Seawitch (9 page)

EIGHT

A
massive shoal of salmon had come into the marina and the water was restless with their endless circling and sudden leaps as they rested before heading to the fish ladder at the locks a mile or so up the passage to the east. Their splashing made occasional punctuation to conversations drifting from the decks and portholes of the boats along the floating sections of F dock.

About two-thirds of the way to the end of the quarter-mile-long dock, we found a group of five people sitting in camp chairs or standing on either side of the floating walkway upwind of a large propane barbecue on a cart. There were chairs set out for more people and a few bowls of chips and salsa sitting on top of the nearest dock box. A few cans of cheap beer and plastic glasses of wine were in evidence, but the party was obviously only getting started.

A tall, dark-haired man in his early sixties, sporting a luxuriant mustache, was tending some beef ribs on the barbecue. He looked up as we drew near. “Hi, there! Hope we’re not in your way,” he added, trying to step aside to let us pass without falling in the water or sending his ribs to feed migrating salmon.

Solis glanced at me and raised his eyebrows. Apparently he wanted me to take this one. “Not in the way at all,” I said. “You’re actually the people we were searching for.”

They all looked at us in surprise, and we were no longer the strangers passing by but a focus of piqued attention. I introduced myself and Solis, who flashed his badge, just to make it official. “We were told there might be some residents on this dock who were here twenty-seven years ago when the
Seawitch
was regularly moored here,” I said.

“
Seawitch
?” asked a seated man wearing a floppy sea grass hat to shield his bearded face from the sun. “Which one is that?”

A short woman with cropped, dyed-brown hair pointed south across the docks with her free hand; the other held a sweating plastic stem glass half-full of white wine. “The ghost ship. You know.” She turned her attention back to me and Solis, smiling a little as if she didn’t want to seem unfriendly but wasn’t going to just give up the information without knowing more. “Why are you looking?”

“We hope to find anyone who might have information about who was on board the day the boat left here on its last trip,” Solis replied to her. “We also hope to discover if a woman named Shelly Knight has been seen in the marina recently.”

“Is she associated with the ghost ship?” the man in the hat asked. A salmon leapt nearby, sending a patter of water drops onto the dock.

“She may be,” Solis replied with care.

“Huh,” the hat wearer grunted. “Imagine that.” He looked at the short-haired woman. “Isn’t that young lady on
Pleiades
named Knight? The one who sings all the time. . . . Something Knight—can’t remember her first name.”

“The woman we’re looking for would have to be approaching or past fifty,” I said.

“Then this couldn’t be her. Our Miss Knight is much younger than that,” Hat Man replied.

I glanced at Solis before saying, “She may be a relative, though. Where is
Pleiades
?”

The man in the hat looked over his shoulder and pointed south. “Over on D dock. The big blue ketch on the far side. Oh, and it’s a beauty, too! They just refinished the masts and all the brightwork on the sheer and up the sprit—”

The short-haired woman shook her head a little in amusement. “Silly, she doesn’t know what a ketch is.” She looked at me and Solis. “It’s a two-master. Shorter mast in the back. The hull’s dark blue with varnished woodwork, gold trim and lettering, and it’s got matching blue covers on the sails. She’s a really pretty boat.”

Solis looked at the man in the hat and the woman who’d spoken before saying, “The office did not have a record of anyone named Knight keeping a boat here.”

“Oh, she’s just boat-sitting and prepping her,” the woman replied. “The owners are back East and they haven’t gotten out here for the season yet.”

“When did
she
arrive? Miss Knight, that is.”

The woman looked around at her companions, seeking consensus. “Oh . . . back in March, I guess. . . . Does that sound right to you guys?”

The rest muttered among themselves and nodded in general agreement.

“All right, then. March. Which would have been when the boat came out of the maintenance yard. They did the hull and bottom paint and reset the masts after winter storage so she’d be ready for opening day, and then the owners couldn’t get back in time. Isn’t that sad? Anyhow, Miss Knight must have come with the money or Keefer wouldn’t have let the boat out of the yard. A lot of people don’t keep boats in the water year round like they used to, but once you’ve got a nice boat like that in, you have to keep her up every minute, so hiring a reliable caretaker is a good idea.”

