Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen Read Free Book Online

grinding hollowness that sets in until someone makes a move.
    “But what Chaz did out there,” she went on, pointing at the water, “it just hacks me off royally. You’ve got no idea.”
    Yeah, I do, Stranahan thought. The question was hanging there, so he went ahead and asked: “Then what’s making you cry?”
    “Oh, I suppose it’s realizing that my whole life adds up to this one moment and this one place and this one”—she swept an arm angrily— “stinking, lousy situation. No offense, Mick, but half-blind on an island with some stranger isn’t really where I expected to be at this point in time. This isn’t the shape I expected to find myself in at age thirty whatever.”
    “Listen, you’re going to be okay.”
    “Oh right. After my fucking husband, pardon my French, threw me fucking overboard on our fucking anniversary cruise! How exactly does a woman put something like that behind her, huh? How does one ‘get past’ that sort of personal setback?”
    Stranahan said, “Seeing him hauled off in handcuffs might help the healing. Why don’t you let me call the police?”
    Joey shook her head so vehemently that he thought the towel might fly off. “The trial, Mick, it’s going to be a nightmare—my word against his. He’ll probably say I got trashed and fell over the rail. That’s what he’s already told the Coast Guard, I’m sure. Four years ago I got a dumb DUI up in Daytona, which Chaz’s lawyers will dig up in two seconds flat. ‘Kindly get up on the witness stand, Mrs. Perrone, and tell the court how your tennis-pro boyfriend dumped you for a swimsuit model, so you drank a whole bottle of cabernet and parked your car in the middle of A1A and went to sleep—’ ” “Okay, calm down.”
    “But I’m right, aren’t I? My word against his.” Stranahan allowed that things could get ugly in court. “It’s none of my business, Joey, but is there money involved? Would Chaz have gotten rich if you’d died?” “Nope.”
    “Not even life insurance?”
    “None that I know of,” Joey said. “Now you see why I’m so … I don’t know, dazed. Him trying to kill me doesn’t make sense. He wanted a divorce, all he had to do was say so.”
    She asked Stranahan what he would do in her place. “Take off the wedding ring, for starters,” he said. Joey sheepishly tugged the platinum band off her finger and palmed it. “Then what?”
    “I’d go straight to the cops,” Stranahan said, wondering what other options she might be contemplating. He decided not to ask, as a breeze kicked up and seemed to carry away Joey’s anger.
    “You’re smiling. That’s good,” he said.
    “Because it’s wet and it tickles.”
    “What tickles?”
    “Mick, please tell me it’s the dog.”
    Stranahan peeked under the table. “Strom, you’re a very bad boy,” he said, reaching for the Doberman’s collar.
    “Guess he likes me,” Joey said with an acid chuckle. “But they all act that way, at first.”
    Detective Karl Rolvaag belonged in the Midwest. This he knew in his heart, and he was reminded of it every day when he went to work.
    Practically anywhere in the upper Midwest would have been fine; Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota or even the Dakotas. There the crimes were typically forthright and obvious, ignited by common greed, lust or alcohol. Florida was more complicated and extreme, and nothing could be assumed. Every scheming shitwad in America turned up here sooner or later, such were the opportunities for predation.
    “I don’t care much for Mr. Perrone,” Rolvaag remarked to his captain.
    “Already?”
    The captain’s name was Gallo. He was fond of Rolvaag because Rolvaag made him look good by closing many difficult cases, though socially the detective wasn’t exactly a barrel of laughs.
    “You think he pushed her?” Gallo asked. “Not like we could ever prove it if he did.”
    Rolvaag shrugged. “I just don’t care for him is all.”
    They were having coffee at a truck-stop diner on