Bad Monkey

Yancy made up something about following chain of command. Caitlin would be on the next flight to the mainland if she knew he was assigned to restaurant inspections.

“What about the boat sinking?” she demanded. “That story was so bogus.”

A week earlier, the hull of Nick Stripling’s boat had been located under seventy-five feet of water off the coast of Marathon, in the same area where the debris had been recovered. There was no money in the local Coast Guard budget to raise the Summer’s Eve, even if investigators had wanted to. The official report said the vessel likely had capsized in rough seas.

“Somebody pulled the plug,” Caitlin Cox asserted, “after Dad was already dead.”

“So, hire a salvage company,” Yancy said.

“How much would that cost?”

“A lot. It’s a major job.”

“Shit.”

Yancy decided it was too soon to mention what he knew about the small shark tooth removed from Nick Stripling’s arm. “Eve told me your father wasn’t much of a swimmer.”

Caitlin slammed her drink on the bar. “Are you kidding me?”

“Yet she put his favorite speargun in the casket, which seemed weird,” Yancy said. “Most spear divers I know can swim like a fish.”

“Dad was a damn porpoise, I’m not kidding. He could hold his breath forever. Now do you believe me about Eve? The reason she said he was a shitty swimmer was to make it seem like he just gave out and drowned after the boat went down. Which would never happen.”

“Besides the insurance money, did she have any other reason to kill him?”

Caitlin leaned close. “Try a hot boyfriend.”

“Go on,” said Yancy.

“In the Bahamas!”

“You know this for a fact?”

“Let’s move to a booth,” she said.

Eight

The salesman at the Ford dealership informed Eve Stripling that the import duty on a new SUV in the Bahamas was 75 percent, a figure she made him repeat. After doing the math in her head, she realized that the new Explorer she’d been eyeing would cost, like, sixty-five grand.

“That’s robbery,” she observed.

“But I’m afraid it’s the law,” the salesman said sadly.

“My boyfriend’ll never pay that much.”

Eve walked off the lot thinking how strange it sounded when she said the word “boyfriend,” strange but also sort of exciting. She took a taxi back to town, complaining to the driver about the outrageous tariffs on automobiles. The driver said he’d paid almost fifty-two thousand dollars for his cab, a used Dodge minivan he’d located on Craigslist in Hialeah. Eve was genuinely outraged on his behalf.

Stopping at an outdoor bar, she ordered a Nassau Nemesis, one of many colorful rum beverages concocted for tourists. Parked on the street was a yellow Jeep Wrangler with a hard top instead of canvas. A For Sale sign was taped to the windshield. Eve inspected the vehicle, which appeared to be in good condition except for a thumb-sized rust spot on the hood.

She drank another Nemesis and asked the bartender to play some UB40. Then she ordered fried grouper fingers and carelessly dribbled hot sauce on the crotch of her white jeans. Normally she would have been mortified, but the booze was kicking in hard. She tucked a paper napkin over her lap and asked for a basket of fried shrimp, which she was heartily demolishing when the owner of the yellow Jeep showed up carrying groceries. Eve hurried to the street, her napkin flapping.

“How much you want for it?” she called out.

The woman set her bags in the Wrangler’s back seat. “Toidy towsend,” she said to Eve.

“No way. Twenty-five.”

“Wot!”

“Plus we need it barged down to Andros,” Eve said.

“Twenty-eight if you pay’n cash. Where you ship it, dot’s your prollem.”

Eve went to see the Bay Street banker who was their new best friend and withdrew the money for the Jeep, which she drove sinuously to the waterfront. There she connected with a craggy white Bahamian who agreed to barge the car to Victoria Creek for a thousand dollars. Eve haggled briefly and without much starch. Her mission had been to purchase wheels and, by God, that’s what she’d done.

On her way to the airport she called him in Miami. “You’ll like it,” she said. “It’s super sporty!”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s bright yellow, honey. I’m gonna call it Yellow Bird, like the song.”

“And this is your idea of what a new widow should be driving? Something sporty?”

Eve sighed. “Where we’re goin’, who’s gonna know? A whole new life is what you said. Isn’t that the whole point?”

“The point is not to stand out like a couple of dumbass expats. Staying under the radar, understand? Yellow Jeep, might as well ring a fucking cowbell every time we drive to town.”

He sounded on edge. Eve couldn’t blame him, all the pressure he’d been under. Both of them, actually—though at the moment she was feeling exceptionally smooth and ironed out, thanks to the rum buzz.

She said, “Honey, everything’s gonna be fine. Take a deep breath.”

“How much did they stick you for?”

“Twenty-eight even.”

“Automatic or stick?”

“You are too much.”

“White would have been a smarter color. Black even.”

“Boring. We’re islanders now, remember? You with the orange poncho.”