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Okay, Pete said to himself, let’s pretend I’m a cop in Fayetteville.  I got a body, dead for awhile.  I got a suspect, the boyfriend.  Except the boyfriend wasn’t around when the girl was killed.  Or was he? 

Pete considered the ‘proof’ he had to exonerate himself.  He had a bunch of witnesses to testify that Pete had not seemed nervous or scared that first day.  The marina guy, the grocery guy, the waiter, the 7-11 guys, Nick and Jo.  Of course, the last two wouldn’t be testifying to anything.

Pete went over his story in his head.  He had received a phone call from Mickey the night before they left.  She had misplaced her wallet with all her I.D.  Pete had called her and left her a message saying ‘don’t worry about it, it’s probably at the restaurant, we’ll get it on the way out the next day’.

The next day, however, he got another message, saying that Mickey had some unfinished work at the office and that she would drive down to the boat when she was done, that he should pick up Jo and go get everything set up.  He answered that one, leaving another message reflecting her words.

“Don’t you ever answer your phone, Mr. Crofton?”  Pete could hear the detective’s words.

I was in the shower. 

No wait, that was too abrupt, made it seem like he’d been planning the answer.  Better just to stare at the guy like you don’t know what he’s talking about. 

“Well, you and Ms. Lassiter seemed to play a lot of phone tag…all these messages but you never actually talk.”

What would work best?  A shrug.  It happens to everyone.  No big deal.

Yeah, that was it.  Don’t make a big deal of it.  And it does happen to everyone, right?  ‘Cause the next person that it happened to was Jo, who left the message while they were on the road. 

But don’t bring that up.  If they’ve ‘found’ the cell phone at this point, let them bring that up.  And don’t insist that you finally got to speak to her.  Make them ask.

“So, did you ever get to speak to Ms. Lassiter?”

Pete figured the first thing he had to find out was when Mickey’s body had been found.  He figured it couldn’t have been the first day.  Even without I.D., it shouldn’t take a week to find out who she was.  And, as of this morning, her mother had not known she was missing.  So Pete would be safe in saying that she had called him while they were at the restaurant in Calabash.  Nick and Jo wouldn’t be witnesses any longer, but the waiter might remember if his memory was jogged.  Pete wouldn’t suggest it, of course.  Let the cops figure it out.  He would simply say that she had called him and told him that she would meet him in Charleston.

Now, wait a minute, do I even have to say that?  That’s the story I told Nick and Jo, but if they’re not around…

Pete watched Jo walk back from the shower.  She stopped at the Lenore and looked at the suitcase.  Then she looked over at the Sunset Voyager.  Pete didn’t think she could see him, but he eased back into the shadow anyway.  Jo picked up the suitcase and boarded the Lenore.

Okay, think, said Pete, going back to his reflections.  He’d taken a chance the next night, placing one more call on Mickey’s cell phone.  So he had that phone call to explain.  Okay, so the first night she says she’ll meet him in Charleston, and the second night she dumps him. 

Yeah, that squares with the fact that Mickey’s boss would say that she wasn’t working, that she was supposedly gone on vacation with Pete.  Let it be Mickey who lied, not Pete.

But what about all the people who would testify that Mickey would never do something like that, that she and Pete were deliriously happy, Pete was going to propose on the boat trip…

No, back that up…wait a minute…

Pete thought hard.  Had he told anyone but Nick that he was planning on proposing?  No…he didn’t think so.  Okay, then, he wasn’t planning on proposing.  He was planning on…healing… yeah, that was it.  He thought Mickey was getting a little distant, and he thought that this trip together, just the two of them, would help fix things.

Pete went over it again in his head.  Then he nodded, satisfied that it made sense.  And if, by some chance, Mickey had mentioned anything to anyone else, any suspicions or dissatisfaction about Pete, then it would reinforce his tale of woe.

Good, good.  So he had to play the ‘confused but still hanging in there’ boyfriend.  He had to make sure they couldn’t ratchet that up to ‘angry and looking for revenge’.

After the second night, it didn’t matter.  He hadn’t received any more communications from Mickey.  He hadn’t left any messages either. 

“Why not, Mr. Crofton?  Didn’t you want her back?”

Pete thought about his answer.  Finally, he decided on, “I didn’t want to beg her over the phone.  I wanted to get the boat to Florida and go home and try face-to-face.”

“Did Ms. Miles agree with you?”

This was tricky ground.  Of course, he could say whatever he liked about Jo.  But what would that be? 

“Um…well…Jo was upset when she found out Mickey wasn’t coming, but…I mean, she…she didn’t seem all that surprised, so maybe she knew something I didn’t…and she wasn’t all that worried…she never said anything to me…maybe she did to that guy…that Nick Carter that she went off with…”

Yeah, that was good.  Make Jo seem so unworried about Mickey that she doesn’t even call her, just takes off to have an affair with the guy that Mickey has been in love with for years.  Yeah, that was good.  It made both women look a little unstable.

And speaking of Mr. Carter, Pete could see him walking down the dock to the Lenore.  Okay, show time.  Pete climbed to the bridge after Nick disappeared onto the boat.  He checked that he had all his charts and the cooler.  He opened the map compartment and touched the gun.  Now he just had to wait it out.  He couldn’t leave the bridge until he saw what they would do.

