Page 23

A Deal’s a Deal

The two police officers stayed with the three wives until Nancy’s son Paul and his partner Estuardo arrived to drive them to the search command center that had been set up at the marina. As they climbed out of the backseat of Estuardo’s jeep, the night air thrummed with the chop-chop of helicopters panning spotlights across the dark waters. In the distance, the red, green, and white lights of the Coast Guard boats traversed the surface, in a grid pattern, they were told.

But no Hank. No Larry. No Andre.

The women huddled on the marina lawn and waited. When the news crews arrived, Paul suggested Pam may want to call Claire and Dylan so they wouldn’t find out about her father through social media. In all their planning, Pam hadn’t thought much about that call. But she stumbled through it, and her daughter and her husband were coming from New Zealand.

As the sun peeked over the horizon and then climbed higher in the sky, curious bystanders sipped their coffees on the lawn and watched the boats come and go.

“Maybe they jumped off and swam away before the boat blew up,”

Pam overheard someone say.

Search parties combed the shoreline. Appeals were broadcast. Nothing.

By noon, divers retrieved some pieces of the wreckage that had sunk, but nothing larger than a steering wheel remained from the explosion that was seen and heard miles away. Officials requested their husbands’ dental records.

The initial shock wore off, and Pam was flooded with emotions. Grief for the loss of her husband. Fear she was going to be charged with his murder. Anger he’d put her in this position in the first place. Pam wasn’t sure she was rational. She thought it was a good sign that she was rational enough to question if she was, in fact, rational. But mostly she felt numb.

Days earlier, she, Nancy, and Shalisa had sat at the kitchen table and reviewed how they should react when the authorities knocked—but none of that happened. After the police officers delivered the news, the women all selected door number one, and remained stunned.

As the hours passed, Paul and Estuardo set up three folding camp chairs under the shaded canopy of a towering oak and waited off to the side. Pam moved toward the chairs, and she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. She turned in time to see Estuardo open his arms and Paul step into their comforting cocoon. They stood, wrapped together. How could Larry deny his son that care? That was all any parent wanted for their child: for them to be loved. Pam remembered how Hank’s arms around her used to salve her soul, and she wished with all her heart she could step into them again. And now she never would.

She shook off that regret, sat down, and turned her eyes to the water. Sitting in a row with Nancy and Shalisa, Pam was reminded of the three monkeys: see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil. Pam was mostly worried about the speaking monkey.

“Just don’t say anything,”

Pam said in a low voice to Shalisa, and Nancy beyond her.

“About what?”

Shalisa asked.

Pam leaned forward so she could make eye contact. “About hiring a hitman to kill our husbands. That’s what.”

She sat back.

“I can’t believe you’re thinking about that right now,”

Nancy said.

Pam leaned forward again. “Well, pardon me for fast-forwarding through the stages of grief to get to the one that doesn’t want us to spend the rest of our lives in jail. When the police rang Shalisa’s doorbell, I thought they were arresting us. I thought they knew. We have to be sure we don’t say anything. About anything.”

Nancy and Shalisa turned their eyes back to the water and nodded.

Nancy said, “You know, if this had happened five hours earlier, I would have been happy.”

“You mean before we went out on the boat?”

Shalisa asked.

Nancy nodded. “Five frickin’ hours away from wanting something so badly I could taste it, to not wanting it and hating that it happened.”

Shalisa grasped Pam’s and Nancy’s hands on either side of her and said, “To tell you the truth, I’m sorry for you guys. But I don’t really mind that it happened to Andre.”

Pam snatched her hand away and turned to face Shalisa. She took a quick look around to be sure they weren’t overheard, then hissed, “How can you say that? We changed our minds.”

Shalisa kept her eyes on the water. “You two changed your minds. I was just being agreeable. I decided I was going to leave Andre anyway.”

She looked at Pam. “You said you’d all help me. I agreed to let him live, not to stay with him.” Her eyes returned to the water. “I’ve given too much of myself to that man. He wasn’t getting any more. Anyway, my mom always said, things happen for a reason. And this way, we still get the insurance money.”

Pam gasped and glanced at Nancy, whose jaw dropped.

