Skinny Dip Read online

  “Exactly what time did your wife leave the stateroom?” the detective asked.

  “Three-thirty in the morning,” Chaz said.

  The specificity of the lie was important to ensure that the rescue operation would focus on the wrong swatch of ocean. The ship’s location at 3:30 a.m. would have been approximately seventy miles north of the spot where he’d tumbled his wife overboard.

  “And you say she was going to ‘scope out’ the moon?” the detective asked.

  “That’s what she told me.” Chaz had been rubbing his eyes to keep them red and bleary, as befitting a hungover, anxiety-stricken spouse. “I must’ve nodded off. When I woke up, the sun was rising and the ship was pulling into port and Joey still wasn’t back. That’s when I phoned for help.”

  The detective, a pale and icy Scandinavian type, jotted a single sentence in his notebook. He pointed at the two wineglasses next to the bed. “She didn’t finish hers.”

  “No.” Chaz sighed heavily.

  “Or take it with her. Wonder why.”

  “We’d already had a whole bottle at dinner.”

  “Yes, but still,” the detective said, “you’re going out to look at the moon, most women would bring their wine. Some might even bring their husbands.”

  Chaz cautiously measured his response. He hadn’t expected to get his balls busted so early in the game.

  “Joey asked me to meet her on the Commodore Deck and I told her I’d bring our wineglasses,” Chaz said. “But I fell asleep instead—okay, make that passed out. We’d had quite a lot to drink, actually.”

  “More than one bottle, then.”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Would you say your wife was intoxicated?”

  Chaz shrugged gloomily.

  “Did you two have an argument last night?” the detective asked.

  “Absolutely not.” It was the only true piece of Chaz’s story.

  “Then why didn’t you go outside together?”

  “Because I was sittin’ on the can, okay? Taking care of some personal business.” Chaz tried to make himself blush. “The seviche they fed us last night, let me just say, tasted like something the cat yakked up. So I told Joey, ‘Go ahead without me, I’ll be along in a few minutes.’ ”

  “Bringing the wineglasses with you.”

  “That’s right. But instead I must’ve laid down and passed out,” Chaz said. “So, yeah, it’s basically all my fault.”

  “What’s your fault?” the detective asked mildly.

  Chaz experienced a momentary tightness in his chest. “If anything bad happened to Joey, I mean. Who else is there to blame but myself?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I shouldn’t have let her go out so late by herself. You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t feel a hundred percent responsible?”

  The detective closed his notebook and got up. “Maybe nothing happened to your wife, Mr. Perrone. Maybe she’ll turn up safe and sound.”

  “God, I hope so.”

  The detective smiled emptily. “It’s a big ship.”

  And even a bigger ocean, thought Chaz.

  “One more question. Has Mrs. Perrone been acting depressed lately?”

  Chaz gave a brittle laugh and raised both his palms. “Don’t even start with that! Joey definitely was not suicidal. No way. Ask anybody who knew her—”

  “Knows her,” the detective interjected.

  “Right. She’s the most positive person you’ll ever meet.” The emphatic response was meant to strengthen Chaz’s position with the authorities. He knew from his amateur research that relatives of suicide victims commonly deny seeing prior symptoms of depression.

  The detective said, “Sometimes, when people drink—”

  “Yeah, but not Joey,” Chaz broke in. “Drinking gave her—gives her—the giggles.”

  Chaz realized he’d been gnawing on his lower lip, which actually turned out to be a fine touch. It made him appear truly worried about his missing wife.

  The detective picked up the copy of Madame Bovary. “Yours or hers?”

  “Hers.” Chaz was pleased that the bait had been taken.

  “No giggles here,” the detective remarked, glancing at the open pages.

  “I haven’t read it,” Chaz said, which was true. He had asked the clerk at the Barnes & Noble for something romantic but tragic.

  “It’s about a lady who gets misunderstood by just about everybody, including herself,” the detective said. “Then she swallows arsenic.”

