Skinny Dip - Страница 11

"So where do we stand?" Joey asked him. "What're you going to do with me now?"

He was pondering a reply when he noticed a blaze-orange helicopter approaching low from the ocean. Strom spotted it, too, and began barking insanely, leaping in circles.

Joey's hat fell off when she tilted her head to see the aircraft, which flew directly over them and slowed to a hover. Stranahan could make out the Coast Guard spotter, positioned at an open door. The man was wearing a white helmet and aiming binoculars, and almost certainly he was searching for Mrs. Charles Perrone, believed lost at sea.

To end it, Stranahan had only to stand up, wave both arms and point toward the woman in the yellow sundress-the one who had hastily ducked back under her floppy hat and was now eyeing him anxiously.

How easy it would be, he thought, and how tempting, too, because honestly he was too old for this shit.

Yet he didn't wave or point or signal to the chopper in any of the usual ways. Instead he reached for Joey's left hand and brought it to his lips, lightly but long enough for the Coast Guard spotter to see him do it.

So that the searcher would conclude, as any observer might, that the woman in the sundress wasn't a castaway but obviously the wife or girlfriend of the lucky middle-aged guy at the picnic table.

And, sure enough, the helicopter buzzed away. They watched until it was a bright dot in the soft blue distance. Satisfied that he'd done his job, Strom stopped barking and curled up. A flock of perturbed gulls materialized overhead.

"Thank you," Joey Perrone said to Stranahan. "Does this mean I can stay?"

"I must be nuts," he said.

Six

The call from the Coast Guard came at noon sharp.

"I can't believe you're giving up!" Chaz said. His bags had been packed for an hour. "My wife's out there in the water somewhere- what if she's still alive?"

"The odds are very slim. I'm sorry, Mr. Perrone."

Chaz checked out of the Marriott and drove home feeling relieved and emboldened. He had committed a flawless crime. Thirty-seven hours had passed since he'd heaved Joey overboard, and not so much as a single hair had been found. The ocean had done its job.

Entering the house, Chaz experienced a wave of-what was it?- not remorse, but more of a carnal longing. The place smelled lightly of Joey's favorite perfume, a scent that never failed to arouse him. It was much more subtle than the fruity slop that Ricca wore, Chaz thought. Maybe I can talk her into switching brands.

He listened to a score of choked-up phone messages from friends of Joey who'd read about her disappearance in the paper. Chaz pondered his good fortune to have wed a woman with practically no family, extended or otherwise, to make a fuss. Chaz had never even met his wife's only brother, and he wondered if the news of Joey's death would dislodge the reclusive Corbett Wheeler from his beloved New Zealand.

At first the sight of Joey's clothes in the closet unsettled Chaz. He felt better after sweeping the hangers clean, and better still after expunging the bathroom of all her soaps, creams, scrubs, moisturizers, exfoliants, lotions and conditioners. Methodically he went around gathering his wife's belongings and piling them on their king-sized bed. He took everything except one intriguing lace bra and a pair of panties, which looked as if they might fit Ricca if she dropped a few pounds. Also exempt from removal was Joey's jewelry, worth at least ten or twelve grand.

Chaz had no containers large enough to hold all his wife's stuff, so he drove to the delivery bay of a nearby BrandsMart and scored some jumbo cardboard boxes. Upon returning, he saw a gray Ford sedan in his driveway, and Karl Rolvaag waiting on the front step.

To avoid the appearance of embracing widowhood, another murderous spouse might have left the boxes in his car, out of the jaded detective's sight. Chaz, however, was resolved not to let himself be intimidated or thrown off course.

"Whatcha got there?" Rolvaag asked. "Is that one of those new Humvees?"

Wordlessly, Chaz unlocked the front door and backed inside with the boxes. He went directly to the bedroom, the sallow cop following at a courteous distance.

"I can't stand to see all her things here. It's just too damn painful," Chaz said. He began tossing Joey's dresses and blouses into a box that had once held a forty-inch Sanyo. "Everywhere I turn, there she is," he went on somberly. "I can't even bring myself to unpack her suitcase from the cruise."

Rolvaag looked on thoughtfully. "Everyone reacts different to a shock like this. Some people, they won't touch anything in the house. They leave every single item exactly as it was before, and I mean everything-linens, dirty laundry. You'd be amazed. Won't even throw out their loved one's toothbrush-they keep it standing in a cup by the sink. Sometimes for years this goes on."

