AHMM, December 2009 (6 page)

"How long has your husband been missing?"

"Do you know Cozumel?"

"By reputation.” It was an island off the Yucatan coast of Mexico. More than occasionally, Meggie thought about trying to run her old ketch down that way, see if it would stay afloat long enough to get her away from Florida. Her father had left her the boat twice—once when she thought he was dead, the second time when he headed off to Miami to work for an agency that needed someone ruthless. If a living man could have a ghost, Daniel Trevor's ghost haunted the Lower Keys and Meggie. She was tired of seeing him over her shoulder.

"Hy was last seen on Cozumel on the eighteenth."

Today was the ninth.

"His boat ran aground on a reef off Isla Mujeres the night of the twentieth. Do you know Isla Mujeres?” Before the younger woman could answer, Nicole Coberly said, “It's an island north of Cozumel. There was a great deal of blood on the boat. The Mexican police are involved, but Woody isn't getting answers. If we could establish that the blood is Hy's, we'd have a strong argument that he died before the divorce became final. That would make a big difference to me."

"How big?"

"It depends on how much the s.o.b. has—or had. We had a killer pre-nup. Let me tell you something. Don't marry a has-been tennis star for love. If you do, make sure he knows how to spell monogamy."

"Okay,” said the investigator. She doubted she would ever marry, was pretty sure if she did it wouldn't be to a washed-up tennis player. At twenty-three, she thought she knew herself. She didn't believe in love. It hadn't lasted for her parents. It hadn't lasted for the Coberlys. It had never lasted for herself. She took the job Mrs. Coberly offered, deposited a check drawn on a Miami bank, went to Mexico, and eventually submitted a written report.

I didn't ask Nicole Coberly if she had hired someone to murder her husband, but she had pretty good ESP.

"If I was going to kill Hy, I'd have done it before the divorce,” she said. “Five years ago would have been just right. I was younger and prettier. Shouldn't have wasted those years on Hy. We waste them on someone, don't we?"

She heard a creak, turned and saw the marina's co-owner, Arthur Hawkes, with one foot on the gunnel. She gave a little jump but didn't shriek.

"Brought your mail, Meggie,” he said, handing me two small pieces across, then leaning in, not quite wetting his lips at Mrs. Coberly. She looked at him the way you would look at a sea slug on a dinner plate, and she had it about right. If a sea slug could walk, his name would be Arthur, who crept past my boat at dusk or dawn, peeking in portholes hoping to catch some skin. If I got way behind on slip fees, I might have to give him a flash. Then I would shoot him.

"Thank you, Arthur,” I said.

He took the hint, and watching him shamble off, Nicole Coberly whispered, “Creepy!"

"You haven't been in Key West long, have you?” I said.

Woody Erskine hasn't had an office in years. He kept an old refectory table on an enclosed second-story porch where he could watch the antics on Key West's main drag, Duval Street, while pretending to attend to clients’ affairs. He never spent time in court. He claimed not to have written a motion since leaving Washington. Mostly he went around nudging friends, working things out. Woody was a guy you went to when you wanted important people nudged. He nudged the city and rickety waterfront buildings got razed to build condos, and Key West lost some more of its seedy charm. He had sent me work several times in the past year.

"I didn't handle Nicole's divorce,” he said, raising his palms as if expecting a slashing attack. “Or her pre-nup, God knows. When the consular office called her about Mr. Coberly, she had been living here six months. Mrs. Funicelli steered her to me."

Mrs. Funicelli was an arts matron who had a garden full of stuffed parrots. Some people said she had strangled them all herself. Woody gave me the once-over on Hy Coberly, handed me printouts of e-mails from the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City. “His lawyer is up in Boca, Charles Pottle, hadn't talked to Coberly in seven or eight weeks. He knew Coberly was puttering around on his boat but not where. Pottle is sending the Mexicans DNA samples that Coberly had to provide two years ago in a paternity suit.” Woody's round face wasn't made for smiling, and he didn't try. “Plaintiff lost. Coberly wasn't the papa. Lucky's as good as virtuous, you know that? Sometimes better."

If lucky was the best I could do, I would take it. I was living on my father's ratty ketch, painting bad pictures that a few tourists bought, doing security gigs when they came along, toying with moving back north to graduate school because there was no future in any of this. I had reached that jumping-off point where there's nothing farther south but open water. So lucky wouldn't hurt.

