Barracuda Page 7

  “What if your father told you some secrets about Greene?” Webb said. “Like how Greene really got his money. And what if you made sure you started working for Greene so you could begin to blackmail him? And then you heard him talking about diamonds because of painkillers?”

  TWENTY

  For a moment Yvonne’s face went slack with surprise. Then she said, “You’d be a fool to believe what a dying old man might have told you.”

  It was obvious, though, that his words had shaken her.

  Webb shrugged and picked up the nanny cam again. “You’re not worried about this?”

  “Photos?” She snorted. “Oh no. Please put it away. I’m so terrified of how they’ll bore me.”

  Then she stood and said, “If you don’t leave now, I’ll call the police.”

  This meant he needed to use the blunt approach he and his grandfather had decided stood the best chance of working.

  Webb said, “Sure. Let’s call the police. Then you can explain to them about this photo frame and how you tried to record everything he said while he was delirious.”

  “You’re a very confused boy,” she said. “And whatever you think you are doing by threatening me with photos won’t matter. The police are going to believe me over you any day.”

  “How about I make my own call? To the IRS.”

  “Internal Revenue Service?” she said. She sat again.

  Webb would never have thought of this approach. It had been David’s idea. Webb hoped David was hearing every word through the open cell-phone connection.

  “I think blackmail would not be hard to prove,” Webb told Yvonne. “How many years did he give you money to keep quiet about what happened after the hurricane? Since you started working for him?”

  “Fairy tales,” Yvonne said. “Good luck convincing people of that.”

  Webb said, “There’s something called the Whistleblower Informant Award.”

  He and David had looked it up on the IRS website.

  “Let me see if I’ve memorized it right,” Webb said. He paused. “The IRS may pay awards to people who provide specific and credible information to the IRS if the information results in the collection of taxes, penalties, interest or other amounts from the noncompliant taxpayer.”

  Webb took a breath and tilted his head like he was thinking. A moment later he said, “Yup, that’s about right. But don’t take my word for it. Look it up on the IRS website. Any money you made as a blackmailer would make you a noncompliant taxpayer. Unless you reported it as income.”

  “Nothing can be proven.”

  “Maybe not the blackmail part. But I’m pretty sure the income part can. They would match money he took out of his bank to money you put into yours. But I’d rather not have to report you.”

  She looked at him with disbelief. “You’re trying to blackmail me?”

  Webb gave her another shrug. He thought of playing the recording on the nanny cam, but if the sight of the digital photo frame didn’t scare her, the recording wouldn’t. It seemed strange, that.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  Webb said only two words. “The truth.”

  She laughed. “I’ll be happy to tell the truth. Jonathan Greene became a murderer when he was a boy. He used the money he made from that murder to build his business here in the Keys. Get a newspaper reporter, and I’ll tell him or her everything.”

  “What do you want me to tell the IRS?”

  “Anything you want,” she said. “All they will find out is that I was paid a nice high salary to be his nurse for the last few years. A very high salary.” She smiled. “I’m not an idiot. I reported all my income. No matter where it came from.”

  Webb had thought this would be a moment of triumph. But it seemed the opposite.

  She stood one more time. “So. Are you going to leave? Or do I call the police to make you leave?”

  Webb left. Confused.

  TWENTY-ONE

  “Hey,” Kristie said to Webb. “Great to see you.”

  Webb had received a text message from Kristie asking him if he wanted to go for a walk along the water. With the sunset putting an orange glow on the water, she’d been waiting for him in the public parking lot, sitting on the hood of a Jeep like she owned it.

  “Great to see you too,” Webb said. “Better than killing time at the cottage.”

  “I don’t have long for a walk,” Kristie said. “I have to be onstage in about an hour.”

  She gave him a smile. “And you haven’t forgotten about tomorrow night, right? Battle of the Bands? I’ll need you in the crowd, cheering for me.”

  “Haven’t forgotten,” Webb said. But it seemed like she’d forgotten that he’d been prepared to play guitar a few evenings ago until Sylas had made him leave. But then, she was the star. He was just someone who was supposed to cheer for her.

  “Great,” she said. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  She jumped down from the Jeep hood and landed awkwardly. “Ouch.” She reached down and rubbed her ankle. “Stupid sandals.”

  Webb’s eyes followed her hand, and he noticed something on the pavement beside her sandal. A smeared cigarette butt. In a circle about the twice the size of a quarter. A swirl of blackened tobacco. He’d seen that same swirl before.

  “Come on,” Kristie said, taking Webb’s hand.

  Girl. Water’s edge. Evening as the stars came out. It should have been another wow moment for Webb. Yet he couldn’t help but think about the swirl of tobacco. It made him wonder if she would start asking certain types of questions. The same questions she asked every time they got together.

  “How much longer are you staying down here?” Kristie asked.

  “Not long enough,” Webb said. “It’s going to be tough to leave the sun and the water to head back north.”

  “I’ve heard Canada is beautiful,” she said.

  “It is,” he answered. “But a person can get tired of snow.”

  “Trust me,” she said, “a person can get tired of sun and heat. The trick is to go back and forth, I guess.”

