Skinny Dip

"I was shooting at turtles," Chaz said. "Where are you?"

Chaz had thought he'd have plenty of time, but the guy was early. He'd heard the gunshots and now he was spooked.

"Turtles?"he said.

Chaz laughed casually. "I was bored. Are you close by? Let's get this done before that damn thunderstorm gets here."

"Where's the ape man?"

"Oh, he couldn't make it."

The blackmailer hung up.

"Shit," Chaz said. He groped around the deck until he found the spotlight. He swept the beam slowly back and forth across the water; no other vessel was in sight.

Moments later, the phone rang again.

"Where are you?" Chaz demanded.

"Up here!" said a different voice.

A woman's voice; one that made him stiffen.

"Get rid of the gun," she said. "Over the side."

Chaz worked the spotlight up and down the stilt cottage. Sitting on the edge of the roof was none other than his wife, very much alive. She appeared to be aiming a large-caliber rifle at his head.

"Joey, is that really you?" Chaz whispered into the phone.

The muzzle of the rifle flared orange and the windshield of the boat exploded before Chaz's terrified eyes.

"Does that answer your question?" she shouted.

Obediently he took the.38 from his jacket and threw it into the bay.

The first gunshots had caught Mick Stranahan by surprise.

"I believe numbnuts just killed his baby-sitter," he informed Joey Perrone and Corbett Wheeler.

The three of them were flattened against the roof, invisible to Chaz from the boat.

"Now what?" Joey whispered.

"I honestly don't know."

"Let me see the rifle," she said.

Stranahan glanced at Corbett, who nodded sympathetically. "She needs to get this out of her system."

"Easy," Stranahan said when she took the Ruger. He had allowed her to try it once before, blasting coconuts out of palm trees on the island. It had a powerful kick, but Joey had handled it capably.

Stranahan phoned Chaz Perrone on his cellular to find out what had happened on the boat. After a short exchange he hung up. "That's it," he said. "He's flying solo." Joey groaned. "What a schmuck."

"If he's killed the bodyguard, then he might be pla

"And the girlfriend," Corbett added quietly.

"Ricca. It's all right to say her name," Joey said. "Now, what about us, Mick?"

"Once Chaz sees the Ruger, he'll probably fold. Right now he thinks he's Vin Diesel." Stranahan dialed Chaz's cell number and handed her the phone. "Tell him to toss the gun or the deal's off," he said.

"Where are you?" Chaz was demanding on the other end.

"Up here!" Joey answered.

Corbett and Mick climbed down from the roof and sneaked beneath the house, where the Whaler was tied. Stranahan's idea was that the two of them would swim quietly out to the boat and overpower Chaz. They were peeling out of their clothes when the rifle went off, and they heard Joey shout: "Does that answer your question?"

"Don't shoot!" her husband screamed back.

"Give me ten good reasons why not!"

Thattagirl, thought Stranahan.

Corbett tugged his arm. "Mick, I heard something else."

"Where?"

"Close by. Listen."

Stranahan heard it, too. "I'll be damned."

Game over, he thought with a rush of relief. Thanks to Chaz Per-rone's fabulous inefficiency as a killer, they were now free to do what Darwin would have done: back off and let Nature take over. Left to his own greedy wits, Joey's husband had no chance whatsoever.

"There it is again," Corbett whispered intently.

Stranahan nodded. "Music to my ears."

A gust of wind caused the old stilt house to creak and murmur above them. The clouds lit up, and through the pilings Stranahan could make out the shape of the boat in the cha

"Hurry." Stranahan crept down the catwalk toward the source of the moans-a floundering gray mass that in the shallows might easily have been mistaken for a stricken manatee.

"But what about Joey?" Corbett asked.

"Hell, let her have some fun," Stranahan said. "Come on, help me get this poor bastard out of the water."

Joey scooted off the roof and reappeared at the end of the dock, barely a hundred feet from where the boat was anchored. She wore an oversized yellow rain suit with the hood down, her blond ponytail whipping in the wind. Chaz struggled to steady the spotlight but the boat was rocking and his hand shook, a condition aggravated by the sight of his wife with a loaded rifle.

So, last night was real, he thought numbly.

"What's the matter, darling?" Joey shouted acidly.

He raised his palms in a gesture of defeat.

"What-you can't figure it out?" she said. "It's simple. You pushed me off the ship, only I didn't drown."

"How is that possible?"

"It's called swimming, Chaz. Where's the money?"

He motioned behind him, where the Samsonite lay flat against the transom. From the dock Joey couldn't see it. The wind was rising, and Chaz didn't hear her speak again until there was a lull between the gusts.

She yelled, "I'm waiting for the ten reasons why I shouldn't blow your head off!"

"What?"

A raindrop splatted on Chaz's nose, and morosely he cast his gaze downward. The black dress hanging in the closet, the cut-up photograph hidden beneath his pillow, the fact that the Coast Guard had found nothing but her fingernails-of course Joey was alive. It all added up.

"Chaz?"

"Just a second. I'm trying to think," he shouted back.

The barrel of the rifle flashed again, and the spotlight shattered in Chaz's fist. Shards of glass and plastic tinkled to the deck.

"Okay, I've got it!" he cried frantically. "I'm mentally disturbed!"

"What?"

"Reason number one why you shouldn't shoot me-I'm sick in the head! Honey, I need help!"

"That's the best you can do?" Joey asked.

Unfortunately, it was. Chaz Perrone couldn't come up with a single good reason why his wife shouldn't blast his brains out. Desperately he sought to change the subject.

"Where've you been for the last two weeks?"

"Watching you making a clown of yourself."

"Joey-"

"Hiding under our bed while you tried to screw a size ten with a rose tattooed on her ankle. It was pitiful."

Chaz felt gutted by humiliation. Medea, he recalled abjectly, the humming reflexologist. It made him shrivel to think that Joey had been eavesdropping during one of his sexual malfunctions.

He tried to turn the tables by slinging guilt. "You put all of us through hell. We had a church service and everything!"

"I'm touched," Joey called out. "Start packing for prison, because I'm going to the cops-and I'm taking the videotape."

"Honey, please."

"There's no golfing in prison, Chaz. No slutty hairdressers, either."

The rain slapping down on the waves sounded to Charles Perrone like cruel applause.

"What about that will?" He heard his voice quaver. "Was it real or not?"

"Apparently you are sick in the head," his wife said.

So that's that, Chaz thought bleakly. No 13 million bucks after all. The wind dropped suddenly to a cool sigh, the proverbial calm before the storm.

"I don't understand a damn thing anymore," Chaz spluttered. "Where's the guy who set up this meeting? The sonofabitch who dragged me out in that canoe with all those damn mosquitoes?"

"Oh, he's right here, Chaz, waiting for you to try something foolish."

"Then you're in on this, too?"

Joey let out a hoot. "From day one, darling."

"But why? You don't need the fucking money!"

"It's not about the money," she said. "How can you be such a bonehead?"