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  The third file contained statements and cancelled checks written against the home equity line of credit. The checks, totaling to the account’s maximum limit of one hundred fifty thousand dollars, were made out to Carrie Marks and endorsed by Carrie Marks. There was no way to trace the expropriated funds—there were no payees identified and no records of deposits to other accounts. My body shook with anger until embarrassment settled over me like a shroud. How could I have allowed my own wife to extort me? I placed the three stolen files in a black plastic garbage bag, wrapped them into a neat waterproof package, and taped it closed.

  The fourth item I had stolen was Carrie’s little peashooter. I wiped the gun of fingerprints and placed it in a shoebox. Then I carried my loot down to the dilapidated wooden dock. Under the dock, a shelf formed by the junction of the pilings with the support beams created a perfect hiding place.

  Next, I unlocked the PODS container and sorted through my belongings. Some of the valuables—a vase, a painting, decorative platters—I brought into the beach house and displayed in the living room. I opened totes and selected pictures to place on side tables and paintings to hang on walls. Buried in one tote I was surprised to find several old pictures of Glenda and a couple of candid shots of Susanne. I was amazed and confused that the tote had survived Carrie’s purges. As a balance to Carrie’s pictures of Simmons and Dickson in her bedroom—our bedroom—I set the pictures of Glenda and Susanne in prominent locations around my house.

  Boxes containing work files were the next items to unload. The files that were current I carried into the house and stacked on my desk. The rest I taped closed and carried into the garage, where some of my most important files had been stored in totes under a workbench. As I entered the garage, my mouth fell open and I had an Oh-my-God moment. The totes were gone! I hadn’t spent any time in the garage and hadn’t noticed the empty space under the workbench. The conclusion was obvious: Carrie had broken into the house to steal the totes.

  One missing tote contained old tax records, medical records, house closings, and long-closed bank accounts—records that had been saved in case of an IRS audit. The other tote contained my proof of Carrie’s spending habits, and she had stolen the records to keep them out of the hands of attorneys and judges and mediators. That’s why she didn’t throw away the pictures of Glenda and Susanne when she rummaged through the attic—she had looked for incriminating evidence and couldn’t have cared less about the pictures. Although it would be tedious, I could reproduce some of the records online, but the receipts were likely lost forever and other records would have to be requested from retailers and creditors. That could take weeks or even months.

  Connecting more dots, I realized that, full of paper, the stolen totes weighed forty pounds apiece, more than Carrie could haul around in a panic with the alarm siren blaring in the night. She would have needed a man to do it for her. Connie had told the truth: Carrie was at her house and the shopping trip was an alibi. Therefore, the intruder was Harlan! Or Harlan and Travis. Then again, it could have been Larry the Yardman, playing prince to the damsel in distress. Maybe his carbon copy helped him.

  I locked the PODS container and grabbed a cold beer. It was childish, I know, but the urge to strike back at Carrie for stealing the financial records was irresistible. I called Tony’s office and Melissa answered his phone. She said he was in a meeting, which I took to be a euphemism for playing golf. He surprised me by calling five minutes later.

  “Have you filed the Baker Act petition?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Great! I’ve been going through the files I moved out of the country house yesterday, and I found my copy of Carrie’s mental health records. There’s a record of all her appointments with a psychologist and all her prescription receipts. She gets antipsychotic drugs from a psychiatrist every quarter like clockwork.”

  “Holy crap! No, wait. Why do you have her medical records?”

  “I kept a copy for insurance claims, and she didn’t know that.”

  Tony hesitated, then said, “Bring them over here.”

  “I also caught up with a sheriff’s deputy she falsely accused of sexual assault. He’s willing to testify to her behavior.”

  “Given Judge Smithson’s tendency to approve requests for hearings, I’m going to save witnesses for the hearing.”

  “Will I have to testify?”

  “I don’t even want you in the room; don’t want you available for cross. When we get a date, schedule a business trip out of town.”

  “When will Carrie hear about this?”

  “When Smithson sets a hearing date. Maybe next week.”

