The Deep Blue Alibi

Twenty-nine

An hour later, Sheriff Rask carted off the dead snake in an Igloo cooler, promising to FedEx it to Irene's leather craftsman as soon as it was measured, photographed, and analyzed for evidentiary purposes. By nine a.m., Victoria and Steve were driving north toward Paradise Key.

Steve felt a stew of conflicting emotions. Relief that Victoria was okay. Guilt that he hadn't been there to protect her. Guilt over something else, too. His deception.

He hadn't told her about rooting around in his father's trash. He knew she would disapprove; the phrase "invasion of privacy" came instantly to mind. So, not a word about uncovering his father's mysterious phone calls to Reginald Jones, Chief Clerk of the Circuit Court. That was something he would have to investigate by himself.

Jones to Luber to Solomon.

Sounded like a double-play combination, with his old man the first baseman. But what the hell really went on two decades ago in all those capital cases? Back then, the courthouse was a beehive of little fiefdoms, with sleazy lawyers, greedy bail bondsmen, and corrupt cops buzzing in the corridors. Presiding over the messy business, perched on a higher plane in each courtroom, were the robed lords of the manor, some decent, some incompetent, and some nakedly opportunistic.

"A den of treachery and mendacity that ah'll clean up," Herbert Solomon announced when his fellow jurists named him Chief Judge of the Circuit.

But what had happened? What did Herbert do then that made him fear Luber now? Reginald Jones was the link between the two men, literally sitting between them in the courtroom. But what did Jones-a baby deputy clerk at the time-have to do with it?

Today, Steve had intended to find out. He had planned to rent a car, drive to Miami, and drop by Jones' office. Pound the table and get some answers. Or not. But after the episode in the hotel room, Steve was not about to leave Victoria alone. And she insisted on interviewing Clive Fowles. Jones would have to wait.

Steve figured that Fowles was a man with conflicts of his own. Torn between his love for Delia Bustamante and a coral reef on one hand and his duty to Hal Griffin on the other. Just who won that tug-of-war, Steve couldn't be sure.

Victoria turned off her cell phone as they approached the causeway to Paradise Key in her metallic silver Mini Cooper. Reporters had been calling since dawn with questions about the snake attack. The car radio was tuned to a talk show hosted by Billy Wahoo, the self-proclaimed "prime minister of the Conch Republic."

"These two Mia-muh lawyers seem mighty accident prone. First Solomon drives off a bridge, then Lord nearly gets bitten by a snake. Those two are the mouthpieces for that carpetbagger Hal Griffin, and trouble follows him like skeeters on a sweathog. You ask me, Solomon and Lord are gonna be up the creek when they get to court."

"This bastard's polluting the jury pool," Steve complained.

"Don't worry. I'll weed out the bad ones on voir dire."

Steve looked over and laughed.

"What?" she asked, without taking her eyes off the road.

"That was terrific. Your confidence. If there's a problem with the venire, you'll fix it. I love that."

"I learned that from you. Don't you know that?"

"Sure I do. I just like to hear you say it."

At mid-morning on this breezy, sunny day, Fowles droned on about his courageous grandfather and Steve pretended he gave a damn. It was a classic lawyer's trick. You don't just come out and ask: "Did you see my client holding a smoking gun over the victim's body?" You buttered up the witness like a toasted bagel until he was convinced the guy with the gun didn't look anything like your client, and even if he did, he was acting in self-defense, and even if he wasn't, the victim was a son-of-a-bitch who deserved to be killed.

You accomplished this by putting on your sincere listener's face and trying not to doze off while the witness rambled from one inane subject to another. His prize-winning butterfly collection. Her mouthwatering s'mores recipe. Or in this case, the heroic exploits of Horace Fowles, Royal Navy submariner in World War II.

Victoria was terrific at the game. Probably because she actually cared about people and didn't have to feign interest in their banal lives. In the car, she had announced she'd take the lead in questioning Fowles, Steve still seeming a bit woozy and all. Her roundabout way of saying she was better at getting people to talk. Steve didn't disagree. They needed to learn just why Fowles, Griffin's trusted boat captain, was conveniently absent when the boss took Stubbs on the fatal cruise. How solid was the Englishman's alibi? Was he really delving into Delia's oysters-garlic and otherwise-when a spear impaled Ben Stubbs?

They had found Fowles in the boathouse on the far side of the island. An open-sided garagelike building that straddled a narrow inlet, the boathouse caught the easterly breeze and was filled with light. In stained coveralls, Fowles wore an eye shield and heavy gloves and aimed a welding torch at what looked like an old rusted torpedo with two seats built into it. The contraption was suspended from an overhead rack by a pair of heavy chains. Sparks flew as Fowles seared the tail assembly with a blue flame.

Catching sight of the visitors, he had turned down the gas and flipped up his eye shield. "Bet you don't know what this is."

Even had he known, Steve would have kept quiet.

Always let the witness have his fun.

"My grandfather's chariot," Fowles said proudly. "Without the warhead."

Chariot? Warhead?

