Death in Rough Water

by Francine Mathews

  “The doors?” He crouched down next to her. “You have to under­stand trawling to understand the doors. The net’s funnel-shaped, like a bag, with the narrow end closed by a string.” He reached for a length of net and pulled it toward them by way of illustration. “The open end is raised upward by f loaters, while the closed end trails along the seabed. That’s why we spend so much time mending net,” he said, smiling for the f irst time, “because there’s so much junk along the bottom. Rocks pulled up by scallopers, pieces of trash left by other boats, even the sand hills will put a hole in a net. The bigger boats have rollers on theirs that sort of keep the net off the bottom, but the Lisboa Girl isn’t big enough to handle those.”

  “And the doors?” Merry said.

  “The doors—they weigh the net down. One on either side of the net, eight hundred pounds apiece. That’s hardwood sheathed in steel, that is, and you don’t get much heavier than that. They slice into the water like a pair of hatchets when the net’s paid out. The f loaters, now,” he said, pointing to the net’s upper rim, “keep the top of the net mouth rising while the doors hold the bottom down, and what you end up with is an opening that doesn’t close.”

  “Don’t the f ish swim out once they realize they’re in a net?”

  “Doesn’t work that way. Fish strike upward when they’re panicked, and what they hit is mesh. And the net’s being dragged along by the boat at about two knots, so they’re scooped into the closed end.”

  “How long do you leave the net in the water before you haul it in?”

  “Maybe an hour,” he said, “depending. Sometimes half an hour, some­times two. You scope out the f ish on the f ish-f inder, and you f igure how long it’ll take to get a good haul.” He hoisted himself to his feet and headed for the pilothouse. Merry followed.

  It was a snug space for wheel and charts, with a bank of electronic equipment ranged along an instrument console.

  “It’s like a plane cockpit,” Merry said.

  “The Lisboa Girl’s not young, but Joe kept her up-to-date.” Jackie gestured toward a screen. “That’s our GPS for satellite navigation—can’t f ish without it these days. And this is the automatic pilot, that’s the sonar, for depth-f inding, and that there’s the f ish-f inder.” He f lipped a switch and she saw a screen full of murkiness. “Nothing much to see here at dock, of course, but you get the idea.”

  “I didn’t know f ishing was so high-tech.”

  “When you’re out alone on the Georges Bank in ten-foot seas, taking ice on the bow and the rigging, and you’ve got a hundred miles to port, you want everything you can get between you and disaster. You trust your men, you trust your boat, and you trust your equipment; but you never, never trust the sea.” He leaned back against the chart table and gave her a level stare. “Now why don’t you tell me why you’re here.”

  Merry said nothing for an instant, assessing his calm for signs of the volatile temper people had warned her about. “I’m here because Del Duarte can’t get over Joe’s death, and I have to help her put it behind her.”

  “By learning about f ishing?”

  “By asking you again what happened that day.”

  “I told the Coast Guard everything.”

  “But Del doesn’t believe it, Jackie. She can’t accept the idea that Joe Duarte was fallible, that he could have made a mistake that cost him his life. She’s asked us—the Nantucket police—to open a murder investi­gation.”

  His f ingers clenched spasmodically on the wooden table and then released. He thrust himself away from the charts and pulled open the pilothouse door.

  Merry followed him outside and found him standing by the gantry with its now-impotent steel slabs. The scene of the crime, she thought.

  Jackie swung around abruptly and faced her, the muscle in his jaws working, his gray eyes f lat and cold. “You telling me that bitch is accusing me of murder?”

  “No,” Merry said. “I’m telling you that no one at the station thinks there’s any truth in it, but to satisfy Del and calm her down—to help her come to terms with her father’s death—we’ve got to go through the motions.”

  “To hell with the motions,” he shot back. “I’ve got a living to make, and if she sets out to tie up my boat, she’ll regret it. You tell her that from me.” He emphasized his point with a blunt foref inger, thrust ac­cusingly in Merry’s face. “Del’s a spoiled little girl. She needs to grow up and face reality. Just because she left her old man for years is no reason to start blaming me when he goes and dies. Shit.” He turned away and spit over the bow, all his venom in the arc of phlegm.

