Your Chariot Awaits

by Lorena McCourtney

  “I’ll go up to the parking lot and wait, then.”

  I’d taken a few steps, but then he called, “Would you like to take a look around the boat?”

  The invitation didn’t sound overly enthusiastic, but he was apparently trying to be nice, and I took him up on it. I’d never been on anything larger than Jerry’s little sailboat.

  He motioned me to step onto the rear platform of the boat, which, unlike most sailboats I’d seen, was built with an open-ing with steps so passengers could walk on directly and not have to climb over a railing.

  “It’s called a walk-through stern,” Matt explained. “This is the cockpit area. And that’s the helm.” He pointed to an oblong pedestal with steering wheel attached.

  There was a tall chair by the helm and padded bench seats on either side for passengers. Inside, a panel in the flooring was raised to expose an enormous chunk of machinery. Matt dropped the panel back into place.

  “Diesel engine, 100 horsepower,” he said. “I was just doing a little work on it. Fortunately it’s not a big enough problem to have to call in a mechanic.” He wiped his hands on a greasy rag.

  “Does Fitz help with engine work too?”

  Matt laughed. “Dad’s a great cook. And a great guy, and I’m really glad he’s here with me now. But he can’t tell a diesel engine from a generator.”

  Which was no doubt important, although I didn’t know the difference either, and I figured Fitz knew plenty of important things that full-of-himself Matt didn’t.

  Matt showed me through the boat, two bedrooms in the rear, two up front. The room he and Fitz shared had narrow twin beds, the others doubles with nautically themed bed-spreads, polished woodwork, and brass lighting fixtures. There were two bathrooms, “heads,” as Matt called them, a small but well-equipped kitchen—galley, that is—and a kind of living room he called a salon, very elegant, with a dining area and comfortable seats, a TV, and more polished teak and mirrors. Also, off in a corner, a navigation center with a wood desk and gauges and equipment that looked capable of launching a spaceship.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said honestly. I could tell Matt was proud of his boat, with good reason. “You’ve been handling sailboats all your life, I suppose?”

  “Oh, no. Up until about four years ago, I was running the rat race down in LA, with a long-term game plan that I figured would make me CEO of the company in ten years.”

  “You were downsized?” I asked, thinking of my own predicament.

  “No. In fact, I was up for a promotion. I’d been aware for some time that things weren’t quite right with the company, but I’d always looked the other way. Until a big deal in the Middle East came up about the same time as the promotion, and I had to face the fact that it was more than things being ‘not quite right.’ The company was up to its corporate ears in unethical deals and deceiving investors. Moving money around all over the world. Juggling the accounting records and setting up subsidiaries to conceal what they were doing. And if I took that promotion, I’d be in it up to my ears, too, which was way over my conscience level. So I got out.”

  “You just . . . chucked it all?”

  “I just chucked it all,” he agreed, as if he liked the phrase. “I’d been up here sailing on vacations several times, and I came up and went to work for the old guy who owned this boat. So when he wanted to sell the boat a couple years ago, I jumped at the chance to buy it.” He frowned. “Why am I telling you all this?”

  Because I’m such a sweet, understanding, easy-to-talk-to person? I doubted he’d agree. So all I said was, “I admire your ethics,” and changed the subject. “Did you name the boat the Miss Nora?”

  “No, the old guy who owned it before me named her.” He laughed. “Not some love of his life, if that’s what you’re thinking. Miss Nora was his cat. Meanest, worst-tempered cat you ever saw. She’d growl when you fed her. Had a rigid no-purr policy.”

  “Maybe the cat was named Miss Nora because she reminded him of some woman in his past.”

  “Hmmm. I never thought of that.” He gave me a glance that suggested my thought had earned me a bit of unexpected respect.

  “What happened to the cat?”

  “She refused to live anywhere but here on the boat. So I kept her until she died of old age last year.” His smile was a little sheepish. “I got kind of fond of the cranky old gal.”

  I liked him better for that admission. “What happened to the company after you left?”

