Seawitch (4 page)

She took a long, deep breath and pressed her lips tight for a moment before answering. “Les was on the boat when it disappeared. Les and Odile were our social satellites. We did everything together, once upon a time. Odile and I were very close. The ‘boys,’ of course, did that man thing of pairing up by gender and going off to do manly things without the ‘girls.’ So, Odile and I . . . we spent a lot of time together.”

Solis sat back and nodded a little. “You were very close.”

Linda nodded again, not quite meeting either of our gazes. “Very,” she repeated. “More than sisters. But not—not below the line.”

That was the kind of phrase my mother would have used to mean lovers without actual sex—the line being the waist, below which one did not venture. Above it was OK, however, since it was acceptable for women to kiss and hug their female friends, even if those caresses were a bit more intimate and frequent than most people were comfortable with or would admit to.

I had new insight into the insurance company’s ideas about why Linda Starrett might have had something to do with the original disappearance of the
Seawitch
; they thought she and her female lover might have plotted the whole thing to get rid of inconvenient husbands. It still didn’t wash with me, but it would be worth a bit more looking to see if Odile Carson’s death had any bearing on the boat’s disappearance.

“What happened to Odile?” I asked. I could look it up, and I would later, but I found Mrs. Starrett’s replies more illuminating than a recitation of mere facts on a computer screen.

Linda’s mouth puckered, holding back a sob with a frown until she had mastered the urge to cry and could speak calmly again. “An ‘accident.’ She was electrocuted or drowned . . . I’m not sure which they said. In the hot tub. Those converted wine-vat kind of tubs that were the rage then. Odile had trouble with her back—she had mild scoliosis of the spine and sometimes it hurt her quite a lot. She would go sit in the hot water and listen to the radio. I think she used to do it more than she needed just to get away from Les. Les hated the classical music she listened to.” Linda smiled a little. “Sometimes we’d go together, Odile and I, and drink some wine and listen to the music, and just float in the water in the tub, out on the little terrace that overlooked the cliff and the beach. . . . Nothing but birds and trees and the wind dancing in the branches over our heads . . .”

She let out a sudden gasp and began crying, tears streaking down her pale cheeks and leaving tracks in her face powder. “I miss her so much! Why couldn’t
she
come back instead of that horrible old boat? I hate it! I hate that boat. I hate it!”

“Do you believe the boat’s disappearance and your friend’s death were connected?” Solis asked.

“Don’t be stupid!” Mrs. Starrett snapped, but it seemed like she was protesting too much. “I used to think Les managed to kill her somehow—he was so jealous while he was being so selfish—but that’s not”—she gulped and continued—“that’s not how things work. Is it? Even if it ought to be. So, no, I don’t think the boat came back for some kind of magical revenge. But now that it’s here I can’t stop thinking about Odile and what happened to her. I miss Odile! I don’t want that horrible boat—I want Odile back!”

Now Solis did turn his head and look at me, the slight lift of his eyebrows asking me to step in.

“Linda,” I started in a low voice, “we can’t bring Odile back, but we’ll find out if what happened to her was connected to what happened to
Seawitch
. I know you don’t want the boat. You don’t have to worry about that—the insurance company will take responsibility for it now. We’ll find out what happened. Now, can you tell me who was on board besides Cas and Les Carson?”

She snuffled and gulped her way back to something like normal. “I don’t know. I—let me think. Who went with Cas . . . ?” She closed her eyes. “There were five all together. Cas, Les, some bimbo friend of Les’s . . . Ruth . . . Ireland, I think. One more woman—I remember it added up to two couples and the captain, but not Reeve that time. . . .”

“The captain?” I asked.

Linda opened her eyes and blinked at me, not sniffling in spite of her reddened nose and eyes. “Yes. Cas hired a professional captain—John Reeve—to manage the boat most of the time. Cas wasn’t really very good at handling her and he was too lazy to sit behind the wheel when he could be on deck, getting a tan or fishing or just drooling on his female guests. This was kind of a rushed trip, so the group was smaller than usual and Reeve didn’t go—it was usually seven to ten guests, plus Cas, Captain Reeve, and another hand or a cook.” She paused to dab at her eyes. “But not this time, which I suppose is why I . . . thought it was something it wasn’t.”

I looked at her expectantly.

