A Quarter for a Kiss (26 page)

“No reason not to,” he replied, holding out a hand to help me on board. “I owe Eli a lot more than just money.”

This time there was no flybridge on the boat. Instead, the part where Tom sat to drive was near the back, and the part with the cabin below and seating above was in the front. The interior of the cabin wasn’t as big nor as elaborate as the last one, but it would do. I brought our stuff down to the little kitchen area and spread everything out on the table. Tom readied the boat, started it up, and drove us out of the harbor.

While he guided us out on the water, I pulled out my cell phone to call my dad. He and I hadn’t touched base since our conversation when I was in Florida, and I knew he would want to hear from me. Mainly, though, I wanted to know what the police had told him about their investigation.

“Callie, is that you?” my mom asked. “What’s all that noise?”

“I’m down in the Virgin Islands,” I replied loudly. “I’m not sure how good this connection is going to be.”

“The Virgin Islands?” she cried. “My goodness, but you do get around a lot. Where are you staying?”

“Stella has a house down here, on St. John. I’m here with her daughter.”
And Tom
, I couldn’t bring myself to add.

“Oh, honey,” my mom said, her familiar, soothing tones welcome in my ear, “I heard about Eli. I know you must be upset.”

“Yeah, it’s terrible,” I said. “But we’re…I’m on the case. Maybe something will break soon.”

“Your father’s been on the phone a lot. He said the police in Florida haven’t gotten very far.”

“Well, it’s all kind of complicated. Is he around?”

She said he had just run down to the store but that he would be right back.

“Do you want him to call you when he comes home?” she asked.

“No, I’ll try later,” I said.

We started to say goodbye, but suddenly I felt compelled to tell my mother about Tom. She didn’t know he and I were dating. It would be a shame to show up engaged and give her a heart attack.

“Hey, Mom?” I said. “You know my boss, Tom?”

“Yes?”

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.

“Our relationship has changed. We’re…dating now.”

“Really?”

“Yes. To be honest I think I’m in love with him.”

She chuckled.

“Oh, I know that, honey. I figured it out months ago.”

“How?” I asked loudly, my eyes flying open.

“You’re not the only detective around here,” she said. “I’d put a mother’s intuition against one of your techniques any old day.”

I grinned, playing with a loose thread on the seat cushion.

“How do you feel about it?” I asked. “Do you think it’s too soon?”

“Too soon?” she said. “Heavens no, Callie. You’re not getting any younger, you know.”

“Gee.”

“You know what I mean. Time passes. Life goes on. Bryan would’ve wanted more than anything for you to be happy. For you to love again.”

I nodded, tears filling my eyes.

“Thanks, Mom,” I said. “I really needed to hear that.”

When I found Tom back out on deck, I slipped my hands around his waist and rested my chin on his shoulder. He was the perfect height for me, tall enough that I fit against him just like a glove. With one hand on the wheel, he reached up the other one and put it on top of mine. We rode along like that for a while, until he needed both hands to steer through a larger boat’s wake.

“What’s up?” he asked loudly as I moved to the chair across from him.

“Nothing,” I said. “I’m just thinking about how we’re going to do this. Are you sure you can scuba dive?”

“I’m not certified, but I know how. I did a dive trip with some buddies one time.”

We slowed a bit as we reached Turtle Point, and when we got around to the other side, we saw that several boats had put down anchor just past Turtle Bay.

“Oh, no,” Tom said. “Looks like we’ve got company.”

“It’s okay,” I told him, recalculating a little bit. “Actually, that’s good. That’s very good.”

We went just past the farthest boat and then swung around closer to shore than the rest. We were out of sight of Dianne’s house but close enough to get to her beach. And if for some reason she happened to grow suspicious, we now had all of these other boats to act unwittingly as decoys. I told Tom to put down the anchor, but then we realized that there were mooring buoys here instead.

As Tom eased us toward the floating white ball, I went to the bow with a boat hook and caught the line on the first try. Tom turned off the motor and then came forward to help me tie it off.

We practiced the dive while it was still light. First we swam from the boat to as close to the beach as we dared. Luckily for us, there were no coral reefs in the way, nor any hidden rocks. We saw a few stingrays in the shallows, but they didn’t hurt us. Satisfied that our plan could work, we returned to the boat. Where we were moored, the water was only about eight feet deep with a sandy bottom, perfect for teaching Tom how to do a “bail out”: At my count, he would close his eyes, jump into the water, swim to the bottom, locate the sunken dive equipment, strap on the weight belt, clear the respirator, put it in his mouth, strap on the tank, put on the mask, clear the mask, and come back up. He seemed to have the hang of it by about the third try.

“That’s one of the things they teach you in scuba class,” I said. “Funny, but it should really come in handy tonight.”

Once I thought he was comfortable with the equipment, we stowed it on the diving platform and went into the cabin. We spread the satellite photos on the table and walked through the plan together. There was one hole in the security there, and we had every intention of exploiting it.

It was really quite simple: Tom was going to scale the rock face of the northeast end of Turtle Point—the only place on the entire property that apparently had no camera surveillance and no motion sensors. I’m sure it never dawned on the security company who wired the house that an experienced rock climber could scale the sheer cliff and reach the top from there, emerging a mere 20 feet or so away from the main house. I only wished I were a good enough climber so that Tom wouldn’t have to be the one to do it.

The night was clear, the moon nearly full, the sea calm. The way I saw it, our risks in the water were minimal, even in the dark. The danger started on land, once we were up against three watchdogs, a security guard, alarm systems, motion sensors, and cameras.

