PART 2: The Scopolamine Slip: How a Shrimper’s Daughter Exposed a Marina Dockmaster’s $40K Theft and Poisoning Plot

The oyster shells crunched beneath my work boots as I reached the cab of my pickup truck.

I laid the heavy brass shuttle across the steering wheel and carefully flattened the torn strip of greaseproof paper against the dash.

The Gulf sun hit the translucent parchment, showing the faint blue grid of an official Coast Guard commercial trawler log.

My father had not just scrawled those seven words across the face of the paper.

He had pressed so hard with his indelible pencil that the reverse side carried indented impressions of numbers and dates.

I ran the tip of my thumb over the raised wax ridges, feeling the familiar sequence of six digits.

It was the serial registration for our commercial marine diesel account at the fuel pier.

Beneath the registration number was a four-digit time stamp from Tuesday morning, followed by two letters: *P.T.*

My chest tightened as the harbor air blew through the open truck window, carrying the thick smell of mud, diesel exhaust, and boiled shrimp.

*P.T.* did not stand for Horace.

Those were the initials of Perry Thibodeaux, the dockmaster who had run the municipal slips at Point aux Pins for the last twelve years.

If Perry had purchased the heavy brass deadbolt that sealed my father inside that stifling bedroom, Horace was not the architect of this misery.

He was merely the guard standing watch outside the door.

I started the engine, backed out of the shelled lane, and turned hard toward the commercial waterfront.

The diesel fuel tax receipt Horace had shouted about was due at five o’clock tomorrow afternoon.

If the slip lease was revoked for nonpayment, the municipal charter allowed the port authority to seize the vessel tied to the pilings.

My father would lose the *Lady Jasmine*, his commercial shrimping license, and the only home he had known since my mother passed away.

Ten minutes later, I pulled into the crushed-rock lot of Bayou Marine & Hardware on Shell Belt Road.

The shop smelled of creosote, galvanized chain, copper paint, and damp Manila hemp.

Old Mack Crawford stood behind the counter, using a flat file to sharpen the teeth of a cast-iron oyster dredge.

“Afternoon, Naomi,” Mack said, setting the file down on a grease-stained rubber mat.

“Afternoon, Mack,” I said, setting my father’s brass shuttle on the wooden counter between us.

Mack looked down at the shuttle, his weathered eyes softening with immediate recognition.

“Your daddy bought that brass casting from my father in nineteen eighty-four,” Mack said quietly.

“He balanced the nose on an emery wheel so it would slide through eighteen-gauge poly-mesh without snagging.”

“He kept it in his pocket every day of his life,” I told him.

“He threw it out his bedroom window twenty minutes ago.”

Mack’s hands paused on the edge of the counter, his jaw tightening slightly.

“Horace told the coffee crowd at the diner that Frank had taken a turn,” Mack murmured.

“He said Frank tried to back the trawler into the channel without checking his raw-water intake.”

“Horace is repeating what someone else poured into his ear,” I said.

I leaned across the counter, keeping my voice steady and low.

“Did you sell a heavy Yale brass rim deadbolt from that display rack this week?”

Mack turned his head toward the brass hardware cabinet behind his cash register.

“I keep three in stock for the trawler cabins,” Mack said.

“Sold one Tuesday morning right after the morning tide.”

“Who signed the ticket, Mack?”

Mack reached beneath the counter, pulled out a brown cardboard ledger of carbon charge slips, and began turning the receipts.

His thick thumb stopped halfway through the Tuesday entries.

“It was charged to the Point aux Pins marina maintenance account,” Mack said, tapping the paper.

“Perry Thibodeaux signed the slip.”

“Did Horace come in with him?” I asked.

“Horace wasn’t nowhere near the store,” Mack replied, shaking his head.

“Perry bought the deadbolt, four heavy lag bolts, and six packages of transdermal motion-sickness patches.”

“My father does not get seasick,” I said.

“Neither do you,” Mack noted.

“I asked Perry what he needed scopolamine patches for, and he told me his sister was visiting from Biloxi for a charter trip.”

The hair on the back of my neck stood up as the pieces began to click into terrifying alignment.

Scopolamine was a powerful anticholinergic medication used for offshore vertigo, but at high doses or in elderly patients, it caused severe disorientation, dry mouth, memory loss, and acute confusion.

It was the exact clinical picture of sudden-onset dementia.

“Can I have a photocopy of that charge receipt, Mack?” I asked.

“You can take the customer yellow copy,” Mack said, tearing the slip from the binding and handing it to me.

