I decided to hunt in Marjorie Jane’s galley for the jar of instant coffee that we had left on board for emergency purposes. If this didn’t qualify as an emergency, then I didn’t know what did.
The search proved to be a monumental challenge. In his quest to discover the source of our water leak, Scooter had removed all the floorboards, exposing the bilge, in order to gain access to the various hoses, fittings, and tanks that lay underneath. I had studied the sailing book Scooter had given me the previous night, so I now knew the bilge was the compartment below the waterline. Water could collect in this area, something both Scooter and I were now very familiar with. That’s why a functioning bilge pump was so important. You wanted to get water out from inside the boat before it sank her.
Scooter had laid down some narrow pieces of lumber over the cavities at the bottom of the boat. I felt like I was walking the plank as I made my way across the cabin. One wrong move and I would fall into the bilge, likely twisting an ankle in the process. The experience reminded me of one of Ben’s T-shirts, the one that read “Walk the Plank, Ye Scurvy Dog.” I didn’t have scurvy, but I was seriously suffering from a case of caffeine withdrawal.
Balancing on a board running the length of the galley, I finally found the instant coffee in the farthest cupboard. It was sitting behind a tub of dehydrated acai berries and a container of turmeric, both left over from one of Scooter’s short-lived health kicks. I think that particular one had lasted thirty-eight minutes.
I got the kettle out, put it under the faucet, and turned the water on. Nothing. Then it hit me—our water tanks were empty. I should have realized this earlier. Why would we have water in the tanks if Scooter had the whole system torn up? The lack of coffee was really impacting my ability to think clearly.
I cautiously made my way across the plank and sat on the couch. I pulled out one of my pastries and took a few bites. The flaky crust and gooey chocolate filling gave me the energy I needed to figure out a solution to my problem. There was a water tap between our boat and Mana Kai. I could fill the kettle up there and presto, coffee would be served.
When I sat at the edge of the deck and prepared to twist my body around in order to climb down the ladder, I realized there was a problem. How would I keep both hands on the ladder and carry the kettle down? I remembered Ben’s suggestion to pass things down to another person on the ground, but the boatyard was still deserted.
I looked at the kettle. It really wasn’t a nice kettle. We had picked it up in a secondhand store, and it was beginning to show its age. So I dropped it overboard. I watched as it bounced off Marjorie Jane’s hull, chipping some of her red paint off, then struck the ladder and landed in the puddle of coffee at the bottom that I had never bothered to clean up.
I was beginning to think this was the worst plan I had ever come up with, but then I remembered the time I had tried to teach sign language to raccoons. Boy, had that ever been a disaster.
After washing the kettle off and filling it up with water, I faced my next hurdle—how to get the darn thing back up. It was too big to tuck inside my shirt. My throwing ability wasn’t the best and would likely result in more paint being chipped off the boat and water ending up everywhere. I decided to take Ben’s advice and hoist it up.
I searched around our boat for a rope to tie to the handle. All I found were a few toy mice that Mrs. Moto had batted off the deck, sandpaper, a chisel, and a large pile of rags. I poked under the stained and smelly scraps of cloth and discovered not one but two cat collars. So that’s where she had been hiding them.
This whole enterprise was getting ridiculous. It now dawned on me why they referred to having your boat out of the water propped up on jack stands in the boatyard as being “on the hard.” Just trying to make one simple cup of coffee was hard work for sure.
I remembered that Liam had tossed some ropes over the side of his uncle’s boat. Surely they wouldn’t mind if I borrowed one. I walked around the stern of The Codfather and stopped dead in my tracks. I looked on in horror at the scene in front of me—Suzanne, lying on the ground, her legs and arms twisted unnaturally beneath her.
After leaning up against the side of the boat for a moment, struggling to breathe normally, I forced myself to go over and check her pulse. But as I got closer, it was clear that I wouldn’t find one.
As I collapsed on the ground in shock, I felt one of her stiletto heels under me. For some reason, all I could think about was how its robin’s-egg-blue color matched the pencil skirt she was wearing. As I picked it up, the breeze caught a scrap of green paper and blew it across the boatyard. I spotted the other shoe by the bow of Norm’s boat. I’m not sure why, but I felt compelled to take that one as well.
My eyes focused on the matching shoe, I tripped over the metal ladder on the ground next to Suzanne. That’s when I noticed the message spray-painted on The Codfather’s keel: You’ve Been Warned, Now You’ll Pay.
* * *
The chief found me huddled on the steps of the boatyard workshop. I was shivering despite sitting in the warm sunlight. While finding dead bodies was always unnerving, Suzanne’s death had really shaken me. I wondered if it was because she had fallen off the ladder, something that I’d almost done earlier that morning.
“Mrs. McGhie, are you okay?” he asked gently. I think even he realized how upset I was. He held out his hand and helped me up. “I understand you were the one who found Mrs. Thomas. Are you up to answering a few questions?”
“I think so,” I said. I reached up to touch my necklace, something I always did when I was feeling stressed or anxious. My eyes welled up when I realized it wasn’t hanging around my neck. “I can’t believe I lost it,” I said, tears dripping down my face.
