Surface Tension

Jea

I’d met Jea

Jea

buildings. Thrown in among these were some of the oldest homes in Lauderdale, old Conch cottages built by Bahamian carpenters in the ’20s and ’30s. Jea

Peering through the screen, I called out, “Hello! Jea

The dark shadow of her bulky silhouette completely blocked out the light coming from the kitchen at the end of the hall.

“Seychelle!” she called out in her contralto voice as she burst through the screen door. Her bright tent-like muumuu surrounded me with folds of parrot-and-bamboo-print fabric. A squeeze from her arms threatened my air supply, and she smacked a wet kiss just in front of my right ear.

“It’s so good to see you. I take it you made it past the pirate patrol out there.”

I nodded and started to speak, but she held open the door and jerked her head in the direction of the interior. With a meaty hand in the small of my back, she propelled me into the small living room of her two-bedroom apartment.

There was always a homelike feeling to being with Jea

I knew better than to share the couch with Jea

“So, you must be in some kind of trouble again. I swear, girl, I never see you unless you need my help. Like that last time when you towed that Bertram charter boat, and it turned out the brokers had repoed the wrong boat, and everybody tried to hang it on you . . .” She chuckled.

Compared to the uncontested divorces, guardianship cases, and real estate closings that were her mainstay, Jea

“You’re right, in a way.”

She grabbed a bag of blue com tortilla chips off the pile of paperwork on the coffee table, propped open the bag, and offered it to me.

I shook my head and offered a thin smile at another of her attempts to eat healthy. “I don’t know as I would call this trouble exactly, but I would like you to look into something for me.”

“Fire away.”

“I towed the Top Ten in this morning.”

“Ha! Neal run out of gas or something and have to beg you for a lift?”

When Jea

“Seychelle, just seeing that man again can make you go all droopy like this? Lord, I thought you were through with him.”

“I didn’t see him.”

“But I thought you said . . .”

“That’s just it.” I proceeded then to tell her the whole story, about the mayday call, and how I’d found the boat, and the girl, dead in the water.

“Oh, my God.” Jea

I guess most attorneys really are ambulance chasers at heart, I thought.

“I did my best not to look.”

“And there was no sign of Neal?”

I shook my head, not trusting my voice to keep steady if we got off on that. Business, stick to business, I told myself. “Jea

“The kind I like.”

“You find out who owns her and start the paperwork rolling. Since she was nearly aground when I got to her, I risked the safety of Gorda and myself . . . you know the line to take. Figuring possible replacement cost of Gorda, my livelihood that I risked, and my fair wages for the effort I put in, we ought to ask for fifty thousand and settle for around twenty-five.”

“Don’t get your heart set on numbers like those, girl. It’s not that easy.”

“And it’s not every day that you find a multimillion-dollar yacht floating around completely unma

“Ha, well, I always knew you were a smart kid.” She returned the smile. “Okay, tomorrow’s Friday. I’ll see what I can get started, but there won’t be too much I can do on the weekend.”

“I know. Just do what you can. Unfortunately, business hasn’t been great lately. I’m not desperate . . . yet. But faster is better.” I stood up and started to walk to the screen door. I stopped and turned. “There’s something else, Jea

“What? Did this just come out of the blue?”

“Yeah. I don’t really understand where it’s coming from. I have my suspicions, but I’m going to talk to him about it. Once he makes his mind up about something, though, he usually doesn’t change it. Anyway, this salvage claim is now doubly important.”

Jea

I watched as Andrew leaned far out on a branch and tried to impale his brother with his plastic sword. I remembered Neal’s smile: the white teeth set in a brown leathery face, the deep cleft in his chin, the intricate patterns of crisscrossing lines around the corners of his eyes. “The cops? They’re out there now with divers, helicopters, the works, searching for a body. That’s what they think.”