Beware the Mermaids

by Carrie Talick

  Santiago was known as a man who could fix things. Anything mechanical or structural. Roger was known as a man who called contractors to fix things. Big difference.

  Santiago kept his salt-and-pepper beard short and neatly trimmed, which set off his penetrating blue eyes. His navy tam was a constant fixture, and he carried within him an eternal spring of natural charisma.

  “Santiago,” Nancy said, flustered from the fall and his penetrating gaze. “Thank you for saving my bag.”

  “Seems this one was making a break for it,” Santiago answered playfully.

  Nancy wiped dock dust off of her shirt and tried to pull herself together. “It shall be banished to the locker from here on out,” she said.

  Santiago smiled warmly, lifted the suitcase onto the deck like it was filled with foam peanuts, and placed it in the cockpit. When he came back, Nancy offered him the bag carrying Suzanne the Cat.

  “Can I trouble you for one more? She’s a little nervous.”

  “Of course,” he said. As he peeked at the little cat inside, he added, “Precious cargo.” Santiago immediately took the bag and with great care brought the cat and her carrier on board. He gently set her down on the teak bench in the cockpit and touched his fingers to the screen. Suzanne nuzzled up against them as Santiago cooed words to her. “It’ll be okay, little one; you’ll get your footing soon enough.”

  Nancy hopped on board with the bag of bedding just in time to witness Santiago’s simple kindness to her cat. She’d almost forgotten what it looked like coming from a man. Roger tolerated Suzanne but never cooed to her.

  Nancy, for once, didn’t know what to do. Then her brain started functioning again, though that wasn’t an easy thing to do around Santiago. She was quite proud of herself.

  “Can I get you a cup of coffee?” she asked.

  Santiago looked around at the two suitcases and the bag of new bedding. Nancy could tell he was trying to surmise what was going on without being rude enough to ask.

  “So, you see, Roger and I … well, we are, um …” Nancy sighed, unsure of how to politely issue the truth. So, she abandoned all etiquette. “He decided to bury the weasel in Claire Sanford, and I decided I couldn’t live with an asshole.”

  Santiago squinted and massaged his jaw, considering the information. She detected a sense of knowing and the hint of a smile at her bold comment.

  “So, this is my new home. And you are my first guest. It might take me a minute, but I can unpack the coffeemaker and get some brewing in no time.”

  “Please do not trouble yourself. I have to finish up some work on Dawson’s boat across the way, so I should be heading back anyway.”

  “You’re right; at the moment, coffee is too much work. But, um”—Nancy looked around, thinking quickly—“I have some rum. How about a shot of rum? I could use the unofficial welcome.”

  “As the custom goes, a pirate never says no to rum,” Santiago said as he smiled. He nodded to her offer of a shot.

  Elated, Nancy disappeared inside the salon and brought back two shot glasses in the shape of cacti filled to the top with spiced rum. Santiago was petting Suzanne, who was now sitting comfortably in his lap. The cat seemed amazingly at ease.

  “Okay, here we go,” Nancy said as she handed Santiago his shot.

  They raised their glasses at the same time, and Santiago quietly said, “Welcome to the neighborhood, Madam Hadley.”

  “Call me Nancy.”

  Santiago paused, nodded, and started again. “To our newest pirate. Welcome, Nancy.”

  She smiled. They toasted and tipped the shots back.

  For a moment they remained locked in a mutual gaze, a chord of connection forming out of nowhere, like tuning in to a long static radio station and finally finding music.

  A pelican squawked and broke the moment, and Santiago cast his eyes downward. “Well, I must go,” he said as he tipped his tam to her and then let himself off the boat and headed down toward Dawson’s vessel.

  Nancy watched him depart until she was interrupted by a small meow from Suzanne.

  “Let’s get you settled, girl. Food always helps.”

  After two hours of organizing the boat, packing everything away, replacing lightbulbs, and setting up Suzanne with her bowls of food and water, Nancy poured herself a crisp, cold glass of white wine and had a seat outside.

