Bluewater Killer: A Serial Murder Mystery Set In Florida and the Caribbean (Bluewater Thrillers Book 1)

by Charles Dougherty

  The cape effect from the south end of Saint Vincent was beginning to cause the wind to gust up and clock a bit at irregular intervals. He disengaged the wind vane and steered by hand until Sea Serpent was in the lee of the island. The sails started to slat back and forth as the boat rolled with the gentle swells when Saint Vincent blocked the wind. He dropped the sails, lashed them out of the way, and fired up the diesel, engaging the autopilot to steer a northerly course that would take him a couple of miles west of the island. The gentle rocking of Sea Serpent and the drone of the diesel were making him drowsy. He checked the radar settings again, in case he should nod off, and went below to get his wristwatch from the nav station.

  Back in the cockpit, he set a 20-minute timer on the digital watch. At least if he fell asleep, the watch would wake him every two miles so that he could check for small boats, and the radar would sound an alarm if a target came within the two mile guard band. He closed his eyes and leaned back, wondering about Danielle. He passed three hours in a half-sleeping state, rousing to stop and restart the timer on the watch. He felt the sea state getting more rambunctious as he approached the north end of Saint Vincent, and the wind began to fill in. He went below to the galley and made a cup of instant coffee and a bag of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, taking it all back to the cockpit. When he finished the coffee, he secured the diesel and turned off the autopilot, raised and trimmed the sails, and reengaged the wind vane steering. He settled in to enjoy 30 miles of perfect trade wind sailing from the north end of Saint Vincent to the Pitons at the south end of Saint Lucia's west coast. Once he was riding the smooth swell out in the Saint Vincent channel, he started on the sandwiches and thought some more about the missing block of time and the mystery of Danielle's sea bag.

  "Am I going nuts?" he asked. "All those damned Carrolls were nuts. My mother, my aunt, both uncles. Aunt Ellen and Uncle Andy had papers to prove it, but the other two were just as screwy. All four siblings crazy as hell, and their children, too. I missed out on my heritage. Or did I? Maybe I've still got a chance to join the family business. Wonder if the Reillys were nuts? Or just drunks?" he laughed at his own black humor as the ocean miles rolled by.

  Manic-depressive disorder ran in his family, as well as some more insidious problems. But this was something else. This sense of disconnection from reality frightened him. This was a new experience for him, and here he was, 45 years old. Surely, this, whatever it was, would have happened before now. "Or has it, and I can't remember?" he wondered, feeling a chill at the prospect that he might have had other periods when he was not in control of his rigidly ordered life. How would he know? "Do I know Danielle?" He tried to change the subject. "Was she on the boat with me? When? Where did she come from? Where is she now, and why did she leave her stuff with me? How did I end up in jail in Bequia? What about the blood on the foredeck?"

  He carefully controlled his consumption of alcohol, just as he controlled all other aspects of his well-ordered life. The prospect of losing control was anathema, so he forbade himself to have more than one or two drinks in an evening. He ruled out an alcoholic blackout, but that did beg the question of the raw scent of the 150 proof jackiron rum that was still noticeable from his dirty clothes when he went below deck. In spite of his clothes being rum-soaked, he realized that he had not been hung over; his symptoms had cleared much too quickly once he had a little water and food. "I wasn't drinking, so how'd my clothes get soaked in rum?"

  "Could someone have knocked me out? Why? Who? Danielle?" He tried desperately to reconstruct his last days in Grenada, but he couldn't conjure up any memories. This was his fourth trip northbound through the islands, so imagining how he might have spent his last few days in Grenada was not difficult, but he couldn't pin down any specifics.

  He passed five anxiety-ridden hours mulling over what might have happened, until he found himself off the Pitons around 7 o'clock in the evening. The two 3,500-foot peaks blocked the wind, and the sails began to flog. He dropped them, lashing the jib along the port lifelines and the main along the boom. He was done with the sails for this leg of his journey north. He had a little over 20 miles to cover before reaching Rodney Bay, where he would normally spend a few days resting up from the trip north from Grenada. This time, he wasn't sure how long it would take him to recover.

  ****

  Mike was in the Customs Office in Rodney Bay Marina shortly after they opened. He helped himself to a clearance form and sat down at a table to fill it out while the agents dealt with the folks ahead of him.

