Mallets Aforethought (22 page)

Wade snugged an arm around my shoulder as we hit the current and the ferry’s engines revved. “Maybe Tommy feels he should’ve done more to help George somehow. Kid that age, he might have a kind of unrealistic idea, what he can really accomplish.”

“Maybe.” Across the water the low outlines of the salmon pens moved on the waves. In the underwater enclosures, thousands of the fish were raised on a scientifically devised diet, then harvested like chickens or heifers. That, I imagined, was what had given Tommy the idea of raising sturgeon.

I still thought he looked worried about something he’d done, though, not something he hadn’t. But I had little more than an uneasy feeling to go on so I dropped the subject.

Ahead lay the massive whirlpool, Old Sow, its power merely hinted at by the small round upswellings called piglets swirling on the surface of the water. “Lots of freighters in the last few days,” Wade commented, gazing at them.

“Could Ginger’s boyfriend have been on one?” I asked.

We’d been over it all the night before when Wade and I got home from the hospital: Ginger and her ex-fiancé Mark Timberland, the Condons, the poison on George’s workbench. And the nurse, Therese Chamberlain, still a wild card but I hoped somehow a promising one.

“Nope,” Wade replied. “Talked to him this morning.”

I turned to him, astonished. “How’d you manage that little miracle?”

“Called around, found the company he works for, pulled a few favors. He’s in California, I got him on the phone. That hadn’t worked, I’d have tried the union halls. But I didn’t have to.”

“They keep lists? Of every single person working on the freighters?”

“You bet. Think about it, Jake. If anything happened . . .”

Sobering thought. “If the vessel went down or had some other disaster, like a fire or an explosion, they’d need a list of the people on board for the casualties report,” he added.

I leaned hard against him as we crossed over the whirlpool, deceptively calm on the surface but surging below.

“First thing I learned, he wasn’t around when Gosling died, or Jan, either. His ship was in transit and he was on it.”

I didn’t know whether to be happy or sad. It wasn’t a good feeling wanting to get George out of a jackpot by getting some other person into it.

“Had quite a talk with the kid,” Wade went on. “Once he knew who I was, Mark was pretty interested in talking with me.”

“And he knew who you were because . . .”

“Didn’t, at first. But his first mate does. I’ve met him a few times out here.” Wade waved at the channel where the big boats traveled between Deer Island and Campobello.

“So I had the mate call him first, introductory-like. I think it being the middle of the night out there sort of lent a bit of urgency to the whole thing, too. And it turns out Mark wants a career in the merchant marine. So he had a few questions about the tests he’ll be taking for that, how to approach them.”

Every so often it hit me that Wade had a whole life I knew almost nothing about, one that he led out on the water. “So we talked about it a little,” he went on. “Then I asked him the question.”

“What Hector Gosling had on him?”

Wade nodded. “That’s right. And he told me the answer. But I am afraid you’re not going to like it at all.”

“Why?” A couple of porpoises arced greenly out of the water and submerged again. “How would whatever Hector had on Timberlake have anything to do with me?”

“He’s dyslexic. That’s the kid’s big secret and old Hector knew it.”

“You’re kidding me! That’s all? How would Hector know that, anyway? And . . . what’s the big deal? Sam’s not making a secret of his dyslexia.”

“Sam’s not hoping to captain a commercial freighter,” Wade replied seriously. “If he were, he might have worried about it as much as Mark has. I had to swear to him I’d never tell, and only because he’d been briefed on my reputation did he tell me even then. That and his realizing that Ginger might be in some sort of trouble.”

“You lied to him? Said the police were looking at Ginger?”

He shook his head. “Didn’t have to. Just told him Hector was dead. Then he was eager to talk. Clear his name and hers, because he knows how she felt about Hector. Hated him to death, he said.”

Interesting phrase. “How?” A seal popped its sleek head up, eyed us briefly and dove again. “How could he clear himself and Ginger?”

Wade’s gaze went unerringly to the distant place where the seal would come up again. It did.

“The thing is,” he replied, “in the merchant marine you climb the promotion ladder by good work reviews and taking tests. Do well in both, you rise through the able-bodied seaman levels, then to second and first mate. But there aren’t as many ships as there are people in those ranks.”

