Seawitch: A Greywalker Novel Read online

  Then she perched on the padded seat of the wicker sofa, her spine poker straight—and gave me another glare. “I said you could sit.” As if permission were the same as an order.

  I ignored her tone and took the remaining seat on the sofa, which put me between her and Solis. I could have penned her in by taking the other chair, but that would have made the conversation awkward and she clearly wasn’t going to run away. I received a thin smile for my pains as Mrs. Starrett reached for the first clean coffee cup and turned her eyes on Solis.

  She forced her smile a little wider, as if trying to apply herself to a job she had no heart for. “I never met a policeman who didn’t like coffee,” she said, pouring the black liquid from a large French press. She managed it very smoothly in spite of its obvious heft. This was a woman with old-school hostess training, and I wondered that she’d made such a lot of coffee for just one person. Maybe it was just a habit she’d never broken. . . .

  Solis gave her a small nod. “It’s very kind of you,” he said like a guest at a fancy tea party. “I am quite fond of coffee. When I was a child there was always a pot of coffee on in the house.”

  “Really? Your parents let a little boy drink coffee?” Mrs. Starrett asked, offering him the cup.

  He took it gently. “It’s very common in Colombia. Everyone drinks coffee.”

  “How do you ever sleep?”

  Solis smiled. “We take more milk.”

  I was having a hard time keeping a straight face. Was Solis—dour, quiet Solis—making a joke? Mrs. Starrett seemed confused, as if she didn’t know whether she should be charmed or insulted. Finally she settled on flustered and offered him the creamer and sugar bowl. I noticed he used quite a bit of each.

  Mrs. Starrett glanced at me and her face got a little harder again. She poured my coffee—which I took black.

  As she was topping up her own cup, Solis started to speak.

  “Mrs. Starrett, I know this cannot be a pleasant topic—the reappearance of your husband’s boat—but I hope you’ll help us understand what happened.”

  “It was his grandfather’s boat,” Linda Starrett replied in a sharp voice. “To Castor it wasn’t so much a boat as a . . . a floating Playboy Mansion with hot and cold running bimbos.”

  Solis raised his eyebrows slightly. Mrs. Starrett blushed and bundled her sweater closer around herself before huddling over her coffee as if she were icy cold.

  “Joshua—Castor’s grandfather—just doted on him when he was little,” she said. “I doubt he ever really acknowledged what a pr—what a pig he was, even when it was obvious Castor didn’t give a damn about anything but his own pleasures.” Her voice grew sharper and the color eased out of her face as she went on. “Joshua died about a year after we were married and I often thought Cas married me to allay any qualms his grandfather had that he might not settle down. Of course he never did. I wasn’t so much a trophy wife as a token of respectability. Cas always made sure we were seen together in public, being ever so perfect, whenever he’d come too close to crossing the line with Joshua or his mother. He kept on using me as his . . . his totem of rectitude when he’d been made a fool of in the press or gotten in trouble with the law.”

  She paused and sipped noisily from her cup, her hands shaking with suppressed anger. “He was a pig!” she repeated. “A spendthrift fool who nearly bankrupted us. He was only saved from total disaster by selling the big house and moving down here.”

  “You said ‘us,’” I observed. “Did Castor control your money, also?”

  Her voice was bitter. “Most of it. Not all. It’s mostly my own money that keeps me in this so-luxurious style now,” she sneered.

  I found the house rather nice, but I suppose if you’re used to cashmere and caviar, anything else seems like a fall from grace. “Why did you marry him?” I asked.

  “Because I was stupid,” she spat. She rolled her eyes in self-deprecation and took a long, disgusted breath, settling herself back down. She sat back and took a steadier sip of her coffee before she went on. “Cas was six years my senior and I thought he was just kicking up his heels a bit—a sort of last hurrah—and would settle down a little once we were married. I thought we’d have fun. I didn’t understand that I wasn’t a person to Cas and certainly not a partner. I was a thing: a shield of respectability he could throw up when he needed it. I should have divorced him—it’s not like people didn’t do it all the time then—but I just couldn’t stand the idea of the failure it represented. I’d never failed at anything in my life and there I was, the only girl in my class whose marriage was as much of a wreck on the outside as it was on the inside. At least my friends had husbands who pretended to be respectable and hardworking. Cas didn’t even try. He was . . . a wastrel. That’s the word: ‘wastrel,’” she repeated with an angry hiss and bared teeth.

  She raised her eyes suddenly and skewered me with her glare. “And you know the most insulting part of it? It made me look ripe for the taking. Cas treated me so badly that other men thought I’d just fall into their beds and be grateful. I wanted to kill him for that. I wanted to just kill him! I was never so happy as the day that damned boat didn’t come back.” Her eyes flicked toward the windows as if she could see the Seawitch right through the cliff and the fog. Then she looked back to me and to Solis—appealing to his chivalrous instincts, I imagined. “I was happy he was gone. But I never realized how awful it is to be a sea widow. To think someone’s dead and out of your life but to never really know. It was terrible. It was as bad as when he was here.”

  Her face knotted into a hideous expression of pain and horror. “And then it came back.”