“How would you know they were reliable?” I asked.

“Oh, mostly references from other boaters, or if they have a bond posted or come from a company that does moving and service stuff.”

Solis didn’t look at me, but I saw his aura flare up for a moment in bright gold sparks. He was very interested in Miss Knight, but he only nodded and thanked them all while making a quick note on his cell phone. A few more salmon plashed around, making a slapping sound on the surface of the water.

“I see,” I said, redirecting the conversation before the momentum dropped off. “What can you tell us about residents who might have been here in the mid-eighties?”

The crowd looked at one another and muttered names to one another. Then they turned back to us and the guy in the hat said, “It’s a pity the old restaurant is gone, because you could have found a lot of the old hands just hanging out there, but try Paul Zantree. I think he moved here in the seventies. He’s out at the end of the dock here on
Mambo Moon
—it’s a big old motorboat—but he might not be home yet. I haven’t seen him, at least. Any of you seen Paul today?”

“Not since this morning,” said the man at the grill, turning the ribs again and brushing sauce on the meaty side. “He volunteers at the library a couple days a week now, but he should be back soon to finish up that trim work while the sun’s still out.” He looked up from his cooking and caught my eye. “He’s a feisty old coot. Trying to get his boat all fixed up to take the grandkids out fishing this summer. The little one’s about eight and loves to hang a line in the water with Grandpa.”

The short-haired woman walked up beside him and elbowed him lightly in the side. “You’re a feisty old coot yourself.”

The cook laughed and gave her a one-armed hug. “Well, I don’t know about the ‘coot’ part—what is a coot, anyway?” he called to the rest of the group.

A slim woman in shorts, who’d been silent up till now, raised her head and said, “I think it’s some kind of badger.”

The man in the hat objected, “It’s a bird. Isn’t it?”

The last man in the group fished a couple of beers out of a cooler and brought one over to the cook. “It’s an old guy who won’t admit he’s old. That’s what a coot is. I, personally, am a young coot and I intend to stay that way by drinking this beer. You better join me, Rick.”

“Well, I think that I shall,” Rick, the cook, replied, letting go of the woman and accepting the beer. Then he turned back to us. “Oh, I’m Rick Hines and this is my wife, Rhonda, by the way,” he added, slipping his arm around the short-haired woman’s waist again. “This is Phil Rhineman”—he indicated the beer bringer—“and his wife, Laura. Peter Black is the fella with the hat over there. Would you like to sit down and wait for Paul here? We’re always glad to have more people. . . .”

It was a generous offer, but I was pretty sure our continued presence would put a damper on the party—and on the gossip, which would be a mixed blessing. More talk might generate more memories, but it might also warn off the mysterious Miss Knight, if she was related to the woman we were seeking. Still, I really had no interest in sitting with strangers when I could be getting more of this business nailed down. Solis seemed to feel the same way.

“Very kind of you to ask, but we need to continue with our work,” he replied. “Thank you for your help. If you think of anyone else who might have been here in the mid-eighties, please let us know.” He offered his card to Rick Hines and I followed suit. Then Laura Rhineman and Peter Black asked for cards as well and we handed them out quickly with a few more thank-yous before we made our way past the barbecue and farther out the dock toward
Mambo Moon
.

“Friendly,” I commented once we were well past.

“Chatty. I hope word will not travel too quickly to Miss Knight. I would like to talk to that young woman without her being warned of our interest. . . .”

I was glad to hear Solis was as wary of the gossip grapevine as I was. “Do you want to split up? I can take Miss Knight if you like—she might prefer to talk to a woman unofficially rather than on the record to a policeman.”

“I prefer we stay together as much as possible. This case is too complex for me to wish to divide our attention.” A few odd sparks glittered in his aura as he said it, but I wasn’t sure what they meant. Solis may have been coming to trust me . . . but that trust only went so far, as long as he was undecided on the point of my paranormality. “And if we do discover a prosecutable crime,” he continued, “I will not want to have undermined any witness statements.”

Ah, thinking like a cop. I sometimes forget that my priorities aren’t like those of most investigators. I nodded. “All right. I can work with that.”