She shook her head. “No cook or extra hand this time. The boat had been modernized and didn’t need as many crew as it did originally, so it could go out with just two as long as the passengers weren’t picky. The usual hand was booked, so Cas was doubling for the crew. Reeve wasn’t available, either, so they took his assistant, a guy named . . . Gary Fielding. Really young. I wasn’t sure he was competent, but I didn’t really care until the boat didn’t come back and then everyone was asking me about the crew. I didn’t know anything. I thought it was John Reeve who’d been with them until he turned up talking to the press. Reeve said this Gary kid had his license and had crossed the bar a dozen times as a pilot—whatever that means. It seemed to make a lot of people shut up, so I suppose it’s important, but I don’t know.”

She stopped, an odd look on her face. Then she said, “Janice. Janice Prince. That was the other woman they took. She was a boater. One of those floating trash that tramp from marina to marina, looking for a trip anywhere in exchange for crew work.” “And other things,” she implied with a lifted eyebrow and a cynical quirk to her mouth.

Starrett, Carson, Fielding, Ireland, and Prince . . . that matched the list the insurance company had given me. The messes in the cabins had left me with the impression of more, but maybe it was just the remains of whoever—or whatever—had invaded the boat and taken or driven the passengers and crew away. . . .

FOUR

T
here wasn’t a lot more we could get out of Linda Starrett. In spite of her own protests about its implausibility, she seemed to cling to the idea that the death of her friend was connected to
Seawitch.
Even a crazy idea can be comforting when you’re confused and upset, which she clearly was. She didn’t hold up much longer and soon asked us, her voice shaking, to go. Solis and I walked down the curving brick drive to the sound of her heavy wooden door thumping closed behind us like the seal of doom.

At least the fog had begun to thin a bit and returning to our cars was less of a passage through mystery than arriving had been.

“What do you make of it?” Solis asked as we neared the cars.

I shook my head. “The whole curse thing is ridiculous. I’ve got the paperwork and there’s nothing about questionable parts from another boat being used on
Seawitch
. Part of the boat’s value was that it was all vintage and intact—a lot of wooden boats that age aren’t. And Mrs. Starrett’s idea that her friend’s death was somehow connected to the boat seems more like the sort of hysterical fancy some people glom onto when they’re upset and can’t ever shed. I suppose we could ask for Odile Carson’s autopsy report, just to be sure. . . .”

“I also think it’s unlikely to be a homicide, but I’ll make the request. What of the rest?”

“I think we need to get that log book dried out and find out who was really on board. Those cabins didn’t look like accommodations for two couples and a single crewman. All four of the cabins had been occupied and more than one of the crew cabins looked used.”

Solis cocked his head. “Only one had the symbols in it.”

“But it wasn’t the only crew cabin that had been used, so it sounds like Mrs. Starrett was wrong about who was on board.”

“Gary Fielding would have used one. But, yes, that does leave the other. . . .”

“It seems to me,” I added, “that the insurance company has come to the late and erroneous conclusion that Mrs. Starrett and Mrs. Carson may have colluded to get rid of the boat with their husbands on board so they could enjoy their . . . friendship in peace. How they would even manage that, I don’t know.”

“It is also at odds with Mrs. Starrett’s statements about her friend and the timing of her death. I’m as disinclined to credit that as you are.”

“Agreed. Even without the complication of Odile’s death, a conspiracy to sink the boat would have required help from someone on board, which wouldn’t include either husband or the ladies they brought with them.”

“Leaving Fielding.”

I nodded. “But he’s apparently as dead as the rest, and what’s the profit in scuttling a ship if you drown in it?”

“Very small.” Solis agreed. “Perhaps we should talk to the original captain, Reeve, about his late protégé. . . .”

It shouldn’t have taken very long to find Reeve—I did have his address in the file—but it proved to be out-of-date and we had to look for him. Or, rather, I volunteered to do some computer work to find him while Solis took the log book to a documents expert the cops contracted with for this kind of problem.

We finally discovered John Reeve in a retirement village in Des Moines—a cliffside town on the Sound south of the airport but far enough north of Tacoma’s Poverty Bay to be free of the paper-mill stink of the mud flats at low tide. The locals pronounced the town’s name with the S at the end and sometimes in the middle, too. Des Moines sprawled along the shore in a wedge that was honed to a point by the westward swing of Interstate 5 near Saltwater State Park on the south end of the bluffs. On Zenith—the tallest ridge overlooking the sea and right in the middle of Des Moines—stood a shining edifice called Landmark; it looked like a grand country estate from an English period film, but in fact it was a fancy Masonic retirement home. John Reeve had lived there for a while, but he had moved when the market crashed and now lived in a humble one-story duplex in a seniors’ complex of identical duplexes on looping private streets on the north side of town, within walking distance from the beach and the Des Moines marina.

