Bodies in the Boatyard Read online

  “She’s a real marina cat, isn’t she?” Scooter asked. “She loves poking around the docks, jumping on boats, chasing seagulls, and begging for treats from the tourists.” He nudged me. “I think she’d vote for selling the cottage and moving onto Marjorie Jane. If she could talk, that is.” The calico twined herself around his legs and made a chirping noise.

  I stifled a laugh. “Allow me to translate. She said that she has no intention of downsizing her collection of catnip mice and giving up her air-conditioned house. That makes two against—and only one for—selling the cottage.”

  Scooter pushed his tortoiseshell glasses up his nose and glanced down at the leash twisted around his feet. “You women always stick together, don’t you?”

  After he untangled himself, we walked across the patio, nodding at people sipping on their coffees and enjoying the morning before it became too hot later in the day. Before we’d left for the marina, my husband had thoughtfully made me a mocha with a double shot of espresso, which would keep me going until lunchtime.

  Scooter had a lot on his plate lately with work, and as a result, we hadn’t been down to see the boat for over a week. This meant that there was some serious boat withdrawal going on—on his part, not mine.

  I don’t know if you’ve ever seen someone suffer from this affliction. It’s not pretty, trust me. He had given up his beloved Froot Loops and had started eating Cap’n Crunch cereal practically nonstop to lift his nautical spirits. And I had caught him watching sailing videos on his laptop at two o’clock in the morning the other night while he and Mrs. Moto shared a bowl of cereal. He’d take a spoonful, then wait while she lapped up some milk. When I expressed surprise that he was eating from the same dish as the cat, he shrugged and said, “I didn’t think she’d mind.”

  I don’t know what was worse—that he had eaten an entire box of Cap’n Crunch in one sitting and would be complaining about a tummy ache the next day or that the YouTube vloggers were so impossibly young and good-looking. Seriously, who looks that gorgeous after they’ve been on a boat all day? No one, that’s who. You inevitably end up with grease stains on your clothes, scrapes, bruises, and sweat dripping everywhere. If anyone tells you that sailing is a glamorous lifestyle, they’ve clearly never been on a boat. Sadly, I’d become all too well acquainted with the reality of boats over the past few months.

  After spending a few minutes standing on the boardwalk and watching the tourists strolling on the beach, Mrs. Moto insisted that we remove her harness and leash. Before we’d adopted her, she had lived on a boat at the marina and had free run of the place. While she reluctantly accepted being restrained elsewhere, she refused to put up with our nonsense here.

  She scurried away ahead of us toward B Dock, where we kept Marjorie Jane, while we trailed behind her. When the dilapidated sailboat came into sight, my husband let go of my hand, rushed past Mrs. Moto, and had what amounted to a tearful reunion with the other woman in his life. If he could have hugged her, he would have. But since she was thirty-eight feet long, he couldn’t quite get his arms all the way around her.

  Personally, I didn’t get it. All I saw was red paint flaking off the hull, weather-beaten teak decks, and an old, rusty anchor at the bow. You would have thought that—considering all the money we had spent on her to date—she would have looked a lot better by now.

  As I was thinking about our latest credit card statement, someone tapped me on the shoulder. “Hey there. I haven’t seen you guys in a while.” I turned and saw Ben Moretti, a wannabe pirate who lived on a sailboat that rivaled Marjorie Jane in the fixer-upper category. “She’s sure been missing you,” he said, pointing at my nemesis.

  “I’d say the feeling is mutual,” I said. “At least on Scooter’s part. See him fawning over her?”

  I tore my eyes away from the scene and looked at Ben. Something was different. Greasy brown hair tied back in a ponytail—check. Ripped khaki shorts—check. Goofy smile—check. Ah, that was it. “New T-shirt?” I asked.

  “Yeah. How’d you know?”

  “It’s clean, and there aren’t any holes.”

  Ben chuckled. “That’s true. It’s hard to keep things looking brand new when you work in a boatyard. Maybe I should change into something else and save this one for a date.”

  “Date? Who’s the lucky girl?”

  Ben gazed down sheepishly at the ground. “No one yet. But there is someone I’m thinking of asking out.”

