Bad Monkey

The problem was she had limited grieving experience to draw from. On numerous occasions she sensed crying was expected of her, yet the only way to make it happen was by remembering a pet turtle she’d owned when she was nine. Flash was the turtle’s name; he was the size of a silver dollar. One day he trundled out of the house and her mother backed over him with the Delta 88. Eve was bereft for a week. She accused her mom of squashing Flash on purpose, the so-called accident occurring soon after a tense family conversation about bacteria on pet-store reptiles. A burial was held under a lime tree in the backyard, Eve bearing the compressed remains of her companion upon a Teflon spatula.

Years later, at Nick’s funeral, all the time Eve stood sobbing by the coffin she was actually thinking of poor little Flash, whom her parents had coldly refused to replace. Every tear she shed that day was for her lost turtle, not for her husband.

Her most important task, besides mourning, was to persuade a Miami judge to declare Nicky dead. It should have been a routine order, the severed arm being more than ample evidence of his tragic demise. The hurdle was Nick’s daughter, who’d been spreading a vicious whisper that Eve had murdered him and chopped off his left arm to fit a bogus story about a boating accident.

Hiring a lawyer to threaten Caitlin Cox with a slander suit might have been sound strategy for an innocent widow, a woman with nothing to hide. For Eve Stripling, the wiser course was to reach out with a peace offering—or a piece offering, as it happened. From past experience she knew Caitlin’s hostility could be dissolved by a gush of money. At first Eve couldn’t bring herself to make the phone call, but soon it became clear there was no other choice. Her nightmare scenario was Caitlin showing up at the court hearing, telling the judge that her rotten stepmother had bumped off her beloved father.

Whom she hadn’t seen in years because she was a selfish, pouty, greedy—

Deep breath, Eve had said to herself before dialing Caitlin’s number.

Lunch is the way to go, someplace quiet where we can talk business, neither of us having to pretend we can stand the sight of the other.

Suck it up, Eve told herself, you’re the only one who can pull this off.

And she did.

They’d met at a small Brazilian restaurant in the Design District. Caitlin came right out and asked her if she’d killed Nick, or paid to have him killed. Eve swallowed hard, bowed her head and refocused her thoughts on Flash, her precious childhood buddy, stuck like a patty of brown chewing gum to the left rear tire of her mother’s Oldsmobile. It worked like magic—Eve quickly began to cry, blubbering that she’d loved Nick Stripling more than anyone, anything in the world. He was her world!

Caitlin was taken aback. “Then what about that boyfriend of yours in the Bahamas?”

At which point Eve could feel the color rush from her tear-streaked cheeks. Somehow she managed to keep it together, cooking up a story about an elderly uncle that seemed to temporarily appease Caitlin. Eve then steered the conversation to the less precarious topic of money, specifically the generous benefits of Nick’s life insurance policy, half of which he’d wanted his only daughter to have despite their heartbreaking estrangement.

In addition, Eve went on—Caitlin practically drooling in suspense—there was an offshore bank account that Nick Stripling had opened for the benefit of future grandchildren.

Caitlin, suddenly sentimental: “Simon and I are trying to get pregnant!”

So the deal got done. Eve ordered a bottle of white wine, which Caitlin depleted single-handedly before the food arrived.

“I didn’t kill your dad,” Eve said solemnly, reaching across to touch Caitlin’s hand. “He died when his boat sank, just like they said.”

“I know, shit, I know.” Caitlin had achieved that level of alcohol-induced volubility where no thought goes unspoken, no secret goes unshared.

And that had been when Eve Stripling learned her stepdaughter had been talking to Andrew Yancy.

Twelve

After Neville’s home on Green Beach was demolished, he went to stay in Rocky Town, where he alternated sleepovers with his girlfriends. The backhoe Neville had attempted to sabotage was running fine again, joined by a bulldozer that had arrived on a barge from a bankrupt development on Chub Cay.

To watch over the Curly Tail Lane construction site, the rich American called Christopher recruited some pinheaded brute from Nassau. The fellow had a high crinkled forehead and small malformed ears that looked like fetal fruit bats. People said he used to work at Fox Hill prison but got fired for brutalizing inmates with a marlin billy. Christopher put a rusty, camper-style trailer on the property, and that’s where the new man slept. Occasionally Neville spotted him in town, eating at the conch shack, but he never lingered.