The Keystone: Finding Home

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The Keystone: Finding Home Page 13

by Seren Goode


  “You’re clear,” Shim announced in my head. At his signal, I nudged Jaxon, and he quickly logged off the computer. We grabbed our bags and walked out into the fresh summer air. We had done this many times before.

  After leaving the coffee shop, Jaxon headed across the street to the park to relieve Breeze, who I had seen a minute ago in the back by the trees, singing to herself. I headed down the street. Most of the stores in the center were two or three stories high and had expensive, bohemian-style shops on the ground floor with huge front windows.

  Walking the well cared for sidewalk, I wove around benches with colorful cushions and tables set for fine dining with glass stemware. The dense pedestrian traffic was distracted today, wandering lazily. Everyone got a little sun-shock when the temperature rose, and the warmth of the afternoon put a hiatus on the biting wind.

  I hadn’t gotten very far when the back of my neck started to tickle. Was I sensing someone behind me? Uneasy, I stifled the urge to look behind me and stopped in front of a shop window instead, using the reflection of the glass like a mirror to scan the people strolling up the street. A couple in workout gear, pushing a stroller. A tall skinny guy in rolled up jeans with his arm wrapped around a girl, his hands sliding up the edge of her tank top as he whispered in her ear and she laughed. An older woman in loose flowing clothes and brightly colored shoes walked a small, white dog with a large orange bow. None of them raised any alarm bells, but the feeling didn’t ease, so I headed back to the park. When I got closer, I heard Jaxon.

  “Breeze?” It wasn’t a shout, but it was close and sounded very panicked. I grabbed onto the necklace.

  “What’s Jaxon doing? Where is Breeze?” Shim sounded stressed.

  “Isn’t she in the park?”

  “I don’t see her, and Jaxon is tearing the place apart. He must be looking for her.” From the room, Shim could see the whole park. How could we have lost her?

  My first instinct was to step across the street and help Jaxon. But that prickly feeling had me stepping back into a narrow alley and taking a minute to look around. I glanced behind me. Stairs led up the steep hill to the expensive homes above. I turned back. Jaxon was headed toward me. Off to the right, I saw Shim and Skylar leaving the hotel and moving toward the park, their bags on their backs. No one paid attention to us, and I didn’t see Breeze anywhere.

  “She isn’t here.” Jaxon’s voice was angry.

  Suddenly, Skylar’s panicked voice filled my head. “Did Jaxon find her? Has anyone seen her?” He must have wrestled the ring away from Shim.

  “No, Jaxon checked the whole park and didn’t see her. I’m down here, too, and I haven’t seen her for several minutes,” I responded to Skylar. “She must be here somewhere. Do a loop around the outside of the park,” I ordered Jaxon. He took off.

  “Skylar…”

  “It’s Shim. I got the ring back from him. He’s…upset.”

  “Keep Skylar with you and check out the coffee and the ice cream shops.” Best not to send Skylar out on his own.

  After scouring the area, we came up with nothing. Where had she gone? Okay, now maybe we should start panicking. Skylar and Shim were double-checking the park while Jaxon and I re-checked every shop.

  “Hello?” Breeze’s voice was tentative over the stones. She hadn’t spent as much time talking through them as the rest of us had.

  “Breeze…” Shim started, then was interrupted.

  “BZ?” Skylar breathed in relief. “Where are you?”

  Breeze ignored the question. “Follow these directions quickly, and try not to be noticed,” she said. “Go to the base of the park and follow Bridgeway north.” She sounded rushed. Was she running or scared? “Take the second right onto Bay Street.”

  “Breeze, are you okay?” Skylar sounded desperate.

  Breeze ignored her brother and firmly repeated, “Take the second right onto Bay Street.”

  Shim and Skylar emerged from the park ahead of me. They were walking at a brisk pace, and Shim had a hand on Skylar’s bag, holding him back from running.

  “At the corner of Bay and Humboldt, cross the street to Marotta Yachts of Sausalito. Take the wooden walkway down to the Spinnaker Restaurant,” Breeze instructed.

