Night Diver

by Elizabeth Lowell

  When he opened the door to the wheelhouse, Kate nodded to him and returned her attention to the ship’s dials, checking that both engines were working evenly and all dials were in the green. She looked natural at the wheel, her hands steady as she brought the ship around and guided it on course for St. Vincent’s aptly named Lee Harbor. The Golden Bough might not be elegant in looks, but she took the waves and wind like the sturdy workhorse she had been designed to be.

  Holden settled himself on the long bench seat at the back of the wheelhouse. From the looks of it, lately the bench had served as Grandpa Donnelly’s bed. Holden thought of ways to bring up Larry’s watch and decided that until he had a chance to download the information and compare it to Mingo’s, there was no point in upsetting Kate. She had enough to do handling ship and storm.

  The radio crackled with one-sided conversations and warnings from the local marine stations for small craft to stay ashore.

  “You do that very well,” he said after a few minutes.

  “Like riding a bike,” she said, smiling faintly as she repeated her grandfather’s words. “The fear is still there, but it’s more an echo than a scream. I always loved to be at the wheel.”

  “Heady stuff for the youngest by far in the family.”

  “Yes. They used to tease me about it. Mom loved when the wind and waves would come up and she could take one of the workboats out and surf the breaking storm waves. I used to ride with her, then I learned how to do it myself. Incredible fun, better than any carnival ride.”

  Holden watched as her smile widened, then turned upside down.

  “Life aboard the Golden Bough was good right up until it wasn’t.” She turned on one of the windshield wipers, then turned it off. “I’d forgotten the good.”

  “It is how we humans are wired,” Holden said. “Bad experiences go all the way to the bone, nature’s way of making sure that lessons stay learned.”

  In his voice she heard echoes of his own nightmare, his own pain.

  A captain called over the radio to another ship, planning an evening in town.

  “Sometimes we learn too well,” she said, automatically adjusting the wheel to keep the ship on course as the wind and waves played their natural, heedless games. “We lose the good.”

  “Like the feeling of holding a sound ship in uncertain seas?”

  Her smile flashed in the dim light. “Just like that. Only Grandpa understood. Dad was like Larry. A ship was just a way to get dive gear from one place to another.”

  Again, Holden felt the weight of Larry’s watch—and its implications—heavy in the pocket of his cargo pants.

  There’s nothing I can do until I see what’s stored on the bloody thing. Worrying Kate about it is unnecessary and cruel.

  The radio crackled but the words were indistinct, a background noise like the wind and wash of water against the hull.

  “Did your mother like handling the wheel of the dive ship?”

  “She preferred charts and books and dreams. I was the one who spent hours up here with Grandpa.” Kate paused. “We rarely talked. I just remembered that. We didn’t have to chatter. I learned quickly, and after I learned, we just watched the endless dance of ocean and weather and light on water. In some ways, Grandpa and I were alike.”

  “You love him.”

  Shadows flickered over her face as she adjusted the wheel to meet a gust of wind. “Yes, very much, and sometimes I don’t like him at all. And Larry . . .” She shook her head. “I don’t know what to think about it and can’t do anything about it anyway.”

  “Blood relationships are never as simple as they look on paper,” Holden said, memories coloring his voice. “My parents have made choices I don’t like, and I’ve made plenty they don’t like. It has little to do with loving them or their loving me. Liking and loving are different emotions. One doesn’t require the other.”

  “But when you have both with one person . . .”

  He leaned forward and touched her cheek with his fingertips. “Yes. It is very good.”

  The radio muttered words and static that added up to a small craft announcing it was entering the breakwater of a small marina ashore.

  Kate saw the first squall line descending and flipped on the radar overlay and the running lights. Though night was hours away, the storm’s twilight was deep.

  The steady beat of rain and windshield wipers became part of the background as she turned the Golden Bough on a line that made even the big boat shudder with beam seas. Nothing dangerous, but not particularly comfortable either.

