by Doug Burgess
He grins, winks. We’re banking heavily to port now, making a wide arc around Sakonnet Point. A tall spotlight casts its bluish glow over Tappens Beach; somewhere, behind the dunes, is Quicksand Pond and Teddy Johnson. A string of gaily colored bulbs means we’ve reached Warren Point Beach Club, which once denied membership to Joe Kennedy and has been boasting the fact ever since. Beyond that, the peninsula ends, and all that is left is open sea. Billy aims for the void. “This far out?” I ask, surprised.
“Yeah, it used to be on the old trading route,” he shouts back. “Lots of wrecks out here.”
I wonder how many of them were courtesy of old Sylvanus Hazard. Billy throttles down the engines, and the shapeless dark begins to assume dimension. The clouds part below a full canopy of stars. Their light is almost too faint to discern something directly ahead, blacker than the sea, whose existence can only be inferred from the slight chop of the waves as they strike against it. “That must be it,” Billy tells me, unnecessarily. If there were ever a less likely place for a millionaire’s yacht, I haven’t seen it. There is not so much as a lobster pot or channel marker to give us bearing. Billy brings the Whaler down to a slow crawl, creeping toward the rocks. Up close, they form a definite shape. It appears to be a solid mass, rising roughly fifteen or twenty feet from the sea, with a few straggly weeds strewn along the top. The boat moves slowly along the perimeter. We are close now, so close that I can almost reach out and touch the rocks.
“Sure this is it?” Billy wonders.
“Nope. Keep going around.”
Just then I see it: an aperture in the wall, curved inward so that from even a short distance, it appears to be solid. “There.” The narrow entrance is almost concealed by overhanging stones. Billy noses us in, and the sound of the engines reverberates off the cliffs on either side. It is grim and shadowy, like the fortress of an evil magician. “Oh, I don’t like this,” I mutter.
“Don’t be such a girl.”
I turn on him, furious, but he is grinning wickedly. Another rite of passage past, we can joke about it now. “Faggot,” I whisper at him. His grin widens.
Suddenly we both gasp. There it is, the Calliope. After all this time, it is right in front of us.
Or what’s left of it.
Clearly something terrible has happened. The yacht rides high in the water, canted over to starboard and showing her red anti-fouling paint like a wound. The main cabin is gone, along with the wheelhouse that Marcus said had been taken from an old pilot boat. But that’s not the worst. Some monstrous creature has attacked the Calliope and left great gaping holes all along her flank, some as small as a paint can, others big enough to drive a car through. Seawater rushes in and out, making an odd sucking sound. “What the fuck?” I ask, amazed. It looks for all the world like the Calliope had an encounter with a Kraken and came out the worse for it.
The Whaler is still inching forward, reluctantly, an old mare skittish around the sight of so much death. Billy brings her alongside the largest of the holes and shines his flashlight into the interior. This must have been the master bedroom, though there is little left to identify it. The walls have been stripped down to their beams, the carpet torn up to reveal bare steel. But, strangely, the bed is still there, turned on its side with pillows and sheets cascading onto the floor. Something else, a nightstand or dresser, lies denuded with its legs pointing feebly in the air.
“What could do this?”
Billy looks grim as he casts a line and secures it on one of the jagged boards sticking up from the hull like rotten teeth. “Come on,” he says and jumps into the void.
It’s a vote of confidence; if I were Rosalie, he would have at least offered a hand. I follow his lead, but my legs come up short, and I catch my shins across the broken wood. I fall heavily on the deck, cursing. Billy helps me up, and once again there is that sudden rush, the electric charge of his body against mine. It seems as if we are at once in two parallel worlds, a penny dreadful and a rather conventional—in some ways—romance. But the setting favors the former. The Calliope is utterly dark, the only sound the gurgle of the waves passing in and out of her broken hull. It is like slow, gasping breath. The yacht is wounded but alive and still possessed of whatever demon threw her against the rocks and ripped out her insides.