  “Well, you might want to think about a different shirt before you do. I’m not sure one that says ‘Pirates get all the booty’ next to a picture of a scantily clad girl is the way to go.”

  He glanced down at his shirt and frowned. “Hmm…I hadn’t thought about that.”

  Scooter looked over at Ben. “Just the person I wanted to see! I was over at Melvin’s the other day, and I saw they had a sale on tung oil varnish. I wanted to get your thoughts on whether you think that’s the right way to go.”

  While the two of them debated the pros and cons of synthetic wood finishes, I stifled a yawn and kicked my flip-flops off. The last time I had tried to get on the boat wearing them, one of them had fallen off into the water, and I had to scramble to get it out before it drifted out into the bay.

  “I’m going to open the hatches up and air this place out,” I said. I climbed up onto the boat, adding a new bruise to the collection on my shin. Mrs. Moto executed a graceful leap on board, then stretched out on a tattered cushion in the cockpit. I gave her a quick scratch behind her ears before unlocking the boat.

  I cautiously made my way down the narrow ladder into the cabin below and stepped onto the floor, straight into a puddle. This was not good. While I didn’t know a lot about boats, I did know one thing—water belonged on the outside of the boat, not the inside.

  After turning on the overhead light to see exactly what was going on, I ended up sliding on the floor and landing on my butt with a thud. Great, now it wasn’t just my feet that were wet.

  I ran my fingers through my hair, which I realized was probably a stupid thing to do—who knew what was in that puddle?—and assessed the situation.

  There was at least three inches of water above the floorboards. Or maybe it was three centimeters. My mom and I were planning a trip to Canada, and I’d been trying to get the hang of the metric system, but I had to admit that it wasn’t going all that well. In any event, there was water everywhere, which wasn’t good, no matter what units of measurement you used. Thankfully, she was on a trip in Europe for the next few weeks and didn’t know how to use her cell phone over there. Otherwise, she’d have been texting me constantly during the day, as she usually did, so I was glad I didn’t have to explain the latest issue with Marjorie Jane to her.

  As I got to my feet, Mrs. Moto scrambled down the ladder and leaped onto one of the couches. The way she was staring down at the water, it seemed like she expected some fish to swim by any moment now.

  I called out to Scooter. “You’d better get down here. We’ve got a problem.” I put my purse on the galley counter, grabbed a dish towel, and wiped my hands.

  “I’ll be down in a minute, my little panda bear.”

  I glanced at the water again. “I’m not sure we have a minute.”

  The boat rocked back and forth in her slip as Scooter climbed aboard. He poked his head down the companionway. “What’s going on?”

  I pointed at the floor. Scooter gasped, uttered a few curse words that would have made any salty sailor proud, and scrambled down the ladder, splashing water onto Mrs. Moto. She did not seem amused.

  “Ben, get down here!” Scooter yelled. “Now!” He put his head between his hands and whimpered.

  “Here, sit down next to Mrs. Moto,” I said as I led him to the couch. I reached into my purse and pulled out a pack of M&M’S. Scooter doesn’t deal well when things get dicey. I’ve found that having an emergency stash of chocolate comes in handy in circumstances like these. He popped several pieces into his mouth while Ben made his way abo
ard.

  “That’s not good,” Ben said. He leaned down and flipped a switch on the wall near the galley. “I wonder why the bilge pump isn’t coming on.”

  Scooter crumpled up the empty bag in his hand and looked at Ben with a worried expression. “It isn’t?”

  Ben fiddled with the switch. “Nope, it isn’t. I guess it’s one more thing to add to your to-do list.”

  “Is the boat going to sink?” Scooter asked. He wrapped his arms around himself and rocked back and forth while Ben pulled up an access panel on the floorboards, peered into the bilge, and examined the pump.

  “Well, the water doesn’t seem to be rising, so that’s a good sign.” Ben ducked into the passageway and opened up the engine compartment. “It doesn’t look like the water has gotten into here, which is a plus.”

  Scooter held up the empty M&M’S bag with a pleading expression in his eyes.

  “Sorry, I’m out of chocolate,” I said, squeezing his shoulder.