  “We’re rocking and rolling now, Tony. Thanks.”

  I called Connie. When she answered, she called me a crook for stealing things from Carrie. I thought she meant the files and the pistol, but it turned out she meant vases and statuettes and paintings. Carrie hadn’t yet opened the bottom drawer of her nightstand to discover that she had lost more than material goods. Relieved, I reiterated my dinner invitation. She demurred, hemmed and hawed, castigated me for my behavior toward her sister, questioned my character, and then accepted. We would have dinner on Friday.

  Like a kid who had saved the best piece of candy for last, I had saved electronic snooping for last. I logged onto my personal computer and followed Jerry Louks’s handwritten instructions to access the account in the cloud, where Carrie’s keystrokes were stored. I was pleased to find the file contained a massive amount of data, but as I marked each keystroke on a notepad, like a code-breaker, I realized it was just a couple of website visits. Each visit was short but required numerous keystrokes to make access. Late this afternoon she had logged into her public account, deleted a couple of spam mails, but hadn’t written de Castro any notes about moving problems.

  The other website she had accessed was Facebook, password: lonely38s. She wasn’t referring to gun calibers. Hoping to find pictures of her cavorting with a boyfriend, I opened Carrie’s Facebook account and was disappointed to find only photos of her family. She had not logged into shadylady44. I signed off before she could catch me rummaging around in her online life.

  Disappointed, I showered but didn’t bother to shave. Dressed in a grubby T-shirt, cargo shorts, and flip-flops, I drove to Tony’s office and dropped off the incriminating mental health evidence. Then I drove all the way back to the Hurricane restaurant in Pass-a-Grille. At the restaurant, I sat alone at a table among happy couples and families at the beach on a Saturday night. After three Coronas and a fried shrimp dinner, I returned to my house to protect my property.

  It was after dark when I wheeled my trashbin out to the curb for Wednesday morning pickup. Four doors down I spotted a white panel van parked across the street, but I gave the kid no indication that I had noticed. I returned to the house as though nothing were wrong and reenacted a scene from some Mafia movie I had seen. In the movie, the wise guy’s wife delivers sandwiches and soft drinks to the FBI agents watching their house from a van. I prepared a ham and cheese sandwich and grabbed a plastic bottle of water. Using a Sharpie I wrote on a piece of notepaper: Tell Carrie you’re an idiot. I carried the stuff out the back door, through the screened porch, down the side of the house where you could park a small boat on a trailer, and under a line of palm trees to the sidewalk. Staying in the shadows on my side of the street, I walked up the street as though I were taking a snack to a neighbor’s house.

  When I was abreast of the van, I darted across the road, set the sandwich and water on the hood, and stuck the note under the windshield wiper, writing facing into the cab. Then I rapped on the blacked-out side window and yelled, “Relax. I’m in for the night.”

  Feeling cocky, I strolled down the center of the street, back to my house. If it wasn’t the PI wannabe in the van, the neighborhood cats would have a feast and the van owner would wonder, Who the heck is Carrie?

  Before I turned out the lights, I stepped outside and looked up the street. The panel van was gone.
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  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Connie and I arranged to meet at the municipal marina on Friday night and walk to our dinner “date” from there. The marina was convenient for Connie, who lived in a middle-class neighborhood in St. Petersburg, midway between her job in Manatee County and the Tomkins family enclave in Cortes County. It was also convenient for me as I planned to spend the day on my boat.

  Given the turmoil in my marriage, I hadn’t been aboard in months, but when I unlocked the padlock that secured the hatch to the interior spaces, I had the sensation that someone had been aboard the boat. It was nothing alarming, just things not quite as I would normally leave them—glasses in the dishwasher, trash in the receptacle under the sink. I peeked in the master stateroom and found that the bed was not quite made to my usual precision. Goosebumps formed on my arms.