“Your daddy gave my boy his first deckhand spot when the shrimp season collapsed in two thousand ten.”

“I remember,” I said.

“If somebody is doing Frank wrong, Naomi, you drop the hammer on them,” Mack said, his voice flat with quiet resolve.

I folded the yellow receipt into my pocket next to the marine log parchment and walked back to my truck.

I did not drive back to the house; I drove straight to the Point aux Pins municipal marina.

The waterfront was quiet under the midday glare, the water the color of milky tea against the creosoted pilings.

At the far end of Pier Three sat the *Lady Jasmine*, her high flared bow and green outrigger booms rising above the marsh reeds.

As I walked down the dock, I noticed the empty mounting pads on the rear deck where the bronze try-net winches had been bolted for thirty years.

The winch frames had not been unbolted with socket wrenches for regular maintenance.

The heavy steel mounting bolts had been cut clean through with an oxy-acetylene torch, leaving melted slag across the treated pine deck.

A man was kneeling on the stern near the lazarette hatch, wearing khaki trousers and a white marina polo shirt.

It was Perry Thibodeaux, holding a battery-powered drill and a fresh brass padlock.

“You are trespassing on a quarantined berth, Naomi,” Perry said without looking up from his work.

“Since when is my family’s trawler under quarantine?” I asked, stopping five feet from the boat’s stern line.

Perry stood up, brushing metal shavings from his knees with a calm, practiced smile.

“Since the county board of health received notice of hazardous conditions aboard,” Perry said smoothly.

“Your father had three fuel spills in the slip over the past ten days.”

“That is impossible,” I answered.

“My father drains his fuel manifolds into settling cans and checks his bilge separators twice a shift.”

“Your father is seventy-four years old and cannot remember what month it is,” Perry said, stepping onto the pier.

“The port authority cannot permit an uninsured, leaking vessel to occupy a commercial slip during king tide season.”

“Where are his bronze try-net winches, Perry?”

Perry’s eyes flickered toward the empty deck pads for half a second before his gaze returned to mine.

“Horace asked me to send them up to the machine shop in Mobile for shaft re-bushing,” Perry replied smoothly.

“He needed to raise capital against the tax lien.”

“Horace does not know how to remove a marine winch without rounding off the nuts,” I said.

“Those bolts were torched off with a cutting tip from the marina maintenance shed.”

“Think whatever you want, Naomi,” Perry said, tucking his drill under his arm.

“The court hearing for the permanent conservatorship is set for next Friday in Mobile.”

“Until then, Horace is the legal custodian, and Horace gave me written authorization to secure this slip.”

“Did Horace also authorize you to drug my father with scopolamine patches?” I asked.

Perry did not flinch, but his fingers tightened against the plastic grip of the power drill.

“Your father is an old man whose brain is failing him,” Perry said, lowering his voice to a cold whisper.

“If you interfere with the administration of this dock, I will have Sheriff Guthrie impound the trawler before sunset.”

“Try it,” I said.

Perry turned on his heel and walked up the ramp toward the marina harbormaster office, his radio antenna bobbing against his shoulder.

I waited until the screen door of the marina office slammed shut before stepping across the gunwale onto the deck of the *Lady Jasmine*.

The trawler smelled of salt, dried sea foam, and diesel fuel, the comforting scents of my childhood.

I ducked down into the deckhouse and reached beneath the companionway stairs where my father kept his emergency maintenance tools.

Behind the fire extinguisher, tucked between two oak ribs of the hull, was an olive-drab steel ammunition box.

I popped the heavy metal latch and lifted the lid.

Inside were my father’s daily running logs, written in his precise, tight handwriting dating back twenty years.

I pulled out the binder labeled with the current year and flipped to the entries for the past two weeks.

The pages for the last seven days had been cleanly sliced out with a razor blade.

Whoever cut them had wanted every record of fuel consumption, engine hours, and dock visits completely erased.

My father, however, was a master fisherman who had survived fifty years of Coast Guard inspections and hurricane seasons.

He never kept his crucial operational figures in only one place.

I knelt on the floorboards, lifted the brass ring of the center bilge hatch, and peered down into the dark cavity beside the starboard diesel stringer.

Taped to the fiberglass casing of the auxiliary bilge pump was a sealed plastic freezer bag.

Inside the bag was a folded sheet of blue paper: an official Alabama Department of Revenue Form ST-14, the annual exempt fuel tax certificate.

I pulled the plastic bag free, unzipped it, and spread the paper out under the wheelhouse window.

