Night Moves (Doc Ford) - By RandyWayne White Page 0,28

truth!”

“If you say so,” I replied, then looked at my watch. “It’s getting late. Full day tomorrow.” I was thinking, I need some ice on this knee.

Still standing, the woman picked up her wine and took a first sip, her mind working at something. After several seconds, she said, “You can be an ass. Tomlinson said that, too.”

I wasn’t going to deny it, plus I like assertive women. Somehow she’d sensed this and was still trying to win me over. Why?

“What time do you leave?”

I replied, “For where?”

“Tomorrow. You’re flying to the Everglades in that damn seaplane again. Tomlinson told me all about it—those five Bermuda Triangle planes from World War Two. Then, next week, it’s some cleanup project in Boca Grande. More flying, more diving. It worries me. Couldn’t you two just play it safe for a while?”

I got to my feet and went to the fridge. “Why not relax for a few minutes, enjoy your wine. Then I’ll drive you home.”

“Especially diving that goddamn pass!” she said.

The cleanup project, she meant. Every winter, scuba volunteers sweep the bottom of Boca Grande Pass, a saltwater canyon that separates two barrier islands, Gasparilla and Cayo Costa. Annually, groups collect more than a ton of lead fishing weights, hooks, and miles of monofilament line, much of it residue from fishing tournaments. What I saw would be a useful follow-up to the project I’d done there.

I wrapped ice in a towel, asking, “You scuba dive?”

The woman shook her head, still preoccupied. “No . . . Robby’s brother and his father are into fishing. I went out with them twice in Boca Grande Pass, but never again. It’s a circus with all those boats flying around at full speed. Even on the charter boat they hired.”

Once again, the lady had earned my attention. I wondered if I should press it and ask if the Arturo males fished the big-money tournaments. Before I could decide, she returned to what was actually on her mind, insisting, “It is true, you know.”

She’d lost me again. “What?”

“I’ve never been unfaithful! Ten years living like a nun and not one single slip. That’s what’s so maddening about you, Ford. I’m the private type. I come here—which wasn’t easy to begin with—and I tell you something honestly. Your reaction? Like it’s no big deal! And that I’m lying to somehow hide my lustful ways. Please don’t expect me to feel guilty for finally having the nerve to—”

“I don’t,” I said. Then added, “That was unfair,” even though I wasn’t persuaded.

Cressa Arturo touched my shoulder with tentative fingers—a request for permission, it seemed—then softened her tone to share another secret. “You’re forgiven,” she said. “The truth is, I am worried . . . but mostly glad. If I’d only known what freedom feels like . . . so now I’m making up for lost time.”

Her meaning was obvious enough for all but the naive and slow-witted, which is why I had to bumble along, saying, “With Tomlinson, you mean.”

My answer was delivered via green eyes, an acetylene look that left no room for doubt. “Tomlinson and I are friends and nothing’s going to change that. The chemistry, though . . . let’s just say the pheromone wallop wasn’t the same as the one I just experienced on your porch when we shook hands.”

My second impression of the married mistress was now tied to my own internal struggle:

Take advantage of this woman, just to even the score with Tomlinson, and you are scum, Ford. Scum.

8

CRESSA’S VISIT WAS UNSETTLING, BUT I THOUGHT I could move it to the back of my mind at least while Dan, Tomlinson, and I resumed our search for the missing Avengers the next day. As it turned out, though, she wasn’t my only visitor that weekend—and this one set off alarm bells.

We weren’t leaving until later in the day, so Sunday morning I was attempting to capture on video something I’d never witnessed—a southern stingray giving birth—when a man called from the boardwalk gate, “Dr. Ford? You have a moment?”

No, I did not and said so. It didn’t deter him. He opened the gate and came toward the lab. “I heard through the grapevine that you and your partners have an interest in Flight 19. Maybe even found wreckage? I think we might be able to help each other.”

Another fast look: a genial smile on a big man in his twenties, the successful outdoorsy type, in slacks, waxed boating shoes, and a silver Rolex, but still hip