  To my relief, Jaxon walked up beside me. Now, we didn’t have to worry about two people being lost. I gave him a quick summary of what was going on, he scowled, and we quickly followed the directions while keeping a safe distance from Shim and Skylar.

  The wooden walkway ran along the harbor, giving access to boat berths. Cars, nose in, were parked along one side of the walkway: a couple of Porsches, a SAAB, a Maserati, two Hummers, not a hoopty in sight. On the other side of the walkway, large, expensive yachts were lounging in berths, like grand racehorses that rarely left the barn, bobbing up and down in the water, their ropes groaning and squeaking. Acoustic guitar music reached across the water, mixing with clinking glasses and accompanied by the cries of seagull.

  Our shoes clacked on the wooden boards like an out of tune xylophone as we raced to the waterfront restaurant at the end of the path.

  Just before reaching the building, I heard, “Look left.” Shim and I turned, pulling Jaxon and Skylar with us. Down a wooden gangplank, a white motorboat was idling. Breeze sat in the boat, waving. She wore an orange life vest and a big smile.

  Traipsing down the gangway to the pier, we were not happy campers. Skylar stomped down first.

  “Are you okay?” He hissed at Breeze, who still hadn’t answered the question.

  “Yes, of course! Sorry I scared you.” Breeze nodded to the man behind the wheel and the woman on deck casting off the ropes. “These are Lincoln’s children, Linda and Herb.”

  Herb nodded, his face serious. Linda gave a tight smile and tugged nervously at the front of her windbreaker.

  “I don’t mean to rush you, but we need to get out of here before someone sees us.” She glanced around the marina. “Would you mind coming with us? We have some important information to tell you, and it’s not safe here.”

  Something was off. Why send Linda and Herb to meet us instead of Lincoln coming himself? Why the rush through town? Why not tell us what was going on now instead of having us go out on their boat? It’s about this point in most mystery shows where everyone is yelling, “Don’t get onto the boat.”

  But we did anyway. Stars, we must be stupid.

  Chapter 15

  Linda and Herb

  A mix of emotions rolled off the pair of older siblings. They appeared to genuinely want to help, but they were holding something back, some secret, that made me uneasy. Sorrow blanketed the air around them like a thick San Francisco Bay fog. They seemed desperate to talk to us, but we could tell our appearance disturbed them.

  Linda looked like she should be drinking a glass of wine as she invited us on board for cheese and crackers. She was in her mid-fifties. Her chin-length blond hair had faded to gray streaks, and lines creased at the corners of her eyes and mouth. She looked comfortably wealthy, dressed in white capris, blue boat shoes, and a blue windshirt with white detailing. An enormous ring glittered on her finger, and ropes of diamonds jangled at her wrist as she fretted, wringing her hands.

  Herb had on brown Birkenstock sandals, faded jeans, and a bright red Hawaiian shirt that showed under his half-zipped windbreaker. His fine blond hair was graying and showed most prominently in his sideburns. As the wind blew, thin patches showed on top.

  Herb and Linda kept shooting nervous glances around, unsettled. They wanted to talk but were holding back.

  Skylar had already moved toward the boat; he wasn’t going to be parted from Breeze again. Jaxon and Shim both looked at me.

  “What do you think?” Shim asked.

  I watched Linda help Skylar into the boat. “If we want answers, we are going to need to go.”

  The brothers nodded. None of us were sm
iling as we climbed aboard.

  Once we were settled, Herb revved the engine and pulled away from the berth. The wind whipped up as we were leaving the shelter of the marina. Linda shuddered. “It’s absolutely honking out here today,” she shouted to Herb over the sound of the engine. Shim pursed his lips and raised one questioning eyebrow at me.

  “It’s windy,” I explained.

  Linda cocked her head at my response. “Do you sail?”

  “I used to, with my parents.” I frowned at the memory. Linda waited expectantly, so I reluctantly continued. “My dad’s a marine biologist, so we spent a lot of time on the water, and my mom is—was—an expert sailor. She taught me.” My voice trailed off, sucked into the wind as I looked out over the water.

