Tahoe Ghost Boat (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller)

by Todd Borg

  “Yup. I also have to get the boat rigged and sails hoisted. But it’s worth it to avoid those men who are after us. And if you help, that’ll speed things up.”

  “How can I help?”

  I opened the narrow closet where I’d found the foul weather gear. I pulled out the smaller waterproof jacket, flotation vest, and waterproof gloves and handed them to Gertie. There was a green scarf and a red kerchief hanging in the closet. I stretched the kerchief out, long and flat. While I was still bent into the closet and out of Gertie’s view, I tied it around my head so it covered one of my eyes.

  I turned around, squinted at Gertie with my other eye, and said, “Aye, me hearty lass, get ye topside, and I’ll show ye how to be hoistin’ me colors.”

  Gertie laughed, saluted me, and said, “Aye, matey.”

  “Well shiver me timbers, we got us a pirate,” I said.

  I put on the other, larger, waterproof jacket and flotation vest, and with Gertie’s help, I pulled the sail bags out of the storage lockers in the cockpit. We sorted the mainsail from the jib, threaded it onto the boom and started sliding it into the base of the mast track. With the halyard line hooked on, it was ready to hoist.

  The jib sail was next. Gertie did most of the work rigging the jib as I explained the process.

  I was checking the rudder wheel, the compass, and other gear when I noticed that the boom wouldn’t clear the kayak. So I untied the kayak, shifted it farther forward, and secured it again.

  When we were ready, I said, “Avast me hearty, prepare the cannons fer a blast o’er the blue, and we be off.”

  I pointed to the cockpit and Gertie, giggling, sat down on the cockpit bench.

  I remembered the green scarf in the closet below decks and went down to fetch it.

  I climbed out to the bow, lay down, and leaned out to reach the mooring buoy. I tied the green scarf to the buoy to mark which one belonged to the sailboat, then unhooked the bow line. We began to drift away. I hoisted the jib. The wind caught it and turned the boat downwind. We began moving at slow speed toward the South Shore. I moved back to the cockpit and set the rudder wheel where I wanted it.

  Gertie watched with great attention when I showed her how the boom swung back and forth, and I mimed how it could hit me on the head. She nodded understanding. As I hoisted the halyard, the mainsail rose and filled with wind. The boom swung out to starboard and strained at the sheet line, and the boat sped up by a factor of four or five.

  Gertie laughed and bounced on her seat. The wind made the sails crackle as they stretched out long-pressed wrinkles and folds. I had her stand behind the wheel, and I showed her how to steer.

  “Me enemy scallywag buccaneers took me doubloons to hide at the Ski Run Marina,” I said. “Yer steering target be that mountain thar.” I pointed at ten thousand-foot Heavenly, 15 miles distant.

  Gertie kept a steady course southeast. We came out of the lee of the Meeks Bay Point to the north and moved into an area where our tailwind increased to a strong steady breeze of maybe fifteen miles per hour. The wind shifted to northwest. We went from a broad reach to running downwind.

  Time to check the spinnaker.

  Gertie was a focused skipper as I got out the spinnaker sail in its sock. The spinnaker is something you can only use when you’re sailing on a downwind course. A striking contrast to the triangular mainsail and jib, the spinnaker is as huge and bulbous as a hot-air balloon. And like a balloon, it is usually made of brilliant colors. Looking into the sock, I saw that this one was yellow, orange, and red panels. Spinnakers can explode in too much wind, but this one appeared to be heavy enough to handle the current breeze, and it looked in good shape.

  On many sailboats, when you use the spinnaker, you don’t use the jib, so I dropped the jib and rigged the spinnaker lines.

  When the sock, with the spinnaker inside it, was in place and ready, I shouted, “Arr, me hearty, raise yer grog fer toastin’ and be tight on yer lines. This gale ain’t fer the lily-livered!”

  I raised the sock. The spinnaker came out. The wind rushed into the spinnaker, and the sail blew open and formed a huge, hot-colored balloon out in front of the boat. It snapped into place with a thunderous clap. The sailboat immediately accelerated to high speed.

