Just Add Water (1) (24 page)

“Can’t we just call the Coast Guard
or something? Maybe a taxi?”

He grinned. “Nope. We can do this.
You
can do this.”

“Uh, don’t I need a safety line,
too?”

“No, you don’t have to go out on
deck to get to the bridge. Hold on with both hands on the way up. Now, are you
ready?”

“No.”

He grinned, turned me around and
gave me a gentle shove. “Sure you are. Go on up and watch for my signals.” I
felt the wind hit me in the back as he opened the side slider and disappeared
into the storm.

I took a deep breath, cussed my way
to the bucking bridge, but found when I got there I couldn’t see a damned thing
through the Eisenglass wind curtains. Unzipping the panels proved hazardous.
First the heavy plastic tried flogging me to death. Once they were secured,
rain and wind shot through the opening, soaking me to the bone and blinding me.

At last I was able to move to the
console where I could see Jenks waiting patiently on the pitching foredeck.
He’d fixed his safety line to a rail and turned on his armband strobe, but how
he managed to keep his footing I’ll never know. I looked longingly at the
marina lights sparkling a half-mile away at Half Moon Bay and vowed never to
anchor out again. Ever. And to replace the Eisenglass with real glass and
windshield wipers.

Jenks
had grabbed a flashlight before working his way to the bow and, as he fought
for purchase on the deck, the beam swung wildly, as if he were doing battle
with Darth Vader. I wanted Scotty to beam me up. I know, I know, mixed intergalactic
metaphors.

Jenks
turned the flashlight on me and, after I gave him a thumbs up, moved the beam
onto the anchor chain, gauging the right time to begin raising the hook.
Standing with my legs wide apart for balance and holding onto the ship’s wheel
for dear life, I watched wave after wave break over Jenks. I kept a death grip
on the ship’s wheel and freed one hand for the controls as I waited for the
signal to move the boat forward.

A
combination of fear and fatigue had turned my knees to jelly. I fought off
panic for control of both my body and emotions. Captain Coffey, my ass! I
mentally demoted myself from captain to deck ape when I glanced at the
anemometer readout and I saw it peg forty knots.
Merde, alors!
 
How readily
we are willing to hand off the reins of command when the caca hits the prop.

When
I looked back to the bow, Jenks was gone.

My
heart literally tripped and my already wobbly legs threatened to melt. My nose
went numb. The nose thing is a big danger signal. It usually does that right
before I faint. And this was no time to be coming down with the vapors, Miss
Scarlet. What to do? What to do?

Thankfully,
nothing. The foredeck suddenly blazed with light as the jillion candlepower
spotlight over the flying bridge sprang to life. Jenks reappeared on the
spotlit foredeck. He gave me a wave.

I
waved back, although I knew he couldn’t see me because he was blinded by all
that light. That’s why he’d waited to turn it on. He wanted to be sure I was
ready. I began to breathe again and waited for the signal to proceed. I hoped I
didn’t proceed to screw up.

We
had, praise the Lord, practiced so many times under more benign conditions that
I began to calm down once we started the drill. Thanks to the spotlight, I was
now able to clearly see Jenks’s first signal to inch
Sea Cock
forward until he had enough slack to release the snubber
line. I eased the boat into gear and pushed the throttle gently forward until
Jenks gave me the “cut” sign. I put her into neutral.

Daring
a quick look away while he coiled the line, I saw the clusterfuck happening
around us. Boats doing the same drill, but with much yelling and cursing.
Spreader lights and flashlights blinked to life all over the anchorage,
illuminating confused crews. There were more bare butts on deck than a good Las
Vegas review. If I hadn’t been so damned scared, I would have enjoyed the show.
The keystone cop scenario on other boats boosted my confidence in Jenks.

As
he’d taught me, I followed Jenks’s signals, moving the boat forward again, then
into neutral, then forward again, until the anchor chain hung straight down.
Now came the tricky part, raising the anchor from a pitching deck without
ripping out the bow pulpit, losing the anchor to a broken chain link, or worse,
losing Jenks overboard. Breaking anchor at night in a pounding sea, even with
the aid of twin screws, a spotlight and an electric windlass, is downright
dangerous. But not as hazardous as staying. The waves and wind were building.
It was time to boogie.

Five foot whitecaps slammed the bow
up and down, engulfing Jenks, but he held his footing, and soon the anchor was
free and secured. I held the boat in place with the engines until Jenks could
join me on the flying bridge and interpret what, to me, looked like measles on
the radar screen. Every boat on our end of the harbor, it seemed, was underway,
headed for the safety of either the southern anchorage or the Half Moon Bay
marina.