  When I looked back, Shim was watching Jaxon white knuckling the seat as he fought the waves and bounced around like a bobble head.

  The bay seemed to never end, long fingers reaching back into the land creating hidden nooks and crannies that Herb seemed intent on exploring. The water was surrounded by low hills with racks of houses descending until they floated on the water. I wondered where Herb was going as he zigzagged through several course changes. It was a long while of bouncing around in the swells before I realized Herb was making sure we weren’t being followed.

  Finally, Herb pulled up to a boat anchored in the middle of the bay out from the marina where we had started. We climbed aboard.

  “Welcome to the Fly to Blue. This was our Dad’s boat.”

  “Lincoln?” Shim clarified.

  “Yes.”

  “Can we see him?” I pushed, tired of the subterfuge.

  Linda looked sad as she rubbed her hand on the wheel. “He died three days ago.” There was a whoosh of air, gasps. Now, the solemn faces made sense. The excitement that had been building in me deflated like a popped life raft.

  Shim leaned in closer. “I’m so sorry. Our parents will be upset to hear he—um, passed.”

  “He didn’t pass,” Herb growled out, his mood dark. “He was murdered.”

  “Now, Herb, don’t scare the kids. It’s not their fault.” Linda leaned forward and squeezed Shim’s hand “Thank you, dear. It was a random, senseless. Someone broke into my house to rob it. He had an apartment in our basement where he stayed when he wasn’t here on his boat or on my boat, the Fly to Blue Too—I named it after his boat.

  “He came home unexpectedly and caught the robbers. They shot him. It was…horrible.” Her story ended with a sigh, then a little hiccup.

  There was something so, so…wrong about this. The timing was too coincidental. I wasn’t convinced this break-in was random. Three days ago. That was when Waters first called Lincoln. My stomach clenched at the idea our search might have harmed someone important to our parents. It seemed Herb didn’t think it was coincidental either. With fists shoved deep into his jean pockets, his lips were pursed and his face pinched.

  “What was taken?” Shim asked.

  “My dad interrupted them. They left an awful mess. We don’t think they had time to take anything—” Linda stopped, and tears welled up in her eyes. Blinking quickly, she waved her hands by her head and closed her eyes as she continued, “The whole house was torn apart. Especially his apartment. He was…” she choked off.

  “Linda, why don’t you grab us something to drink?” Herb offered. She gave her brother a watery smile at the reprieve and headed below deck.

  “Look, this wasn’t your run-of-the-mill breaking and entering.” Herb’s tone was low and grim, barely audible over the lapping of the water on the hull. “Our dad lived on the streets most of our lives; he knew how to handle himself. And the whole place was torn apart, nothing of ours or his was taken—” He glanced at the stairs that went below deck. “Dad was worried after he got Waters’ message that you wanted to see him. He told me he called your parents to check on you, and he couldn’t get through to anyone. He also said he had something of Amé’s.” He turned angry eyes on me.

  “What was it?” I whispered.

  “I don’t know for sure…” With a deep sigh, Herb’s face crashed, and he surrendered his secret. “Several times this last year, I caught him reading from a book I’d never seen before. When he saw me, he always hurried and hid it, like he was worried about getting caught with it. It had a greenish cover, and the one time I saw the pages, they were handwritten, like a diary. He carried it everywhere. The longer he had it, the more and more paranoid he became…Well, I guess he wasn’t paranoid after all.” Herb squatted down next to me, his face a mass of conflicting emotions. “I think that’s what they were after. After it happened, I looked everywhere for the book, and I couldn’t find it. I don’t even know for sure what it was.”

  I did.

  It was my mother’s diary.

  Growing up, she always had it on her. Leaving the boat, she would check her purse for her keys, her wallet, and her diary. It was just as much an appendage as her green hair. I looked for it after she left. I was convinced that if she had taken it, then she had left because she wanted to, and when I didn’t find it, I knew I was right. She was very private about it. I couldn’t imagine her sending it to someone else, letting someone else read it.

