“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.