"Wish I had his midget sub," Fowles continued. "But that's at the bottom of a fjord in Norway."

"Has to be a story in that," Victoria said.

And hurry the hell up and tell it, Steve thought.

Fowles offered them each a Guinness Stout from a cooler. Steve accepted; Victoria frowned and declined. Fowles' blond hair was mussed. His sunburned face brighter than usual, probably from the heat of the welding torch. Leaning on a sawhorse, Fowles began telling tales of his grandfather.

Horace Fowles had helped design the Royal Navy chariot, basically a torpedo with a six-hundred-pound warhead on the bow. Two men sat atop the chariot on seats sunk into its hull. Horace was an early charioteer, perhaps the most dangerous job in World War II, other than kamikaze pilot. Wearing a bulky dive suit, Horace would pilot the craft underwater, aim it at a German warship, then hop off, hoping to be picked up by a friendly ship or submarine. Later, he graduated from the chariot to four-man midget submarines called X-craft. He named his Fowles' Folly.

"Bloody floating coffin is what the midget sub was," Fowles told Victoria and Steve. "Or sinking coffin may be more like it. Glands leaking, batteries dying, pumps useless. Grandpop would patch her up with chewing gum and twine. Makes my service in the Falklands seem paler than piss. Not like fighting Nazis in the North Sea."

Fowles finished his story. Horace led the raiding party that went after the biggest prize of the war, the Tirpitz, a Bismarck class battleship. To get into the Norwegian fjord where the German ship was anchored, Horace swam out of the Folly in freezing water and cut through submarine nets with a knife. Sailors on the Tirpitz spotted the X-craft but thought it was a porpoise.

"That's how small she looked when you're on the deck of a fifty-thousand-ton battleship," Fowles explained. "Grandpop gets through and brings up the Folly amidship. Picture it, now: three British lads, looking up at this behemoth, twenty-six hundred German sailors aboard. Enough armaments to blow up all of London. But the big bastard can't fire her guns straight down, so the Krauts are using rifles and pistols and there's my Grandpop in the water, attaching charges to the hull. He gets back in and as they're pulling away, ka-boom, the Tirpitz lifts five feet out of the water. Hauling ass out of the fjord, the Folly gets tangled in the net, and a German cruiser sinks them."

Clive Fowles took a pull on his stout, doubtless picturing the midget sub going to her watery grave. "They gave my Grandpop the Victoria Cross. Posthumously, of course."

He reached inside the top of his coveralls and pulled out a medal dangling from a chain. A cross with a crown and lion and the inscription "For Valour."

"Churchill himself presented the medal to my grandmother." Fowles raised a hand above his head and spread two fingers in the fashion of the wartime prime minister. " 'V for Victory.' That's what Winnie told my grandmom."

"You must be so proud," Victoria said.

"Doubt if anyone in the war showed more guts than my grandpop." Fowles lowered his voice into a deep Churchillian baritone. " 'I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.' " He smiled sadly and continued: "That was Horace Fowles. Which makes me a lucky bloke. The man I look up to most is my own flesh and blood."

It was more than that, Steve thought. Clive Fowles seemed to be measuring himself against his grandfather. Desperate to be a hero. But how could a man compete with those memories? In the warm turquoise waters of the Gulf, just what could a man do to earn his own medals?

Ten minutes later, they sat on the edge of the concrete seawall, soaking up the morning sun. Victoria wore an orange Lycra bandini top with floral pants that tied in front and stopped at mid-calf. Her long, tanned legs dangled over the water. Steve wore denim cutoffs and a T-shirt that read: "Could You Come Back in a Few Beers?"

Fowles turned up the bottoms of his coveralls and now resembled a sunburned Huck Finn. He had carried his cooler from the workshop, and Steve accepted a second cold stout, even though it wasn't yet noon. Half a mile offshore, a sailboat headed downwind, its bright orange spinnaker puffed off the bow like an umbrella in a storm.

"Did you know Griffin was taking Stubbs to Key West?" Steve asked.

" 'Course I knew," Fowles said. "I cleaned the boat and fueled it for Mr. G."

"You had drinks at the dock," Victoria elbowed in. "Then you went ashore. Why weren't you driving the boat?"

"When Mr. G has company, he likes to handle the Majeure himself. Show off a bit."

"Even though he was stopping to pull up lobster pots?" Victoria asked.

"Especially then. He gets to play Great White Fisherman. Anchor the boat, get out the gaff, pull in his supper. It's a macho thing."

"You get the feeling Griffin didn't want you along?" Steve asked.

"Not really, mate. Mr. G just gave me the rest of the day off. I'd busted my hump the day before. Hauled ass out to Black Turtle Key to bait the lobster traps, plus all my other work back here."

Victoria and Steve exchanged glances. There was a question someone had to ask without giving up too much. The pots had been baited with more than chum. But did Fowles know that? Victoria chose her words carefully. "I thought Hal Griffin baited the traps himself."

