In Harm's Way (A Martin Billings Story Book 3) Page 5

  “So, this police business you’ve come about —” I said.

  “Urgent business,” Bill added.

  His scowl deepened. “Are you telling me you really don’t know?” he asked.

  “Know what?”

  “This is about that sailboat you brought in today,” he said. He had a way of chewing over his words that made him appear thoughtful. Maybe he was, but accurate judgments of that sort take time.

  “I figured that much, seeing as that’s been the headline news today. But why is a yacht rescue police business? We didn’t put it on the reef and rescuing a stranded boat wasn’t a crime the last time I checked.”

  “There are some unsettling circumstances.”

  “Unsettling,” Walter snorted. “Be saying it plain, Inspector George, so the man can say what happened.” He turned to me. “The inspector thinks you a lying man,” Walter said, pretending not to notice the glare the inspector gave him.

  “All I said was that the facts are not clear,” the inspector said. “I need to hear the facts from you.”

  “Fine,” Bill said. He looked at me. “May I?”

  “Be my guest.”

  Bill faced the inspector and put on a calm face. “Here are the facts: We steamed up from Trinidad this morning. On arrival, we came across a sailboat on French Reef; a woman standing on the reef next to sailboat told us she drifted onto it; we yucked the sailboat off the reef and took it into the yacht basin; we anchored the sailboat, and, at the lady’s request, Martin took the woman ashore. Then we resumed business as usual, up to and including having a fine dinner here at The Barracuda.” He raised his glass. “And that, Inspector, are the facts we know.”

  The inspector looked from Bill to me. “Nothing else? Anything to add?”

  Bill folded his hands and looked the inspector in the eye. “Not a thing.”

  When he turned his cop gaze on me, I shook my head. “I concur with the facts as presented. Everything is seemingly rather clear, and all operations were performed in broad daylight with no special effects. No animals were harmed while performing this daring rescue.”

  As Bill talked, the inspector’s face darkened. “That’s all well and good, but those are simply your statements, not facts.”

  That earned him a guffaw from Walter. “What I said — he thinks you are lying men.”

  With his hands on the table, Bill leaned toward the inspector, using his rather sizable bulk to intimidate the man, as he does. “If that is true, it makes me exceeding curious. Which of those statements do you contend are not factual, good sir? The woman, French Reef, and the sailboat seemed tangible enough to us. Given that I know damn well that we didn’t sneak around the island and build either a yacht or a woman, I’m rather certain we found them both on the reef as we said.”

  “And that very same sailboat is floating at anchor out there,” I said, pointing at the yacht basin. Realizing I couldn’t see it, I squinted. “Or it was, the last time we saw it.”

  Inspector George looked at me, and then Bill.

  “I got the boat tied up alongside the dock until things get settled,” Walter said.

  The inspector nodded. “Your… story, your version of the events raises a number of questions.”

  “Such as?”

  “Where is this woman now? What happened to her?”

  I laughed. “We have no idea.”

  “We didn’t put a tracker on her, Inspector,” Bill said. “Around here, you take a person ashore and they go where they go.”

  “You told the Port Captain she was staying at Gazele’s guesthouse.”

  I held up a finger and grinned at Walter. “No. That strays from the facts.”

  “Then?”

  “I told him that the woman told me she was staying at the guesthouse and that we took her to Gazele’s dock. I also told him the name she gave, but I didn’t check her ID. I also told him that there was a storm coming in, and I told him the boat was damaged but seemed sound.” I looked at Walter again. “Anything else?”

  “You asked me to tell Gazele you had her cargo for her.”

  “Right.”

  The inspector turned his glass on the table, considering taking another taste, I suspected. “The thing is, we got no record of a woman with that name arriving on the island — not this one, nor St. Agnes.”

  “So, she lied to us about her name,” I said.

  “Or she came on a tour boat,” Bill said.

  That got the inspector’s attention. “What?”

  “There are any number of ways to arrive and depart this island without it being official.”

  “There are?”

  “Sure. If I had a reason to get on this island without going through formalities, it wouldn’t be hard, even for a man of my rather obvious cheerful disposition and size.”

  “How?” I wondered that the inspector was so curious, but Bill was warming to his story.

  “Well, I’d go to another island, maybe Grenada. There are tour boats and dive boats leaving all the time and they head this way. It isn’t that far to get here in a small boat. I’m pretty sure that if a person slipped the operator a hundred bucks, it would be enough to persuade him to put me ashore and say nothing about it.”

  “With even less hassle, you could hitch a ride on a sailboat,” I said. “Especially a pretty lady. She just goes to the marina and asks around to find a boat heading over here. Maybe she slips them a little money so that when they check in, legal and all, they fail to mention you came with them. In fact, since we found her with a sailboat, maybe that boat brought her here.”

  The inspector looked at Walter, who nodded. “I expect it happens that they don’t declare all the passengers. We don’t check who might be on the boat.”

  “And just like that you go ashore and here you are, on the island, free of cumbersome documentation.”

