Ghost Walk

by Laurel Pace

  Dani looked down at the platter the waitress had just slid in front of her. Although she was handling his scrutiny with admirable equanimity, she seemed grateful for the diversion. "Well, let's see. I always enjoyed cooking, and one summer when I was in college, I worked at a big mountain resort up in North Carolina, helping out in the kitchen. From there, I started picking up odd jobs with caterers during the school year. After I graduated, I thought, why not give it a try myself? "

  "So you came back to Charleston and opened your business?" Ken supplied.

  Dani shook her head and laughed as she spooned a dollop of cocktail sauce onto her plate. "If it were only that simple! First, I enrolled in a cooking school in New York. After that, I interned for a year at a hotel in the Catskills. And then I came back to Charleston, only to find that it takes hours of marketing to find clients, and oodles of money to set up a proper commercial kitchen. I had a nest egg from Mother's estate, but I was really nervous plunking most of it into the business. I kept telling myself that if Moveable Feast turned out to be a colossal flop, I could always work for a resort or a country club, but that would have been a bitter pill to swallow."

  "I'm glad you made it." Dani smiled modestly. "I prefer to say 'doing okay'. It doesn't pay to tempt the gods. And I still have a lot of unachieved goals. I'd love to have a small restaurant or a bed-and-breakfast place someday. Right now, though, I'll be happy simply to pay the lease on the Feast's kitchen space and continue to build my clientele."

  "With that kind of attitude, I'm sure you'll be a success." Ken hoped she recognized his remark for what it was: not an empty platitude, but a sincere compliment. "What about you, when you're not being the proprietor of Move-able Feast?"

  Dani carefully dunked a bite of shrimp into the puddle of sauce. "Well, I've never been arrested. I don't drink in excess. I've never used drugs. And as far as I know, I keep company with clean-living types." She watched him with amused interest, taking her time chewing the shrimp. "I don't know. What else does a background check usually include?"

  Remind me never to play poker with you, Ken thought as he met the level, hazel gaze. Trying to get the best of Dani Blake in a verbal combat was not a challenge to be taken lightly. That she wasn't prone to babble every mundane detail of her life made those details all the more intriguing. Then, too, he realized that, quite aside from professional interest, he simply wanted to know more about Dani, what she ate for breakfast, the kind of music she listened to on a rainy winter night, if the airport scene in Casablanca made her cry. Before he could think of a gambit for extracting such tantalizing specifics from her, however, Dani turned the tables.

  "What if we split the check and you tell me about yourself?" she proposed. Propping her chin on her folded hands, she looked as if she were settling in for a lengthy narrative.

  "Gee, I don't know where to start." Ken made a production of picking through the shrimp tails on his plate in search of an overlooked bite, trying to stall for time.

  All the while his curiosity about Dani had been growing, it had never occurred to him that she might reciprocate the interest. Not that he expected her to find him unattractive. Like most aspects of his life, Ken took a rational, objective view of his effect on woman; he was in good shape, decent if unspectacular looking and not an obnoxious creep. That she now wanted him to talk about himself, however, was a development for which he wasn't prepared. His life was so complicated, riddled with emotional thickets that he couldn't even explain to himself.

  "Where did you grow up?" Dani prompted.

  "In Baltimore." Ken swallowed, suddenly aware of a faintly disagreeable aftertaste clinging to his palate.

  "Does your family still live there?"

  Which one? We have at least six to choose from. Ken crumpled the napkin inside his fist, avoiding her gaze. "We're all kind of far-flung now," he hedged.

  Dani's brow knit as she mulled this cryptic response. Her chin pivoted inside her cupped hands as her eyes drifted to the parking lot. Suddenly, her hands dropped and she sat straight up. "Look!"

  Ken turned to the window in time to see a crimson red Mercedes speed past. "Better step on it, Rebecca, or you're going to be late for that hairdresser's appointment," he murmured under his breath. When he caught Dani's eyes, he smiled warily. "You're not thinking what I'm thinking?"

  "Come on, Ken. What harm could it do? Assuming she's taken the dog with her, the house will be deserted. We can drive up, have a quick look at the boat and then be on our way. No one will ever know. Besides," she reminded him, "that's what we intended to do in the first place."