  She had purchased white-and-navy canvas cushions for the teak benches, and she sat back and let the sun warm her legs as she relaxed, or at least tried to. For the first time in her life, she didn’t have anyone to look after, no sandwiches to make, no dry cleaning to pick up, no awful lunches with Roger’s business friends to attend—which meant she didn’t know what to do with herself. Relaxation came hard for someone who wasn’t accustomed to it. So, she got up and made sure Suzanne was okay, her last mission of caretaking. Problem was, Suzanne had always been an independent sort. After inspecting every single part of the boat while Nancy busied herself with unpacking, Suzanne had found the perfect spot to take a nap. She was happily dozing in the corner of the shower when Nancy interrupted her. The small cat twitched one ear, seeming to know she was needed, and sauntered out to where her human sat on the bench of the cockpit. She cuddled up next to Nancy on the white-and-navy cushions and started purring.

  “We did the right thing, right, Suze?”

  Suzanne merely squinted into the sun, sighed so deeply that it seemed to signify a contentedness she hadn’t felt in years, and proceeded to nap.

  “Thank you, my furry Zen master.” Nancy took a sip of her wine and felt her shoulders loosen for the first time in two weeks, or possibly thirty-six years.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  SOMETHING NEFARIOUS AFOOT

  Roger was in the middle of his back swing on the twelfth fairway at Palos Verdes Golf Course when his phone rang. As a result, he ended up shanking his ball into a lovely pond nestled in front of a grove of eucalyptus trees.

  “Goddamn it!” Roger whacked his club down hard on the fairway, sending a local squirrel scrambling back into the ground cover. He reached in his pocket for his phone and saw that it was his attorney, Spencer Raeger, calling.

  “Hey Spence, what’s up?”

  He and Spencer had talked nearly every day this week concerning his wife Nancy—how to freeze assets, how to forestall the divorce she was seeking, which he was trying to prevent entirely. Roger heard a cha-ching! in his head every time Spencer called. He had briefly considered changing Spencer’s incoming ring tone to a cash register as a gentle reminder that lawyers were maddeningly expensive. But not as expensive as divorce.

  “Well, I’ve found out where Nancy has decided to take up residence.”

  “Is it Bali Hai Gardens? That sketchy outpost for forlorn divorcees? That’s about all she can afford.” Roger snickered.

  “No, she’s about to live on a boat. In King Harbor.”

  “What? What boat?”

  “Oh, I assumed it was your boat, the Bucephalus. Which is, by the way, not listed as one of your assets. We need to change that.” Cha-ching!

  “Impossible. She’s not on Bucephalus because I changed the locks.”

  “Oh, that’s a bit of a preemptive strike, but okay. I’m looking at a publicly registered dock slip contract for twelve months in King Harbor. Signature looks a lot like your wife’s.”

  Roger abruptly hung up on Spencer Raeger. As he was charged by the minute, the need for lengthy conversation or simple phone etiquette was pointless. The financial squeeze Roger had been so masterfully executing over Nancy to bring her back into the fold was failing. There was only one explanation. Those crones had to have come to her rescue with their measly savings from piggy banks and portions of their 401(k)s. He grumbled and thought to himself, Why me? Is nothing in life fair? Is it too much to ask to have a wife I can completely control?

  Just then his phone rang again. He looked at the screen and saw it was his daughter Stella calling. He sighed and then connected.

  “Hi, Pean
ut.”

  “Mom is living on a boat?”

  “How did you hear already?”

  “From Mom! What the hell is going on, Dad? I thought you would be in Kauai by now, buying her some koa wood jewelry and getting everything back on track.”

  “I know. Things went a little … sideways.”

  “That might be the understatement of the decade. She’s moving herself onto a boat, and she’s taken the cat. Has she completely lost her mind? What fifty-seven-year-old woman leaves her husband for no good reason and goes to live on a boat? I think it might be grounds for a psych evaluation. I can call a friend of mine, and we can—”

  Roger cut her off. “Stella, she’s not crazy. She’s just going through something.”

  Stella remained silent, presumably waiting for more of an explanation.