  “Collapsed,” he said laconically. “Taking the pension I was supposed to get someday with it. Three top execs now in prison.”

  “Hey, daisies!” I said suddenly, spying a window box of them behind a little wooden barricade in the kitchen. They were a dwarf variety, only a few inches tall, blue with yellow centers. “I love daisies. I have several flower beds of them at home. They’re so real and . . . you know, unpretentious. Not like big, ostentatious dahlias and other showoffy flowers. Are these Cape Town Blue?”

  “I have no idea.” He looked at me as if he were wary of anyone attributing personalities to flowers. “Dad’s the daisy grower, not me.”

  Matt Fitzpatrick obviously didn’t place much value on daisy growing, but I did. I’d tried a few fancy varieties, but mostly I grew the ordinary White Shastas because they tolerated my sometimes haphazard gardening habits.

  Fitz came in, carrying a couple of big plastic bags of groceries. He set them on the counter in the galley. “Hey, you’re here already. Good. I guess Matt told you about my car not starting?”

  “That’s too bad. Nothing serious, I hope?”

  “Nah, just a run-down battery. I’ll put the charger on it, and it’ll be fine.”

  “Dad, I keep telling you, you should get a new battery. One of these days you’re going to be out in the middle of nowhere, and it’ll go dead and you’ll be stuck.”

  “You’re probably right,” Fitz agreed, a cheerful Mr. Congeniality but obviously without any intention of heeding his son’s warnings. “Oh, by the way,” he added to me, “I talked to one of the guys I know on the city police force. He said that Molino detective who’s heading up the investigation is a real gungho kind of guy, with ambitions of being sheriff himself one of these days. But he’s a good, very thorough detective. He won’t leave any stones unturned.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.”

  “What investigation? What detective?” Matt inserted in that same frowning voice I’d heard on the phone.

  “Murder at Andi’s place. The body in her limousine.”

  “You’re not getting involved in that, are you, Dad?”

  “Andi and I thought we’d see what we could find out before they try to pin it on her.”

  “Dad, you’re not a real detective. I wish you’d remember that. And the real stuff can be dangerous.”

  “He solved Mr. Bolivar’s murder down in LA,” I put in defensively. “I’m sure it took real detective work to do that.”

  “Right. And did he tell you how many legs Mr. Bolivar had?”

  “Legs?” I repeated uncertainly.

  “Okay, so Mr. Bolivar had four legs,” Fitz muttered. “He was a German shepherd. But he was poisoned, and I figured out it was that snooty couple down the street who did it.”

  “And have you told her about the big crime wave of flower thefts you also solved?” Matt asked.

  “I’m sure you’re going to if I don’t.”

  “Flowers kept disappearing out of yards in Dad’s neighbor-hood in LA. He figured out who did it.”

  I was still feeling defensive. “I’m sure the neighbors appreciated that.”

  “Captured the wild and dangerous Daisy Thief, who was all of nine years old. Picking the flowers to take to a teacher he had a crush on.”

  “Well, it was something he shouldn’t be doing. And who knows? Maybe the talking-to I gave him deterred him from a life of crime. At least I never went kerchunk off my sailboat into the water in front of six guests, like someone I could name.”


  “It was rough water. An exceptionally large wave hit the side of the boat—”

  “You were giving a demonstration on sailing safety at the time!”

  The two men glowered at each other, and for a moment I thought a family crisis was about to erupt. But then I saw the teasing twinkle in Fitz’s eyes and an echoing twinkle of affection in Matt’s, and I knew this was just chatter between two guys who probably never could manage to come right out and say they loved each other, so this was how they did it.

  Then Matt eyed me, not so twinkly eyed, as if he suspected I was leading Fitz astray with this detective nonsense.

  “And you, what about you? I suppose you’re some kind of detective too?”

  With me, his tone and look said if I was a detective, he was captain of the Battlestar Galactica.

  I named the only credential I had as a detective. “I used to watch Ed Montrose, P.I.E. all the time.”