"He tell you that?" Fowles laughed. "Yeah, I can hear him saying it. 'I baited the traps.' Same way he'd say: 'I flew the Grumman to Nassau.' Or 'I reconditioned the diesels.' I suppose it's true because Mr. G pays for it, but good old Clive Fowles does the flying and the reconditioning."

"And that baiting," Steve said. "What'd you use? Redfish? Crab?"

Another laugh. "Don't sod about, Solomon. Just ask it. Yeah, some crab and a big bag of currency."

Sloppy, Victoria thought. Uncle Grif involving Fowles like that. Now the boat captain would be a prime prosecution witness. Fowles could help the state establish the bribes, or at least one of them.

"Griffin tell you what the money was for?" Steve asked.

"Nope."

"And you didn't ask?"

"I don't get paid to ask questions."

"But you wondered," Steve said. "Wondering's free."

"I figured Ben Stubbs was gonna be richer stepping off the boat than stepping on."

"Make you angry, knowing your boss was paying the guy off?"

"Just reinforced my beliefs about the way of the world, Solomon. Money talks. Bullshit walks." Bull-shite.

Fowles tossed an empty beer can back in the cooler. He scooped up one of the plastic bands that ties a sixpack together. It was lying on the seawall and would blow into the water in a light breeze. The plastic bands strangle fish that get caught in them.

No way Fowles would ever toss junk into the water, Victoria decided. Or tolerate those who did. His heart would be with Delia in the battle to save the coral reef, but his pocketbook would be with Uncle Grif. So just where did he stand?

"Any idea who would want to frame your boss for murder?" she asked.

"I figure someone who wanted to stop Oceania."

Victoria dropped a line into the water. "Someone like Delia?"

"Strike me pink! You're still on that? Delia's a lover, not a killer. Just ask your partner."

Steve smiled, agreeably. Annoyingly.

"Ever tell Mr. Griffin how you felt about Oceania?" Victoria asked Fowles, ignoring Steve.

"I told him how development killed the big reefs off Honolulu and Singapore and Hong Kong. I told him how pile driving so close to the reef would dislodge sediment that would clog up the coral. How the gas pipeline and the conduits for water and electrical would mess up the ocean floor. But he had a study to rebut every one of my arguments. Like I told Delia from the start, it's Mr. G's decision, not the guy who drives his boats and flies his planes. In the end, my opinion didn't count any more than Junior's."

"What's that mean?" Steve jumped in. "What was Junior's opinion?"

"All I'm saying is that father and son don't always see eye to eye."

"Mr. Griffin told you to be open with us," Victoria reminded Fowles. "But you're holding back."

When the Englishman didn't respond, Steve said, "Just what's Junior got to do with this?"

Fowles rolled his pants legs back down. "Nothing much, except when the financing fell through, Mr. G and Junior had a row. A real argy-bargy."

"When the financing fell through. ."

What did that mean? Griffin had a huge construction loan in place. He had his financing. So what the hell did Fowles mean? Steve shot Victoria a look that warned: "Don't let on we're clueless."

As if she would give that up. She tried to remember something Junior told them. Jesus, what was it? Had her knees been so wobbly from seeing him that she'd forgotten? The word "hoops" came back to her. Junior complained about "all the hoops" the insurance companies made them jump through to get their financing. He'd been evasive about just who issued the binder, some double-talk about a foreign consortium. Then Steve made up the name of a Pacific Rim company that Junior seemed to agree was the one.

Victoria cautiously baited another line, cast it. "Did the financing run into trouble because of the insurance problem?"

"It did indeed."

"But Griffin landed insurance somewhere," Steve added, "or he couldn't have gotten a construction loan."

Fowles barked out a laugh. "You don't know shit, do you, mate?" Shite.

"Tell us," Steve said.

"Oceania couldn't get insurance. The computer models showed the hotel would capsize in a Category Five hurricane. Mr. G argued that the chances of a Category Five hitting one tiny spot in the Gulf were infinitesimal, but it didn't matter. No one would insure the place."

"So how'd he get a construction loan?"

"By putting up everything he owned as collateral. Every last piece of real estate. Every stock and bond, all his spare cash, too. That's what the row was about. Junior was ranting and raving that his father's ego had run amuck. That he was building a monument to himself that was sheer folly and he'd lose everything."

Victoria remembered something Uncle Grif had said the day The Queen showed up. "Lately, Junior's taken an interest in the business. Been riding me hard, telling me I spend too much money, take too many risks."

"So Junior was scared shitless he'd lose his inheritance," Steve emphasized, as if Victoria didn't get the point. As if she didn't know he was already pushing Junior to the head of the Reasonable Alternative Scenario class of suspects most likely to create reasonable doubt.

"And Mr. G was yelling right back," Fowles continued, "giving Junior a real bollocking, calling him a prima donna and a playboy."

"A playboy," Steve repeated, just in case Victoria had missed it.

"Mr. G said it was his money and he'd do whatever the hell he wants with it. So if you ask me, Junior Griffin had a helluva lot more reason to deep-six Oceania than Delia or me. Millions more, you might say."

Steve's smile was so smug, Victoria longed to slap it right off his face.