“Think about it. What was the one thing Mom would get truly bent out of shape about? Every single time we went on the boat . . . ?”
“Well . . . she was always a bit paranoid . . . about safety.”
“Exactly.”
Henry looks back at the wake, an ivory froth triangle billowing out from behind, slicing the sea into pieces.
“The life vests!” he realizes.
“Bingo.”
Now it’s like watching a maze form, setting itself up in the perimeter of his mind.
“Mom would never have left the dock without the life vests,” I go on. “Remember? She even refused to keep them in the hold so they’d be ‘readily accessible’ or whatever.”
“That’s true,” Henry concurs.
“So, think about it. Look back and think about every shot on the news of every plane crash or boat accident . . . What do you always see, floating around everywhere on the top of the waves . . . ?”
A moment while the maze falls into place.
“The life vests,” Henry realizes.
“Right. And Mom insisted on keeping them right up on deck, always, at all times, no exceptions. So . . . they would have floated up. Someone would have found them.”
“Right. And if they never floated up out of the water, which they would have . . . they must not have been on the boat.”
It hits us at the same time.
“Someone must have taken them off the boat,” I say.
For the first time, the very first time . . . that implies purpose. Before, we could have, if we wanted to, believed that everything was a mishap. The explosion was some kind of accident. A misfortune. A terrible twist of fate, but only that. Nothing planned. Nothing nefarious.
But now, considering the idea that there were no life vests on board, taking into account our mother’s obsessive-compulsive insistence on having them within arm’s reach at all times, it’s clear.
Someone purposefully took the life vests off the boat.
“Whoever took them off. That’s our guy,” I whisper.
“Or girl,” Henry offers.
Maybe in all this discovery we were hoping to be proven wrong. Or somehow let off the hook. But this is the opposite of being let off the hook. Now there is proof. Intent. Now there is something malicious where before there was just a bunch of clues and guesswork and conjecture. Now there is collusion.
“Well, looks like we made good time, then.” Captain Wayne guides the boat toward the marina, giving us a reassuring smile.
“Thanks for helping us, Captain Wayne. We really can’t thank you enough. Right, Henry?” Henry nods and the two of us step forward, readying ourselves to dock.
“No kidding! Wow. Mother Nature is a beauty. This has been quite an adventure, little dudes.” Uncle Finn smiles, helping us off the boat.
Standing on the dock, looking back at Captain Wayne as he rearranges the rigging, it comes to me.
“So, um. Captain Wayne, have you seen any life vests around? Like extra ones . . . anywhere?”
“Let me see . . .” He ponders it, leaning over to tighten a sailor knot to the cleat. “Nope. Not that I can think of, no.”
“Anything? Like in the past few months? Just sort of lying around?” Henry continues.
“If you kiddos need some life vests, I can buy you some. No problem. I’m sure they sell them nearby,” Uncle Finn offers.
“No, it’s not that,” Henry tells him.
“Sorry, kids.” Wayne shakes his head, his reddish-blond hair turning bronze in the sun.
Henry, Uncle Finn, and I make our way back up the dock. It’s about fifty feet of creaky, gray, weathered boards, the smell of fish coming off the water.
We’re just about near the parking lot when we hear it.
“Hang on, kids!” Wayne comes walking up, winded. “I just remembered—every once in a while one of these richy-rich types comes down from San Francisco, then rents a yacht and doesn’t know a thing about safety first. You know, pretty girls in heels and all that. They think they’re in a hip-hop video. Well, they never have the proper amount of life jackets for their numbers, so they end up just buying them here, else they can’t go out, against harbor rules, you know. So they just buy them up and leave them here. Truly wasteful, if you ask me. You know how they are up there. Lavish. New money. We usually just throw the extras up in the old boathouse over there . . .”
He gestures to the slate-blue-and-white little wooden boathouse at the end of the pier, sitting over the water with one lone orange life preserver attached to the side.