“Can you?” he asked, giving me a sharp look.

I frowned at him. “Of course. Do you think I’m not aware of the necessities of police procedure?”

“I think you are not a cop and that you . . . take all advantage of the flexibility that offers you.”

I was perversely amused and my smile quirked a little as I raised an eyebrow to him. “I see. I’ll bear that in mind.”

He nodded and turned his head to watch his step along the dock until we reached Paul Zantree’s boat.

Mambo Moon
was one slip from the end of the dock, bobbing comfortably as a larger boat swept by in the channel beyond. Small waves reflected off the breakwater to move the floating dock with gentle swells that sparkled sunlight into our eyes, punctuated by the shadow of salmon. The boat was completely unlike
Seawitch
: half the length and made of white fiberglass that had been recently cleaned and waxed to a shine. With its flying bridge on top and almost a dozen canlike fishing-rod holders attached to the stainless-steel railings at the rear of the two open decks,
Mambo Moon
looked like a boat meant for long, lazy fishing trips in ridiculous comfort.

We walked down the finger dock beside the boat, looking it over and trying to figure out where the thing that passed for a door was. Most of the living space must have been contained within the hull, and the cabin that rose out of the main deck looked like an iceberg waiting for
Titanic
. The rear of the main deck had a sort of built-in ice chest the size of a double-wide coffin with two big lift-off covers. I guessed it was meant for storing the catch of the day on one side and in the other any bait or drinks that might be needed for a long day of fishing from the built-in chairs on posts that faced the aft rails. An extension from the floor of the flying bridge deck made a small roof over the lower deck that was further shaded by a canvas cover stretched from the edge of the roof’s lip to a pair of upright poles that folded out of the railings. Despite our having been told that the owner probably wasn’t in, noises were coming from inside the boat.

We stopped beside a set of molded plastic steps that led up to an opening in the rails that stood at about Solis’s head height. This was the front door, for lack of a better description. I felt odd about stepping aboard a boat onto which I had not been invited, so I glanced at Solis for ideas. He shrugged and reached out to knock on the hull. The noises stopped. Solis knocked again and called out, “Mr. Zantree?”

“Are we supposed to say ‘ahoy’ or something?” I asked.

Solis started to reply but was cut off by a pirate coming around the edge of the cabin from the rear. The buccaneer was a dark, grizzled man with a broad chest showing a few gray hairs through the opening of his billowing cotton shirt. His hair was covered in a red bandana that sported a skull and crossbones on the front, but a few bits that stuck out were as gray as the rest and matched the scruffy whiskers on his jaw that weren’t quite long enough to be called a beard and were too pronounced to be a five o’clock shadow. Black trousers bloused into knee-length brown boots and a bright red sash tied around his waist completed the bizarre outfit. The man himself was just as odd, his brown skin and mixed-up features defying racial typing.

“Avast! What be the cause o’ this bangin’ and hallooin’?” the pirate demanded, squinting at us with a snarl.

“We’re looking for Paul Zantree,” Solis replied, flipping open his ID.

The pirate straightened up and blinked, his entire demeanor going from aggressive to passive in a heartbeat. “Oh,” he said in a perfectly normal voice and let out a small nervous laugh. “Well, that’s me. I—I was trying on my pirate outfit for Seafair. I hope I didn’t startle you—thought you were my neighbors. Am I in trouble for something? And, gosh, I hope so—it’s been such a long time since I was in trouble.”

“No, sir,” Solis answered. “We merely have some questions about the past we hoped you could answer for us. Your neighbors were kind enough to refer us to you.”

“Which neighbors?”

“The Hineses and Peter Black.”

“Oh. Well, then, you’d better come aboard.” He unclipped a chain that barred the way through the railing at the top of the steps and waved us up. We followed him on deck and back to the fishing area at the rear.

He flipped a couple of the chairs around so they faced in rather than out and settled himself on the edge of the built-in ice chest, shoving to the deck a decorative belt and scabbard from which protruded the worn steel hilt of an old navy cutlass. It fell with a clatter and he winced, but didn’t stoop to touch it again. “Have a seat,” Zantree said. “Can I get you a drink?”