  Merry took a deep breath, seeing the rigidity in his shoulders, the stiffness of his neck. “Well, Jackie,” she said, “in somewhat gentler terms, that’s what I’m trying to do. And it’ll help all of us get past this faster if you answer my questions.”

  There was a short silence, during which he continued to stare out toward the mouth of the harbor, and she held on to her calm by folding her arms across her chest, her hands clutching her elbows.

  “Seems a guy can’t even make a living anymore,” he said. “Between the lawyers and the police and the friggin’ stupid women. I just want to f ish. You know? I want to go out and do what I know how to do. This sitting around is killing me.”

  Merry refrained from telling him that the sooner he talked to her, the sooner he might be able to claim his boat; it wasn’t exactly true. Her father wasn’t opening a murder investigation. Nothing would stop the probate of Joe Duarte’s will. But as long as Jackie thought Del might—

  “Okay,” he said, thrusting himself away from the gantry. “Shoot.”

  She got out a notebook, pen, and her half-glasses. “The weather was pretty bad that night, wasn’t it?”

  “The storm that hit the island the day of Joe’s funeral was nothing compared to what swept through the Bank the day he died.”

  “But Joe decided to stay and f ish.”

  Jackie’s eyes shifted away. “We’d been out for two days and were almost ready to turn for home. The weather came up sudden, and I don’t think anybody expected it. Besides, he’d seen a lot of rough sea over the years. You worry about January. You don’t worry so much about May.”

  “You had a net down.”

  “Most of the other boats had pulled out and were heading for port. We were in about twenty-four fathoms of water, around the Leg—”

  “What’s a fathom?”

  “Six feet.”

  “And the Leg?”

  “—is just a spot on the Bank. That don’t mean nothing to you, I know, but it’s the only grave marker Joe’ll ever have.”

  “Go on.”

  “We’d run into some nice-sized cod. They’re gettin’ rarer and rarer anywhere, even on the Bank, which was famous for ’em, so we wanted to f ish while we were still making money, and damn the swell. But Joe got nervous about the weather—he’d lost all his balls this winter, God knows how we got any f ish at all—and ordered the net pulled in. The Swede—he’s a kid ’bout twenty-three, and Joe had him working the winch—he’s so excited about all the f ish down there, and pissed about Joe, that he doesn’t ease up on the throttle, and the doors come rocketing out of the water twice as fast as they should. Here, look at these.”

  He reached down and picked up the net, pointing to the yellow chaf ing strips tied to it at varying intervals. “These are made of f iberglass to toughen the net while it’s dragging along the bottom.” His blunt, calloused f inger moved higher, to some strips of rag. “But these here are like f lags—haul three in together, and you know the doors are coming up out of the water. The Swede was only hauling in about f ifty feet of net. He shoulda seen these rags, and eased off the throttle. But he’s feeling angry about the f ish that got away, and he gets careless.” He threw the net aside in disgust.

  “So the doors slammed into this thing here,” M
erry said, tapping the gantry, “much faster than they should. Where was Joe?”

  Jackie dropped his eyes and rubbed at his nose with chapped, red f ingers. Stalling, Merry thought.

  “He was at the helm, at f irst,” Jackie said, “like he shoulda been. But when he sees what’s happened, he runs out fast and starts giving orders. Doors that weigh this much, unsecured and swinging wild, can capsize a boat, and the cap’n wasn’t about to let that happen. He got in the way, what with the crew trying to secure the doors—you’ve got maybe thirty seconds to do it, and Joe f igured we weren’t doin’ it right—and all of sudden he’s reaching an arm in to do it himself. The boat heels over, the left door comes walloping in, and Joe’s out cold from an eight-hundred-pound slap to the head.”