“It’s chock-full of them, actually. Floor to ceiling. Just take your pick. Be warned, though. Some of them might have some vomit on them, and the like. You know, these city folks get on the boat and get seasick. Landlubbers.”
Henry and I nod and take off toward the boathouse.
We throw open the door.
It’s a solid wall of orange life jackets. Some of them tumble down in a mini avalanche. We jump back, and they settle on the dock around our feet.
Henry turns to our uncle. “Uncle Finn, not to be rude, but you might want to make yourself comfortable. This is going to take a while.”
21
THE INSIDE OF the boathouse smells like a combination of mold, salt, fish, and a bit of something chemical, I’m assuming from the life jackets. Captain Wayne was right, this place is packed.
I can’t help but think someone else could put these to better use, halfway across the world somewhere.
“What, exactly, are we looking for, little dudes?” Uncle Finn follows us in. Henry is already picking up life jacket after life jacket, inspecting, scrutinizing, throwing to the side.
“We should send some of these to those in need,” I suggest, inspecting on my own. “This seems like a waste.”
“Agreed. Uncle Finn, you really don’t have to help us. Just take a seat. This is really just too tedious,” Henry says.
“Well, I can help. I’d like to, if you’d let me,” he offers. “Just tell me what I’m looking for.”
“Honestly, Uncle Finn, even I’m not sure what I’m looking for,” I tell him.
“How many of these babies do you think are in here, anyway? One hundred? Two hundred?” Uncle Finn looks around at the mass of orange flotation devices.
“I’m not sure, some of them seem really old, actually,” I say, picking up a life jacket that looks like it might have come off the Titanic. I resist the urge to sing the theme song from the movie. Not now, Eva. “Seems like they’ve been chucking them in here for decades.”
Uncle Finn stares out at the waves through the boathouse’s tiny window. He seems lost in thought. We give him his moment.
Meanwhile, Henry and I stay hard at work. We inspect each one of the life vests.
After about an hour, I’m beginning to think it’s obvious that this is an exercise in futility. I mean, if someone did take the life vests off Mom’s boat, which I am one hundred percent convinced is true, they could now be anywhere. In Timbuktu. In Guadalajara. Even (shudder) in Los Angeles. They could have been thrown in the trash, or sent to Kalamazoo.
“Henry, do we really think the life vests are here? Why would they be?”
“Because this is the most logical place for them.” Henry doesn’t even look up from his investigating.
“How do you figure?” I ask.
“Well, Eva, think about it like this. Let’s say you were going to steal the life jackets off a boat for nefarious reasons.”
“Yes?”
“Now, anywhere you would take those life jackets would point to you. Even if you left them in a Dumpster at the gas station in Poughkeepsie for instance.”
“O-kaaay . . .”
“All of a sudden, there would most probably be video of you leaving said life jackets in a random Dumpster. Very suspicious,” Henry continues. “No way to explain it away.”
“True.”
“However, if you were smart, which let’s assume this person or person
s is . . . you would not take the life jackets anywhere out of this exact marina. Thereby leaving no trace, no path, no clues, no bread crumbs, et cetera et cetera et cetera.”
“Maybe.” I weigh it.
“And . . . if you couldn’t take the life jackets out of the marina, where would be the perfect place for you to leave them where no one would ever, ever find them?”
“Um.”
“Possibly with hundreds of other life jackets? In a place no one seems to have looked in, what did you call it, decades?”
“Right,” I admit. “You would leave them here. In the great life jacket depository of Monterey Bay.”
“Exactly,” Henry gloats. “And eureka!” He holds up a smallish life jacket and I immediately know, for the zillionth time in my life, that my brother is a super genius.
There, in his pale little hands, hangs an orange life jacket, built small-scale for a child, with the weight limit “90 lbs.” stamped on the side. But that’s not the important part. The important part is . . . off to the lower right-hand side of the jacket, just below the white plastic belt, in scraggly black pen . . . are three games of ticktacktoe, scrawled on the side. And a happy face where I had declared myself the winner. When I was six.
