“Because it’s a nine-millimeter cartridge. German Lugers fired nine-millimeter parabellums. That’s the pistol the Nazis used.”
“Oh, I get it. There could be some guns down there.”
“Well, if there’s ammunition…” I gestured with my hands:
Jeth looked in the direction of the marina store. His bride was there, Janet Mueller Nichols. She was waiting in the glow of security lights, the parking lot behind her. Even at that distance, Janet looked glossy and ripe in her pale maternity blouse. Judging from the way she shifted from one foot to the other, she was also impatient, ready to drive to their rental apartment in Iona.
Jeth noticed, too. “Well,” he said, “maybe we’ll have some luck for a change and the weather will break tomorrow. Doc? About the stuff you’ve already got cleaned—that diamond Nazi thing, the coins? Can I try and sell them now?”
Before we found out the boat’s identity? I told him it was risky. Also, the metal might disintegrate if we removed objects from the sodium solution too soon.
He shook his head, frustrated, and I watched him glance toward his wife again. After only two months of marriage, he already knew the importance of body language. “I wish we could make it faster because…well, with the baby coming and all. Janet, she’s worried…and, hell, I don’t blame her. What I’m saying is—”
Tomlinson decided to help. “Money’s tight, and Janet’s thinking it might be smart to move back to Ohio to be with her family. Jeth’s asking you for a timetable. When you think he’ll start seeing some cash.”
I said, “You two separating during a pregnancy,” then paused, realizing how judgmental I sounded. I tried again. “I wouldn’t do anything drastic until you talk to Mack. And until we get a look at what’s on your wreck.”
Jeth didn’t brighten much when Tomlinson tried to change the mood. “Tomorrow morning, we’ll pack ourselves a nice lunch, throw beer in the cooler, and have some fun. Maybe water visibility will be better when we get near the bottom. Hell, compadre, you could be a rich man and don’t even know it.”
I had another beer, but dumped the remainder into the water—no late-night drinking for me if we were diving in the morning—then looked up, checking weather: Stars were hazy with smoke from trash fires. In the jet stream, thirty miles above Sanibel, bands of stratus clouds filed southward. Wind currents were volatile up there on the rim of weightlessness, reacting to hurricanes now gathering power off Cuba. The precise arc of clouds reminded me of the incremental lines of magnetic power.
I listened to Jeth tell me he’d have the boat fueled, loaded, and ready to go by late morning, while also thinking about Chestra’s offer to pay him and Javier a salary. It would take a lot of pressure off two very good men, but what was her angle?
I checked my watch: 9:30. Time to find out.
19
I’d misjudged the woman’s age, possibly because of the tricky lighting on the second floor, with its Tiffany lamps dimmed and candle shadows flickering in the wind that had drifted through the open balcony doors.
The doors were open now.
Chestra Engle was younger by a decade. Or more. Soft light is supposed to be kind. Instead, it had contributed to yesterday’s misimpression—my
Tomlinson had been surprised when I called her an old woman. I now understood why, sitting in the same room, with the same candles and lamps, but seeing her clearly for the first time. The woman had wrinkles—smile furrows; a sagging area beneath the chin—but her skin wasn’t a tragedy of lines, and she wasn’t old.
No. My amended guess: she was a few years beyond what some call middle age; a mature woman who, when the light was right, was still attractive.
Chessie’s facial bones had the classic structure: cheeks that created shadow, large eyes staring out, a jawline that curved into hairline on a delicate stem of a neck…
I was thinking about that—facial subtleties, the structural dimensions of beauty—when I heard Chestra ask me, “When you disappear from the room, Dr. Ford, is someone special with you? Or are you all alone?”
“Sorry, Chess. What did you say?”
She repeated herself, laughing as she added, “Please be a dear and tell me I’m not boring you. I won’t be offended if it’s true. Why, at times I find myself a dreadful bore—”
“Not at all. I apologize.” I realized I’d been staring at her face, something that was impolite in her world. No…it was an
She looked at me for a moment, enjoying my dishonesty, before saying,
She seemed oddly pleased by my discomfort but didn’t press. The polite thing to do was change the subject. She did the polite thing.
Conversation is no longer considered a skill, but it is. Chestra was expert. Talking with her was effortless. She had the knack of asking questions that probed, but that also made me feel important. My opinion was valuable to her—she listened. I was interesting; the topics fascinating: sharks, water pollution, the dynamics of storms and open sea.
She didn’t insult me by playing the role of the hopelessly ditzy female to reassure my male insecurities. She wasn’t cutesy, she didn’t chatter, she didn’t flirt, she didn’t ramble, and didn’t use double entendres to test what she, at least, considered tasteful boundaries. When I asked her a personal question, she was sometimes so shockingly frank that I felt it was safe to be honest in return. An example: “Men are pack animals, like wolves. That’s why I’ve learned never to show fear, and how to use a gun!”
She had a wiseguy cynical side that I liked, especially when discussing relationships and marriage:
“I think the reason most women marry, Doc, is they fear being alone more than they fear having a keeper.
“I married once, never again. I don’t have the patience it takes to fall in love with a man I’m marrying for money…”
When I told her no, I’d never been married, she said, “Good for you. You’re smart. Too many women treat husbands like horses. They use love like a bridle to steer and control—or to punish them when they misbehave.”
She was funny, too. Didn’t mind being the butt of her own jokes. One of her gambits was to ask some cliche rhetorical question—“
Good conversation was as important to her as being a hostess who made good drinks, real drinks, and who served excellent hors d’oeuvres, such as the shrimp, black bread, and Feta cheese now on the table before us. Conversation was ceremonial, something that shouldn’t be rushed by business.
So I didn’t press. She led, I followed. The woman was insightful, and entertaining.
Even so, I still had to get home and plan what could be a difficult dive, and it was already ten-thirty…
“Doc? Can you at least have a glass of wine? I have a very nice Riesling…or a Syrah from South Africa. I want to walk you around the houses, and show you why I want to be involved with salvaging that wreck.”
“Show me?”
“Photographs. They’ll make it easier for me to explain.”
The woman’s instincts were excellent.
C hestra believed that her great-aunt was aboard the vessel that Jeth had discovered, the night it went down in a storm.
“She was from the Dorn branch of the family. Marlissa Dorn.” The woman searched my face briefly—had I