  “I bow you your expertise,” Bill said. He turned to the inspector. “We have a clear division of labor on board the motor vessel IRREPARABLE HARM. I am in charge of navigation, since Martin gets lost going to the bathroom. I also handle philosophy, particularly epistemology and ethics, and, of course, poetics; the Captain here handles bureaucratic paperwork, is in charge of looking good, chatting up port authorities, logistics, and doing any sneaky things that require doing.”

  Walter touched the inspector’s arm, and I thought the man was going to jump. “You best get to it. Tell these boys why this matters or they gonna keep just funning you until the rum runs out.”

  The inspector drew himself up. “When the Port Captain called Gazele and learned she never heard of this woman, he got worried about the boat. The boatyard told him they didn’t get a call either, so he sent someone out to the boat to check on its condition. He’s the one who found the dead body.”

  He said it as a throwaway line, watching our faces closely for a reaction. “A body?” Bill asked. “What body?”

  “Named Warren Davis,” Walter said. “The man what owned the boat.”

  “And I’d like to know why you didn’t mention that part,” Inspector George said.

  I shook off bad feelings. “Because we didn’t know that part.”

  “How could you miss it? The man was lying on the center of the cabin floor.”

  “Sole,” Bill said sharply. The inspector looked at him, puzzled. “It’s important to be accurate as well as factual. Cabins don’t have floors, they have a sole. And we didn’t notice the dead body because we didn’t go on board the boat.”

  The man scratched his head. “You didn’t go on board? I thought you salvaged the boat.”

  I shook my head. “No, we pulled it off the reef. I checked the hull from the outside and was confident that any leaks I didn’t see would be slow ones. The woman said not to bother being thorough. She claimed she’d contact the owner and get the boatyard on it right away.”

  “Basically,” Bill said, “the boat wasn’t our problem — we were just lending a h
and and had no reason, and no business, going on the boat. If the woman hadn’t been there, we would have inspected it.”

  “Why is that different?” the inspector asked.

  “Maritime law. See, if no one had been on board, then we could declare salvage rights.”

  “They could claim the boat,” Walter said. “A boat like that would be worth a nice piece of change and they’d treat her like they own.”

  “Damn right,” Bill said. “But she was there and said it was her friend’s boat. And that shows we didn’t make her up. Why would we when it kept us from declaring salvage?”

  The inspector shook his head. “You weren’t curious to learn more about her?”

  That made me smile. “Given that the rescue was just a favor, lending a helping hand, we didn’t have time to be more curious. We had a delivery schedule to meet. Besides, here in the islands, asking questions isn’t a good way to make friends.”

  Bill nodded. “The things we’d be curious about, like whether she had a boyfriend, didn’t seem to come up. A man who would loan her an expensive boat suggested that she wasn’t available.” He sighed. “She is a pretty one. Might be pleasant company.”

  “Unless she’s a murder,” Walter said.

  “The man was murdered?” Bill made a face. “You just said a body. Killed is a different fact than found dead. A bigger thing.”

  “He’d been shot,” Walter said.

  “Even so —” I could see where his thoughts were headed.

  I needed to shift the conversation. “The point, Inspector, is that we have really told you all we know, every fact. I know you’ve been off the island for a time, but this kind of thing isn’t that uncommon.”

  “Boats winding up on the reef with dead men on board?” he asked.

  “A boat sailed by someone who doesn’t own her winding up on the reef…”

  “Not at all unusual,” Walter said, refilling his glass. “Not the right thing at all, course, but…”

  I held my glass out for the same treatment. Bill followed suit.

  “But the woman disappearing and finding the dead man on board…”

  “People disappearing isn’t that strange. The body is a twist,” I said.

  Bill acknowledged my comment with a nod. “Even if Martin and I knew the dead guy, even if we had a reason to kill him, I don’t think it would make much sense for us to steal the boat, run it aground, and then bring it back. And we wouldn’t shoot him.”

  “No?”

  “If we wanted him dead, Martin here could just slip on board the boat at night and kill the dude with one of his special ops neck twisting moves. I think that’s how he’d do it, being a considerate type who wouldn’t want to wake the neighbors with gunshots or screams.”

  I grinned. “My uninformed friend means a special SEAL move, not special ops.”

  “You were a SEAL?”

  I nodded. “Was the murder weapon on board?”

  The inspector shook his head. “No. I’m assuming it got tossed into the sea somewhere.”

  “Unless the killer still has it,” Bill said.

  “Why keep it and incriminate yourself?” Walter asked.

  Bill scratched his fat nose. “Well, if I was on a killing spree, not that I think about such things much, I’d be inclined to hold on to the murder weapon as long as I thought I might need it.”

  “Unless you were afraid of getting caught with it,” I said.

  “There is that pesky issue,” he agreed. “You might be right after all, inspector. I withdraw my objection.”

  Inspector George finished his rum and didn’t object when Walter added a touch more to the glass. I warmed to him. With just a little time, a little exposure to his own culture, he should fit right. That laid-back mindset can prove an irresistible force. “And you have no idea where this woman went?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “I need you to stay on the island while I check things out, hear?”

  “Yes sir,” I said. “We have no reason to leave when the fun is just starting.”

  He glared at me while deciding if I was being smug, then nodded. “Fine. And if you see her around before then, you call me.”