  Roger continued, “Look, if this is what she needs to see how good she has it at home, then I can abide by that. Living on a boat is a lot like camping. It won’t be long before she misses her eight-hundred-thread-count sheets, long hot showers, or a toilet that doesn’t require her to grind her shit before she flushes it. Not to mention reliable refrigeration for her Chardonnay. Trust me. She’ll be back under this roof inside two months.”

  “I guess, Dad.” This seemed to calm Stella for a moment. “But Mom was supposed to watch Charlotte while Sam and I go up the Central Coast for a getaway, which we desperately need. I’ve already been denied by all of her friends’ mothers at Redondo High, even the ones with neck tattoos. I swear they hate working mothers. So now what am I supposed to do? I can’t cancel this trip.”

  Roger, knowing full well he didn’t want to spend a weekend with his sullen teenage granddaughter, said, “Sadly, I’m golfing at the country club with the boys this weekend.” Roger hoped his excuse didn’t sound too hasty. Then he offered, “Why not drop Charlotte at her grandmother’s new boat? I’ll bet your mom would love it.”

  “Oh, she would. She already offered. The problem is Charlotte doesn’t want to go.”

  “Why?”

  “No Wi-Fi.”

  Roger considered this for a moment and then added, “Might be good for her. Get some fresh sea air in those lungs of hers. Blow the tech stink off of her. Besides, she’s a kid. She has no say.”

  “You are no help, Dad.”

  The line went dead. Roger knew his daughter was more at her wits’ end with her own daughter than she was mad at him. He sighed heavily, took a deep breath, twirled his new driver under his armpit, and tried to get a handle on the rage he felt behind his eyes. He only half believed that Nancy was going to return to their Hermosa Hills home in two months. In fact, in the bigger scope of his plans, her living on a boat in King Harbor had complicated things nearly beyond his control. Nancy wasn’t coming around. Not without a hard shove to get her back into the fold. And if anyone knew how to shove, it was Roger Hadley.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE EFFING CHARGERS

  Chuck Roverson sat at his desk overlooking the marina, his Dodgers baseball hat askew, a spear gun in one hand and a Miller Lite in the other. The King Harbor dock master didn’t usually drink until happy hour and certainly never before noon, but the stress of his current situation warranted the numbing effect of alcohol. He felt his fingers tingling, and he wasn’t sure if it was the booze or abject fear.

  His bookie had left a rather ominous threat on his phone, something about three grand in the red, and if the dough wasn’t forthcoming soon, a couple of guys with pliers would alleviate him of his toenails. “Fucking Chargers,” he muttered. Chuck had made a bet on the LA Chargers football team, three-to-one odds, and all they had to do was win by three. Things had been looking great until the kicker shanked a measly twenty-five-yarder with seconds to go. The Chargers failed to cover the spread in overtime. Three large was more than he could cover, even if he raided his wife’s Lake Havasu vacation savings. He’d exhausted all his options and even considered stealing part of the money Brad Warren had delivered to him that very morning for a one-year lease on a boat slip for his client, Nancy Hadley. But he could lose his job if he did that. He was guzzling his beer when the phone rang.

  “King Harbor Marina, your gateway to the Pacific. How may I help you?” Roverson answered glumly.

  “Chuck, this is Roger Hadley.”

  Chuck immediately sat up in his swivel chair, wiped the sweat off his brow, and set his beer on the desk. “Mr. Hadley, sir, how are you today?”

  “I’ve been better, Chuck. Listen, I was hoping to buy you a drink at the Blue Water Grill. I want to talk to you about a little matter I think you can help me resolve.”

  Chuck sat there for a minute, trying to work out why Hadley was calling him. The only other time Hadley had spoken to him was when he threatened to have him fired for allowing a visiting yacht to block part of Bucephalus’s slip on the Fourth of July.

  “Chuck? You there?”

  “Uh, sir, yes, sir,” Chuck responded.

  “How about that drink?”

  “Sure, say two o’clock?”

  “See you then.” Roger Hadley hung up.