  Matt didn’t physically roll his eyes, but I could see them practically doing a somersault on a mental level.

  “Figures,” he muttered. Then he went over and yanked up the floor panel to expose the engine again.

  Fitz just looked at me and winked. I winked back. Then I edged around the hole in the floor to get outside and back up on the dock.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t have time to find out anything more. But after we get back from this trip on Saturday, I’ll see what else I can turn up. The Vigland police and county sheriff’s department work pretty closely together, so the guys I know may know something. Especially since Jerry lived within the city limits. The lot where his car was parked was in the city limits too.”

  “I think while you’re gone I’ll see if I can find out anything about Jerry’s girlfriends. And contact some relatives in Texas to see what I can learn about Uncle Ned’s shyster dealings and enemies down there.”

  “Good places to start. Just don’t put yourself in any danger. People who murder once may not be reluctant to do it again. I’ll walk up to the SUV with you. I need to get the battery charger hooked up on my car so I can get to the lawyer’s office on time.” He paused. “Hopefully I’ll get the connections right this time.”

  Fitz gave me the keys to the SUV, then showed me the controls and where the registration and insurance papers were located in case I needed them. He also gave me good directions about parking and connecting with the clients.

  As I was getting into the SUV, I asked, “Has Matt ever been married?”

  “He gave it a try back in his twenties. Lasted about a year, I think. He’s forty now, but he seems to prefer his boat to the ladies.”

  I nodded. “Figures.”

  “Although his ol’ Dad here doesn’t necessarily feel the same way,” Fitz said and winked again.

  Again, no clue as to why he was seeing a lawyer. As I pulled out of the parking lot, my imagination busily supplied every-thing from lady-friend complications to drinking-and-driving problems.

  THE TRIP TO Sea-Tac turned out to be easier than I expected. Traffic was heavy, but there weren’t any bad accidents or big snarls. I parked, followed Fitz’s directions, and held up my sign. Three chattering couples rushed over. They retrieved their luggage while I went out to get the SUV, and then I picked them up right outside the door. They asked a lot of questions about the boat and the San Juan Islands, some of which I could answer. Their enthusiasm was catching, and I found myself wishing I were going along.

  Back at the marina, I dropped them off, collected a generous check from Matt, and picked up my Toyota. Fitz wasn’t around. I’d spend the afternoon getting that résumé whipped into shape, I decided.

  But an unfamiliar car was parked at the end of my walkway when I got home, and an unfamiliar man stood at my front door.

  14

  He was stocky, brown haired, plain looking, wearing tan slacks, a pale blue knit shirt, and sunglasses. Nothing threatening look-ing about him, but considering all that happened lately, I felt wary. Rather than jumping out to meet him as I might have a few days ago, I cautiously rolled the window down partway.

  “Are you looking for someone?” I called.

  “Andi McConnell, I think. I’d like to talk to her.”

  I was tempted to say, “She moved away,” and burn rubber getting out of there. But I didn’t, of course. I may be paranoid, but I seem to be stuck with a built-in politeness to strangers. So I said warily, “I’m Andi McConnell.”

  He took off his sunglasses as he walked up to the car. Without them I could see the fortyfiveish lines around his blue eyes. Studious looking. Crime investigator? Intellectual murderer?

  “I hope you don’t mind my coming here. I’m Ryan Norton, Jerry’s brother.”

  I peered at him in surprise as I rolled the window on down. “No, of course not. I . . . I’m so sorry about Jerry.”

  “Could I talk to you for a minute? Ask a few questions?”

  “How did you know to come here?”

  He grimaced lightly. “The police haven’t been eager to tell me much, but I did get out of them that this was where his body was found. In a limousine belonging to you?”

  It came out a question rather than a statement, his doubt about the limousine obvious. His quick, surreptitious glance took in the non-limousine-status neighborhood. Moose was barking again, his black-on-white spots bouncing up and down behind the fence.

  “Yes. In the trunk of my limousine. Long story about the limo and me,” I added, figuring he didn’t need to know all about Uncle Ned.

