Dead in the Water

by Robin Stevenson

  “What’s odd?”

  “They have scuba gear on the deck.”

  I stared at her. “So they like diving. Lots of people like diving.”

  “I guess,” Olivia said.

  Patrick appeared on the deck and beckoned to us. We headed back to the cockpit and sat there, rubbing our sore muscles and waiting to hear what he had to say.

  “For a first day,” he drawled, “that wasn’t too bad. You all have areas you need to work on though.” He lit up a cigarette.

  Olivia frowned. “Are you supposed to smoke while you’re teaching?”

  “My boat, honey. I make the rules.” He winked. “Olivia, you’re quick on your feet and you have an instinctive understanding of the how the wind works in the sails. What you need to work on is your attitude. Try acting like you want to be here, okay?”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t know we were being graded on our acting ability.”

  He shook his head in mock disgust and moved on. “Blair and Joey, you’re big strong guys, but you need to understand the theory so you know what to do with all that muscle power. There’s no point in cranking the sail in as tight as you can if we’re sailing on a broad reach. If the wind is behind us, you need to let the sails out. You need to work with the wind.”

  Patrick took a drag on his cigarette and turned to me. “Simon, you’re getting called Spacey for a reason. You’ve got the best understanding of sailing of anyone here, but most of the time you’re off in your own world. You need to work with the crew. If the sails need adjusting, ask someone to do it instead of fighting the boat. We could’ve been going a good two knots faster if the sails had been trimmed properly.”

  “I was at the helm,” I protested. “Trimming the sails wasn’t my job.”

  He met my eyes. “But you were the only one who knew it needed to be done. I bet you’ve got some sore muscles now, right?” He glanced around at the others. “Did any of you notice the problem?”

  They all shook their heads.

  “Looked fine to me,” Joey offered.

  Patrick nodded. “That’s what I thought. So, Simon? Try to be a bit more of a team player.”

  I stared at my runners and said nothing. Delivery skippers sail alone.

  chapter four

  We had a schedule worked out for cooking meals, and Olivia and I were on for dinner. Cooking isn’t my thing, so I was a bit apprehensive. Fortunately it was very straightforward: Jeopardy had a surprisingly large freezer, and all we had to do was pull out a lasagna and stick it in the oven. Even I could manage that.

  “I can’t eat it,” Olivia announced. “It’s beef.”

  I picked up the package and pointed to the picture on the front. “Look at that. It doesn’t look like beef. It’s just a miscellaneous meat-like product. I bet it didn’t come from a cow.”

  She just looked at me. “I’ll make a salad.”

  “You’re gonna get pretty hungry,” I said. “There’s steak kebabs on the menu for tomorrow night.”

  Olivia ignored me. She sat at the table and sliced up tomatoes and cucumber while I washed lettuce for a salad. She was fast: the knife flew up and down and the vegetables collapsed into neatly sliced and diced piles.

  I tossed the greens into a large plastic bowl. “You worked in a restaurant or something?”

  “Nope. I just concentrate on what I’m doing.”

  I could feel myself flushing. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing.” She bit her lip.

  I slammed the salad bowl down on the table harder than was strictly necessary. To be honest, I was a bit worried about this whole concentration thing. I’d been getting in trouble for zoning out my whole life. A couple of years ago, my teacher told my folks I should be on medication for it. Dad told them what they could do with their pills and that was the end of that.

  “So, how come you’re in such a bad mood?” I asked. I wasn’t that interested, but I didn’t want to think about the spacing-out thing anymore.

  Olivia scooped the chopped veggies up and dumped them on top of the lettuce. “Told you already. I don’t want to be here.”

  “So how come your dad made you?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “He sails. He spends most winters down in the Caribbean on his boat and he wants me to come.”

  I couldn’t keep the disbelief out of my voice. “He’s in the Caribbean. On a boat. And you don’t want to go?”

  “His new wife is there too,” Olivia said darkly. “His new wife who’s about twenty-five and used to be his student.”

  “His student?”

  “PhD student. Dad’s a marine biologist.”