“So you wait to get your own ship.”

“Right. You have to be chosen. So you tell me, why would the owners pick a guy, if there’s ever an accident the other side’s lawyers can stand up in court and say, So Mr. Ship Owner, did you know your captain can’t tell his right from his left?”

“But that’s not true, and it’s not fair! Sam can—”

“But it doesn’t matter, because it might create doubt anyway. Whether or not they took all possible precautions to prevent an accident. It could be construed as a liability even if it never created a handicap.”

Wade looked out over the waves. “And there are lots of good people waiting for their own ship, who
aren’t
dyslexic. So Mark Timberlake could end up waiting for his command forever, without anyone ever admitting to him the real reason why.”

“You know that’s not the way dyslexia works,” I protested stubbornly. “Sam has no problem driving a car, for instance.”

“I know.” He tightened his arm around me. “But not everyone does. That’s the problem. And Mark’s realistic about it, he knows it could hold him back. He didn’t know how Hector found out, but he says he did take a lot of special classes in school, participated in some medical center studies.”

“And Hector probably just kept digging till he found dirt,” I said bitterly, thinking of the computer search Will Bonnet had done on Jan Jesperson. Probably if he’d paid enough he could have gotten her medical records, too.

“But how does that clear Mark and Ginger?” I asked. “Sounds like the opposite, that he told you what their motive would’ve been.”

“Right. It doesn’t clear them for sure, I agree. But he was at sea. That’s easy to check. And from what you’ve said about Ginger, I doubt there’s a third person she would trust enough to bring in on that kind of thing. To carry Hector, help her get rid of his body, after she’d poisoned him?”

I thought again about her loner lifestyle, way out in the woods with lots of things to occupy her in solitude.

“Probably not,” I agreed. “On top of which I keep feeling that somebody picked George to be the fall guy on purpose. And Ginger wouldn’t have any reason to do that, much less know enough about him.”

“Right. And what Mark said confirmed that. He said to ask around. You’ll find Ginger plays it all very close to the vest. No tight buddies she would have told if she whacked Hector and needed a helper. Hell, the way Mark tells it, she doesn’t even trust
him
.”

“But then why would she lie about being in touch with him?”

The air changed suddenly as we reached the place where land was equally far away in all directions. I felt my shoulders relax as they always did out here, my troubles falling away.

Or lessening, anyway. For the moment. “Maybe she didn’t lie, exactly,” Wade replied. “Because Mark says he e-mailed her. He’s got one of those wireless gadgets, bounces e-mails off satellites so you don’t need a land line. But she hasn’t replied. He thinks she’s probably not even reading his letters.”

“Oh,” I said, comprehending. “So maybe she didn’t tell us the facts. But in her mind, she could’ve been telling the truth?”

“That’s how I’d read it,” Wade agreed. One last thing didn’t make sense, though.

“So Mark was at sea. But he still told you his secret, even though he couldn’t have been the one who . . .”

“I wondered about that, too,” Wade said. “Why tell me if he didn’t need to? So I asked a little more. Turns out he thought if he helped me out by being straight with me, I might keep an eye out for Ginger, give her a hand if she needed it. Just in case this whole thing did somehow end up getting stuck to her shoe.”

Stranger things had happened. After all, it was happening to George. “To protect her from afar? That’s pretty gallant of him.”

“Yeah. Sounded to me like he’s really in love with her. Not that she’s giving him an easy time of it.”

“Wade, he dumped her,” I pointed out.

“Only because she wouldn’t marry him right away, and she wouldn’t take any money from him. Hector was threatening to fire her, too, not just rat on Mark. So what was the guy going to do, leave her here alone without a dime and without even a job?”

“Oh,” I said slowly. “And she wouldn’t let him explain. She told Ellie and me she hung up on him.”

“Tell you the truth, I can see why he loves this woman. She sounds a lot like you. Bullheaded.” He squeezed my shoulder.

“Oh, thanks.” I grinned at him. But what he’d said earlier still bothered me a lot and I turned once more to stare out over the waves.

“Wade, do you suppose that’ll happen to Sam, too? That he’ll be passed over for things because . . .”