  He fell silent, and looked away over the mass of f ishing boats to either side of the Lisboa Girl, to the mouth of the harbor and the sea beyond. “It looks real nice out there today,” he said. “A real Chamber of Commerce view. But unless you’ve seen it, Merry, you’ll never understand what high seas in a storm and chaos on deck can be like. How sixty feet of old wooden boat can feel like a milk carton, shuddering with every wave that comes against the bow, lurching into the troughs, while the sea rises like a wall in front of you, swamping your men and tearing at the net you’re trying just to get on board. And trying to get on board quickly, so’s the weight of the catch don’t send the entire boat capsizing with the next wallow.” He turned back to her and dropped his eyes again. “Joe didn’t panic, exactly. He just picked the wrong moment to try’n run things.”

  Jackie was def initely uncomfortable about something, but whether it was his memories—or his version of them—Merry couldn’t say. “You went into the sea after him?”

  He nodded. “Not that it did any good. He wasn’t wearing a life jacket—nobody does, the padding’s too dangerous around the winches. You get caught in a line and you’ll lose an arm. What with the knock on the head and the size of the seas, he never had a chance. He had his boots and his slicker on, and they’d have weighted his body and sent him to the bottom. Almost sent me down, in fact, ’cause I forgot to haul off my boots when I went in after Joe. But at least I wasn’t unconscious.”

  “How’d you get that?” she asked, pointing to his head wound.

  He felt it gingerly. “They had to use a grappling hook to haul me back on board, and they hit me in the head with it before they managed to catch my clothing. No big deal. The hair’ll grow back.” He gave her the vestige of a smile. “I was lucky it wasn’t January. The water in May is around f ifty degrees, but at least it isn’t freezing. Man only lasts a few minutes in January water.”

  Merry felt her stomach clench and looked up at Jackie Alcantrara. “Did you get a good price for the trip?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing like what Joe’s life was worth.”

  For the f irst time, amid all the bluster about the boat being his due, about Joe Duarte being past his prime, about Jackie himself being all that had stood between the Captain and disaster, Merry saw something like pain for the dead man in the living one’s eyes. She read it as a form of truth, and decided that despite Jackie’s deliberate omissions and half-truths, he probably had not killed Adelia’s father.

  “You know how many good men get caught by those doors over the years?” he said. “I could read you a list. Men retired now with one arm, men knocked unconscious and overboard like Cap’n Joe. He wasn’t God, Detective. What happened to him has happened a thousand times. You tell Del that, from me. And you tell her I won’t be taking no murder rap for what the sea’s done on its own.”

  Chapter 7

  “How’s business?”

  Tess turned from tossing the last of the chicken lobsters, claws wav­ing frantically, into a boiling vat of water and squinted at the kitchen’s back screen door. The light was behind the face thrust around the jamb, blotting out the features, but she recognized Rafe’s voice and the outline of his shaggy head. He’d affected a breezy nonchalance, as though Fri­day’s blowup and Saturday’s f ishing hadn’t occurred, but there was an edge of tension to the words nonetheless.

  “Not bad,” she said, turning back to the lobsters. “In fact, I don’t have time to talk right now.”

  “Did you get the steaks?”

  “Yep.”

  “How were they?”

  “Don’t know. Gave them to the cat.”

  “Tess! Those things’re worth a fortune!”

  He had a right to be aghast. Almost thirty pounds of swordf ish had ar­rived on her doorstep the previous evening, enough to serve the entire restaurant at a tidy prof it; and though she had no cat, as Rafe well knew, she hadn’t kept the steaks either. She sent them out to the VFW’s Me­morial Day dinner in Sconset, with her compliments and no explanation.

  “Do you really think I’d accept anything from that woman?” she said now. “After she’s done her best to destroy my happiness?”

  “Oh come on, Tess, be reasonable,” Rafe said in exasperation. “The steaks were from me. My share of the catch. I had as much to do with landing it as Del did.”

  “You’re quite the partners, I hear.”

  “Now what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You took her to dinner yesterday.”

  “We got a burger with Peter, and we went dutch, if you want to know. Now stop acting like a three-year-old and ask me into the kitchen.”

  She turned toward him abruptly, kitchen knife in hand, and despite himself, he leaned back from the doorway apprehensively.

