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Nick restarted the engine and maneuvered the Lenore up the inlet and around into the protection of the island.  Then he dropped the anchor.  He felt secure.  Even if Pete did decide to backtrack and look for them, he would probably look on the marina side of the island.  If he came this far around, Nick would be able to see him coming and would just start the engines and move on.

He went below and got Jo.  He told her that she had to come up on the bridge with him.  Nick had to be able to see what was going on.

“He’s out there, then?” asked Jo.

“Yes, he is,” said Nick, and he told her what had been going on for the last couple of hours.

“Okay,” said Jo, “so do you think he knows I’m here?”

“I think so,” said Nick.  “At least, he’s suspicious.”  He told her about the hair.

Nick pulled two bottles of water from the cooler and twisted off the caps.  He handed one to Jo and then sat down in the captain’s chair.  He swiveled it around so he was facing her.  “So tell me why, Jo?” he said.  “Why is he bothering to follow you?”

“I think because I know too much.  About Mickey…”  Jo’s voice trailed off.

Nick waited for her to continue.  When she didn’t, he asked the big question.  “Why do you think Mickey’s…um…you know?”

“Because I can’t get in touch with her…on the phone.”  Jo gave a sheepish grin.  “She lives on the phone.”

“But Pete did…get in touch with her, I mean,” said Nick.  “He talked to her a couple of times that I know of.  In the restaurant… and on the boat…”

“No, he didn’t.  I think he was faking it.”

Nick sighed.  “Okay, let’s start at the beginning.  Who is Pete?”

“His name is Peter Crofton,” said Jo. “At least, that’s what he says it is.”

Jo began to tell her story.  Nick listened carefully, searching for any discrepancies in the story that Pete told him.  There were many, but they were tiny ones, inconsequential.  Pete had told Nick that he’d been going out with Mickey for two years.  According to Jo, they’d only known each other for a year.

“Why would he say ‘two’ then?” asked Nick.  “Why would he tell such an obvious lie?”

“Because he lies all the time.  Even when he doesn’t have to.  And besides, it was nothing.  If you ever got asked, he’d just say you were mistaken.  If all of this hadn’t happened, you probably wouldn’t even have remembered exactly what he said.”

“So why bother to tell me all that shit at all?” asked Nick.

“Because,” said Jo, “you were a gift from heaven for him.  You would be there to back up his story.”

“What story?”

“That Mickey was alive and well and talking on the phone to him while he was in Calabash.  That gives him an alibi, you see.  If he got questioned, he could say that he’d met this guy who could prove his story.  He didn’t figure he’d see you after the first night.  Do you understand?”

“Not really,” said Nick.  “Start from the beginning.”

The beginning was when Mickey had met Peter Crofton.  It had been at a wedding, just as Pete had said.  Mickey had fallen hard for the smooth talking, dark-haired man.  He was almost ten years older than her, in his early thirties.

Mickey and Jo had an interesting relationship; they seemed to be better friends when Mickey had a man.  It didn’t seem to matter if Jo did or not.  Mickey without a man was a mass of insecurities that kept her friends busy constantly bolstering her self-esteem.  She changed completely when she had a man, but even in the beginning stages, she needed reassurance that he was a nice guy, that people liked him, that she wasn’t a loser.

Jo tried hard to keep track of the relationship and be supportive, but it was hard when she was away at school.  And after the euphoria of the first couple of months, which Jo had witnessed, having been home on summer vacation, the bloom seemed to be off the rose. 

“In the beginning,” said Jo, “I got details.  Boy, did I get details!!  More than I ever wanted.  But it was cool because it was obvious that Mickey was head over heels for the guy.  But then…just before Christmas…it stopped…all the gushing and lovey-dovey stuff.  I thought at the time that maybe the relationship had just…you know, matured or something…but looking back on it now, I wonder if that’s when she started to get suspicious.”

“Suspicious of what?” asked Nick.

“I don’t really know exactly, “ said Jo, “but it had something to do with an ex-girlfriend.  Mickey said there was something not right about it.”

“You mean like maybe he was still seeing her?” suggested Nick.

“No, it wasn’t that.  The girl had died.  Pete said she’d had leukemia, and he’d nursed her through her last days.  In the beginning, it got him gigantic sympathy points with Mickey, but then she started to suspect something about the story.  She said she was going to check into it.  It happened when he lived in Florida.”

“He lived in Florida?”  Nick thought it was funny that Pete had never mentioned that to him.  It seemed an obvious conversation starter.

“Yeah, then he moved to Fayetteville after he met Mickey.  He told her that he was a boat broker and that he could do that from anywhere and he wanted to be near her.  She thought it was very romantic.”

“A boat broker?”

“Yes, I told you .  He lies about everything.  When Mickey found out what he really did, she didn’t care.  Delivering boats is actually kind of a cool way to make a living.  But he lied to her, and that made her wonder what else he was lying about.”

Nick nodded.  Yeah, he knew about lies.  They were like potato chips.  You could never have just one.

“Then she sent me an email telling me to use her work address and not send anything to her home email.”

“How do you know that had anything to do with Pete?” asked Nick.