  "Good morning, sir," he greeted the Customs agent as the other people moved away from the man's desk.

  "Morning, Skipper," the agent said, his eyes traveling over the form Mike handed him, as Mike took a seat in front of the desk. "Ah, Sea Serpent! Welcome back, Captain. Nice to see you here again," the agent smiled. "Clearance from your last port of call?" He held out his hand.

  Mike handed him the Grenada clearance document, watching as he circled the departure date and looked over at his desk calendar.

  "Slow trip," the agent said, a question in his tone, looking at Mike over the top of his reading glasses.

  "Yes, light air," Mike said, trying to sound disinterested.

  "You stop anywhere?" the agent asked.

  "Couple of nights at Petite Martinique, diving to clean the bottom," Mike offered. Petite Martinique, while part of Grenada, is sort of a no man's land. It's an island several miles north of Grenada's northernmost customs port of entry and departure. Boats headed north routinely clear out from Grenada and spend a day or two at Petite Martinique in the clean, clear water. In the old days, it was a smuggler's haven. Some say it still is. In any case, it's a good excuse for a delay not documented by paperwork. "Sea Serpent had a foul bottom after sitting in Grenada and not moving for the whole hurricane season," Mike said.

  "Welcome back to Saint Lucia. We're glad to have you here. Enjoy your stay with us," the agent said, stamping the triplicate entry form with rapid-fire vigor.

  Mike paid his fees and got his passport stamped by the immigration agent. He bought a loaf of fresh bread and a roti for lunch at the bakery downstairs from Customs and took his dinghy back to Sea Serpent, thankful that the gap in his memory and his paperwork had been bridged by official documents. The issue of where he had been for those missing days was now solely between himself and what his ex-wife had referred to as his obsessively guilty conscience.

  Chapter 4

  "Look, Jim! Isn't that Sea Serpent over there?" Joann Morris asked her husband as he threaded their dinghy through the anchored boats in Rodney Bay.

  "Looks like it to me," Jim said, as he pulled alongside Morris Dancer. "We'll swing by and say hello to Mike and Dani after we get the groceries put away. Maybe they'd like to come over for sundowners this evening."

  "Great idea," Joann said, tossing the dinghy painter over a cleat on Morris Dancer's port quarter as she scrambled up the boarding ladder. "They were a lot of fun the other night in the Tobago Cays. Wonder how long they've known one another? They didn't really say much about their personal history, did they?"

  Jim passed the grocery bags over the lifelines to Joann and scrambled up after her. "No, they didn't, but they struck me as sort of an odd couple, you know."

  "Odd how, Jim?"

  "Well, both of them had a lot of bluewater sailing experience, but she didn't really seem at home on that boat. She didn't know where stuff was stored. Remember, she kept asking him where things were in the galley, when she was setting out the snack food."

  "So maybe he's the cook, you sexist pig. She probably changes the oil in the diesel for him," Joann said, teasing him, as they stored the groceries. "Let's eat some sandwiches and take a nap. Then you can zip over there and say hello and invite them for drinks."

  ****

  Mike had just finished scrubbing Sea Serpent's deck with bleach and detergent in a bucket of seawater. After a thorough rinse with the seawater washdown hose, the bloodstains were much less noti
ceable. A few days in the tropical sun and a few more boisterous sails with the deck awash with salt water should get rid of the remaining discoloration. He rolled up the hose and hung it on the bow pulpit, and he was stowing the bucket in a cockpit locker when a dinghy approached.

  "Hello, Sea Serpent!" Jim yelled over the noise of his outboard. "You home, Mike?" The dinghy coasted alongside Sea Serpent as Jim shut down his outboard. He reached up to grasp the toe rail as Mike closed the locker and stood up. "Hello. What can I do for you?" Mike asked, a puzzled look on his face, as he tried to figure out who the man was.

  "I'm Jim, from Morris Dancer," the man in the dinghy said. "My wife, Joann, and I had cocktails with you and Dani on board Sea Serpent down in the Tobago Cays the other day. I came by to invite you guys over for sundowners on Morris Dancer this evening. It'll just be the four of us, and we'll make an early night of it, 'cause we're out of here early in the morning. Heading up to Saint Pierre. Gotta get to Antigua to meet the kids in a few days. That's us anchored straight across the bay -- the little red ketch. Can't miss it. About 5:30 okay with you?"