  Perfect, Chaz thought. “Look, Joey was happy last night,” he said, not quite as insistently. “Why else would she dash out at three-thirty in the morning to go dancing on the deck?”

  “In the moonlight.”

  “Correct.”

  “The captain said he ran into some rain.”

  “Yes, but that was earlier,” Chaz said. “About eleven or so. By the time Joey went out, it was beautiful.”

  Before the Sun Duchess had departed Key West, Chaz had checked the weather radar on TV at a famous bar called Sloppy Joe’s. He had known that the skies would be clear by 3:30 a.m., the fabricated time of his wife’s disappearance.

  “The moon was full last night,” Chaz added, to give the false impression that he’d seen it himself.

  “I believe that’s right,” the detective said.

  He stood there as if he were expecting Chaz to say more.

  So Chaz did. “I just remembered something else. There was a raccoon, a rabid raccoon, running loose on the ship.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m serious. Ask the captain. We were held up for hours leaving Lauderdale last Sunday while they looked for it.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, don’t you see? What if Joey got attacked when she went out on the deck? What if that deranged little monster went chasing after her and she accidentally fell overboard or something?”

  The detective said, “That’s quite a theory.”

  “You ever seen an animal with rabies? They get totally whacked.”

  “I already know about the raccoon,” said the detective. “They trapped it in the crew’s laundry and removed it from the ship at San Juan, according to the captain’s log.”

  “Oh,” Chaz said. “Well, it’s good you checked that out.”

  “We try to be thorough.” This was spoken in a barbed tone that Chaz felt was inappropriate for use on a distraught husband. He was glad when the detective finally departed, and further relieved to learn that he was free to start packing. The stateroom had to be vacated soon, as the Sun Duchess was being prepared for its next cruise.

  Later, as Chaz Perrone followed the porter down the gangway, he saw two blaze-orange helicopters rising from a pad at the Coast Guard station on the other side of the port. The choppers banked and sped off toward the Atlantic, where a cutter and two smaller rescue vessels were already hunting in grids for Joey. The Coasties would also be sending up a Falcon out of Opa-locka, or so Chaz had been assured.

  He glanced at his watch and thought: Thirteen hours in the drink, she’s history.

  They can search all they want.

  Hank and Lana Wheeler lived in Elko, Nevada, where they owned a prosperous casino resort that featured a Russian dancing-bear act. The bears were raised and trained by a semi-retired dominatrix who billed herself as Ursa Major.

  Over time the Wheelers had become fond of Ursa and treated her as kin. When one of her star performers, a 425-pound neutered Asiatic named Boris, developed an impacted bicuspid, the Wheelers generously chartered a Gulfstream jet to transport the animal to a renowned periodontic veterinarian at Lake Tahoe. Hank and Lana went along for moral support, and also to sneak in some spring skiing.

  On the return flight something went sour and the plane nosedived into the Cortez Mountains. Federal investigators later determined that, for reasons unknown, the convalescing bear had been seated in the co-pilot’s position at the time of the crash. Film recovered from a 35-mm camera owned by the Whee
lers revealed several snapshots of Boris squeezed upright behind the steering yoke. In one frame, Ursa Major was curled laughingly on the beast’s lap, tipping a bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream to its unfurled lips. In a subsequent photo, Boris had been posed in headphones and tinted aviator glasses.

  Taped communications between the Gulfstream and control towers en route confirmed a highly festive, and possibly distracting, atmosphere aboard the Wheelers’ jet. Why it had suddenly gone down remained a mystery, though Ursa’s assistant surmised that the bear’s sunny humor had evaporated dramatically once the Xylocaine wore off. During the aircraft’s fatal corkscrew plummet, controllers attempting to radio the cockpit received only bestial snorts and grunts in reply.

  The Wheelers were worth a pile of money, which after probate was divided evenly between their two young children. Joey Wheeler, who had been named after the singer-actress Joey Heatherton, was only four years old when her parents died. Her brother, named after the comedian Corbett Monica, was six. Each of the kids came immediately into approximately $4 million, plus a guaranteed cut of the weekly keno handle at their late parents’ casino.

