Tahoe Ghost Boat (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller)

by Todd Borg

  FORTY-FOUR

  “When you say we’ll sail this boat, how does that work? I’ve never been on a sailboat.”

  “It’s just like you imagine from pictures you’ve seen.”

  “Do you know how to drive it?”

  “Yeah. I’ve never rigged a boat exactly like this one, but they all operate on the same principle. It shouldn’t be difficult.”

  Gertie thought about it. “What if the wind is blowing the wrong way?”

  Her question was a good sign. She was thinking about something other than the terror she’d been through.

  “That’s what’s cool about sailboats,” I said. “You can sail any direction regardless of which way the wind is blowing.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” she said. “What if the wind blows hard from, like, the north and you want to go north?”

  “Well, you can’t actually sail directly into the wind. But you can sail somewhat into the wind. So you go northeast, then you turn and go northwest. It’s called sailing close to the wind or beating upwind. When you turn back and forth, that’s called tacking or coming about. You’ll see how it works tomorrow. It’s fun. You’ll love it.”

  “I doubt it. I was on a Jet Ski once. That’s fun because you have all this power, and you can race around any direction you want. But having no power and having to do tacking or whatever to go, it seems lame compared to a power boat.”

  “Power boats are great,” I said. “They go fast, and they are very fun, especially small power boats. But power boats make noise and they create smelly exhaust like trucks and cars. It’s impossible to hear the birds and the waves and the natural wind when you’re on a power boat. It’s impossible to smell the pine trees and flower scents blowing from the nearest shore.”

  Gertie looked skeptical.

  “Most of the time, sailing is about quiet and calm, about contemplation,” I said. “On a sailboat, you’re using your wits and smarts to extract your power from the wind. It’s one of the oldest kind of transports that man ever invented. Sailing can take you anywhere in the world. So when you go out on a sailboat, there’s a historical connection that takes you back to the great seamen who first explored the planet. The Vikings, Columbus, Magellan, Captain Cook. The Polynesians who populated all the islands in the Pacific. You feel that history when you’re on a sailboat.”

  “You talk about it like sailing is art or something.”

  “It is. There’s a kind of poetry to sailing. You think about the rhythms of nature. You watch the birds to sense the coming breezes, even the weather. You study the waves to see squalls. You see the fish jump. You can talk without shouting. Sailing connects you to the beauty of movement, the beauty of nature. It even gives you an appreciation for math and physics because that is what makes a sailboat go.”

  Gertie looked at the candle flame.

  The subject was a good mood change from the fear of being pursued by killers, so I continued my little talk.

  “I think of sailing as a cousin to kayaking and canoeing, bicycling and hiking. It’s transport that doesn’t burn gasoline. And a sailboat, its sails filled with wind, is one of the most beautiful things there is to see. It’s romantic. You’ll think I’m nuts for saying it, but sailing is like using a candle compared to using an electric light. It still gets the job done but has much more warmth and beauty than those things that require technology.”

  “You’re like a sailing pep club or something.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  There was a jar of toothpicks in one of the shelf holes. Gertie pulled out a pick and stuck it through one of the openings in the hurricane lantern, touching the pick to the flame. When it lit, she pulled it out and watched it burn.

  “So if you think sailing is about beauty, does that mean you think beauty is important in everything?” Gertie blew out the toothpick. It issued a smoke plume. She drew ellipses with it in the air.

  “I think it’s good to find beauty where you can. It makes you appreciate life more.”

  “What about people? Is it important for people to be beautiful?”

  I saw where she was going with her question. I paused before answering. “There are lots of kinds of beauty. I assume you’re referring to physical beauty. That is the only kind of beauty that doesn’t matter. Beauty based on things outside of your control is meaningless and ephemeral. Beauty based on qualities you can create is meaningful and long-lasting.”

  “So even though the whole world is fixated on beautiful celebrities, you don’t care if someone is physically beautiful?” she asked. There was a hardness and a wariness in her voice.

  “Some people are born beautiful. To me they’re like flowers. They’re nice to look at, but their beauty doesn’t impress me.”

  “Why wouldn’t you be impressed?”

  “Because physical beauty comes from the luck of birth, from DNA, from genetics. Some people win the lottery. Lucky for them. But it’s not impressive. Except for good grooming, you can’t do a great deal about the way you look.”

  “If you’re not impressed by physical beauty, what are you impressed by?”

  “I’m impressed by a person who gets results from their effort, not from their natural gifts. If a person succeeds in spite of disadvantages, that’s someone to celebrate. But if a person succeeds through the luck of birth, there’s nothing impressive about it.”

  “You’re telling me you don’t look at pretty flowers?”

  “No, I’m not saying that. I do notice pretty flowers. But I think they’re lucky. I don’t think they’re any better for it.”

  “Men don’t have a clue what it’s like to suffer prejudice. The rudeness of people who fixate on beauty.”

  “That’s mostly true. But it does affect men, too.”

  “How?” Gertie asked.