Shalisa looked from one to the other and sighed. “Oh, all right. Maybe I am sorry for Andre. I would have liked it if he’d lived, but we can’t do anything about it now. And you have to admit—we changed our minds, but it happened anyway. Maybe the universe is telling us something.”

She shrugged. “Maybe they were meant to die.”

Pam sat back. Her stomach was roiling up and down like the boats on the open water. She took a deep breath. It didn’t matter what Shalisa thought. That was between her and Andre. But Hank was gone, and it was because of her.

Or was it?

Another search vessel pulled away from the dock.

Pam said, “Maybe it wasn’t us.”

Nancy and Shalisa leaned forward to see her face, but Pam kept her eyes on the boat as it headed out the channel, beginning to bob a bit as it left the calm of the harbor for the mild chop of the sea.

“What do you mean, ‘maybe it wasn’t us’?”

asked Nancy.

Pam took a deep breath, looked around to be sure no one had come within earshot, and leaned forward to huddle, her voice still low. “I mean, don’t you remember? Hank said there might be a gas leak. The last thing he talked about was sticking around to take a look at that leak. And I smelled gas when we were on the boat. Didn’t you?”

Shalisa nodded, but Nancy shrugged. “I’m not sure. I don’t remember.”

Pam continued, “Well, Hank said he was going to check it out. If it was nothing, they were going to head back out for a nightcap, and a cigar.”

She nodded toward the command center. “I heard one of the inspectors saying Hank filled up just before he went out again. Maybe this wasn’t us. Maybe this was an accident.”

“Do you think Hector will charge us the rest of his fee?”

Nancy asked.

Shalisa’s head snapped to her. “That’s what you’re worried about? Wondering if we still have to pay full price?”

Nancy shrugged. “It’s a legit question.”

Pam said, “If Hector didn’t do it, how would we ever know? If anything, we should refuse to pay him because he screwed up and did it two days early.”

“You think he’s worried we won’t give him a five-star rating on Yelp?”

Shalisa said.

Pam insisted, “I specifically said Sunday. A deal’s a deal.”

She sat back in the camp chair. “I just think it’s something to think about. Maybe this wasn’t Hector’s handiwork. Maybe we’re not responsible.”

Nancy said, “I wish that made me feel better.”

Hours later, Pam’s head was bobbing as she dozed in her chair. A horn honked in the parking lot, and startled, Pam turned toward the blare.

A smile broke out across her face when she saw Marlene’s teased blond hairdo pop out of Estuardo’s jeep.

Marlene juggled a tray of coffees and a box of donuts. The women rose to greet her, and as Marlene closed the gap between them, she sped up and tossed aside the coffees and snacks, leaving a trail of debris in her wake.

With mascara tears streaming tracks down her cheeks, she ran toward her friends as if pulled by a magnetic force and fell into their arms.

Black tears soaked into the shoulders of Pam’s sweatshirt, but Pam didn’t cry. Finally, as the others composed themselves, Estuardo produced another chair and Marlene joined them, their fourth monkey.

Pam strained to recall what that monkey represented, then the penny dropped. Do no evil. Well, Marlene was the only one of them who could sit in that chair.

Or maybe not. Maybe this had been an accident. Maybe the explosion was a crazy coincidence.

Finally settled, sipping fresh coffees that Pam’s new favorite couple, Paul and Estuardo, had fetched for them, Marlene said, “You’ll never guess who I saw at the coffee shop.”

After a moment Shalisa said, “Who did you see at the coffee shop, Marlene?”

“Dave’s barber.”

Pam’s arm jerked, and a dark patch of coffee spread across her light khakis. She straightened and held her breath, bracing for Marlene’s next words.

“I don’t remember his name. Victor or something. Whoa. Good-looking man. Very mysterious. Captivating eyes. Nice shoulders. Must be from working with his arms so much.”

Marlene inched forward in her chair and skewed toward them. “Anyway, he wanted me to pass on a message . . . What was it he said? Oh yeah. He’s praying for good news. And to let him know if he could do anything else.”

A chill ran down Pam’s spine. “He said that? He said that, exactly?”

“What?”

Marlene asked.

“He said anything else? Not just if he could do anything?”

Pam prodded.

“Huh. I guess so. I’m just repeating the message. I didn’t exactly transcribe it.”

Pam sat back in her chair and, despite the raging heat, shivered.