Ahoy!

by Maggie Seacroft

  Ahoy!

  An Alex M. Mystery #1

  Maggie Seacroft

  www.maggieseacroft.com

  Copyright © by Maggie Seacroft

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the author, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are fictitious or have been used or embellished fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real in any way. Any resemblance, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  CREDITS Book cover by Molly Burton with CoverWorks

  For my parents.

  Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  EPILOGUE

  TEASER: BUOY

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER one

  If anyone told me I’d become a millionaire because I loved pie and old movies, I’d have never believed them, but I did, and this is how it happened.

  My name is Alex Michaels, short for Alexandra, and I live on a hundred-and-one-foot by twenty-eight-foot boat that I dock at Pier 17 in Marysville, California. Built in 1967, she’s a tad older than me and she cruises at six knots, which is a touch faster than my general pace when I go for my morning jog. My circuit usually takes me around the marina, down the beach, up Main Street, and then back to the dock –– to home, sweet floating home.

  She, the Alex M., a double-decker tow tug named after yours truly when my father bought her almost thirty years ago, stands out like a sore thumb in a sea of fiberglass cruisers and sailboats owned by the working wounded turned weekend salty sailor. The other contingent of boat owners in the Marysville Marina are of the perpetually tanned, retired, yet still ruggedly fit set. Though my last birthday only gave me cause to change the first digit of my age to a three, I tend to make friends most easily with these sexagenarians, and they like that I refer to them with that risqué-sounding moniker.

  It was Tuesday morning, which meant that Nat Grant would soon row up beside me or come strolling down the dock with a freshly baked pie in hand. When I walked out onto the stern deck after a cursory pass through and tidying up of my home office, sure enough, there he was tying up to the post on the port side of my boat. Nat was a man in his late sixties, and I could tell from looking at him that he was quite a heartbreaker in his heyday. In fact, he looked as though he still qualified. He stood six feet tall and had thick white hair, bleached by the sun, and it was set off against his deep, luscious tan. He had light blue eyes and a wry smile that revealed that, by the look of things, he even had all his own teeth—something that most assuredly placed him at the top of the heartthrob list in his circle of friends. There were few occasions to which Nat did not wear his uniform of khaki shorts, a white cotton t-shirt, and canvas sneakers with the laces pulled out. The odd time I’d seen him in anything else was when he attended a ceremony for one of his pals who had moved on to the heavenly harbor in the sky, as it were. I smiled when I saw him; he was singing, and that always brought an extra big grin to my face.

  “Isn’t it romantic? Music in the night, a dream that can be heard.” He looked over to see me watching him and saw me smiling back at him like an idiot. “Oh, hello there, sunshine. I hope you’re in the mood for peach.”

  “I love peach pie. Coffee’s on, won’t be long,” I said, then I gave a quick swipe with a towel to the table at which we always sat.

  Pie in hand, Nat stood on the fender of the boat and one-legged it over the other to clear the railing and get to the stern deck. Since there was no way in hell I’d be returning the Alex M. to any form of active duty in the coastal towing game, I’d had the main tow post and winch removed about a year earlier.

  Not only didn’t I require the apparatus, I’d more than once snagged the winch cable and tow rope that seemed to just lay in wait like tripwires for me. So off they went, swapped out for a more fashionable vintage teak conversation set. The winch was removed entirely, and the tow post was cut down to serve as a table base, complete with a hole for an umbrella to fit. Cut down, it made a nice setting, where, like clockwork, each Tuesday at ten, Nat and I enjoyed pie, cards, and good conversation.

  We’d see each other at other intervals during the week, of course, if one of us was heading to the marina store or to dinner or a walk, but those happenstance get-togethers did not have the priority our Tuesday standing engagements seemed to have taken on. One of only a handful of others who lived year-round at the marina, in the year and a half I’d been there, Nat had taken on the role of stand-in father with all that implied.

  He counseled me on decisions of uncharted territory, was an excellent secret keeper, and he even took me to task on those rare occasions where I admit it may have been called for. We shared a mutual exuberance for the classics—that is to say anything before 1967, music where you didn’t have to guess at the lyrics, and television shows where the female lead kept it classy and wore pearls and a dress while vacuuming the house.

  At the ping of my coffeemaker, I excused myself and ducked inside the stern door of my home. When it was engaged in the towing business, the vessel took about six men to run. When push came to shove, my father could do it with three, but most times he insisted his captains use at least five men. As such, there had been six modest or, to be more accurate, shoe-box sized bedrooms on the main deck—three on each side of the passageway. Each had just enough room for a built-in bunk, storage below, a chair, and if you were lucky a drop-down desk.

  Since I’d converted her, though, the Alex M. had been more open concept, which is to say less claustrophobic. On one side of the corridor, three bedrooms were combined to form one large, self-indulgent master bedroom ensuite, and on the other side, the space was opened to create my home office/living room/kitchenette. Since the galley was down forward, which meant at the end of the long hallway and down a very steep set of steps, in the name of convenience and laziness, I opted to put a mini-fridge and coffee maker on the main level. I decided that both had fallen into the category of office expenses and wrote off those and similar comforts on my last tax return.