  Ben walked back into the main cabin. “Maybe your water tanks are leaking. Or maybe it’s because of those heavy storms we had last week. Water could be coming in through the deck.” He glanced down at the floor. “Tell you what—why don’t you taste the water? If it’s salty, then you’ll know it’s coming in from outside the boat. If it’s fresh, then you’ll know it’s not.”

  Scooter cocked his head at me.

  I shook my head. “You’ve got to be kidding. I’m not going to do that. You do it.”

  “No way,” he said. “Not after I ate all that chocolate.” He turned his gaze to Ben.

  Ben shrugged, bent down, and stuck his finger in the water. He put it in his mouth. “Can’t really tell. Listen, you were saying you needed to do work on the bottom. Why don’t you just get the boat hauled out now and take her into the boatyard? That way you can find out for sure what’s causing the leak. Give the office a call and see if the Travelift is free. Just make sure you tell them it’s an emergency.”

  “What exactly is a Travelift?” I asked.

  “It’s a big blue crane-like thing with straps.” He paused and rubbed his chin. “I’m really not sure how to describe it. Basically, it lifts boats out of the water and moves them around on land.”

  “Sounds weird,” I said.

  “Well, you’ll see it soon enough,” Ben said.

  Scooter got out his phone and had a quick conversation. “Okay, they can pull us out now,” he said.

  Ben clapped his hands together. “Good. Let’s get this baby fired up.”

  As he and Scooter tried to start the engine, I began to feel pangs of guilt. What if I were responsible for the leak aboard Marjorie Jane? After all, just last night I had been thinking about different ways to get rid of her, including having her spring a leak and sink to the bottom of the sea. Did some vindictive mermaids use their ESP to read my thoughts? Did they decide to teach me a lesson by convincing a shark to chew a hole in Marjorie Jane’s hull? But, more importantly, would our insurance company pay up if she sank before we could haul her out?

  * * *

  Thankfully, Marjorie Jane’s engine sputtered to life. We hadn’t fired up the boat since we’d bought her a few months ago. Come to think of it, there were a lot of things we hadn’t done since we’d bought the boat, like take her out of the slip.

  “Okay, here goes nothing,” Scooter said as he started to reverse the boat.

  “Watch out to your port,” Ben said frantically as a wood piling came precariously close. “Put it in neutral, quick!”

  I shut my eyes and clutched my hands together. While I didn’t see the boat hit the piling, I felt the thud. Mrs. Moto yowled and cowered in my lap.

  I breathed a sigh of relief as I heard Ben tell Scooter that it seemed like a minor scrape. What’s one more dent? Marjorie Jane already makes us look like trailer trash at the marina with all the marks on her hull. This one will just blend in with the others, I thought to myself.

  “I guess he’s a little rusty,” Ben said in an effort to calm my nerves. Or maybe it was to calm his nerves. I wasn’t sure.

  I rubbed my temples. “I’m not sure a little rusty actually covers it. Completely oxidized would be more like it. I don’t know when the last time was that Scooter drove a boat. Certainly not in all the time we’ve been married, and that’s been ten years now.”

  Ben gulped. “Scooter, want me to take over?”

  I watched as Scooter gripped the wheel tightly and stared straight ahead. “No, it’s okay. It’s a straight shot from here to the haul-out area.” I think the last thing he wanted to do was admit to Ben that he was in over his head.

  As we passed by other boats, people waved at us and yelled out encouragement. “Finally taking Marjorie Jane out for her first sail?” “You’re going the wrong way—the open water is that way.” “Whoa, that was awfully close.” “Hey, watch where you’re going! You almost hit my stern!”

  “It’s a shame the first time you’re taking Marjorie Jane out is because she has a leak,” Ben said. He reached down and playfully batted at Mrs. Moto’s cute little rabbit-like tail, which was a hallmark of Japanese bobtails. She was so entranced by the other boats that she didn’t even notice.

  After we passed the dinghy dock and the fuel dock, a blue fishing boat cut in front of us and slipped into the area where they haul boats out.