  Still wearing the red kerchief over one eye, I put my shoulder against the headstay, the front-most cable that runs to the top of the mast. Braced against it, I leaned forward over the bow, and raised my arms out wide like a conquering pirate flying into the wind. Back in the cockpit, Gertie whooped and shrieked with excitement.

  FORTY-SIX

  The Nāmaka ran well with the wind, pitching little despite a rolling swell that got bigger as we went south. With increasing distance of windswept water behind us, the waves would be pushing four feet by the time we got to the South Shore. There was little to do but steer for the next 40 minutes. Because we were running with the wind, it didn’t blow strongly in relation to us. But the windchill was still significant. Gertie was wrapped up in my jacket with the foul weather gear on top of that. With her back to the wind, she looked warm enough.

  “I assume you knew your stepdad?” I said. I sat on the rear bench of the cockpit. Gertie stood behind the wheel, making careful adjustments as the boat shifted with the wind and waves.

  Gertie snorted. “I met him once. And it wasn’t at their wedding. I wasn’t invited. Mom called later and invited me to San Francisco. Dad gave me permission to go. Mom said we could do whatever and go wherever I wanted. So I said I wanted to visit all the locations where Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” was filmed. Mission Delores and the Golden Gate and Lombard Street and the Palace of the Legion of Honor and Coit Tower. So mom picked me up and drove me to the Bay Area.”

  “Was it fun?”

  “No. We didn’t go to any of the places I wanted. She brought me to her house in the South Bay and said that things had come up, so if I wanted to meet her new husband, it would have to be at Starbucks. Mom knows I don’t like coffee, but she and Ian do. So they took me to Starbucks in Santa Clara, and I had a cookie and water while they fussed over fancy coffees and discussed what time it would be best to go to the De Young art museum where Ian had to attend some kind of meeting.”

  “Tell me you went to the museum?” I asked.

  “I said maybe we could all go there together, but mom said I wouldn’t like it, that it was for adults.”

  “More fallout from unwanted child status?”

  “That,” Gertie said, “and mom’s continuing embarrassment to be seen with me. She always has the perfect hair, perfect makeup, and perfect outfit like she’s a model or something. Wouldn’t want to be seen with the imperfect daughter, would we?”

  “Did they go to the museum without you?”

  “Yeah. They had a babysitter come over. So I spent most of my visit talking to a Mexican girl not much older than me. She was nice. But that was the closest I ever got to Hitchcock.”

  “And you went nowhere else?”

  “No. I told mom maybe she could at least take me to San Carlos so I could see where Kathryn Bigelow was from.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “The only woman who’s ever won a Best Director Oscar. It was for “The Hurt Locker.” I thought it would give me inspiration to see where she was born.”

  “And San Carlos is just up the peninsula from Santa Clara,” I said.

  Gertie shook her head. “Mom said San Carlos was too far and that Santa Clara was nicer, anyway.”

  “I don’t know what to say, Gertie. I suppose your parents could have been worse, but, short of beating on you, it’s not clear how.”

  Gertie looked off the side of the boat at the water rushing by.

  “So Ian wasn’t like a stepdad to you?”

  Gertie laughed. “Other than that one time at Starbucks, I only spoke to him once more. On the phone.”

  “How did that happen? Was he trying to reach Merrill and got stuck talking to you instead?”

  “No, he called me.”


  “Really?”

  “Yeah,” Gertie said. “I was shocked. The phone rang one night. My dad answered and then gave the phone to me.”

  “What did Ian want?”

  “He said he’d heard from mom about how I was into films and how I’d made some short videos with my phone. He said he wanted to make a film, and he wanted my advice.”

  “Do you think he really wanted advice, or was he trying to flatter you?”

  “It turns out he actually wanted advice. Of course, I was flattered that he would ask me. But later I realized he would rather have asked someone else if he knew someone to call who didn’t know his associates. Instead, I was the only person he knew he could ask who wouldn’t be able to spread the word to anyone in his circle that he was asking about filmmaking.”

