“Since you’re up, I wonder if you wouldn’t mind talking with me for a few minutes,” I said. “I’ve never been on your boat before. May I come aboard?”
He didn’t answer, and I took that as an invitation; he hadn’t said no.
“It’s so dark tonight,” I said. “It’s hard to see where you’re going.”
It would have been polite if he’d helped me down, as Mort had done on Ike’s boat that morning. But he was obviously not feeling social, and since I was invading his privacy I didn’t begrudge him the lack of courtesy. I turned around, put my bag on the dock, and knelt down, holding on to a cleat. I reached down with one foot until connecting with the deck, and jumped the rest of the way. Brushing off the front of my dress, I turned toward the wheelhouse. Spencer had disappeared.
“Spencer? I know you may not be in the mood to talk, but something happened tonight I think you should know about. Spencer?”
There was no answer from inside the cabin.
“Please come out,” I said. “We have to talk. Barnaby Longshoot was assaulted this evening. He was beaten up and left for dead behind Mara’s. I shudder to think what might have happened to him if I hadn’t come along.”
I walked to the wheelhouse and leaned down toward the opening. Recessed steps led to the cabin door, which was ajar. “Spencer? This is serious. If Linc Williams is behind this, too, we need to do something—and fast. Are you listening? The lobstermen can’t remain silent forever. Someone has to be brave enough to stand up to Linc and demand that this madness be stopped before someone gets killed.”
No answer.
“Really, Spencer. I shouldn’t have to come in after you.” I stepped into the stairwell and pressed the door open. Spencer was lying across the bunk. He wasn’t moving. But it was so dark in the cabin, I couldn’t see very clearly. He couldn’t have fallen asleep so quickly— unless he was drunk. But he hadn’t seemed inebriated. There wasn’t any smell of alcohol in the air.
“Spencer?”
Suddenly the hairs on my arms stood up. Spencer and I were not the only ones on the boat. Someone was behind me. I put my hands on either side of the door to brace myself, but I knew I’d walked into the lion’s den. I felt the heavy blow, felt my legs crumple beneath me, felt my body being lifted and flung to the side. I’m not sure if I heard the engine start, but I felt its vibrations as the boat backed out of its slip and made for open water. After that, the clouds covered the moon again. And a deeper darkness descended.
Chapter Thirteen
I think it was the smell that woke me.
I’d been dreaming about a lobster boat on the water. I shut my eyes again and tried to recapture the vision. It had to do with the lobster festival. And Spencer Durkee was there. Why? We were on a boat, weren’t we? I struggled to remember, but the details kept fading away. Even so, I could still hear the quiet lapping of the sea on the hull, feel the gentle rocking of the boat, and smell the sour tang so reminiscent of a fishing boat.
What a vivid dream, I thought.
A breeze was fluttering fabric against my legs. I felt it move across my body. I tried to turn over to escape the blinding light of the sun, but my bed was all lumpy and hard.
This isn’t my bed!
The shock of recognition made me bolt up quickly. I cringed at the pain and reached out to steady myself, my hand pressing against a hard surface. My heart was sounding a tattoo in my chest. I tried, but couldn’t take a deep breath, settling instead for shallow panting. Dizzy. Why was I so dizzy?
I looked up. Above me dangled the pulley of the hydraulic pot hauler used to pull lobster traps up to the surface of the water. It was attached to the purple roof of the wheelhouse, a Spencer Durkee trademark.
I’m on Spencer’s boat, the Done For. How did I get here?
While my brain struggled with the past, I took inventory of the present. I was alone on the ocean. No land in sight, only a straight line of water stretching away to where it met the sky. I was without food, without drinking water, without any way to communicate, without even knowing in which direction to go. All around me the seascape was the same. Water. No land. And a bank of dark clouds heading my way.
Gingerly I probed the left side of my head, discovering a good-sized egg that was tender to the touch. I knew that a bump on the head could cause amnesia. Was I one of its victims? I knew who I was. But I had no recollection of how I’d gotten here.
I stood on the wet floor in the cramped cabin of the Done For, staring at the body of a dead man, and little by little the events leading up to my being there returned.