  “I read a study about the CEOs of the Fortune Five Hundred companies – those are the chiefs of the biggest corporations in the world. They include several women, but generally, they’re mostly men, and other than the heads of the countries with the biggest economies, they are the most powerful men in the world. It turns out that on average, the company CEOs and presidents are taller than average by a substantial amount, they have more hair than the average guy, they are thinner than average, and they are better looking than the average guy, although that last concept is obviously subjective.”

  “What does subjective mean?”

  “It’s sort of like personal opinion that can’t be verified by any facts. There are, of course, notable exceptions to the rule of CEO looks, but the principle is solid. It even carries over to our country’s presidents. If you go back through all of the presidents, in a majority of the elections, the winners were taller and had more hair.”

  “Really?”

  “Again, there have been notable exceptions, but yeah, people take those preferences into the voting booth. So what about the guys who are short or bald or fat or all of the above? Do they matter less? Should we pay them less, value them less, promote them less? Of course not. But when a company’s board of directors chooses its next president and CEO, they are invariably affected by the looks of the candidates. More often than not, they choose the tall, handsome male. While it’s true that these issues affect women much more than men, men still have to deal with it.”

  “Beautiful people have so many advantages,” Gertie said. “They get favors and jobs and attention and opportunities. It’s not fair.”

  “You’re right, it’s not. But those who realize that life is unfair can turn that knowledge to their advantage.”

  “How?”

  “By not trying to compete on the level of physical beauty.”

  Gertie looked up at me.

  “If you’re a short, bald guy,” I said, “instead of investing time into putting lifts in your shoes and getting a lofty hairpiece, you can put your energy into your skills and climb your way up in spite of not having physical advantages. I remember that you are interested in movies. You want to be a director, r
ight? Well, a woman interested in movies can study them and practice writing them. You can make videos and learn from the reactions while you – what did you call it? – formulate your debut.”

  Gertie made a little smile.

  “This is all stuff that you can work on while other girls are fussing about their looks.”

  Some wax had pooled at the bottom of the lantern. It broke through an opening and ran out onto the table in a thick pool.

  I used my fingernail to shape it into something like a fir tree. Then I picked up Gertie’s burnt toothpick and drew some branches on it.

  “Some kids make fun of the way I look,” she said, finally getting to the reason she brought up the subject.

  “Then those kids are either immature or stupid or both. The appropriate response is to ignore them and remind yourself that you are far beyond them in terms of ambition, drive, self-education, and so forth. Look at all you’ve learned about Noir movies while they learned about makeup or pickup trucks.”

  “But I’ll never have the opportunities that the beautiful kids have.”

  “No, you won’t. But I think you’re ultimately better off as a result.”

  “That’s ridiculous. What could possibly be better about being homely and having a cleft lip?”

  “Several things.”

  Gertie scoffed.

  “Hear me out. First, beautiful people get so much handed to them that they never learn as many valuable skills as other people learn, skills that help you make it through life. Then, in the middle of life, when their youthful beauty begins to fade, the attention and the advantages fade, too. Without attention, they often flounder and sometimes collapse. Without skills, they sometimes find they have no way to earn a good living anymore. Of course, many former beauties cope. People are adaptable. But other former beauties feel like dried up flowers, left alone and passed over for the next crop of beauties. Many Hollywood celebrity actors stop getting job offers when they turn forty. Models stop getting job offers at thirty or thirty-five. Just when people start to really know something, their beauty advantage goes away, and they suffer. Meanwhile, directors are just getting warmed up. And, as you must know from looking at directors, no one cares what they look like.

  “The second advantage to not being beautiful is that you get to operate under the radar. You get the gift of privacy. If you were beautiful and tried to make a movie, you’d be scrutinized intensely just when you really wanted to be left alone and out of the spotlight while you developed your chops. If the first movie of a beautiful director was bad or even embarrassing, everyone would gossip about it and write bad reviews of it. The scrutiny would be excruciating. Whereas, the non-beautiful director doesn’t get much attention for her failures. She will be comfortably overlooked until she creates a hit.

  “But maybe the best part of not being beautiful is that you get credit for your accomplishments. When a beauty succeeds at something, the world says that she got her acclaim for her beauty as much as anything she accomplished. People remark that anyone can be successful when they’re beautiful, and the hard-won accomplishment is dismissed. And if the beauty fails, the condemnation is more severe because people will say, ‘How could a person fail when they have so many advantages?’ By comparison, the accolades bestowed on the accomplishments of people with ordinary looks are sincere.

  “Gertie, when the day comes that you direct a good film, you will get genuine praise and admiration. No one will take away your accomplishment and say that you really don’t have ability and that you only succeeded because of your beauty.”

  Gertie was still bent over the table. She made a slow nod without looking up.

  She said, “You said that there are lots of kinds of beauty and that physical beauty is the one kind that doesn’t matter. What are the kinds that do matter?”

  “Well, I haven’t thought about it much, but there are many. Passion, desire, interest, hunger for ideas, charity, attention, focus, kindness, and skills that you acquire through practice and hard work. Like your softball pitching. No one is born knowing how to do that. You learned that through constant practice. Your pitching is the kind of beauty I’m impressed with. These are all the things you have control over. These are the kinds of things that can make you beautiful in ways that are a thousand times more important than how you look.”