“If someone does it’s their loss,” he said. But he was too straightforward to deny the idea just to make me feel better. And there was something else as well; I could tell by his expression.

“What?” I prodded.

His shoulders moved unhappily inside his jacket. “Well, I don’t know what this means. But it seems George’s boat was out on Friday night. Some fellows saw it, I heard about it earlier this morning. They saw it heading out. Almost to the line.”

The imaginary line between the U.S. and Canada, he meant. The line went down the middle of the bay; we were crossing it about now.

“They’re sure it was the
Witchcraft
?”

The only flight of fancy in George’s whole life had been the christening of the little vessel; that and his seemingly impossible dream that Ellie would someday marry him.

“Yup. Saw the strips of reflective tape on his life rings, knew who it must be.”

The strips had been Ellie’s idea. She had insisted that in an emergency all bets were off and any little extra precaution you took might end up being the thing that saved you.

“Huh,” I said. “Not much chance of George’s getting a stop-and-board, is there?”

Because the Coast Guard had Eastport pretty well buttoned up nowadays, every freighter and other unfamiliar large boat made to check in well ahead of the time they were expected to make port, all others investigated appropriately on arrival. The local work boats went in and out without excess hassle, though.

George’s, for instance. “George was on the boat?” I asked Wade.

“Nobody saw him. But I’m starting to think maybe we’d better assume that he was,” Wade replied. I’d told him what Clarissa had warned: that George was desperate for money.

Which Wade knew anyway. He frowned down at his hands. “If, for instance, he was moving something on the
Witchcraft
. . .”

“Wade, we know George wouldn’t . . .”

“No.” Wade cut me off. “We don’t. I hate suspecting the guy, too. But if he needed cash, it’s not like he had many other ways of getting it. He’s already working right out straight.”

I thought about it: a load of something, maybe even drugs. Because Coast Guard or not, the coastline around here had just as many places to conceal things as it had during Prohibition, and it was surely a whole lot easier to get into than New York or Miami.

The ferry reversed direction around the forested point of Deer Island, angled to port and made for the wooden pilings that marked the landing channel. A few small trucks idled on shore for the return trip to Eastport.

“I’d have lent them money,” I said sorrowfully.

Wade made a “not-in-your-wildest-dreams” face. “He wouldn’t take it. You know that. Ellie, either. It’s hard enough for her letting you advance the money to Clarissa. And I don’t think he knew his aunt was leaving money to him, no matter what they say.”

Nor did I. “I’d hate to get him out of the murders by implicating him in something he
did
do.”

“Yeah. It’s why I haven’t told anyone else about the boat. The other guys aren’t going to either, not without my say-so. They’re rooting for George and they know this isn’t necessarily good.”

The ferry slid up, the ramp creaked down, and the trucks rumbled aboard. We didn’t go ashore, so we didn’t have to clear Customs; a few minutes later we were back on the water.

“It’s a darned good bet there was something illegal on the boat, or why wouldn’t George already be copping to the trip?” I wondered aloud.

We passed the return voyage in silence, Wade waving a thanks to the captain of the
Island Hopper
as we strode ashore. On reentry in Eastport, we had to account for ourselves to a Customs officer stationed at the landing, and show ID with pictures.

Speaking of which, what was wrong with this one? Then I had it, or thought I did.

“Wade, you can’t count on slipping anything past Customs even if they know your boat. The border security is too tight. It would be too risky, because no matter who you are you could get a spot-check.”

“So?” He headed the truck toward home. “You’d just pull in somewhere else, some little cove no one is watching. Offload your cargo, hide it, pick it up later.”

He made the turn onto Key Street. “George does know every secret spot on this coastline, has since he was a kid. So he just goes ashore in the dinghy, hides his cargo, next day he takes his truck out there, grabs it up.”

My shoulders slumped. “Yeah.” For a minute there I’d been certain I had a reason why George couldn’t be running contraband.

And now I didn’t again. “Hey, thanks for the boat ride. I guess beauty parlor magazines have some good ideas, after all.”

He made a wry face. “Next time I’ll show you how to fix all the movie stars’ favorite desserts.”