Trusting Viktor (A Cleo Cooper Mystery)

by Mims, Lee

  “My sentiments, exactly,” I said. Then, raising my wineglass, I added, “To the oil patch.”

  “To the oil patch,” she responded with a click of hers, and just like that, we were bonded.

  Besides the years we’d both spent working in the oil industry—affectionately known as the oil patch by those who work in it—it turned out the two of us had similarities in our private lives too. She was also divorced with two grown children. Best of all, she was a wealth of information. She’d been with Global for twenty-five years, survived two major employee purges and a near bankruptcy when the government stopped their first attempt to drill an exploratory well in the Manteo Prospect.

  “With so many layoffs and all that debt, don’t you worry you’ll be next?” I asked.

  A mysterious little smile crossed Wanda’s lips. “Not at all. They can’t do without me, girl. I know where all the bodies are buried.”

  I laughed, but I had a feeling she said it only partly in jest. Instinct told me my new friend was one worth having.

  After we swapped stories for a while, I felt comfortable enough to ask if she’d heard anything about the unfortunate Voyager pilot who had fallen overboard. She said no and I believed her, so I moved on to my next topic of inquiry: Did she know anything about Davy Duchamp?

  “Good lord, yes,” she said. “He and I grew up in Golden Meadow, Louisiana … you know that’s just a stone’s throw from Port Fourchon, right?”

  I nodded that I knew where it was.

  “We went to school together until he went away to college to study physics. He had to if he was going to understand the business his granddaddy started, SeaTrek, the geophysical surveying company.”

  Wanda smiled reminiscently. “We were real close for most of our high school days, even sweethearts for a while. And I still have to laugh when I think of how his daddy almost had a conniption fit when Davy announced he wanted to change his major to history. To this day, he’s still a huge history buff, especially World War II—Hitler, Stalin, all that depressing stuff. Anyway, he used to mope to me about it, and I told him the truth: he should get his head on straight and finish that degree in geophysics. He did, and the rest is history. His daddy ought to have thanked me.”

  “I notice there are quite a few folks on the Magellan who sound like they hail from southern Louisiana,” I said. “Duncan Powell, for instance.”

  “You’re right there, doll. Duncan grew up not far from Davy and me in a little town called Larose. Our football teams played each other. After college at the Merchant Marines Academy, he moved to Morgan City and went to work with TransWorld. He’s been there, gosh, I guess over twenty-five years. He knows Davy. Heck, everybody in the oil business in southern Louisiana knows everybody else and they’re a tight-knit family.”

  “I bet,” I said. I was just about to ask her if she knew why Davy Duchamp would be visiting in Morehead since all the seismic surveying necessary for exploration had long since been completed when her cell hummed like an angry bee on the table. She checked the screen before slipping it in her purse discreetly. “Would you look at the time,” she said. “It’s ten thirty, and tomorrow’s a work day. Let’s do this again real soon.”

  “Definitely,” I said. We both needed change for the tip, so after paying our bill on the way out, I volunteered to go back and leave it. By the time I made it to the parking lot, Wanda was long gone. I had the feeling she wasn’t going home, but that was none of my business. I’d ask her about Duchamp being in town next time I saw her.

  I crossed the lot still thinking about Duchamp. It didn’t seem logical he’d be in town to see his boys, as it would be practically two weeks before they rotated back on duty. At that moment, Viktor Kozlov got out of a car a few spaces away and walked toward me.

  “Finally,” he said, wrapping his arm around my waist and giving me a nuzzle behind the ear. “I thought you two ladies would never stop talking.”

  I pushed him away and said indignantly, “Have you been stalking me?”

  “Stalking? Of course not. Stalking means the other person is not interested. That is not the case with you and me.”

  “But I’m not interested. Don’t you remember I said I’m only interested in a professional relationship with you?”

  “Don’t you remember my reply?”

  I thought for a second, looking up at a moon so bright it was casting deep shadows in the lot, and said, “I remember you said something, but since I don’t speak Russian, I have no earthly idea what it meant.”

