Gina Cresse - Devonie Lace 01 - A Deadly Change of Course--Plan B (2 page)

Suddenly, the plane surged straight up like a rocket, but without the horsepower needed to propel it into space.  The strong thrust woke most of the passengers from their light sleep.  Then the plane banked sharply to the left.  David dropped his magazine and tried to shelter his head from the items falling out of the overhead storage compartments.  Passengers who weren’t seat
belted flew across the aisle onto the other passengers.  He looked across the aisle at the mother and little boy in the seats opposite his.  Terror shone in the little boy’s face as he cried and begged his mother to make it stop.  She held him tight against her and told him not to worry
—
it would be all right.

Sheer panic raced through the plane as it continued to roll onto its back and then dove sharply downward toward the earth.  People were screaming hysterically and praying loudly for the gra
ce of God to save them from the
hellish ride. 

Samantha buried her face into Michael’s chest as he squeezed her, trying to calm her fears. 

David’s life flashed before his eyes.  He remembered his college graduation
—
seeing how proud his father was of him for graduating
at
top of his class.  He saw every detail of his wedding
—
the beautiful
bride walking down
the long aisle of the church on her father’s arm.  He remembered the day Emily, his little baby girl, was born and how elated and scared he was at the thought of being a father.  His last thought was of Amanda and Emily and the new baby on the way, and how they would make it without him there to take care of them. 

David spoke the words, “Please, dear God…” just as Flight 9602 crashed into the side of a mountain, exploding into a huge mass of flames and smoke.  Burning debris flew for miles.  Heat from the plane’s nearly full fuel tanks was so intense that trees within a
quarter-mile radius of the crash site were ignited.  There could be no survivors.

Chapter Two

San Diego, California
—
August 1996

T
he alarm c
lock startled me like a sudden
gunshot.  I rolled over in my bunk to look at the time.  It was five in the morning.  I had to think for a moment why I was getting up so early.  Was it a mistake?  For the life of me, I couldn’t remember why I set the alarm.  I lay there for several minutes and felt the swaying of my bed as the wake of an early morning fisherman’s boat lapped at the sides of my cozy home
—
the
Plan B.
  Slowly, consciousness brought me out of a recently recurring dream
—the one where I was
married to
Tom
Selleck
—
and hurled me into the reality of my rather uneventful life.  I remembered something about having to be at a particular place early this morning, but
where?  Oh yeah
, the auction.  My friend Jason told me if I could get there as soon as the gates opened, I might beat out a lot of the competition and make some pretty good deals.

My name is
Devonie
Lace.  I’m a thirty-six year old self-employed treasure hunter.  I was a senior database administrator for a major communications company for thirteen years.  On my thirty-fourth birthday, the database went down, and it stayed down.  It took eleven days, at a cost of over one-million dollars per day, to recover.  I lost nine pounds in that eleven-day period.  I also lost half my hair
—
the half that hadn’t turned gray yet.  For my thirty-fifth birthday, I had a minor heart attack. 

When I got out of the hospital, I quit my job, sold my house, and bought a nice little th
irty-five foot sailboat.  She was
a 1969 Coronado sloop with a ten foot bea
m and a fiberglass hull.  She had
a beautiful, meticulously maintained teak deck.  Originally, she had a single gasoline engine, but the previous owner felt safer with diesel, so he replaced it.  I affectionately named her
Plan B.
  Plan A had been to somehow become the most successful, highest paid database administrator the world had ever seen.  Unfortunately, the price was too high. 

As soon as she arrived from her previous home in San Francisco, I had a new sail custom made for her.  I designed it myself, inspired by the exquisite Pacific sunsets that bless this side of the country like a daily gift from Heaven.  The ba
se of the sail was
a beautiful deep sapph
ire blue that gradually lightened
to a nearly transparent azure at the top.  In the center
was
a bright yellow orb with various shades of red, orange, and white sunbeams shooting out in all directions.  In front of the
sun
was
the silhouette of a graceful sea bird gliding effortlessly on the winds of the sea.  I sketched the design one evening while sitting on the beach.  While I sat, enjoying the feeling of the warm sand between my toes, I contemplated how I could change the world.  I had just gotten out of the hospital and was taking a short doctor-ordered vacation before returning to work.  It finally dawned on me that I probably couldn’t change
the
world, but I could certainly change
my
world.  That was the day before I made the call to my boss, letting her know I wouldn’t be returning to work. 

So now I live on my beautiful little boat in a peaceful marina near San Diego.  I haven’t mastered the art of sailing yet.  My first venture out of the marina cost me about f
our
thousand
dollars.  I really thought that
boat could turn a lot sharper and faster than it
did
.  The man in the slip next to mine will attest to the fact that you can’t decide, at the last minute, to
park your thirty-five foot sail
boat instead of taking one more practice run around the harbor.  Although the damage seemed very minor to me, repairs to yachts are somehow equivalent to repairs on, say
,
a Mercedes, Porsche, or Rolls Royce.  I promised the owner of the marina I would not venture out of my slip unassisted again until I ha
d
completed the boating and saili
ng course the Coast Guard offered
for a reasonable fee
—I believe it was
free.

