Bone Deep (3 page)

An hour before sunset, the fishing guides crossed the flats, three boats in formation, so I put away the photos Dunk Fallsdown had loaned me—stone carvings that did, indeed, resemble owls—and walked to the marina to enjoy the show.

Business hours at Dinkin’s Bay Marina are seven a.m. to six p.m., but Mack, the owner, doesn’t lock the parking lot gate until later, especially in summer. Tourists were gathering on the dock to watch the guides clean fish, and tourists have money.

Mack, a big man with a cigar, was standing at the office door, surveying what his eyes perceived as profit. He waved and pantomimed pulling the lever of a cash register as I passed. Jeth Nicholes, one of the guides, had gone inside to use the toilet, and I walked with him to the cleaning table—a slab of wood with a wash-down hose—where captains Felix and Neville were sharpening their knives.

“There was a school of spinner sharks off the lighthouse,” Jeth said, stuttering some but not worried about it. “I brought one back for steaks, if you want to check its stomach.”

I did, but said I would wait for the crowd to thin. A semicircle
had formed around the cleaning table, people snapping photos, clients posing with fish, while gulls bickered with terns, and a flotilla of pelicans waited below, their heads swaying as if fillet knives were conductors’ batons. Captains Felix and Neville, buckets at their feet, had had a good day catching sea trout, mackerel, pompano—a big cobia, too, that might weigh sixty pounds.

Jeth said, “I saw Hannah’s boat near the river. Her clients were fly-fishing. Two guys—but they weren’t what you’d call good-looking.”

He was referring to Hannah Smith, an elite fly-fishing guide, and the woman, who according to rumor, had dumped me. Which is why Jeth had stuttered a little more when he described her clients.

“We had dinner last night,” I reassured him. Then asked if he would remind Felix to save the cobia carcass so I could have a look inside its belly.

Jeff is built like a farm boy linebacker, but he’s sensitive, so he showed his relief. “Sure,” he said. “Good.” Then he maneuvered his way through the crowd and got to work.

When there was no one around to offend, I opened the bellies of the spinner shark and the cobia. The shark had been feeding on thread herring. The cobia was loaded with crabs and two sea horses. I washed my hands, and said hello to Rhonda and Joann, who live aboard an old Chris-Craft yacht,
Tiger Lilly
. The stop required another reference to my date with Hannah to defuse the gossip. Same when Eleanor intercepted me at the Red Pelican Gift Shop and offered a consoling piece of fudge.

Mack, at least, had other interests when he took me aside and asked, “You meet Tomlinson’s Indian pal from Montana? Nice fella. Not like most of the oddballs who show up asking for His Guruness.”

After what Fallsdown had told me, I couldn’t help chuckling. “He stopped by the lab.”

“Yeah? What’s so funny?”

I didn’t have permission to share details, but I could say, “Tomlinson’s driving the poor guy nuts.”

“Nothing unusual about that,” Mack said, waiting for the punch line.

“Duncan will be back in the morning. Get him to tell you.”

“
Dunk
, you mean? He did tell me something. Tomlinson thinks Dunk is a big shot with his tribe back in Montana, the head medicine man or something. So Tomlinson volunteered him to put on a show for some rich folks, the ones who own Albright Key. The two of them left to catch a water taxi half an hour ago.”

“The Albright family, yeah,” I said. “Twin daughters, both out of college, and Mrs. Albright, the wife.”

“Are those the three blondes from last night?” Mack smiled when I nodded. “Okay, now it sort of makes sense. But sitting in some tent—a sweat lodge—in June?”

“That’s the funny part,” I said, and told him that Tomlinson was in for a disappointment. Duncan was conducting a shaman drum ceremony, not a sweat lodge.

Mack got the joke. “Hah! Wish I could see the look on the horny bastard’s face when he finds out. No sweat lodge means the women won’t have to take their clothes off, right? Mosquitoes will be bad enough as is.”

I said, “That’s why I’ll be wearing pants and a long-sleeved shirt.”

Mack sobered. “You’re going?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” I said. “Jeth will let my dog out, once you lock the gate. I’d take him, but people who own islands are fussy about dogs.”