“Lost what?” The chief searched in his pocket, pulled out a crumpled-up napkin, and handed it to me.
“Thanks.” I blew my nose. “The necklace Scooter gave me. I think of it as my good-luck charm, but I lost it a few days ago, around the time I found Darren’s body. Do you think there’s a correlation? Am I jinxed?”
“No, you’re not. Besides, there’s no such thing as luck, good or bad.”
“Of course there is,” I said. “You don’t think it’s bad luck that I’ve found four bodies now?”
“I’d say it’s unfortunate. But it isn’t because you’re jinxed or because you lost your necklace. You just always happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He reached in his other pocket and handed me another napkin. “What time did you find Mrs. Thomas?”
“About a half hour ago, I think,” I said. “Although it could be longer than that. I’m not really sure.” I chewed my lip. “It seemed like her body had been there for a while. I took a seminar at the FAROUT convention last year. It was given by a medical examiner. He told us that you can estimate how long someone has been dead by—”
“You don’t need to worry about that,” the chief said. “Our coroner will determine the time of death.”
“But it was before I got to the boatyard, right? I’d hate to think she was lying there dying, and I didn’t hear her screaming out in pain.”
“Why do you think she screamed?”
“Well, you saw the body and the way she was lying on the ground. She must have been on The Codfather’s ladder when she fell off. Landing like that would be incredibly painful. She could have been lying there for hours in agony.” I took a deep breath. “I guess we can only hope she was struck unconscious when she hit the ground.”
“So, just to be clear, did you or didn’t you hear anyone screaming?”
“No, I didn’t hear anything. The place was deserted.” I glanced over toward where I had found Suzanne. Marjorie Jane was right next to The Codfather. I should have been able to hear something from there. Next to our boat was Mana Kai. “Have you spoken to Ken and Leilani yet? They live on their boat. Maybe they heard something.”
“Officer Moore is talking with them now.”
“Now that I think about it, they probably didn’t. D
arren was murdered not too far from their boat, and they didn’t hear a peep then.”
The chief gazed over at the three boats. “Strange to think people actually live here.”
“Strange is right,” I said. “The idea of living on a boat is weird enough, but living on one here? That’s crazy. Not to mention dangerous.”
I looked at the placard on the side of the workshop listing the boatyard’s rules and regulations. “I hate to say this, but Nancy is right. Going up and down ladders here is dangerous. I almost fell off ours this morning. I can only imagine what would have happened if it hadn’t been tied on. When I had that nasty tree frog encounter and let go of the boat, the ladder could have tipped backward. I could have been lying on the ground like Suzanne.”
“So you think it was an accident?”
I glanced at him quizzically. “You don’t?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Oh my gosh! I just remembered something. The ladder next to Suzanne had some rope attached at the top. It had been tied on.” I chewed on my lip while I thought through the implications. “That means that either the rope frayed naturally—although it’s pretty unlikely that it happened at the same time on both sides—or someone deliberately untied it or cut it. Maybe they even pushed the ladder when she was on it.”
“Hmm.”
“That’s all you can say—hmm?”
The chief shrugged. “Why exactly were you over by The Codfather?”
“I was making a cup of coffee.”
The chief raised his eyebrows. “Coffee?”
“It’s a long story.” I sighed. “I could really use a cup right about now.”
“We’re almost through here. So, you were making coffee over by The Codfather, and…”
“No, I was looking for a rope.”
“I’ve never heard of making coffee with rope. Sounds interesting.”
Officer Moore walked over from questioning the Chois, saving me from explaining the whole kettle fiasco. She whispered something in the chief’s ear and handed him a piece of green paper.
“All right, just a few more questions, Mrs. McGhie. Did you touch anything over by where you found the body?”
“I touched Suzanne to see if she had a pulse.”
“Other than that.”
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“You said you were looking for some rope. You didn’t pick any up?”
“No, I completely forgot about rope and coffee when I saw Suzanne.”
“Let me try phrasing this another way. Did you pick anything up and remove it from the scene?”
“Of course not.”
The chief stared at me. I stared back without saying a word. I was convinced I was going to win the stare-down competition, but then he raised both of his bushy eyebrows. I couldn’t help but look up at them twitching above his eyes like fuzzy caterpillars making their way across a tree branch, just like the tree frogs had done earlier.
The minute I broke eye contact, he took a step toward me. “I’ll ask one more time,” he said, enunciating every word. “Did you touch anything, accidentally borrow it, put it in your purse or your pocket, and completely forget about it?”
His breath smelled like coffee, which caught me off guard. I had figured him for a sweet tea drinker. “Do you know where I can get a cup of coffee around here?” I asked. “I don’t want to have to drive all the way back to Penelope’s.”
“Just answer the question.”
“No, I didn’t touch, borrow, stash away, or forget to tell you about anything. Are we done?”
“Just one last question. What do you think the message ‘You’ve Been Warned, Now You’ll Pay’ means?”
I scratched my head. “It could refer to just about anything or anyone. Warning Liam off about poaching. Warning Norm and Suzanne about this property deal they’re supposedly mixed up in, or…”
“Or what?” the chief asked.