I follow the beam cast by Billy’s torch. It bounces against empty corridors, piles of flakeboard, shards of glass, and pink cotton-candy insulation strewn everywhere. “It’s like something was trying to eat it from the inside out,” I whisper.
Billy shakes his head. “Don’t get so carried away. Human hands did this.”
“Why the hell?”
He raises his shoulders. “That’s what we need to find out. Look around.” The beam rounds a corner and disappears.
It takes a while for my eyes to adjust. There is just enough light from the portholes to make out a spiral staircase, still intact even though the cabin above is gone. It opens onto empty air. Someone has laid down long planks, like catwalks, over great gaps on the deck. Yet what looks like random destruction actually has a kind of system. It’s like construction in reverse, pulling up the decks and tearing down the walls, then moving slowly aft and down, deck by deck. Looking into the cavernous depths, I can just make out the engine room, still untouched. There, stacked in neat rows, are twenty-six bags of fertilizer.
The stern remains mostly intact; there’s even a patio table and chairs and a furled awning nearby. Yet a blowtorch sits beside it, silent but menacing, its greedy flame waiting to gobble up the steel beams it rests on. And something else, a silvery cylindrical object lying, seemingly discarded, at the rail. Clearly, it’s been here a while: one whole side is dark with brown rust. Yet the other looks almost new, untouched. Not really knowing why, I reach down and pick it up. Just a fire extinguisher. But the rust is not rust. There is something clotted on the bottom, dulling a sharp edge that speaks of blood and mangled bone.
“Be careful with that.”
I look up and Billy is standing just a few feet away on the opposite end of the plank. The flashlight dangles from his left hand.
In his right is a pistol.
“Billy?”
He doesn’t move. The pistol is aimed at my heart. “You’re not gonna like this,” he says.
I don’t already. Seeing but not believing, I edge slowly away. The fire extinguisher is still in my hands. “That gun,” I said, staring at it, “is that the one…?”
“That shot Wally? Yep, thirty-two magnum. No question about it.”
There is a strange look in his eyes. I feel like I’ve never seen him before. “Why are you holding it, then? Isn’t it evidence? I mean, fingerprints?”
He sighs. “It was lying in a puddle. Anyway, I think I know whose prints were on it. This is it, David. This is where it all comes out. Everything.”
“And this?” I ask, holding up the cylinder.
“You don’t need me to tell what that was for. You saw Marcus closer than anyone.”
True, but now I’m seeing something even more incredible, like the eye of a tornado, or the volcanic cloud over Pompeii. The face of a murderer about to kill again. He is in absolute agony. His face is twisted and raw, consumed with guilt for what he is about to do. In a way I almost feel sorry for him. “Billy,” I say, very quietly, “what is all this? What have you done?”
He stops, confused. He looks down at the pistol as if he can’t understand how it got into his hand. “Oh, my God, no! What? No!” Disgusted, he flings it down onto the deck. “Not me! Jesus, David, not me!”
I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until now. “Fuuuuck,” I say, letting it out in a long gasp, “you scared the crap out of me. What did you do that for?”
“Sorry! Sorry! It’s just… Oh, hell, David, don’t you see what this means? Who could have done all this?”
I’m still breathing hard. “You tell me.”
“I told you, you’re not gonna like it. I remembered something just now. When we first started looking for the yacht, the police sent patrol boats, but the Coast Guard had a helicopter. There’s no way they could have missed this place.”
“So the Calliope wasn’t here then?”
“Couldn’t have been. It had to be close, though. And whoever had it knew it would be safe from us and the Coast Guard but for whatever reason couldn’t keep it in its initial hiding place forever. Which means that somewhere nearby there is a second hiding place, even better than this, which we all overlooked. And you know, David, there really only is one.”
“Which is?” I ask, puzzled.
“Look around you. The Calliope wasn’t attacked. Somebody was trying to destroy the evidence. She was scrapped.”
He waits to let this sink in. “You mean…Aunt Constance?”
