Rising Storm: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 11)

by Wayne Stinnett

  “Monday was when we were supposed to sail,” I said, by way of reply. “Ginger might not like missing the treasure hunt, but that’s not what I came here for.”

  “You want to see the Bahamas,” she said, standing, and taking my hand to pull me up. “He’s right over by the bar.”

  Standing, I looked over to where Carmichael sat. He raised his glass in salute. Cruz pulled me along toward his shaded table. The young woman that had been sitting with the two of them moved her chair around to make room for us.

  “I understand you’re looking for a charter to the Bahamas,” Carmichael said, extending his hand. “Wilson’s the name.”

  “Buchannan,” I said, shaking his hand. “But friends just call me Stretch.”

  His grip told me there was more to him than met the eye. Up close, I could see the corded muscle of powerful forearms.

  “Wilson’s the first name,” he said. It didn’t slip past me that neither he nor Cruz had given me their last names.

  “I’m not really looking to charter,” I said. “My wife and I came down to go on a cruise with a friend and his boat’s in the shop.”

  Carmichael sat forward and took a pull from his drink. “You know how to drive a boat?”

  “Powerboat?” I replied. “Sure, but I’m not a sailor.”

  “My boat’s a big trawler. Not fast, but very reliable and sturdy. We’ll be gone two weeks. First stop is the Berry Islands, ever heard of them?”

  “Can’t say as I have,” I lied.

  “A hundred and thirty nautical miles from here,” Carmichael said. “It’ll take twenty straight hours to get there, and I could use a good man to spell me at the helm for a little shut-eye.”

  “Two weeks?” I asked. “How much of the Bahamas can you see in that time?”

  Carmichael sat back and drained his drink, motioning the bartender with his finger, circling it around the table to order another round.

  “Not a whole lot,” he said. “The Bahamas are more than seven-hundred islands scattered over almost two-hundred-thousand square miles of ocean. But I know quite a few outta the way anchorages where we can party hearty, and there won’t be anyone else around for miles.”

  I pretended to consider it a moment. “How many are going?” I finally asked.

  “Me and Wilson,” Cruz replied. “And Diane here, and her boyfriend, plus two other girls.”

  “Three men and five women? Must be a pretty big boat.” I reached across to shake hands with Diane, a tiny woman with glasses who reminded me of the librarian at my junior high school. “Pleased to meet you, Diane. Your boyfriend doesn’t know much about boats?”

  “We’re newlyweds, actually” Diane replied demurely. She couldn’t have been more than five feet tall. She wore a baggy, long-sleeved blouse, unbuttoned to the top of her bikini top, and loose-fitting khaki pants. Though I couldn’t see much of her, I was pretty sure she wouldn’t tip the scale into three digits.

  “She’ll sleep fourteen, easy,” Carmichael went on to say. “Be nice if we could find a few more people to go along, preferably the eye candy variety. Know anyone looking to have a little fun?”

  I couldn’t help but notice that the man’s eyes kept straying to Diane’s open blouse. He also didn’t try to hide it, which I could see made Diane uncomfortable. In fact, Carmichael stared brazenly at every passing bikini or skirt.

  “No, we’re not from around here,” I said, then an idea came to me. “There’s one unattached woman in our group. She seems to be a little bored with Miami. And I know she can handle a boat.”

  Carmichael sat forward. “Now we’re getting somewhere. She as pretty as your wife?”

  Deuce’s voice crackled in my left ear. “You’re going off script.”

  Glancing at the two women sitting with us, I then winked at Carmichael. “Oh, yeah,” I replied. “She’s a California girl named Gabby.”

  “Cali, huh?” Carmichael asked. Then his eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You never said what you do, Stretch.”

  “I own a farm up in Illinois,” I replied.

  “That so?” he said. “I’m a Midwesterner, myself. I was about to catch a cab to the boatyard to see how work’s coming on the boat, Stretch. You wanna come along?”

  I pretended to think about it a moment as I listened to Deuce and Charity talk in my ear. Finally, Deuce said, “Do it. But be careful. Andrew will follow you there in the Suburban.”