  Herb interrupted my musings. “Dad was devastated when he heard about your mother’s accident. She meant a lot to him.” He looked at each of us. “All your families were so important to him, and I can’t tell you how much what they did for him meant to our family.” He choked up and had to stop talking.

  “What did they do?” Shim leaned towards him.

  “They gave him back to us.” Herb gave a miserable shrug. “Our dad left when we were young. Even though it had been horrible living with his PTSD, his leaving destroyed our family. I grew up feeling like I didn’t have a father…just emotional baggage.” He cleared his throat before he continued. “He had a lot of problems from the war. He was raw. Messed up for a long time. Lived on the streets most of that time. When my grandparents died, they left him their boat. It didn’t change him, but it got him off the streets, and he was always calmer when he was on the water. Then he met your parents. They saved him—not just his life, but his soul. They changed…everything. I don’t even know how they did it, but they brought my father back and gave us a second chance to have him in our lives.”

  Linda climbed back onto the deck. She had forgotten the drinks. With a sad smile, she sat down and put a hand on Breeze and Shim’s arms, who were closest to her. Herb did the same, putting a heavy hand on Skylar’s and my shoulders. “We are so thankful for the time that your parents gave us with our dad. We would do anything for them to thank them—and that means helping you. No questions asked. Just let us know what you need.”

  Their story was amazing and confusing. I couldn’t wrap my head around Lincoln having my mother’s diary, and I didn’t want to even imagine what it meant if the Helios or the government had murdered him and had it now. It made me want to hurl when I thought of those people touching something so personal of my mother’s.

  Herb and Linda’s offer to help was kind but useless. It was Lincoln who had the information we needed, and with him gone, I wasn’t sure what we would do. We hadn’t thought further than locating Lincoln and getting his story, then maybe calling or emailing the geologists our parents had worked with, if we could track them down.

  We needed to talk together and figure this out.

  “Thanks for your offer to help. This does change things for us, and we need to decide what we should do next.” The sun was starting to set behind them as I spoke to the older siblings. “We are staying at the hotel in town.” At Herb and Linda’s looks of alarm, I added, “Maybe we shouldn’t go back?”

  The older siblings had a quiet discussion. There was no way to escape overhearing the whispers in a boat this small. “They could… but what if… it’s not safe for us… cost a lot…what he wanted.”

  Tryin
g to ignore them, we checked out the other vehicles anchored out in Richardson Bay. Shim filled in the awkward silence. “What are all these boats doing out here? Why aren’t they in the marina?”

  I nodded to the bobbing chucks of floating wood and fiberglass around us. “Marinas are safe, but expensive. There is a maritime tradition that it is free to anchor offshore. It attracts a combination of freewheeling sailors and drifters.” I pointed out a couple of the boats around us. Some had tarps used for waterproofing and debris piled on deck, and weathered hulls that, by some miracle, still sported a mast and canoes or battered row boats tied behind. Beyond the floating bits of boat rubble, nicer boats, some like Fly to Blue, weathered but well-maintained, were anchored with motorized dinghies tied to the back. Lights were starting to twinkle in some of the boat windows, and beyond that, further out across the bay, huge plate glass windows glowed in pastel houses terraced up the hills, each vying for the best view of the bay and sparkling city beyond. “We lived like this for years.” I sighed, content to be back on the water.

  “Which were you, freewheeler or drifter?” Shim asked, watching me.

  I tilted my head to consider my response. A long strand of mottled ash and green hair caught the wind and repeatedly slapped me in the face. Shim reached out and pulled it away, seeming reluctant to let the soft strands go as they slid through his fingers.

  “Both, I guess. It certainly felt like we were drifting most of the time. I guess my parents were trying to get lost.” Subconsciously, I had been leaning in closer since he pulled on my hair. It might have been just to hear him better. “But we would never”—I pointed out to a boat that had tarps covering most of the roofs and windows and was still taking on water—“ever let our boat get in that condition. Even with no money, daily care can go a long way in the maintenance of your boat.”

 

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