The Deep Blue Alibi

It's just you, Steve being Steve.

'Hey, Vic. You wanted the top up, I put the top up. You didn't want to listen to the Marlins game, I didn't put it on. Now, is it okay if I have one cool one before we hit the turnpike?'

'Are you two gonna fight all the way home?' Bobby said, putting down his book.

'We're not fighting,' Steve said.

'We're working on our issues,' Victoria said.

'What issues?' Steve said. Flummoxed.

He quit changing stations when the radio picked up Jimmy Buffett wailing 'Coastal Confessions.' Steve tried to sing along, just another tropical troubadour.

What was the point, she wondered, of glorifying beaches and bimbos and lazy days in an alcoholic haze? The Surgeon General ought to put out warning labels: 'These songs could turn your children into slackers.'

The tires were singing, too, buzzing across the bridge over Crocodile Lake when Steve turned to her and said: 'Anyway, this road's more scenic.'

Why did he always have to have the last word? 'It's been a long weekend,' she said. 'Just take me home.'

'Other than being thirsty, did I do something wrong here? Because if I did, tell me now instead of next month. I'd like to have a decent enough recollection to defend myself.'

'You didn't do anything wrong. You were just you. Stephen Michael Solomon.'

'Stephen Michael Solomon,' Bobby said, wrinkling his forehead, unscrambling the words in his brain. 'COMPLETE MANLINESS. HO. HO.'

'Thanks, Bobby,' Steve said, then shot a sideways look at Victoria. 'Tell me the truth. What'd I do?'

On the berm, a turkey buzzard was hunched over the remains of a possum, picking at its bones. The buzzard, brazen as a trial lawyer, didn't even move as the Caddy blasted past, Jimmy Buffett confessing his misspent youth.

'I don't want to start anything,' Victoria said, 'but you acted unprofessionally with Junior.'

'Did not.'

'You practically accused him of murder.'

'You guys are fighting,' Bobby said.

'Pardon me, partner,' Steve said, 'but I thought a defense lawyer's job was to suggest to the jury that someone other than his client might have committed the crime.'

'Not when the someone is the client's only son.'

'Is that it? Or is the problem that the client's only son can't possibly be guilty because you get dreamy-eyed around him.'

Dammit, she thought. I was giving off vibes. 'I don't get dreamy-eyed around anybody.'

'Ouch. Somebody pull the knife from my heart.'

'Don't play the wounded lover, Steve. It doesn't become you.'

'I'm just making an observation. The way you were gawking at Junior, you were practically secreting hormones.'

'Estrogen or progesterone?' Bobby asked.

Just when you think Steve's not paying attention, Victoria thought, when he seems to be daydreaming about the Dolphins or a plate of stone crabs or some game where he stole a base-and maybe the petty cash, too-he surprises you.

She would not be defensive. Like a good trial lawyer, she would attack when challenged. 'Face it, Steve. You're jealous of Junior.'

'That's ridiculous. What's he have that I don't?'

Bobby leaned over the front seat. 'He's rich. He's buff and ripped and totally jacked.'

'Hey, Bobby,' Steve said. 'How'd you like to go back to the orphanage?'

'I was never in an orphanage.'

'Never too late, kiddo,' Steve said.

They rode in a silence a few minutes. Then, Bobby yelled: 'Hey, look at that!'

Over the water, an osprey, its talons wrapped around a fish almost too big to handle, struggled to stay airborne. A second, larger osprey, hovering like a helicopter, tried to tear the fish away with its own talons.

'Put your money on the smaller, quicker bird,' Steve said. 'The one that grew up hungry.'

'You have this preconception about people,' Victoria told him as they passed the entrance to the Ocean Reef Club, home to rich snowbirds. 'You think everyone who grew up with privilege is spoiled or lazy or degenerate. So it really bothers you that Junior is a good guy, that he cares about people and the environment.'

'You can't be objective about him.'

'And what about you and Delia-Big-Boobs Bustamante?' She dipped her voice into a pretty fair imitation of Steve's supercilious tone: ' 'I don't see Delia killing anyone.' '

'I know Delia better than you know Junior. You haven't even seen the guy since he hurled chunks of chili dogs in his old man's Bentley.'

'What difference does that make? You saw the video. Junior dived off the boat before it left the dock.'

'Right. Then where'd he go?'

'For a swim.'

'Did you see him doggy-paddling away from the boat?'

She shook her head. 'Once he went over the side, he was out of camera range.'

'Exactly. And we never saw him come back.'

'Because he swam to the beach, not the dock.'

'Convenient, wasn't it? Think about it, Vic. The others, Delia, Robinson, Fowles. We clearly see them leave the boat. No way they can get back on without the camera picking them up. But Junior, who knows he's being filmed, makes a big point of diving off and disappearing.'

On the radio, the Monotones demanded to know,

'Who wrote the book of love?'

'What are you saying?' Victoria asked. 'That he climbed back on board?'

'So far, it's the only scenario I know that clears our client. Junior's a champion swimmer. He free dives to four hundred feet. He's like that comic book character. .'

'Aquaman,' Bobby helped out.

'Right. How hard would it be for him to climb up the swim ladder or hang on to the dive platform and hitch a ride?' Steve asked. 'When Stubbs goes into the cabin to pee, Junior climbs into the cockpit and goes down the rear hatch into the engine room. He comes up through the salon hatch and shoots Stubbs.'

'And I suppose Junior clobbered his father, too?'

'Don't know. He may have. Or he may have just figured his father would be arrested for the murder when they docked at Sunset Key. In which case, the story about Griffin falling down the ladder is true.'

'And how did Junior get off the boat?'

'Easy. They were never more than a few miles offshore the whole trip down from Paradise Key. Junior swims to shore just like that stowaway in that Conrad book I never read. He picks up a car he's hidden and drives home.'

'And his motive for all this? For framing his father for murder?'

Steve shrugged. 'To take over the company, probably.'

'Junior seem like a corporate type to you?'

'Okay, how's this? Junior's a 'coral kisser.' His term, not mine. He loves the reef. He's wondering if maybe Delia's right. Oceania will be a disaster. When Junior can't talk his father out of it, he goes radical, becomes an environmental terrorist.'

'Conjecture piled on speculation and topped by guesswork.'

'That's called lawyering, Vic. Which, I might remind you, requires an open mind. Creative thinking. Fresh ideas. Not being rigid.'

'Who's rigid?' she fired back.