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  I paused, and she stopped playing with her food to concentrate on my words. Remembering again to be careful, I said, “She’d have to come alone, and she’d have to warn me she was coming.”

  “She wouldn’t let you in the country house again.”

  “We can’t have an emotional discussion in a public place.”

  “This is the best way.” Still playing the role of family fixer, she said it as though it were an agreed arrangement.

  I thought for a moment, a forkful of fish suspended in front of me. “What if it doesn’t work? Is it mediation or murder?”

  “Oh, Randle, this has to work. They talk about hurting you like it was a parlor game, something to get just right.”

  “She’d claim I tried to rape her?”

  Connie dabbed her lips with her napkin and sat up primly like a 1950s secretary being interviewed. “Yes. She’ll bring along a change of conservative clothes so she can look innocent when she meets the cops.”

  “Your sister would look like a tramp if she wore a nun’s habit.”

  “Now you’re being mean just to be mean. From what I hear, you like the tramp look.”

  Touché. I pursed my lips and spun my wineglass in my fingers. “She’d have to change clothes before she shot me so she’d get blood on the conservative clothes. If she shot me at close range, it would produce high-speed blood spatter, not a smear. Anyone who watches CSI New Orleans knows that.”

  Connie made a face like she had bitten into something sour. She finished one taco, then picked up another.

  I said, “She’ll need help too. She can’t overpower me by herself.”

  Chewing, she said, “Daddy and Travis will help her.”

  The hairs on my neck stood up like the quills on a threatened porcupine. Did the crazy old cracker break into my beach house? “They can’t kill me on the boat dock. Too many witnesses. Unless it’s a sneak attack.”

  Connie seemed caught off guard. “Ah, no. She’ll ask you to take her out into the Gulf so Daddy can get to your boat in a hurry from his marina. You guys always floated off Clearwater, right?”

  In the good ol’ days, we’d drift off the coast, tie our floats to the boat, and drink in the sunshine. When the lights came on along the coast, we’d watch the shoreline glitter, grill a steak, and sometimes we’d make love. It would be an obvious temptation for me and a safe murder location for Carrie.

  “Yes, in the good ol’ days,” I said.

  “If she wants you to go out into the Gulf, up to Clearwater, you’ll know she didn’t come to give you hugs and kisses.”

  Connie smirked and I seethed. Had we been in a private place, I’d have flipped her on her head and shook her until the whole story fell out like coins from a piggybank. I leaned toward her, and she shrank away from me. Under control, I said, “Makes sense. Go on.”

  Connie squirmed. “Well, if you can’t make a deal, Carrie could shoot you, rip her clothes, get bruised, you know. Travis and Daddy would rescue her. They would call the Marine Police, and Carrie would tell her story: She wanted to discuss a settlement; you made her go with you to the Gulf, where no one could see what you were doing; you came on to her; she resisted.” She paused to look at me, see if I believed her story. Maybe I didn’t look all that convinced because she added, “She feared for her life.” Other than the change in venue, it was the same old plan they had for the beach house.

  I sat back to think about the plan. With the physical pressure relieved, she sat upright. I said, “If your daddy and Travis arrived after I was dead, they’d have to testify to an assault they hadn’t witnessed. Would they perjure themselves?”

  “Daddy is willing to help his favorite little girl any way he has to.” An undercurrent of bitterness inflected her voice.

  “How would she get bruised?”

  Connie flushed with embarrassment. “Carrie saw a movie where a woman fakes her rape by using a bottle to bruise herself. Down there.”

  Gone Girl. “Yep, I saw that one.” In a voice full of skepticism, I said, “But, Connie, they must see that this isn’t a very good plan. She said her gun was stolen, but now she’s going to shoot her unarmed husband in cold blood.”

  Connie’s chin dropped onto her chest. She didn’t look up. “Instead of shooting you, they could force you at gunpoint to jump overboard. You’d drown, and they’d go back to shore in Daddy’s boat. Your boat would be found adrift, but you’d just be a sailor lost at sea.” She spread her hands as though I should see how obvious that variation would be.