  I shook my head. “Whatever. I can’t believe you’re passing up a chance like that... Hey. Think your dad would take me instead?”

  “I think he wants to bond with his daughter. So, no, probably not.”

  “Figures.”

  Olivia grinned at me. “Cheer up. And take the lasagna out before it burns to a crisp. I’m not eating it, but I’d hate for the cow to have died for nothing.”

  Over dinner—slightly blackened but nonetheless delicious—Patrick quizzed us on the parts of the boat. I knew them all, and I took some small satisfaction in discovering that Blair and Joey did not. They might look like junior yacht clubbers, but they barely knew port from starboard, let alone the leech from the luff.

  Blair and Joey were on dish duty, so Olivia persuaded me to go ashore with her in the dinghy. Not that she was particularly enjoying my company: She’d rather have gone alone, but Patrick had vetoed that idea. I didn’t mind. I wanted to stretch my legs anyway.

  The dinghy was a rubber Zodiac inflatable. They’re fast enough with an outboard engine, but they’re crap to row. It was a long way to shore, so I automatically started to lower the propeller into the water.

  Olivia grabbed my arm. “No, don’t spoil the quiet.”

  I rolled my eyes, but actually I didn’t mind. It was really peaceful. All around us, the trees and the clouds were reflected in the water like it was a big dark mirror. I dipped the oars in and started to row.

  “If I was a guy, you wouldn’t have assumed you had to row,” Olivia said.

  I thought about that for a moment. “You can row back,” I told her.

  She grinned. “I was just teasing you.” Then she frowned. “Hey, Simon...row past that other boat, okay?”

  “Why?”

  “Why not? We can say hello. They’re our neighbors for tonight. We might as well be polite.”

  I narrowed my eyes at her. “Uh-huh.” I didn’t think politeness was usually high on her list of priorities. Nosiness, maybe, but not politeness.

  “Come on. Why not?”

  The cabin cruiser was a few hundred feet away, between us and the shore. I shrugged. “Sure. It’s on the way.”

  We rowed in silence for a while, listening to the dip-splash of the plastic oars in the water. At one point a seal poked its head up right beside our dinghy, and we drifted for a while, watching while it stared at us. Neither of us said anything, but our eyes met and we both grinned. Some people would have had to talk about it, but Olivia wasn’t like that. It was all right, hanging out with someone who didn’t feel the need to talk all the time.

  I glanced over my shoulder. We were getting close to the boat. I could see its name— Salty Mist—written in script on the stern. I lifted the oars out of the water and let our momentum carry us until we bumped alongside. The boat looked empty. A small runabout with a powerful outboard engine was tied at the stern. The scuba gear Olivia had noticed earlier was in the smaller boat.

  Olivia opened her mouth to say something. Just then, a tall man with a scruffy blond beard stepped out of the cabin onto the boat’s aft deck. “What do you two want?”

  “We’re on the sailboat over there.” I pointed. “Jeopardy. We just thought we’d say hi.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, we’re not exactly the Welcome Wagon here.” He frowned.

  I shrugged. “That’s all right
; we’re just going ashore anyway.”

  Olivia shaded her eyes from the sun and looked up at the bearded man. “I noticed the dive gear in your runabout...what are you diving for?”

  His face suddenly changed, eyes narrowing and mouth becoming a tight line beneath the blond mustache. He stepped backward and folded his arms across his chest. “None of your business, kid.”

  “Hey,” I protested. “She was just making conversation.”

  “Yeah? Well, like I said, we’re not the Welcome Wagon. I don’t have time for this.”

  He turned away and stepped into the darkness of the cabin.

  So much for being polite to the neighbors. “All right then,” I drawled. I pushed our dinghy away from the boat and looked at Olivia with raised eyebrows.

  She was nodding, like the man had just confirmed something she’d suspected all along. “I can’t believe it,” she whispered.

  I started to row. “What? That they aren’t the Welcome Wagon?”

  She gave me a green-eyed stare. “They’re hiding something.”

