Flush - Carl Hiaasen [7]
“That’s not what I said, Noah. It is a big deal.” She scraped the chopped onion bits into a bowl, which she covered with plastic wrap and placed in the refrigerator. Later, when she was alone in the kitchen, she would empty the whole thing into the garbage.
“I’m at the end of my rope with your father,” she said.
“Mom, everything’s going to work out.”
“You children need to have food on the table! The mortgage needs to be paid!” she went on angrily. “Meanwhile he’s sitting in jail, talking about fighting for his principles. He wants to be a martyr, Noah, that’s fine—but not at the expense of this family. I won’t stand for it!”
“Mom, I know it’s a rough time—” I said, but she cut me off with a wave of her hand.
“Go clean up your room,” she said. “Please.”
Abbey was waiting at the top of the stairs. She put a finger to her lips and led me down the hall to my parents’ bedroom. She cracked open the door and pointed.
There, lying open on the bed, was my mother’s suitcase. Not her vacation suitcase, either, but the big plaid one.
“Uh-oh,” I said in a whisper.
Abbey nodded gravely. “She’s serious this time, Noah. We’ve got to do something.”
THREE
By the time they let me visit my father again, the Coral Queen had been pumped dry, mopped clean, and refitted with new gambling equipment. I was hoping Dad wouldn’t ask about it, but he did.
“No way!” he exclaimed when I told him that Dusty Muleman was back in action.
“They must’ve had twenty guys working on that boat,” I said.
My father was crushed. “I should’ve taken it out and sunk it in Hawk’s Channel,” he muttered, “or the Gulf Stream.”
Luckily we were alone in the interview room. I assumed that my father had convinced the big jowly deputy—and probably everyone else at the jail—that he was harmless and fairly normal. He was good at that.
“Mom heard you might get transferred to the stockade in Key West,” I said.
“Not anymore,” Dad reported in a confidential tone. “The lieutenant here likes me. I’m teaching him how to play chess.”
“You play chess?”
“Shhhh,” my father said. “He thinks I do. Hey, how’s Abbey?”
“All right,” I said.
“Tell her to hang in there, Noah.”
“She says you need professional help.”
Dad sat back and chortled. “That’s our girl. Did you go see Lice Peeking?”
I described my visit to the trailer park. My father wasn’t surprised that Lice turned down the old truck and wanted money in exchange for providing evidence against Dusty Muleman.
“Dad, how are we going to pay him when …”
“When we’re flat broke? Excellent question,” my father said. “See if Lice will take my bonefish skiff. It’s worth ten or twelve grand at least.”
Secretly I’d been hoping that one day Dad would give me that boat. It was an original Hell’s Bay with a sixty-horse Merc, a really sweet ride. Sometimes, late in the afternoon, my father would take me and Abbey out fishing. Even if the snappers weren’t biting, we’d stay until sunset, hoping to see the green flash on the horizon. The flash was kind of a legend in the Keys—some people believed in it and some didn’t. Dad claimed that he’d actually witnessed it once, on a cruise to Fort Jefferson. For our fishing expeditions either Abbey or I always brought a camera, just in case. We had a stack of pretty sunset pictures, but no green flash.
“You sure you want to give away the skiff?” I asked.
“What the heck, it’s the best we can do,” Dad said.
“I guess so.” I tried not to sound too bummed.
“Hey, did you meet the famous Shelly?”
“Yeah. She’s kind of scary,” I said. “Lice said he stole her from Dusty—what did he mean exactly?”
I figured it was one of those I’ll-explain-it-when-you’re-older questions that my dad would brush off, but he didn’t.
“Shelly was Dusty’s second or third wife, after Jasper Jr.’s mother,” he said. Then he paused. “Actually, maybe they were only engaged to be married. Anyway, one day she got fed up with Dusty and moved in with Lice.”
I wondered how miserable life with the Mulemans must have been to make Lice Peeking look like a prize.
“Dad, when’re you coming home?” I