  Holden took the portside watch so that Kate could concentrate on starboard. Radar would pick up big objects, but rain and spray from the wave tops could conceal debris and small boats that didn’t carry radar reflectors.

  They finished the run to Lee Harbor in a companionable silence, tied off the boat, paid the crew, and eyed the weather. It was markedly calmer on the lee side.

  “Two miles walking in the rain or a mile in the uncertain shelter of the workboat to the fuel dock where the truck is parked,” Kate said.

  “Workboat has my vote. If I had wanted to slog through rain on foot, I would have joined the infantry.”

  CHAPTER 20

  WHEN HOLDEN AND Kate finally reached the dirt ruts leading to the cottage, the perpetual twilight of the storm seemed almost normal, as did the rain. The temperature was hot enough to make them sweat, and too humid to absorb the sweat.

  Or maybe it was simply that Kate was still steaming from her grandfather’s call.

  “Did he say anything else about Larry?” Holden asked.

  “No. Grandpa was too busy telling me how I had plenty of fuel and should have just ridden the storm out.”

  “I overheard that part,” Holden said. It would have been hard not to, as she had put the phone on speaker in order to drive. “I also heard you telling him that no one gives out blue ribbons for slamming around in a tropical storm when a safe port is nearby. At least Larry is recovering quickly.”

  “So Grandpa says. I’d feel better if I could talk to Larry myself,” she said, bumping slowly down the ruts, “but he was sleeping.”

  “Did the doctors say what happened to him?”

  “Still examining test results.”

  Holden’s duffel pinged from where he had crammed it between his feet. He pulled out his computer. Between bumps he checked the latest weather bulletin.

  “Now what?” Kate asked.

  “All flights in or out are canceled until further notice. It’s still safe enough for bigger planes, but no commercial airline executives want to explain to an insurance carrier that they decided to spin the wheel with a tropical storm that is sliding toward hurricane territory.”

  “Storms feed on warm water,” she said, turning off the truck. “The longer they stall out at sea, the bigger they get.”

  “It’s like plugging into a vast energy grid,” he agreed. “Only landfall deflates the storms. In any case, it takes the urgency out of talking with”—questioning—“your family about what was happening during the off-books dives.”

  “It does?”

  “Nobody is going anywhere until the storm passes. We can sort it out tomorrow and decide which, if any, authorities require notification,” Holden said. “Or, if the storm stalls out off the coast, we’ll go to the hospital and sort out everything tonight.”

  “First I have to sort it out in my head,” Kate said. And my heart. “I feel like I’ve been grabbing at air since Mingo took off.”

  “You’re good at spreadsheets,” he said. “Perhaps we should try to fit all our facts and probabilities and such into one of them?”

  “Or a flowchart.”

  “If I knew what you were talking about, I’d quite likely agree.”

  “I’ll show you,” she said.

  When she opened the truck’s door, it seemed like grass and shrubs, ocean and leaves, even the ground trembled in the soft roar of the coming storm. Although the first squall line had passed, wate
r still fell from uncountable thousands of leaves, gathering and swelling and dropping to puddles below. The air tasted of salt, and electricity gathered heavy on it, though there was neither thunder nor lightning nearby.

  Farnsworth’s speedboat wasn’t at the cottage’s dock, which was just as well. The floating dock was rippling like a snake on the restless water. While the cottage wasn’t on the storm side of the island, it wasn’t really in the lee, either.

  “Guess Malcolm is going to ride it out in town,” Kate said.

  “With all the tourists fleeing before the airport shut down, there should be plenty of rooms. Or perhaps his female has a sturdy house.”

  “I’m just glad he isn’t here. I don’t feel like being genial to someone I barely know when my brother is ill and the family business is headed into bankruptcy.” And it looks like there is a thief or two just to keep things interesting.

  Holden ran his hand soothingly down her spine, but his mind was on the moment when he would plug in his computer and mount Larry’s dive watch. “I don’t fancy a long night with Farnsworth, either.”

