The Deep Blue Alibi

churning. Steve heard screams from the beach, saw people scattering as the boat flew over the first row of beach chairs, slashed the palm-frond roof of the tiki-hut bar, and crashed through a canvas-topped cabana. The wooden hull split amidships with the sound of a thousand baseball bats splintering, its two halves separating as tidily as a cleanly cracked walnut.

'Vic! You okay?'

But she was already swimming toward shore.

Victoria ignored Steve's shouts to wait. No, the senior partner would have to catch up on his own. She had seen the lettering on the stern as the big boat lifted out of the water: FORCE MAJEURE IV. She instantly recognized the name, remembered the first Force Majeure, even after all these years.

How could it be?

In a place where most boats were christened with prosaic puns-Queasy Rider, Wet Dream- this craft could be owned by only one man. In the law, a force majeure was something that couldn't be controlled. A superior, irresistible force. Like a powerful yacht …or its powerful owner.

Steve was still yelling to wait up as she scrambled onto the sand and ran toward the broken boat. The bridge was lying on its side in the sand, the chrome wheel pretzled out of shape. Shards of glass, torn cushions, twisted grab rails, were scattered everywhere. The fighting chair, separated from its base, sat upright in the sand, as if waiting for a missing fisherman.

Half-a-dozen Florida lobsters crawled across the sand, a shattered plastic fish box nearby. Something was impaled on one lobster's antenna. It took a second for the bizarre sight to register.

A hundred-dollar bill. The lobster's spiny antenna was sticking right through Ben Franklin's nose.

Then she saw the other bills. A flutter of greenbacks, blowing across the beach, like seabirds in a squall.

'This one's breathing, but he's messed up bad.'

It was the hotel lifeguard, bent over a thin man in cargo shorts and polo shirt. He lay on his side, motionless, his limbs splayed at grotesque angles, a broken doll. The lifeguard turned the man gently onto his back, then gasped. A metal spear protruded from the man's chest.

'Jesus!'

Victoria got a look at the man's face.

Thank God. It's not him.

'Another one! Over here!' A woman's voice.

Victoria navigated around a thicket of splintered teak decking. A female bartender was crouched in the sand over a thick-bodied man in a white guayabera. Rivulets of blood ran down the man's face from a gash on his forehead. 'Don't move,' the bartender ordered. 'We're gonna get you to the hospital.'

The man grunted. He appeared to be in his sixties, with a thick neck and thinning gray hair. His eyes were closed, either from pain or the blood running into his eyes.

Victoria edged closer.

Could it possibly be him?

'You should put a compress over the wound,' she said.

The man opened his eyes, and Victoria recognized him at once. 'Uncle Grif!'

'Hello, Princess.' Grimacing through the pain, Hal Griffin pushed the bartender aside. 'Leave me alone, dammit. I need to talk to my lawyer.'

SOLOMON'S LAWS

1. If the facts don't fit the law. . bend the facts.

Two

THE IRRESISTIBLE FORCE

Lower Keys Medical Center wasn't far away, but the streets were jammed. Locals on bicycles, teenagers in flip-flops, cruise-ship passengers scorched from the Caribbean sun. With Victoria sitting shotgun, Steve was at the wheel, stuck in traffic, bogged down behind a Key West taxi, pink as Pepto-Bismol. Steve banged the horn, but the taxi didn't pick up speed. Of course not; its bumper sticker read: 'What's Your Hurry? This Ain't the Mainland.'

They had taken the ferry from Sunset Key and picked up Steve's rusty orange 1976 Eldorado from its parking spot off Mallory Square. The old Caddy, whose throaty rumble had once sounded dark and velvety, like a pot of brewing coffee, now hacked and belched like a geezer at the Sand amp; Surf Retirement Home.

'So who's the other guy on the boat?' Steve asked.

'All I know, Uncle Grif was bringing someone to dinner. He didn't say who.'

Steve honked at a bearded jaywalker with tattooed snakes crawling up his bare back. 'And just now, on the beach, he didn't tell you?'

'It didn't seem to be the time for introductions.' Trying to shut him up. She knew Steve well enough to read his mind. He was already thinking there was profitable legal business scattered in that boat wreckage.

Sure, Steve, but it's gonna be my business, not yours.

'And how the hell did that guy get a spear in his chest?' Not letting up. He was like a fifty-ton Mud Cat dredging the harbor, a force majeure in his own right.

'I don't know any more than you do, Steve.'

'Three possibilities,' he persisted. 'One: accident. Griffin's showing the guy the speargun and it fires. Then we've got a civil case to defend.'

'We,' she thought, her heart sinking. God, hadn't he been listening?

'Two: They fought over something. The guy clobbers Griffin, who shoots him with the spear. Then, we've got aggravated battery, maybe murder if the guy dies. Self-defense a possibility if Griffin feared for his life.'

Try poaching Uncle Grif's legal work, you'll be in fear for your life, sweetheart.

'Three: a boat malfunction. The steering goes out, we sue the manufacturer or repair yard or parts supplier for damages. That doesn't explain the spear, but-'

'Let's just see how Uncle Grif is doing,' she interrupted icily, 'and not worry about business.'

'Sure thing, but we could be looking at big bucks here.'

'We' again. When you're already upset with your boyfriend, his everyday aggravating habits seem even worse. There's a multiplier effect, like the bank compounding interest. Here he was, once again not listening to her, once again not picking up the nuances of her voice, the rhythms of her mood.

Dammit, Solomon. You can read the flutter of a witness' eyelashes. Why can't you hear me unless I scream?

They passed the marina at Garrison Bight, ancient houseboats slouched cockeyed in the water, unrehabilitated hippies sprawled on front porches, drinking the night away. Two tourists on motor scooters hogged the middle of the road, and Steve banged the horn again. He hung a left at College Road onto Stock Island, headed past the pungent garbage dump and landfill, and pulled between two rows of royal palms into the hospital parking lot. A helicopter descended noisily, heading for the concrete pad near the Emergency Room entrance. But if there was any emergency, it was journalistic, not medical. The chopper was from Channel 4 in Miami.

Great. Just great. Steve never met a camera he didn't love.

A Monroe County sheriff's car sat angled at the hospital's front entrance. Perched on the hood of the car, like a long-legged ornament, was a white ibis. If she were superstitious, Victoria would have considered it a bad omen. The bird watched them walk into the lobby, Victoria's mind swirling with memories.

Why had Uncle Grif called her after all these years? And why had he