Bones of Contention (19 page)

Chapter Thirty-three

Dinah drove her blue Toyota Rav 4WD Cruiser away from the Thrifty Car Rental thinking how much she had missed the freedom of having her own wheels. The Rav’s ABS, EBD, VSC, Traction Control, air-conditioning with dust filter, dual sunroof, and throaty vroom were neat, but it was the mobility that pepped up her spirits. Mobility was one of life’s most empowering feelings—the option to vamoose if a relationship or a job or the general course of events went bad. She’d vamoosed many times in the little Porsche Boxster that Cleon had given her when she graduated from college. It finally conked out in Seattle and she’d done without a car for the last year. If Cleon had left her anything other than forged paintings, she’d have bought another one as soon as she got back to the States. Alas, as Mack would say.

She wondered about poor, ill-treated Mack and the missing Homers. He wasn’t as up on American art as Aboriginal art and wouldn’t realize they were fakes until he tried to sell them. Even then, he probably had contacts who could help him peddle them to some unsuspecting soul. In fact, if he held onto them until the Dobbs clan left the country, he’d be sitting pretty. But Lucien was positive that Wendell had taken the paintings for Neesha and Dinah had no choice but to start the recovery effort with him. Any other shakedowns, whether of Mack or anybody else, would have to wait. Today she would review the material on Wendell’s Flash Voyager, see if it provided any leverage, and go from there.

She meandered through Katherine looking first for a comfortable place to spend the night. The lush and palm-shaded Katherine Lodge Motel on the banks of the Katherine River on Giles Street seemed the best of a limited lot. The lobby was clean and modern, the price reasonable for a place with an ensuite bathroom
and
insect screens, and she registered for one night. She would’ve gone straight to her room for a nap, but it was too early for check-in. She left her suitcase and started toward the in-house restaurant, the Cheeky Croc, for a quick lunch. A diffuse, institutional smell that reminded her of a school cafeteria stopped her at the door and she decided to scout out something more appetizing. On her way out, she asked the woman at the front desk where she might find an internet café. As luck would have it, that was in-house, too.

The woman showed her a small room just off the reception area with a row of clunky old computers and dial-up access only. Dinah was beginning to feel like a frontiersman. But doubtful she’d find anything better, she postponed lunch and sat down to begin the tedious process of connecting. After a century or so, she was on-line.

Before inserting Wendell’s flash drive, she checked her e-mail. The first four messages were from Nick and she deleted them unread along with the airline promotions and bookstore coupons.

There was a newsy note from her friend, Mallory, full of excitement about her new boyfriend and the cool new clothes she’d bought to go with him, and there was a blast from the past from her boyfriend before Nick.

Tyler Colby. She hadn’t seen the guy in over a year, hadn’t told him she’d been living with another man, hadn’t told him her job ladder was a step-stool to nowhere. Eddie’s words rained down on her head like hot coals. She had done many things she wasn’t proud of and letting Ty go on loving her when she’d long since relegated him to a historical footnote was one of the worst.

E-lies required no skill. No shifty eyes, no shaky voice, no hemming or hawing to give you away. But she felt guilty anyway and deleted “every day.” There was a grain of truth in “miss you.” At least, she wished that she missed him, which was almost the same thing. It wasn’t as if she’d ruled him out of her life plan. There was a Native American Studies department at the University of Montana. Maybe she could finagle a job as a teaching assistant or something and in her spare time, put together an encyclopedia of Native myths.

It sounded as if she were hyperventilating. She scratched the last sentence.

She had hoped there’d be an offer from her anthropology professor—an immediate assignment in Timbuktu or Kizil Arvat or the International Space Station. But it probably wouldn’t do her any good. Jacko hadn’t confiscated her passport yet, but it was just a matter of time before he grounded the whole family.

She inserted Wendell’s flash drive into the computer. The good news, he hadn’t installed password protection. The bad news, he hadn’t copied his E-mail onto the Flash Voyager. She brought up the list of files. Baltimore, Barranquilla, Black Point, Brunswick, Cayenne, Davao, La Guaira, Manado, Miami, Montevideo, Surabaya, Tampico, Veracruz.