He looked around the harbor.  This was such a pretty place.  He might come back here some day.  Some day when he had his own boat.  Pete spent fifteen minutes imagining the boat he was going to buy once he got out of his present situation.  Then he came back to reality.  There was still no action on the Lenore.  Pete wondered if they were fucking again.  He laughed and picked up his cell phone and called Nick’s number.  If they were, then they were about to experience coitus interruptus.

Pete hung up the phone after a few seconds of conversation.  He smiled to himself.  He didn’t think he’d interrupted anything intimate.  So, that meant he had to be even more vigilant.  And he was right to be so because it wasn’t long before he saw Nick and Jo come up from below and start untying the lines.  Pete went below and hid while he watched the other boat depart.  He waited until they were just out of sight, and then he started the engines.  He followed them slowly, determined not to lose them this time.

Pete looked at his watch.  Nick had said he hadn’t heard from Bernie.  Pete knew Nick wouldn’t want to go out of phone range so he was probably just heading out slowly.  Pete would do the same.

Pete peered out carefully.  There was no sunshine.  The day was overcast and grey.  There was even a bit of fog.  That was good, and that was bad.  It would make it harder to keep an eye on the Lenore.  But it would also make it harder for Nick to spot the Sunset Voyager.

Pete followed the other boat until he saw it stop.  Then he pulled his boat over and moored it in the shelter of an island.  He lowered his dinghy from the back of the boat into the water and paddled it to the island.  He pulled it up on shore and crept through the trees until he could see the Lenore.  Then he crouched down and waited.

While he sat there, hoping that it didn’t start to rain, Pete went over his story in his head one more time until he was sure he had all the details straight.  He was the innocent boyfriend who wasn’t even around when the terrible accident had taken place.  He was miles away on a boat not acting nervous or scared.  He had lots of witnesses, including the tragic couple Nick and Jo who were so unconcerned that they’d gone off together. 

Of course, Pete told himself, he would only dole out the story as he was asked for it.  He’d learned that in his many interviews with Randy Atkins, the cop from Florida.  Don’t roll out the whole story at once.  Let them get it out of you detail by detail.  Never tell them something they don’t already know if you can help it.

Pete knew he had to find out what they knew, and he knew he could get it from Nick.  Then he just had to tailor the story and find some way to plant the phone.

Randy Atkins. 

Thoughts of the detective led Pete to thoughts of George Hannaford.  Pete knew that Mickey had found out about Margie.  He wondered if the Fayetteville police would too.  If they had, Pete knew he would be the number one suspect and would be put under a microscope.  He might even be arrested and brought to trial.  But it wouldn’t matter, he knew.  If they couldn’t pinpoint the time of death to the night before he left, he was in the clear.  There was definite reasonable doubt.  He had all his witnesses to show his whereabouts and his demeanor.

Witnesses…

Something scratched at the back of Pete’s brain.  Witnesses…

As he tried to grasp the thought, he noticed movement on the Lenore.  Nick was standing on the back deck talking into a cell phone.  He had his arm around Jo, and they were swaying back and forth.  It didn’t look like good news.

Pete raced back to the dinghy and paddled quickly back to the Sunset Voyager.  He tied the dinghy to the back of the boat, not bothering to winch it up.  He didn’t have time and he figured that they might not even notice that it was there.  And if they did, who cared.

Pete climbed to the bridge and started the engine.  He moved the boat out into the channel and as he did, he suddenly realized that he’d fucked everything up completely. 

Witnesses! 

Pete had only concerned himself with witnesses after the event.  He forgot about the witnesses before.  He forgot about the waiters and the other patrons in the restaurant where he and Mickey had had dinner.  And what about her clothes?  She would be wearing the same clothes.  Damn!  It wasn’t going to take a medical examiner to determine the time of death.  It was going to be obvious that she died in that stairwell the night of the dinner.

Panic rose up and washed over Pete.  He tried to push it back down as he rounded the bend in the waterway and came up on the Lenore. 

Go over it again, he told himself.  Okay, Mickey left something at the restaurant and went back for it.  She fell down the stairs and died.

Now, work with that. 

They had dinner, and Mickey told him that she had to work the next day.  They went back to her apartment and got her luggage.  And took it to his place.  Then she remembered that she had forgotten to get something from the restaurant and said she’d get it on the way home.

Pete reflected on that scenario.  Then he reworked it.

They had taken his car to the restaurant.  Yeah, that was better.  They’d taken his car.  No one saw them.  He was pretty sure of that.  Okay, so they ate dinner, and Mickey told him that she had to work the next day.  They went to her apartment and got her luggage.  Pete put it in his car and said goodbye.  Then she phoned him from her cell phone...to his land line.  He would have proof of that on his phone records.  She told him that she’d left something at the restaurant and she was going to go back for it.  He told her not to bother, they could get it in the morning.

No!  That wouldn’t work!  Not if he already had the luggage. 

Think!!

Pete could feel himself sweating.  He was close to the Lenore.  He could see that Jo was crying.  Okay, this was it, time for his game face.  He’d figure out the scenario later.  But he knew one thing for sure.

The cell phone had to go. 

What he had thought was going to provide him with the perfect alibi could now be used to hang him.  No, the cell phone had to go.