Mack, relighting his cigar, said, “You don’t give a damn about any shaman drum ceremony. And that island’s forty minutes by water, even in your boat. What’s the real reason?”

“I’ve never been on Albright Key,” I answered, which was true, but not the whole story.

Fallsdown had asked me for a harmless favor—or so it seemed at the time.

•   •   •

IN THE CRIMSON DUSK OF A JUNE SUNSET,
I left the mouth of Dinkin’s Bay and flew my boat northeast, pretending the quickest route was backcountry past the village of Sulfur Wells. The detour was a silly excuse to wave at Hannah, the long-legged fishing guide, if she happened to be on the dock, or topside on her small blue live-aboard cruiser.

She wasn’t—but a sleek runabout I recognized was tied there, which suggested Hannah was below, entertaining a guest. A male guest. I knew the runabout and I knew the guy. He was a wealthy Brazilian who kept his yacht at Dinkin’s Bay when he wasn’t traveling the world, one or more fake passports in hand.

Hannah trusted that bastard?

Worse, while I rubbernecked, my port engine snagged a crab trap and nearly threw me out of the boat, so it was dark, and Fallsdown was already drumming, when I got to Albright Key. The island was forty acres of foliage intersected by a shell ridge where, by day, a Mediterranean mansion spread itself on columns, bone white, above the bay, but now showed only windows and a lighted portico of marble. There was a boathouse off the channel where
No Trespassing
signs included threats of prosecution.

I tied up anyway. Through the trees, I could see a golden
bouncing light that was a ceremonial fire. The Albright family, plus Tomlinson, would be gathered there, so why interrupt? My clothes were soaked after going overboard to cut that damn crab trap free, so I pawed through the emergency bag I keep aboard and soon stepped onto the dock wearing a chambray shirt and jeans.

Only then did I notice a man coming toward me from the shadows. A very tall man who spoke articulately but sounded weary when he said, “Unless you’re invited to this circus, get back in your boat. I’ve got the local deputy on speed dial.” He had to raise his voice to be heard over the thumpa-thumping of the drum.

I introduced myself, and looked toward the fire. “That noise has to get on your nerves after a while,” I said.

“Then why are you here?” The man’s tone insinuated
All the way from Sanibel . . . at night?

“I’ve passed this island a hundred times and wasn’t going to miss an invitation to come ashore. I was hoping to meet the owner and have a look around.”

He made a sighing sound. “My daughters own the place, apparently. And my wife. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have to listen to that maddening bullshit. Any idea how long it’ll go on?”

From the elevated dock, I could see the fire and the silhouettes of four people, their backs to me. Tomlinson’s hair, tied Samaria style, was as distinctive as a woodpecker’s crest. Fallsdown faced his audience, a drum between his knees, but was dressed normally, not like a stage medicine man. “Not a clue,” I answered. “In my cooler, I’ve got beer on ice. Maybe it’ll take your mind off the noise.”

The man switched on dock lights to get a better look at me. “Never seen a rig like that,” he commented, meaning my twenty-six-foot rigid-hulled inflatable—a boat ringed with a heavy foam-filled collar. It had a T-top, twin Mercs, and an electronics tower. I’d
bought it through contacts at the specials ops base at MacDill in Tampa—a confiscated drug runner’s vessel, supposedly, and that’s the story I stuck with when I told the man about it. But I was honest when I added, “It’s made by Brunswick in Edgewater, Florida. That’s where Boston Whaler has its tactical division.”

“I didn’t know Whaler made tactical boats,” he said. “It’s not a Zodiac?”

I had made the same assumption, which felt odd to admit, then explained that Brunswick, depending on the buyer, followed black ops protocols when it came to labeling. The manufacturer’s name wasn’t on the registration. Impact was the model. Or B-Impact Tactical—BIT, for short.

“Military types love acronyms,” the man said, following along, then asked for permission to step aboard.

He liked gadgets, and we talked about the springy decking and seats for a while—
shock mitigation
, is the term, nice to have in rough seas. He claimed he was interested in buying a RHIB design—a rigid-hulled inflatable—but I got the impression he was bored, just wanted to talk. After I’d demonstrated the electronics—impressed him with the night vision system; FLIR thermal imaging, too—he said, “If you want to come inside and see the house, I’ve got liquor and beer. It’ll be quieter,” and then finally told me his name.

