Skeleton Sea

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.

Lanny’s kayak headed up the channel toward the back bay.

So he wasn’t heading out to open sea. I expelled a breath. I’d kayaked before, on lakes and tame rivers, and I figured I could handle a protected bay.

I went down the stairs.

Straps hung free on the kayak rack. I chose the sleek white Necky, thinking the captain has real nice equipment. I lifted it off the rack and set it on the end of the dock, front end hanging over the black water. Now for a paddle. I glanced around. The tall fiberglass gear locker had one door ajar. I opened it and chose my paddle, keeping watch for a pissed green-haired owner. I took a twenty from my wallet and left it in the locker.

Easy as breathing, I was in the Necky paddling up the channel toward the back bay.

I was dressed for a coffee run, not kayaking, in jeans and sneakers and a T-shirt, and I quickly worked up some body heat in the summery night. There was no sound but the suck of my paddle in the glassy water — putting in, pulling free. No light but the glow from the moon. As I glided past the waterfront, on my left, I saw people inside bars and restaurants and if they put their faces to their windows they might glimpse a sleek shape finning among the anchored sailboats. To my right was the sandspit that began back at the mouth of the harbor and rose to giant dunes in the distance, well ahead of me, where the channel widened into the bay.

Right here, within the confines of the narrow channel, I could see anything that was moving on the water, anything beached on the sandspit.

Nobody. Nothing. Just me skimming along like a water bug.

And then suddenly my paddle caught on something, dragged something silvery out of the water. I stared at the thing dangling from the right-hand blade and identified it as a jellyfish. Shit. I’d probably killed it. Carefully I dipped the blade back into the water and set the jelly free. I was leaning over for a closer look, to see if it would swim away, when I realized the water was full of jellyfish. Translucent saucer-shaped jellies and small blue petal-shaped jellies and crazy-looking see-through jellies full of what looked like fried eggs. They were everywhere. I let the kayak drift, balancing the paddle across the cockpit, floating through the swarm. The bloom—I recalled the word, I’d read about this sort of thing, this was a jellyfish bloom. It was a seawater garden and in the silver moonlight it stunned me with its beauty.

Stunned like I’d been stung.

I thought of the huge purple-striped jelly I’d seen in the open ocean, of the red welt on the diver’s face.

Did these jellies, here in the channel, carry a sting in their trailing tentacles?

A line from the Ancient Mariner popped into my brain. Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs, upon the slimy sea. Thank you very much, Walter, for sharing.

This jellyfish bloom was slowing me down.

I was losing Lanny, somewhere up ahead.

If I’d been wrong and all he carried in his pack was a snack and binoculars for star-gazing, then I’d leave him to it. If I was right, though, he carried something that I wanted. Something that had clearly frightened him, and yet it was something worth stealing, worth hiding, worth covering up. Was he frightened of the diver, as well? Frightened, understandably, of what happened to the diver in the ocean, and then later in the Keasling cave. Terrified, I would think, of whoever fed the diver bad anchovies.

Unless, I had to consider, it was Lanny himself who had poisoned the diver. I didn’t really think so. If I thought that, I’d turn my kayak and hightail it back to Jake’s dock.

I started to paddle, cutting my blades into the spaces between the jellyfish. Perhaps it was my imagination but they seemed to get with the program, to give me some room.

And finally, I paddled the Necky out of the bloom.

By the time I reached the end of the narrow channel, the water was innocent of jellyfish. I left behind the bloom and the docks and the buildings and entered the gentle wilds of the widening bay.

Way in the distance I thought I saw something riding the water. Something just at the limits of my vision.

Lanny, I figured, in his kayak.

I struck out in that direction.

The bay widened — the far left shore growing bristly with eel grass and the far right shore rounded with rising sand dunes. I paddled harder, suddenly eager to reach Lanny and sweet-talk him or bully him into telling me what the hell was going on.

There came a snort behind me and water splashed my back and I let out a cry that echoed across the water. My heart slammed. Jumbo squid out hunting? Did they hunt here in the bay? And if not squid, what? I pivoted in my seat to look the monster in the eye. It was a black shiny eye in a long torpedo body but it was not a squid. Just a sea lion.

