The man’s shoulders sagged. “I guess I should be relieved you didn’t see him dead.”
“I’m sorry—” She cut off her words, realizing how much she seemed to repeat her apology. The knot in her stomach was tighter than ever. “You know, Mr. Charles, it’s usually just plain old everyday investigative procedures that solve the case, not a paranormal camera lens in my head.”
“I understand.” He reached into his jacket again and brought out a small business card. “If you change your mind when you’re feeling better, please call me. Anytime. Day or night.”
Cara took the card, holding it in both hands as he drove away. She turned and walked into the restored adobe building where her Aunt Gaby worked in the visitors’ information office. Her great-aunt had unlocked the gates to allow Cara and Mr. Charles the clandestine visit. Eighty-three-year-old Gabriella Salazar was a docent of the rancho during a retirement filled with activity. The small, white-haired woman was a sharp-minded historian with the strength and agility of most fifty-year-olds.
Aunt Gaby looked up from a pile of research books, pushing her glasses up from the end of her nose. “You look like you could use a sip of this. Here . . .”
Cara blindly accepted her aunt’s personal cup of Yerba Santa. The holy herb was blended with mint and chamomile flowers to create a distinctively sweet flavor that soothed the senses before it even reached her upset stomach. Holding the stoneware mug in one hand and the silver-gray business card in the other, she propped one hip over the corner of the massive desk.
“I turned him down,” she said, then grimaced at the sharp twinge in her abdomen. She sucked in a short breath and held it, waiting for the spasm to subside. Her own body badgered her as if, on a deep-down level, it knew the right answer and would not let up on her until she made the proper decision. But she had made the proper decision. Hadn’t she?
“Perhaps you should have accepted.”
“I don’t need the notoriety.”
“You will handle it with the utmost grace.”
“You make it sound like I’m going to change my mind and take the case. I’m not.”
“You will if you want to get rid of that bellyache.”
“It’s just a little indigestion.”
Her aunt softly clicked her tongue in admonition. “This is your Aunt Gaby you’re talking to, Cara—not your mother or father. When will you learn that I understand how these things work? Listen to your body. It’s trying to tell you that something isn’t right.”
“Yeah, well, the only thing not quite right was last night’s green peppers in my stir-fry.”
Cara hated to admit that her aunt might be right . . . again. Gabriella Salazar had guided Cara through her childhood experiences when her parents had refused to believe the peculiar psychic revelations. Aunt Gaby had encouraged Cara to open up to her inexplicable insight, telling her stories of their ancestors who had similar abilities. Those same ancestors were part of a secret history no one else would acknowledge among the living descendants in her family— no one, that is, except Gabriella, Cara, and Cara’s kid sister. Her own father was raised to believe in his singularly Latin heritage, which had been traced to the Spanish settlers of early California. Although her mother was half Italian, she also claimed that the other half of her bloodline was Hispanic. This was partially true. Only Aunt Gaby would talk of the Indians who became known by their mission names—Gabrielino and Luiseño. Only Aunt Gaby believed that the powers of the native people had been passed on through the generations who had denounced their blood ties to avoid persecution.
Her aunt flattened her palms on a scattered array of papers, levered herself to her feet, and leaned forward. “Cara, you must pay attention to what your soul already knows. You won’t have a minute’s peace until you do what you know is right.”
Of all the women in her family, Cara resembled their matriarch, Gabriella, the most—in strong opinions as well as physical appearance. Both had light copper skin, a round face, and wide-set dark eyes. Both possessed the thick hair that held its own soft curls, though her aunt’s had long since lost the deep brown-black color. In her youth, the woman had been as much in love with the physical challenges of outdoor life as Cara was. They were kindred spirits, the two of them. So it was no surprise that Aunt Gaby could dig right to the heart of the present situation.
“I realize how cold I must sound,” Cara said. “I do care about the boy’s safe return. I just don’t think I can help.”
“What if you can?”