  I had named the forty-two-foot Carver aft cabin cruiser Wahine II, in honor of Glenda’s brother who had committed suicide after losing his battle with drug addiction. His boat had been named the Wahine—Hawaiian/Polynesian for “girlfriend.” Fifteen years old, the interior furnishings, appliances, and TVs were dated, but the engines and mechanics were in fine operating condition. The boat stood three levels tall, like a floating condominium. Belowdecks were a master stateroom in the stern, a guest stateroom in the bow, and a galley in between; on the main level was a sitting/dining room above which perched the bridge. There were two heads: one in the bow, and one in the master stateroom. On the bridge were two captain’s chairs and a built-in lounge seat for passengers. Behind the bridge, half a level lower and sitting atop the master stateroom, was the aft cabin—essentially an enclosed patio equipped with a wet bar and furnished with a wicker couch and two side chairs. Powered by two massive Caterpillar diesels that were geared for torque rather than speed, the boat could start, stop, turn, spin, and maneuver like a sports car.

  Carrie hated the Wahine II—hated the name; hated the fact that I had entertained on it before we were married; hated the fact that it wasn’t sleek and sexy and fast. She wanted me to buy a speedboat, but I had wisely resisted.

  During the rest of the morning I straightened the spaces, and in the middle of the afternoon I took her out for a sea trial. The rumble of the big diesels, the vibration of the deck, the salt air, and the whooshing of the massive wake she created as she plowed through the Bay thrilled me. Many of my dock neighbors were uncomfortable on the water by themselves, but I enjoyed the solitude, not to mention the freedom from landlubbers who might fall overboard or throw the wrong switch or foul a line. The Bay was busy with boats of all kinds, but I wound my way past fishermen and around sailboats to a stretch of open water. Moving at cruising speed so I didn’t attract any attention, I casually leaned over the gunwale and dropped Carrie’s pistol into the Bay. On the bottom I imagined it coming to rest alongside murder weapons discarded during Tampa’s Mafia heydays.

  After burning fuel for two hours, I returned to the dock, showered, and dressed in date clothes. With a beer in my hand, I waited for Connie in the aft cabin. From my boat, I had a clear view of the locked gate at the land end of the dock and the parking spaces beyond. When Connie’s blue sedan pulled into a space, I climbed down onto the dock and walked to the gate to meet her. She was all smiles in a floral-print sundress and a pair of real high heels. Her face showed a hint of blush, and her lips revealed a faint coating of lipstick.

  We kissed—on the lips as always—then walked down Beach Drive toward Cassis, the trendy restaurant at the edge of the Central Yacht Basin. I calculated that a trendy restaurant was a safer rendezvous than a romantic one. It was an awkward stroll because I didn’t want to hold her hand or clutch her arm in mine. To cover my uneasiness, I chatted up a storm and used both hands to accentuate my words. The expanse from my boat to the restaurant, with the park on our right and the harbor to our left, was one of my favorite places on earth and I wanted to share it with Glenda, not Connie Tomkins.

  At the restaurant, the hostess led us to a table at the window overlooking the harbor. I held Connie’s chair for her, and we both took a few moments to admire the yachts. Comfortable, we disposed of the pragmatic tasks of ordering drinks and discussing the menu. We clinked glasses—sauvignon blanc in anticipation of seafood entrées—and Connie made a toast.

  “To a fresh start.”

  “Just remember that we both need a fresh start, not just your sister.”

  “Don’t play hardball, Randle. This isn’t business, it’s personal.”

  “Nice turn of phrase. Mario Puzo would like that. If she wants mediation to work, she has to call off her private investigator.”

  “If mediation is going to work, you have to give her back the files and pistol you stole when you moved out.”

  I didn’t bother to deny the thefts. I folded my hands, rested my forearms on the table, leaned toward her, and adopted a serious, sober look—the pose a doctor uses to tell a patient he has terminal cancer and only six months to live.

  “Carrie’s private investigator hasn’t gotten a shred of evidence against me.”

  Connie shrugged. “They know you’re having an affair with your ex-wife.”

  “There is no ‘affair.’” I used my little fingers to make air quotes around the euphemism “affair.” “I took pictures of him when he floated down the inlet like Huck Finn on a raft, and I’m going to report him to the judge for violating my protective order.”