I talked on the phone to the lawyer up in Boca. Charles Pottle agreed it was a mess when somebody died outside the territorial limits. Worse when a body hadn't been found.

"I know Nicole's purpose,” he said. He sounded fairly young and eager to sound shrewd. “Going to be tough to nail down a time of death, assuming Hy is deceased."

"If the divorce becomes final,” I said, “who would be Mr. Coberly's heirs?"

"He has a couple of cousins in Pennsylvania. They're a good bit older than Hy is."

"Children?"

"One cousin has a son who's a policeman."

"Is there much money in Mr. Coberly's estate?"

"Not really. Round numbers, four million, all in Treasury bonds. That doesn't count whatever the boat is worth."

"Four million isn't much?"

"Depends on your perspective. Some of my clients, it would be a rounding error. For Hy it was enough to do pretty much what he wanted but not go wild."

That afternoon I tried to figure out what I would do with four million. Even better, what I'd do with an amount that made four million a rounding error. After getting my father's boat repaired, there would be a lot left, so maybe dinner at Louie's. New jeans. Fancier phone with umpteen million minutes. Hair salon? Not really, I liked my hair the way it was, low maintenance like the rest of my life—which wouldn't be low maintenance once I had all that money. I would need a lawyer. Woody wasn't cheap. A tax accountant. A financial adviser. Right there was what my old econ professor called an epistemic problem: Anyone who really knew money didn't need to sell advice. So my adviser would be a dud who would blow my fortune faster than the tax guy could keep up with him. Next time the boat needed hauling I would be broke again, probably in debt to the IRS. A couple of beers helped me think the problem through. I sat in the cockpit, ignoring the grubby cabin. That was one thing: If I had money even for a little while, I could hire a cleaning service. Maybe pay ten years in advance. Otherwise having money sounded like a headache.

Good thing there was no prospect of my having any.

The police investigator for the eastern district of the Mexican State of Quintana Roo was a suave guy of about thirty-five who knew he was nature's gift to visiting
gringas
. He may have been. I wasn't there to prove him wrong. First Sergeant Javier Torres had bristling thick eyebrows shading warm brown eyes.
Siesta, senorita?
The eyebrows were the same dark red color as his hair. He wore a blue seersucker suit and black loafers. He appeared to be in pretty good shape, all six two or three of him, as he walked along the Camino Real Marina on the west side of Cozumel, from which Hy Coberly's motorsailer had departed on the eighteenth day of April.

"Señor Coberly had spent most of his three days in port at discotheques,” Torres said. “He drank modestly. The manager of one establishment is Australian and he remembers Mr. Coberly. If he attempted to pick up women, according to this man, he did not have his heart in it. I asked about men. The manager said no. Imagine my surprise when we found an American couple on a neighboring yacht who said Mr. Coberly had a woman aboard when his boat departed."

"Was there a woman aboard when the boat went aground?"

"Not when a small boat rendered assistance. Only blood."

"Do you have a description of the woman?” Though he didn't know it, I meant: Did she look like Nicole Coberly?

"She was slim, possibly blonde, possibly tall, and wore a large hat.” He smiled. “Like a movie star."

"That specific."

"If the gentleman who noticed her paid closer attention, he does not want his wife to be aware of it.” His gesture took in an array of pretty boats. “The small cruiser is theirs. Would you like to interview them?"

I talked to a couple in their fifties from Davenport, Iowa, who had the deep tans of long-range cruisers. It was after five p.m., the cocktail hour in any port. Both Sergeant Torres and I accepted martinis, which the woman made with pride and precision.

No, they hadn't gotten a good look at the woman on Coberly's boat. She was forward, casting off on the port side, which faced away from them. She was pretty tall, strawberry blonde, the husband admitted. The tall part let Nicole Coberly out.

"Are you certain she was still aboard when the boat left the marina?” I said. “She didn't jump to the pier?"

"Uh-uh. She sat on the bow like a hood ornament,” said the wife.

"Bowsprit,” her husband corrected her. “She was on a boat."

The woman, who had seemed mild until that moment, squinted ferociously across the lip of her glass and said, “That's right, sweetheart, correct the woman who mixes your drinks."