  “Sure,” I said to Carmichael. “Nothing much going on around here anyway. No need to take a cab though. I have a car here.”

  “We’ll talk,” Deuce’s voice said in my ear. “You listen and nod.” I nodded my head, as Carmichael followed me to the parking lot. The big black van was still under the shade tree. “I’m guessing you want to bring Charity into this?”

  I nodded again, walking toward the Maserati.

  “As backup and further bait?” I nodded once more, clicking the button to unlock the car.

  “Holy shit, man,” Carmichael said, as the lights on the luxury sports-sedan flashed. “Nice ride.”

  “It’s a rental, Wilson,” I said. “You can rent damned near anything in Miami.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that before.”

  “Okay,” Deuce’s voice said in my ear, as a woman got out of a car two spots down. “How do you want to bring her in?”

  The woman walked toward us, wearing a dark blue bikini and sheer white beach wrap. I stopped at the Maserati’s door and turned to follow her with my eyes. When she reached the hotel, I turned my head quickly toward the pool area and nodded.

  “You sure you’re okay to drive, Stretch?” Carmichael said, his eyes also following the bikini clad woman.

  Over the comm, I heard Charity laugh. “By the pool, wearing next to nothing?”

  I looked across the roof of the car, past Carmichael, and nodded at the van. “I only had a couple, Wilson. No problem. Where we going?”

  We got into the car, as Charity’s voice whispered in my earwig, “I didn’t exactly come prepared for swimming. I’ll need to go buy something.”

  Carmichael told me which way to go out of the parking lot. At the stop sign he said, “Hang a right. It’s just a few blocks.”

  In my left ear, I could hear Deuce giving orders. Chyrel was on the computer locating a store that sells women’s swimwear. There were several within a short distance. In the rearview mirror, I saw the black Suburban pull out of the parking lot. Charity, Tony, and Andrew were in it. They’d drop Charity off at Maui Nix, a surf shop just a couple of blocks away, then come to the boat yard as backup. I didn’t expect I’d need them.

  “Tell me about your friend,” Carmichael said. “This Gabby chick you said might want to come along.”

  “I don’t really know her,” I replied, winging it as I went. “She’s part of the group that Ginger went to college with.”

  He turned in his seat. “Ginger’s a lot younger than you, isn’t she?”

  “Yeah,” I replied. “Sixteen years younger. Why?”

  “Trophy wife; that’s what the high-ranking officers in the Army called them. Man just humps it along through his twenties and thirties, dragging the same wife and kids from one post to another, but if you get a star on your shoulder by the time you’re forty, and the kiddies are grown and gone, you can trade her in for a newer model.”

  “What a degenerate dirtbag,” I heard Chyrel say.

  “I like Jesse’s term better,” Charity said from the van two blocks behind us. “Turd fondler.”

  I almost laughed, but managed to control it, and played along with Carmichael. “Wouldn’t know, I was never in the Army. But wouldn’t a trophy wife be a woman who marries the older guy for money?”

  “Usually, yeah,” Carmichael replied. “That ain’t the case with you and Ginger?”

  We’d rehearsed our backgrounds and I was hoping he’d ask about it. “Hardly. I was doing okay when we met, been divorced five years and not looking. My farm is forty thousand acres of the best bottom la
nd on the Ohio River.”

  “That explains the car,” he said. “I never been in an Italian car before. So, your wife’s richer than you?”

  Asking someone you just met what their net worth is was something that usually didn’t happen, at least not in the social circles I was in—not that my sphere of friends was all that large. But I’d met others that didn’t have that filter and knew how to play along.

  “Her dad was a lawyer and later a judge. He’d been buying tech stocks in her name since she was born; one of the first to buy into Microsoft when they went public. He sent her to Auburn, where she graduated with a degree in computer science. Her dad died later that year and she sold her stocks just before the tech bubble burst seven years ago. She’s worth a lot more than me.”

  “Turn in right up here,” Carmichael said, pointing ahead and to the left. “Where it says Mistrall’s.”

  I parked the car and we got out. I didn’t expect Andrew and Tony to arrive any time soon, but I took a slow look around out of habit.