It was like Jeopardy with only one category—geography. She didn’t know where all of them were, but water seemed to be the common denominator. Baltimore and Brunswick were U.S. ports on the Atlantic, Veracruz was situated on the Gulf of Mexico and wasn’t La Guaira the seaport town next door to Caracas? Black Point. Hadn’t she seen that mentioned in her
Northern Territory Lonely Planet Guide?

She signed onto Google Earth and called up a scan map of the Territory. Black Point was a small dot on the tip of the Cobourg Peninsula northwest of Kakadu Park in Arnhem Land, which was owned by the Aborigines. From the descriptions she’d read, Black Point was little more than a wide spot with one store where you could charter a boat and buy fuel and basic provisions. But on Wendell’s flash drive, Black Point kept company with some heavyweight ports. Why?

She opened the Brunswick file. The Port of Brunswick was one of the busiest on the east coast, importing and exporting automobiles and agri-products of all kinds. It was also where Wendell lived and worked and, presumably, the center of Fisher’s business empire. She scrolled down a list of numbers that appeared to represent dates. After each date, if it was a date, there was a row of letters, possibly representing the name of the buyer or seller. Next to each name, if it was a name, was another number and a small k—kilobytes? kilometers? kilograms? And next to that number were more names. Lucky Rascal, Sea Rover, Windcheater, Aces Full, Wave Walker. Boats. The Wave Walker was what Wendell had named his Bayliner, the one he took his kids to Florida on.

Did fish processing plants keep their records in code? Did professional fishing boats usually have such frolicsome names? Wouldn’t the plant have to designate the type of fish it was purchasing and wouldn’t there be a different price for each variety? She looked at the k again. Wouldn’t American fisherman sell their fish by the ton rather than by kilograms?

She opened the Black Point file. BH-PROB. DF2GO5317BP. If this were a simple abbreviation, PROB would be problem. A problem with BH. Bad Hair? Boat House? Boat Hitch? Bags of Heroin? Heroin was sold in kilograms.

Drugs. Desmond Fisher owned a necklace of waterfront properties perfect for smuggling drugs. The fish plant was a perfect front and Wendell, the drab and respectable banker, was his perfect front man and accomplice. If this all meant what she thought it did, he and Wendell were involved in a criminal enterprise on a massive scale. Seth might also be involved. He had a passport with stamps from the most prolific drug producing countries in the world and she had a feeling he knew more about the doctor’s still-missing satchel of cash than he’d admit.

BH. What if BH-PROB stood for Bryce Hambrick problem? DF—Desmond Fisher to go May 31, 2007, Black Point. Holy Moly. She felt the exhilaration of certainty. Jacko had been right. Hambrick was murdered somewhere else and brought to Melville to keep the other place secret. To keep Black Point secret. The clues, if there were any, were in Black Point.

If Wendell was operating a drug cartel, it was a fire she didn’t want to play with. Her head told her to call Jacko, but if she did, she might inadvertently blow the gaff on Lucien’s forgery.

She removed the flash drive and pushed it through a small hole in the lining of her tote. She sandwiched a pad of the motel’s stationery between K.D.’s journal, swiped while K.D. slept this morning, and the Manila envelope containing Cleon’s original Last Will and Testament, which he’d left lying on the sideboard. For no particular reason, she’d also lifted a snapshot of Wendell and his son at the helm of the Wave Walker out of the side pocket of his briefcase last night.

On impulse, she’d snitched one other item. Seth’s Glock lay camouflaged in his navy windbreaker under the rest of her plunder. After Jacko had searched all the rooms, while Seth was making himself scarce and everyone else was clamoring for Jacko’s attention, she’d crept into Seth’s room to see if the gun was still there. It was. Given all that Jacko knew and suspected about him, it seemed like an oversight. An oversight she corrected. At the time, she couldn’t have imagined that she would be dickering with a drug lord for the return of Lucien’s paintings. Maybe her ESP was back on track at last.

Chapter Thirty-four

The T-shirts on sale in the Katherine Oasis Shopping Center ran the gamut of Australian icons. The Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge, Ayers Rock and the Great Barrier Reef, kangaroos and koalas, Akubra hats and vegemite. Dinah was drawn to a shirt with an erect, open-jawed crocodile in red boxing gloves—The Boxing Croc of Humpty Doo. The woman at the sales counter informed her that Humpty Doo was a small town near Darwin and the giant Boxing Croc was a famous landmark in the Territory, one of the country’s Big Things.

