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32

I told Rhonda, “I don’t know how old the woman is. And I don’t understand why you’re so concerned.”

Rhonda had my head in her lap, a washcloth in her hand. She’d already snipped the stitches and pulled them out with tweezers. Now she was using the cloth to scrub the cut beneath my eye with Betadine, the two of us on a settee in the main salon of Tiger Lilly.

She replied, “JoAnn thinks she met her one night, walking on the beach. The big gray house that you couldn’t see until the storm knocked the trees down? With the gray gables?”

I tried to nod, but she was holding my head tight.

“JoAnn said she tried to talk to her—this was right after the hurricane when everyone was chatty. JoAnn said the woman was pleasant enough until she found out Tomlinson was a friend. After that, it was like a curtain dropped. An ice curtain—JoAnn’s words.”

As I began to reply, she muttered, “This thing’s not as long as the cut on your forehead, but it’s deep. Almost to the bone and only an inch from your eye. Gad. The guy who beat you up did this?”

“He didn’t exactly beat me up—”

“You don’t have to lie to me. The story’s all over the island. Then you got another knock on the head while you were diving?”

I said, “Minor. It doesn’t hurt.”

“Three severe blows to the head. A guy like you who uses his brains for a living. Minor?” She expected a response. Began to scrub harder when she didn’t get it.

“Does this hurt?”

I said, “Yes! You could take varnish off wood, the way you’re digging. It burns like hell.”

“Good! Serves you right for behaving like a damn schoolkid. No”—she pushed my shoulders back when I tried to sit—“you’re not going anywhere until I get you patched up. Afterward, you can help me decorate for tomorrow’s party—out of gratitude.”

“A party?” Friday was the traditional night for marina parties. Tomorrow was Sunday.

“Why not? We’re making up for lost time.”

A marina party hosted by the ladies of the Tiger Lilly. The first since the hurricane. Also the first I’d heard of it.

Tiger Lilly is a forty-one-foot Chris-Craft Continental, a wallowing, teak-and-mahogany hulk, party-sized and homey, which is how she’s decorated: potted plants and Japanese lanterns strung along the weather bridge, full bath, staterooms fore and aft, stereo speakers all around. A boat that’s rigged for socializing, not open sea.

A few years back, after a run of bad luck, the ladies had had a ceremony and changed the boat’s name to Satin Doll. Things kept getting worse, however, until they reversed the ceremony, and it’s been Tiger Lilly ever since. It’s moored at the deepwater docks, Dinkin’s Bay Marina, neighbor to a dozen or so other live-aboard vessels—houseboats, sailboats, and trawlers.

Four weeks earlier, there’d been twice that number.

Lucky.

Aside from a Danforth compass, the only navigational equipment aboard Tiger Lilly is a brass plate that points toward the ship’s toilet. The ladies installed it as a precaution against confused and desperate drunks.

“Doc,” Rhonda continued, her tone severe, “we worry about you. That’s why I asked about your new lady.”

I repeated myself patiently. “Mildred Engle is not my new lady,” I said, and fought the urge to check my watch. I didn’t want Rhonda to know that I was eager to get to Chestra’s house.

She said, “It doesn’t matter what you think. It matters what the woman thinks. You’re a dear, sweet guy, Doc, but forgive me for saying this—you’re pretty damn dense when it comes to women.”

I wasn’t going to argue.

“Same when it comes to fighting. That’s just dumb. Especially with some low-life marina punk—we heard about the fight so don’t even bother to deny it. Some freak named Heller? You don’t think a jerk like that can’t take one look and know you’re the scientific type, not a fighter? That’s what I’m trying to get through your head. You’re an easy target for a punk like that to show off. And also for a certain type of woman.”

Rhonda’s hair was colored Irish copper instead of the usual brown…a stylish new wig. She was wearing shorts and a dark blue blouse that was buttoned one notch higher than normal. She’s tall, heavy-hipped, and busty—busty until a recent illness, anyway.

She was one of the friends who’d been hospitalized.

Rhonda had been scolding me about the fight, fussing about Mildred Engle, but something else was on her mind.

Her encounter with cancer and the black void was recent. She deserved my patience.

Rhonda said, “You got about as many scars on your face as I got on my belly and boobs,” She was done with the washcloth and opening a tube of antibacterial cream. “Get a few glasses of wine in me tonight, maybe we can compare.”

“Tempting,” I replied.

“I’d like to think you’re serious. Since the operation, I’m worried you and other manly man types won’t be interested. As if the hysterectomy didn’t make me feel self-conscious enough.”

Self-deprecating humor, typical of her. But it contained an underlying truth. A few months before, she’d found a lump on her breast. Her physician had removed the tumor after assuring her that the biopsy report could have been a lot worse. Rhonda had finished her last week of chemotherapy just before the hurricane.

“If you’re serious,” I replied, “I’ll return with a long line of the manliest men who’d love to get a look at that body of yours. Dozens, probably hundreds. Me included.”

“Hah!”

“Don’t offer unless you mean it. There’re guys on these islands who’ve been lusting after you for years.”