Billy spreads his hands. “What’s the one place we didn’t think to look during the initial search? The old submarine barn. I mean, why would we? Couple of old ladies and a scrap company, why would they be hiding a twenty-million-dollar yacht?”
“But I was there! Not a week after he disappeared, I came right into the boathouse and it was completely empty.”
“Sure, the yacht had been moved by then.”
“To Scilly Island?” I’m thinking rapidly. What was it Grandma had said? She’s different now. A ghost. Anyone with eyes could see it. All blacked out and draped in bunting, like a funeral cortege. Shrouded, to prevent detection. Crossing the bay like a phantom in the night.
“There’s something else too,” Billy goes on sadly. “Remember on the second search it was Constance who drew up the chart and assigned each person a different zone. We just thought she was being efficient. But I remember which zones everybody had because I wanted to make sure nobody sailed into shoal water or breakers. And where do you suppose Constance was searching?”
I collapse into one of the patio chairs. “No,” I tell him, shaking my head, “that’s not possible.”
“Why not?” he insists. “She kept the Calliope in the boathouse for a couple of days, just long enough for the search to end. But she couldn’t keep it there forever; eventually you or somebody else would happen upon it by accident. So she snuck it across the bay to a place she knew nobody would ever look. But then the town got excited, and there’s another search. So what does she do? Pretend to go along with the idea, then carefully keep everyone looking in the wrong direction. Who else could have been so confident no one would ever find this place?”
“All that trouble just for an old yacht? And what do you think, she brained Marcus and pitched him overboard on the way?”
Billy sighs again. “I think so, yeah. And I think poor old Wally got curious and blundered in here while she was still on board. So she took care of him, too.”
“In God’s name, why? Millionaire’s yachts pass through this town every day. She’s probably seen ten thousand of them. Why turn homicidal over this one?”
Billy is still frowning, but he cannot conceal a small smirk of satisfaction at his own cleverness. “She told you herself. The Robie gold.”
“Oh, please. That’s just a myth. Even if it weren’t, so what? Marcus found it, Constance discovered somehow and went pirate? Does that sound likely? And if she did,” I go on, gathering steam, “why would she be such a fool as to announce it in the middle of the Boy and Lobster? She had the whole town looking for the gold then!”
He nods fervently. “Exactly! Don’t you see? That’s just what made me wonder in the first place. Why was she so determined to put that story out there? Why get the whole town looking for gold she already stole? But in another way, it was genius. How do you conceal a crime? Add more suspects! Get everyone out on the water, blundering around. Constance knew there was no chance of them finding the Calliope. Not as long as she kept the sector with Scilly Island for herself. She muddied the waters, literally, and sat back to watch another layer of mystery get added to the Calliope’s disappearance. Of course,” he adds, “she couldn’t have done all this alone. Irene must have helped. But you know Irene; she’d go along with anything Constance did. They’re closer than sisters.”
“But Billy,” I say, fighting to remain calm, “think about what you’re saying. You know them. The Laughing Sarahs, for Christ’s sake. Could they really…” Really, what? Brain a man and toss his body over the side? Sure, why not? They’d done it before.
But Billy doesn’t see my hesitation. “I know,” he sighs, “it sounds bonkers. I don’t want it to be them, God knows, but there’s no doubt about it now.”
“Oh, bullshit,” I cut him off. “This is circumstantial at best. Constance isn’t the only one in Rhode Island that knows how to scrap a boat. She could have genuinely missed seeing the Calliope here that day—it wouldn’t be hard. I still refuse to believe she’d suddenly go rogue, even over a fortune in gold. What the hell would she do with it? Put a new roof on the dog kennel? You said it yourself. These are just a couple of old ladies.”
“A couple of old ladies that just lost their best friend. What if Marcus killed Emma, and Constance found out? Then it wouldn’t just be about the gold. It would be revenge.”