I followed Leland Albright, heir to his grandfather’s fortune, up the ridge into the mansion.

“I was reading this book that says it takes three generations to piss away a family fortune,” Albright said, pouring another vodka rocks while I sipped my beer. “One to make it, one to mismanage it, and then a spoiled third generation to squander what’s left.”

He straightened and tested the air for the faint thumping of the drum. “I think I’m an exception. But my daughters and wife seem determined to prove the book right.”

He had seen me noting the walls blistered by a leaking roof, the corroded faucets in the kitchen, and obviously felt the need to explain why a vacation home they seldom used wasn’t in the best of shape.

“I thought a caretaker lived here,” I said. “The times I’ve gone by, there’s usually a boat tied up.”

“Drunks and druggies,” Albright explained, then returned to the subject of his family. “They have no concept of what it takes to make money. Find business contemptible, I guess, the twins especially. They’d rather save the world by giving it all away.”

“Your daughters?”

“By my second marriage. Esther and Tricia. Thirty-one years old, with degrees in environmental studies, and they’re worried sick about carbon footprints, global warming—but they still love flying to Palm Beach to shop. Otherwise, to hell with the family business. That’s how they finally bonded with my new wife. Now it’s me against them, and they’re starting to wear me down.”

I said, “I’m the wrong one to ask for advice about women, but isn’t it odd for daughters to side with a new wife?”

Albright started to answer, then reconsidered, aware that his second vodka, or maybe his fourth or fifth, was causing him to open up to a stranger. We were sitting in a room of tile and coral rock, which had probably been mined in the Keys way back, an elegant space with maharajah accents—Persian rugs, carved elephants—but the furniture was 1960s bamboo, glass tables, and floral prints more commonly found at yard sales. The chairs were positioned to offer a panoramic view, on this moonless night, of the village lights of distant Boca Grande, miles of black water between. To the left, beneath trees, we could see the ceremonial fire where two angelic-haired blondes were thumping away on a log while Tomlinson shuffled to the rhythm. Albright put his drink on the table and decided to find out more about me. “You said you run a marine supply business? A boat like yours isn’t cheap.”

I replied, “A small business,” and got a few sentences into describing my lab, and what I do, when I was stopped by the stricken look on his face. “Is something wrong?”

“You’re a
biologist
?”

“Yeah . . . ?”

“I thought you meant marine supply as in selling yachting hardware.”

“More like selling sea horses to schools,” I said. “I do consulting work, too.”

Leland Albright, who was six-six but had the delicate hands and face of a pianist, stood. “Goddamn it,
that’s
why you’re here. Ava and the twins want you to work on me, don’t they?”

“They what?”

“You heard me. And there’s not a damn thing you can tell me about our Peace River holdings I haven’t already heard.”

I said, “Sorry, are you talking about the Peace River as in Central Florida?”

“As if you didn’t know. You’re leaving. You gave me a bullshit line, pretending you only came to see the island.”

“Leland,” I said, “I’ve never met your wife or your daughters. Calm down, and tell me what you have against biologists.”

People who inherit wealth assume everyone wants something, so they construct shields, and Albright was embarrassed to have been caught with his down. “You just admitted you live on Dinkin’s Bay. I know Ava took the twins to a party there last night. They didn’t get back until almost sunrise. Now you expect me to believe you’ve never met? That’s a tiny little podunk marina. I’ve seen it. How dumb do you think I am?”

I said, “Okay, I understand now. I thought it was my charm that got me in the door.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You want to pump me for details about the party last night, isn’t that why I’m drinking your beer? But you got the wrong guy. I wasn’t there. If your wife and daughters met somebody at the party, it wasn’t me.”

Albright tried to hang on to his anger but couldn’t convince
himself I was lying. His eyes moved to the fire, where a third woman had joined Tomlinson, a taller blonde. She was standing close enough to drape an arm over my pal’s shoulder.

I asked, “Your wife’s name is Ava?”

Albright, staring at the two of them, said, “Not if I catch her screwing around again. I know how she is when she gets a few drinks in her. Fashion models are experts at getting what they want.”

“I’ve heard the rumor,” I said.