  Joey and Corbett were raised in Southern California by Lana Wheeler’s twin sister, who conspired zealously but without success to loot the trust fund in which the children’s inheritance had been placed. Consequently, both orphaned Wheelers reached adulthood with their fortunes intact but their innocence abraded.

  Corbett lit out for New Zealand, while Joey headed to Florida. There she informed no one of her wealth, including the stockbroker who would become her first husband. She and Benjamin Middenbock dated for five years and were married for four more, until fate intervened in the form of a sky diver who fell on Benny one sunny afternoon as he practiced fly casting in the backyard. The sky diver’s parachute had failed to open and he had descended silently, though like a sack of cement, upon Joey’s husband, who had been breaking in a new Loomis 9-weight. The tragedy left Joey alone, stupefied and richer than ever, thanks to a seven-figure settlement check from the skydiving company’s insurance carrier.

  It was the second time in her young life that she had unwillingly profited from the death of loved ones, and she could scarcely bring herself to think about the money, much less put a dent in it. Misplaced guilt led her into charity work and a modest lifestyle, though she had retained a weakness for Italian shoes. Joey Wheeler hoped someday to establish a regular life among regular people, or at least to find out if such an existence was possible.

  She met Chaz Perrone one January afternoon in a parking lot outside the Animal Kingdom attraction at Walt Disney World, where she’d just made a flying tackle on a teenager who had swiped the purse of a Belgian tourist. The culprit, who belonged to a group of youths being chaperoned by Joey, supposedly had been diagnosed with chronic attention deficit disorder. Oddly, the young man’s capacity for concentration was not so diminished that he’d failed to focus on a genuine Prada handbag amid the heaving throngs of tourists. Nor had his focus wavered even slightly as he stalked his elderly victim from the Giant Anteater exhibit all the way to DinoLand, where he’d made the snatch.

  Joey had chased the pimpled creep through the ticket turnstiles and brought him down hard on the hot pavement outside the park. While holding him for Disney security officers, she’d shaken from his pockets a Gucci key chain and a Tiffany cigarette lighter, casting further doubt on the nature of his disability.

  Chaz Perrone, having watched the takedown from a departing tram, had hopped off to compliment Joey on her pluck. She’d found him impossibly handsome, and had done nothing to discourage the flirtation. Chaz had proudly informed her that he was a biologist, and that he was attending a convention of distinguished scientists working to save the Everglades. He’d further confided that he was supposed to be taking a VIP safari tour of the Animal Kingdom but was instead sneaking out to play Bay Hill, the favorite hometown golf course of none other than Tiger Woods.

  Joey had been attracted to Chaz not only by his good looks, but by his involvement in such a lofty mission as rescuing Florida’s imperiled wilderness from greedy polluters. At the time he’d seemed like a fine catch, though in retrospect Joey realized that her judgment had been skewed by previous disappointments. Before meeting Chaz, she had been dumped in chilly succession by a tennis pro, a lifeguard and a defrocked pharmacist, a grim streak that destabilized her self-esteem as well as her standards.

  So she’d been eager, if not reckless, for steady companionship. The courtship had been a whirlwind campaign of roses, love letters, candlelit dinners, whispered endearments—Chaz had been relentlessly smooth, and Joey had melted with minimal resistance. Her most distinct memories of their first twelve months of marriage were scenes of reliably torrid sex, which turned out to be Chaz’s singular shining talent. It was also his obsession. During their more revelatory second year together, Joey came to realize that she’d mistaken her husband’s indefatigable urge to rut for ardor, when, in truth, for him it was no more personal than isometrics. She also became acutely aware that Chaz did not regard matrimony as an exclusive carnal arrangement.

  Other wives might have bailed out, but Joey was too proud and competitive. She resolved to immerse herself avidly in all aspects of her husband’s world, and to become what the self-help books called “a true life partner.” Her plan was to make Chaz need her so fervidly that he’d knock off the bullshit and clean up his act.