The document bore an official state seal stamped three weeks ago, showing the annual two-thousand-dollar diesel fuel tax had already been paid in full by Joseph Fontaine.

Attached to the certificate was a cashier’s check receipt from the First Gulf Bank in Bayou La Batre.

My father did not owe a single penny to the port authority.

The supposed two-thousand-dollar tax lien was an entirely fabricated pretext to force the vessel into immediate commercial forfeiture.

I folded the tax exemption certificate into my tackle bag, climbed off the boat, and headed directly for the medical clinic in Irvington.

Dr. Arthur Calloway had practiced family medicine on the bayou for forty years, operating out of a squat brick building beside the pecan orchards.

When I stepped into the wood-paneled waiting room, the receptionist recognized me immediately and picked up her desk phone.

Two minutes later, Dr. Calloway opened the door to the examination hall, wearing his white coat over a faded denim shirt.

“Naomi,” he said, ushering me into his private consultation office.

“I was terribly sorry to hear about your father’s sudden decline.”

“That is why I am here, Doctor,” I said, sitting down across from his cluttered oak desk.

“Uncle Horace showed me an emergency probate petition this morning with your signature on it.”

Dr. Calloway paused, his reading glasses halfway to his nose.

“I signed an evaluation summary for the probate court, yes,” Dr. Calloway said carefully.

“Perry Thibodeaux brought Joseph into my clinic on Monday afternoon.”

“Did Perry stay in the examination room?” I asked.

“He insisted on it,” Dr. Calloway replied, his eyebrows knitting together.

“He said your father was prone to severe panic attacks and disorientation if left alone.”

“What were my father’s symptoms when you saw him?”

Dr. Calloway pulled a manila folder from the rack on his desk and opened it.

“Pupils dilated, extreme dry mouth, acute short-term memory impairment, and unsteady gait,” Dr. Calloway read aloud.

“He could not tell me what year it was, and he did not recognize Perry.”

“Did you run a routine blood panel?” I asked.

“Of course,” Dr. Calloway said.

“The lab results came back from the hospital in Mobile late yesterday evening.”

He picked up a white laboratory sheet, studied it for a moment, and let out a soft, sharp breath.

“What is it, Doctor?”

“There were high therapeutic levels of scopolamine in his serum,” Dr. Calloway said, looking up with genuine confusion.

“I assumed he had taken motion sickness medication for a charter run, but that drug is contraindicated for a patient with his mild glaucoma.”

“Did you write a statement saying my father was permanently incompetent?” I asked, leaning forward.

“Absolutely not,” Dr. Calloway said firmly.

“I wrote that he was suffering from an acute toxic encephalopathy of unknown origin and recommended an immediate seventy-two-hour inpatient neurological workup at Providence Hospital.”

I took the folded probate petition out of my pocket and placed it on the blotter in front of him.

Dr. Calloway turned the document over, adjusted his glasses, and looked at the second page.

His face turned the color of dry salt grass.

“This second page is not my typing,” Dr. Calloway said, his voice dropping an octave.

“My practice uses ten-point Courier font on our formal evaluations; this is printed in standard twelve-point Arial.”

“Is that your signature at the bottom?”

“The signature is a photocopied reproduction of the release form I signed for Perry to pick up the records,” Dr. Calloway said, his hands trembling with cold fury.

“Someone spliced my signature block onto an affidavit declaring Frank permanently incapacitated.”

“Perry Thibodeaux filed it with the Mobile County probate clerk yesterday at two o’clock,” I told him.

Dr. Calloway stood up from his desk, grabbed his desk telephone, and dialed an outside number.

“Who are you calling?” I asked.

“I am calling Sheriff Guthrie’s direct line,” Dr. Calloway replied.

“Falsifying a physician’s medical affidavit to execute an involuntary conservatorship is a Class C felony in the state of Alabama.”

“Wait, Doctor,” I said, putting my hand gently over the receiver.

“Horace has the house locked down, and Perry has commercial buyers arriving at the dock.”

“If Perry sees the sheriff’s cruiser pulling down the lane before we have my father out of that room, he will hide the records and claim Horace did everything.”

Dr. Calloway slowly lowered the receiver back into its cradle.

“What do you need me to do, Naomi?”

“I need you to write an official revocation of that medical affidavit right now,” I said.

“And I need you to drive your car down to the house in twenty minutes.”

“I will be there in fifteen,” Dr. Calloway promised.

I left the clinic, my heart hammering against my ribs, and drove back toward Point aux Pins.

Instead of turning into our oyster-shell driveway, I parked my truck three hundred yards away behind the old net-drying shed near the marsh line.