“Me, too, but I married her anyway. You should see her in a bikini—when she bothers to wear one. That party last night, I figured it was okay as long as the twins were along. Tricia has a wild streak, though, plus they’re suddenly like the Three Musketeers—the same fitness teacher, the same interests. So who the hell knows?” Albright watched his wife move her hand to Tomlinson’s hip. He made a faint grunting sound as if suffering a stomach cramp.

“They can really set the hook deep,” I said. For an instant, Hannah popped into my mind, and the sleek runabout owned by the Brazilian.

“If we’re dumb enough to swallow it,” he responded, and reached for his glass but decided against it. “You’re divorced?”

I shook my head. “Only because I’ve never been married. I have a son and a daughter, so I understand that part.”

“Do you get along?”

It was an awkward subject. My young daughter lives in Europe with her golf pro mother and female lover—a tennis star who doesn’t need a racket to break balls. My teenage son attends boarding school in South America. He and I had argued during our last few phone conversations. Recent e-mails had gone unanswered. I was concerned by rumors he was smoking grass and hanging out with counterculture college types, but my son has a mulish
contempt for advice. So, for Albright, I put a cheery spin on the truth. “My kids are great, but their mothers are the independent types—in other words, they don’t want me around. The woman I had dinner with last night says I’m not ready to settle down.”

My host began to loosen up. “She was using reverse psychology. Women are experts on everything but themselves.”

I didn’t agree with his cynical tone, but said, “Sounds like you’re going through a rough patch. Your third marriage?”

“Third and last,” Albright replied. “Manipulation is their specialty. Ava, she and the twins sit around giggling until I walk into the room. My own daughters. Last month they maxed out a credit card at some meditation retreat in Asheville, then gave me the silent treatment when I asked Ava, What the hell?” He looked out the window. “Now she shows up with two . . .
guru
types. See how she’s hanging all over your long-haired friend? What do you expect me to think?”

I said, “She can’t be much older than your daughters. I’m surprised they get along.”

Albright, eyes fixed on his wife, didn’t seem to hear. There were long seconds of silence, then he asked, “Is your friend screwing her? I know how fast gossip spreads at a small marina.”

I said, “Nope. He is definitely not.”

Surprised I didn’t dodge the question, Albright sat back. “You sound pretty damn sure for someone who wasn’t at the party.”

“The one with the hair is Tomlinson. He told me they all had some fun last night, but as a group. Nothing physical. Not with your wife or daughters.”

“You actually asked him?”

“We’re old friends.”

“He could have lied.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” I agreed. “He knew I wouldn’t come if that’s what was going on. But I believe him. The other guy I just met, but I don’t think you have anything to worry about. His name’s Duncan Fallsdown—a Crow Indian from Montana.”

I expected skepticism and got it. “Are you the religious type? Or just have higher moral standards?”

“I’m careful. I wanted to know what I was walking into. I’ve got no interest in showing up on some private island owned by a pissed-off husband.”

There was a hole in my story. Albright sensed it and looked at me over the rim of his glass. “Ava said he’s not charging for this drum nonsense. But I’ve got to ask myself why an Indian from Montana puts on his tom-tom act for free . . . and why a biologist decides to tag along.”

It was time to level.

I told him about the stolen carvings, then shared what Fallsdown had explained to me in the lab. “Tomlinson met your daughters a month ago. They mentioned your family has owned phosphate mines for a long time, so he invented a reason to come here. Apparently, people in your industry keep track of artifact collectors because they’re a pain in the ass—always trespassing and digging without permission. The serious ones, according to my Indian friend, will do damn-near anything, even apply for jobs, so they can hunt after hours. It was a long shot, but Tomlinson operates on instinct. Fallsdown asked me to talk to you, find out what I can, while he does his show. That’s the real reason I’m here.”

Albright said, “I knew you were working some kind of angle.”

“There’s nothing tricky about the truth,” I replied.

He was still watching his wife through the window. “Shamanic drum ceremony, my ass. I figured those two for dopers, guru freaks,
who want to get into my wife’s pants. Or my daughters’. Now you tell me this crazy story.”

“A cold trail, you’ve got to start somewhere,” I said.

“Cold is right. My family got out of the phosphate business twenty years ago.” The man confirmed my surprise with a glance.

