The Deep Blue Alibi by Paul Levine

Junior walked out. Wearing his Speedos. Barefoot and bare-chested, as usual. He said something to Robinson and Stubbs, then climbed the ladder to the fly bridge, graceful as a high diver scooting up the ten-meter board. Once he got to the control panel, he hit some switches.
    “Checking the NOAA weather for Dad,” he explained.
    The salon door opened again, and this time, a tall, caramel-complexioned woman with long, dark hair stepped into the cockpit. The woman seemed to blink against the glare of the sun, then put on large, stylish sunglasses. She wore a light-colored, low-cut, spaghetti-strapped sundress, and for just a moment, as she walked across the cockpit, hips in full, fluid motion, breasts straining at the thin fabric, Steve thought she resembled a young Sophia Loren. One difference, though. He had never made love to Sophia Loren.
    “Who’s that?” Victoria asked. Putting a little disapproval into the “that,” Steve thought.
    “Ah,” Junior said. “That sweet confection is—”
    “Delia Bustamante!” Steve immediately regretted the exhilaration in his voice.
    Victoria turned toward him, studied his profile in the semidarkness. “You know her, Steve?”
    “Last I saw her,” Steve said carefully, aiming for nonchalance, “she owned a Cuban restaurant in Key West.”
    Victoria kept quiet, but he could read her cross-examining mind. “And just when was the last time you saw her?”
    “Havana Viejo,” Junior helped out. “Great Cuban food. Plus, Delia’s on the Monroe County Environmental Advisory Board. Dad brought her into his circle, tried to get her support. Even offered her a consultant’s job in food services at Oceania. Big bucks, little work.”
    “In other words, a bribe?” Steve said.
    “A well-intended favor,” Junior replied. For a beach bum, he had a way with words.
    “If I know Delia, she wouldn’t go for it,” Steve said. Feeling Victoria alongside, shifting onto one hip on the love seat.
    “Delia told Dad that Oceania was a blight,” Junior continued. “Worse than drilling for oil. She raised all the bugaboos. Pollution in the Gulf. Traffic congestion at the hydrofoil ports. Increase in crime up and down the Keys. Gambling addictions, poor slobs tossing the rent money into the slots. She was gonna blow the project out of the water. Her exact words.”
    “I can picture Delia saying that,” Steve said, “but I don’t see her killing anyone.”
    “How would you know that?” Victoria asked, her tone even.
    “Some things you intuitively know about people.”
    “Just how well do you know her?” Her voice still neutral, so clean as to be positively antiseptic.
    “Before you and I met, like a couple years before we met, Delia and I …”
    What was the word? What was the phrase they were using these days? “Hooked up”? But that was so juvenile, and he was, after all, an adult, at least chronologically.
    “Fucked each other’s brains out?” Victoria suggested. Ever helpful.
    “Well,” Steve said. “Not only that.”
    Aargh. He’d blundered. Because, in fact, his relationship with Delia had been pretty much limited to mutual lust. He lusted for her luscious lechon asado as well as her luscious self. He’d gained ten pounds in the short time they’d dated.
    Her thing was having sex out-of-doors, something that seemed more enticing in the telling than the doing, once you’ve rolled bare-assed over pine needles a few times. Their long-distance coupling—it’s a four-hour drive from Miami—lasted three months. Either she’d run out of locations to expose her ass to the moonlight, or he’d gotten tired of her roasted pork and sweet plantains. He couldn’t quite remember which. So his “not only that” was both misleading and destined to bring another unwanted question.
    “What else was it besides sex?” Victoria’s tone took on the flavor of the prosecutor she once was. “Just how would you describe the relationship?”
    “Brief,” Steve said.