Voyage of the Dreadnaught: Four Stella Madison Capers (3 page)

“Well…”

“I need a little fun before I leave.”

“What kind of fun?” Mason came up behind
them and cast a glance over the rail. “Who the devil’s that?”

“Cole Deforio.” The young man gave a nod of
his head then turned his brown eyes back to Lou. “You coming, or
not?”

“Sure, but I have to wait until the Senator
wakes up. Why don’t you come aboard and meet everybody?”

“I’d be happy to watch him for you, Lou,”
Stella interjected quickly – the thought of taking a baby into that
miniscule little boat! “If you’d like to go on, that is. Seems a
long trip to be starting out so late in a small open boat like
that.” Why, she had heard it was nearly six miles across open ocean
even to get to the nearest island. After the bumpy adventure she
had personally experienced this morning just crossing the calm
harbor, the entire idea was appalling.

“Oh, would you, Stel? That would be great!
He hasn’t been feeling the best lately, anyway. I think he’s got a
bug, or something.”

“No doubt.”

“OK, change of plans – I’m coming down.” Lou
Edna reached for the black windbreaker she had tossed onto the deck
earlier, and fairly skipped toward the bow. “Pick me up under the
anchor chain,” she called over the noise of the motor as her young
man started the engine, again. “And don’t you dare let me fall
in!”

Naturally, everyone followed. They lined up
along the rail to watch her crawl up and over with an agility only
the young possessed. As Cole expertly maneuvered his little boat
directly under the apex of the chain and the bow, Lou made contact
first with her feet, and then lowered herself onto his shoulders
with a playful giggle. He let the engine idle in neutral while he
eased her down in a slow seductive slide against the front of his
body, that ended in a sizzling kiss no self-respecting person would
engage in while others were watching.

“Dear heaven!” Stella fumed as the outboard
revved into gear and they sped away. “And in broad daylight,
too!”

“Somebody ought to knock some sense into
that girl,” Mason growled irritably. “Little flirt – what’d you let
her go for, Stuart? Should have made her stay and suffer along with
the rest of us.”

“Well, I would have,” the Captain was still
watching the small boat as it receded into the horizon. “Only she’s
right. She is the best deckhand I got going for me on this
trip.”

“Who is that kid anyway?” Mason squinted
into the sun as if he might be able to tell if he kept looking hard
enough. “I’ve never seen him before.”

“Been hanging around the docks the last
couple months,” Stuart replied. “Does a bit of work with the fleet
now and again… came in on one of them cargo boats before that.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if he was the
devil’s own cousin,” Stella pronounced. “And to think she was going
to take the baby along!”

“Rather strange he knew right where to find
us.” The Colonel twisted the top off a bottle of chilled tea and
drank half of it down without stopping.

Stella couldn’t help thinking how at home he
looked in this environment, with his khaki shorts, and Hawaiian
shirt hanging loose and unbuttoned to reveal a thatch of curly gray
hair. He must have spent a great deal of time at the beach over the
years.

“Strange or not,” Stuart turned away from
the rail and headed back toward his project, “did you see them
muscles? I could use a good hand like that on this trip.”

“Good Grief!” the Colonel muttered to
himself. “Then we’d really have problems to contend with!”

“Two of them acting like that night and day,
nobody would miss the movies,” Stuart chuckled.

Mason suddenly stood up straighter and
shielded his eyes as he tried to catch a last glimpse. “Just what I
thought… circling right back to shore.”

3

Packing up an apartment was nothing compared
to packing up a mansion. Especially one that had been lived in for
nearly twenty years. True, very few of the Villa’s furnishings
actually belonged to Millie, but Stella soon discovered that the
latter years of financial troubles had turned her newfound friend
into a packrat. Specifically in the food department.

“What in the world!” Stella retied her red
bandana to fit more snuggly around her ears as she stood gazing
into a wine cellar that was stacked almost to the ceiling with a
veritable mountain of food.