We grew tired of going over the plans and finally put our diagrams away, confident that we both knew every aspect of what we were about to do backward and forward. I had hoped to make our move around 10
P.M
., but at that point there were still too many people up and about on the boats that floated nearby. Instead, we had to kill more time. There was a pack of playing cards in the glove compartment, so we sat at the kitchen table and tried several hands of Gin Rummy, then Two-Man Spades, then Twenty-One. The problem was that Tom could not be beaten.

I thought about our time in the North Carolina mountains, when he had been so good at Scrabble that I finally stopped playing it with him at all. I wasn’t a sore loser, but it simply wasn’t any fun knowing I
couldn’t
win. Now that I knew he was a cryptographer, however, it made sense. I realized that he probably counted cards and recognized patterns—and that whenever he looked at a pile of letters in Scrabble, he could see every possibility that existed! No wonder I couldn’t win.

Outside, it was cool and not very windy, and it sounded as though our floating neighbors were still out and about. They weren’t noisy, really, but they were talking and occasionally laughing. I could detect about four or five different voices, though their words were indistinguishable.

I went back down into the cabin and came out a few minutes later with one of Eli’s spy tools: the telescoping microphone.

“What are you doing?” Tom whispered.

“We could use a little practice, don’t you think?”

“On them? No, I don’t think. There’s no warrant for that, Callie. What you’re doing is illegal.”

“I need to practice,” I said, turning on the power. The microphone was shaped sort of like a rifle, with a wire leading from the butt of the handle to a pair of headphones. I put these over my ears and aimed the mike toward the other boat. “There’s no telling when we might have to whip this out and use it.”

“You’d better hope nobody sees you,” he said. “That thing looks like a gun.”

“We’re in the dark,” I whispered. “And they’re too far away to see, anyway.”

I adjusted the volume and then listened to the people’s chatter. Mostly, they were telling fish stories. I couldn’t hear what everyone said because some of them were blocked from my view—and for a telescoping microphone to work, you always had to have a line of sight in order to get sound.

“This is nice,” I said, pulling the headphones from my ears and examining the microphone more closely. “State of the art, for sure.”

I gave the headphones to Tom and insisted he try the tool out as well. He did, turning the other direction and pointing the mike toward Turtle Point.

“Can you hear anything that way?” I asked.

“Just the wind and rustling leaves. And the waves.”

I looked up toward the house, a shudder passing down my spine. The point was dark, the water black. As Tom turned and listened in the other direction, I prayed that somehow God would get us through the night safely, allowing us to do the job we had come here to do.

Pulling off the headphones, Tom handed the mike back to me.

“Sounds like they’ll be turning in soon,” he said softly. “I say we give it an hour or so for everyone to fall asleep, and then we make our move.”

Twenty-Nine

In the end it was nearly 2:30
A.M
. by the time everything was completely still and we felt comfortable in going forward. The moon was nearly full, which was both good and bad—good, because it made it easier for us to see; bad, because it made it easier for others to see us.

Still, the wind was almost nonexistent and everything was calm. If we moved quickly and made no sound, there was no reason for us to be detected.

We started by taking turns in the cabin getting dressed in our new wet suits. Wet suits hadn’t been absolutely necessary, but then again there was no telling how long we might have to remain underwater, so I thought it was better to be safe than sorry. Also, I liked the black color; it would help us to keep hidden. We pulled on our hoods, and then I put a little black grease paint on each of our cheeks and the backs of our hands. The fewer light-reflective surfaces we had, the better.

Once we were properly attired, we moved half of the scuba gear into the dinghy. Tom climbed in next, and I handed him the transmitter, which we had put inside a small black backpack along with Tom’s climbing gear. I also handed him the oars and a bundle of rope, and then I used the back ladder on the power cruiser to ease myself quietly into the water.

It wasn’t cold at all, especially with the wet suit on. I grabbed my scuba mask, which I put on my face, and then Tom gave me one end of the rope. I took a few deep breaths before swimming down under the mooring buoy, feeling for the chain. It ran all the way to the sea bottom and was locked in place by a sand screw. I pulled myself down the chain and tied the rope at the bottom.

When I surfaced, Tom was leaning over the side of the dinghy, watching for me nervously.

“Wow, you can sure hold your breath a long time,” he whispered.

I put my finger to my lips even as I struggled to catch my breath.

Using the ladder on the power cruiser, I climbed halfway up and then swung one foot over into the dinghy, sliding into it until I was sitting. Water ran from my suit in rivulets, and I motioned to Tom to hold up the backpack so it didn’t get wet.

Grabbing an oar, I pushed us off from the power cruiser and silently rowed us toward the beach as Tom played out the rope that was now connected to the mooring. We had to go around a small point, but since we had checked it out earlier, I knew just how close we could come in without hitting anything. When the beach was in sight, I rowed as quickly as I could across to the far end and then moved the little dinghy to the shallows.

Tom handed me the rope and the backpack and then climbed out of the dinghy and into water that just came to his waist. I handed him the backpack, and holding it high so as not to get it wet, he gave me a significant look along with a thumbs-up before turning and walking to the shore. My heart stuck in my throat. I didn’t know how I was going to get through this, knowing he was putting himself in such danger. As he walked I rowed straight back a short way to where the water was probably about eight feet deep.

Once Tom was on the sand, he set the backpack safely on some rocks and then grabbed one big loose stone and carried it to the edge of the water. Looking up at me where I sat in the dinghy, he placed the stone down on the sand. That would be his marker when it was time to swim out of there.

He turned then to his climbing gear and I knew I couldn’t stay and watch. I had too much to do myself.