  “The problem with that idea is someone might see Carrie getting on my boat, and then she wouldn’t be on the boat when it was found. If she came to the dock dressed for sex, people would remember her.”

  “She would say you fell overboard and she called Daddy to pick her up.”

  “I’m not going to commit suicide by drowning, Connie.”

  She nodded. “Another way is to shoot you when Daddy gets there and throw your body overboard. There’d be blood in the water so the sharks would, ah, dispose of your body. Carrie could still say you fell overboard, but you wouldn’t be found.”

  I could imagine the scene at the Tomkins hacienda—one person would point out a weakness in the plan and another person would suggest a way around it. I had the twisted thought that I should change my boat’s name to Haole, the Polynesian pejorative for Caucasians, meaning “shark bait.”

  “What about all the blood? Carrie knows you can never clean it all up.”

  She had a ready answer: “They could sink your boat so the DNA deteriorates.”

  “Good God! How much time do they spend on this? Do they ever go grocery shopping? Feed the dog?” It pissed me off that these people were spending their time thinking up ways to make these amateurish plots workable. “Is your insane sister coming up with all these ideas, or are your momma and Jerilynn helping her?”

  Connie shrank away from me. “I don’t know. I haven’t always been there.”

  While I rearranged my silverware and glasses, I slid my phone off the table and put it in my pocket, turning it off as I did so. I took a sip of wine and said, “Okay, I get it. I have to make a deal, but your sister has to be reasonable.”

  Connie thought about it. “This is Carrie’s last chance to get a stake for the future. She’s already struck out three times, and she won’t look sexy forever.”

  “In a couple of years she’ll look like her mother, a wrinkled old prune. That’s the problem when beauty is your only asset—it fades.”

  Connie wore a dreamy look, as though she were imagining Carrie as plain as herself. Maybe the passage of time would supply Connie the final advantage in her sibling rivalry. She carried less weight, hadn’t abused herself with prescription drugs and UV rays the way Carrie had. The scallops arrived, and we took a few moments to get acquainted with our meals.

  “Let’s talk about something less depressing than my divorce.”

  Dipping a scallop into the mustard sauce, Connie said, “Okay, I’ll go first. I’m taking the whole family to the beach to celebrate on the weekend after your mediation. The kids will be back in school so it won’t be crowded. I’m going to miss having you along, Randle. You were always fun.”

  I thought I’d rather have a root canal and a proctology exam in the same day than go on a Tomkins family trip, but I said, “Yeah, the sad part of a divorce is that you lose the whole family. Going to make a long weekend of it?”

  “We’ll drive over to Clearwater on Friday afternoon, spend the night Friday and Saturday, and then people can leave for home whenever they want on Sunday. Travis will need to get to work, but Carrie will want to be in the sun all day.”

  Showing off her assets. “That’s a fact,” I said.

  “Aren’t you lonely, Randle, living all by yourself?”

  “I’ve had to work hard to get the company ready for the IPO. And then there’s all the moving out and moving in I’ve had to do, so I haven’t had a chance to be lonely. But this is nice. Tonight.�
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  It was nice. As the sun set into the Gulf on the other side of the peninsula, darkness fell over the yacht basin like a shade drawn slowly down on an enormous window. Boat lights, dock lights, and buoy lights were suspended in the night, hinting at the unseen objects they marked. We both gazed out the window, enjoying the peaceful setting.

  Connie said, “Yes, I’m enjoying it. Carrie is high-strung, excitable. You and I are calm, more compatible.”

  “Carrie is a thoroughbred, and I’m just a plow horse. It wasn’t a good match.”

  “I’m a plow horse too, Randle. You have to break a thoroughbred or it’s hard to handle. Plow horses are easier to manage.”

  I twirled my wineglass, shifted in my chair, and gave Connie a sympathetic look. “You mentioned that other men had made the same poor choice I made and had gotten involved with Carrie when they should have, ah, gone in a different direction.”

  “I knew you’d ask. I should never have mentioned it.” She dipped another scallop to delay a direct answer.

