Night Moves (Doc Ford) - By RandyWayne White Page 0,26
landed on top of Jeth, the fishing guide. Or possibly Jeth, a big, strong guy, had tried to catch me, I didn’t know. Afterward, he was dazed and stuttering so badly I had yet to get the story straight. But I didn’t want to go into it.
“You mentioned something about our mutual friend being in trouble,” I said, placing her wine within reach, then sitting at the little galley table. She obviously knew about the plane, so I asked, “You were with him last week when he touched a wire and got shocked?” I had already seen where someone had left the hose on near the breaker switch downstairs. Because my power was off when Tomlinson had arrived, he’d been standing barefoot in water when he’d tried to fix the problem.
Cressa nodded. “Scary, but it was an accident—or so I thought at the time.”
“So that’s it. You’re worried someone’s trying to kill him, right? He told me the same thing. Look”—I put my glass down and tried to make my point—“you two are romantically involved. You care about him, maybe think you’re in love with him. Fine. But you haven’t known the guy long and he goes through these periods of—I don’t want to call it paranoia, exactly, but—”
“I’m not in love,” the woman cut in. “Neither of us are in love.” She was arranging first-aid items on the table as if preparing for heart surgery, but stopped long enough to joke. “Besides, I find the smart dangerous types more interesting. They’re damn rare these days.” Then laughed as if she wasn’t testing me.
I countered, “Maybe Tomlinson’s not as safe as he appears—we all have a darker side.”
Her expression read You’ve got to be kidding! “That dear, sweet man? I’ve only known him a few weeks, but that’s impossible. He’s too . . . free, too open to be dangerous. And so insightful. I didn’t believe him at first when he told me he’s an ordained Zen Buddhist teacher, but it’s true, isn’t it?”
“You really don’t need to do this,” I said, meaning clean my scratch wounds with the Betadine she was dripping onto a gauze pad, probably counting each drop.
Cressa made a shushing sound and continued. “He says people call him the guru sometimes.”
Among other things, I thought, but said, “Yeah. It seems to fit him.”
“Guru,” the woman said again, musing. “Must be true because he’s opened my mind to a lot of things. I was ready for a change, don’t get me wrong. But if I hadn’t’ve met him, well . . . let’s just say I’m way ahead of schedule when it comes to getting to where I want to go. He reads to me—he’s a beautiful writer. We meditate, we laugh, and he nails me on some of the totally bullshit lies I try to tell myself. Tomlinson’s more of a teacher . . . but fun, with absolutely zero inhibitions—I can’t tell you how refreshing that is for someone like me. And I don’t want to see him get hurt. Or you either.”
She attempted eye contact, adding, “It makes you uncomfortable, doesn’t it? Talking about yourself.”
No, she was wrong. Even so, I allowed myself to be distracted by the rumble of a boat idling into the marina basin—Captain Alex returning from a dinner trip to Useppa Island or ’Tween Waters. Just in time, though, I noticed Cressa reaching for the bandage on my arm and slapped a hand over it before she saw the teeth marks beneath.
“Good god!” she said, giving me a look. Surprise, a hint of fear, then approval—an odd mix.
“I just changed it,” I explained. “Barnacle scrapes take awhile. It’ll be fine in another week.”
The woman took an uneasy step back and trashed the gauze pad as if I’d soiled it, then selected another. I watched her fold the pad into a perfect square, then dab Betadine on it, a precise circle of red. “I think my husband knows,” she said, finally getting to it. “I think he has someone watching me.”
I waited, letting her explain in her own way.
“His name is Robert—Robby. I was fond of him once, but ten years of marriage has turned our age difference into light-years. The younger man!” She laughed, an older woman amused by her own naivety. “I keep expecting him to grow up, but it’s not going to happen. He refuses to divorce. Now it’s getting ugly—only I didn’t know it was ugly until I started putting things together.”