“It’s my famine chest,” Millie explained as
she dragged a stack of plastic storage bins up close to the nearest
edge. “Left over from our prepper years. Sam was one of those
survivalist types that thought World War III was going to break out
any day. Either that, or the California coastline was going to drop
off into the ocean during the hundred year biggie.”

“The hundred year biggie?”

“You know – the big one. The next earthquake
that measures over eight points to hit smack along the San Andreas
fault. We even have a stash of guns and ammunition in case we ever
have to defend ourselves when total chaos breaks loose in the
cities.”

“Goodness – it must have cost a
fortune!”

“Not exactly. Sam was a real wheeler-dealer.
Before he left me, we always had plenty of money. Here. You can
take half of these bins and start on that end, while I get busy on
this one.”

Stella retreated to her specified area and
began to pack can after can of condensed soup and beef stew into
the containers. “This hardly looks like your cupboards, Mil… you
being such a stickler for cooking fresh from scratch and all.”

“In case of a real emergency, there’s not
always a working kitchen at hand,” Millie explained. “Look at all
the people who were stranded in their own front yards after that
last big one. Water lines broke. All the power went out. Streets
and highways were busted or buckled in so many places you couldn’t
even drive out.”

She stopped for a moment as if remembering,
and then shook off the memory to get back to work. “Nope. The
houses were too dangerous to stay in, so – what with the
aftershocks going off for days afterward -- most people were stuck
camping out in their own front yards with whatever they had on hand
in their cupboards. Which this day and age isn’t much, considering
how almost everybody works and eats out most of the time.”

“It’s true -- hardly anyone cooks at home
anymore,” Stella agreed. “I had a neighbor back at my old apartment
complex who was always dieting, so she didn’t want any food around
her place at all. Just went to the grocery store every day or so,
and ate out every night.”

“A lot of people do. Anyway, that’s why most of this
stuff you can just open up and eat cold right out of the can. Don’t
have to cook anything and it will last for years.”

“Well…” Stella looked in awe at the towering
mountain of food that seemed hardly diminished even though they had
both been packing it away steadily, at their respective ends, for
the last ten minutes. “All this sure is going to come in handy on
the
Dreadful
. So, maybe Sam’s survival tendencies weren’t
such a bad thing after all. And what do you mean he left you? I
thought you said he died.”

“Before he died he left me.” Millie looked
at several jars of home-canned something that could either be light
gravy, or applesauce, but had lost the labels. Then packed them
into her container, anyway. “Went on a fling with some younger
woman and only came back when he found out he was dying.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“So was I. But I didn’t have it in me to
turn him away – not after being married twenty-two years. Look here
– have you ever tried any of these?” She held up a tan package with
black lettering on it. “They’re MRE’s. You know, military food
rations.”

“Not hardly. Where did you get so many?”

“From the Colonel. Said he could get more,
too.”

Stella stopped loading her containers and
looked over at Millie. “I thought you said all this was Sam’s idea.
Oliver’s only been here a little over a year, hasn’t he?”

“It was Sam’s idea to start with. But I’m a
firm believer in taking care of myself during a national emergency.
You think I’d be like some of those people you see on the news,
just sitting around waiting for someone to rescue them? Some even
dying? Not me. Not on your life! I’m going to be handing out help,
not waiting for it. I never go to the store without bringing back a
little something for my famine chest. Force of habit.”

“I can see that. But Millie…” Stella
straightened up for a moment and put a hand to her aching back.
What a long week it had been! “It’s obviously been more than could
fit into a chest for years. Look at the size of this thing!” She
looked up at the pile that nearly touched the ceiling in some
places. “There’s no way this is all going to fit into that galley
pantry, even if Stuart does move all his paint stuff somewhere
else. Shouldn’t we prioritize?”

“Mason already built some water-tight crates
so we could store the extra down in the hold. Believe me, we’re
going to need all of it when we find out there isn’t a grocery
store for a hundred miles up there, and we get snowed in until
spring in some frozen wilderness.”