  "I like your logic," Ken remarked drily. As they stood up, he snatched the check the waitress had anchored beneath the hush-puppy basket. At the register, Dani nudged his arm playfully.

  "I guess I'm going to have to buy you lunch if I want to find out more about you," she teased.

  "I guess so," Ken agreed.

  As they drove back to the isolated summer house, however, he was keenly aware of the camaraderie that had developed between them in the short time since they had reached a truce in Battery Park. If he had not been able to get a break in the case as quickly as he had hoped, at least the protracted investigation now offered a consoling benefit: more contact with Dani.

  By the time they reached the house, the sun had already sunk low in the sky, inching its way behind the tops of the trees. They could hear the sound of the encroaching tide surging along the shorefront.

  "It's going to be dark before you know it. Do you have a flashlight?" Ken asked.

  Dani pulled the keys out of the ignition and dangled the pocket flashlight attached to the chain. "I have this baby. There should be a full-grown one inside the glove compartment." She peered through the van's window, alert to any signs of life from the house, before gingerly opening the door.

  Following her lead, Ken climbed out of the van and closed the door as quietly as possible. They both stood in the dark green shadows of the palmetto grove, listening for reassurance that they were, indeed, alone. Overhead, a few gulls squabbled over the bounty of fish carried in by the tide. A sonorous chorus of insect voices resounded from the depths of the landward forest. After a few minutes, Ken flicked on the flashlight to check its battery and then snapped it off again.

  "Okay, let's go." Dani's hushed voice blended with the wind rippling through the palmetto fronds.

  The dock was a good half mile from the spot where they had parked, obscured in part by a stand of live oaks gracing the front lawn of the house. Only when they had cleared the oak grove did they catch their first glimpse of the boat-house and the silver plane of water stretching across the horizon behind it. A mast was visible over the peaked roof of the boathouse.

  "That has to be it!" In her excitement, Dani grabbed Ken's wrist.

  Suddenly, her hand tightened its grip as the drone of a car's engine carried from the road. Ken looked around, trying to find some cover in the event the car turned into the driveway. They were too far from the live oaks to seek shelter there. At this point, the boathouse was their best bet. Turning his hand to seize Dani's, Ken made a dash for the dock. They pressed themselves against the salt-bleached wall of the structure, holding their breath until the sound of the car's engine had faded in the distance.

  Dani was the first to emerge from the boathouse's protective shadow. Despite her careful tread, the heels of her pumps pecked noisily against the dock. As Dani and Ken rounded the corner, Dani gasped.

  "Look!"

  And for a moment, all Ken could do was stare at the magnificent white yacht anchored in the bay. It was much larger than its stripped-down modern descendants, which Ken had. seen in televised clips of the Americas Cup, a solid ocean-going craft as suited for carrying its sailors to distant ports of call as it was for racing. With its sails lowered and its hull dipping gently with the tide, it still carried an air of energy, of the dazzling speed it could borrow at will from the wind.

  Dani was already stalking the length of the dock. "How c
an we get out to it? "

  Ken nodded toward the small rowboats tethered at the end of the dock. "We'll be pulling against the tide," he cautioned her. "But getting back to land should be a cinch."

  "Why don't we use this one?" Dani suggested, brashly pointing to the powerboat berthed on the other side of the dock.

  "What would Rebecca say?" Ken pretended to cluck under his breath, but he could feel his adrenaline rising, spurred on by Dani's audacious spirit.

  They exchanged grins when they found the motorboat's key anchored conveniently in the ignition. But as the craft steadily plowed through the gray tide, carrying them to the moored yacht, a sober expression settled over Dani's face, and Ken knew she must be thinking about her father. Following instincts he had forgotten he possessed, he placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. She didn't look at him, but only reached to cover his hand with her own. As the jutting stem of the yacht loomed in front of them, she released his hand, stretching her arm to point to the large script letters arching across the prow.

  "There's the name! Bandeira Branca." She pronounced the unfamiliar words carefully, sounding each syllable. "Remember what Paul Crawford said about the pins—the name of the boat was connected to the little gold chain. Now we know what's missing from Richardson's pin."