  We sat in silence for a bit.

  “I want to tell you one more thing,” I said, “but I worry that it will weaken my earlier point, so please keep those things in mind.”

  Another slow nod. “What is it?”

  “My hobby is studying art. I’m no expert, but I like art. I’m kind of like a little kid with a picture book. I like to look at the pictures that people make. I have a bunch of books on art, and in some of them, the artists talk about what makes something art. Of course, I’m pretty naive about this stuff, so don’t take me as an expert. But anyway, one of the categories of picture art is portraits. I’ve looked at a lot of them over the years. And I’ve learned something interesting. When it comes to portraits, those of beautiful people are almost never as interesting as those of people who aren’t beautiful. Physical beauty in people, for all of its pleasantness, doesn’t make you think or wonder as much as when you look at interesting-looking people.

  “So here’s where I’m going with all of this. You don’t think you’re beautiful. But I think you have a very interesting face, and I’m hoping you agree with that. And talking to someone with an interesting face is more interesting than talking to someone who has a perfect, pretty face.”

  “But do artists do much of that?” Gertie said. “Paint people who aren’t beautiful?”

  “Absolutely. In fact, some of the most famous portrait artists today are Lucian Freud and Chuck Close and my favorite, David Hockney. The portraits they make are captivating. Fascinating. And to my knowledge, none of them ever did a portrait of a beautiful person. They only paint people who have intriguing faces. For them, beauty is nothing compared to intrigue.”

  “You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”

  “No. It’s what I care about. Maybe someday you’ll meet my girlfriend. Her name is Street Casey. I think she’s wonderful, and to me, she’s beautiful. She has a fascinating face. But it’s not what other people would think of as beautiful. She’s all angles and has acne scars.”

  “But you think she’s beautiful.”

  “Yeah. It’s all those other kinds of beauty that I mentioned. I like looking at her face because it intrigues me. It has character. Someday, if not already, people will think that about you, too.”

  Gertie looked down at my wax tree. She seemed pensive to a greater degree.

  “What is that?” she said.

  “My name is Irish, Scottish, and Welsh, which all have Celtic origins. This is a fir tree, an important symbol for the Celtic people.” I turned the wax tree over and used the toothpick to scratch an F, H, R, and S into the wax. “The Celts said that the fir represents Friendship, Honesty, Resilience, and Strength. These are real characteristics of beauty, and I think you have them.”

  I picked up the wax tree and handed it to Gertie. “This is for you.”

  She took it and stared at it.

  “My name’s O’Leary,” she said, “so I have a Celtic background, too.”

  I smiled, and we sat in silence for a bit.

  I’d said enough, so I went into the forward stateroom and spread out a couple of the sleeping bags for her. I came back and handed her the flashlight.

  Gertie carefully closed her hand around the wax fir tree and went to the front of the boat. I folded and lowered the dining table to be level with the settee base. Then I pulled out the settee cushions and blew out the hurricane lantern.

  It was a very comfortable bed, which, even though I slept diagonally, was still six inches too short.

  My feet hung out, and Gertie was troubled, and there were still men out there who wanted to kill both of us.

  But we were safe for now.
r />   FORTY-FIVE

  I couldn’t sleep. All night long I heard thumps and bumps and possible voices. Waves that seemed too big splashed up against the sailboat’s hull. Once, I thought I heard the hum of another ghost boat. Each time I got concerned, I opened the companionway door and went up topside, stood in the dark, snowflakes still falling, and listened. The noises that I’d heard below were not there. Back down in the cabin, I remembered that sound travels underwater like it travels through steel. It might well be possible to hear the hum of a far-off engine through the sailboat’s hull and have it be impossible to hear through the air.

  By the time morning came, I was more exhausted than I’d been before. But Gertie was still asleep and safe. I didn’t know if the onboard water was potable, so I dipped water out of the lake to make coffee, finding some old instant coffee powder in a jar. There was a teakettle to heat water on the propane stove top.

  I took my coffee topside and drank it while I brushed three inches of fresh snow off the boat and its rigging.

  I was on my second cup when Gertie came out of the head and said, “What’s for breakfast?” She had a smile on her face. It was obviously good to have put some hours between her and her would-be killers.

  “We have more cranberries. Or you can eat anything you want once we get this crate down to the South Shore of the lake and stop at the Red Hut Café.”

  “What is it, a drive-in restaurant for boats?”

  “No. But it’s just across from the Ski Run Marina where we’ll dock and call for help.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “It’s a long way, maybe ten miles. The wind has shifted out of the north, and it’s a pretty good breeze. It stopped snowing, and the cloud ceiling has moved up to over ten thousand feet. So all the mountains are visible and navigation will be easy. It’ll be a straight shot on a broad reach. If we average six or seven knots, we’ll be there in an hour and a half, give or take.”

  “You’re saying we have to sail ten miles before we can even eat breakfast.” She put her hands on her hips in mock critique.