  Mike was looking down at his feet, his right hand massaging the back of his neck as he pondered the invitation. As he looked up, ready to make an excuse, Jim said, "No need for you to bring anything. We just stocked up. See you then," and started the outboard with a roar. He put it in forward and raced away before Mike could decline.

  Mike went below and looked at the clock on the forward bulkhead of the saloon. It was 3 o'clock. He had two and a half hours to kill. He thought that maybe a nap was in order, so he stretched out on the settee opposite the dining table. After tossing about for 10 minutes trying to get comfortable, he gave up trying to sleep in favor of trying to remember meeting Jim and Joann. At least, he had caught their names when Jim extended the invitation, so he wouldn't embarrass himself that way. He had no idea how much time he and "Dani" had spent with Jim and Joann, or what they had talked about. Jim's comment implied that they thought Dani was still with him, so he and Dani must have presented themselves as a couple. How would he explain her absence? Having given up on the nap, he made a cup of coffee and sat down at the nav station.

  From Jim's comment, Dani had been aboard Sea Serpent in the Tobago Cays. He didn't remember being in the Tobago Cays on this trip. That could have been either Thursday night or Friday night, assuming he had picked her up in Mayreau on Thursday. Mayreau was only a few miles from the Cays, so it was not a stretch to think that he left Petite Martinique on Thursday morning and sailed to Mayreau. He could have picked up Dani, and they could have sailed to the Tobago Cays that afternoon. He could have then sailed to Bequia on Friday or on Saturday. He could imagine that he might have spent one night in the jail cell and walked out Sunday morning, but it seemed unlikely that he could have spent two nights there. So, he reasoned, he most likely got to Bequia on Saturday evening. That meant he probably spent Friday evening in the Tobago Cays.

  That still left the questions related to Dani. How had she come to be aboard? How did they represent their relationship to Jim and Joann? Where was she now, and why was all of her stuff still on Sea Serpent? Most importantly, at least for the moment, how would he explain her absence? Perhaps he could concoct a story that included her future return to Sea Serpent and position the day or two in the Tobago Cays as a "get acquainted," trial run for a longer term cruise together. He'd have to pay careful attention to the conversation in order not to raise questions. He had an uncomfortable feeling about Dani's absence. Part of it had to do with his lack of memory about her being on board, and his memory gap in general, but her abrupt, unexplained departure disturbed him, too.

  Dani had left behind what appeared to be everything she had with her. That and the unexplained bloodstains troubled Mike. Had he and Dani been victims of foul play? That kind of thing happened occasionally, but usually not in this part of the Caribbean. With that thought in mind, he checked himself for unexplained cuts and bruises. Other than a tender swelling on the back of his head, there were no obvious signs of foul play. He wondered about the knot. That explained his hangover-like symptoms from the other day, anyway. He must have had a mild concussion. Shaking his head, Mike scrubbed his face and put on a fresh shirt in preparation for his visit with Jim and Joann.

  ****

  "Ahoy, Morris Dancer!" Mike called, as he brought his dinghy alongside the well-kept red ketch.

  "Welcome, Mike," Jim Morris responded, as he stepped out of the cockpit onto the side deck to take Mike's painter. "Come on aboard while I tie off your dinghy. Where's Dani?"

  "Well, she was just with me for a trial run down in the Cays to see if we hit it off. If I'm lucky, she'll rejoin me in a week or two. She had some loose ends to tie up. Thanks for the invitation. Pretty boat you've got here. What is she?" Mike asked, hoping to shift the topic of conversation.

  "She's an old Halberg-Rassy 35, from the 70s. Joann and I bought her a few years ago. We spent three years of weekends getting her ready for cruising," Jim said, pride in his voice.

  "I'm partial to boats from that period myself," Mike said, "before they started building for the charter market."

  "Yeah, you said that when we were on Sea Serpent last Thursday," Jim agreed. One of Mike's questions had been answered without having been asked. Now he knew where he had been on Thursday.