  “Let me refresh your memory. Ne boysya, milaya moya.”

  “And that means?”

  Viktor leaned in close to me and whispered in my ear, “It means trust me, my sweet, don’t be afraid.” Then he slipped his arm around me again and pulled me to his chest. I knew I shouldn’t have just stood there and let him hold me, but, seriously, he looked good and smelled good and felt good. Then several thoughts surfaced through the fog of lust clouding my mind: he was still twelve years my junior, we still shared the same workplace, and I had no idea what Henri’s plans for tonight were.

  She could be out with her friends right now. She might even drive by this very spot and see me. I stepped from his embrace and said, “You have it backwards, my dear. You’ll have to trust me in this matter, because I’m older and wiser than you. Now, go home. Tomorrow’s a work day.”

  “Don’t you think I know how to protect your privacy? I do and I want to be with you so badly,” he said, reaching for me again. “I have a special place where we can spend hours alone and no one will ever know.”

  I took another step back, images of the previous hours we spent alone sending a jolt through my system like I’d straddled an electric fence. I simply had to get away from Viktor before I did something I would probably—no, definitely—regret.

  “Good night, Viktor,” I said and leaned in to give him a buss on the cheek. Big mistake. He was fast with the old head fake and caught me in a lip lock that I didn’t want to wrestle out of. Jeez, he tasted good too.

  Only seconds passed before prudence prevailed and I scooted free, hopped in my Jeep, and left.

  Ever actually tried the cold-shower cure for a case of hormone overload? Don’t bother, it doesn’t work. I even tried to concentrate on what I’d learned from Wanda: that Davy Duchamp was a history buff who knew Duncan Powell and virtually everyone in the industry. Which, of course, wasn’t surprising, when you thought about it. My brain, however, was so addled from my encounter with Viktor that I couldn’t think straight. What this information had to do with the death of the Alaskan ROV pilot, I couldn’t see clearly, but it did. I was sure of it.

  Giving it all up for the moment, I stepped from the shower and was toweling off when I caught my reflection in the corner of my eye. I turned, sat the towel on the counter, and gazed at myself. Sucking in a deep breath, I tipped my chin up and posed, my hands at my waist. Then I turned sideways, taking in my belly and my breasts. Not bad, but how would I, at forty-six, stack up against a thirty-four-year-old woman, one Viktor’s age?

  “Yes. You’re still very beautiful,” Bud said from the open doorway between the bathroom and bedroom.

  I spun around. “How the hell did you get in here?”

  “Here as in the bathroom, or here as in the house?” Bud asked. “Doesn’t matter. In both cases, I used a door.”

  “Where’s Henri?”

  “Off with Will at some bar on the beach. They have a lot of catching up to do.”

  I snatched up my towel and wrapped it around me. “I didn’t realize you two were coming back today. Nobody ever tells me anything.” Bud looked as good as I’d ever seen him. Had he done something to his hair? It was subtle, but I noticed the cut was more youthful, the style more tousled, a little spiky even.

  But it was the Nat Nast buff yellow shirt à la Charlie Sheen in Two and a Half Men that was the real kicke
r. Bud had never worn luxury sportswear in all the years we’d been together. Maybe it was the shirt, maybe it was just my hormones, but I was giving some thought to letting the towel slip enticingly when Bud said, “We do too. Have a lot of catching up to do, that is. Meet me in the kitchen. I’ll make us some late-night pancakes.”

  Pancakes?

  After careful deliberation, I put on a pair of ivory satin pajamas and pulled my hair up in a loose bun. When I sauntered into the kitchen, Bud was already pouring the batter. “You look nice and relaxed,” he said.

  Just then I noticed Will’s duffel bag, computer case, and a few other personal items still stacked by the door. “What’s Will’s stuff doing down here?”

  “That’s one of the things we need to catch up on. He wants to come and stay at Seahaven with me for a while.”