“Bingo.”
22
“I’M GOING TO assume that’s what you were looking for?” Uncle Finn asks, picking himself up from the floor and dusting off his pants.
“I think so.” I hope so, at least.
Henry and I share a look. Whatever it is or whoever it is, we’re getting closer. Clearly, whoever got rid of the life jackets had no idea that at one point, years ago, two innocent little scamps had been playing ticktacktoe on one of those very life jackets, only to get chastised by their mother. And clearly, they didn’t realize that would matter.
But even so, we’re still no closer to figuring out who that person is.
“Interesting.” Henry notices the little life vest seems to be tethered to three other life vests. I recognize them. Mama bear. Daddy bear. Me bear. Don’t think about that, Eva. Thinking cap on. Heart off.
“Okay, good. I don’t know about you, little dudes, but I am ready to get out of this musty old boathouse.” Uncle Finn yanks the life vests farther from the pile and ting. There is the unmistakable sound of something metal hitting the floor. “What’s that?”
He stops on a dime. Looks down.
“Did you guys drop this?” Uncle Finn picks something up off the ground, beneath Henry’s feet.
“Drop what?” I ask.
Henry leans in, squinting. “It looks like an old-fashioned key.”
The top of the key is an intricate fleur-de-lis in bronze; the bottom is shaped like an L, with little notches in it. It almost looks like something off a pirate ship or a Victorian steam train. The kind of thing Sherlock Holmes and Watson would spend an afternoon musing about, over tea or crumpets or popovers or whatever happens over there.
“It definitely looks vintage,” I say, inspecting the detail.
“Is it yours?” Uncle Finn looks up at us.
Henry and I meet eyes.
“Definitely not.”
23
“OKAY, SO, KIDS? I’m officially confused,” Uncle Finn admits, driving us back home along the Pacific Coast Highway, the ocean off to our right side, down the treacherous cliff. This part of the road swirls up and down, on the side of the mountains. There are railings here and there, but definitely not as many as you would need to keep from flying off the precipice into the abyss. Perilous.
“Let’s see. How do I explain it?” I look to Henry for an assist. But he’s a lost cause, gazing out over the sea, the sun just about to sink down into the other side of the world. A golden slit of light before the dark takes over.
“Okay, well. Here goes. We have . . . as we stated earlier . . . through various means . . . come to realize . . . that our parents’ deaths were not accidental. That there was . . . an explosion.”
Uncle Finn keeps his eyes on the serpentine road. “Wait. Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously. And not only that but . . . we have reason to believe it was a quite purposeful explosion.” I’m trying my very best not to sound looney tunes. “Meant to sink the boat. And our parents.”
Henry is still offering zero help, entranced by the blazing sunset.
“And whoever did it, took out the life jackets. Purposefully,” I go on.
“So that they would die,” Henry says blankly.
“Henry!” I look over at him, concerned. Then back at Uncle Finn. “So that . . . whoever was on board would not survive.”
“But that’s horrible! Are you sure about this? This seems like . . . I dunno . . . it seems kinda like a stretch. Like something out of a Hitchcock film or something,” Uncle Finn says.
“I know. Look. We know it seems weird. But something is definitely wrong,” I say. “There is literally no other explanation for why these life jackets would be in the boathouse. Our parents would never, ever have taken them off the boat.”
“‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.’” Henry stares out over the ocean, surveying the waves and the depths below.
“That’s Shakespeare,” I add.
Uncle Finn seems unable or unwilling to process this information. “Listen, you kids are super smart, for sure, no question. But do you think this might just be a little, teeny-tiny, maybe, exaggerated? I’m not questioning the validity of your assumptions, but, just to play devil’s advocate here for a second, doesn’t this all seem a teeny bit, I dunno, dramatic?”