I’d been talking to Spencer. Or was it Spencer? There’d been a man on the Done For—at least, I thought it was a man. I’d assumed it was Spencer, but I’d never actually seen his face or heard his voice. It had been so dark, and clouds had covered the moon. Even when there was a break in the clouds, the weak light of the crescent barely reached into the heavy shadows, making it difficult to see anything clearly.
There had been a pressing reason why I wanted to talk to Spencer. What was it? Oh, yes. Barnaby. Barnaby had been beaten. Oh, dear. I hoped he was all right. Mort had been there, and Seth. Not on the Done For. Where? At Mara’s. That was right. I was to meet Barnaby at Mara’s. They came to help after I’d called 911. I shivered at the memory and looked down at the dirt on the front of my sweater. I’d put it beneath Barnaby’s head to shield him from the damp and chilly earth. Evelyn Phillips was there, too. I still needed to finish that article on the lobstermen for the festival edition of the paper. It was all coming back to me now.
The body lay on an angle across the bunk. Booted feet hung off the end. It was those boots that had blocked my entrance; I’d had to push hard to force the door open. They were not fishing boots, but leather, highly polished and intricately stamped. I moved to the side to get a better look at the corpse, but I already knew who it was. The dead man was the lobstermen’s broker, Henry Pettie.
Had Spencer killed Henry?
Pettie had been the source of the old fisherman’s humiliation. Spencer had signed the contract that had bound his fellow fishermen to whatever price the broker wanted to pay for lobsters for the festival. He had been reviled by his peers and punished in a most public and degrading manner. He’d sworn to get even with the broker. Had he been plotting revenge all this time?
I lifted Pettie’s right hand, pushed back the sleeve of his leather jacket, and felt for a pulse in his wrist, but I knew I wouldn’t find one. I leaned across his body and turned his head. His earring was missing, and there was little blood on the berth beneath him. I couldn’t see a wound without turning over the body, but I knew he hadn’t been killed on board. It must have been his corpse I’d seen Spencer struggling to carry down the dock—if indeed that had been Spencer. Had Pettie been bludgeoned, like me, only harder? Was that why I was here? I’d stumbled upon the murderer who was in the process of disposing of his victim. Whoever that was had decided to get rid of the witness—me—at the same time.
Don’t disturb the crime scene, I told myself. But I realized that if someone didn’t find me soon, it might well be a crime scene that only I would ever see. I remembered seeing Pettie writing in that infamous black book in which he kept a record of everybody’s debts to him. I patted his pockets in search of it, but they were empty. No black book. No wallet either.
As my mind cleared and my senses sharpened, I had a sudden urge to flee the cramped, stuffy cabin and Henry Pettie’s lifeless body. I made my way out to the deck and surveyed the horizon in search of another boat. Nothing, just the relentless expanse of ocean. I climbed up on the rail for a better view, now confident of my balance after having gained my sea legs. There was no mast in sight, no boat-shaped vision, no faint sound from a faraway engine. I don’t know why, but somehow the discovery of a murder seemed to compound my predicament, making the need for rescue even more urgent. I needed something I could use as a signal should another boat come into view, a flare, an air horn, even a flashlight. I h
ad forgotten my hunger and thirst, but knew I had to keep my strength up. Spencer might have emergency supplies—assuming he’d left them, assuming they hadn’t been removed.
Reluctantly I went back into the cabin. But my attention was drawn down to its floor. It had been wet before, but now the water came up to my ankles. The Done For was taking on water.
I tried to conjure a rational reason for that to be happening. Spencer’s boat was, as far as I knew, seaworthy. Had something in the water damaged it, as Ike Bower claimed had happened with his craft?
“Oh, no,” I said aloud, and my stomach tightened. The incident with Ike’s boat hadn’t been an accident. Someone had deliberately opened its hull. The same malicious intent must have been applied to the Done For. At least the hole in Ike’s vessel had been slightly above the waterline. Whoever made it had wanted Ike Bower to know he could have sunk his lobster boat, but chose not to. That obviously wasn’t the case here.