  After they changed into dry clothes, Kate threw together the usual meal of cold chicken, fruit, and rice. Holden settled at the tiny bar, plugged in his computer, attached the dive watch, and waited.

  “Why did you bring Mingo’s watch?” she asked, seeing the setup.

  “It’s Larry’s watch. Or, to be precise, I found it in his quarters.”

  Her stomach clenched. “Hidden?”

  “No. In a box in his unlocked desk.”

  She let out her breath and went back to work.

  Holden scanned his e-mail, pulled up the file Volkert had made of the contents of Mingo’s watch, and opened the dive log on Larry’s watch.

  In silence, she poured cold tea into glasses and set out the plates of food. She couldn’t read Holden’s expression, which told her how accustomed she had become to picking up the small cues of his mood that other people missed. She went around the counter, stood behind him, and watched the screen until tears blurred her vision.

  Without a word he reached back and pulled her across his lap, ignoring the pressure on his aching thigh. She looked sad and angry and tired to her soul. He needed to hold her, to silently tell her that she wasn’t alone.

  “Larry was working with Mingo,” she said.

  “It’s possible that your brother was set up,” Holden said carefully.

  “Possible.” The word broke on a choked sob. “But not very damn probable, is it?”

  He didn’t answer because the truth wouldn’t comfort her, and he wanted very much to do just that.

  “Mingo’s and Larry’s dives covered the same territory,” Holden said, “but the times are different. Each was either diving solo or had a different partner.”

  “Mingo was arrogant enough to dive at night alone,” she said after a moment. “But Larry was a careful diver. Once or twice he might have done it, but nearly every night since we arrived? No wonder he looked half dead. I can’t believe it took this long to bring him down.”

  Holden started to point out that Larry hadn’t necessarily been wearing the watch every time it recorded a night dive, but kept silent, simply rubbing the tight muscles of her back and shoulders. She leaned against him, but she didn’t take her eyes off the damning trails on the computer screen.

  After a long silence she asked, “Do you think Mingo is alive?”

  “Until there is a body, there is always the possibility of life.”

  “I’m beginning to hate that word.”

  “Possibility?” Holden asked.

  She nodded. “It offers too many ways to duck the overwhelmingly probable truth.”

  “If Mingo drowned during a solo dive, who took the Golden Bough’s missing tender?” Holden asked. “And why wasn’t a body found? The currents in the wreck area flow toward St. Vincent.”

  “The weight belt would keep him down.”

  “Until the natural processes of decomposition created gas, which creates buoyancy.”

  Kate grimaced.

  “Sorry, love,” he said. “I forgot the American fastidiousness about natural processes.”

  “So Mingo is hiding out somewhere?”

  “Or foul play is involved.”

  She stared at him with shocked turquoise eyes. “I might be forced to accept that my brother is a thief, but a murderer? No way.”

  Holden’s arms tightened around her. “Remember, Mingo had to deal with some very dodgy people in order to sell the stolen goods.”

  “Has more appeared on the black market that you haven’t mentioned?”

  “AO hasn’t given me any updates on that front.”

  “So anywhere from a little to a zillion dollars of stuff could have been skimmed, or not,” she said. “Mingo could be alive or dead. Larry may not have been but likely was part of the stealing.” She rubbed her forehead. “I’m getting a really big headache, and it’s not just the pressure drop from the coming storm. I doubt if the winds are even thirty miles an hour on a sustained basis on the lee side. Gusts are a different story. We’ve had some pretty good ones.”

  Holden hesitated, then said, “There is one more thing to be considered.”

  “I’m sitting down,” she said, joking and bracing herself at the same time. She had a feeling she wouldn’t like what he had to say.

  “Yes, I can feel that,” he said, stroking her and nuzzling her neck. Then he pulled back from temptation. “We also have to make an assessment of the possible danger to your family.”

  “This is becoming a tropical storm, not a big hurricane. Even if it gets to Cat One, we’ll be fine. But if you’re worried, we can go to higher ground or one of the new hotels.”