“Good grief, Millie!” Now, she couldn’t help
stealing the Colonel’s phrase. “Doesn’t that thought just send
chills up your spine? Surely Mason wouldn’t let us all get into
such a--”

“He certainly would,” her friend informed
her. “Mason thinks he can survive anything, and figures he can take
care of half the rest of the world while he’s at it. On account of
he was in one of those prison camps during the Vietnam war.”

“I didn’t know that!” Stella stopped packing
again, and looked back over at Millie; this time noticing she had
split a seam on the side of her lavender colored pants from so much
bending and stretching. “He doesn’t seem the type.”

“Nobody’s that type, believe me. Don’t let
on to him I told you – he’s real touchy about it. But you know
what? It’s because of that experience we ever met the Colonel. On
account of he wanted to use Mason’s story in one of the chapters of
his hero book. Mase got some kind of medal for something he did
back then, but I never could get him to show it to me.”

“One of Oliver’s heroes for a history book--
I never would have dreamed! Isn’t it rather amazing the way all of
us have come together, Mil? I mean, it’s almost like … like
destiny, or something.”

“It’s destiny all right. Because while Mase
figures it doesn’t matter what condition that Alaskan lodge of his
is in, since we can live under a tree and survive off pine nuts if
we have to, he’s going to be pretty darn glad I brought my famine
chest along. Plenty of moose and salmon up there, he says. I say
nobody wants to live off the same thing for eight months straight,
no matter how much the stuff sells for down here in the states. He
wouldn’t last two weeks without hankering after a pot of my
homemade chili, anyway.”

“None of the rest of us would, either,”
Stella pointed out.

“So, get ready for the worst, is what I
always say, then celebrate like crazy if nothing happens. Hey -- do
you realize what time it is, Stel?”

Stella glanced at her watch. “Why, it’s
three o’clock already, and I’m supposed to meet Oliver downtown at
four! We have to get some last minute things for our cabin.”

“Better take my car.”

“But we might not be back until late.”

“Doesn’t matter. Mase is coming in to take
the last of the stuff aboard, and I’ll be staying out there from
now on. Everything of mine is in, already. Just make sure and lock
up the garage when you bring it back, will you? The man who bought
it won’t be by until Saturday, and Lou’s picking up a swing shift
tonight. Trying to get in all the hours she can before we
sail.”

“Thanks, Mil!” Stella missed the last words
of instruction as she fairly flew up the cellar steps and into the
basement.

One more flight of stairs in such a hurry
only brought her to the kitchen, and she was already exhausted. How
could she possibly clean up and get downtown in time? She certainly
couldn’t arrive in blue jeans, a checkered blouse and a babushka!
Not that Oliver hadn’t seen her in the worst of all possible
conditions before. It was just that they were planning a farewell
dinner at the
Luau Palace
, since they were practically still
on their honeymoon.

Such a thoughtful man she had married… he
never ceased to amaze her. Which is why she had no intentions of
having him pacing the isles of the curtain department in a store
down at the local mall because she completely lost track of time.
She had enough shortcomings that would come out sooner, or later,
and had every intention of making the “honeymoon period” last as
long as it possibly could.

So—in a snap decision—she heaved open the
iron doors in front of the dumbwaiter and proceeded to climb in. If
it had been a good enough elevator for Millie’s invalid cousin
Gerald all those years, it could certainly get her up to the third
story without depleting every ounce of energy she had left. Except
there was something in the way.

Several large items, wrapped with brown
paper and string, that she could tell the minute she moved them,
were paintings. But what were they doing here? Stella didn’t have
to wonder whether or not they were expensive because every original
item in the old Hollywood retreat known as
Villa Nofre
had
been worth a small fortune. Which is why—when curiosity got the
better of her—she peeled back a corner of the top frame and peeked
inside.

It was that ghastly modern art Millie said
she detested, and had packed away into the attic, years ago. Worth
a fortune on the right market, though, which she had also told her.
Stella counted the frames. Seven of them. Probably the whole
collection. Surely they should have been left in the attic, with
everything else up there, for the family of the deceased owner to
go through. That is…