It was evident that we were sinking. I forced my eyes open and closed a few times, as though that would help me think more clearly, the way people in cars looking for a house number invariably turn down their radios for the same misplaced reasoning. Whoever struck at the boat had to have done it after we’d reached open water, and with the intention of seeing it sink, taking Henry Pettie’s body to the ocean depths, and me along with him.
Who was that person? More important, at least at that moment, was the question of where he or she had gone after doing the deed. My initial thought was that a lifeboat of some sort might have been the vehicle for escape. But I discarded that possibility as quickly as it had occurred. As far as I knew, lobster boats didn’t carry such craft. Besides, we were far out to sea. It would have been a frightfully long row back to shore.
No, someone else must have been involved, probably having trailed the Done For and taking whoever scuttled it back to Cabot Cove, or to a neighboring seaside community. Having come to that logical conclusion, I forced myself to think more keenly back to the moment I’d stepped aboard and been struck from behind. What had subsequently transpired? There was little to remember, of course, because I’d been knocked out by the blow. But I’d drifted in and out of consciousness, hearing a sound for a brief second, or detecting an odor that came and went. I recalled a banging noise, like someone hammering away at a wall. Of course. That must have been when my assailant—and presumably Henry Pettie’s murderer—had put a hole in Spencer’s boat.
What else could I remember? Not much. Oh, yes, there was that period of time, no longer than a few minutes, when the steady drone of a motor had ceased, followed by relative quiet. But then there was another mechanized sound, a deeper, throatier sound I’d heard before. Was that another motor? It was different from the previous one. That might have been the boat used to rescue my attacker from the Done For.
I looked down again. The water was rising; it was halfway up my shins. I realized that the boat was now listing to its port side. Quickly I looked around the cabin for storage bays. There were cubbies to my right, above the bunk. I reached inside, desperately groping for supplies or anything that could be used in an emergency. I found a flashlight, an open box of saltines, and a six-pack of tomato juice with two of the small cans missing from the plastic rings. I tossed the provisions through the open door onto the deck, which was two steps up and dry—at least temporarily. The juice and crackers would be breakfast if I ever found the time to eat.
I clambered back on deck and collected my rations, wrapping them in Spencer’s slicker, which I’d removed from a peg on the wheelhouse wall. It had been his foul-weather gear that had concealed the door when I’d first looked for access to the cabin. I put the folded slicker on top of the bulkhead. The deck would be wet soon enough.
“We’re going under!” I announced to no one, the breeze carrying away my words.
Stay calm, I reminded myself. Think!
My eyes searched the horizon. Could it be? Is that a boat I’m seeing? Yes, it is, a large one, maybe a freighter of some sort, or a tanker. But it was so far away, a shimmering image that came and went. I started to wave my arms but realized it was a wasted exercise. No one would see me from that distance. But it raised hope. There might be other boats and ships. I knew I couldn’t wait for that remote possibility. I had to take action, and do it fast.
I pulled the old-fashioned life preserver from where it hung. It was a hard flotation device, rigid and solid. Would it enable me to survive an extended stretch in the water? The thought of drifting aimlessly in the vast ocean was painful to contemplate. But I didn’t have a choice.
There was another problem, however: the very dead Henry Pettie. Could I simply cast myself overboard and allow him to sink to an icy, watery grave? I would if I had to, I decided, but resolved, at least for now, to attempt to remove him from the boat before it went under.
I entered the cabin, where Pettie lay dead. The notion of having to pull him out on to the deck wasn’t pleasant, but it had to be done. Fortunately he wasn’t a big man. I knew I’d never be able to accomplish it with a heavier and bulkier person. Gripping the heels of his cowboy boots and using all my strength, I began to yank him off the berth. The thick blue vinyl cushion that served as a mattress came away from the wall along with the body. I stopped. There was something stenciled on its side. I squinted at the lettering. APPROVED FLOATATION DEVICE. Thank goodness! There was a real possibility now that I could save Pettie’s body for the authorities. I dragged him the rest of the way off the berth and he landed on the floor with a splash, his now-waterlogged clothing adding to his weight. Even so, I was able to maneuver him through the narrow cabin opening, up the steps, and onto the deck. Leaving him there, I went back into the cabin, wading through the knee-high water to retrieve the cushion. I laid it next to Pettie, trying not to look at his face, contorted in death.