  “You think this Gabby can afford to take some time off for an extended cruise?” Carmichael asked, as we walked toward the front of the store.

  “No idea,” I replied. “About all I know is that she owns a sailing yacht and doesn’t have anyone to answer to.”

  We entered the front of the store. Shelves full of various boat parts and optional equipment extended at right angles to both sides of the center aisle.

  “Hey, Mister Mistrall,” Carmichael said, as we approached the counter. “I need to go aboard and fetch something, if you don’t mind.”

  “Meaning you want to see how the work’s coming along?” the old man said, looking over his reading glasses, and setting his paper aside. “Customers aren’t usually allowed in the work area, but you happened to come at lunch time. Sure, come on back. I think you’re gonna be really happy, Mister Carmichael.”

  The man visibly winced at the mention of his last name. It was apparently something he didn’t want me to know.

  “This is my friend, Stretch.”

  The old man nodded to me, and opened the door to a shop area in the back of the building. We followed him through the door. The shop was completely open at the far end, with three boats on the hard, under cover. One I recognized immediately as James’s old salvage boat.

  “Bottom’s all finished up,” Mistrall said, as we approached the dark blue hull. “They were doing demo work in the forward cabin this morning, and will finish that up after lunch.”

  “Perfect!” Carmichael said, touching the dark, gleaming hull. “Midnight blue, Stretch. Shines like a diamond in a goat’s ass, don’t it?” Then he turned to the old man. “They know not to mess with anything in the salon and aft cabin, right? I’ll bring her back in three weeks to have that work done.”

  “They haven’t touched anything,” Mistrall said. “Except to disconnect the batteries, so they can replace all the forward wiring. But that’s right there at the engine room access from the cabin just below the pilothouse.”

  “Come on up, Stretch,” Carmichael said, starting up a ladder.

  The boat’s gunwale was ten feet above the floor of the shop, and the full keel rested on the concrete deck. They hadn’t painted the boot stripe yet, but I guessed the waterline to be at about eye level standing next to the boat, which gave it a draft of about five and a half feet.

  “Looks like a pretty heavily built boat,” I said, climbing up to join Carmichael. The cockpit was very large, having been built for the salvage business. The large frame and hoist that had been mounted over the aft fifteen feet of the boat was gone.

  Carmichael stepped through a watertight door and down three steps into the boat’s interior, and I followed. The smallish salon was cluttered but clean. A galley down one side, and a dinette and sofa on the other. Next to the hatch we’d just come through, stairs led down to a lower aft cabin. If it was the same proportion as the cockpit above, it would be a huge stateroom.

  At the forward end of the salon, steps on the starboard side led up to a pilothouse and another set of steps on the port side went down to the forward stateroom area. It was brightly lit down there.

  “Go ahead up forward there, and have a look around,” Carmichael said. “I gotta check something in my cabin. I’ll be with you in a couple of minutes.”

  Wandering through the salon, with two full width deck hatches, fit perfectly to match the deck, I got a distinct feeling of solid workmanship. The deck hatches were probably to access to the engine room below the salon, in typical trawler fashion. I stepped up into the pilot house at the forward end of the salon.

  The helm was centered, with three front windshields raked forward, tugboat style. More windows and doors on both sides provided a commanding view all around, and access to the side decks. A ladder mounted to the port bulkhead went up to a dogged hatch, giving direct access to the fly bridge. On one side of the helm seat was a navigation desk and on the other side, a small refrigerator. To the rear of the pilothouse was a raised table and couch seating. Behind the couch was a narrow watch bunk. Very efficient.

  Carmichael was still in the aft stateroom, so I went back down to the salon, then down the forward steps to the stateroom area. It was completely gutted, no bulkheads, deck, nothing. Just temporary deck planks down the middle, covering the bilge, for the workers to walk on. It was a mess of plumbing and exposed wires, everything carefully capped off and labeled.

  To the right of the stairs were another set of steps going down to a large cabin below the pilothouse. The man hadn’t been kidding when he said the boat could sleep fourteen. The aft stateroom would be the master and the one below the pilothouse could be a large guest stateroom, or even two smaller ones. The bow section could easily be built into several cabins for guests or crew.