Chaz continued to fill the box. "Not me. All these things to remind me, I'd be too depressed to get out of bed."

"What're you going to do with all of it?"

"I haven't decided. Give it to charity maybe."

The detective reached in and picked up a tortoiseshell hairbrush. "May I take this?"

"Be my guest," Chaz said automatically. Then, after a moment's thought: "Can I ask what for?"

"Just in case."

"Yeah?"

"In case something turns up later," Rolvaag said, "a body part or whatever. I don't mean to be graphic, Mr. Perrone, but it occasionally happens."

"Oh, I see. You want a sample of Joey's DNA."

"That's right. The hair on this brush should be enough to establish a match, if necessary," the detective said. "Do you mind?"

"Course not." Without missing a beat, Chaz snatched a couple of purses off the bed and dropped them into the box.

Rolvaag slipped Joey's brush into an inside pocket of his suit jacket. He said, "There've been incidents here in Florida where a fisherman hauls in some huge shark and it's flopping around the deck of the boat and all of a sudden it regurgitates part of a human body. And this can be, like, weeks after the person has gone missing. Meantime, the shark might've swum two or three hundred miles-"

Chaz interrupted with a queasy grimace: "I get the picture."

"Sorry, Mr. Perrone. You probably studied cases like that at Rosenstiel."

Chaz's gaze flickered briefly from the box to the detective's face. "Yes, we did." He heard an edginess in his own voice. Rolvaag had been checking up on him.

"Take whatever you need," Chaz offered, motioning toward the pile of Joey's things. "I'm willing to do anything if there's a chance to bring closure."

The detective gave a smile that Chaz chose to read as sympathetic. "Closure would be good," Rolvaag said. "Painful sometimes, but still a step forward. I'm sorry to have intruded on your privacy."

Chaz walked him to the door and said, "The Coast Guard called. They quit searching at noon."

"Yes, I know."

With simulated chagrin, Chaz added, "Three thousand square miles and they couldn't find a damn thing."

"Oh, they found something," Rolvaag said, freezing Chaz with one hand on the knob. "Four bales of marijuana. That's it."

Chaz waited for the rush of nausea to subside. "Whoop-de-doo," he said. "I'm sure they're scared shitless down in Colombia."

"Actually, the stuff was Jamaican. But you're right, they'll never figure out who dumped it, or even where. The Gulf Stream probably dragged it all the way up the islands."

Chaz snorted. "From Bermuda, maybe. Not Jamaica."

"What do you mean?"

"The Gulf Stream? It flows from north to south."

Rolvaag's blond eyebrows crinkled. "Not the last time I was out there," he said. "I'm pretty certain it goes the other way, Mr. Perrone. To the north."

Chaz lapsed into an unplanned coughing jag. What if the lame-ass detective isn't wrong? he wondered despondently. That meant the ocean currents had carried Joey's body from the remote perimeter of the search-and-rescue zone into the bull's-eye.

"Heck, you might be right." Chaz cleared his throat. "My brain's so scrambled today, I couldn't tell the sun from the moon."

"I understand completely. You get some rest," Rolvaag said, and headed out to his car.

Chaz shut the door and leaned wearily against it. Of the millions of people who weren't sure which direction the Gulf Stream ran, he was probably the only one to hold an advanced degree in a marine science. He had a fleeting urge to phone one of his former professors and settle the question, but that would have invited scorn that Chaz was in no mood to suffer. It was one of the rare times that he regretted having been such a slacker in school.

Quickly he returned to the chore of removing his late wife's belongings, consoling himself with the knowledge that sharks off the coast of Miami Beach were as indiscriminate in their feeding habits as the ones in the Keys. Joey undoubtedly had been gobbled by one, the strongest evidence being the absence of a corpse.

When Ricca phoned, though, Chaz couldn't restrain himself from asking, "Honey, which way does the Gulf Stream go?"

"Is this a quiz? What are my choices?"

"North or south," Chaz said.

"I got no idea, baby."

"Shit."

"Well, don't get mad at me" Ricca said. "Aren't you the one s'posed to be the big-shot scientist?"

Which is exactly what Karl Rolvaag was thinking about Charles Perrone on the way to the Coast Guard station.

Corbett Wheeler had moved to New Zealand at the age of twenty-two, believing that if he stayed in America he'd spend the rest of his youth battling to hide his inheritance from his gummy-fingered aunt.