  He wanted to enjoy what it felt like to hold hands with her.

  “I guess,” he said.

  “But that would take money,” she said. “Lots of it.”

  “It sure would,” he said.

  “Like, what if you could find a bunch of it,” she said. “Like if the stories about Jonathan Greene were true. That would be so cool. Like if he had told your grandfather about where it was hidden. You know, before he died.”

  There it was. She hadn’t asked anything, but still it was like a question. This time he was ready.

  Webb said, “Actually, he did.”

  “What?” Kristie stopped and faced him. She moved in a little on the space between them. Her eyes were wide-open and she spoke breathlessly, with her lips parted as if she were about to kiss Webb.

  It should have been another wow moment. Like maybe it would become his first kiss. Near the water. At sunset.

  But he wasn’t seeing how pretty her face was. He was seeing a swirl of blackened tobacco. Like maybe she’d been talking to someone else before he showed up. Someone who liked putting out hand-rolled cigarettes by stomping them with his heel and giving them a twist.

  “Don’t tell anybody,” Webb said, “but I know exactly where it is. A second box of diamonds. The first box is gone. But he told us about another box. Nobody else knows except me and my grandfather. But my grandfather didn’t believe what Greene told him because the first box was gone. I do. I think there is a second box. And tomorrow I’m going to go get it.”

  “No way!” Kristie said. “Where?”

  “I’m going to pretend I’m headed off fishing in the kayak. Then, if what Jonathan Greene told my grandfather was true, I’ll be back with a pouch full of diamonds.”

  “You are amazing!” Kristie said. She moved forward and stood on her toes and kissed Webb on the cheek.

  She stepped back and smiled at him.

  Even though it
was only on the cheek, it was officially his first kiss. Webb knew he’d remember it for a long, long time.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Webb and his grandfather believed they had found the perfect spot for a double ambush.

  First, it was a few hundred yards away from US Route 1, on the west side of Little Torch Key. This was important. The highway followed the route of the original Flagler railroad, which had been destroyed by the hurricane of 1935. It would seem believable that all those years earlier, when Jonathan Greene had been a boy involved in a rescue operation after the railroad was destroyed, he would not have gone too far when he took the satchel from the mobster and hid some diamonds.

  Second, the location was reachable by road. Webb had kayaked from the resort on the east end, south around the tip of the key and then back up the west side. By car, David had been able to drive to near the spot, taking with him mosquito netting and two folding chairs and bottles of drinking water.

  Third, the vegetation along the shoreline made it easy to watch the kayak and remain hidden under the mosquito netting. Webb had anchored the kayak and waded to shore.

  Fourth, the water was too shallow for a motorboat to swoop in. If someone was going to get close, they’d be restricted to kayak speed.

  All of this made it perfect for their ambush. Now they were expecting one in return.

  As for the other ambush, the kayak was just offshore, screened by overhanging branches of mangrove trees. Better yet, if someone was going to ambush the kayak, it was hidden from the highway and was easy for anyone to sneak up on. That made it a perfect ambush target.

  If Webb’s guess was right, that would happen sometime in the next hour or two.

  They’d added one more detail.

  A dummy.

  It had not been difficult to make a trip over to Big Pine Key and buy one from a secondhand clothing store. The dummy was about Webb’s size. After Webb had anchored the kayak, they had dressed it in the clothes Webb was wearing when he paddled away from the resort. Long-sleeved striped shirt, bright-red shorts and a distinctive orange ballcap. Webb was now in comfortable brown shorts and a brown T-shirt, the better to blend in with the mosquito netting.

  With the kayak nestled under the branches, someone would need to be within a few dozen feet of it to see that the “person” in it was a dummy. That would be close enough for David to film whoever came up to the kayak after tracking its location with GPS.

  Webb had a good guess who it might be but needed to prove it.

  He was settled in his chair, his grandfather in the other. David had the video camera in his lap. Webb had his iPhone ready to take video as backup. The mosquito netting was tented over them, supported by a couple of sticks that David had jammed into the sandy soil.

  Both of them stared at the kayak.

  Everything was ready. Now it was just a matter of waiting.

  “This is sneaky,” Webb said in a voice not much louder than a whisper.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.” It had been his grandfather’s idea to set up the dummy. No way, he’d sternly said, was he going to put Webb at risk in any way.

  “And if your hunch turns out to be correct,” David continued in an equally soft voice, “you get the same compliment for telling Kristie last night that you would be headed out for diamonds this morning. That was truly sneaky.”

  “Hey, Grandpa,” Webb said. “Your sneakiness is at a much higher level.”

  Yeah, Grandpa. Webb had said it. Felt good, letting some walls down.

  “Hmm,” David said. “Sneakiness? That almost sounds like an accusation.”

  Webb was glad his grandfather hadn’t made a big deal about Webb not calling him David anymore. One thing to finally call him Grandpa, but no need to have a discussion about feelings.

  “You could have made this trip to Florida by yourself,” Webb said. “Jonathan Greene asked for your help, not our help. It could have been a two- or three-day trip, and you would have had lots of time for a different trip somewhere else with me.”

  “That does sound like an accusation.”