“Really? That’s a shock, because I’ve been lusting after a few of them, too.”

I told her if that information got out, we’d have to build a new marina parking lot.

It’s understood that the partnership between Rhonda and JoAnn is more than business. They’ve been dedicated to one another for years; confident in the way strong couples are confident. Which is maybe why they seem to get a kick out of discussing their occasional bawdy interest in men.

That interest wasn’t always a ruse, either. As I knew.

Rhonda was laughing. “Good ol’ Doc. You always know the right thing to say to a woman.” She reached and opened a box of bandages. Began to sort through them. “That’s another reason you’ve gotta take care of yourself. The summer’s been shitty enough, we can’t afford to lose you. Fighting like some teenager.” She made an introspective noise of disgust. “After the storm, before the cops finally let us back on the island, JoAnn and me about got sick when we heard you’d stayed here, rode the damn thing out. Didn’t know if you were alive or dead. Tomlinson, too—there’s another man who’ll never grow up. Crazy coconut-headed fools, the both of you.”

Not quite accurate. Tomlinson hadn’t been at the marina when the winds began to build. He’d used the flood tide to pole and wade his sailboat into the same tidal river where the fishing guides had moored several of Dinkin’s Bay’s larger vessels, Tiger Lilly included. He’d tied a spiderweb of lines to the mangroves, burned incense, then roped himself to the ship’s helm and was meditating naked, he told me, when the eye passed over.

I was the only one watching as he sailed back into Dinkin’s Bay under full canvas, the sunset an eerie green as the hurricane pulled the last of its funnel clouds northward. No other vessel under way for a hundred miles. Few human beings on the island, none at Dinkin’s Bay. Standing on the broken decking of my roofless home, I considered the possibility that I might be hallucinating because of the recent concussion. Quite a vision; quite a night.

“You have a son to think about,” Rhonda reminded me primly. “A new daughter, too. People who care about you, and rely on you to stick around. Who worry about some of the stupid things you do.”

As she said that, into my mind appeared the image of an adolescent boy, playing baseball in the jungle. Then an infant bundled in pink, her face an undefined space. It was the daughter I’d never seen.

Rhonda had unwrapped a butterfly bandage and leaned in to apply it. I took her wrist, stopping her. “Why is it I get the impression you’ve practiced this little speech? And you’re not only talking about the fight. You’re putting a whole lot of mysterious implications between the lines—”

I paused when the cabin door opened and we watched JoAnn Smallwood step into the salon.

J oAnn is a shorter, bustier version of Rhonda; she looked businesslike in stockings, dark skirt, and blazer. She was carrying a sack of groceries in one arm and the marina’s resident cat, Crunch & Des, in the other. JoAnn and Rhonda exchanged looks as we exchanged greetings, and then JoAnn said, “You’re having that little talk with him?” Expecting it.

“Just getting started,” Rhonda said. She pushed my hand away and leaned toward me with the bandage.

Sounding like a tattletale sister, Rhonda said to JoAnn, “Guess who got into a fistfight? Got himself beat up. Look at how deep this gash is—thing needs stitches. Then he got clunked on the head today while they were diving that wreck—”

JoAnn said, “I heard. I heard,” letting the cat drop pad soft on the deck and taking groceries to the galley. Began to sort items on the teak cupboard. Cheese, tortillas, coffee, toilet paper, party hats, candles, tonic water, wine. Cat food, too. The expensive kind in caviar-sized tins.

Which explained why Crunch & Des hadn’t visited me at my stilt house for a while. A burly black cat with ragged ears and a white patch. It wasn’t the first time he’d been lured away by better food.

“I told him what you said about the woman you met on the beach.”

JoAnn replied to me, saying, “I hope it doesn’t seem like we’re being nosy, but—”

I interrupted, “Of course you’re being nosy. But it’s okay. Being nosy’s one of the perks of friendship.”

“Then I’ll tell you what I think. I think there’s something strange about that woman, if it’s the same one. Slender, very elegant—even at night on a beach—but something…dated about the way she dresses. Even the way she talked. Some of the phrases she used. I’d guess her to be in her late sixties, so maybe that explains—”

I said, “Mildred Engle isn’t that old. It must have been someone else,” but knew she was talking about Chestra.

It allowed JoAnn to be less guarded. “I hope so. A woman who won’t risk meeting a man’s female friends? That’s a danger signal. Always trust a woman’s instincts when it comes to other women. The one I met is cold. The kind of coldness that’s hiding something. So I’m glad it wasn’t the same woman.”

Her tone said she suspected it was.

They still weren’t done with me. This wasn’t just about Chestra, or the fight. What was on their minds?

I listened to JoAnn talk about how hot it was and that they needed to get a new air conditioner, the old one was so noisy, before she finally started getting to it. “Maybe we shoulda tried to talk some sense into him earlier, huh? Maybe he’da thought twice before getting mixed up in a brawl.”

“Probably should’ve,” Rhonda said. “Someone needs to find out why our old buddy seems to have a death wish.”

I removed the washcloth from my forehead and sat up. “Death wish? Okay, ladies, what’s this about?”