The seaside town wasn’t pretentiously quaint yet, but it was working on it, keeping the buildings short and widening the sidewalks near the boardwalk and municipal marina to encourage foot traffic to the little commercial district along Marine View Drive. The east side, near the freeway, was nowhere near as picturesque as the west side. Reeve’s home was kind of the same: cute on the outside and much less charming inside.

It was just after three o’clock as we pulled up in front of the building. I thought it looked like the suburban equivalent of a hobbit’s house: low and rambling with arched window frames and doorframes and green stucco that blended into the landscaping. The plants in the yard were just a little wild and seemed to have been miniaturized in some fashion, not to bonsai tiny, but to Kincaid-cottage cute. Straight cement walkways to each door slightly ruined the effect, but I thought it was probably a concession to canes, walkers, and wheelchairs. There was no front stoop in front of Reeve’s door; the porch was just a slightly sloped cement rectangle. A cast-concrete figure of a semireclining mermaid sat on one corner of the pad, patchy remnants of sparkly blue paint making her supporting tail look leprous, while the red color that had adorned her hair had flaked and gone gray-brown. A scatter of shells and a wisp of sea grass circled the base. Just beyond the porch I saw tiny white and blue sparks in the Grey that darted through the foliage near the house and danced fleetingly across the mermaid with a sudden blush of emerald light that faded as quickly as it had come. Other than that the building was magically dull.

Because Reeve was now approaching eighty, according to the Department of Licensing, we did not attempt the tactic of simply showing up to ask questions. We called first, which netted us a civil greeting at the door, though it took some time for Reeve to open it to us. He didn’t move very fast; he wasn’t using a cane or a walker but it was obvious to me from the way his whole right side seemed slightly collapsed that he could have used some kind of assistance.

“Ah, the cops!” Reeve exclaimed in a mushy voice that issued only from the left side of his mouth. He had been a big man in his younger days but now he was stooped and withered. His shaggy white mustache—now gone a little yellow—and large ears seemed to be compensating for his hair, which was white and had thinned to expose a spotted scalp between the fluffy strands. “Come on in. Don’t mind the place—I hate it. We’ll go out back.”

Inside the house was faded and too full of once-fine furniture that didn’t really fit the small rooms. The whole thing had an air of benign neglect to it—it was clean enough but nothing was really kept up. We followed Reeve through a grim little kitchen that even yellow paint and matching wallpaper hadn’t perked up and out into a small yard made private by a vine-covered fence. A large tree cast pleasant shade over the green-painted iron table and matching chairs he directed us to with a jerky wave of his left hand.

“The sundeck—if you will,” he said with what might have been a chuckle or an incipient cough. A plate of misshapen homemade cookies and a sweating pitcher of iced tea large enough in which to sink a small flotilla of bathtub toys awaited us.

As we sat, something rustled in the bushes behind a tiny dried-up fountain with a flurry of Grey sparks that glittered green and gold for a moment, then vanished as the sound died away. Reeve grunted as he lowered himself clumsily into one of the chairs. “Neighbor’s cat’s always slinking around in the shrubs. Looking for rats, I say. She always squeals like a lubber when I say that. Don’t know why; killing rats is what cats are best for.” He seemed to fall the last inch or so into his chair and sighed heavily. Then he looked up at Solis and me. One of his eyes wandered a little, but the other was a piercing blue that seemed to cut right into us. “Now. What was it you want with me? Something about the ’
Witch
, I suppose.”

We both gave him our best bland expressions. I spoke first. “Why do you suppose that, Captain Reeve?”

“I’m a little slow these days, but I ain’t stupid and I watch TV. Saw her on the news the other night. Though why the police are interested after so long, I can’t guess. So tell me and I’ll think on how I might help you.”

“I have to be honest with you: I’m not actually with the police,” I explained. “I was hired by the insurance company.”

Reeve snorted. “Money grubbers. Probably think the boat’s a scam, don’t they?”

I made a noncommittal noise.

Reeve turned his sharp gaze on Solis. “And you?”

Solis returned a small nod. “I
am
with the police. We wish to know more about your apprentice who captained the
Seawitch
on her last voyage.”

“Gary? That scamp. Never could decide if I was glad or sad over him.”

Solis lifted an interrogative eyebrow but said nothing.

Reeve made another of his scoffing snorts. “He was an able seaman and captain—had the paperwork to prove it and the skill—but like a lot of young fellas then, he had a bit of an eye for skirts. Thought being a sea captain was sexier than being a bar pilot—it was all about getting the girls.”