  Ken guided the power boat alongside the yacht, avoiding a string of buoys and a dinghy tethered to the vessel. He let the engine idle, cutting it only after he was able to grasp a metal ladder extending over the edge of the larger vessel. He took pains to tie the powerboat to the yacht's ladder and to pocket the flashlight before helping Dani scale the ladder.

  "I had no idea it was so big. Compared to the sailboats I've seen, it seems like a battleship," Dani whispered. She took a tentative step on the deck, running her hand along the rail.

  Ken glanced back to the dark mainland. Although he felt certain they had slipped in undetected, no one could be sure when Rebecca would return. She would be spiteful enough to call the police and charge them with trespassing. Of which, of course, they were guilty, technically speaking. The thought that they were treading a thin legal line prompted him to hasten their inspection of the boat.

  "Why don't we split up? That way, we can cover the boat in less time," he suggested. "I think it's important at least to get a quick look at the area below deck."

  Dani's head jerked in a brief nod. "So do I. Let me know if you find anything interesting."

  "You do likewise." He tapped her shoulder lightly in parting.

  Ken bent his knees slightly, adjusting his balance to the fluid feel of the deck underfoot. The yacht rolled with the swelling tide, its great body swaying in an easy cadence not unlike the motion of a cradle. The movement was punctuated by equally rhythmic sounds, the odd creaks and sighs of the vessel's sinews.

  The deck of the boat appeared to be in pristine condition, thanks, no doubt, to Theo Boynton's restoration. At the stern end of the cabin, Ken paused to inspect a small cupboard and found it stocked with flares and lifejackets. As he was closing the cupboard door, he glanced down the deck. Dani had disappeared from sight. Although he realized she had only gone belowdecks, a strange apprehension gripped him. The product of too many ghost stories and your weakness for a pretty face, he told himself. He didn't believe in ghosts, of course, and to characterize the complicated feelings Dani had stirred in him as common physical attraction was oversimplifying things in the extreme.

  Ken tested the hatch to the rear cabin. It yielded easily. For a moment, he stood at the top of the stairs. The corridor below was dark and narrow, and he reached for the flashlight in his pocket. The door to a small chamber to his right swung gently on its hinge. Ken descended the stairs and nudged the door wide open. A quick sweep with the flashlight revealed the valves and pistons of the yacht's engine.

  A dull noise somewhere at the other end of the corridor caused Ken to retreat. Ken focused the flashlight's beam in the direction of the sound.

  "Dani?"

  The quiet was unbroken, save for the throb of the tide and the yacht's audible breathing.

  With his hand tracing the oiled paneling, Ken made his way down the corridor. He pushed open the first door he passed. light from the waxing moon streamed through the round window to dimly illuminate the tiny cabin. Ken ducked and put one foot over the threshold. His flashlight roved the cabin, picking out a bunk and built-in chests of drawers in the far corner.

  The floor creaked behind him.

  "Dani?"

  Ken stepped back, lowering his head to clear the doorframe. Just as he turned, a splintering sensation exploded at the back of his head. The corridor expanded and contracted before his eyes. He could see the flashlight tumbling from bis hand in slow motion, feel himself reach for it, hear the hollow thud echo through his skull as another blow fell. The cold floor slammed into his face, and everything went blank.

  Chapter Seven

  "Ouch!"

  Dani lurched and then caught herself. Clutching the frame of the cabin door with one hand, she stooped to massage the ankle she had just bumped against the raised threshold. If Rebecca had only been more cooperative, they could have inspected the yacht in full daylight instead of stumbling and groping around in the dark. The sky was still flushed with the setting sun's afterglow, but its meager light barely penetrated the area below deck. Although the corridor and probably the cabins, as well, were equipped with caged light fixtures, Dani dared not test them..Any light bright enough to do her any good was bright enough to be spotted from the shore, and that was the last thing she wanted to risk.