Although I do own the
Plan B
outright, there was
still the matter of monthly slip fees, boat bottom cleaning, annual boat painting, personal property taxes, insurance,
fuel
for my Jeep, food, and all the other necessities of life that require
d
some sort of mont
hly income.  To accommodate that
unfortunate requirement, I perform
ed
a plethora of income-earning activities.  On
Friday and Saturday nights, I was
a cocktail waitress at King Rooster’s Bar & Grille
—
a restaurant in the marina where I live
d.  The work wa
s mindless and sometimes demeaning, but the tips
were great, and it was
really the only steady, reliable income I ha
d
.  The rest of the time, I read the legal sections of our local newspaper looking for probate sales, foreclosure sales, and auctions.  I
didn’t
have a lot of capital to invest in anything big, but once in a while, I
could
pick up some interesting small items
—
like jewelry and watches
—and re
sell
them for a profit.  Lately I’d
become interested in a particular kind of auction, the kind I plan
ned
to attend
that day
.

We Americans
are
a funny lot.  When I was a little girl, I
didn’t
remember ever seeing a self-storage complex.  What did people do with all their stuff back then?  Did they throw it away when they didn’t have room for it anymore?  Maybe they kept all the stuff they owned in their house or garage until they died, and left the disposal of the valuables to
the survivors.  Today, it seemed everyone had
more stuff than they ha
d
room.  Why?  What ha
d
changed in the last thirty years?  I counted fifty self-storage complexes in the phone book just in my little community alone.  Maybe a lot of people live
d
on their boats like me, but didn’t want to give up
their washers, dryers, and sofas in case they decided that boat living wasn’t really for them.  I
didn’t
know for sure, but I
did
know that when people fail
ed
to pay their storage rent, eventually the
owner
s of the complexes auction
ed
the contents of the units to h
elp offset their losses.  I had been to several of tho
se auctions, and I really enjoy
ed
the anticipation of buying something really val
uable for next to nothing.  It was
like a treasure hunt.  Sometimes you end
ed
up with an
empty cardboard box, but there was
always the chance you might wind up with a chest of gold.

Mostly, I
wound
up with semi-useful appliances that I
could re
sell t
hrough my friend Jason, who owned a small used-
appliance sales and repair shop down
town.  He was
the one who clued me in on
the
auction
I was headed for
.  Apparently, there was a misprint
in the paper that announced the auction.  It actually started
one hour earlier than was stated in the
ad
.
  They
never
really let you inspect the contents of the units very well before you bid on them,
so it was always
a gamble when you
risked cash
for something unknown.  The less competition in bidd
ing, the better for me since I was
no longer bringing home that substantial annual salary that I had become accustomed to
—
in my prior life.

I rolled out of my bunk and staggered to the bathroom.  Oh, I mean
head
.  Boats don’t have bathrooms, as my neighbor informed me, which is where he was when I accidentally parked my boat in his slip.  I don’t
think
park
is the correct term either.  I think dock is the word I should use.  I ha
d a lot to learn about the
boat
ing
business.  I
did
know the things that look
ed
like ropes
were
not
actually called
ropes, but lines.  They sure look
ed
like ropes
to me
, but each time I use the term, I
got
a funny look and a correction from whichever expert
was
helping me out that day.  I
did
appreciate the assistance I
got
from the local sailors.  If it weren’t for them, I’d never get to sail outside of my slip.  But, they
were
all so picky about using the right words for things.  Non-technical terms like “thingamabob” and “doohickey”
went
right over their heads.  They
were
really nice people, but I would have to say for the most part, they
were
technical-term snobs.

I fixed myself the usual low-fat, low-sugar, low-taste breakfast and turned on the radio.  It was August, and although the air was foggy, the day was going to be bright and a beautiful seventy-five degrees.  I love
d
the weather
in San Diego—land of the short thermometer
.  It
beat
the heck out of the summers in the valley I came from, where summertime temperatures
could regularly exceed one
hundred degrees.

After breakfast, I fed Marty,
my pet goldfish.  Actually, he was
Marty number four.  I don’t think I
had
that
goldfish business down to a science yet
,
either.  They
kept
going belly up on me.  If
that
Marty
didn’t survive, I was going to switch
to some other kind of fish.  Jason suggested some type of plastic fish substitute
—
a faux fish.  He said it would be more humane than subjecting
another poor living creature to my apparent lack of skill in fish ownership.  He
was probably
right.  Personally, I
thought
the lady at the pet shop where I
bought all
my
Martys
was
selling me defective fish.  I believe she
was
doing
that
to encourage me to buy a more expensive type of animal,
probably
a parrot.

I showered and dressed in my most professional attire
—
a pair of
white shorts, an over-sized red-and-
white striped
T
-shirt, and deck shoes.  I put on a jacket to fend off the morning
chill.  If nothing else, I had
perfected the sailing wardrobe and certainly look
ed like I should know what I was
doing.  I checked my watch
.  I
t was six-thirty.
  Ninety minutes to get ready in the morning was typical for me since starting my
Plan B
life.

“See
ya
later, Marty,” I said as I stepped through the hatch onto the deck, turning back to lock the
Plan B.
  I gingerly hopped off of my beautiful boat onto the dock and quickly headed toward my Jeep in the marina parking area.

“Good morning, Mr. Cartwright,” I called to my neighbor, who was out polishing some pi
ece of chrome on his yacht.  I’d
often been tempted to ask him how little Joe and
Hoss
were
, but after the parking incident, I
didn’t
think he’d appreciate my sense of humor.  I
decided
I’d better wait until he really
got
to know and love me before I start kidding around with him.