“His father’s had the best-of-the-best working for him for three months.” Cara set the mug on the coaster beside her aunt’s splayed fingers. With a shake of her head, she thought of the culprit who’d given her name to Mr. Charles. “What I would do to get my hands on Frank right now. My brother is a thirty-eight-year-old adolescent. It’s his fault I’m in this mess.”
“In it, are you?” Aunt Gaby’s white brows arrowed upward, her eyes bright with amusement. “Why, only a moment ago you had washed your hands of it all.”
“I’m not actually in this mess,” she backpedaled, wishing her quick-witted aunt wasn’t quite so fast at picking up a mere slip of the tongue. “It was just a figure of speech. I was in a mess. I’ve told Mr. Charles I’m out now.”
Her abdomen knotted again. Cara tried to hide her discomfort.
“How is the pain?”
With a sigh of resignation, she grumbled, “Worse.”
“See?”
“See what? I just need an antacid.” Glancing around for her purse, she realized she’d left it in her car.
“Deny it all you want. Sooner or later you’ll come around. That little boy is lost somewhere. And you won’t be able to live with yourself if you don’t do what you can to find him. Even if you come up empty-handed, you’ll be no worse off than all the others who have tried and failed. But I guarantee you won’t be hunting antacids anymore.”
Absentmindedly, Cara fiddled with the business card in her hand, turning it over and over with the dexterity in her fingers she’d learned playing poker in college. She contemplated her aunt’s advice. Maybe it wouldn’t be so difficult to take a look around the ship. Maybe she could deal with the media attention. Maybe she wasn’t giving enough credit to her own investigative abilities.
Aunt Gaby moved around the corner of the desk and slipped her arm around Cara’s shoulders. “Stop being afraid of your psychic powers.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“Yes, you are.” Gabriella spoke gently yet firmly. “You are also ashamed of them.”
Cara tensed under the truth of her aunt’s statements. Her own heated response surprised her. “Yes, I am embarrassed to admit I am different than most people. I’m afraid to be singled out by the reporters and labeled a weirdo, a freak. I don’t know if I can ever truly let go of this fear.”
“Then don’t. Instead, you must allow yourself to feel the fear, experience it, embrace it . . . then do what you must do anyway. Let yourself be who you are.”
The quiet words seemed to echo in the room, bouncing off the adobe walls as if blasted from a bugle. Cara couldn’t deny the plainspoken reality. Acknowledging the challenge in her aunt’s words, she looked down at the business card in her hand.
“Would you mind if I made a call?”
Grinning, Aunt Gaby gestured toward the desk phone with a wide sweep of her arm. “Be my guest.”
With permission from the corporation that owned the Mystic, Mr. Charles arranged to take Cara aboard later that same morning. The hour-long drive south on the freeway took her onto Interstate 5 and past the exits for Laguna Beach and San Juan Capistrano before she finally turned off for the quieter Pacific Coast Highway. Within minutes she found Dana Point Harbor Drive and followed it north a short distance until it ended in a small parking lot at the base of steep bluffs near the Orange County Marine Institute. She cut the engine and hopped out of her eight-year-old Camry, activating the alarm with a remote on her key chain. The car chirped
as she made her way through the full parking lot that served the congested marina.
Approaching the institute, Cara looked at the ship anchored several yards out in the water. The Mystic was smaller than she’d expected—about ninety to a hundred feet in length. As a meticulously restored nineteenth-century square-rigger, it looked as if it had been plucked from the pages of a history book. The dark wooden hulk was a sharp contrast to the sleek lines and bright colors of the contemporary pleasure boats moored in the east basin of the marina beyond the brig. It was hard to imagine that such a small ship plied the waters off California, let alone sailed the great distance around the tip of South America to New England. Though her school lessons were a bit foggy, she did remember the assigned reading of Two Years Before the Mast, recounting the experience of the author from whom the coastal community had taken its name.
“Ms. Edwards?”