  “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that you gave me a video from my dad on the same trip where you brought me to be with your friend as he died, right?”

  “Tell me this,” David said. “Do you understand more about death than you did before? How angry have you been at your father? And how angry are you now?”

  “Your questions answer my question,” Webb said. “Can I just say thank you and leave it at that?”

  His grandfather snorted. “I hate it when you gush. It’s so awkward.”

  Webb thought of how he’d bawled and bawled after watching the video from his dad. He wouldn’t be able to express to his grandfather how important that had been and how much it had changed things for Webb. Although his dad was gone, it was like he’d gotten him back.

  “Yeah,” Webb said. “Awkward. But really. Thanks, Grandpa. And when we get back, I’d love to see the other videos.”

  There was no chance for silence to settle back on them. Webb tapped his grandfather’s knee and pointed.

  A small upright pipe seemed to be drifting along the surface of the water toward them. As it got closer, it looked like it was dragging an alligator-like shadow.

  Then Webb understood.

  “Snorkeler,” Webb said to his grandfather.

  David had the video camera up and was catching the stealthy movement. Webb readied the camera on his iPhone.

  They kept watching as the snorkeler moved to within yards of the kayak. Webb felt short of air and realized he hadn’t breathed. He gently inhaled, keeping his hands steady as he kept the snorkeler in his viewfinder. He had his suspicions about the identity of the snorkeler, but so far all he could see was a man’s body, flowing smoothly underwater.

  Then, barely a matter of feet from the kayak, the man erupted out of the water and in one motion lifted a spear gun.

  Webb bit back a gasp.

  With a dull snap, the snorkeler fired the spear gun at the dummy in the kayak.

  The thud of impact was equally dull, but the impact was devastating. The spear hit the dummy in the left shoulder, spinning it in a half circle and flinging the ballcap from the dummy’s head onto a branch.

  For a moment the snorkeler froze. And in the next moment obviously comprehended that this had been a trap. He dropped the spear gun, sank back into the water and began to swim away, roiling the water with each powerful kick of his flippers.

  TWENTY-THREE

  “Did you get that?” Webb half-shouted to his grandfather. He couldn’t keep the excitement out of his voice as he leapt from the chair and cast away the mosquito netting.

  “Yes!”

  Webb brought up his own video coverage on the iPhone to make sure he hadn’t missed it. He clicked Play. It was there. The rising snorkeler. The raised spear gun. The spear hitting the dummy.

  What wasn’t there was a clear identification of the snorkeler. With water streaming from the snorkeler’s face mask, Webb couldn’t be sure it was who he suspected it might be.

  Webb was angry. More than angry. It was heated rage.

  If he had been in the kayak instead of that dummy, the spear would be deep inside his back, and he’d be lying in agony among the roots of the mangroves. Or dead.

  Webb threw his iPhone into the pocket of his shorts and scrambled forward toward the dummy.

  “Webby,” his grandfather called. “You need to stay.”

  Not a chance. Webb wasn’t going to ask for permission. Not with the chance that his grandfather would try to hold him back. This was a time for action, not debate.

  He let his rage give him extra fuel to burst through the mangroves to the dummy.

  It was on its side. The force of the arrow had completely pierced it. That only added to Webb’s rage, as again he realized that it could have been him.

  Webb took a step into the water. He grabbed the spear gun where it was settling into the sand a few feet beneath the clear s
urface.

  “No!” his grandfather yelled. “Just the kayak. That was our plan. Just the kayak.”

  Webb pretended not to hear. He was good at that.

  Webb flipped the dummy’s torso from the kayak, then yanked the spear from the dummy. He slammed the kayak back into the water.

  “Don’t!” his grandfather yelled. “He’s the monster. Not you.”

  Webb was already in the kayak. He placed the spear gun across his lap and positioned the spear along the length of the paddle. Now he could paddle and hold the spear at the same time.

  “Webby!” His grandfather had splashed into the water. “You don’t know what you’ll bring on yourself. Leave the spear gun!”

  Webb didn’t look back, didn’t acknowledge that he could hear his grandfather.

  The snorkeler was out in the bay and making the turn around the small point of land, heading back toward the bridge that carried the highway from key to key, the same bridge that had once held a railroad track and been torn apart by a hurricane.

  Webb paddled hard and efficiently, quickly gaining on the snorkeler. Now it was a race, but Webb knew he was going to win.

  He dug in with the paddle and gained on the snorkeler. But he needed time to do more than just win the race. He needed to be able to stop and load the spear gun.

  As he paddled, he glanced down again and again at the gun on his lap, trying to figure out how it worked.

  He could see that it was just a barrel with a trigger mechanism on the handle. The wooden barrel had a groove in it for the spear. At the other end of the barrel there was a thick rubber band in the shape of a horseshoe. It was obvious that all he needed to do was lay the spear into the groove, fit the pulling end of the rubber band over the back end of the spear and pull the band back far enough to lock the top of the trigger mechanism.

  He gave a few hard thrusts with the paddle and let the kayak’s momentum keep him going forward as he armed the spear gun. Then he set it across his lap and surged forward again.

  He caught up to the snorkeler about a hundred yards from the boat that was waiting.