“What kind of big things?” asked Dinah.

“Oh, there’s the Big Beer Can, the Big Mosquito, the Big Banana, the Big Prawn. There’s lots of Big Things in Oz. It’s kind of an art form. The tourists love ’em.”

“Is Humpty Doo an Aboriginal name?”

“I’m not sure. Some say it means fine and good. But whenever things turn out wrong or upside down, my mum says they’ve gone humpty doo.”

“Perfect,” said Dinah. “I can always use another name for trouble.”

With her new boxing croc nightshirt in the bag, she had a taste for hot Italian sausage and Chianti. She drove through the town in search of a trattoria and ended up at a place called Diggers Den—a rather unprepossessing pub that claimed to serve Italian food. She had just been seated and handed the menu when who to her wandering eye should appear but Margaret. She spotted Dinah at the same time and turned to leave, then about-faced with an expression that seemed more a nod to the inevitable than a glad hello.

“I had to get away from that place for a few hours. As we used to say back in the sixties, it has bad vibes.”

“It’s still said today, Margaret, and I agree. Crow Hill has very bad vibes.”

“I drove Lucien’s car. He said that he and Eduardo wouldn’t be needing it for the next couple of days. Lucien doesn’t look well. I hope it’s not a relapse.”

“He’s on edge like the rest of us.” Dinah was happy to see Margaret and hoped she could update her on the scene at Crow Hill. “Have you had dinner? You’re more than welcome to join me. I haven’t ordered yet.”

“Why, yes. It’ll be good to talk with someone who isn’t having histrionics.” She sat down and blew out a heavy sigh. Her face showed the strain of the last forty-eight hours, but her eyes still had that hawk-like vigilance. She was a full-figured woman and gravity was winning out, but she held her chin high and her posture was finishing-school perfect. She’d obviously turned heads thirty years ago and even now, there was a knowing quality about her that some men might find attractive.

“Who’s having histrionics?”

“K.D.’s having a hissy because Thad stole her journal. Wendell thinks the Inspector overreached his authority and took something he had no right to. Lucien and Eduardo are saying hateful things about Wen behind his back. Neesha has locked herself in her room and the Farraday person is prowling through the house like a cat burglar. Of course, Tanya’s with Victor at the hospital and Mack’s absconded, could be with your paintings.”

“What’s Cleon doing?” asked Dinah.

“Making out his new will.”

A hurried young server arrived and spieled off the evening’s specials: camel croquettes, buffalo kabobs, and meat pie. They ordered drinks—Dinah a glass of Shiraz and Margaret a martini—and pondered the menu.

“Cleon’s way with a martini is the first thing that attracted me to him. All the other boys I’d gone out with in high school and college guzzled beer, but Cleon aspired to sophistication even in the backwater he came up in.”

“He grew up in Needmore, right?”

“He used to brag it was Tallahassee. But after he won a few big cases, he lost the sense of inferiority and started embroidering on his countrified past, regaling the tony Atlanta crowd with stories about the bumpkins he’d known back in Needmore. It called their attention to how far up the ladder he’d risen, how much higher he still might rise.”

Dinah said, “I’ve always been curious about Cleon’s early years, what he was like when…when he was just starting out as a young lawyer.”

“Don’t pussyfoot. You want to know what your mother saw in him.”

“That, too.”

“Did she never talk to you about him?”

“She’s never talked to me about Cleon or my own father, even. Nothing that wasn’t self-evident. She’s pretty frugal with details about the men in her life.”

Margaret dabbed her lips with her napkin and turned thoughtful. “Cleon was a well-built, athletic boy, sure of his abilities and ambitious as hell. He believed he could conquer the world with one hand tied behind his back. Nothing was going to stop Cleon Dobbs.”

“The drive hasn’t changed,” said Dinah.

“But there’s nothing left to drive for.” Margaret was pensive. “All that fire and charisma and he didn’t get the grail. He didn’t get…”

“Our drinks are here,” said Dinah, cutting her off. The waiter offloaded the martini and the wine and took their food order. Margaret went for the beef rib-eye, rare, with fries and an extra cupful of blue cheese dressing for the salad. Dinah ordered the pasta arrabiata and a side Caesar.