  The anniversary cruise seemed like a good opportunity to put her plan into action, so Joey had accepted the invitation with high hopes. She had looked forward to “re-connecting” with her husband, as the relationship experts advised. The biggest challenge would be engaging Chaz in at least one intimate conversation that did not concern the peerless durability of his erection.

  Once at sea, unfortunately, the breakthrough moment had never presented itself. Or perhaps it had and Joey had found herself not sufficiently motivated. Except for the sex, Chaz simply wasn’t a very compelling fellow. The more Joey had listened to him—really listened—the emptier she’d felt. For a scientist, Chaz seemed dishearteningly blithe, self-centered and materialistic. He rarely spoke of his work in the Everglades, and he seemed largely unfazed by the rape of the planet. He displayed no anger about the push for oil drilling in an Alaskan wildlife refuge, yet he bitched for a solid hour, spewing half-masticated shreds of clam, upon hearing from another cruise passenger that Titleist was raising the price of its golf balls.

  It had struck Joey that she could spend the rest of her life faking enthusiasm for her husband’s interests, and that he wouldn’t care one way or the other. So, why in the world had he married her? Joey had intended to pose that very question during their late-night stroll on the Sun Duchess, but then she’d changed her mind. The slate clouds and the drizzling rain had depressed her, and all she’d wanted to do was go back to the room and crash.

  She’d been staring off toward Africa, thinking of God knows what, when Chaz bent down to pick up something he’d dropped on the deck; a key, he’d said. Joey had been perturbed to feel his moist hands closing around her ankles—she’d figured he was about to spread her legs so he could slip her a fast one, Chaz being keen on outdoor quickies. The last thing she had expected him to do was throw her overboard.

  The worthless shithead, Joey thought.

  Because here I am, parched and delirious and half-blind, clinging to the same fucking shark that tried to eat me.

  Which is absolutely ludicrous, so I must either be dead or getting damn close. . . .

  He knew he couldn’t get his hands on the money, even if something happened to me. He knew from day one that my inheritance was untouchable. So why did he do this?

  It made no sense to Joey Perrone. Nothing did.

  Not Chaz; not the lazy, sweet-smelling, rough-skinned shark; not the seagulls piping excitedly overhead—can’t a person even die in peace?

  Not the low chug-a-chug of an outboard engine, growing louder; not the slappety-slap of the waves against
. . . what, the hull of a boat? Don’t believe your ears, Joey told herself. What would a boat be doing all the way out here?

  Didn’t make sense. Neither did the faraway voice calling to her, a man’s voice urging her to hang on, honey, just hang on for another minute.

  Then the same voice saying it’s okay, I’ve got you now, so let go, come on, let it go!

  Something lifted her as if she were as light and free as a bubble. Glassy droplets streamed down her bare legs as she rose from the water, her toes brushing the foamy tips of the waves.

  Then came a huddled warmth, the smell of dry linen and a sleep nearly as deep as death.

  Three

  “Don’t move,” the man said.

  “Where am I?”

  “Safe. Try to lie still.”

  “What about the shark? Did I get bit?”

  “What shark?”

  “The one I was hanging on to when you found me.”

  The man laughed softly. “That was a bale of grass.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Joey said.

  “Sixty pounds of Jamaica’s finest.”

  “Terrific.” In her delirium she had mistaken the burlap wrapping for shark hide. “Where am I?” she asked again. “I can’t see a damn thing. What’s wrong with my eyes?”

  “They’re swollen shut.”

  “From the salt? Please tell me that’s all—”

  “And jellyfish stings,” the man said.

  Joey reached up and gingerly touched her burning eyelids. A Portuguese man o’war must have brushed against her face while she was drifting.

  “You’ll be okay in a day or so,” the man told her.

  Joey groped under the covers. She was wearing what felt like a fleece pullover and light cotton sweatpants.

  “Thanks for the clothes,” she said. “Or I should say, thank your wife.”

  “Actually, they belonged to a friend.”

  “Is she here now?”

  “Hasn’t been for ages.”