  When I returned to the stern deck with a tray of ironstone mugs, plates, forks, a coffee carafe, and a crystal creamer of half-and-half, I saw Nat seated, angling his face, eyes closed towards the June sun. He was the poster boy for sexy at sixty and was from an age when sun tanning was encouraged and the pre, during, and post-meal cocktails were rituals. I suppose all that drinking had caught up to him and that’s why he’d stopped years ago, but the sun was the mistress he wouldn’t turn his back on—except when he literally turned his back on her to get a little warmth on his shoulders.

  The peach pie Nat doled out tripped all my senses. When my fork bit into the crust, it made a cracking sound before it sank into the layers of sliced peaches stacked three inches thick. I could smell the pie on the end of my fork before I tasted it — a bouquet of peach and cinnamon and just a hint of lemon. It was warm from the oven and the juicy but still crisp filling juxtaposed the flaky, crispy pastry made me close my eyes. The apocalypse could have come then and there and I would have died in sheer pie bliss.

  “Mmm. Oh, Nat, this is the best pie I’ve ever tasted.” I’m sure it was even better than sex, though truthfully, I’d only had a faint recollection of the latter, havin
g experienced a dating dry-spell of late.

  “Sunshine, you say that every Tuesday,” Nat said, sending a crinkly-eyed, broad smile my way before thrusting his first forkful of the dessert into his mouth and, like always, he nodded to himself with approval.

  I did say it every Tuesday, and with good reason. Somehow, Nat transformed a little fruit, sugar, flour, and butter into heaven on a plate, and each Tuesday I’d guess almost all the ingredients with the exception of one or two which he doggedly refused to disclose. As if anyone could usurp his role as my pie dealer — he had me hooked on the stuff.

  From what he’d told me, Nat’s previous life had started in the baking industry, and though he kept most of the other details of his past vague, I assumed he was just too humble to elaborate on what I surmised had been a successful career. You can just tell that about some people by the way they speak, how they carry themselves, and how they treat others. What’s more, I hadn’t the interest in looking him up online. I always managed to find some disappointing tidbit about people when I felt the impulse to see what the world wide web had on them.

  After one piece of pie, two cups of coffee each, a few hands of poker to decide who got the leftovers, and a rambunctious discussion on the allegories of the old western movies we loved watching, Nat sighed, stretched, and kissed the top of my hand. This ritual, I’d come to learn, generally signaled that his leave was imminent.

  Our usual parting remarks concluded, and he used one of his oars to shove off against the hull of my boat and headed back to his motor yacht, working off the pie courtesy of an authentic rowing machine ten times more challenging than any you’d find in a gym. As he rowed away with his winnings, the rest of the pie, I could almost see the blood pumping through the veins in his tanned, sinewy forearms, and he effortlessly dipped each oar into the blue-green water. He belted out a rendition of “If ever I would leave you, it wouldn’t be in springtime”, apparently feeling regal and in the Camelot kind of mood.

  I returned to inside the boat, laden down with my tray of what I’d taken out, but with a few dishes to clean up. I took them down forward to the galley and then made my way back to the desk in my office and logged into the computer to find a list of emails waiting for me.

  I don’t like to work too hard, at least not on the computer. I’ve done hard labor in the traditional office setting and it almost kicked my ass. The realization that life is for living came a little later than it should have, but isn’t that always the way with epiphanies? It came after my father died, leaving me a small annuity, the Alex M., interests in a few of his partnerships, and his pet project—a boat brokerage which I happily took on. When people want to sell a boat anywhere from California to Nova Scotia, they call me. I specialize, advertise, and fraternize within the industry and “find a home for your surplus marine inventory” – that’s my tagline. It was either that or “Need a barge? Call Marge”, but my name’s not Marge and I wasn’t about to change it.

  My woe-is-me tale ends right about there, or perhaps after I divulge that I am the only child from a broken home and a mother nowhere in sight. I was also married once, but that didn’t end well and I don’t care to discuss it. It doesn’t take much for me to make ends meet since I’m mortgage-free and my only dependent is my cat George, and with all the fish around the marina, he eats cheap.

  “Oh, would you look at that, George. Mark Morgan wants a thirty-five-foot aluminum landing craft with two hundred horsepower and his budget is thirty grand. Dream on,” I said and rolled my eyes in the direction of my cat, who I found sunning himself on the window ledge catching some rays through a porthole. He’d assumed the dead raccoon pose, limbs sticking straight up and, had I not known better, I would have thought he had succumbed. I formulated a snappy response to the dreamer along the lines of “Mr. Morgan, thank you for your interest. I regret to inform you that your budget is too low and that you ought to stop believing in fantasies like this and the Easter Bunny.”