As their server was walking away, Margaret tasted her martini. “Vodka! I don’t know what’s wrong with bartenders anymore. I wanted a martini, old school with gin, not this odorless, tasteless potato water.”

“Send it back. I’ll run and catch him.”

“No, no. This is just the aperitif. I’ll make myself plain on the next round. I don’t care if I get snockered tonight. I’m in pit city. That’s another thing we said in the sixties. Pit city.” Her mouth quirked up on one side. “We had no idea. No idea at all.”

Dinah couldn’t see Margaret as a murderess. She wasn’t a soft woman, and she made no secret of her lasting anger toward Cleon for dumping her after four short years of marriage—anger, Dinah imagined, in direct proportion to how much she’d once loved him. It was obvious that she’d cared about Dez Fisher, too, and Dinah was probably the only person on the continent who could condole with her. “Get as drunk as you like, Margaret. It’s girls’ night out.”

“All of Cleon’s women should get drunk together. Me, Neesha, his old secretary Darla, Seth Farraday’s mother. I’m sure there were a lot more. But there was only one woman who gave him heartburn.”

So much for condolence. “Don’t start in on her, Margaret. Please.”

She started in. “Cleon wanted Swan Fately the minute he laid eyes on her. He chased after her and courted her like she was a princess. She didn’t scruple to remind him he was already married, but it wouldn’t have mattered. He had the bit between his teeth. He wasn’t going to let a wife and child stand between him and the Holy Grail.”

“Margaret, I understand why you hate my mother, but don’t belittle her to me. She
is
my mother and I’ve heard more than I care to hear about her foibles.”

“From Neesha?”

“Yes, of course. K.D., too.”

“Neesha’s lived in Swan’s shadow longer than I’d have predicted. She married Cleon for his money, of course. With Cleon away from home so much, I expect she has a handyman on the side.” She laughed. “All the Viagra in the world is no substitute for youth.”

With his doughy physique and dour disposition, Wendell didn’t seem like the stud of anyone’s dreams, but there was no arguing with sexual chemistry. And Margaret was obviously in the dark about her boy’s semi-incestuous love life. She imbibed the last of the potato water and raised a hand for the waiter. “Your mother never seems to age. She must have a pact with the Devil.”

“She doesn’t have a pact with the Devil, Margaret. She’s not an ogre.”

“I know she’s not.”

Conversation lapsed for a few minutes until their server arrived with the salads.

Margaret ordered an “honest” martini. “Mind you, that’s gin, Tanqueray if you have it, and tell the bartender I’ll just imagine the vermouth.”

“No worries, missus. And you, miss? Will you have another glass of Shiraz?” It rhymed with pizzazz.

“Of course, she’ll have another,” said Margaret. “Keep ’em coming every twenty minutes ’til we cry uncle.”

Dinah had to laugh. Margaret was in rare form.

“It’s true I hated your mother once. But give me some credit for the wisdom of age. Wisdom’s blinking all that comes with age. That and the spotty hands and sagging boobs. No, Swan couldn’t help the effect she had on Cleon and I admire the way she held onto herself. She didn’t let him take possession. She’s the only person, male or female, who’s ever brought him to his knees. He never owned her the way he’s owned everyone else, myself included. You can’t imagine how I cheered the day she ditched him and ran off with your father. It nearly killed Cleon. He drank himself sick on my back porch and cried like a baby.” She sat ruler straight and her eyes sparkled with schadenfreude.

Their main course came, along with the honest martini and the Shiraz. Margaret swigged the Tanqueray. “Ahh, now this is more like it.” She reminded the waiter to hit her again in twenty-minutes and salted her steak. “It’s a relief to eat a simple meal for a change and not have to rave about the back taste of fenugreek or a soupçon of amchoor in the sauce. I never really liked all those outlandish dishes Dez set such store by, but I acted like shark’s fin soup was the nectar of the gods. My Southern upbringing. You know how it is. But gin and red meat, those are the essential food groups.”

She sucked down half her martini. “Yes, Cleon stayed drunk at my place for two weeks after Swan shagged off to Miami with Hart Pelerin. Lost a big products liability case because he couldn’t keep his mind on his facts. I tried to help, but the man was a basket case for six months. It nearly wrecked his career.”

