Free Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen Page B

couldn’t restrain himself from asking, “Honey, which way does the Gulf Stream go?”
    “Is this a quiz? What are my choices?”
    “North or south,” Chaz said.
    “I got no idea, baby.”
    “Shit.”
    “Well, don’t get mad at me” Ricca said. “Aren’t you the one s’posed to be the big-shot scientist?”
    Which is exactly what Karl Rolvaag was thinking about Charles Perrone on the way to the Coast Guard station.
    Corbett Wheeler had moved to New Zealand at the age of twenty-two, believing that if he stayed in America he’d spend the rest of his youth battling to hide his inheritance from his gummy-fingered aunt.
    Corbett had begged his younger sister to flee the States with him, but Joey’s heart had been set on Florida. He had not been surprised when she married Benjamin Middenbock, but he was astounded when the stockbroker proved to be an upright, honest fellow with no overt interest in Joey’s money. It was only later, after Benny had been flattened by the sky diver, that Corbett learned his sister had never educated her adoring husband about the family fortune. Corbett then began to suspect that Joey could take care of herself.
    By that time he’d grown to love New Zealand, which was as vast and glorious as California, though without the motoring hordes. He had developed an improbable interest in sheep farming during a period when the East Friesian breed was being introduced from Sweden. East Friesians were the most prolific milking sheep in the world, and crossbreeding with New Zealand strains produced a bounty of chubby, fuzzy lambs. Corbett Wheeler had done very well for himself, though profit had never been a motive; he simply possessed an innocent fondness for the husbandry of sheep. Nothing gave him more joy than sitting on the porch of his farmhouse, toking on a joint and gazing out upon verdant slopes speckled in pewter with rams, ewes and lambs.
    One night, Joey had called excitedly to report that their late mother’s twin sister—the avaricious harpy who had raised them—was being sent to prison for authoring fraudulent insurance claims. Dottie Babcock had been working in Los Angeles as a professional accident victim, racking up two or three imaginary collisions per month in league with a crooked physician. For every alias used by Dottie Babcock, there was a corresponding crushed vertebra, shattered hip or detached retina. A newspaper had tracked her down and plastered on the front page a photograph of her Rollerblading with her Pila-tes instructor in Santa Monica. Authorities had been obliged to take action, and a judge slapped Dottie with eight to twelve years. Joey had delivered this bulletin in the hope that her brother might consider a return to the States, but Corbett had declined. From such a distance (and filtered through the leery eye of the BBC), American culture appeared increasingly manic and uninviting. Moreover, Corbett Wheeler couldn’t imagine a life without lambing.
    He had come back only once, for Benjamin Middenbock’s funeral, and had lasted barely forty-eight hours. The blinding vulgarity of South Florida was too much; total sensory overload. Corbett had flown home to Christchurch, resolved to hunker down and tend his flock. He spoke regularly to his sister, and in that way had learned of her growing doubts as to the faithfulness and rectitude of her second husband, Dr. Charles Perrone. Still, Joey had said nothing in those conversations that even hinted she feared for her safety.
    “He actually pushed you off the ship?” Corbett Wheeler’s hand was shaking as he gripped the telephone. “How? And why, for God’s sake?”
    Joey told him the story of what had happened that night. He managed to laugh when she got to the part about the bale of grass.
    “Who found you—the DEA?”
    “Not even close.”
    “But you’ve been to the police, right?”
    No reply.
    “Joey, what’s going on?”
    “It would be my word against Chaz’s,” she said, “and he’s a good