  "Good evening, Mike," Joann said, as she emerged from the companionway into the cockpit, a tray of snacks balanced in one hand. "It's good to see you again."

  "Likewise," Mike responded, reaching for the tray to give her a hand.

  Joann set up the folding table attached to the steering pedestal and took the tray back from Mike. She sat down and put the tray on the table. "Have a seat, Mike. Make yourself comfortable. What would you like to drink? We've got some fresh rum punch."

  Mike settled in across the table from her. "Sounds just right."

  Moments later, Jim reappeared from below, juggling three frosty glasses. Joann took them from him while he sat. She handed one to Mike and put Jim's down on the table.

  "To new friends becoming old friends," Jim offered by way of a toast, once everyone had a drink.

  "Yes," Mike and Joann said, simultaneously.

  Mike decided that since the topic of Dani had already been raised, and his explanation seemed to have been accepted, he might as well probe Jim and Joann a little bit. "So, I told Jim that Dani's gone to tie up some loose ends and think about whether she wants to join me on Sea Serpent for a while. I'm fond of her, based on our short acquaintance, but I'm curious to know how she struck you two. You look to be a happy cruising couple, so a single hander who'd rather be part of a couple would welcome your comments and advice."

  "Well, Mike, it's hard to say, since we only just met both of you," Joann said. "We could tell she was new aboard Sea Serpent, but she's quite a sailor, I guess. That transatlantic passage she told us about was a real hairy one, I thought. I can't imagine the guts it takes for a young gal to take off like she did. I would have never done something like that at her age."

  "I sure hope not," Jim said. "I don't know what the kids and I would have done if you'd run away to sea and left us."

  "Oh, hush! You know what I meant." Joann chuckled, smacking Jim playfully on the shoulder. "I guess I'm not surprised that she jumped at the chance to join you on Sea Serpent when she met you in Mayreau. Can't imagine a worse match than a young, free-spirited French girl stuck on a boat with a stodgy British couple with three runny-nosed kids. They apparently expected her to be a nanny as well as crew and chef."

  "Yeah." Jim picked up the conversation. "I gathered that she was kind of a spoiled brat herself, from her tales about her folks and their big old Perini Navi sloop."

  "Well, they had it in charter most of the time, from what she said. Not like it was just the family yacht -- it was a business, and she was paid crew," Joann said.

  "Some business -- a 120-footer that charters in the Med for a cool fifty grand a week," Jim said. "But, you're right.
She grew up working her holidays as deck crew on it, so I guess you can't say she was spoiled."

  Mike sat, listening quietly. He was gathering a wealth of information, and based on the way they were chattering, they weren't likely to ask too many questions.

  "I did pick up some vibes that she didn't get along with her folks, though. Or at least with her stepmother. I kind of wondered if she had been a 'troubled teen,' and her Dad sent her to sea to straighten her out, maybe," Joann said, looking over at Mike expectantly.

  "Hard to say," Mike said. "We didn't spend much time talking except when we were with you guys, so you know as much as I do about her, probably. I sure enjoyed her company, and she's a hell of a sailor. I hope she decides to give me and Sea Serpent a try."

  "You two seemed like a good match to me," Joann said. "Hope it works for you, if your single-handing days are done."

  "I'm kind of an accidental single-hander," Mike offered. "I started out with my ex aboard. We'd been a couple for 15 years when we took off. After a year of cruising, she kind of up and left. I was helping a friend deliver a boat from Nassau to Fort Lauderdale, and when I got back to the marina we were in, she and all of her things were gone. That was 10 years ago, and I haven't heard from her since. No clue how to get hold of her, either. She has no family, and she hasn't been in touch with anybody we knew from our shore-side life. End of story."

  "Wow," Jim said. "Hope this turns out for you, then."

  "To happier times!" Mike said, raising his nearly empty glass.

  On that note, they all tossed back their drinks.

  "Another for anyone?" Jim asked.

  "No, thanks. I appreciate your hospitality, but I know you've got an early start tomorrow. I'd better let you two get some rest." Mike got up and reached for his dinghy painter.

  "Okay, Mike. Thanks for coming over. Hope we see you up the way, and Dani, too," Joann said.

  "G’night, folks, and thanks again," Mike called, as he motored slowly away toward Sea Serpent.