  Solis and I were both taken aback by her outburst for a moment. “Do you know how it came back?” Solis asked.

  Mrs. Starrett snorted. “How? Why would I? As far as I’m concerned it might as well have precipitated out of the fog.”

  I found that an interesting choice of words since I’ve seen ghosts materialize in that very way—particles of mist gathering and assembling into a recognizable form.

  Solis had no outward reaction to her phrase but I did see a spark of blue jolt from his aura. “Do you believe your husband had anything to do with the boat’s return?”

  Mrs. Starrett scowled at him. “I do not. Castor’s dead and I don’t think he brought the boat back to harbor from beyond the grave—no matter what the sensation-mongers are saying about it being a ghost ship.”

  “And yet its presence disturbs you. Why?”

  At first she didn’t reply, and we let the fog-wrapped silence lean on her, exerting pressure to fill the void with words before something worse could enter. “I think . . . I’m afraid that there might be something to that curse folderol,” she whispered.

  “Curse?” Solis asked. He didn’t shoot me a glance, but the rising tension in his body and the growing brightness of his aura stretching toward me was almost as good. “Tell me.”

  Mrs. Starrett dropped her eyes and stared at the floor, unblinking. “At first the press didn’t have much to say except that it was a tragedy, but when the ship didn’t come back and Odile was already dead they made a big deal about the boat being cursed—which was a total fabrication. They claimed the boat was built with parts from another boat that went aground—not parts taken from the boat but parts meant for the boat that weren’t used—and they made up this wild tale about a curse that would take everyone who had anything to do with the boat. First the crew and passengers and then the family. They said I’d be next, but of course I wasn’t because there isn’t any curse, but . . . I wondered if there was something else, even at the time and . . . What if there is?”

  “Who is Odile?” Solis asked.

  “Odile? My—she was my best friend. Odile Carson. She was married to Leslie Carson.” She blinked at us, waiting for us to fill in the blank. I knew it but I wasn’t going to say where I’d seen the name before; it was more valuable to see how she filled in the blank herself. Solis also gave her a slightly owlish loo
k and waited.

  She took a long, deep breath and pressed her lips tight for a moment before answering. “Les was on the boat when it disappeared. Les and Odile were our social satellites. We did everything together, once upon a time. Odile and I were very close. The ‘boys,’ of course, did that man thing of pairing up by gender and going off to do manly things without the ‘girls.’ So, Odile and I . . . we spent a lot of time together.”

  Solis sat back and nodded a little. “You were very close.”

  Linda nodded again, not quite meeting either of our gazes. “Very,” she repeated. “More than sisters. But not—not below the line.”

  That was the kind of phrase my mother would have used to mean lovers without actual sex—the line being the waist, below which one did not venture. Above it was OK, however, since it was acceptable for women to kiss and hug their female friends, even if those caresses were a bit more intimate and frequent than most people were comfortable with or would admit to.

  I had new insight into the insurance company’s ideas about why Linda Starrett might have had something to do with the original disappearance of the Seawitch; they thought she and her female lover might have plotted the whole thing to get rid of inconvenient husbands. It still didn’t wash with me, but it would be worth a bit more looking to see if Odile Carson’s death had any bearing on the boat’s disappearance.

  “What happened to Odile?” I asked. I could look it up, and I would later, but I found Mrs. Starrett’s replies more illuminating than a recitation of mere facts on a computer screen.

  Linda’s mouth puckered, holding back a sob with a frown until she had mastered the urge to cry and could speak calmly again. “An ‘accident.’ She was electrocuted or drowned . . . I’m not sure which they said. In the hot tub. Those converted wine-vat kind of tubs that were the rage then. Odile had trouble with her back—she had mild scoliosis of the spine and sometimes it hurt her quite a lot. She would go sit in the hot water and listen to the radio. I think she used to do it more than she needed just to get away from Les. Les hated the classical music she listened to.” Linda smiled a little. “Sometimes we’d go together, Odile and I, and drink some wine and listen to the music, and just float in the water in the tub, out on the little terrace that overlooked the cliff and the beach. . . . Nothing but birds and trees and the wind dancing in the branches over our heads . . .”

  She let out a sudden gasp and began crying, tears streaking down her pale cheeks and leaving tracks in her face powder. “I miss her so much! Why couldn’t she come back instead of that horrible old boat? I hate it! I hate that boat. I hate it!”

  “Do you believe the boat’s disappearance and your friend’s death were connected?” Solis asked.

  “Don’t be stupid!” Mrs. Starrett snapped, but it seemed like she was protesting too much. “I used to think Les managed to kill her somehow—he was so jealous while he was being so selfish—but that’s not”—she gulped and continued—“that’s not how things work. Is it? Even if it ought to be. So, no, I don’t think the boat came back for some kind of magical revenge. But now that it’s here I can’t stop thinking about Odile and what happened to her. I miss Odile! I don’t want that horrible boat—I want Odile back!”

  Now Solis did turn his head and look at me, the slight lift of his eyebrows asking me to step in.