I slipped through the tall cordgrass, keeping low beneath the line of wax myrtles that bordered the property.

Horace’s rusted green station wagon was parked by the front porch, its hood still ticking as the metal cooled.

I crept along the east foundation of the raised cottage until I stood directly beneath my father’s bedroom window.

The window screen was still pushed out at the bottom corner where he had dropped the brass shuttle.

“Dad,” I whispered, tapping the wooden siding with my knuckle.

A moment of heavy silence hung in the humid air before the sash slid upward two inches.

My father’s face appeared behind the glass, pale, drawn, and shadowed by dark purple rings under his eyes.

“Naomi,” he rasped, his voice cracked from lack of water.

“Dad, I am right here,” I whispered, reaching my fingers through the gap in the screen.

His fingers found mine, trembling and cold despite the midday heat.

“He put patches behind my ears while I was sleeping in the berth,” my father whispered, each word a painful effort.

“Who did, Dad?”

“Perry,” he said, his breathing shallow.

“He told Horace I had fallen down the lazarette ladder.”

“He told Horace I was setting fires in the galley.”

“Did Horace believe him?” I asked.

“Horace is a fool,” my father whispered, a flicker of his old fire breaking through the fog.

“Horace thought the state was going to lock me up in the asylum in Mount Vernon.”

“Horace thought he was saving our slip from the creditors.”

“Did Perry put the deadbolt on the door?”

“Perry brought the drill on Tuesday night,” my father said.

“He stood in this room while Horace was outside at the pump, and he laughed at me, Naomi.”

“What did he say to you, Dad?”

“He told me I was finished on this bayou,” my father whispered, tears cutting pale tracks through the salt dust on his cheeks.

“He threw my captain’s license on the floor and stepped on it.”

“He told me my daughter was living in Mobile and didn’t care if I rotted in this bed.”

A knot of icy rage locked in my throat, but I kept my voice low and steady.

“I am here, Dad,” I said.

“I found your log paper, I found the tax certificate in the bilge, and Dr. Calloway is on his way.”

“The tax form,” my father murmured, his grip tightening on my fingers.

“Perry told Horace the port authority was going to seize the boat for two thousand dollars.”

“I know,” I said.

“The tax is paid, Dad.”

“Listen to me,” he said, pressing his forehead against the pane.

“In the bottom drawer of Perry’s desk at the marina office, there is a brown folder labeled Gulf Coast Marine Dredging.”

“He has a contract to sell our slip to an offshore crew-boat company for forty thousand dollars.”

“He needed me out of the way before the harbor board meets on Monday.”

Before I could answer, the front screen door of the cottage banged open around the corner.

Heavy boot heels sounded on the wooden porch boards.

“Who are you talking to in there, Frank?” Horace’s booming voice demanded from the hallway inside.

I ducked down into the marsh grass as the bedroom door rattle echoed through the floorboards.

The deadbolt snapped open, and the door creaked on its brass hinges.

“You leave that window alone,” Horace barked from inside the room.

“You’re going to catch the marsh chill and make your lungs worse.”

“I don’t have a chill, Horace,” my father’s voice came back, stronger now, fortified by the knowledge that I was outside.

“You’re a blind old jackass who can’t see the wolf sitting at your own kitchen table.”

“Keep your mouth shut and eat your soup,” Horace snapped, the heavy deadbolt clicking shut once again.

I stayed motionless in the grass until I heard Horace walk back toward the kitchen.

Then I stood up, circled through the tree line, and walked openly up the oyster-shell lane toward the house.

As I reached the driveway, two vehicles turned off the main road and pulled in behind my truck.

The first was Dr. Calloway’s blue sedan.

The second was a white Mobile County Sheriff’s patrol truck driven by Deputy Guthrie, a tall, thick-set man with a graying mustache.

Behind them came a black heavy-duty pickup truck hauling a flatbed trailer.

Sitting in the cab of the black pickup was Clyde Murdock, a well-known commercial scrap dealer and salvage operator from Theodore.

And walking out of the marina path, carrying a clipboard and a key ring, was Perry Thibodeaux.

Horace stepped onto the front porch, wiping his hands on a greasy rag, his eyes narrowing as the small convoy came to a halt in the yard.

“What in the hell is this circus?” Horace shouted, walking down the steps.

“I told you to clear out of here, Naomi.”

“You don’t tell anyone to clear out, Horace,” Deputy Guthrie said, stepping out of his cruiser and resting his hand lightly on his gun belt.

