The Deep Blue Alibi

Fowles wore an eye shield and heavy gloves and aimed a welding torch at what looked like an old rusted torpedo with two seats built into it. The contraption was suspended from an overhead rack by a pair of heavy chains. Sparks flew as Fowles seared the tail assembly with a blue flame.

Catching sight of the visitors, he had turned down the gas and flipped up his eye shield. 'Bet you don't know what this is.'

Even had he known, Steve would have kept quiet.

Always let the witness have his fun.

'My grandfather's chariot,' Fowles said proudly. 'Without the warhead.'

Chariot? Warhead?

'Wish I had his midget sub,' Fowles continued. 'But that's at the bottom of a fjord in Norway.'

'Has to be a story in that,' Victoria said.

And hurry the hell up and tell it, Steve thought.

Fowles offered them each a Guinness Stout from a cooler. Steve accepted; Victoria frowned and declined. Fowles' blond hair was mussed. His sunburned face brighter than usual, probably from the heat of the welding torch. Leaning on a sawhorse, Fowles began telling tales of his grandfather.

Horace Fowles had helped design the Royal Navy chariot, basically a torpedo with a six-hundred-pound warhead on the bow. Two men sat atop the chariot on seats sunk into its hull. Horace was an early charioteer, perhaps the most dangerous job in World War II, other than kamikaze pilot. Wearing a bulky dive suit, Horace would pilot the craft underwater, aim it at a German warship, then hop off, hoping to be picked up by a friendly ship or submarine. Later, he graduated from the chariot to four-man midget submarines called X-craft. He named his Fowles' Folly.

'Bloody floating coffin is what the midget sub was,' Fowles told Victoria and Steve. 'Or sinking coffin may be more like it. Glands leaking, batteries dying, pumps useless. Grandpop would patch her up with chewing gum and twine. Makes my service in the Falklands seem paler than piss. Not like fighting Nazis in the North Sea.'

Fowles finished his story. Horace led the raiding party that went after the biggest prize of the war, the Tirpitz, a Bismarck class battleship. To get into the Norwegian fjord where the German ship was anchored, Horace swam out of the Folly in freezing water and cut through submarine nets with a knife. Sailors on the Tirpitz spotted the X-craft but thought it was a porpoise.

'That's how small she looked when you're on the deck of a fifty-thousand-ton battleship,' Fowles explained. 'Grandpop gets through and brings up the Folly amidship. Picture it, now: three British lads, looking up at this behemoth, twenty-six hundred German sailors aboard. Enough armaments to blow up all of London. But the big bastard can't fire her guns straight down, so the Krauts are using rifles and pistols and there's my Grandpop in the water, attaching charges to the hull. He gets back in and as they're pulling away, ka-boom, the Tirpitz lifts five feet out of the water. Hauling ass out of the fjord, the Folly gets tangled in the net, and a German cruiser sinks them.'

Clive Fowles took a pull on his stout, doubtless picturing the midget sub going to her watery grave. 'They gave my Grandpop the Victoria Cross. Posthumously, of course.'

He reached inside the top of his coveralls and pulled out a medal dangling from a chain. A cross with a crown and lion and the inscription 'For Valour.'

'Churchill himself presented the medal to my grandmother.' Fowles raised a hand above his head and spread two fingers in the fashion of the wartime prime minister. ' 'V for Victory.' That's what Winnie told my grandmom.'

'You must be so proud,' Victoria said.

'Doubt if anyone in the war showed more guts than my grandpop.' Fowles lowered his voice into a deep Churchillian baritone. ' 'I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.' ' He smiled sadly and continued: 'That was Horace Fowles. Which makes me a lucky bloke. The man I look up to most is my own flesh and blood.'

It was more than that, Steve thought. Clive Fowles seemed to be measuring himself against his grandfather. Desperate to be a hero. But how could a man compete with those memories? In the warm turquoise waters of the Gulf, just what could a man do to earn his own medals?

Ten minutes later, they sat on the edge of the concrete seawall, soaking up the morning sun. Victoria wore an orange Lycra bandini top with floral pants that tied in front and stopped at mid-calf. Her long, tanned legs dangled over the water. Steve wore denim cutoffs and a T-shirt that read: 'Could You Come Back in a Few Beers?'

Fowles turned up the bottoms of his coveralls and now resembled a sunburned Huck Finn. He had carried his cooler from the workshop, and Steve accepted a second cold stout, even though it wasn't yet noon. Half a mile offshore, a sailboat headed downwind, its bright orange spinnaker puffed off the bow like an umbrella in a storm.

'Did you know Griffin was taking Stubbs to Key West?' Steve asked.

' 'Course I knew,' Fowles said. 'I cleaned the boat and fueled it for Mr. G.'

'You had drinks at the dock,' Victoria elbowed in. 'Then you went ashore. Why weren't you driving the boat?'

'When Mr. G has company, he likes to handle the Majeure himself. Show off a bit.'

'Even though he was stopping to pull up lobster pots?' Victoria asked.

'Especially then. He gets to play Great White Fisherman. Anchor the boat, get out the gaff, pull in his supper. It's a macho thing.'

'You get the feeling Griffin didn't want you along?' Steve asked.

'Not really, mate. Mr. G just gave me the rest of the day off. I'd busted my hump the day before. Hauled ass out to Black Turtle Key to bait the lobster traps, plus all my other work back here.'

Victoria and Steve exchanged glances. There was a question someone had to ask without giving up too much. The pots had been baited with more than chum. But did Fowles know that? Victoria chose her words carefully. 'I thought Hal Griffin baited the traps himself.'

'He tell you that?' Fowles laughed. 'Yeah, I can hear him saying it. 'I baited the traps.' Same way he'd say: 'I flew the Grumman to Nassau.' Or 'I reconditioned the diesels.' I suppose it's true because Mr. G pays for it, but good old Clive Fowles does the flying and the reconditioning.'

'And that baiting,' Steve said. 'What'd you use? Redfish? Crab?'

Another laugh. 'Don't sod about, Solomon. Just ask it. Yeah, some crab and a big bag of currency.'

Sloppy, Victoria thought. Uncle Grif involving Fowles like that. Now the boat captain would be a prime prosecution witness. Fowles could help the state establish the bribes, or at least one of them.

'Griffin tell you what the money was for?' Steve asked.

'Nope.'

'And you didn't ask?'

'I don't get paid to ask questions.'

'But you wondered,' Steve said. 'Wondering's free.'

'I figured Ben Stubbs was gonna be richer stepping off the boat than stepping on.'

'Make you angry, knowing your boss was paying the guy off?'

'Just reinforced my beliefs about the way of the world, Solomon. Money talks. Bullshit walks.' Bull-shite.

Fowles tossed an empty beer can back in the cooler. He scooped up one of the plastic bands that ties a sixpack together. It was lying on the seawall and would blow into the water in a light breeze. The plastic bands strangle fish that get caught in them.

No way Fowles would ever toss junk into the water, Victoria decided. Or tolerate those who did. His heart would be with Delia in the battle to save the coral reef, but his pocketbook would be with Uncle Grif. So just where did he stand?

'Any idea who would want to frame your boss for murder?' she asked.