  He put a business card on the table and Bill scooped it up. “I’ll have that. Junior here would just lose it,” he said. “He ain’t what you call organized.”

  With an uncertain expression, the Inspector downed his rum and nearly smiled. “That’s good stuff. I’d forgotten.”

  “Mt. Gay,” Bill said. “Better than tea.”

  “I’d like you to come see me first thing tomorrow,” he told me.

  “Both of us?” Bill asked.

  He weighed his answer. “No. Captain Billings, if you drop by, we can sit down and review what you’ve told me. I’ll see things differently after I’ve had time to think through what you’ve told me and a chance to talk to a few other people.”

  I wondered who he wanted to talk to. I doubted it would be the people hanging around the dock. “Certainly,” I said. “I’ll be there for the opening bell.”

  “At the crack of ten,” he said, then shook his head. “If my friends at Scotland Yard heard that we have a police station that keeps hours…”

  Then he was gone.

  “He’s going to do fine,” Bill purred. “He’ll learn the ropes soon enough.”

  “Strikes me, he’s no dummy,” Walter said.

  “We told him what we know, Walter,” I said. “All of it.”

  “Good,” he said. Then he reached for the bottle, as a person does when comfortable among friends. He held it up to the light so we could all see that we were in dangerous territory. “We seem headed for shallow water,” he said. “That’s not much for a long evening,” he said.

  “I think that, if we asked nicely, Sally might be able to find us another bottle,” I said. “And if we actually bought one, you know it would definitely please Gazele.”

  Walter clearly liked my answer, and he smiled as he drained the last of the rum into his own glass and then looked around for Sally. “Where that girl is?”

  7

  When we are in port, it isn’t unusual for Ugly Bill to find a reason to spend the night on shore. Typically, this reason is female, and tonight’s reason was named Sally Walker. That evening we’d hung around The Barracuda and, as the crowd thinned, Sally took him aside and suggested a more satisfactory option than sleeping alone on his lonely, hard bunk on a steel freighter. Wise in the ways of the world, he took the option.

  Life on board an island freighter might sound romantic but staying on board loses its allure quickly in the face of warm competition from real romance.

  I’ve been known to fall prey to those welcome temptations myself but, alas, by closing time, I saw that Gazele was out on her feet. The effort of getting rich, one drink at a time, proved exhausting even for her.

  She sidled up to me with an apologetic smile. “If you are hanging around on my account, darling, I might owe you an apology. This crazy evening left me no good for anything but sleep tonight,” she told me. I started to speak, but she touched her fingers to my lips. “I don’t want you going with me and being disappointed. No, we gonna wait until we both right for it.”

  I hate logic that doesn’t lead to the conclusion I want. She did manage to give me an intoxicating kiss before retiring alone to her room behind the office.

  I’d steeled myself to the idea of dealing with that woman, and now the opportunity had dissolved. Life! At the very least, the challenge and pleasure of Gazele’s company, the chance to experience her unique mixture of hard-headed aggression and extremely sensual femme fatale attitude, was postponed.

  She wouldn’t be an easy woman to deal with, I felt certain, but a man could do worse — being alone struck me as much worse.

  And so, acutely aware of being alone and lonely (something aggravated by seeing Bill slip away with the luscious Sally Walker), I motored Lilly back to HARM.r />
  But I’ve been alone and lonely before and refused to dwell on things that weren’t going to happen. On board, I went to my cabin and took a shower, then slipped on an ancient robe and went up on deck. As I end up spending an unfair number of nights alone on board, I’d set things up nicely for myself. I had a wide and comfortable portable recliner, a table that Bill and I retrofitted with a cabinet underneath that served as a portable bar, and even decent music (mellow jazz) that I could pipe onto the foredeck. Ensconced with all the essentials, sipping a lonely rum and watching the brilliant night sky is calming.

  St. Anne is a busy little island, but it still managed to remain untroubled by many of the amenities of other commercial ports. The harbor is lit only by windows and running lights, so the stars remain visible — the clear and sharp beauties hang against a black background above the small halo of light surrounding the harbor.

  Once I turned off our riding light (totally illegally) I could enjoy a great view despite the large pale moon settling down toward the horizon. From the opposite side of the bay, Orion smiled down at me and I toasted him with smooth rum.

  My reverie and contemplation of the universe was interrupted by a splashing sound that told me someone was approaching, and that this someone had no idea how to row a boat properly.

  Although it was late for visitors to be dropping in, they had to be coming to see me as HARM was about the only practical destination for someone who’d rowed out this far. The fishing boat next door was deserted.

  A mix of curiosity and amusement propelled me to the rail to look down. HARM has quite a bit of freeboard — the distance down to the water. I watched, smiling, not particularly surprised at what I saw coming alongside. After all, when things start to go weird, they usually don’t stop until the irresistible weird force strikes an immovable object (weird or otherwise). I think I learned that in high school physics.

  The dinghy below me, probably stolen, that Donna Devro, the nonexistent (according to the inspector’s suspicions) female murder suspect was banging against our hull, didn’t qualify as either irresistible or immoveable.