  “Any idea what kind of film he wanted to make?” I asked.

  “Not really. He said it was going to be a cross between fiction and documentary. I asked if he meant docufiction or docudrama, and he didn’t know the difference.”

  “I don’t either,” I said.

  “Docufiction is like a documentary with a real person playing his real life, but it adds some made-up stuff to help make its point. Docudrama is kind of the opposite. It’s pretty much all made up and it has actors playing the parts. But it’s inspired by real events. Docufiction is more real than docudrama.”

  “After you explained that, did he say which direction he was going?”

  “No. I think he didn’t want me to know. But I also think that he didn’t have a clue what he wanted.”

  “What did he want from you?”

  “It was more like equipment questions. Do you need a fancy camera, and was everything digital now, or did they still use film, and what was the best kind of editing software, and did I know if there was a short class anywhere that taught all the basics.”

  “Did you give him answers?”

  “Yeah,” Gertie said. “I told him about the basic filmmaking summer program at USC. But I warned him that it was real expensive and intensive, too. You can’t do it online. You have to be there every day for six weeks. He said that price wasn’t an object and time wasn’t an object, either.”

  Gertie went silent, then looked away. After a minute, she said, “He could plan an entire summer going to USC and buy a zillion-dollar digital setup and probably live in an expensive hotel and hang out by the pool while he played with his new camera, but he and mom couldn’t take me to the Golden Gate because it took too much time.”

  “More fallout,” I muttered, more aware than ever that a simple childhood like mine – with two parents who cared about you, whatever their flaws – is something that huge numbers of kids never experience.

  She nodded. Wiped the back of her hand across her eyes.

  “Have you ever been to the Golden Gate?” I asked, almost not wanting to hear the answer.

  “No,” she said. “It’s been a great ride, this being a kid thing.”

  We sailed for awhile without talking.

  “When did you find out that Ian had been killed in the boating accident?”

  “I got an email from my mom a few days after it happened.”

  She said it with no drama, just a simple statement that made me wince.

  The wind shifted a little just as we crested a large wave and started surfing down the front side. The boat yawed a bit to port. I reached out and pointed to the right. “Just a bit,” I said.

  Gertie eased the wheel a touch to starboard.

  “Where did you learn about filmmaking?” I asked, thinking it would be better to go back to the previous subject. “Did you go to the USC summer program?”

  “Are you kidding? I’m fifteen. My real dad has no money. Whatever money my mom has goes for shoes and makeup. Just the summer program at USC is something like twelve thousand for six weeks, and that’s just tuition.”

  “Your mom’s clothes are more important than your education,” I said.

  “Of course,” Gertie said. “Everything I know about filmmaking comes from reading blogs on it. Not like I know that much. But no money means I have to be a DIY person.”

  Maybe I frowned.

  “Do It Yourself,” she said.

  “Ah.”

  “I’ve also learned a lot by watching great films. DIY can be a pretty good way to go. Did you know that Steven Spielberg applied twice to USC Film School, and he was rejected both times? Talk about an ‘Oops’ moment. Somewhere there’s a USC decision maker who’s the butt of jokes.”

  “I didn’t know that about Spielberg. Was he a high school dropout, too? Like all those other directors and actors you mentioned?”

  “No. And he did get into Cal State Long Beach. So he actually went to college for awhile. But then he dropped out of that.” Gertie said it with satisfaction.

  “Pity the potential film hero who’d lose your respect because he or she finished college,” I said.

  “Right,” Gertie said, sounding serious. “Did you know that when Spielberg directed “Jaws,” he got one of his greatest ideas from watching Hitchcock films?” Gertie said.

  “No. What was that?”

  “It’s a motif.” She looked at me to see if I comprehended. “A motif is...”

  “Something you learned from the Tarantino interview?” I interrupted.