She turned to see Victor Charles emerge from the front door of the building with a casually dressed gentleman at his side. He approached and introduced the other man. “This is Samuel Schermerhorn, director of the institute. He’ll be taking us onto the ship.”
The director offered a welcoming handshake. “I’m only too happy to cooperate with the corporate owner and the Charleses, Ms. Edwards.”
She shook his hand. “Please call me Cara.”
“We would like to see this unfortunate incident resolved for everyone’s peace of mind. I understand you’re psychic.”
Cara gave Mr. Charles a furtive glance of annoyance. “I assumed we had an agreement about divulging that information.”
“To the press,” Victor corrected pointedly. “Samuel isn’t any more eager than you to have the newspapers exploit this ship as haunted. Such PR may have boosted the popularity of the Queen Mary, but it certainly wouldn’t be an asset in this case.”
Schermerhorn led them toward the dock. “Our primary focus is overnight visits for elementary students, usually in the nine-and ten-year-old age group. The idea of ghosts may be appealing at an amusement park or a historical building. But here we need the kids’ attention on the reenactment of history and interaction with each other in problem-solving situations. Their imaginations are vivid enough without frightening horror stories to distract them. The word from parents has confirmed the opinion. Only recently have we been able to reopen the program, after the authorities ruled that our safety procedures were not at fault.”
The three of them climbed down into a small powerboat, motored the short distance to the Mystic, and climbed the ladder to board her. Cara managed far easier in her jeans and running shoes than Victor did in his business clothes.
The deck was neat and orderly, with coils of thick ropes at the base of tall masts. The gray sky above was scored with lines and angles of rigging and cross timbers, the names of which Cara had forgotten from her school studies. The scents of the salty breeze and the old wood sparked her imagination with the danger and excitement of a more primitive era. An element of darkness and fear crept into her thoughts. She paid close attention to the sensation, seeking its source, waiting for something more to come to her. The feeling became like a black veil, obscuring shadowy thoughts and images that seemed to lie just beyond her mental grasp.
A gull flew past with a raucous “Scree—,” effectively interrupting her concentration.
Turning to the director, Cara said slowly, “How old is this boat?”
“The actual brig,” he corrected, “has been refurbished a number of times—the latest of which was in Connecticut at Mystic Seaport, hence her name. There probably isn’t a single board on her that is original. I have the history of her in my files. It’s spotty, at best.”
“I’d like a copy when we’re finished here.”
The visit proved unproductive, which was as much a disappointment to the two men as it was to Cara. She didn’t need special perception to read the expression on their faces. It was her own attitude of frustration that surprised her. Hadn’t she expected to fail when she’d first met with Mr. Charles? Hadn’t she told him she couldn’t do it? Then why did it bother her so much that she’d been right?
A revelation came to her with such crystal clarity it startled her. She knew the answer to why she was bothered about being right . . .
Because her gut told her she’d been wrong.
Chapter 2
Cara knew with a deep-down conviction that she was going to be the one to find Andrew. What’s more, her stomach didn’t hurt any longer. She could already imagine Aunt Gaby’s reaction to that news. But just because she’d taken a 180-degree turn, she found the job no easier than her predecessors had. She went back to the ship two more times without Mr. Charles. On each visit, she sensed the same darkness and fear, particularly in one small cabin below deck. Digging further into the history of the ship didn’t supply any information that hadn’t already been documented in the papers from Schermerhorn’s files.
The Mystic had been built smaller than most ships of the early 1800s—small and speedy for the smuggling trade. When she’d read of its illicit past, she’d felt a quiver of dread run down her spine. While there was no proof that innocent souls had died on board, she had sensed an ominous dark cloud hanging over the ship, as if it were shrouded in such secrets. Yet she was fairly certain Andrew was not one of the departed spirits. The brig had also gone through a number of owners, resulting in several different names. “Mystic” had appeared more than once during the last two centuries. In the 1830s it had been a merchant ship sailing between Boston and California, carrying dry goods to the West Coast and returning with cattle hides.