  Squeezing the key-chain flashlight, Dani pointed its needlelike beam into the glowering dusk filling the cabin. The room appeared to be an office or a sitting room equipped with a small couch and a couple of chairs riveted to the floor. The weak ray of light traversed the walls. On one side, it picked out round windows shrouded hi striped curtains. Gliding across the far wall, the flashlight beam skimmed framed maps, nautical prints and photographs suspended on the panelling. Dani crouched slightly as she stepped through the door. There was a musty smell to the room, an indistinguishable blend of pipe tobacco, salt and age. Unlike the parts of the boat she had seen so far, this cabin had an untouched feel to it, as if Theo Boynton's stem-to-stern restoration had somehow passed it by.

  On closer inspection, Dani could see that the maps and pictures were arranged above a built-in table that must have served as a desk. The captain's chair facing the wall wobbled on loose rivets, squeaking meekly as she sank onto it. Directly in front of the chair hung a photograph of the sailing team, almost identical to the one she had found in her mother's album. She guided the light flashlight along the row of black-and-white photos, pausing on the unlined, optimistic faces of Richardson Whyte and Powell Boynton.

  Without warning, the cabin door slammed shut. Dani jumped in her seat. As she released her hold on the flashlight, the room was suddenly plunged into darkness. Her heart still racing, Dani clamped the flashlight with a death grip. With the dim light restored, she managed to steady herself. The yacht was rolling with the waves; its motion, and nothing more, had tipped the door closed.

  Scolding herself to quit conjuring specters, Dani turned back to the photographs. The flashlight beam faltered as it grazed a handsome, open face, the countenance of a man accustomed to winning and setting his own rules for life.

  "Dad. Daddy." Dani pressed her lips together, overcome with the thought that she had never had the chance to choose a name for her father. She leaned across the table, reaching to trace the face's contours, the fearless smile, the angular, wind-chapped jaw. Something about this forgotten, fading picture, enshrined in the yacht Dan Blake had loved so well, seemed profoundly sad. The weak light began to blur, but Dani only stared at the picture, letting the tears ebbing from her eyes flow unchecked.

  From the far end of the deck, she thought she heard Ken call her name, reminding her that he could walk in at any moment. Although Dani felt far more comfortable with him than she would have t
hought possible in the short span of their acquaintance, discovering the old picture in such an emotionally charged setting had awakened a deep and private pain within her. For now, she preferred to keep her disjointed feelings to herself, at least until she had a chance to come to terms with them.

  On impulse, Dani lifted the framed picture off its hook and pulled the photograph from beneath the glass. Dan Blake's picture would be of no sentimental value to Richardson's heirs; she felt almost protective as she slipped the photo into her pocket. Leaning back in the chair, she tugged open the desk drawer. She was sliding the empty frame into the drawer when she happened to spot another, smaller snapshot half hidden by an open deck of playing cards. Pushing the cards aside, Dani was startled to recognize herself as a child, scuff-kneed and minus both front teeth, grinning up into the camera. Another sound from the corridor prompted Dani to tuck the snapshot into her pocket, alongside her father's picture.

  The tiny flashlight's battery was nearly spent. If she wanted to give the cabin a proper inspection, she needed the more powerful flashlight Ken was carrying. As she started for the cabin door, the minuscule light failed. Dani shook it and won a reprieve that she guessed would be brief at best.

  "Ken?" Dani peered out into the murky corridor." Yoo-hoo! I'm down this way!"

  Perhaps the wind had only subsided, but the yacht now seemed very quiet.

  "Ken?"

  She took a step, reminding herself to give the threshold a wide berth. The flickering beam skittered down the panelled corridor to light on the closed hatch. No wonder it was abysmally dark in the hall; the damned door must have swung shut, cutting out the stingy bit of remaining natural light. Dani was swaying along the corridor when she stumbled over something solid and bulky right in her path. She tried to break her fall, clawing at the wall as she pitched forward. She recognized Ken just as the flashlight winked its last.

  "Ken! Oh, my God!"

  Dani recoiled from his inert body, scuffling backward with her heels. As she scrambled to one side, her hands slipped on the sticky, wet floor. The rich, sweet smell of blood rose in the darkness, and she almost gagged. Oh, no, not you, please not you, please no, no, no! Panic swelled in her throat as she alternately shook the unmoving body and pawed the floor in search of his flashlight.