  Gertie grinned. “Right. It’s kind of like a design element in a film. Something that repeats and builds power through the repetition. Well, anyway, in “Jaws” there is a motif of the shark’s fin cruising through the water. Why show the whole shark, when just the fin is more ominous? Hitchcock often did that where less is more. Instead of showing someone getting killed up close, just show the shadow of the murderer killing the victim. Showing less can be more powerful because the viewer fills in the rest.”

  “I remember,” I said. “The shark fin in the water was really creepy.”

  “Yeah, and “Jaws” became the highest grossing film of all time. Then Spielberg directed “E.T.,” and it became the new highest grossing film of all time. Then he did “Jurassic Park,” and it did even better than “E.T.” And all along, Spielberg got critical raves and won Academy Awards like Best Director for “Schindler’s List.” So naturally, a few decades later, USC came crawling on hands and knees, asking if they could please give him an honorary degree. Probably just hoping he’d drop a billion on them in his will.”

  “You’re kind of a cynic, huh?” I said.

  “Live and learn,” Gertie said.

  “I have a hypothetical question,” I said.

  “Hypothetical?” Gertie grinned. “Did you learn that from an interview?”

  “Probably,” I said. “If you ever got a chance to go to a good college, you wouldn’t turn it down just to remain pure and unsullied by the world of academia, would you?”

  She thought about it. “Depends on if they had a good film school.”

  “Like USC or UCLA?” I said.

  “Or AFI,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “American Film Institute. Only maybe the best there is. But it won’t happen. You have to be rich. And anyway, AFI is like a graduate school. Or what do they call it? A conservatory. Pretty snooty.” Gertie put her thumbs together and then her forefingers together to make a circle and held her hands above her head like a halo. “They’re all so special. And anyway, it’s all old people who go there.”

  “How old?”

  “Real old. I read that the average age is twenty-seven. And they only give out Masters of Fine Arts, so if I wanted to get a Bachelor’s degree in Filmmaking, I’d have to go to USC or UCLA or one of those fancy East Coast schools. But I can still study Hitchcock on my own.”

  “Good idea,” I said. “Did Hitchcock drop out of high school?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to Google it. But if he didn’t, maybe he dropped out of college like Spielberg.”

  I grinned at her.

  “Do you know what most people think is the most excl
usive club in the world?” she asked.

  “No, what?”

  “People who get a college degree from Harvard. But that’s not true. The actual most exclusive club in the world is people who drop out of Harvard. Microsoft’s Bill Gates. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. William Randolph Hearst, the guy who ran the San Francisco Examiner and built the Hearst Castle. Bonnie Raitt the rock star. Robert Frost the poet. And, oh yeah, the movie star Matt Damon. Those are the richest, most successful people of all.”

  “Wait,” I said. “You’re telling me that Matt Damon didn’t drop out of high school? And you still respect him? I’m shocked.”

  “Right. He had to wait until he got into Harvard.”

  “So do you still want to drop out of high school?” I said.

  “I do. But it would be even cooler to drop out of Harvard. That would guarantee that people would pay attention to whatever I film.”

  “Isn’t making really good films the best way to get people to pay attention?”

  “How is anyone gonna know they’re good if no one notices them in the first place?”

  “You’re a hard kid to argue with.”

  We were getting close to the South Shore, so I turned my attention to sailing. As we swept in toward the Ski Run Marina, I worried that my sailing skills wouldn’t be sufficient to bring a large sailboat up to the dock without damage. Like landing a plane, landing a sailboat is much trickier than taking off, especially landing downwind.

  I aimed for a point a hundred yards northeast of the pier where the Tahoe Queen was docked. When we were still well out from shore, I took down the spinnaker and stowed it.

  We were running downwind on a port tack. I touched Gertie’s shoulder and pointed at the mainsail and boom, which were projecting off the right side of the boat.

  “We’re going to jibe to starboard, otherwise known as turning to the right. When we do that, the sail and boom are going to blow across the boat from right to left.” I pointed. “It will come fast, so you’ll want to keep your head below this level.” I held my hand up.