Crash Tack

by A. J. Stewart

  Lenny had laughed himself hoarse when I had told him about running out of gas on the freeway while following Mandy, and he suggested that I keep the Mandy thing to myself, lest it set Ron on a train of thought we wanted him to avoid right now.

  Ron started making calls to drum up some business, so I played lunch boy and wandered down Clematis Street and returned with hoagie rolls and sodas for everyone. I even remembered to get whole wheat for Lizzy, which earned me the raised eyebrow of admiration. Or was it shock?

  By late afternoon Ron had finished his calls and I was at a loose end. Lenny had gone, as he called it, to see a man about a dog. It was a phrase he had picked up from Lucas, and like most Lucasisms , it made no sense to me whatsoever. Ron leaned back in his chair and ran his finger over his wall calendar, tapped it twice, and then looked at me.

  “There’s a twilight race on at the yacht club this afternoon,” he said.

  “Aha.”

  “Do you think it's too early to go? Or should I keep a low profile?”

  “I think you should get on with your life. You wanna sail, sail.”

  That brought a smile from him. “Care for a walk?”

  I didn’t care for a walk. It was hot out. But I went anyway. Partly to support Ron as he rejoined his group after being accused of killing one of them, and partly because I was just curious to see how they responded to him. We left Lizzy in the cool office and headed out into the hot sunshine. It was only a tick over a half mile from our office to the yacht club, but I was melting by the time we reached the docks. The water was right there, looking all sparkling and inviting, but the breeze was coming from the other direction, making even the docks swelter.

  There were more people around than I suspected there would be. Ron got a lot of looks, but he also got a lot of hugs and handshakes. The general consensus was that if the state attorney for the 15th Judicial Circuit thought Ron capable of murder, then the state attorney was barking wildly at the wrong tree.

  Felicity Havill made a beeline along the dock toward Ron with tears forming in her eyes, and practically jumped into his arms. They hugged each other, and then she pulled back and ran her hand across his cheek.

  “I’m so glad you’re back,” she said.

  “That makes two of us. ”

  “It must have been awful.”

  “Like you say, I’m back. Now I just need a boat to sail on.”

  “You’ll come with me. I’m on Off Your Rocker . Jim and Denise would love to have you onboard.”

  “Just let me stop in the office and say hi,” said Ron, and he stepped away. Felicity was about to bounce back along the dock when she noticed me.

  “Hi,” she said. She looked good in a blue polo shirt and matching shorts. The heat didn’t seem to affect her, even if she was from Montana.

  “Felicity,” I said.

  “You must be glad Ron’s out of trouble.” She smiled.

  “Out of jail, not out of trouble.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The state attorney reserved the right to lay charges at a later time. They’re still looking at Ron.”

  “That’s crazy. Ron didn’t have anything against Will.”

  I shrugged. “Except that Will was sleeping with Ron’s ex-wife.”

  I watched the air in Felicity deflate some.

  “What about you?” I asked.

  “Me?”

  “And Will?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You were sleeping with him, too.”

  She pinched her eyebrows together. She was going to rule the roost over some guy one day, because her angry face was drop-dead gorgeous.

  “Excuse me?” was the best she could come up with.

  I didn’t feel good about bringing it up, and I felt even worse about having a beautiful woman hate me, which is exactly what Felicity would do after this conversation. But I brought it up anyway, and I really didn’t know why. Ron was out, there were other suspects. Maybe I just didn’t like people lying to me. Or maybe I expected them to lie, and didn’t give a damn if they did, but still wanted to know what they were hiding.

  “You had an affair with Will.”

  “Listen, I don’t know where you heard that—”

  “Here,” I interrupted. “It seemed to be common knowledge among your crewmates.”

  The air was sucked from her a little more. I could see she wanted to fight it, to deny it, maybe even go back and make it not so. But life ain’t like that. Once the pitch is thrown, it’s either a hit, or it’s not a hit. There is no do-over.

  “Look, I’m not proud of it, okay.”

  “I know.”

  “How do you know?” She pinched her eyebrows together again. It was really something.

  “I know because you lied about it. You’re a smart girl—you know that on a small boat like that, everyone knows everything. There are no secrets. But you lied anyway. Because the whole thing gives you a bad feeling inside.”

  She lost the frown and nodded. “It was just in Nassau. Just a race thing. Just one time.”

  I nodded but said nothing.

  “He was a charming sort of guy. And we’d spent this time close together, and a few drinks, you know?”

  I nodded again.

  “I knew he was married, but . . . Well, you know what they say.”

  “What?”

  “What happens on the boat stays on the boat. ”

  “They used to say the same thing in baseball. What happens on the away stand, stays on the away stand. The thing is, it doesn’t. What happens on the away stand always finds its way back home. Because you always return home.”

  Now she nodded. I gave her a moment, and then I spoke again.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  She nodded again.

  “Did anyone else on Toxic Assets ever put the moves on you?”

  She blushed. I found it hard to believe that on a little boat, far away from home, with a few rum and colas going down that more than one hadn’t made a play for Felicity.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I don’t either,” I said. “I just want the answer.”

  “There may have been one.”

  “Who?”