  Chuck Roverson stared out over all the boats resting in their slips, still trying to figure out what Hadley wanted. Chuck had assumed that Roger and Nancy had simply bought another boat and therefore needed another slip. Then his mind cramped when he thought back to the fine mess he’d gotten himself into. He was enterprising. He had gotten into tight spaces before. He just had to get creative. And that’s when it dawned on him. Maybe this meeting with Hadley could lead to more than a drink. Maybe he could blackmail Hadley. After all, he’d seen him fooling around with that other woman, the redhead, the one who wasn’t his wife. Plus, he was a rich guy. He had plenty of money. Wouldn’t hurt him to part with just enough to keep Chuck’s toenails firmly attached. He didn’t need to get greedy; he just needed to get clear of his bookie’s thugs. He had two hours before their drinks at the Blue Water Grill. He had to think. He wanted to go down by the water.

  He grabbed a beer out of the fridge in his office and went outside. A warm breeze nearly blew his hat off, but he caught it and then wrenched it down on his head. He walked onto the platform that led down to the docks and in doing so disturbed a large pelican sitting on the top of a nearby pole.

  “Go on!” Chuck barked at the pelican.

  The bird lazily flew up and north over the marina and then circled back overhead.

  Chuck Roverson felt a large splat on his shirt. He looked down at a big messy glob of pelican poop just above his right pocket.

  “Goddamn it!” he yelled as he looked up into the blinding sun, catching just the shadow of a wing.

  The pelican hung in midair, coasting on the wind, looking down at his handiwork. Satisfied, he flapped his big brown wings and flew away.

  * * *

  “We’ll have another,” Roger said loudly toward the bartender of the Blue Water Grill as he twirled his index finger in a circle, the universal sign for another round.

  Roger eyed the birdshit stain on Chuck Roverson’s shirt, saw the man’s lazy smile, and figured he’d sized him up pretty accurately. A gangly man in his late forties, Chuck likely had at least two failed financial dreams under his belt—being the captain of a booze-cruise catamaran in the British Virgin Islands and owning a money-hemorrhaging sport-fishing operation in some backwater. Roger surmised that both of those shiny hopes had been dashed by the harsh truth of his addictive personality.

  Roverson’s brow was weathered and furrowed, his nose and cheeks red with gin blossoms, and Roger noticed that Chuck didn’t just drink to be social; he gulped his alcohol as if Prohibition were about to be reinstated. Roger had learned of his previous experience as the captain of a whale-watching schooner down in San Diego, which had eventually led him to his job as dock master at King Harbor. Chuck had admitted to Roger that he really was looking for a job at the neighboring, more upscale Port Royal Marina, where the females were moneyed, bored, and flirty with boat personnel. Chuck sn
orted in an attempt, Roger thought, to laugh. Roger summed up Chuck Roverson in two words: easily manipulated.

  “So, Chuck, my wife Nancy Hadley has just recently rented a boat slip in King Harbor.”

  Chuck’s smile vanished. He grew quiet and stared at his drink.

  “I signed that this morning,” he finally said.

  “Yes, then you know. You see, Nancy and I are having a little disagreement on what the future looks like. And well, I was hoping you might be able to help me.”

  “How so?” Chuck slurred.

  “I love my wife.”

  Chuck snorted and chortled again.

  Roger paused for a moment, irritated, and then continued. “I love my wife, and I want her to realize that home, with me, is where she belongs.” Roger reached for his wallet. “I was hoping you could help me make her understand that life on a boat can be, shall we say, uncomfortable.” Roger stared hard at Chuck to make sure the words sank into his pickled brain.

  Chuck Roverson sat there for a second, brow furrowed, trying to grasp the concept.

  “I want you to make her life in the marina a little harder than it is for other liveaboards.”

  “Oh, you mean like cite her for violations and stuff?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean, but maybe take it one step further.”

  “I could have someone sink her boat?”

  “No, that’s a buoy too far, my friend. Somewhere between minor infractions and going down like the Edmund Fitzgerald. I just want her to come home, not press charges. Can you do that for me, Chuck?” Roger flashed fifteen one-hundred dollar bills at him and gave him a healthy pat on the shoulder, as if they were devious, scheming comrades.

  Chuck hovered in his seat. He stared at the cash.

  Roger knew the money would be like catnip.

  “How soon do you want the little lady home?”