  “Come on, you promised to tell me the story.”

  Connie cocked her head, swallowed, and decided to trust me. “It was just one man.”

  I nodded.

  “In high school I dated the star quarterback. Surprised?” Her eyebrows rose in anticipation.

  “No, not at all,” I lied.

  “Well, you’ll be surprised by who it was. It was Chance Dickson.”

  Shocked was a better word. “You dated Chance before Carrie did?”

  “Carrie never dated Chance, I did. He was always around our house, and he couldn’t help but notice Carrie.”

  “Oh no, I see it coming.” And I could: Carrie prancing around, showing her butt, to see if she could attract his attention.

  Connie nodded in resignation. “When Chance came on to her, Carrie didn’t resist. Couldn’t resist. He got her pregnant, and Daddy went crazy. Made them get married.”

  “Shotgun wedding. I am so sorry, Connie.” I meant it. Must have been mortifying to be betrayed by her sister. How could they pretend to be friends now?

  “Changed my plans, for sure.” A weak smile played across her lips as she remembered the shattered dreams.

  “I’d have strangled the little bitch.”

  “Wasn’t her fault, Randle. Chance took advantage of her.” She used her napkin to stop the moisture forming in the corners of her eyes from becoming tears. She took a breath. “I was away at college, so I didn’t attend the wedding.”

  That stopped me in my tracks. “Whoa, wait a minute. You were already out of high school when this happened?”

  “Sure, I was at Stetson. Probably why it happened.”

  I pressed on, hammering a wedge between the sisters. “That’s a nice rationalization, but Chance wouldn’t have hung around your family unless he was sleeping with your sister.”

  “Chance worked for Daddy in the yard,” she insisted. Then Connie’s face dissolved like a box of chocolates in the hot sun. “Carrie said they slipped up once at the end of my freshman year.”

  I shook my head. “Carrie let herself get pregnant so she could get back at you.”

  “Get back at me for what?” She said it loud enough for nearby tables to hear, and diners stopped their conversations to look at us.

  “For being Miss Perfect, the good student, the college girl, the daughter who took care of her parents. She didn’t want you to have a fairytale marriage as well.”

  The tears ran freely. Her lower lip trembled, turning words into wails. “It was Chance. He made her do it and got her in trouble.”

  “And the baby was Travis. He’s the baby you should have had, and the baby Carrie never wanted.”

  “Chance made her do it.” She slammed the table, anger overcoming sadness.

  “Carrie trapped him, Connie.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “No.”

  “They were only married a couple of years. Did you try to get him back when they divorced? He was the love of your life.”

  “I can’t do this, Randle. I’ve got to go.” She stood up.

  Looking up at her from my seat, I said, “You should have taken him back, adopted Travis.”

  She shouted at me, “I couldn’t! Chance enlisted in the Army to get away from it all. Then he brought home a wife from Germany.” She moved into the aisle.

  “And you were left alone. My God, what devastation! Carrie destroyed all of you.”

  Connie barreled away, knocking over her glass of wine, drenching my lap. Nearby diners stared at me in horror. What terrible thing had I done or said? A waiter hurried to the table with a bundle of napkins. I took one and said, “I can do this. Why don’t you meet me at the door with the check?”

  “Of course, sir,” the waiter said and hurried away. He wanted to get the wild man out of his restaurant.

  Making no eye contact with the other diners, I signed the check, left the restaurant, and walked back toward the marina. Connie waited beside her car, daubing her eyes with her table napkin. I put my arms around her, and she rested her head on my chest.

  “I’m sorry, Connie, but I think you’ve known the truth for a long time. You suppressed it, but you knew. Your sister has been manipulating you since you were little girls.”

  She pushed back enough to look up at my eyes, as if straining to see the top of a skyscraper, then switched her gaze to my boat. “I think I should calm down before I drive.”

  I knew what she wanted but I couldn’t do it to Glenda, not even to save my life. “Let’s go over and sit on a park bench for a bit until you’re calm.”