“I don’t,” admitted Jo.  “And let’s face it, I was away at school, living my own life.  I didn’t put a lot of thought into it.  Like, I wasn’t sitting around thinking, Omigod, Mickey’s in danger.”

“Then what changed your mind?” asked Nick.

“She did.  She told me she thought she was in danger…or at least, that she didn’t trust him.  That’s why I came on this trip…because she asked me to.”

Over the winter months, Jo admitted, she’d let her email correspondence with Mickey slide a little.  She’d been busy working on her Master’s thesis and also having an intense but disastrous short-term relationship with a guy at school.  When she did email Mickey and inquired after Pete, the response was always that he was ‘fine’.

“You have to understand Mickey,” explained Jo.  She paused, trying to get the words to sound right.  She didn’t want to be disrespectful to her friend…especially now.  “Okay, there are some girls out there who need to be with a guy to have their own existence validated.  Mickey was one of those.  She was really pretty and nicely built, very shapely.  She was bright and witty…”

Jo paused, fighting back tears.  She realized she was using the past tense to describe her friend.
Jo shook her head, trying to regain control.  Then she continued.

“…but if Mickey didn’t have a guy in her life, she didn’t count for anything, in her opinion.  And the times that I didn’t have a man in my life and I told her that I was perfectly happy that way, she didn’t believe me.  She thought I was just fooling myself.  She didn’t see how any woman could be single and happy.  I think it’s her mother’s fault or something.”

Nick pursed his lips.  “So you think that even if she was suspicious of Pete for some reason…”

Jo nodded.  “It would take a lot for her to break up with him.  I mean, come on, the guy’s good looking, well-built, very charming…sure can tell a good story…and he courted her…the whole roses and champagne thing…fancy dinners…picnics in the park…”

“Sounds good to me,” said Nick.

“Yeah, sounds good to me too,” retorted Jo, “but somewhere along the line, it stopped.  For whatever reason, he stopped doing those things.”

“He stopped, or she just stopped telling you about it?” asked Nick.

Jo looked at him, and her neck stiffened.

“No, no, hear me out,” said Nick.  “You said that Mickey thought you were unhappy if you didn’t have a man…even if you didn’t think that…did you have a man then?”

“No,” said Jo, slowly.

“Well, see, maybe that was it,” said Nick.  “Maybe she thought that she was giving you too many details.  What was it you said?  ‘More than you ever wanted.’  Maybe she just stopped telling you about it.”

Jo chewed the inside of her mouth thoughtfully.   “No, that wasn’t it,” she said, coming to a decision.  “Besides, there were all the lies.”

“What lies?”

“I told you, Pete’s a compulsive liar.  He always makes himself sound better than he is.  There was the whole ‘boat broker’ thing.  And he told her that he’d been to college, but he hadn’t.”

Nick remembered Pete saying that he’d met Mickey at a wedding where the groom was a friend of Pete’s from college.

“How do you know?” asked Nick.

“Know what?” said Jo.

“How do you know he didn’t go to college?”

Jo sighed.  “I told you.  Mickey started checking him out.  He did something to make her suspicious.  I don’t know what it was.  But before I left for Europe, we went out for lunch.  Mickey told me he’d planned this vacation, taking her on the boat, but she wasn’t sure about him any more.  She asked me if I’d go with her – that she trusted my instincts, that I’d know if he was for real or not.”

Jo held her hands up in surrender.  “I don’t know any more than that.  I wish I did.  I wish I’d given her the third degree that day and pulled every detail out of her.  But I didn’t.  I was excited about going to Europe, and I wanted to talk about my plans and…and…if I’d only known…”

Jo broke down in tears.  She put her face in her hands and sobbed.

Nick waited her out because he didn’t know what else to do.  He put the two empty plastic bottles in the cooler and opened the cold ones.

“Here,” he said and then, “I’ll get some tissues.”

Nick went down the ladder to the back deck, wondering if he even had tissues.  Maybe toilet paper would do the trick if that’s all he had.  He went down the stairs to the living area and looked around.  Jo had tidied up during her enforced sojourn in the cabin.  The coffee maker had been washed and the mugs washed and put away.

Nick didn’t see any tissues.  He went up the hall to his bedroom.  The bed was made, and all his clothes were folded neatly on the chair.  He smiled to himself.  He went back along the hall to the bathroom and pulled a long strip of toilet paper off the roll.  He wrapped it around his hand telling himself to remember to put tissues on a shopping list.

If only tissues were the biggest problem in my life right now, Nick said to himself.

He took a moment to reflect on Jo’s words.  He had no doubt that she believed what she was saying.  But if he wanted to play devil’s advocate, Nick thought he could counter each one of her arguments with…with what?  Nick was afraid to say it to Jo, but he thought he could counter them with reality.  She hadn’t said anything so far to make him think that Mickey had been harmed, that Pete was out to get Jo.  If Mickey were here, Nick was sure she’d tell Jo the same thing!

That was it!

Nick grabbed his cell phone from the counter and went back on deck.  No big deal, he thought, we’ll just call her up.  He’d been waiting for five days to meet Mickey.  It was time he did.