt the rolling wake when Larry sped away. The whole time, I sat shaking in the hollow privacy of my cabin, where I battled the urge to scream, or cry, or telephone for help. But I did neither, save for a few traitorous tears.

No one can save you from a bully but yourself. I’d been through it enough in high school to know.

On the other hand… it couldn’t hurt to enlist the opinions of a few trusted friends. How would they handle the situation?

On the counter lay Sabin Martinez’s business card. I didn’t consider him a friend, but the fact he’d been a confidant of a man like Harney Chatham was impressive.

Call me, he’d said, if you need help with anything at all. Anything. I’m a problem solver from way back.

The emphasis he’d given the word suggested that he was, indeed, an experienced problem solver.

I studied the card for a moment, then dialed.

When Larry was long gone, I returned to the quiet aft deck of my cruiser, where there are cushioned bench seats and a small teak table. My hands were still shaking. I had to take a moment. I used a first-aid kit and fishing pliers to remove the treble hooks, then called Mr. and Mrs. Gentry’s cell phone. They were my only clients who had an interest in citrus. I didn’t want to believe they’d go behind my back and hire another guide. Not after the talks we’d had about a partnership in developing a biotech patent.

My faith was well placed. Larry had made up a story or had someone else in mind.

“Are you referring to the crazy man who cut off my snook?” Dr. Gentry asked. “Never in a million years would we hire someone like that, my dear. I can tell you’re upset. Do you want to talk about it?”

I shared a few details, minus the threats of violence. “Somehow he knows about you and Mr. Gentry. About what we’re doing. And he used it to scare me-either that or he’s being chartered by someone else who knows.”

“I don’t like this, Hannah. It’s worth checking into. We might have to hire someone to keep an eye on you.”

“You sound worried.”

The woman remained serious but mitigated matters with a calming tone. “In the world of biotech patents, there’s always something to worry about until the patent is actually awarded. No, I’m misleading you. That’s just the start of your worries. During the process, you have data thieves, and leaks of every kind imaginable, and then the international courts to deal with. Science is a noble profession-until money gets involved. Then it’s like any other cutthroat business, only worse because… well, the stakes are so much higher. It’s the foreign companies that fight dirtiest of all. One of India’s recent biotech patents changed the entire economy of Mumbai-more than thirteen billion dollars the first year.”

I cleared my throat. “Did you say billion?”

My fishing client, the famous scientist, replied, “Get used to it. A million is the numerical starting point in this business. The numbers get bigger fast depending on who, and how many companies, want to license whatever intellectual property you happen to own.”

We had never talked money before, just ideas and methods. “Good Lord, Mrs. Gentry, you’re not telling me that-”

“No, no, no, it’s way too early to predict profits. And there seldom are, by the way. But big egos and the chance for big money-or even a piddly little research grant-can be a dangerous combination. That’s what I’m saying, Hannah. The man who threatened you sounds dangerous to begin with. If someone hired him, it can only be to steal whatever it is we’re after. Unless he’s just crazy. Either way, you need to be very, very careful, dear.”

Now I was worried, too. “Someone found out what we’re doing, that’s obvious.”

“They always do. I’ll bounce this off Doug when he gets home. We need to have another meeting anyway because of a conversation I just had. I told you that naturally occurring DNA sequences can’t be patented? That’s true. But I was wrong about my take on a Supreme Court ruling a few years back. There’s a loophole when it comes to seed stock. Monsanto has been patenting seeds under what’s called a stewardship clause. I knew that, but here’s how it applies to us…”

She went into greater detail. As hard as I tried, some of the terminology she used was indecipherable. “I don’t understand any of this,” I said after a while. “I can’t believe you and Mr. Gentry have been kind enough to guide me through the process this far.”