  Instantly, her demeanor changed. She stiffened and her eyes burned with evil intensity. She extricated herself from my embrace and moved to the driver’s door.

  Feeling a measure of remorse, I said, “You shouldn’t drive until you calm down.”

  She forced a smile. “I’m calm, Randle. I’m a plow horse.”

  Embarrassed that she had been rebuffed, she didn’t wait for me to change my mind. As she drove away, I felt genuine sorrow for her. We all harbor unreasonable aspirations that are dashed by reality, don’t we? My expectations had been modest: get Connie on tape describing an amateurish murder plot so the tape could be played for a jury if mediation failed. If mediation failed. I had no intention of walking into Carrie’s trap on the Wahine II. If Connie hated her sister enough to be my “Deep Throat,” so much the better.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Walking back to the boat I decided not to stay where Connie and Carrie expected me to be and to return to the beach house for the night. I locked up the interior, secured the lines, and drove back across the peninsula. When I reached the beach house I went straight to the refrigerator, grabbed a beer, and took it out to the pool. Then I contemplated my options for dealing with my ex-wife and her crazy family.

  There were only two or three ways to play it, and I was trying to imagine the end state for each option. When I rose from the chair to get another beer, I faced the house and saw the broken window. The guest bath window on the back of the house, an old-fashioned pebbled-glass window that allowed a certain amount of sunlight while maintaining privacy, had been smashed. Because of its unusual construction, the security company could not affix a pressure sensor to detect the breaking of the window. It was the one unprotected porthole to the home, and only Carrie would have known that. More alarming was the supposition that Carrie knew I wouldn’t be at the beach house. Either the kid “private investigator” had located me at the marina or Connie had told Carrie I would be with her.

  I rushed inside and checked for the TV, the iPod, the computer, and artwork. All were in their places. Moving from room to room, pausing to scan walls and tabletops, I couldn’t detect anything missing. The last place I checked, at the far end of the house, was the master bedroom. I knew before I opened the drawer to the nightstand what I was going to find. Not find. My pistol and its twelve-shot clip were missing. I turned on my heel and ran down to the dock. Kneeling in shallow water,
I verified that my horde of Carrie’s files was still on the concealed ledge wrapped in a black plastic garbage bag. Having dumped Carrie’s peashooter in the Bay, I was unarmed and vulnerable.

  The pistols were the obvious objects of the break-in, but had she found the stolen files, it would have been a bonus for her. My stolen weapon, the .40-caliber Glock, had been Jamie’s service weapon in Atlanta. She had given it to me when she was issued a new service weapon in Florida, so it had sentimental value as well as defensive value. I knew I should call the cops and report the theft, but there were downsides to doing that. If I pointed a finger at Carrie for this break-in, she would point a finger at me for the theft of her gun. A crime scene investigation wasn’t likely to produce any evidence—Carrie’s fingerprints were all over the house and fingerprints aren’t time-stamped. If I lost everything in the divorce and was forced to sell the house, a reported crime would stain its safety record and make it more difficult to unload.

  I turned on all the lights, set the alarm, and locked the doors. With nowhere safe to go, I took a room at a sleazy beach motel. Lying on the bed, fully clothed to deter bedbugs, I arrived at several conclusions: 1) Carrie and Connie were collaborating as Carrie knew I wouldn’t be at the beach house; 2) Connie wanted to sleep on the boat to keep me away from the beach house; and 3) they were definitely plotting to kill me.

  On the way back to the beach house in the morning, I contacted a window repairman and the security company. Waiting for them, I swept up the glass on the bathroom floor and dumped the jagged shards into an old plastic paint pail. Then I loaded everything of sentimental value into my Bronco. I had no intentions of returning to the beach house while crazy people were attacking me.

  The window repairman was the first to arrive. I showed him to the bathroom and he pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and began picking the remaining shards out of the frame. As he worked I wandered away, paced from room to room, said my sad goodbyes to my safe haven. A few minutes later the repairman called out to me from the bathroom, “Hey, boss, look at this.”