  “Do me a favor, Rafael da Silva,” she said, advancing on the screen door. “Get out of my backyard and don’t come around here again. We have nothing to talk about. Not until you know what you want, who you want, and why. Is that clear?”

  “Tess!”

  She shut the back door f irmly in his face, despite the heat of the unairconditioned kitchen, and sat down suddenly in an available chair. Damn Adelia Duarte, she thought. Damn her thirty-year-old body and her Por­tuguese blood and her adorable two-year-old and her love of the sea. Damn her for being everything I’m not, and for spending entire days with him. I hate her.

  The inner door swung open, and her chief waiter, Sammy, looked at her with pleading eyes. “Tess, table f ive is frantic for their orders. I placed them half an hour ago. Whaddya say we give them their food before they leave, huh?”

  I hate her. I wish she had never come back.

  The door swung closed. From the stove the timer suddenly blared, announcing the end of the lobsters’ martyrdom.

  I wish she were dead.

  She reached for the pot with shaking hands.

  Merry glanced at her watch and turned her car toward home. A thorough canvass of the docks revealed that most of Joe Duarte’s crew had left the island for work on boats elsewhere—one in Gloucester, another in New Bedford. She’d managed to f ind the last and best man to talk to—the twenty-three-year-old winch operator known as the Swede—scraping the barnacles from a pleasure yacht still dry-docked in the Washington Street boatyard. He pushed sunglasses to the top of his white-blond head, crossed his arms over his deeply tanned and completely bare chest, and told her his name was Lars Olafson. He was really from Norway, and he’d been knocking around the New England seaports looking for work since the age of seventeen.

  If she believed Lars, he hadn’t missed the marker rags on the net; the winch itself was to blame. The throttle hadn’t been working properly, and even when Cap’n Joe rushed up and all hell broke loose with the doors, no one could get the thing to slow down. They’d f inally thrown the proverbial wrench in the works—jammed the winch itself—but by that time the skipper was over the side and Jackie had gone in after him.

  “So how’d it happen?” Merry had asked.

  The Swede shrugged. “The engineer didn’t ship that trip—had a bad cold, and his wife wouldn’t let him outta the house. Ma
ybe things didn’t get checked out right.”

  Or perhaps they did, Merry thought, if the object was murder. Had Jackie f ixed the winch so that it would malfunction, anticipating Cap’n Joe’s reaction and the probable consequences? Here was a way to kill someone without the entire crew being aware of it—no need for consistent stories, no silence bought with money, no risk of acting with confederates one could not entirely trust. But how risky the method itself would have been! The chances of the wrong crew member being struck by the doors—of other lives being lost beside Joe’s, or instead of Joe’s—were very great. Was Jackie that much of a gambler?

  Merry had no idea. But she declined the Swede’s offer of a drink, tore her eyes from his f lashing white grin, and turned toward home with less conviction of Jackie Alcantrara’s innocence than she’d had a few hours before.

  “We’re going out again tomorrow,” Adelia said, spooning some of Ralph Waldo’s kale-and-bean soup into Sara’s mouth. “Rafe says he’s got the time, and that we might as well see if we can do this more than once. He wants to get the word out to the local wholesalers that they don’t have to count on importing all their swordf ish.”

  Merry was half-listening to the wail of sirens from town. “Could you sell to restau­rants directly? What about the Greengage?”

  Ralph Waldo f lashed her a look of warning. Adelia’s spoon dipped as she went for Sara’s mouth, and soup dribbled onto the mat.

  “Shoot!” she said. “Can I have a sponge, Ralph?”

  He tossed her one.

  “What’s wrong with the Greengage?” Merry asked.

  “Tess Starbuck thinks I’m a threat,” Adelia said carefully. “She doesn’t want Rafe f ishing anymore, and I’m the reason he is. She gave him back his ring and warned him off the property.”

  “You’re kidding.” Merry sat down quickly, a knot in her stomach. There was a time when she’d been jealous of Tess, and wished that Rafe had never met her; but those days were long past. Now she felt respon­sible. If she hadn’t persuaded Rafe to help Del, Tess might still be planning a July wedding.