“I didn’t know.”

“My father thought Johnnie Walker Black was a better investment. Second generation, just like the book says.”

I said, “Now I understand why you’re reading it, to get the Albright legacy back on track.”

“Out of the toilet, more like it.”

“Sorry to hear that,” I said, “but maybe you still have access to someone’s list of artifact hunters. That could help.”

“I doubt it. Tell me more about these carvings. What makes your friend think they’re in Florida?” Albright was interested but didn’t want to show too much.

“I asked the same thing,” I said. “They were stolen from tribal land back in the nineteen seventies.”

“That’s fifty . . . almost sixty years ago.”

“I know, it sounds like a wild-goose chase,” I said. “But not when you think it through. Collectors network, and they tend to hold on to their best stuff. They also know what other collectors have or what buyers want. What’s the point if you can’t make someone in your peer group envious? A list of names, especially collectors from twenty years ago, could put Fallsdown on the right track. Why not?” I placed my beer on a woven elephant doily. “It might be fun to help a tribe in Montana solve an old mystery.”

I smiled, Albright didn’t. He retreated into his drink—yes, a troubled man. A crumbling marriage, financial problems, and now he was sitting with a stranger, fielding questions. It was an
uncomfortable situation, and I understood why. Even twenty years ago, phosphate mining was reviled by environmentalists. Those in the industry have learned to tread carefully when it comes to dealing with the public—especially nosy biologists.

Finally, he said, “People don’t realize how much work goes into making it in the phosphate industry. My grandfather started Mammoth Ridge Mines back when they dug the stuff with shovels, not draglines. Nineteen seventeen.”

Mammoth Ridge
—maybe that explained the maharajah-and-elephant décor.

I said, “He had to be a very smart, tough guy. Obviously successful if he bought an island and built a house like this.”

Albright motioned across an expanse of tile toward a hall. “There’s a whole room full of photos and old records, if you really are interested. You’ll have to dust them off. The twins won’t go in there. They say the photos make them nauseated. And the only history Ava cares about is the kind that makeup won’t cover.”

“Your daughters are thirty-some years old?” I asked.

My tone gave me away.

“Kids mature slower these days, I agree. The year after they graduated, they married brothers who’d inherited a bundle. An Oregon family, Apple software. They both divorced about the same time, too—eighteen months later—and came home to Dad. Not literally, of course. They bought a beach house on Siesta Key. Esther is good with money.”

“I wasn’t criticizing,” I said.

“Of course you were, and you’re right. Thank god, my stepson is starting to come around. If it wasn’t for him, I think I’d just say to hell with it. Let all the spinning plates come crashing down and
move to Costa Rica. I hear it’s nice down there, maids and a staff for next to nothing.”

I knew the answer before I asked him, “Is Ava your stepson’s mother?”

Disdain confirmed that she was not. “My second wife, Madison. Her husband was killed in a skiing accident. Owen, my stepson, was four when Madison and I married, then she got pregnant with the twins. She was unusual . . . the finest
person
I’ve ever met. Mattie, everyone called her.”

Albright’s reflective tone, the way he withdrew into his head, told me his second wife was dead. I said, “Sounds like quite a woman.”

“Not beautiful in the regular way, but it didn’t matter. We liked the same music, and she read the classics to me at night. Mattie loved this island—went clear to Morocco to furnish the place. Could hang with the boys when we went tarpon fishing, too. You ever been to the Temptation on Boca Grande? She’d sit right there at the bar and hold her own with the fishing guides.”

Albright’s eyes found a rectangle on the wall, where, for a time, paint had been shielded from sunlight. “Her portrait used to hang there. The older Owen gets, the more he reminds me of Mattie.”

Photos from a previous marriage seldom survive a new wife, but I had to say something. “It’s good that you and your stepson are close.”

“We’re not, but we at least get along,” Albright said. “It’s not easy on kids when their mother remarries, especially when new babies show up. Owen and I hardly spoke once he hit adolescence. And we had a hell of an argument when he insisted on taking back his father’s name. About a year ago, though, I helped him out of some trouble, now he’s working for me on a new project that could—”
Albright blinked at the glass in his hand and decided he’d said enough.