“We have a complaint filed regarding the unlawful restraint of an elderly person and the falsification of judicial records.”

Horace froze, his face flushing dark red under his gray beard.

“Unlawful restraint?” Horace sputtered, pointing toward the porch.

“Frank is my brother!”

“I am his court-appointed temporary guardian!”

“I have the probate court order signed by Judge Holcombe right here in my pocket!”

“That order is based on a forged medical affidavit, Horace,” Dr. Calloway said, stepping forward with his clipboard.

Perry Thibodeaux stepped onto the oyster shells, his expression smooth, calm, and completely unbothered.

“Dr. Calloway, you examined Frank yourself on Monday,” Perry said, spreading his hands in a gesture of reasonable concern.

“You saw the condition he was in.”

“He couldn’t even tell you his daughter’s name.”

“He was severely intoxicated with scopolamine, Perry,” Dr. Calloway said coldly.

“A drug he was never prescribed, but which you purchased at Bayou Marine & Hardware on Tuesday morning.”

Perry smiled thinly, shaking his head.

“I bought transdermal patches for my own boat charter,” Perry said.

“If Frank had scopolamine in his system, he must have found them in the marina shed and taken them himself.”

“You know how confused he has been.”

“He has been wandering the docks at three in the morning, leaving valves open, almost sinking the *Lady Jasmine* twice.”

“That is a lie,” I said, stepping between Perry and my uncle.

“Horace, look at me,” I commanded.

Uncle Horace stared at me, his shoulders hunched, his jaw clenched tight against the rising wind from the bayou.

“Frank never left a valve open in his life,” I told him.

“Perry told you that because Perry wanted you to panic.”

“He told you Frank was losing his mind so you would let him put that lock on the bedroom door.”

“I put that lock on to keep Frank from drowning in the bayou!” Horace yelled, his voice cracking with sudden defensiveness.

“Perry said if Frank wandered into the harbor again, the Coast Guard was going to pull our commercial slip lease!”

“We owe two thousand dollars in fuel taxes by five o’clock tomorrow, Naomi!”

“If we don’t clear the slip, the port authority sells the berth, and Clyde here was the only buyer willing to take the boat off our hands to pay the debt!”

Clyde Murdock leaned against his trailer hitch, chewing on a matchstick, saying nothing.

“Horace, you idiot,” I said, pulling the blue state document from my tackle bag and thrusting it into his chest.

“Read the seal.”

Horace blinked, looked down at the paper, and slowly adjusted his glasses.

“This is the Alabama Department of Revenue commercial exemption certificate,” Horace mumbled, reading the text line by line.

“It’s dated three weeks ago.”

“The two thousand dollars was paid in full by Frank on the first of the month,” I said, my voice echoing across the quiet yard.

“There is no fuel tax lien.”

“There never was a fuel tax lien.”

Horace looked up from the paper, his weathered face draining of color as he turned toward Perry.

“Perry,” Horace said, his voice dropping into a hollow whisper.

“You told me the state issued a notice of tax levy on the slip.”

“You said the port authority was going to seize the boat on Friday.”

Perry shifted his weight, his clipboard tightening in his fingers.

“There was an administrative discrepancy on the fuel logs, Horace,” Perry said, his tone turning sharp and defensive.

“The discrepancy was in your head, Perry,” Deputy Guthrie said, stepping directly into Thibodeaux’s path.

“I spoke with the county clerk on my drive down here, and the only lease transfer filed for slip nine is a private assignment to your own commercial LLC.”

Perry took a step back toward his truck, his eyes darting toward the gravel road, but Deputy Guthrie reached out and caught him firmly by the arm.

“You’re coming down to the substation, Perry, while we review the forged affidavit with Dr. Calloway and the magistrate.”

Horace dropped the tax certificate, his hands shaking violently as he pulled the brass key from his pocket and stared at it with sickening clarity.

“My God,” Horace choked out, looking toward the house.

Without another word, Horace turned and ran up the porch steps, the screen door slamming behind him as he unlocked the bedroom deadbolt and threw the door wide open.

Deputy Guthrie walked Perry toward the patrol cruiser in handcuffs while Clyde Murdock quietly put his salvage truck into reverse and backed out of the lane.

Ten minutes later, my father sat on the front porch steps in the warm Gulf breeze, drinking cold water while Dr. Calloway gently removed the last residue of the medication patch from behind his ear.

I sat down beside my father and placed the heavy brass shuttle back into his calloused palm.

Frank curled his fingers around the worn metal, his breathing deep and steady as the late afternoon tide turned in the bayou.