“Kindness begets kindness, my dear,” Dr. Gentry said. “But don’t forget, we’re businesspeople, too. If you can find that early Spanish seed stock, and if the DNA sequencing is even slightly different, we could really be on to something quite substantial, Hannah. There are a lot more ifs regarding their resistance to disease, but let’s save that for later and talk about something serious. How is Roberta, our young mother, getting along?”

There is no excuse for boredom if you live on a boat or own anything that floats bigger than a canoe. Maintenance, if not given daily attention, is guaranteed to become an annual disaster. I spent early Sunday afternoon battling a leak in the Marlow’s stuffing box, which was okay because it was mindless work. It gave me time to run through a list of people who might have hired Larry Luckheim to shadow me or to search for wild oranges.

Not a single client could I name.

He was lying, I decided, but I had no doubt he’d been tailing me for a while. Before the weather had turned foul, I’d spent two days gunkholing local islands and collecting samples of feral citrus and their leaves, plus bark scrapings. On an island off the Estero River, I had also found two prime little seedling trees-juveniles, they were called in the trade. These items all had to be bagged, labeled, and logged just so, as Roberta had demonstrated. The procedure required my full attention, so it was possible that Larry had tailed me, or at least gotten a peek at what I was doing. If true, his motives for lying were cloudy at best, but that was to be expected from a forty-some-year-old man who didn’t shave, and probably didn’t bathe, but who took tango lessons.

I dropped the subject and fixed the leak.

Missing church had left me with a residual feeling of sloth. On Sunday afternoons, the public pool on Pine Island clears two lanes for serious swimmers. Finishing first at high school regionals in the hundred-meter freestyle didn’t qualify me as serious, but I do enjoy a hard swim. The wind had swung northwest, the harbinger of a coming cold front. According to NOAA weather, the temperature would plummet into the low forties tonight, and the breeze already had an icy edge. There was also a bandage on my left bicep, and a laceration the nurse had told me not to get wet. I decided to swim anyway. To doubly ensure discipline, I jotted my workout in pencil and pasted the paper it was on on the tile when I was in the pool.

Warm-up laps are the best for letting the mind wander. After six hundred yards, Larry’s threats had been replaced by thoughts of Kermit Bigalow; images of his kindly smile and fatherly attention to his daughter, Sarah. Of course I would speak to him if he stopped by my boat at seven. I hadn’t actually consented, so maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t. But, if he did, how would I handle it? The news about Mr. Chatham’s will could not be shared; I had promised Sabin Martinez. Even if I hadn’t, it would be an awkward topic. I would soon inherit a portion of the very citrus operation from which he’d been fired, so how would I respond when the subject came up?

No… Kermit hadn’t said “fired.” He’d said that Lonnie had forced him off the property by padlocking his house. What a terrible thing to do to a man and wife with a ten-year-old daughter. Childhood was tough enough without the added hurt of legalities and changing homes.

On my flip turn, my legs snapped around with precision. Feet found the wall in synch. I pushed off… glided, while my legs imitated the thrusting strokes of a dolphin. When I surfaced, the easy flow of thoughts resumed.

Loretta floated into my mind. With her came a weighty sadness. All those years she had lied to me, her own daughter, yet her only regret was that she had sometimes heeded her moral conscience along with the commandments of her faith.

A part of me was indignant, a part of me understood. I could not deny a secret empathy for two people in love who had dealt as best they could with life’s obligations and a tragic run of bad timing.

The longing in my mother’s words came back: I don’t regret a single moment I spent with Harney Chatham… only the times I said no out of conscience. All those lost hours of happiness we could have shared!

Inevitably, my situation with Kermit took advantage of what I knew was a sly ingress. I heard his voice saying,… it’s the feeling I got when I first saw you… I’ve never done anything like this before… If things were different at home, maybe…

Kermit’s wife hated Florida. She hated bugs, and boats, and the water. Sarah had told me that.

