“Miss Sullivan?”

“Yes.” My voice sounded to me like that of a ten- year-old.

“You are coming to the station today.”

“Yes, okay.”

“We’ll speak more about the Daggett girl then. And Miss Sullivan . . .”

“Yes?”

“The Coast Guard has suspended the search for Neal Garrett’s body. It has been over forty-eight hours.”

I didn’t say anything at first. The silence dragged on, broken only by the occasion pops and crackles from the phone line. “What do you want from me, Collazo?”

“I want to know what really happened out there.” He paused expectantly, but I just let the silence drag on. “And perhaps you will be able to explain something to me: Why are so many people connected to you turning up dead?” He hung up the phone.

I slowly settled the receiver back in its cradle.

It didn’t feel real. Surely I could get in Lightnin’ and drive over to Harbor House and she would be there, laughing, telling me that it was all a goofy mistake. Her curls would be bouncing, her eyes sparkling.

In the distance, the Jungle Queen, a popular tourist cruise boat, tooted her horn for one of the bridges. I stared out the window at the estate across the river. The main house was shuttered and blind-looking. Closed up against the ravages of weather and crime and time. I wanted to close my own shutters, block out the world. I shut my eyes, and fat tears dropped to my cheeks. It was real, wasn’t it? And it seemed Collazo had finally asked me a real question. This time, I wanted to know the answer, too.

X

Galen Hightower bought the Ruby Yacht six years ago when the seventy-five-year-old ketch lay abandoned and half sunk in an estuary in Rhode Island. A podiatrist, Hightower had come up with the idea for the Happy Feet franchises. He was hoping his name would push Dr. Scholl’s off the map, and he was making more money than a person that tacky had a right to make. Granted, he didn’t pay much for the seventy-two-foot steel hulk when he bought her, but he had sunk over half a million into the boat since. He thought she was gorgeous, and there was some dubious connection to Errol Flynn and a few other 1920s film stars that he was using to make his investment in “historical preservation” tax deductible. He talked on and on about the history of the boat, and I had a tendency to tune him out because there was no avoiding the fact that, historical or not, the boat was just plain ugly. Squat and tubby with a ridiculously high wheelhouse and short, stubby masts, she didn’t even look like a sailboat. The interior boasted two claw-footed bathtubs and several carved teak cherubs, and Hightower had added garish orange-red velvet upholstery. The whole thing was a case of too much money and far too little taste colliding on the waterfront.

I had agreed to tow the Ruby Yacht up to River Bend Boatyard for Hightower’s annual haul-out at eleven that morning. The boat had a dangerously small rudder, and the first time he had tried to take her upriver himself, the incoming tide had carried him right into the Andrews Avenue Bridge. He lay there listening to his mast and rigging scrape and grind against the steel bridge for ten minutes before the irritated bridge keeper finally opened the span.

I pulled myself together by showering and dressing in clean blue jeans, a T-shirt, and sockless deck shoes. I didn’t have time to wash my hair, so I just tucked it inside a black baseball cap.

The ride down the river seemed different; the colors of the broad lawns, empty swimming pools, and barrel-tiled roofs were less vibrant, less alive, but I knew that what had really changed was me. I piloted the Gorda through the bridges and the turns, past the buoys and the traffic of the waterway, but I saw little of it. The world had become a dull and empty place, and I felt a certain numbness inside. Keeping busy might keep the tears at bay, but it didn’t fill the hollowness in my heart.

I could not believe that Elysia had intentionally used drugs. Someone had done this to her. Someone had decided that she needed to die. I didn’t understand how or why anyone could have taken the life of such an innocent kid. She deserved so much more. She had worked so hard to pull herself together, for this? Collazo had said her death was either suicide, accidental overdose, or homicide. And he thought somebody had either killed her or tried to hide the fact that she’d killed herself. Me? Surely he didn’t really suspect me on this one, too. He was just fishing, but he always seemed to be headed in the wrong direction. He believed them over at the Harbor House, and he evidently thought I was the one who was covering up. I owed it to Elysia to find out what really happened.

The Ruby Yacht was normally tied up near the end of Pier C, and when I saw the T-pier open, I pulled alongside and tied up Gorda at a couple of minutes after eleven. I was surprised that Galen Hightower wasn’t out pacing the deck looking for me. He was usually so tense whenever his boat had to leave the dock, and he panicked at the slightest deviation from routine. I walked down to Ruby Yacht's slip, and there, tied to the aft quarter of the steel ketch, was Perry Greene’s twenty- eight-foot open towboat, Little Bitt. I couldn’t miss Perry’s white-blond hair in the cockpit of the big yacht. He was handing a clipboard down the companionway, no doubt with a towing contract on it.

“Hey, Perry, where’s Hightower? What’s going on?” Perry looked up and squinted through the smoke coming from the butt hanging between his thin lips. When he recognized me, he plucked the cigarette from his mouth and walked over to my side of the cockpit. He was wearing his trademark hole-ridden and paint- stained cutoff jeans and a too-tight faded Florida Marlins T-shirt.

“Hey, baby,” he said.

He was trying to irritate me, I knew. I was determined to remain professional, although I couldn’t repress a shudder. “What are you doing here, Perry?”

Dr. Hightower climbed out of the companionway at that point, glancing at his watch. He stood several inches taller than Perry. “You finally decided to get here, eh, Sullivan?”

“What’s going on here, Dr. Hightower? What’s he doing here?” I pointed toward Perry as I spoke. Perry leaned back out of the doctor’s peripheral vision and puckered up, making like he was kissing me as Hightower spoke.

“I tried to contact you all day yesterday, Seychelle, but no one answered your telephone. I sent you e-mails, but you never replied. I was afraid you would be late again, as usual, and this time I took precautions against such a problem.”

“Late? You’ve never said anything about having a problem with my being late. I tied up Gorda here at two minutes after eleven. The tide won’t shift until twelve- thirty. We’ve still got plenty of time.”

“I’m dealing with Mr. Greene now, Seychelle. I found his Web page when I was searching for your e-mail address, and it was very impressive.”

“Perry has a Web page?”

“You better believe it, baby,” Perry said. “That’s the way to go these days. You know, Seychelle, you can find anything your little heart desires on the Internet.”

“And when you’re looking, I’m sure that desire and little are the key words, Perry.”

“That’s enough, boys and girls. I’ve signed a contract with Mr. Greene. End of story.” He turned his back to me and busied himself at the helm in the wheelhouse.