Most were small sailboats with
outboards, so I knew we could outrun them, but Jenks, overriding my hysterical
suggestion to run them down like dogs in a mad dash for a dock, held us in
place and let the panicked pack leave. He then found us a protected spot near
the breakwater and re-anchored.

The anchor dug in and held fast.
Jenks switched off the engines and I had his clothes off in about two seconds.
Nothing like a little adrenaline rush to bring out the worst in me.

After a hot shower, we sat on the
enclosed sundeck in the now almost empty harbor, listening to the wind howl and
the lesser rabble babble on the radio. Most were still jockeying for dock space
or moorings.

“Want something to drink?” I asked
Jenks, hoping he didn’t ask for his usual iced tea. Reformed drinking habits
aside, I needed something a little more formidable than Mr. Lipton. Unless of
course, it was spiked with Mr. Slivovitz.

“I think we’ve earned a bracer,
don’t you? How about a brandy?”

I poured us both a snifter, but
before I could take a glug, Jenks reached over and took my brandy hand.

“First, a toast,” he said, “to a
full fledged, certified sea wench. Hetta, you handled yourself like a pro. I’ve
been with seasoned sailors who didn’t do as well as you did tonight.”

“Gee, Jenks, I’ve heard tales about
those navy showers, but didn’t think you were the type.”

He grinned. “I meant the anchor
drill. You did better than most experienced sailors.”
 

I actually blushed. “Yeah,” I said,
“but did they scream and cuss as good as me?”

“Not even close. I’d take you
anywhere, under any conditions.”

I was speechless. Never, in my
career, life, whatever, was I so moved by a compliment. Nor had I ever, with
the exception of my father, felt I could trust a man so implicitly as I did
Jenks Jenkins.

Which is why, when he dumped me, I
came close to meltdown. Or murder. Whichever came first.

43

Samurai seagulls invaded Seattle.

Every
six months the big boys of Japan, Inc., my client’s client, did their seagull
act. They’d fly in, squawk loudly over some garbage, crap all over our plans,
and fly back out. It was my job to deal with them. I excelled at Nihon-dazzle.

The Japanese clients, I knew,
thrived on marathon meetings, followed by copious wining and dining.
 
I stopped short of hustling up blondes for
them, but that wasn’t necessary because they always stayed in overpriced
Japanese-owned hotels where such “amenities” were available.
 
And for some unfathomable reason, not one of
the men ever asked
me
to walk on his
back.

Between chairing meetings and
making sure our yen factories weren’t insulted by our Barbarian ways, it wasn’t
until Wednesday afternoon that I realized I hadn’t talked to Jenks since I left
the boat on Monday. We usually talked every evening, so not hearing from him
was odd, but didn’t ruffle my trust in him. I just figured he’d called while I
was tied up with late night dinner meetings.

By Thursday, however, I was
beginning to feel a
soupçon
of
unease. Especially after leaving three or four calls on Jenks’s machine and
getting no reply.

I got a break when one of the big
boys called in drunk and a meeting was postponed. Rushing back to my room, and
still getting only Jenks’s answering machine, I decided to log on to his
website, thinking maybe he left me a message there. No message.
Merde
.

Maybe something was wrong with the
boat and Molly had to cancel the charter and Jenks was working on
Sea Cock
? I logged off, called
Sea Cock
and got my own machine. Fooey.

I sat at my laptop, thrumming my
fingers. Now what? I logged back on, got the security site and punched in my
code. The phone rang, but nothing happened.
Sea
Cock
was not at the dock. I felt a little panic attack rising but talked
myself down. What to do? Then a little light went off in my skull. I had
another option. My mobile security setup.

So that the system would work when
the boat was away from the dock, Jenks had installed cell phone access onboard.
If I was at anchor and needed help, I could activate the PANIC button by
putting in a special code. He also rigged it so I could call my onboard cell
phone and activate the cameras. I’d never used it before, but decided there was
no time like the present.

I went back to Jenks’s Internet
site, brought up my system, punched in my ID and password and then clicked on
the MOBILE mode. A series of dings, dongs and buzzes were followed by a delay
when I feared my screen was frozen up, but the little blinking hourglass told
me to just hold my horses. I went to the minibar and pulled out a diet Coke. A
robotic version of “Anchors Aweigh” emanating from my speakers pulled me back
to the computer. I hit another key,
et
voila!
I was looking at the back of someone’s head.

I felt a little voyeuristic and
vaguely guilty. I had never told Molly about my covert cameras, mainly because
Jenks had been so adamant in insisting that no one know about them. The key
word here is security, he’d said. Telling
anyone
anything in the yacht club was like posting it on the club’s bulletin board.

The
head the camera was on didn’t belong to Molly, but it
was
vaguely familiar. Maybe one of her staff? I squinted at the
screen, mentally willing the person to turn around. When he did, a curse
escaped my pursed lips. Alan Whitcombe, the smarmy Brit and royal pain in the
ass, was on my boat. What the hell was
he
doing there?