Nicole had fronted me enough money that I could pay for a hotel room a half mile from the beach. I wasn't carrying much, just a toothbrush and a couple of changes of clothes in my pink knapsack. No gun, which made me feel a little exposed.

Sergeant Torres called me before nine in the morning. “We received the DNA profile from the American lawyer,” he said. “He has been very helpful. But now I am truly puzzled. We ran samples of the blood on the boat's deck. That blood does not match Señor Coberly's type. So I wonder whose blood it is? If it could be the young woman's, then I might believe Señor Coberly has done something he regrets and has chosen to disappear. But this blood from the boat is from a man. But not from Mr. Coberly. That is good news for Mrs. Coberly, hey? Her husband may still be alive."

"I can't wait to tell her,” I said. “Still no idea who the blonde is?"

"Our transient population is impossible to track, Miss Trevor. They arrive by boat, leave by boat. Arrive by scheduled flight or charter, leave by ferry. If there is no report of such a person missing...” Without seeing him, I was pretty sure he shrugged. “My men checked, of course. Young women are always missing in Mexico. But at the moment, there is no tall blonde woman missing."

Sergeant Torres didn't mind my repeating the legwork his investigators had done. I hung around the marina, trying to jog memories about Hy Coberly, his boat, or the woman he'd left with. More than three weeks had passed since Coberly's
Mojito
had cast off. I found there were at least a dozen boats at the marina that had been there when Coberly was visiting. A surprising number of people remembered him. He'd been a likeable guy. But they remembered him being alone.

"What about tall blondes?"

"Nada.” Or “Can you bring me one?” Or “You're not tall or blonde, but wanna go snorkeling?"

After a while, I twigged to a flaw in my sampling. I was starting with people who remembered Coberly, then asking about a companion. The tall blonde with the movie star hat might have been on the island alone for a while. I should be looking for people who remembered her independent of Coberly.

The second part of that Saturday I spent making the rounds of discos and bars. Tall blonde women were a numerous subspecies. They were so common there was no point in my envying them, as I had done all my life. After four hours of sipping ginger ale, I admitted I didn't know enough about this particular blonde woman to ask the right questions. I also admitted I was wasting Nicole Coberly's money. I e-mailed Woody the bad news from an Internet cafe and booked a flight back to Key West.

I was in a cab to the airport when I realized I'd done an amateur's job. Coberly's voyage had had a beginning and an end. I'd focused only on the beginning.

Cozumel is only thirty nautical miles south of Isla Mujeres, a much smaller island. It took me more than an hour to find transportation. You would think there would be a regular puddle-jumper flight between islands. Or a ferry. I asked around at the airport. No, señora. Why would you want to fly from one very nice island to one not so nice? I found a tourist kiosk and asked about an inter-island ferry. No, señora. But I could take a ferry from this island to the mainland, then a bus north, then another ferry across to the smaller island. I gave up on ferries. The pilot of a single-engine pontoon plane agreed to take me across, and we were there in twenty minutes. He landed a hundred yards off the main dock, taxied in, and someone came out in a tiny boat and fetched me. I reached land almost broke. Isla Mujeres. Island of women. Last stop for Hy Coberly's yacht.

The
Mojito
wasn't in bad shape for having run aground. Both masts were intact. The hull was scraped but not holed. The police had towed her to a small marina on the bay side. Everyone on the island knew the story. The old man who brought me ashore knew the story—"
sangre, señora!
"—and pointed me to the marina. Nobody was guarding the marina or
Mojito
. I walked down the concrete pier and climbed aboard. Sergeant Torres came out of the salon and smiled.

"I thought you were going home,” Torres said. “How did you get here?"

"By plane. How did you get here?"

"A police boat, of course. I would have given you a ride had you asked.” He came toward me. “My other question is why have you come?"

I told him my idea. If Hy Coberly or his passenger or both of them reached shore, there might be witnesses on a small island.

Torres gave a patronizing smile. “If you were Mexican, Miss Trevor, I would ask the
comandante
to hire you. We have pursued the possibility of witnesses here to no avail. Nobody noticed a waterlogged stranger. As the island gets its share of tourists, that is not surprising. But I will tell you something interesting about this boat. The valve controlling the water flow to both toilets has been removed. The
Mojito
was meant to sink. The most likely person who wished it to sink is Señor Coberly. Don't you think?"