  I backspaced that reply. It’s a wonder my backspace button isn’t worn out. I typed out a more professional, suitable answer and, through the magic of technology, Mr. Morgan would be soon to find his hopes dashed by a complete stranger with much more sense than he. A few more emails along those lines, along with a couple requests for more information regarding Mike Scruton’s barges and engines he had listed with me, an invoice sent out for a commission on a closed sale, and before long it was time for some fresh air and an escape.

  The beauty of having a home-based office means I’m not chained to my desk and, when the need for a mental break invariably arrives, I can always find something to do. On this occasion, I decided to check off the ole to-do list, the task of buffing and touching up the paint on the roof of the wheelhouse of my tug.

  The upcoming Fourth of July festivities at the Marysville Marina includes what amounts to a “show and shine” event for boats. Instead of car owners lining up their turtle-waxed vintage land yachts and souped-up hot rods, this affair sees boat owners lining up their polished motor yachts and cruisers. For me, it was a good excuse to refresh the paint on my boat, though I really had no interest in the contest aspect of the festivities. Last year was my first year in the competition, and the judging — done by marina members and their guests — seemed to involve some element of collusion, if you’d asked me. A fact that didn’t make much sense, considering the winner only received a pizza a month from Lighthouse Pizza up on Main Street, and to be honest, their dough’s a little underwhelming for my taste.

  I had donned my coveralls over my work bikini, rifled through my stash of painting supplies, and headed out to the deck where I unwittingly crashed through a fresh cobweb across the frame of the door like a runner through the ribbon at the end of a race. “Ewwww,” I groused as I spotted then swatted at the latest of the one too many spiders I’d seen that day. Spiders with fat bellies that squish in a plop of murky white when you step on them are the bane of my existence, but they are attracted, like city people, to a nice waterfront retreat like mine. “Would you stay the hell off my boat!” I huffed as I wiped the sticky webs from my fingers.

  “I assume you don’t mean me,” a familiar voice called out from the dock. It was Aggie. She’d probably seen me batting my palms in the air like a raving lunatic or a budding aerobics instructor, but she had to have been used to my antics by then. We’d been fast friends since I’d arrived at the marina some eighteen months earlier in my behemoth of steel and, since day one, she was welcome to board my boat. Her feet thudded on the steel deck as she made her arrival.

  “Hiya.”

  “Hey, girl, I didn’t see you come by for lunch. Have you eaten yet?” she asked as she hoisted the paper bag in her hand.

  I arched an eyebrow, my trademark look of suspicion. Don’t get me wrong, Aggie is awesome and caring, but I wasn’t about to be fooled. Any trip down the dock that pre-empts my own stopping in for lunch usually means she needs to talk about the latest man or men in her life. My eyebrow slunk back to where nature intended as I softened to the idea of the best roast beef sandwich in town. “Here ok?” I said, nodding to the outdoor table and chairs.

  “Absolutely.”

  Aggie, if you can believe it, is Augusta Wind Bellows. Aggie for short because, frankly, her full name is not only ridiculous but a mouthful. She owns the store at the marina and lives in the apartment above it. And while keeping the store is her occupation, you might say that keeping a rotation of men is her pre-occupation. She’s an import from the Canadian province of Quebec and attributes her popularity and joie de vivre to her French heritage. We both attribute her interesting name to the LSD her parents must have taken. She is sarcastic, reliable, funny as all get out, and I’d put her in the best friend category along with Nat Grant. In my time at the marina, I’d witnessed the revolving door of men she knew and can say in all honesty that one thing we’d never fight over was a fella – her taste is totally different from mine.

  “So, did you hear Mr. Beedle is sending in a n
ew man to oversee operations?” she asked as she unpacked the roast beef sandwiches, pickles, and homemade kettle chips from the bag. The oil from the chips made a mark on the paper bag like a cholesterol-soaked Rorschach test that only made me want to dive in and get crunching.

  “No, what happened to the other guy? Chris something,” I asked, seated patiently and rolling up the sleeves of my coveralls. I’d never taken much notice of the man, but he seemed alright enough to me. He kept the docks in good repair, and I kept my petty complaints to myself.

  “He had to be… relocated,” Aggie said as she searched for, in her estimation, just the right word. She got a devilish grin and popped a potato chip into her mouth.

  “Oh? And what do you know about that?” I asked, knowing there was more to the story. There is always more to Aggie’s stories, and she looked like she was dying to tell this one. I took a bite of my roast beef delight so I could savour the story while I savoured my lunch. In the process, a gloopy white dollop of mayonnaise landed on my lap. I wiped it away, and the greasy remnant it left was immediately lost amid the splotches of white, red, and black reminders of painting tasks already checked off my list.

  “Well, I may have had something to do with his move,” she said, smiling a guilty smile with almost all her teeth and giggling before she took a sip of the lemonade she’d brought.

  “Do tell.” This was going to be good.

  “Well, how was I supposed to know he was married?” she asked.

  “Mmm, you could have asked him flat out, checked him out online, looked for the tan mark on his left ring finger, but all of that sounds like too much work,” I said and shot her a knowing grin.

  “I know, right,” she replied innocently, but I wasn’t buying it.