Alan had taken to dropping by
whenever I was alone on
Sea
Cock
. It was as if he watched from the
club, waiting for Jenks to leave. The Brit was always polite, but flirty in a
slimy kind of way. And now here he was, lounging on my settee like he belonged
there. Why?

I sat, frustrated and angry, and
watched as he got up, took a furtive look around the main saloon, and then
headed for my cabin door, the one clearly marked, “Off Limits. Owner’s cabin.”
He opened the door and went inside, shutting it behind him. Crap! Jenks hadn’t
installed a camera in my cabin, possibly in deference to my privacy. I’d have
him fix that, but what to do now?

I used my cell to call Molly’s
cell. Ain’t communication in this century grand? Too bad Jenks wasn’t better at
it.

“Ancient Mariner Charters, Molly
speaking.”

“Hi, Molly. It’s Hetta.”

“Hi, girl. I’m on
Sea Cock’s
flying bridge right now.
We’re on our way back to your dock. What’s up?”

“Uh, nothing. Just curious, who
chartered the boat today?”

“Oh, I thought you knew. Your
friend, Alan Whitcombe. He took some of his friends for lunch at Pier 39. Nice
bunch. Mostly foreign.”

“Oh. Okay. Uh, Molly, I....”
Merde.
How do I let her know Alan is
where he’s not supposed to be without telling her about the cameras?

“Hetta, you still there?” Molly
said.

“Yes. Uh, hey would you go down to
my stateroom and make sure I put my shampoo away this morning. I would hate to
lose twenty bucks worth down the drain if it tipped over.”

“Sure. It’s been a real smooth run,
though. I don’t think you have to worry.”

“Well, then. I guess I’ll get back
to work. Thanks, Molly.”

“Thank
you
, Hetta.
Sea Cock
is one of my best charter
vessels, even with that name you keep saying you’re gonna change. Hey, how
about
Sea Change
?”

“Sorry, doesn’t grab me. Uh, Molly?
Have you….” I wanted to ask her if she’d seen Jenks at the marina or yacht
club, but my pride wouldn’t let me. “Uh, have a nice cruise. See you soon.”

I stared at my cabin door. Just as
Molly entered the main saloon, Alan oozed out of my cabin and slid the door
behind him. When he turned around and spotted Molly, a fast fury passed over
his face, followed by that unctuous grin.

Over the roar of the diesels and
the water sounds, I heard Molly say, “Oh, hi, Alan. Sorry, that stateroom is
not part of the cruise.”

“Oh, I wasn’t going in. The door
swung open and I was shutting it. My, Molly, don’t you look glowing today. Must
be the salt air. Positively glowing.”

Molly looked a little uncertain,
murmured something I couldn’t understand and brushed past Alan to check on my
shampoo. Alan looked very pleased with himself as he walked out of camera
range. I cursed myself for not learning how to switch cameras faster.

After turning off my computer, I
sat on the bed for a few minutes, trying to massage a faint headache away from
my temples. This Alan was really starting to piss me off. I had seen him last
week and there was no mention of his chartering my boat. Odd, but nothing I
could really fault the man for. Besides, other than being a nosy body and
probably snooping into my underwear, he was just a minor annoyance. My big
problems—my missing boyfriend and a demanding client—loomed larger. I sighed,
freshened up for the next round of meetings, and prepared for battle with my
modern day weapons: laptop, briefcase, palm pilot, and charge card.

Almost out the door, I had a bright
idea. I returned to the desk, brought up Jenks’s site and turned on the video
recorders on my boat cameras, a practice I planned to follow for all charters
from now on. Since I had to leave for a meeting and wouldn’t be back for
several hours, my cell phone bill would be astronomical, but the rest of Alan’s
cruise would be on videotape.

* * *

I got back to Oakland Friday
morning. I’d left several messages for Jenks, telling him what time I’d be
home, suggesting maybe we’d have a later than usual cocktail cruise to Treasure
Island so I’d have time to provision. No answers.

It wasn’t until I boarded
Sea Cock
that I instantly and truly knew
something was wrong. There was no bologna in the fridge. No bologna, no Jenks.
The two went together like, well, bologna and Wonder Bread.

A
hollow despair scourged the pit of my stomach, a feeling sickeningly
reminiscent of that day in Tokyo when I returned from work to find Hudson’s
closet empty. Jenks didn’t live with me, but he had a hanging locker where he
kept a few clothes. They, too, were gone.

Almost sick with dread, I checked
my telephone messages, e-mail, and faxes. Nothing from Jenks. I called his
apartment and got his machine. A nasty little voice kept rasping in my ears,
saying,
Yo Hetta, you’ve been dumped,
dumped, dumped.
 