  “You don’t know that,” I scoffed. “Maybe he liked having the bay to himself and is annoyed that we anchored here too. Maybe he hates teenagers. Maybe he’s just a jerk.”

  Olivia leaned toward me, and her black hair hung forward, covering one eye. The other eye looked at me fiercely. “No way,” she said. “Didn’t you see what was on the deck?”

  chapter five

  I looked back at the cabin cruiser. I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary: just some storage bins, a bucket and some rope. The usual kind of boat clutter. “What?” I asked. “What did you see?”

  “Shells,” Olivia whispered.

  “Shells. You mean shells from a gun?” I wasn’t actually quite sure what that meant. Bullet casings or something. I wouldn’t know one if I tripped over it.

  She gave me the kind of look people usually give me before they call me Spacey. “No, Simon. Shells like in seashells.”

  “Uh-huh.” She really was nuts. “And what, you think they’re making decorations or something? Shell nightlights, maybe, or shell ashtrays?” I laughed. “Okay, that stuff is so ugly that maybe it ought to be illegal, but...”

  She kicked me. “Simon. I think they’re poaching abalone.”

  “Ouch.” I pulled my legs out of her reach. “Abalone?”

  “It’s a shellfish. People eat it—”

  “Yeah, I know. Like clams.”

  “Except that there’s been a total ban on taking abalone from around here for years.”

  I shook my head. It didn’t sound like that big a deal to me. Who cared if these guys ate a few fish? “How come you know all this?” I asked.

  “Dad’s so-called student did some research on abalone and told me all about it.” She scowled. “Before I knew she was sleeping with him.”

  “Huh.”

  Olivia glanced toward shore. Then she turned and looked over to Jeopardy. “I think we should go back and tell Patrick.”

  “What’s he going to do?”

  “Call and report it.”

  I stopped rowing for a moment and stretched out my legs. “Can’t it wait?” I was dying to walk a bit. Hauling up sails and working those winches is a great upper body workout, and keeping your balance on a boat that is rolling and pounding in the waves uses muscles you didn’t know you had. Still, after being on the boat all day, my legs were stiff and cramped.

  Olivia hesitated. She looked out at the cabin cruiser. In the early evening light, its white hull gleamed against the dark water. “I guess they’re not going anywhere.”

  “Nah, they wouldn’t want to leave their abalone.” I grinned to let her know I was just kidding.

  She didn’t grin back. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. It just seems a bit unlikely. There are lots of other reasons they could be diving. And a few shells on the deck...well, lots of people pick up shells.”

  Olivia’s eyes were icy. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll talk to Patrick about it, and we’ll see what he says.”

  We walked along the shore in silence for a while, but it wasn’t the friendly silence that we’d had earlier. I thought about apologizing, but I didn’t see why I should. She was just making a huge deal out of what was probably nothing at all.

  When we got back to our boat, Patrick, Joey and Blair were all down below playing cards. Olivia didn’t even say hello before she launched into her story. She stood there, her hands on her skinny hips and her black hair all wild from the dinghy ride, and started ranting about endangered abalone and poaching and scuba gear.

  Patrick listened with an amused half smile. Finally he held up one hand. “Hold on there, Olivia. Are you serious? You think the men on the boat over there are doing something illegal? Just because they have scuba gear?”

  He made it sound ridiculous, and even though I agreed with him, I couldn’t help feeling bad for Olivia.

  She nodded and folded her arms across her chest defensively. “And shells on their deck. Yes.”

  Joey laughed. “Man, don’t tell me you’re one of those conspiracy theorists. Hey, Olivia, do you think Princess Diana faked her own death?”

  She gave him a withering look and didn’t bother to respond. “Patrick...look, my dad’s a marine biologist. I do actually know something about this and I’m pretty sure I saw shucked abalone shells on that boat.”

  Patrick sighed and climbed the companionway steps, sticking his head out the hatch and looking over toward the cabin cruiser. He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and lit one. “Listen, honey...”

  “Olivia.”

  “Olivia, then. I really doubt they’re doing anything they shouldn’t be doing, but if it’ll make you feel better, I’ll go over there and have a word with them.”