  “Hey, isn’t that The Codfather from last night?” I asked. “The captain is one of the guys who got into a fight. Can you believe he just cut right in front of us?”

  “I’m busy trying to steer the boat,” Scooter said. “I can’t check to see who that is. But whoever it is, that was a really crappy thing to do.”

  Ben leaned forward to get a closer look. “Yeah, that’s Norm Thomas’s boat. It doesn’t surprise me in the least. He’s such a jerk.”

  “I recognize him too,” I said, pointing at a young sunburned guy with short red hair who was standing on the dock. “He was there last night. Norm is his uncle.”

  “Yeah, I know him as well. We went to high school together.” Ben walked out to the bow and yelled down at Liam. “Hey, man, what’s going on? These folks arranged for an emergency haul-out. Tell your uncle he has to wait his turn.”

  The redhead sneered. “First come, first served.” He glanced at Marjorie Jane dubiously. “I’m surprised that thing is even floating. I still can’t believe anyone would be suckered into buying this excuse for a sailboat.”

  Scooter looked like steam was coming out of his ears. He gripped the steering wheel so tightly that I thought he might bend the metal. “She’s a great boat, bud,” he snapped. “She just needs a little TLC. Now get that other boat out of the way, so we can get hauled out before we sink!”

  Liam laughed. “Nah, you can wait. That’s what bilge pumps are for. Besides, we’re running a business. Time is money, you know.”

  He sauntered over to The Codfather and had a few words with his uncle, pointing back at us occasionally. Then he walked over to the Travelift operator and handed him something.

  “What was that?” I asked. “Did he just bribe him?”

  Ben shook his head. “Nah, I don’t think it was a bribe, just a tip. Lots of folks tip those of us who work at the marina.” He grinned. “I know I sure like it when it happens. Keeps me in beer.”

  “Ben, what are we going to do here?” Scooter asked anxiously.

  “Hang on a bit. Let me go check down below.” After a few minutes, Ben popped his head back up. “It looks okay. The water doesn’t seem to be rising. Why don’t we tie her off here and wait for them to come haul you out when they’re done with Norm’s boat?”

  “Wait? Why should we have to wait?” I asked. “That Norm guy is really getting on my nerves.”

  “Well, don’t take it personally,” Ben said. “He treats everyone that way. He thinks that because he’s a successful businessman, he’s in charge of the town.”

  “Can you really make that much money from running a fishing charter business?” Scooter asked. I wa
s relieved to notice that his grip on the wheel had loosened slightly.

  “Oh, that’s just one of four charter boats he owns. Plus, he has his finger in a lot of other pies in town. That guy is ambitious. If he had his way, he’d own everything in Coconut Cove.”

  While Ben and I got Marjorie Jane tied off, I thought about how Norm had threatened to drive Melvin out of business the previous night. Exactly how far would he go?

  * * *

  As I walked across the patio, a group of kids tore past me. One of the girls glanced back as she reached the top of the steps, which led down to the beach. “Hi, Miss Mollie! Where’s Mrs. Moto?”

  “She’s on the boat,” I said. “I’ll tell her you said hi, Katy.”

  “Can I come visit her later?”

  “Of course, anytime.” I looked over at the marina office. “But maybe we should keep that between you and me. You know how your grandmother feels about cats.”

  She giggled and raced down the stairs to catch up with her friends.

  I watched as the sailing instructor, Penny Chadwick, attempted to corral them. “All right, kids, settle down,” she yelled with an adorable Texan twang in her voice. The kids bounced up and down while she briefed them on the morning’s activities.

  My weekly ladies’ sailing lessons with Penny were very different—less youthful exuberance and more complaints about muscle aches and knee replacements. Having only recently celebrated my fortieth birthday, my joints were still working adequately, but Marjorie Jane seemed to be trying her best to change that. Crawling in and out of confined spaces to fix things and doing yoga-like moves getting on and off the boat were starting to take their toll.

  Although we might not have showed it in the same way, I think we had as much fun as the children did. It really was exhilarating to take Penny’s boat out into the bay and feel the wind in her sails. While I wasn’t very fond of Marjorie Jane, I had learned to appreciate the joy of sailing over the past few months.