Merde, merde, merde. Déjà vu all over again,
again, again.

 
I shakily poured myself a tumbler of wine.
Paced. Had another wine. Paced. Tromped up to the yacht club to see if, by some
wild chance, Jenks was playing liar’s dice and forgot the time. Or the day? Or
me? He wasn’t there and no one had seen him.

I didn’t stay long at the club for
fear of running into that pain in the butt, Alan. In my deteriorating mood, he
would be a convenient target, and I couldn’t really lay him low without letting
on about the cameras. Besides, the strain of trying to act normal when chatting
with other club members proved too much. After fielding several, “Hey, Hetta,
where’s Jenks?” queries, I stormed back to the boat.

By nine I was a wreck. A worried
wreck. What had become of Jenks? Please, please Lord, don’t let him be dead.
Unless, of course, he was dumping me, then please, please Lord, let him be
dead.

I remembered the security videos. I
hadn’t bid
sayonara
to my charges
until almost midnight the night before, so I had a good twelve hours to view.
Even with fast forwarding, it would take a while to check out. I retrieved the
tapes from the hidden recorder and headed for my VCR.

I hit REWIND, then PLAY and watched figures on the
split screen. As Jenks had told me, the quality was shadowy and the sequences
jerky. In order for the tape to last long enough, the shots were actually
activated every few seconds. It all looked like an early Japanese monster
flick. I watch as Alan seem to lurch to the aft deck where five more men were
sitting around my Brown Jordan table. The sound quality was very bad, wiped out
by the droning diesels. Three of the men appeared to be Oriental and all seemed
to be having a great old time. I actually had a moment of sympathy for Alan.
Perhaps he, too, had to woo a demanding client from time to time.

Molly entered the picture, said
something to her guests, the timbre of the engines changed and I could tell
they were docking. I fast forwarded, watching people move about like ants.
Finally, everyone left except Molly and a crewmember. They washed the boat,
vacuumed the carpets, gathered their catering equipment, locked the door and
all was quiet. Nothing happened again until the tape ended. Certainly not what
I wanted to see, which was Jenks coming aboard.

I poured more wine, retrieved some
hors d’oeuvres left in the fridge by Molly, and attempted to watch TV.
Actually, I was staring down the phone, ordaining it to ring, when I spotted
the red PANIC button peeking from under my workstation. This was an emergency
situation, wasn’t it? I mean,
I
was
certainly in a panic.

I hit the button.

Nothing happened.

I was getting ready to hit it
again, when my phone rang.

“Jenks?” I gasped, “Where are you?”

“Miss Coffey, this is Ed Lu. Do you
have an emergency?”

Ed, one of Jenks’s staffers, was
tall, thin, Chinese, and wore his long luxurious locks in a queue. He, like all
of Jenks’s employees, was hooked up at home to man the security system. This
setup, while not all that lucrative for a guy with a PHD, allowed Ed time to
pen his great Chinese-American novel, a existential ‘90’s account à la
Easy Rider, but
without benefit of
booze, recreational drugs, or weapons, of his journey, via motorcycle, from
Brazil to New York. Dennis Hopper Lu. But sober and sensitive. The title of his
novel in writing?
DWO
:
Driving While Oriental.

“Ed, please call me Hetta. And no,
not an emergency. Is Jenks there?”

“No ma’am, uh, Hetta. He’s not.”

“Do you know were he is?”

“Sorry, I don’t. He left town is
all I know. Now, according to company protocol, I have to ask. Do you want me
to call the police?”

“No Ed, but I do want you to turn
off the damned cameras.” I made a face at the fake smoke alarm on the wall.

“I don’t turn on the cameras unless
you don’t answer the phone.”

“How do I know for sure?” I shot
the camera the finger, just to check. Paranoia runs right strong through these
veins, especially when folks keep disappearing on me.

Ed
didn’t react to my digital salute. “Well,” he said, “I guess you have to trust
us. Or, if you really feel uncomfortable, disconnect power to the system.
That’ll do it. But if you do, and then you have a problem, we won’t be able to
help you.”

Fooey.
 
I sighed into the phone.
“I guess you’ve got me there, Ed, but let me give you a warning. I know how to
access my own system on the Internet, so if I turn it on and see my large white
butt on the screen, I’m going to come over there and cut off your ponytail. Got
that?”

“Yes ma’am,” he said with an,
“Ooooh, I’m really scared” tone in his voice. I get no respect. I hung up.

I was running out of ideas. I paced
and drank more. So much for reform. Here I was, right back where I started,
only worse. At least before I put my trust in Jenks I was unhappy and lonely.
Now I was unhappy, lonely, and furious.