  A gust of wind rattled the louvered windows and sent currents of air stirring.

  “Excellent idea,” he said. “A few more gusts like that and the tin sheets on the roof will take flight.”

  She looked at his ever-changing, fascinating eyes and wondered if she would have time to get used to them. “In Charlotte,” she said absently, “this would be a welcome break from stultifying heat and humidity.”

  He lifted his black eyebrows. “Lovely place you live. In any case I was thinking more of dangers of the human variety.”

  “Such as?”

  “If Mingo is alive and he’s been stealing treasure that’s worth thousands or even millions of pounds, he would want to cover his tracks.”

  “You don’t think that he’d actually murder anyone, do you? I mean, he’s an ass, but I don’t see him as a stone killer.”

  “For some people, greed excuses all manner of crimes.”

  A shudder went through her. “I feel like the night I was alone on the ship and knew that my parents needed help and was terrified I wouldn’t be able to get to them. Only now it’s Larry who’s lost and in danger and desperately in need of a helping hand.”

  Holden stroked her damp hair that still burned like embers. He wanted to tell her that none of this was her fault but knew it wouldn’t help. In her place he would have felt the same.

  “I’m calling the hospital,” she said. “I have to talk to Grandpa and Larry. I can’t spend the night wondering.”

  After a brief hug, Holden released her. She dug her cell phone out of a pants pocket and got the information for the hospital.

  “I am the sister of Larry Donnelly, who was admitted this morning after something went wrong on a salvage dive. I need to speak to him. It is urgent. Yes, I’ll wait.”

  Another gust hit, bringing with it rain that sounded like nails dropped onto the tin roof. The lights went out.

  In the silence that followed, his computer pinged with a weather update. The storm had a thirty-five percent chance of coming ashore as a Category One, but landfall wouldn’t be until morning. By the time the center passed and they got the wash, it would be almost noon. The storm was sucking energy from the warm water and taking its own time getting anywhere but bigger.

  “What?” Kate as
ked, her voice climbing.

  He looked up and saw that she was unnaturally still.

  “Are you certain?” Her voice was tight. “Please double-check. Of course I’ll wait.”

  “What is it?” Holden asked.

  “Larry checked out of the hospital against the doctor’s—yes, I’m here. I understand. What time was that again? And was anyone with him?” She paused. “Thank you. Sorry to have bothered you.”

  A flush burned along Kate’s cheekbones, and her eyes flashed with anger. “He checked himself out a few hours ago and never so much as called me. Grandpa might have been with him, but the nurse couldn’t say for sure.”

  “Then there’s no reason to stay here,” Holden said. “The worst of the storm won’t come until after the eye passes, but it won’t be particularly nice until then, especially with the electricity out. Let’s find a hotel with a backup generator and—”

  Kate’s phone rang. She didn’t recognize the caller. “Kate Donnelly,” she said.

  She listened, swayed, and straightened even as Holden came to his feet to steady her.

  “Yes? What? Are you sure? No, I knew nothing about this. No, don’t call the police. Apparently my brother felt like taking a ride in a storm.” She disconnected. “Well, I guess that answers some of our questions,” she said in a flat, disconnected tone.

  Holden waited. If she had been angry before, she was somewhere between rage and shock now.

  “That was the harbormaster,” she said. “He was doing a storm check on the large boats when he saw the Golden Bough pull away from the dock and head out.” Her hand shook just a bit, then steadied as she thumbed through the phone’s contact list and punched Larry’s number. “The harbormaster was calling to chew me out for not telling him I planned to leave.”

  “Was it Larry?” Holden asked.

  She listened to the phone ringing and ringing. “All the harbormaster said was that he saw a man in the wheelhouse, but it was too far away to see a face.”

  “Kate, I’m sorry that—”

  “So am I,” she said savagely as she counted ten rings and hung up. “But I have time to find them and tell them to go to hell.”