“Or maybe someone could have left it because they were angry about Norm trying to drive other fishing charter businesses out of operation.”
“Someone like whom?”
I took a deep breath. “Someone like Melvin.”
* * *
Officer Moore had asked me to wait for her at the patio in case there were any follow-up questions. There was no way I was going to survive a minute longer without some form of caffeine. But here was the conundrum—there was bound to be a Coke or possibly even an iced coffee for sale at the marina office, but could I face dealing with Nancy before I had had any caffeine?
I’d have to try to sneak in, creep stealthily toward the coolers in the back, open them quietly, nab a couple of cans, and get back outside before she spotted me. The sticking point was how to pay for them without talking to Nancy. Perhaps I could tuck some money in between the beer and milk for her to find later.
My plan fell completely apart when Nancy yanked open the door, causing me to fall headfirst into the office, knocking down a display of fishing lures in the process.
As I tried to pick them up without slicing my fingers with the barbs, Nancy barked, “What were you doing skulking outside?”
Rather than tell her about my ingenious caffeine-procurement plan, I said, “Sorry, I was just preoccupied thinking about Suzanne’s tragic death.”
Nancy put her hands on her mouth, speechless for once.
Ned stepped out from behind the counter, holding a bucket full of cleaning supplies. “Did you say Suzanne was dead?”
I nodded while sorting the purple lures from the ones with orange spots.
“What are you doing on the floor?” Nancy asked, her power of speech restored.
I stood and placed the lures into color-coded piles on the counter. “Just picking these up.”
“Humph. Those ones go over there,” she said, pointing at the ones with long green streamers. “And those other ones go over there.”
“Nancy, can you forget about the lures for a minute? I want to hear what happened to Suzanne,” Ned said.
After I told them about finding her body at the bottom of Norm’s boat, my theory about the ladder being deliberately untied, and the message the killer had left behind, they both peppered me with questions.
“Do you think the two murders are connected?” Ned asked.
“Hmm. That is a good question.” I pondered the connection between Suzanne’s and Darren’s deaths while I hung the lures on the display stand. “I can think of people who might have wanted one of them dead but not the other.”
Nancy handed me a lure. “Like who?”
“Well, Norm might have killed Darren to drive Melvin out of business, but he wouldn’t have killed his own wife.” Nancy and Ned exchanged glances. I looked back and forth at them. “Or would he?”
Ned shifted the bucket of cleaning supplies from one hand to the other. “Well, I did hear Norm complain about how much money Suzanne kept spending on furniture for their office. He said she married him for his money and was bleeding him dry.”
“Interesting turn of phrase, considering she’s the one who ended up covered in blood.”
Nancy pursed her lips. “I can’t say I like the man, but killing your own wife…”
“Sometimes a woman can be insensitive and stick her nose into things where it doesn’t belong,” Ned said.
She gave him a sharp look. “Well, sometimes a woman can just be trying to help, and her husband is too pigheaded to realize it.”
“I’ve got a question for you guys,” I said, trying to defuse the situation. “What was Suzanne doing there, anyway? She told me she would never set foot on a boat, let alone one on the hard.” I thought about her robin’s-egg-blue stilettos and skirt. “And she certainly wasn’t dressed for climbing up a ladder and onto a grimy boat.”
“That’s a good point,” Ned said. “She always was dressed to the nines.”
Nancy pointed at the lures. “You need to redo that section
, Mollie.”
“What, aren’t these organized enough for you?” Ned asked.
“Things can always be better organized.” She glanced at the bucket Ned was holding. “And cleaned properly.”
When he didn’t respond, she turned back to me. “What were you doing in the boatyard at that time in the morning? I didn’t think you were such an early bird.”
“I couldn’t sleep, so I decided to work on sanding the bottom before it got too hot.”
“I doubt if you’ll get any more work done on it for a while now,” Nancy said. “The police will barricade it off while the investigation is under way.”
“But it didn’t happen by Marjorie Jane. It happened on The Codfather.”
Nancy shrugged. “They’re both right next to each other. What were you doing over by Norm’s boat, anyway?”
“Trying to get a cup of coffee.” Before Nancy could ask any follow-up questions, I said, “It’s a complicated story. I don’t want to go into it now. And it’s been a really long morning, and I still haven’t had a single cup of hot, liquid caffeine.”
“You know we got a new coffee maker in the lounge, don’t you?” Ned asked.
“That’s the best news I’ve had all morning.”
“Come on, I’ll show you where it is.”
Nancy frowned. “Why would you need to show her where it is? She isn’t blind. I’m sure she’ll have no problem finding it.” She pointed at the pile of papers on the counter. “I need you to work on this after you’re finished cleaning up over there.”
Ned placed the bucket on the counter right on top of the papers. “Do it yourself. I’m on break. Come on, Mollie. Let’s go have some coffee.”
Nancy scowled. She moved the bucket to the side and shook off imaginary dust from the top sheet of paper. As we walked out the door, she said, “Don’t forget to put some money in the donation jar next to the machine. Both of you.”
Bodies in the Boatyard Page 13