Dangerous Waters

by Laurey Bright

  Too long without the company of women, he told himself, turning his attention to the pork and sawing at it with unwarranted vigor. The meat was tender and succulent, and he was determined to enjoy it to the exclusion of that other, inconvenient and less easily satisfied appetite.

  He knew when Ocean-eyes left the dining room, but didn't look up. By that time Granger was talking about the funeral arrangements, and out of respect Rogan tried to blot everything else from his mind.

  "He wanted his ashes scattered at sea," Granger said, "from the Sea-Rogue."

  Rogan would have wondered at anything else. "What time is the service?"

  "Eleven. Some of his old drinking mates have volunteered to help carry the coffin."

  Rogan grinned. "Do you think they can stay sober until the wake? We are having a wake, aren't we?"

  "It seems to be expected. The proprietor here's offered me a special rate for the private bar."

  He probably wanted to shield his more refined clientele from a gathering of Barney Broderick's mates. Most of Barney's life had been spent on the ocean, but Mokohina was nominally his home port. From a sheltered deep-water cove and small shingly beach the old town straggled up the hills behind the bay. Formerly a mixture of settler cottages and modest villas, solid homes built by retired farmers, and a scattering of classic holiday "baches"—knocked-up boxes with few pretensions to architectural style—the port had been discovered in the last ten years by the owners of expensive oceangoing yachts, and land-based refugees from city life.

  Semi-mansions had appeared on the higher slopes. New shops and food outlets aimed at the burgeoning tourist trade joined the modest stores that had served the district for decades. Two motels and a few bed-and-breakfasts catered to the summer influx, and trendy café bars had opened along the waterfront. But the permanent residents and regulars like Barney Broderick remained loyal to the old Imperial, a two-story colonial relic, recently enlarged and refurbished, boasting a creaking veranda on the top floor and kauri wood paneling in the interior.

  The new owners had wisely left virtually untouched the well-used public bar. Its scarred, varnished timbers reeking of generations of hard-drinking sailors and fishermen, it was within staggering distance of the old wharves and the Sea-Rogue's preferred berth when she was in port.

  Granger picked up the wine bottle and offered it. Rogan shook his head. After whiskey and beer he didn't fancy adding wine to the mix. He watched his brother empty the bottle into his glass, then quaff the lot. Granger seldom, if ever, drank to excess, and the wine didn't seem to have much effect, even when they left the restaurant.

  In the lobby they paused by the elaborately carved, polished newel at the foot of the broad stairs. It was too early to go to bed, and the air seemed thick and over-warm.

  "Think I'll go for a walk," Rogan said.

  "Good idea."

  Outside, without discussion they strolled across the road and turned along the curve of the waterfront. Rogan ducked his head under a wide-spreading pohutukawa and skirted a dinghy leaning bow-up against the tree.

  The strip of sand gave way to a retaining wall where the water slapped rhythmically at hard gray stones. Several dozen boats lifted and dipped on the restless waves in the bay. A high moon picked out the glimmer of metal here and there, and cast white hulls and masts into relief, while dark ones disappeared in the blackness.

  Both men knew where they were headed.

  The cheap cafés and fast-food bars, the shops selling local handcrafts, gaudy sarongs and souvenir T-shirts, were replaced by boating and fishing suppliers.

  Rounding a curve, they reached a part of the shoreline where the streetlamps were fewer and the vessels tied at the weathered wharves were sturdy, battered working boats instead of glossy, greyhound pleasure craft. Past a warehouse, a marine engine repair shop and a malodorous fish-processing plant, they reached the mooring where the naked masts of the Sea-Rogue loomed against the stars.

  Rogan scarcely hesitated before leaping lightly onto the deck below, followed by Granger. The ketch shifted against the wharf, the worn tires hanging from the boat's side to buffer the hull making soft bumping noises. Rogan went to the stern and ran his fingers along the old-style teak taffrail, paused as he found what he'd been searching for, and traced over the letters carved into the timber.

  "Still there?" Granger came to stand beside him.