  “Oh,” I said. This was disappointing and bewildering. I was looking forward to Will’s coming home so I could get to the root of what was bothering him. If he was with Bud, whom he worshiped and wanted to be just like, he’d be less likely to unburden himself. And expecting Bud to notice a faint emotional change was really leaning on a weak reed. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to ask.

  Bud set a plate of hotcakes in front of me.

  “Thanks,” I said and picked up one, tore off a piece, and popped it in my mouth. Bud sat his plate down and proceeded to drown his in butter and syrup. How he kept his fabulous physique was a mystery to me. He’d never been big on exercise. “Bud,” I said. “Did Will seem a little moody to you while you were in Paris?”

  “Are you kidding? No. How could anyone be moody in Paris?”

  He had a point there, but he’d also confirmed my original assessment of his ability to sense things—it didn’t exist.

  “Catch me up on all things geological out at Manteo One.”

  We talked until Will and Henri came in around 1:30 a.m.

  “Hi, Mom!” Will said, giving me a hug and a peck on the cheek. The minute I saw him, I could tell he was still stressed. He was hiding it well, but it was there right under the surface of his sunny expression. After telling me a little about Paris and how much he’d enjoyed any time spent learning the family business, he and Bud were out the door, headed for Wrightsville.

  Henri and I went to bed. Yes, I was worried about Will, but at least I wasn’t horny anymore. I slept like a corpse until the alarm went off a little over an hour later. I must have hit the snooze because next thing I knew Tulip was licking my face. I jumped up, ran downstairs to let her out, then threw on some clothes, pulled my hair into a ponytail, and jumped in the Jeep.

  Something was holding up the early-morning traffic, forcing me to pull into a parking place at Dockside Marina. My plan was to park there only long enough to jog up the street and see what the problem was.

  I hadn’t walked 10 feet when a group of young people ran past me holding signs. Protesters again! Didn’t they ever sleep? But now there were a lot more of them. Why was today different from yesterday? I started to shove my way through the throng to the guard at the entrance but luckily remembered a small side gate behind one of the warehouses.

  By backtracking a block and cutting through the pool area of a private condo, I was able to reach it. Unfortunately, several demonstrators and the press members had also found this lesser-known access. Making the executive decision to leave my car where it was for the rest of the day and hope it didn’t get towed, I pushed past them and showed the guard my pass. He let me squeeze through the gate. Rude shouts of disapproval followed me. Halfway across the port yard, I saw the reason for the furor.

  SunCo had arrived, and in full glory: seven different vessels bearing its logo were tied up, both at the port dock and across the New Port River on Radio Island.

  SunCo was the largest oil company on the planet. They were giants not only in exploration and production, but in the downstream industries of refining and marketing as well. In every single corner of the globe, SunCo had rigs probing the depths of Earth for energy.

  Since I didn’t see any anchor vessels—ships that transport the enormous suction anchors that hold semi-submersibles in place—I figured they were using one of their fleet of drillships to drill their first exploration well in the Manteo Prospect.

  Obviously it was the presence of the SunCo flotilla that had caused the protest organizations to ramp up their outcry against the evils of capitalism, big oil, fossil fuels, and anything else that fueled the modern industrialized nations of the world. Feeling a small twinge of anxiety about Henri alone at the house, I gave her a heads-up text on my iPhone and then headed back across the yard for the Iron Responder.

  Spotting me from the bridge, Captain Eddie slid open the window in the wheel house door. “Come on, girl. There’s big doings in the gas patch and we’re burning daylight!”

  THIRTEEN

  Mild weather conditions made for gentle swells, and in a little under four hours, I was back aboard the Magellan. As was now my custom, after a visit to the radio room on the bridge, I went straight to the helm to inform Captain Powell I was aboard.

  He and some of his crew were standing at the windows, each with a pair of binoculars trained on SunCo’s giant drillship about six miles from us.

  “We’ve got company,” Powell said.