  Connie gasped. “Don’t do that! He’s just a kid—Phil’s son, Scott Simmons.”

  “Why would she use her former stepson?”

  “He has a crush on her, does her favors. He’s a computer science student at the university, and he helps Carrie with computer problems.”

  Like installing an email snooper. “If I see him again, I’ll report him for stalking me without an investigator’s license.”

  “She already called him off.”

  “Good, then I won’t have to use the evidence I have on her.”

  “She swears she never cheated on you.”

  “I have the evidence, Connie. For example, when I moved into the beach house I found two wineglasses in the hot tub and only one had her lipstick on it.”

  “The other one was mine, Randle. I stayed with her and helped her move. She made me get in the hot tub with her. Not really my thing, but she was distressed.”

  “I have a pile of evidence, Connie, but the rest is more … intimate.” I wish.

  Connie composed herself, pulled her dress down under her thighs, and adjusted herself in the chair. “Maybe my sister isn’t a saint. So what? Just reach a settlement and put it behind you so you can start a new life.”

  With the evil twin sister? “I don’t think you understand how much money is at stake. It’s millions, Connie.”

  Her eyes popped open, and then her face dissolved. “Millions?” she whispered.

  I nodded.

  Connie sagged back in her chair. In a tiny voice, she said, “She won’t share. She’s selfish.”

  “The beggars will follow the money, believe me. That’s how human nature works.”

  The waiter appeared, and while Connie sat frozen like an ice sculpture, I ordered for both of us: grouper tacos—the house specialty—as an appetizer and scallops as entrées. While Connie was distracted, I switched my smartphone into voice record mode and laid it in the middle of the table, next to my wineglass. When the waiter left, now on the record, so to speak, I said, “If mediation doesn’t work, will Carrie and her father kill me to get the money?”

  Connie shushed me, didn’t want people at neighboring tables to hear the word “kill.” She leaned across the table and stage-whispered directly into my microphone: “They talk about the murder plot all the time. She asked Daddy to be a witness for her. You know how vengeful Daddy would get if he thought you raped Carrie.”

  And who told her she needs a witness? “Your daddy is old school, thinks husbands own wives like they own dogs. He wouldn’t understand how you could use the terms ‘marriage�
� and ‘rape’ in the same sentence.”

  We were interrupted by the waiter delivering our appetizers. As he positioned our plates and utensils, I remembered a conversation I had with Harlan on his front porch following a family dinner, out of earshot of the womenfolk. During dinner, Carrie had made a nasty remark about me and I had shot her down and shut her up.

  Harlan had congratulated me and said, “Those other guys couldn’t handle her.”

  At the time, I assumed Harlan was referring to Carrie’s ex-husbands. Now I wondered if the remark included Richard Puralto.

  “She can be hard to handle,” I had said.

  “Needs a firm hand, like her momma.” Harlan had slapped his left hand with his right. Smack!

  I had laughed along with my father-in-law, to show I could be one of the boys, but I found it ironic that a Bible-toting Christian thought physical force a useful tool in a marriage.

  The waiter departed, and Connie and I began to eat. After I swallowed a mouthful of grouper, I said, “Is she still planning to float naked in my pool until she magically produces a gun?” I wanted to get that plot “on the record.”

  Chewing, Connie said, “What if she was willing to meet you on the boat to make a deal and avoid mediation?”

  Is she afraid the mediator will favor the husband—me? “Why the boat?”

  “She said you guys always ‘did it’ on the boat, so you’d be willing to let her aboard if she was dressed for sex. Then maybe you could make a deal.”

  Connie pretended to organize the grouper in one of her tacos, waiting to see how I’d react. A meeting on the boat was appealing to me. I wanted them to stop messing with my beach house, and the boat was a more controllable environment. Remembering that I would be recorded, I answered carefully, “I can’t afford the house and the boat and alimony. When the beach house sells, I’ll have no choice but to live aboard the boat full time until I can cash my stock options.”