  She looked away down the dock, and then back again.

  “Alec. He had a few drinks and asked me to dance at the bar where the post-race party was. I said no, he kept at it. Will told him to go away, cool off.”

  I listened and then watched Ron come out of the office. I wasn’t sure if it was the ocean air, or being around friends, but the life had returned to him. He came over and Felicity offered him a smile that was tinged with regret.

  “You guys have a good sail,” I said.

  “You’re not coming?” asked Ron.

  “Nah.” I didn’t want to come. I wanted Ron to return to his element. And I didn’t want to look at Felicity, she having made a mistake that I had made her share. I didn’t want to see her eyes looking at mine, seeing me as the physical embodiment of something that she could have gotten past if I wasn’t there to remind her of it. I wanted to find the bar, somewhere cool, and watch the sailboats fly their white wings across the azure water.

  “Come on,” said Ron, again. “Come out with us.”

  I shook my head, but the words didn’t make it out.

  “He can’t,” said a voice behind me.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I TURNED TO see Amy Artiz standing on the dock, dark and tanned and potential energy. “He’s coming out with me.”

  I stood in place, looking at her and she at me, and then she glanced at Ron and winked. Ron and Felicity disappeared up the dock, leaving me looking down at Amy. She threw a sailing bag at me and I caught it.

  “I need another crew member.” She smiled, dropped the smile and strode by me. I followed. I don’t know why I did. I had just resolved to find a bar, which was usually a determination I could not be dissuaded from, but this little pocket rocket of a woman had me foll
owing like a Grand Canyon mule. We walked far out on the dock, to a yacht that wasn’t as long as Toxic Assets but had a wide open deck. It looked built for speed, not comfort. Another two men and one woman were already on board, coiling ropes and setting up winches. Amy stepped over the guardrail onto the deck, turned and put her arms out. I put my hand out in return.

  “The bag,” she said.

  I snatched my hand back and lobbed the sailing bag to her, and then she turned away to stow the bag below. I stepped over the guardrail all by myself, no help required, and waited on the deck. Amy reappeared, having tucked her dark hair under a ball cap. I had no such respite from the sun. She stood behind the wheel, and I sat in the cockpit by the winch, so I had to look up at her.

  “You know I don’t really sail, right?”

  She nodded. “You’ve been out with me before, remember. Don’t worry, I just need an extra hand on a winch.”

  “You need me as a hand on a winch?”

  “Yeah. I was a body short for the twilight race. Now I’m not. Good timing. Just do what I tell you.”

  Evidence suggested I had no problem with that. We prepped the boat and Amy fired up the motor and expertly steered us out of our mooring. She didn’t mention Ron. In fact, she didn’t speak to me at all. As we reached the midpoint of the Intracoastal Amy directed for the headsail to be hoisted, and the fleet of boats grew thick. They seemed to be coming from all directions, seemingly without any order. Amy looked around as she steered with the big wheel, calm but alert.

  “Is it every boat for himself, or is there method to this chaos?” I asked.

  “Starboard tack has right of way,” she said, glancing at me. She must have seen the blank look on my face, because she continued. “There are two sides to a boat, starboard,” she said, pointing to her right, “and port.” She pointed to her left. “Your tack is determined by which side the wind is coming over your deck. If it is coming anywhere over your starboard side, you are on starboard tack. You have right of way. If it coming over the port side, it’s port tack, and you must yield to all boats on a starboard tack.”

  “Okay, I think.”

  Amy pointed ahead. “You see that boat coming straight at us? Who has rights? ”

  I had no idea. It was a head-on waiting to happen. I was sitting on the left side of the boat facing forward, so that meant port side. The headsail was on the other side of our boat, so I assumed the wind was coming across my side, which meant port tack.

  “We have to yield,” I said, like the schoolkid with his eye on becoming teacher’s pet.

  “Why?”

  “We’re on port tack.”

  “Good,” she said. She didn’t smile and she didn’t look at me, which seemed a smart move given we were sailing straight into another boat.

  “So what do we do?”

  “Yield?”

  “How?”

  I searched my memory for a term that Ron might have used. “Bear away?”

  Now Amy looked at me. “We might make a sailor out of you yet. Bearing away.”

  She jinked the wheel ever so slightly and as we reached the other boat our bow turned away from the wind a touch, and the woman working the headsail winch eased the sail out. I noted that she took the winch handle from a mesh pocket between her legs on the side of the cockpit, and clipped it into a hole on the winch itself. The handle was heavy-looking chrome, and I thought of Will Colfax getting that in the head. It would be like being hit with a hammer.

  We passed the other boat only feet apart, but everyone seemed okay with that. I noticed that it was Ron’s boat, and he was standing right at the front, doing something to the sail. He waved to me and I waved back .

  “Let’s get the main up,” said Amy, and she pointed the boat close to the direction of the wind. I pulled the halyard as the other woman winched, and the big sail slapped in the wind like a whip as it filled with air. The woman tied the halyard to a cleat and smiled at me.

  “Miami Jones,” I said, offering her my hand.

  She took it with a glove that had the fingers cut off.

  “Dakota,” she said. “Ain’t that something?”