I don’t like it, not one bit. But Constance is a Hazard, and Hazards are wreckers. I can almost feel the shade of Sylvanus moving amongst the rocks around us, staring down with amusement at my feeble attempt to exonerate his progeny.
Billy cannot read my thoughts, which is just as well. His hands squeeze my shoulders. “I know, I’m really sorry. But what can I do? I’m a police officer, as stupid as that sounds. I can’t just ignore all this.”
I pull back slowly. “But you wouldn’t have to do anything unless you’re sure. Are you sure, Billy?”
He is silent for a long moment. “No,” he admits finally. “It’s possible—not likely, but possible—that it could be somebody else. There’s really only one way to be certain.” I already know I’m not going to like this either. Sure enough, I don’t. “We need to search the boathouse.”
“Now?”
“I could get a warrant. But this is enough for probable cause. And I wouldn’t like to think what they’d manage to do in the time after you warn them.”
The air leaves my lungs. I honestly hadn’t even thought that far, but in the time it takes me to work up a decent head of outraged steam, I realize he’s absolutely right on both counts. Irene and Constance managed to strip Emma’s house before the body even cooled; how long would it take them to empty out the boathouse? And, yes, of course I would warn them. Whatever else, they are family. “Well, shit.”
“You’d better come with me,” he says. “I’ll need a witness, and if it turns out there’s nothing there, we can both have a good laugh and lock up again quietly.”
“And if there is?”
For the first time, he looks away, down at the shattered deck. “Guess we’ll have to figure that out when we come to it.”
So it’s to be like that. I’m now the appointed defender of my elderly aunts, against the prosecution of my ex-, tentatively non-ex-, soon to be re-ex-boyfriend. Merry Christmas. “Just out of curiosity,” I ask as we climb back onto the Whaler, “what were you planning for our next date?”
Chapter Fifteen
It must be nearly four by the time we get back to Dowsy’s Pier. Billy passes right by it, bringing us up alongside the boathouse with SALTY BRINE’S BEST LITTLENECK CLAMS still showing faintly under the paint. The office is dark; the Aunts have gone home and taken Grandma with them, probably having a good snicker about how late Billy and I are staying out and what we might be up to. The reality makes me physically sick. “God, Billy,” I mutter, “can’t we leave it till morning, at least?”
He keeps his eyes on the boathouse. His expression is stern. For the first time it is Chief Dyer standing before me, and he is as unsparing as any Puritan judge. “It
is morning, David. And it won’t get any easier then.”
Christmas morning. What a sick joke. We tie up right by the giant barn doors, and Billy turns to me. “How do you get in?”
“Side door, padlocked,” I answer automatically.
The lock is new, but the hasp is old. Three minutes’ work with a screwdriver and we’re in. The interior is pitch dark, but I know it better than my own house. Without a pause I reach to the left and hit the switch. These are original kliegs that hiss and pop as they come on.
“Damn,” Billy whispers, impressed.
The boathouse is a cavernous space, three hundred feet long with barrel ceilings that vault over our heads like a cathedral. The docking slip is empty and filled with gray, brackish water. Two giant gantries stand guard at the hinged barn doors. Lining the walls are the tools of the wrecker’s trade: hacksaws, blowtorches, evil-looking wrenches with grooved teeth that bite into steel.
But none of that is what impresses Billy. On the wall closest to the shop, extending some thirty feet into the air, are the spoils of New England Wrecking and Salvage. Grandpa started the collection. He had a bit of book-learning and named it the rostra after the broken ships’ prows that once made up the speaking pulpit of the Roman Senate. There are dozens of wheels, some teak with brass studs, others polished chrome; binnacles and compasses on buckling shelves, wound with bits of rope; yards of teak decking stacked like lumber; doors with beveled glass edges and portholes lined with nickel; buckets full of handles, knobs, cleats, davits of every possible size and age. One whole section has been given to totems, figureheads, and other bits of maritime art. “Tourists love that crap,” I remember Constance saying dismissively. I look amongst them for Calliope, the bespectacled mermaid, but she is not there.