I expelled a breath. Go play somewhere else.

I'd had my fill of sea creatures. Like I was late for dinner I plunged the paddle in the water and took off — no style, no rhythm, just me galumphing across the bay.

The sea lion watched me go.

Lanny in the distance watched me come. The bow of his kayak was turned to face me. He was still as the water, his paddle horizontal across his knees.

He must have heard me cry out. Now, he watched me coming.

I waved.

The kayaker dipped his paddle and turned, moving deeper into the bay, and within a few minutes disappeared around a jutting spit of land.

I found my rhythm and settled into it. I heard a splash, sounding a good distance behind me. I glanced back, saw nothing, smiled. Not going to get spooked, this time. Something unknown in the water and your mind takes off — but there’s always an explanation.

I refocused on the invisible kayaker ahead.

Wherever he was going, it was getting lonely out here. To my right the sand dunes grew and to my left, across the widening bay, the only structure along the shoreline was a long building with a lot of glass that shined in the moonlight. And then the leftward shoreline receded into darkness.

I kept to the dunes side of the bay, following that bone-white shoreline.

Within another five minutes I too rounded the jutting spit of land.

And then I saw the figure on the dunes.

Rising like elephant backs, the dunes up ahead on the right shoreline were white in the moonlight. The figure stood atop the largest of the elephants, a stick-figure silhouette at this distance, but the silhouette wore a pack. On the shore at the foot of the dune, at waterline, was a shape that strongly resembled a beached kayak.

All right, then.

I angled my kayak toward the dunes.

Lanny fled over the top of the elephant.

As I neared the shore I saw that the beached kayak was a Necky single, like mine, only green. It was stenciled with Captain Kayak’s logo. My craft arrowed onto the wide muddy beach, a couple yards from its green twin. I understood the need for a kayak here. Only a craft with a shallow draft could reach this beach. I assumed Lanny had come by kayak for just that reason. That, and stealthy quiet.

I secured my paddle, took off my shoes and socks, rolled up the legs of my jeans, swung my legs free, and stepped into the muck to drag my kayak up high on the beach. The last thing I wanted was for it to drift free.

Now what?

Well lady, you either sit here and wait for Lanny to return, or you climb up that elephant and see what’s on the other side.

I climbed, and the sand was soft and cool and slippery under my feet. As the dune steepened I felt the climbing-burn in my thighs. I was glad to reach the summit.

Over the summit was a shallow descent onto gentle dune waves. In my night-limited vision I could make out the shine of the sea, in the distance, and the spikes of bushy dune vegetation, closer by. Nothing moving. Just me.

“Lanny?” I said.

No response.

I sank to the sand. “Lanny?” I said again. “If you can hear me will you please show yourself? I followed you, I know you’re here, I know why you’re here. You came to bury the diver’s float.” Perhaps he was hiding in those bushes over there. I spoke louder, “I need your help. You helped me once, on the Sea Spray.” I thought I heard him, rustling the bushes. Or perhaps it was the sighing of the sea in the distance. “What’s going on in the ocean, Lanny? You said you broke something. Was it something to do with the float?” I listened for an answer. Silence. “Maybe we can fix it.” Whatever the hell it is. “What would Jock Cousteau do, Lanny?” Or should I have said it with a zzh, Jacques, instead of the hard J? Lanny’s slow but he’s not a moron, he must know the correct pronunciation. He’s just eased it to Jock. So does he think I’m mocking him? Does he even hear me? “Lanny, if something is broken in the ocean, you need to help.”

There came a sound, a soft soughing noise of feet on shifting sand, only it did not come from the bushes in front of me, it came from behind, near the summit of the dune.

I sucked in a breath. Heaved onto my hands and knees. Pushed to stand. Croaked, “Who’s there?”

An eon passed in which nobody responded, and then the soughing started up again and a man topped the summit and came down the little hillock to join me. Black polo shirt, camo cargo pants, barefoot, carrying a pair of white boat shoes in one hand. “Hi there,” Fred Stavis said. Just a touch out of breath. “Didn’t mean to startle you. Remember me? This morning, out at Morro Rock? And here we meet again. You here for the same reason I’m here?”