After another flip turn, and a long dolphining glide, Kermit was repeating to me, in a whisper, You are so damn beautiful, and not in the typical… way…

This cleared my head for a moment, because I knew better. If I were beautiful, I would not be wearing a black, plus-size Speedo to disguise the extra weight I carried in too many wrong places. Nor would I have spent last night-yet another Saturday-alone on my boat, researching the history of rootstock and the citrus industry.

Why did I even care? I had kissed a married man… and had let it go too far. So what! At this instant, all around the world, people were probably kissing like mad, indifferent to silly rules about when to kiss and why, particularly in Europe (or so I’d read), where men and women, married or not, kissed as a matter of common courtesy-even on the streets, where everyone could see. No wonder Loretta and Mr. Chatham had snuck off to Paris to kiss themselves crazy without all the damn guilt they’d suffered here in the prudish boondocks of Florida.

After eight hundred yards, I stopped, adjusted my goggles, and consulted my workout sheet.

“Beautiful day, even if it is getting chilly,” a lifeguard said on his way to the office. “I hear a big cold front’s coming.”

“They might think it’s a beautiful day in France,” I replied with a surliness that was undeserved. After that, I began a series of middle-distance reps, but started much too fast. Soon I was plodding along-this time, my mind on Sarah. The ten-year-old who drew sad stick figures was now homeless to boot. Of course, I would discuss whatever business her father had on his mind. The poor man was desperate to care for his family after being locked out of the home that had been provided them by…

Locked out.

The term jolted me. It echoed and banged around in my head until the particulars fell into place. Only then did I remember Kermit saying he had been locked out of the house, and his office, too.

I snapped a flip turn and sprinted to the wall as my final lap. I gathered my belongings, pulled a towel around me for warmth, and hurried to the locker room to change. It is rare for me to quit in the middle of a workout, but I suddenly knew-no, I suspected-who had mentioned my name while hiring an unstable fishing guide to search for oranges.

If Lonnie Chatham had locked Kermit out of his office, she now had possession of his files! Quite possibly they included his notes regarding a theory about the original Spanish rootstock.

From my SUV, I called Kermit but got voice mail. “Give me a call back,” I said. “I should be home by seven-if that’s still in your plans.”

It was a bold stroke that made me bolder. I called Reggie. He was at his cottage, he said, waxing the Lincoln. “Every Sunday afternoon, if I’m not driving, it’s what I do. Why you ask?”

“Would you mind some company? I can stop on the way and bring food. Oh-and I need Lonnie’s cell number, if you have it. I think she wanted to charter my boat but changed her mind for some reason.”

After a silence, he replied, “That woman don’t fish for nothing unless it wears pants, and it’s too cold to fish anyway. What’s wrong, makes you want to speak with her?”

“That’s what I need to find out. Do you know a man named Sabin Martinez?”

“’Course I do, but I ain’t seen him in near a month. I can’t say why that’s a worry to me… or maybe Beano paid a visit to you and your ma. Is that what happened? I’d be pleased if he paid you a call.”

“You call him Beano?”

“Twenty years or more, that’s what the governor called him. Sabe, sometimes, but Bin don’t fit the man. As a chauffeur, of course, I’ve got to be more formal. Call him Captain Martinez, or Mr. sometimes, depends on the formality of the situation. Reckon you’d sound happier, Miz Hannah, if Beano had spoken to you. But wait… he must’a, ’cause how else you know his name?”

“Was he supposed to stop by your place? He strikes me as the type who travels a lot.” This confused the chauffeur, so I explained, “It worries you, you said, not seeing him for a while. We can talk about it-I’ll pick up some barbecue on the way. Or would you prefer I make sandwiches?”

Before we hung up, I reminded him, “How about Lonnie’s number?”

“The woman don’t speak to me unless she needs something or wants to holler about how useless I am. You could try the house, I suppose.”

“Stop by and see her, you mean?” The Chatham ranch was only a mile or two out of the way.

“I wouldn’t advise no person to do that-not on a Sunday. You got something to write with? I’ll give you the private number to the house.”