Using the coil of rope that had been my lumpy bed, I tied Pettie’s body to the blue mattress. As an afterthought, I left a length of the line dangling free and looped it around the hard life preserver I intended to use for myself. As macabre as the thought might be, having him tethered to me in the water would provide a modicum of comfort. A dead, shipwrecked companion was better than no company. Besides, if Pettie, an apparent murder victim, went down with the boat, the chances of ever recovering his body were nil. All the authorities would have was my word—provided I survived to even tell the tale.
I looked around the deck. What else could I salvage? The box leaning against the bulkhead that Spencer used as a seat held supplies, too. I unlatched the top, lifted it up, and rummaged inside, claiming a box of zip-top plastic bags, a coffee cup, a pad and pencil, a loop of wire, a nail clipper, and a box of matches, which I put in my pocket. I used the nail clipper to cut the wire, and tied off Spencer’s yellow rubber pants at the cuffs and waist in the hope they would hold some air and provide additional flotation. And I unwrapped the slicker I’d left on the bulkhead and packed the crackers into one plastic bag, the juice in another, and the remaining items in a third, folded up the slicker again, and laid it atop Pettie’s body.
Anything else?
The box! The box was wood. Maybe it would float. With a strength I didn’t know I had, I tipped over the seat and pawed out its contents, moving quickly but wary of sharp items that could cut me. I didn’t want the smell of my blood to lure any hungry sea creatures once I was in the drink. Don’t think about that, Jessica.
The port side of the boat was slipping under. Water poured through the drainage holes and flooded the deck. Pettie’s body on the blue cushion began to float toward the rail, taking my life preserver with it. I closed the lid, latched it, pushed the box to the port side, and lifted it up and over into the water. It bobbed on the surface, then was upended, the weight of the top pulling it over. But it didn’t sink. I should have put the plastic bags inside, I thought, but there was no time to pull the box back on board.
I drew deep breaths in an attempt to ready myself for the plunge. My plan was to hold on to t
he life preserver ring, push Pettie over the side, and follow him, pulling Spencer’s rubber bib pants behind me. I didn’t know if it would work, but it was the best scheme I could come up with. But then I decided to take another step. I would set the bow of the boat afire in the hope that it would serve as a signal to someone, anyone in a position to see it. I carried the red metal container I’d found under the transom at the back of the boat and made my way to the roof of the cabin in the bow, where I sprinkled the container’s meager contents on the boards. The empty can might also help me stay afloat, and I tossed it into the water in the direction of the wooden box before pulling the matches from my pocket. Hopefully they weren’t too damp to strike.
Kneeling down, careful to keep the skirt of my dress well away from the gasoline, I pulled out two matches and struck them on the side of the box. They flamed immediately and extinguished just as quickly. A hum began in my ears as I tried another match, moving my body to shield the small flame from the wind, to no avail. The hum got louder, and I shook my head, thinking that this was no time to allow a buzzing insect to distract me. I waved my arm over my head and concentrated on my task. The hum persisted. I looked up to see the source of the annoyance. A small, single-engine plane was flying low across the horizon. Help! I jumped up and waved my arms frantically, bouncing up and down on the slippery platform. Help! I’m over here. The boat is over here. You’re going in the wrong direction. Turn, turn and you’ll see me.
I realized the smoke from a fire would be far more visible than my ineffective frenzy. I fell to my knees and emptied the box of matches, striking and dropping each one till a flame finally caught on the deck and spread. I stood up on shaky legs and scanned the sky for the buzz I’d so doggedly ignored. Why hadn’t I paid attention? Where were my vaunted powers of observation when I needed them? Gone, along with the plane. I could barely see it. It was getting smaller and smaller, only a tiny speck against the dark clouds, looking for all the world like the insect I’d initially thought it was.
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