  “Great. Great.” Olivia sat down at the table with Blair and Joey. “Thanks, Patrick. I mean, I hope I’m wrong, but I’d feel much better if you checked it out.”

  He winked. “No problem.”

  Patrick got in the dinghy and set off, the thrum of the engine jarring in the quiet anchorage.

  Blair shook his head at Olivia. “That was a good game of cards you just interrupted.”

  “So excuse me for thinking that a threatened species is slightly more important than a game of...what, Crazy Eights?”

  “Poker. And I had a full house.” He tossed his cards on the table and ran his hands through his blond-highlighted hair. “Anyway, it’s just a freaking fish. I mean, okay, if it was baby seals or something...”

  Olivia looked furious. “I hate how people only care about animals that are cute. Anyway, it’s not a fish. It’s a marine mollusc.”

  Blair started laughing. “Mollusc,” he said, like it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. Joey punched his brother on the shoulder and joined in, snorting loudly and spluttering his Coke everywhere. “Mollusc.”

  “A mollusc is a shellfish,” Olivia said coldly. “Abalone is a univalve mollusc, meaning it has a single part shell—not two parts joined together like a clam.”

  Blair and Joey started laughing even harder. A fine spray of Joey’s Coke settled on my glasses. Nice. I’d dreamed about this trip for months and here I was, stuck on a boat with a shellfish-obsessed girl and two junior yacht clubbers whose combined IQ was probably less than that of a...mollusc.

  chapter six

  We had all drifted outside and were sitting in the cockpit, slapping at mosquitoes and watching dark clouds forming along the horizon when Patrick returned. He’d been gone for a while: the man in the cabin cruiser must have been a bit friendlier to him than he’d been to us.

  “Well, you can all relax,” he told us as he climbed the stern ladder and stepped aboard. “No small sea creatures are having their rights violated.”

  Olivia tilted her head back and looked up at him searchingly. “So, what are those men doing here then?”

  “Those men are Keith and Victor. They’re just enjoying the s
cenery. All right?” He laughed. “The only crime they’re committing is cruising on that diesel-guzzling stinkpot instead of a sailboat.”

  “And the dive gear?” Olivia asked stubbornly.

  “There’re some wrecks nearby. They’re divers. Like I said, they’re just checking out the local scenery.” Patrick grinned. Olivia almost smiled. Then he flicked his cigarette butt into the water, and Olivia’s mouth opened in a horrified circle. For a second I thought she might jump overboard to retrieve it, but instead she just stood up, turned and disappeared down below into the cabin.

  “Man, there goes a girl who hates to be wrong,” Patrick said.

  We all laughed, but I felt a pang of guilt and hoped she hadn’t heard him. Olivia was definitely a sore loser, but she was the only one who hadn’t called me Spacey.

  Patrick looked out at the clouds. “Doesn’t look good,” he said. “Wind’s picking up too.”

  I hadn’t noticed, but he was right. A strong breeze was starting to whistle through the rigging, and the water was no longer smooth as glass.

  “This anchorage should be okay,” Patrick said. “We might have a bit of an uncomfortable night, but it’ll be safe enough.” He rubbed his cheeks and chin thoughtfully. “Not sure about tomorrow though. If this keeps up we won’t be able to cross the Nawetti Bar.”

  “We’re going to a bar?” Joey asked hopefully.

  Patrick chuckled. “The Nawetti Bar. It’s a stretch where the water suddenly gets shallower, which creates all kinds of currents and nasty sailing conditions. It’s a tricky bit of water, but we have to cross it to get around Cape Scott.” He shrugged. “Often boats have to wait here a few days to get the right weather. I’d hoped we’d get lucky and go early tomorrow at slack tide, but...well, let’s listen to the weather.”

  He switched the VHF radio onto the marine weather channel. I tried to listen, but the monotone voice of the weather guy was putting me to sleep. I found myself thinking about my dad and how he didn’t want me to sail, and Olivia, whose dad was making her learn even though she couldn’t care less. Fathers were strange. Why couldn’t they just accept their kids as they were?