  "Yep." Rogan had been eleven, Granger twelve, when they'd marked their initials with a pocketknife. They'd expected a blast from their father as soon as he discovered the defacement, but he'd just laughed and clapped them on the back with his big, rough hands.

  A loose halyard flapped against the metal mizzen, and Rogan looked up, glancing at the furled sails. He remembered the thrill of the first time he'd been allowed to help hoist them, the wind cracking them free and blowing cool and strong on his face, while the ketch's bow forged blue-green water into a foamy V, throwing up a fine white spray that showered him with its salty blessing.

  He'd fallen in love with the sea there and then. A love that had never left him. The only thing better than sailing was being underwater—a living, breathing part of the ocean itself. Between diving contracts he sometimes chartered a yacht with a buddy, exploring recreational dive sites. Or spent time on a tiny Pacific island where he and other professional divers supported a local dive school, giving financial and practical help.

  "Want to go below?" Granger asked.

  "Sure." Tomorrow they'd see their father's body in the funeral parlor before they carried his coffin to the seamen's chapel whose doors Barney Broderick had seldom darkened in life. But his beloved Sea-Rogue was where Barney's spirit lived. This was their real goodbye.

  Granger dropped into the cockpit where the mizzen was stepped, a few feet forward of the wheel. He took a key ring from his pocket and opened up the deckhouse to descend the short, steep companionway to the dark interior.

  Rogan followed him down. "Have you been aboard since the old man…?"

  "No." Granger flicked a switch but nothing happened. Evidently Barney hadn't hooked the boat up to shore power. "Hang on a minute." He fumbled about the galley area behind the companionway.

  A small flame flared, and within seconds he'd lit a kerosene lamp hanging from a gimbal. The light flickered, brightened, and steadied. Varnish gleamed on the mahogany interior; a slit-eyed mask from the Philippines leered from one of the few spaces on the bulkheads.

  "Guess it hasn't changed much," Granger said.

  The palm-leaf matting on the floor looked new, but otherwise was identical to what Rogan remembered from years back. So was everything else.

  Seats that could serve as narrow berths formed an L at the table, their once-floral coverings faded and thin. A bank of instruments occupied the navigation desk near the companionway. Recessed shelves fitted with fiddle rails to safeguard the contents in rough weather held old volumes that Barney had treasured, along with some paperbacks, nautical knickknacks, and shells and carvings from islands around the Pacific.

  In the galley a cutlery drawer sat half open, and a cupboard door hung ajar. Granger said, "The police searched the boat for ID and a contact address."

  He unhooked the lamp and headed toward the stern, pausing at an open door to one side of the short passageway. Taff's cabin, with colorful pictures torn from National Geographic magazines pinned over the bunk, a battered peaked cap hanging on a hook, a rolled sleeping bag at the end of the mattress, looked as though he'd just stepped out on deck.

  Granger moved on to what Barney had liked to call the master's stateroom in the stern, crammed with more books and a built-in desk. The attached wooden chair had a curved back, the varnish worn pale in the middle, its seat softened by a thin, indented cushion. Rogan had the absurd idea that if he put a hand on it he'd find it still warm.

  A marine chart of the Pacific lay open on the desk, with a small pile of tide tables and almanacs. Items of clean clothing were heaped on the relatively roomy berth fitted at the ster
n, and books occupied the shelves above.

  As Rogan followed him inside, Granger turned, lifting the lamp high. The framed picture of their mother still hung over the doorway, where Barney could see it every night before going to sleep.

  Rogan swallowed, then blundered back to the saloon.

  Granger said evenly, "I guess that's it." He rehung the lamp, and turned the flame down until it disappeared.

  In the blackness Rogan groped for the companionway. Back on deck he breathed in the pungency of salt water and fish, and a whiff of diesel. "He didn't deserve to die like that," he said hoarsely. Like some bit of discarded flotsam, callously abandoned to the cold and dark.

  "Nobody does," Granger agreed.

  Rogan closed his fists, overwhelmed by a hot-eyed, skull-thumping rage. Whoever was responsible for causing his father's secretly damaged heart to finally stop beating—when he found them he'd bloody well tear them apart, limb from limb.

  Chapter 2

  Camille wasn't sure what to wear to the funeral of a man she'd never known.