  “I noticed. You should see the mob in town.”

  “What mob?”

  “Demonstrators. Several hundred, I’d say. Although it’s hard to be sure since they’re scattered through the streets leading to the port. Most of them were jammed up by the gates.”

  “Shut up! No way!” said a wide-eyed young crew member from Powell’s staff.

  “Way!” I said, laughing.

  “Glad we get to dodge all that crap,” Powell said. “You might think about staying out here until it dies down. It’d probably be safer.”

  “Thanks. That’s nice to know, but I’ll be fine,” I said. “Mind if I take a look?”

  He handed me the binoculars.

  I scanned the massive hull for the vessel’s name and watched as thrusters on each end of ship kicked in, swinging the bow away from us. As the ship came broadside, I saw it: Able Leader, emblazoned in shiny red letters under the bow rail. Noticing the behemoth literally sparkled in the sun, I wondered if it was new.

  As though reading my mind, Powell said, “She just came off the rails, one of SunCo’s new generation of ultra-deepwater drillships. They have a wholly owned subsidiary, SunCo America, that builds them to their exact specifications. Notice anything different about that ship that this one doesn’t have?”

  I studied its structure. “Uh-oh,” I said. “Would those be dual drills in one derrick?”

  “Yep, sure would,” Powell said. “Instead of doing each operation involved in drilling a well sequentially, they have a main advancing station and an auxiliary advancing station. Both stations can assemble strings of pipe and have them ready to drill or rack them back as they come up. Lower cost, less time.”

  “Impressive. I’ve read about them, just haven’t seen one yet, though they’ve been in use for several years now.”

  “Well, we’ve got a good head start. But in the end, it doesn’t matter who gets to their target first, right?”

  I set down the nocks. All eyes on the bridge trained on me. “That’s right,” I said confidently. “In the end, it all comes down to who chose the right target. Who cares if your team is the first if you hit a duster?”

  “But that won’t happen to us, will it?” a trim young man in a blue jumpsuit, part of the bridge crew, asked.

  “Of course not,” I said.

  “Well,” he said, “I heard that twenty years ago Global and SunCo both owned this spot.”

  As employees of TransWorld, Powell and his crew were engaged in the business of operating the drillship and all the drilling equipment efficiently. Geologic decisions made by the operator wh
o contracted them—in this case, Global—were out of their purview.

  “Yes,” I said. “That was right about the time the two companies split and Global bought the lease on this block. Keep in mind, seismic surveys weren’t as advanced twenty years ago as they are today. Technology has marched on and now we can see what’s happening below ground in 3D. And more than that, with 4D we can get a feel for what’s happened over time. Plus both companies have drilled countless wells since then and each one has its own lessons to teach.”

  I lifted the binocs for another quick peek at the magnificent ship. “I can’t say for certain, but I believe that based on what happened to SunCo on a certain well in the eastern Gulf, their geologic exploration team won’t necessarily try to drill the thickest part of a reef anymore.”

  “But isn’t that our plan, to drill into the thickest part?” Powell asked me.

  “Well, it’s a little more complicated than simply drilling the thickest part. I’m just saying that, based on that experience and newer seismic surveys, they’ve chosen to go a different route. But here’s the thing, you can make all the projections you want, slice and dice your 3D diagrams all you want, in the end, it’s impossible to know until you drill a hole.”

  Captain Powell and his bridge crew looked a little dubious. “Don’t worry,” I said. “When it comes to the geologic part of this operation, Phil and I have lots of rabbits up our sleeve. Right now, I need to get down to the shaker shack and check in with the guys to see where we are in the hole.”

  As I headed off, I remembered I’d felt my iPhone vibrate several times while I was on the bridge. The last two missed calls were from Detective Pierce. His probing blue-gray eyes and gaunt face came to mind. I’d call him back when I got to a quieter place, maybe on my return ride on the Responder. Before I did so, however, there was something more I needed to learn. From Duncan Powell.