There was no answer to that. Questions, yes, but no workable answer.

“Relax, I’m a good guy.” Stavis smiled to prove it. “And I’m not following you. I’m following Lanny. He up here?”

I managed to shrug.

“Good golly, did that sound menacing? Let me explain. I was working late at my dive shop — it’s on the waterfront, just where the channel widens into the bay. And I happened to glance at the water and who do I see out there kayaking? Lanny. Gave me pause, got to admit. You know, considering what happened to Robbie Donie and that diver, I just got concerned about Lanny out there at night by himself. I really did.” He gave a sharp nod, reaffirming his worry. “And then I saw another kayaker following him — you, it turns out, although I didn’t know it at the time. I thought, might as well go out there too, just to be on the safe side. I would have taken my outboard but it’s real low on gas, so I just hopped in my kayak and came along. Didn’t even take time to change clothes.” He lifted his boat shoes. He looked at my rolled jeans. “Looks like you came unprepared, too.”

I nodded. Looks like Fred Stavis has a real convenient reason not to have done the obvious, take his outboard. If I were Stavis and wanted to stealthily follow somebody on a quiet night across still water, I’d take a kayak, too.

“Anyway,” he said, “I found the two kayaks beached and thought I’d better climb up here and check things out. Managed to work myself into a bit of a worry. If I’d had my cell phone, I would've called Doug Tolliver and told him to get his patrol boat out here. I was that worried.”

I found my voice. “But you didn’t have your phone.”

“Forgot it in the rush.”

I thought I heard a rustling in the bushes. It took all my will not to turn and look.

Stavis’s head turtled around. He heard the sound, too. “Lanny. Stop hiding. You got two people up here looking for you and neither one of us bears you any ill will. While I was climbing up the dune I couldn’t help overhearing Miss Oldfield saying she thinks you have some float she wants, thinks you came here to bury it, so maybe you can come out here and put her mind at ease. As for me, you know you can count on me. You got a problem? Let’s put our heads together and solve it.”

There was no response.

“Lanny. Miss Oldfield here is shivering. Be a gentleman and come out so we can all go home and warm up.”

Stavis was right. I’d begun to shiver, although the night was still warm. I suddenly wanted to signal to Lanny to stay in the bushes, stay away from smiling Fred Stavis.

But Lanny was indeed a gentleman and came out of hiding.

“Good man,” Stavis said.

Lanny stopped in front of us, staring down at the sand. He wore, I took note, the T-shirt and board shorts he’d worn this afternoon for castle-building — and a good choice, as well, for kayaking. I’d wager that Lanny had left the Keasling hacienda with kayaking in mind. Needed to wait until dark, though. Did whatever he did until then. I considered his pack, and the trowel that snugged into the side mesh pocket. I considered the miles of dunes and the impossibility of my finding the hole he’d dug in the sand to bury the float. I wondered if he intended to retrieve it, at some point. The day he took it he could have thrown it into the garbage, and yet he did not. He kept it hidden somewhere — in his room, at home? And then, this afternoon, after Walter and I came to ask him what he’d taken from the diver’s bag — after we’d showed him the photo of the yellow float from Donie’s shrine — he panicked. And he came here to hide the red float.

Stavis held out a hand to Lanny. “Shall we go?”

Lanny looked up. “I’m not ready.”

“I think it’s best if we all go together.”

I reached in my pocket and brought out my cell. I said, to Stavis, “Or maybe I should call Doug?”

Stavis held up his palms. “Nobody needs to call anybody.”

“Except Jock.” Lanny now looked at me. His face was serious. “You should call Jock. Tell him there’s sick animals in the ocean. Tell him he should come. Tell him we need him.”

Stavis gave a strangled laugh.

I said, gently, “I can’t call Jock. He’s dead.”

“I know that.” Lanny’s face bloomed into a wide smile. “But I got you. Both of you. You should see your faces. You thought I believe in ghosts. You can’t call ghosts on the phone, Cassie.” He turned to Stavis. “You can’t ask ghosts to fix things. You have to do it yourself.”