  “Whatcha think?” Carmichael said, as he descended the steps to join me.

  “Big,” I replied. “You have plenty of room to add a couple of small cabins up here. Is that what they’re doing?”

  “Yeah,” he replied, stepping down into the VIP stateroom. “This cabin is being refitted into a big stateroom. It used to be lined with shelves and storage cabinets.”

  “You plan to extend that ladder in the cabin above, down to there?”

  He scrambled up to where I stood in the forecastle and looked back down into the cabin. Even from here, I could see that it was a full beam cabin. “That’s a helluva idea, Stretch! Just extend the pilothouse ladder straight on down there.”

  Moving forward, he painted imaginary bulkheads and hatches with his hands, like a mime inside an invisible box. “Up here in the bow will be a big vee-berth, with a hanging closet and desk. Aft, over here to starboard will be a full head with a big tub, and across the companionway, a Pullman-type cabin. Aft of that, a utility closet on both sides, one with a washer and dryer and the other for bulk storage. Lots more storage below the deck here, too.”

  “Unless I miscounted, that’s only enough beds for eight.”

  “Nah,” he said, moving past me toward the stairs. “The dinette in the salon converts to a double, as does the one in the pilothouse, and there’s a watch berth up there, too. That’s an easy thirteen. Lots more if the ladies are friendly.”

  I pretended to stumble, as I followed him up to the salon. Looking up at him sheepishly, I remounted the steps. “Sorry,” I muttered.

  “Let me ask you something, Stretch, before we get too far ahead of ourselves here. This cruise is all about fun, booze, and sex. You and Ginger aren’t a couple of those straight-arrow types, are you?”

  He moved casually over toward a cabinet and opened it. “I’m from Illinois,” I said. “Not Utah. Metropolis might not be Miami, but we know how to have fun.”

  When Carmichael turned around, he held a small, ornately decorated wooden box. Opening it, he removed an equally decorative pipe with a small brass bowl. He took a small pinch of a green leafy substance and put it in the bowl, setting the box aside. I knew exactly what it was.

/>   “So, you guys like to party on the farm?” Carmichael asked, putting a lighter to the bowl. He drew hard on the pipe, burning up the marijuana in just a second. He inhaled deeply, then tapped the ashes out of the pipe and added another pinch.

  I’d seen my part-time first mate smoke pot many times, but he’d always smoked hand rolled cigarettes, so I didn’t think such a tiny amount would do much harm. I’d tried cigarettes and pot when I was a teen. Tobacco made me puke and the marijuana didn’t do much of anything. I never tried it again, and still couldn’t figure out the attraction for those that do.

  So I took the pipe he offered and lit it, burning the pot up quickly, as Carmichael had, and inhaling deeply. It burned the back of my throat slightly, but little else. For about three seconds. Then, it started to expand in my lungs and I coughed the smoke out. Hard.

  My throat felt raw and hot, and my eyes were itchy. Suddenly, I wasn’t as steady on my feet as I usually was, and a fog seemed to envelope my brain. Carmichael laughed and patted me on the shoulder as I coughed. I felt like one of my lungs was about to become dislodged.

  “I bet the weed you get on the farm ain’t quite as good as what they get around here,” Carmichael said.

  “You got that right,” I replied. “Nothing even close.”

  Getting the cough under control, I stood on wobbly legs, the confined interior of the cabin seeming to close in.

  “There’s one other thing,” Carmichael said, putting the pipe in the box and storing it back in the cabinet.

  “What’s that?”

  “Out at the pool?” he began. “You dropped something green and shiny out of your pocket.”

  My hand instinctively went to my pants pocket, and I pulled out the handkerchief with the emerald rolled up inside. I unrolled it and extended the stone to him. I wanted him to have a good look at it, to see for sure that it was identical. “You mean this?”

  Carmichael took the emerald and went over to the main hatch, where the shop lights shined in. The light reflected off the surfaces of the many faceted sides, sending beams of green light around the salon, to make green dots and dashes wherever it came into contact with the boat’s interior.