Rhonda said, “It’s about you staying in that rickety old piling house of yours when everyone else in their right mind evacuated the island. And it’s about—”

“Hold it,” I said, and began to explain that I’d been on a trip, returned late, didn’t realize how bad the storm would be. But she cut me off, saying, “It’s not just the hurricane, Doc. And it’s not just you getting into a brawl—”

“It was worse than just a brawl,” JoAnn put in, “a lot worse,” her tone saying she had additional information.

“It’s about the risks you’ve been taking,” Rhonda continued. “At least, risks that some of us around the marina think you’re taking. We’re not stupid. We pay attention to what goes on in this weird little fishbowl of ours and some of us are worried. Worried about you.”

I became more focused. Uneasy. Wasn’t certain that I needed to respond cautiously but did. “Risks?” I said. “I don’t know what you mean.”

The women exchanged looks again, Rhonda’s expression telling JoAnn to take over.

“Let me go down the list,” JoAnn said. “A couple months back, you went for a cruise on the Queen Elizabeth. A guy like you on a cruise ship. Wearing a tuxedo, shopping in tourist dumps like Jamaica? No way. Then you come back with a big bruise on your neck like someone smacked you with a sledgehammer—”

“The Queen Mary 2,” I corrected her. “There’s nothing risky about that because she didn’t stop in Jamaica. No one in their right mind intentionally visits Jamaica. Not me, not the Queen Mary. I took Ransom because she needed a break. Ask her, she’ll tell you.”

My Bahamian cousin, Ransom Gatrell.

“That’s my point,” JoAnn said. “We did ask her and she didn’t tell us. Hardly said a word. You didn’t, either, the both of you hush-hush, like you didn’t want to talk about it. That woman, you’re closer than brother and sister. She’ll say whatever you tell her to say. But wait. I’m not done.

“A month or so before that, you took off to God knows where. South America, you said. But your tan was nearly gone when you got home, so I don’t know where in the tropics that would be.

“A few months before, you came back from a trip with a big gauze bandage taped over the meaty part of your right side.” She raised her voice when I tried to interrupt. “Don’t deny it, I saw the dang thing. I was out for a walk and watched you taking a shower.”

My outdoor shower has no curtain, but it’s located at the back of my stilt house, out of sight unless someone’s willing to stand in the mangroves off Tarpon Bay Road. Or arrive by boat, like Arlis.

“You watched me shower?”

“Only five minutes or so, yeah.” In reply to my expression, she added, “Doc, almost every woman on this island has seen you showering at one time or another. Some nights, we could sell popcorn. As if you didn’t know—but don’t change the subject. Point is, you came back injured. Again. Maybe a gunshot wound, that was one of the rumors.”

“A gunshot?” I was shaking my head, smiling. “Unbelievable. I didn’t realize my pals had such good imaginations. No…I was diving off St. Martin. A biologist friend wanted my opinion on something, and I got sliced up by a chunk of coral. You can see the scar, if you want.”

Which was close to the truth. I’d been cut—but not by coral. A knife.

I said it again, “A gunshot wound? Boy oh boy,” then waited. Made an effort to appear relaxed, indifferent. I was worried that JoAnn and Rhonda had correlated the dates: When I left. When I returned. And that they had associated my visit to St. Martin with an incident that occurred while I was there. A small item in the national news: the unexplained disappearance of Omar Muhammad, prospective head of Abu Nidal, a fundamentalist terrorist organization.

Muhammad had vanished while snorkeling on a shallow reef off St. Martin. His body was never found.

I relaxed a little when JoAnn pressed ahead, saying, “Then there was the time you said you had to go to Key West for a few weeks, but I know damn well you went to Colombia or someplace like that, because Sandy Phillips mentioned she saw you at Miami International, the TACA gate, and…”

“We also know how Tomlinson makes his living,” Rhonda cut in severely. “That’s what we’re getting at. I don’t know why he didn’t stick with his Internet meditation school, Ransom did such a great job setting that up. He was making plenty of money. Bought the Harley, and the cool minivan. But now he’s back to importing and selling what everyone knows he’s always imported and sold, and, well…Doc—”

“Doc,” JoAnn said, “we love Tomlinson. You know that. But if that crazy old hippie has somehow talked you into helping him smuggle marijuana and God knows what else…sending you off to foreign countries to do the dangerous stuff while he hangs out here getting stoned and working on his tan—” The woman paused and looked at me. “Why are you laughing, Doc? What’s so damn funny?”

After several more seconds, Rhonda said, “Doc. Stop it. We’re not joking. Today, you show up with a fancy new yacht you say you got as salvage. We’re not dumb. That’s the sort of thing men buy with drug money. Now you’ve got Jeth involved?”

JoAnn said, “We know a lot of people are hurting since the hurricane. If you need cash, we can turn you on to some good investments. But smuggling is poison, and it’s bad for Dinkin’s Bay—”

Thin-lipped, Rhonda said, “He’s not listening. I don’t know why we’re bothering.”

I couldn’t talk. I was laughing that hard.