“Excuse me,” I said. “What’s a bar pilot? Mrs. Starrett mentioned something about crossing the bar . . . is that related?”

“Columbia Bar,” Reeve replied. “River comes down to the sea mighty strong and dirty—you can see the silt spill from space—and deposits the mud and debris for a couple miles at the mouth of the Columbia River, making a shoal. That’s a sort of moving underwater sandbar, missy. What with the current going out and the tides moving, it’s a damned dangerous place to cross. But you want to navigate the coast here, you’ve got no other choice ’cept to sail out a hundred miles or so to avoid the current push. Takes a skilled and experienced pilot to cross the bar more than once—’cause once could be luck, but more than that is skill. Gary had that skill—had a feel for the bar you don’t see in every ship’s pilot. Could take damn near any craft across and never so much as scrape the barnacles off a hull.” He gave me a wink and added, “Gary once told me he’d been kissed by a Columbia River mermaid when he was a kid and I half believed him.”

“He sounds remarkable.”

Reeve nodded. “He was. I worked with him first time on a yacht delivery coming up from Alameda. He fair impressed me. And he hadn’t his captain’s papers yet, so I offered to take him aboard so he could get his hours. Didn’t hurt me any to have another able man around and I thought I might start me a service, but I dropped that plan when Starrett come along with his offer. Hard to refuse.”

“What was the offer?”

“Prep, maintenance, and permanent on-call at thirty thousand a year. Doesn’t sound like much, but I could do whatever else I liked so long as I always had the
Seawitch
ready to go and took her out for him whenever he said. I also brought on a cook and extra hands if wanted and I could take the ’
Witch
out on my own for shake-down cruises and the like whenever he wasn’t using her. I made some right good money taking youngsters like Gary out for their training hours and doing the odd private party when Starrett was out of town.”

“Did he know about your sideline?”

“He did. Only kink in the line we ever had was Starrett blowing up rough at me over fuel costs. After that I paid the fuel myself, but I was charging the trainees and party folk for it already, so that was fair, yeah?”

“Captain Reeve,” Solis cut in, “why were you not on board the
Seawitch
for her last voyage?”

Reeve peered at Solis, his energy corona pulling in and fading to a watery apple green color. Then he looked away. “Truth to tell, I wasn’t fit for duty. First time since I’d taken the job.”

Solis didn’t say anything for a moment or two and the silence in the yard stretched, broken only by a new rustling from the cat in the bushes. Finally he asked, “In what way were you unfit?”

Reeve flushed a mottled red that continued into his aura, but he didn’t yell or demonstrate his anger. He just said quietly, “I was drunk. Three sheets to the wind and didn’t give a whore’s damn. Thought I could hold my liquor better than that. Guess I was wrong. Starrett wasn’t pleased at first, but then he didn’t seem to mind so much when I said I’d send Gary along. He liked Gary—they had that skirt-chasing hobby in common. And I won’t say I was entirely disappointed to miss the cruise. Kept thinking I saw the dobhar-chú hanging around the boat.”

I frowned at the foreign phrase that sounded like “dovr koo” and saw Solis do the same. Reeve noticed our confusion.

“Dobhar-chú—the water hounds. Bad-luck beasts. You see one by a river, you run away fast or they’ll catch you and drown you. You seen one hanging round your boat, you can be sure something bad’s going to happen on board. That’s what I saw the last day I piloted
Seawitch
: a dobhar-chú. It came out of the water and right up the boarding ladder. Then it just stood on the foredeck and stared at me like it was memorizing my face, planning some kind of mischief. I went straight to the bar with the old hands and their gals once I got ashore and had a few drinks—maybe more. And I told myself it wasn’t anything but an otter, but you know what happened later, and I say it was the fault of the dobhar-chú.”

“This . . . water hound is some kind of sailor’s omen, then?” I asked.

Reeve shook his head. “Not an omen; the real thing.”

“A mythical beast . . .” Solis muttered.

Reeve’s aura flashed red again, but this time he didn’t hold his temper back. “You think I’m crazy? You think I’m lying?” he shouted, leaning farther forward with each angry sentence. His half-slack face twisted into something from a nightmare and his words came out in a wet slur. “You think because sailors are superstitious it must
all
be hokum and smoke rings? You’ll take it more seriously when
you’re
the one looking a devil dog in the face and you see those teeth shining, hear its voice. . . . You won’t think it’s a myth: You’ll think it’s going to rip your throat out and dance in your entrails. You will
believe
you are staring Death in the face!”