All of a sudden, I am questioning myself. We haven’t even told him yet about the recurrent spectral visitations. Jeez.
“Uncle Finn, may I see that key again?” Henry interrupts from the back, as if abruptly remembering something.
“Sure, little fella.” Uncle Finn hands him the key over the back seat, eyes still fixed on the road. “You found an old, ornate key. I suppose that’s gonna be a big part of the mystery, too, right?” He lets out a small chuckle, more affectionate than mocking.
I take this in. My spider-sense is telling me clearly that Uncle Finn thinks we’re just two delusional little kids with no idea, grasping at straws in the wake of this terrible tragedy, just trying to find meaning. I’m beginning to understand why Henry didn’t want to go to any adults on this particular case—our case—sooner.
“Maybe. It’s possible it’s just some dumb key.” I shrug. An attempt at reverse psychology.
“Or it’s possible it’s everything,” Henry proclaims matter-of-factly from the back seat. There’s a kind of confidence to it as if he knows something we don’t. Almost a smirk embedded in his words.
Uncle Finn and I share a look.
“You never know,” Henry adds. And now he starts to whistle nonchalantly.
The whistle gives it away.
24
WHEN WE GET back to the house, Henry immediately catapults out the back of the car, not even bothering to wait until it is fully stopped. Uncle Finn and I gawk after him as he tears up the driveway, kicking up dust all the way back up the path, barreling through the front door.
Inside, the house is quiet, with not a single light on. Unusual for this time of the evening. Normally, this time of night the kitchen is lit up like Grand Central Station, with Marisol listening to NPR and chopping up vegetables in her floral-printed apron from Anthropologie. She, my mom, and my dad all got matching ones. I know, kind of goofy. But right now there is no goofiness to be had. The house is abandoned, none of the sweet smells and sights of home and hearth.
“Henry? Henry?! Where are you?!” I call up to him from the landing, following the sound of his footsteps on the floorboards above.
Uncle Finn lags behind, taking his time over the clover-and-cobblestone path up the driveway. However, inside, upstairs, there’s an urgency, a whirling tornado of activity I can hear clattering and clanking from the entry down below.
“Eva! I know what this is, I’m sure of it!”
“Henry, what are you doing?! You’re making a mess. We’re going to have to clean this whole thing up!” This feels like a violation.
“Eva, it’s here. I know it’s here.”
“I think maybe you should sit down, Henry. I mean, it’s been a big day. What with the life jackets and everything. Maybe you should have a drink of water.” I’m beginning to be concerned. Henry has a tendency to get a bit obsessed, as evidenced by his . . . everything.
“Don’t you see, Eva?! It’s all coming together. The whole thing!”
“What whole thing? Henry, what are you talking about? Look, I really think we should just sit down for a second. Maybe do some deep-breathing exercises.”
Anybody else would be aghast. Henry is like a hurricane blasting his way through the entire room, turning it upside down.
Uncle Finn saunters in, backpack over his shoulder, a twisted smirk on his face. “Whoa, so this is the viper’s nest?”
Strong words, I think. “You and Uncle Claude really don’t care for each other, do you?”
Finn begins to snoop right along with Henry, lifting a folded sweater here, piece of paper there.
“Let’s just say we have—different approaches to life.” He shakes his head. “I guess we’ve done pretty terrible things to each other over the years, but I’ve traveled this world. Gained some perspective.” He pauses. “Some people, no matter how long they live, no matter how much they have, they just never see the light.”
Wow. Finn thinks Claude is even more terrible than we do.
Crash! Henry is essentially terrorizing every nook, cranny, and millimeter of poor Uncle Claude’s bedroom. Ugh. This is going to be a nightmare to clean up.
He has now been swallowed up by the walk-in closet. Tennis rackets, shoe boxes, old weathered hats are being spewed out mad-dash from inside.
“Henry. This is enough! You’re acting crazy!”
Henry & Eva and the Castle on the Cliff Page 12