  I made a quick decision. Ryan Norton didn’t look like this year’s serial murderer. In fact, he looked tired and sad and harried. I wasn’t trusting enough to invite him inside, but I said, “Would you like to sit over there on the bench in the shade? We can have some sodas or lemonade while we talk.”

  “That’s very nice of you. Thank you. It’s been a difficult couple of days.”

  I opened the door and slid out of the car. “Except there’s one thing you should know—it may change your mind about talking to me. The police haven’t arrested me yet, but I’m pretty sure I’m at the top of their suspect list. I was, though I hate to use the rather juvenile term, Jerry’s girlfriend.”

  I thought he’d be surprised. Fitz might consider my age “prime time,” but I doubted someone Ryan’s age would.

  Jerry, in one of his more playful moods, had once told me I could make it as the Playmate-Grandma-of-the-Month, but I figured then—and now—that he was just trying to flatter me into a more cooperative attitude. Looking back, I’d also decided he’d probably viewed my resistance to his masculine charms as a challenge. Maybe that was part of what had kept him interested in me. In any case, all irrelevant now.

  But, for whatever reasons, Ryan apparently wasn’t surprised by the nature of our relationship. “I assumed that.”

  “Although neither were we—” I stopped, brought up short by the only word I could think of, which wasn’t really a normal part of my vocabulary. Then I just braced myself and said it. “We were dating, but we weren’t lovers. It wasn’t that kind of relationship.” I don’t know why, but it seemed important to me that he know this.

  Ryan looked as embarrassed as I felt. The only way I could have been more embarrassed was if I’d had to admit we were lovers.

  “They think you killed Jerry?”

  “They have their reasons for thinking it. Pretty good ones,” I admitted. “But if you still want to talk . . .”

  A smile crossed his plain face, and in it I saw a tiny hint of a brotherly connection to Jerry’s roguish good looks. “The bench looks safe enough. I’m willing to take my chances.”

  “Have you seen Jerry’s Trans Am? There’s a good-sized dent in the door. I put it there. With a shovel.”

  “Perhaps that’s one of the things I should ask questions about.” He sounded curious, but in a good-humored, nonhostile way.

  Except that once we were sitting on the bench to talk, a Pepsi in his hand and a 7UP in mine, I asked the first question. “Where are yo
u from?”

  “Jerry never mentioned me?”

  “Your name, and that you were a younger brother, but that’s about all.”

  “I guess I’m not surprised. We weren’t exactly close. I live in Denver. Wife, Marilyn, and three kids, Cory, Jeff, and Kristin. I teach junior-high science. None of which Jerry ever mentioned either, I suppose.”

  “No.”

  “Somebody in the sheriff’s department called me about his death, and I flew in on Sunday and rented the car.”

  I glanced at the car parked out on the street. A Honda Civic, gray, the boring kind of vehicle Jerry wouldn’t be caught dead in. Then I choked on my soda over that thought, the truth slamming me afresh. Jerry had been caught dead in a vehicle, my limousine.

  “Are you staying in Jerry’s condo?”

  He looked surprised. “No, of course not. The police are still—You do know the condo was broken into, don’t you?”

  “No! I had no idea.”

  “The police must be keeping it quiet. Maybe it’s one of those situations you hear about where the police don’t tell everything because they figure it will help them catch the perp.” He smiled self-consciously. “My son is big on crime shows. There’s often a ‘perp.’”

  I couldn’t recall Ed Montrose ever talking about perps. “Was anything damaged or taken?”

  “The place was ransacked. The police took me in for a few minutes just to look around. I couldn’t touch anything. Jerry’s computer and printer, everything was gone.”

  Was that why Detective Sergeant Molino had snapped to attention when I mentioned Jerry’s Web site–design business? They must already have known his computer was missing, but probably hadn’t known about the business.

  “What about his CDs? He had a lot of them he’d burned on the computer.”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see any. Even his filing cabinet and desk drawers had been emptied. And apparently the burglars did it all without arousing any neighbors in the building.”