  The one dress she'd packed—lightweight, creaseless, and simple enough for any time of day—had been fine for dinner with James Drummond. But even with a beige silk cardigan to cover her shoulders it looked a bit frivolous for a somber church service.

  Entering the historic seamen's chapel later, she was glad she'd settled for forest-green jean-style pants with a cream shirt and low-heeled braided-leather shoes.

  Two men seated near the coffin wore impeccable dark suits, but other suits in evidence were of the ill-fitting, limp and unfashionable kind resurrected from some forgotten corner of a wardrobe, and the air was pervaded with a faint odor of naphthalene and mildew.

  The service was simple and brief. When the minister paused, one of the men in the front pew went to the lectern, and only then Camille recognized her piratical stranger's dinner companion of the previous evening.

  Shocked, she turned her gaze to the second man.

  He'd had a haircut, but the broad shoulders straining at the jacket of the suit, and the confident tilt of his head, were already familiar. She half expected him to turn and grin at her with the same bold insouciance he'd shown last night.

  But of course he wouldn't. This, she realized as his brother began to speak, was his father's funeral.

  Camille hardly heard the eulogy, dimly registering words like "adventurous" and "indomitable" and "determined." She wondered if his sons had really known Barney Broderick. If they too had longed for a father who went to the office every day and came home for dinner every night and read the newspaper and watched TV before going off to bed. She swallowed, assailed by a familiar sensation—half sadness, half anger.

  The man in the front pew dipped his head, momentarily out of her sight, but when he raised it again his big square shoulders were straighter than ever.

  He didn't take up the minister's invitation for anyone to share their memories of the deceased, but a few gristly, weather-creased men spoke of a staunch friend, a fine sailor, a great bloke, and "one of nature's gentlemen." The last elderly raconteur told a couple of down-to-earth anecdotes about "old Barney" that had his cronies rocking with laughter and then wiping away tears.

  His two sons as they helped lift and carry the coffin were tearless, seemingly emotionless. Outside, the coffin was slid into a hearse and the brothers stood shoulder to shoulder, fielding handshakes and condolences.

  Camille waited for a gap and had almost decided to give up and return to the hotel when the pirate brother looked over the shoulder of a man who was shaking his hand, and she saw the quick flare of recognition in his eyes as they met hers.

  He said something to the man and then he was pushing through the crowd, throwing a word here and there, moving inexorably toward Camille until he fetched up directly in front of her, so close she took a startled step backward.

  Scowling down at her, he said, "Who are you?"

  "Camille Hartley," she told him. "I'm sorry about your father, Mr. Broderick."

  "Rogan," he said. "Or Rogue, if you like. Did you know him?"

  "Not really. I was supposed to meet him here yesterday, but when I arrived I was told he'd…died. I'm sorry," she repeated.

  "Why were you meeting him?"

  "He asked me to. It concerned…my father."

  "Your father?"

  "Thomas McIndoe."

  For a second he looked confused. Then he said, "Taff? Taff was your father?"

  "Yes," she admitted stiffly.

  "So old Taff does have descendants."

  "One," she confirmed reluctantly.

  There was a stir in the crowd behind him, and his brother came to his side. "Ready to go to the crematorium?" he quietly asked Rogan. The notice in the newspaper had said the cremation would be private. "I told everyone we'll see them later at the Imperial."

  He nodded curtly to Camille and made to turn away and take his brother with him.

  But Rogan stood his ground. "Granger," he said, "this is Taff's daughter."

  Granger stared at his brother, then at Camille. He looked back at Rogan. "You're kidding."

  "She's his daughter. So she says."

  Slightly miffed at the addendum, Camille held out her hand to Granger. "Camille Hartley," she said. "I'm sorry about your father."

  Granger took her hand and briefly clasped it in a firm, cool grip. "Hartley?" he queried. "You're married?"

  Camille shook her head. "It's my mother's name."

  The two brothers exchanged a fleeting glance that obscurely annoyed her with its hint of some secret joke.

  Then Granger cast her a keen look. "You do know about Taff? I mean—"

  "That he died, yes."