Everybody knew Cleon had a breakdown after Swan left him. But he’d gotten over it. He won joint custody of Lucien, made peace with Swan and, over time, won the friendship of Dinah’s father.

Dinah said, “Cleon likes to tease you and Neesha about his deathless love for Mom and how marvelous she is, but he got over her years ago. He befriended my father. They played cards, went to football games, barbecues. Apparently, they went quail hunting together at least once with Dez Fisher.”

“And when your daddy got himself killed, Cleon was Johnny-on-the-spot to represent your mother in court.”

“As a friend. To keep the feds from railroading her.”

“It wasn’t just that. He thought he could win her back. He found out the hard way, what goes around, comes around.”

Unrequited love, it seemed, was the bane of almost everyone’s life. Dinah wondered if her mother had ever loved a man who didn’t love her. Would she understand what it was like to watch a man she loved cry his heart out over another woman, or catch him in bed with a redhead?

“Don’t spoil our dinner by dredging up old calamities, Margaret. Desmond Fisher’s murder is calamity enough to have to contend with.”

“Yes. I’ll miss Dez.”

“He must’ve cared a lot for you to leave his businesses to Wendell and so much money to you.”

“I suppose. We never dreamed how valuable it was or that Wendell would own it someday, lock, stock, and barrel. Of course, Wen will have to sell it. He’s not bold enough or savvy enough to run a company. He’s a good man, a good husband and great with the children. He’s been especially good with Thad. But Wen’s not gutsy. Nothing at all like his daddy.”

Dinah felt sorry for Margaret. She was due for a serious reality check and daughter-in-law trouble wasn’t the half of it.

“What do you know about this fish processing plant, Margaret? Did you ever meet any of Desmond’s employees?”

“No.”

“Did Wendell or Dez talk about the business at all?”

“Wen had nothing to do with it and Dez became withdrawn whenever I asked him questions. Our relationship stayed in the shallows.” Her voice thickened. “At least he cared enough to leave me some money.”

“Plus the epergne,” said Dinah, not sure what to say or how Margaret would take a pitying squeeze of the hand.

“And the epergne!” She laughed. “It would be the perfect receptacle for his ashes.”

“Were you in love with him, Margaret? Really in love?”

“I’d have married him if he asked. He found me witty and desirable, which was balm to my clobbered ego. But love?” She blew a mordant little puff through her nose. “Cleon broke me of love the way Swan Fately broke him.”

Dinah felt a touch of irritation. Loving someone who doesn’t love you is a heartbreak and two, three months, even a year of breast-beating in the worst cases was understandable. But Margaret and Cleon had had three decades to get over their disappointments. She said, “Mom’s past sixty now, Margaret. If she caused you pain, I’m sure she’s very sorry. I don’t need to hear anymore about her disastrous impact on everyone’s life.”

“I don’t believe she set about deliberately to cause anyone pain. But she knows that she did and she’s no more remorseful about it than the moon is for shining.”

There was no point arguing. Like everyone else, Margaret had her own impression of Swan. It sometimes seemed that Swan was nothing but a collage of other people’s impressions. Dinah loved her mother, but she had given up trying to understand her. She had been a benign and lenient parent, charming, but not much engaged in her children’s moral or social development. Especially after Dinah’s father died, she was off in her own world. Like a Dreamtime being, thought Dinah. The Swan Dreaming. She had given her children life, imbued them with nice table manners and a penchant for denial, and retreated into the mythical realm. Without being present, she was everyone’s excuse for something. It was an open question how many of those excuses were hidden lies.

“My mother has feelings, Margaret. But probably no one knows her well enough to say exactly what they are.”

“Don’t you want to know her secrets before she’s dead and gone?”

“Everybody knows the facts of her life. It’s her interpretation of the facts that she’s kept secret. I’m not sure she knows, herself, what to make of all that’s happened. I was hoping Cleon could give me some idea what my father was thinking when he…” She hadn’t meant to bring her father into the conversation, but it wasn’t as if Margaret didn’t already know the gory details. “Cleon is more analytical than Mom. He might have seen or heard something that would help me understand my father’s actions, or the demons that drove him to do what he did.”