And yet nothing, absolutely nothing, shed any light on the disappearance of Andrew Charles on last year on December twenty-second. There was one thing left that she hadn’t tried—putting herself on the ship under the same circumstances as the young ten-year-old would have experienced.
“I want to go on the Mystic,” Cara told Schermerhorn on Friday afternoon.
He checked his watch. “There’s still a few hours before our school group arrives.”
“I don’t need another look around. I want to be on that ship tonight to stand watch at the same time Andrew did.”
“I told you I was only too happy to cooperate, but I’m afraid this may be going a bit too far, don’t you think?”
“I think it may be just the right atmosphere I need to help me finally pick up something.”
“Ms. Edwards—Cara . . .” The patronizing tone didn’t surprise her, even though he hadn’t shown such open disapproval during previous meetings. She’d sensed that he had been masking his true opinion of her credibility. “Our own people are in full costume and trained to act their parts during the experience. Since you are quite obviously not one of the schoolteachers or parent chaperons, how would we explain your presence on board? You can’t go unnoticed dressed in your jeans and sneakers. And we can’t very well tell them you are a private investigator.”
Cara folded her arms across her chest. “Train me.”
“But that’s—”
“—Not impossible. I’m a quick study with a sharp memory for details. I have the athletic ability to climb the ropes—literally.” She dropped her hands to the edge of his desk and leaned forward. “I want on that ship. If I have to work my butt to the bone learning how to climb that rigging, I’ll do it.”
“I can’t possibly authorize it.”
“Then put me in touch with the person who can.”
The director stared at her, then a slow smile of respect crept into the corners of his mouth. He reached for his office phone. “Let me see what I can do.”
Several minutes later, Cara received the answer she’d been counting on—one week of intensive one-on-one lessons, starting at seven on Monday morning. By next Friday, she would be ready to work the overnight “voyage.”
On her way home that evening, she stopped at a local bookstore and bought a paperback of Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast. She intended to study it over the we
ekend, memorizing every detail of a sailor’s life in the early nineteenth century.
Bo’s’n, halyard, yardarm, fo’c’sle, gaff, mizzenmast . . .
The maritime words and their meanings swam through Cara’s head as she approached the enthusiastic young sixth graders on the dock the following Friday afternoon. Her muscles were still sore from the relentless week-long workout of hauling heavy ropes, climbing rigging, and rowing the longboat. Still, the daily training had been a piece of cake compared to some of the wilderness treks she’d taken with Mark.
Dressed in white duck trousers, red-checked shirt, and short blue jacket, she listened to the captain address his “men” and felt confident that she would be a convincing crew member. To begin the adventure, she manned an oar in one of the longboats to take the kids out to the brig.
Boarding the Mystic from the longboat, she blended in with the activities aboard ship, following orders from the curmudgeonly British captain as if he were actually in command on the high seas. The children formed a line hustling their gear down the companionway and into the forecastle in the bow, where the lowly sailors lived. When the first mate referred to it as a “fo’c’sle,” the common sailor’s term, one boy snickered, then whispered to another with a lewd wink. Cara had nearly forgotten how the prepubescent male mind could find a sexual connotation to just about any word in the English language. She stifled a grin and raised an eyebrow to let them know she had their number. One flashed a beguiling smile, while the other blushed and turned back to his work. Shifting the leather strap of her sports bag on her shoulder, she shook her head, picked up the rolled sleeping bag at her feet and moved on, wondering if Andrew was anything like the mischievous little charmer or his red-faced friend.
Cara had requested the small cabin adjacent to the captain’s quarters. After stowing her things, she paused in the tiny cubicle, feeling the same uneasiness as before. She stood in the narrow space between the wall and the berth, which took up the length of the second mate’s room. If there was anything to sense regarding Andrew’s whereabouts, it wasn’t coming through. Not yet anyway.
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