  I nodded. She was a heavyset girl with a bird’s nest of hair, but she moved about the boat like a ballerina.

  We jostled around with other boats until an air horn sounded, and Dakota hit a button on a display in the cockpit and a timer started counting back.

  “Five minutes,” she called. She did the same with each minute, and then at thirty seconds. From ten she counted down each number, and I watched Amy positioning the boat for the best possible start. Dakota called one and I heard a loud air horn again, and the guy standing on the bow of our boat looked back with his thumb in the air.

  “Perfect,” said Dakota. Amy gave no reaction. She was all business. As we headed away I noticed much of the fleet dropping behind. We must have had a fast boat.

  “Quick boat,” I said to Dakota.

  “Quick skipper,” she replied.

  I looked at Amy. “How come Will Colfax deferred to Drew Keck on sailing decisions and not you?”

  Amy glanced up at the mainsail. “Bring it in a touch.” Dakota winched the sail in a little.

  “You see those little red tags on the sail?” Amy said to me. “Those are called telltales. If they’re flying straight back the sail is more or less trimmed right. If they flap, you’re off and the sail needs to come in or out.” Dakota was looking up at the sail as we went.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” I said.

  “Because he was an idiot. And a chauvinist dinosaur.”

  “You a better sailor than Drew?”

  Amy shrugged. I glanced over at Dakota, who nodded emphatically.

  I looked up at Amy. “So were you okay with him doing that?”

  “I was paid to be there, so I did what I was paid to do.”

  “I didn’t realize you were paid.”

  She nodded. “Me and Drew.”

  We sailed on until we came upon a marker buoy in the water. Amy called the mark, and told me to swap sides with Dakota, and to watch the boom. She spun the wheel on her call and the boat whipped around on a dime, and the sails flapped angrily and the boom went zooming over my head. Dakota eased the sails out wide so the main was way over the side of the boat.

  “Wind’s behind us?” I asked.

  Amy nodded. “This is where we’d run a spinnaker, you know the big colorful sail at the front?”

  I nodded.

  “But this is a non-spinnaker race.”

  We were booking. The yacht seemed to move faster than the wind, which defied physics but not my logic. It felt like there was no breeze at all, and the sun beat down hard.

  “I heard Felicity Havill was having a thing with Will,” I said to Amy.

  She shrugged.

  “Did you know that?”

  “Everyone knew that. ”

  “I also heard you were keen on him, but he chose her.”

  Amy stared down at me. “You heard that, did you?”

  “I did.”

  “Let me ask you a question. You’re a private eye, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You any good?”

  “I solve more than I don’t.”

  “Well, what do you make of that idea?”

  I thought about it. Was Amy Will’s type? My deduction based on available evidence was that she was, because she was female and had a heartbeat. Moreover, she was attractive. She had the fit strong body of someone who worked hard, and I figured that was about all Will was looking for.

  “I think he’d be interested, yes.”

  “I’m not talking about him.”

  She was talking about herself. Would she give the likes of Will Colfax the time of day? She was a strong, confident woman, who clearly didn’t suffer fools and was still on the fence about me. Would she be a sucker for Will’s fraternity old boy charms? I didn’t see it. And then there was the alternate hypothesis.

  “I heard ano
ther suggestion.”

  “Let me guess,” she said, looking up at the headsail but saying nothing about it. “I’m a lesbian.”

  Score one, Artiz. She could see my questions coming a mile away. But that didn’t mean the answers were wrong.

  “Something like that.”

  “And what if I am?”

  “Makes no difference to me.”

  “Really? No difference?” She had a raised eyebrow like she wasn’t buying it.

  “No. You are who you are. ”

  “That’s very poetic.”

  “I’m a regular Walt Whitman.”

  “You’d look terrible as a sweaty-toothed madman. And for the record, I’m not a lesbian. Not that you care.”

  “As a detective, no, I don’t. Doesn’t tell me much about you as a person. But if you’re not, it tells me plenty about the people spreading the rumor.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “You want to know who said it?”

  “You don’t have some kind of PI confidentiality?” Now she was mocking me.

  “This wasn’t a client.”

  “I know it wasn’t.”

  “You suspect.”

  “Let me guess, Drew Keck,” she said.

  “He might have mentioned it.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But there was another source.”

  “Okay, guess two. Drew Keck was passing on a rumor he heard, because he wouldn’t own up to it himself. He got the story from Alec Meechan.”

  I sucked in some sea air and looked hard at Amy. I hoped she didn’t decide to become a PI, because I’d be out of job if she did.

  She grinned without joy. “Well, what do you say?”

  “Something about nails and heads.”

  She nodded.

  “So you weren’t interested in Alec, either?”

  Amy screwed up her face at me. “Seriously?” She looked over at Dakota, who was still looking up at the sail. “’Kotes ,” Amy said. “Alec Meechan. ”

  Dakota looked down at me, rolled her eyes and poked out her tongue like she was gagging on battery acid, and then turned her eyes back to the sail.

  “Okay, ready for the mark,” said Amy, back to business.

  She counted down the mark and spun the boat around again, and Dakota and I worked together on the sails. Amy pointed us toward the island.