  "Then may we return your condolences?"

  "Thank you, but I scarcely remember him."

  A woman touched Granger's arm. Middle-aged, with brass-colored curls and red-rimmed eyes. "Sorry to interrupt, love. I just want to say, your dad might have been a bit of a rough diamond, but he had a good heart. I won't go along to the pub, only I'd like to talk to you two boys sometime. You'll be in town for a while?"

  Rogan said, "A couple more days anyway."

  She moved off and Granger turned back to Camille. "Will we see you at the wake?"

  "I wasn't intending to be there."

  Rogan asked, "Are you staying at the Imperial?"

  "Yes. But—"

  "We have to talk to you," he said, "don't we, Granger?"

  Granger said slowly, "I guess we do." He glanced back at the hearse, where the driver was showing signs of impatience.

  "You're not leaving Mokohina yet, are you?" Rogan pressed her.

  After a small hesitation she conceded, "Not yet."

  "Then we'll see you later."

  Camille didn't answer, and as he moved away with his brother he shot a glance over his shoulder as if willing her to stay.

  * * *

  The wake was just the sort of send-off Barney would have enjoyed. Drinks and stories flowed freely, and Rogan lost count of the number of beer-breathing, teary-eyed old salts who clapped him or his brother on the shoulder and urged them to join in yet another toast to their father.

  One white-bearded, purple-cheeked character whispered hoarsely, "Did he tell you about his find then, boy?"

  "What find?"

  Rogan edged backward, but the beard only moved closer, and the man squinted up at him through watery, bloodshot eyes. "You don't know?"

  "Know what?" The old guy was probably talking through the bottom of his beer glass.

  The man looked about them covertly and clutched at Rogan's arm. "We gave Taff a send-off the night your dad got his, y'know. In absentia, so to speak. Poor old Taff." He shook his head in sorrow. "Barney was saying Taff had missed out on a fortune."

  Barney would say that. He'd always hoped someday to uncover sunken treasure.

  The beard leaned closer still. A whiff of tobacco breath mingled with the beer. "I reckon," the man said portentously, "him and Taff found so
mething."

  Rogan looked about for an escape route. "Then I guess he died happy."

  "And that's another thing." A broad, blunt finger poked his chest. "Heart attack, they said, right? But what brought that on, eh? Someone jumped him, didden they? Barney didn't have an enemy in the world."

  "It wasn't the first time he'd got in a…fight." Rogan avoided the words drunken brawl. Apparently Barney was already in line for the sainthood conferred by death, but he'd had minor brushes with the law in several Pacific ports after becoming involved in some pub scrap.

  "Not for years," his friend averred. "He was getting a bit long in the tooth for that sort of caper, you know."

  He was probably right, but Barney had been mourning his sailing companion, a man he'd spent way more time with over the years than he ever had with his wife or his sons. And he'd been drinking heavily. "Maybe he felt like getting in a fight that night."

  The white-bearded chin protruded stubbornly. "Or maybe some bastard robbed him. Y'know, all night he kept feeling his breast pocket as if he had something in there he didn't want to lose."

  "You think someone from Taff's wake beat up my father?"

  The man looked shocked. Then he scowled. "Well, the pub was full and we were in the public bar. It wasn't a genteel private do like this." He looked about at the crowd splashing beer on the tables and the floor as they poured it from brimming jugs and brandished their glasses in raucous toasts. One man snored in a corner while his companions rocked in their chairs with laughter at another who stood on the table, declaiming a long and exceedingly ribald poem. In competition, a group being kept upright only by their affinity for the solid bar counter struggled through an off-key and heavily adapted version of "Shenandoah."

  Rogan manfully kept a straight face. It was becoming obvious why the proprietor, after hosting Taff's send-off, had preferred to corral this particular group of patrons in a separate bar.

  "Webby, you old piker!" Another enthusiastic mourner clapped the bearded man on the back. This one was taller and younger, with gingery whiskers peppering a long, creased face under a thistle-head of reddish hair. "Fill up, then!" He poured a stream of beer into Webby's glass, then waved the jug invitingly at Rogan. "What about yourself, Rogue?"