  “Linda,” I started in a low voice, “we can’t bring Odile back, but we’ll find out if what happened to her was connected to what happened to Seawitch. I know you don’t want the boat. You don’t have to worry about that—the insurance company will take responsibility for it now. We’ll find out what happened. Now, can you tell me who was on board besides Cas and Les Carson?”

  She snuffled and gulped her way back to something like normal. “I don’t know. I—let me think. Who went with Cas . . . ?” She closed her eyes. “There were five all together. Cas, Les, some bimbo friend of Les’s . . . Ruth . . . Ireland, I think. One more woman—I remember it added up to two couples and the captain, but not Reeve that time. . . .”

  “The captain?” I asked.

  Linda opened her eyes and blinked at me, not sniffling in spite of her reddened nose and eyes. “Yes. Cas hired a professional captain—John Reeve—to manage the boat most of the time. Cas wasn’t really very good at handling her and he was too lazy to sit behind the wheel when he could be on deck, getting a tan or fishing or just drooling on his female guests. This was kind of a rushed trip, so the group was smaller than usual and Reeve didn’t go—it was usually seven to ten guests, plus Cas, Captain Reeve, and another hand or a cook.” She paused to dab at her eyes. “But not this time, which I suppose is why I . . . thought it was something it wasn’t.”

  I looked at her expectantly.

  She shook her head. “No cook or extra hand this time. The boat had been modernized and didn’t need as many crew as it did originally, so it could go out with just two as long as the passengers weren’t picky. The usual hand was booked, so Cas was doubling for the crew. Reeve wasn’t available, either, so they took his assistant, a guy named . . . Gary Fielding. Really young. I wasn’t sure he was competent, but I didn’t really care until the boat didn’t come back and then everyone was asking me about the crew. I didn’t know anything. I thought it was John Reeve who’d been with them until he turned up talking to the press. Reeve said this Gary kid had his license and had crossed the bar a dozen times as a pilot—whatever that means. It seemed to make a lot of people shut up, so I suppose it’s important, but I don’t know.”

  She stopped, an odd look on her face. Then she said, “Janice. Janice Prince. That was the other woman they took. She was a boater. One of those floating trash that tramp from marina to marina, looking for a trip anywhere in exchange for crew work.” “And other things,” she implied with a lifted eyebrow and a cynical quirk to her mouth.

  Starrett, Carson, Fielding, Ireland, and Prince . . . that matched the list the insurance company had given me. The messes in the cabins had left me with the impression of more, but maybe it was just the remains of whoever—or whatever—had invaded the boat and taken or driven the passengers and crew away. . . .

  FOUR

  There wasn’t a lot more we could get out of Linda Starrett. In spite of her own protests about its implausibility, she seemed to cling to the idea that the death of her friend was connected to Seawitch. Even a crazy idea can be comforting when you’re confused and upset, which she clearly was. She didn’t hold up much longer and soon asked us, her voice shaking, to go. Solis and I walked down the curving brick drive to the sound of her heavy wooden door thumping closed behind us like the seal of doom.

  At least the fog had begun to thin a bit and returning to our cars was less of a passage through mystery than arriving had been.

  “What do you make of it?” Solis asked as we neared the cars.

  I shook my head. “The whole curse thing is ridiculous. I’ve got the paperwork and there’s nothing about questionable parts from another boat being used on Seawitch. Part of the boat’s value was that it was all vintage and intact—a lot of wooden boats that age aren’t. And Mrs. Starrett’s idea that her friend’s death was somehow connected to the boat seems more like the sort of hysterical fancy some people glom onto when they’re upset and can’t ever shed. I suppose we could ask for Odile Carson’s autopsy report, just to be sure. . . .”

  “I also think it’s unlikely to be a homicide, but I’ll make the request. What of the rest?”

  “I think we need to get that log book dried out and find out who was really on board. Those cabins didn’t look like accommodations for two couples and a single crewman. All four of the cabins had been occupied and more than one of the crew cabins looked used.”

  Solis cocked his head. “Only one had the symbols in it.”

  “But it wasn’t the only crew cabin that had been used, so it sounds like Mrs. Starrett was wrong about who was on board.”

  “Gary Fielding would have used one. But, yes, that does leave the other. . . .
”

  “It seems to me,” I added, “that the insurance company has come to the late and erroneous conclusion that Mrs. Starrett and Mrs. Carson may have colluded to get rid of the boat with their husbands on board so they could enjoy their . . . friendship in peace. How they would even manage that, I don’t know.”

  “It is also at odds with Mrs. Starrett’s statements about her friend and the timing of her death. I’m as disinclined to credit that as you are.”

  “Agreed. Even without the complication of Odile’s death, a conspiracy to sink the boat would have required help from someone on board, which wouldn’t include either husband or the ladies they brought with them.”

  “Leaving Fielding.”

  I nodded. “But he’s apparently as dead as the rest, and what’s the profit in scuttling a ship if you drown in it?”

  “Very small.” Solis agreed. “Perhaps we should talk to the original captain, Reeve, about his late protégé. . . .”

  It shouldn’t have taken very long to find Reeve—I did have his address in the file—but it proved to be out-of-date and we had to look for him. Or, rather, I volunteered to do some computer work to find him while Solis took the log book to a documents expert the cops contracted with for this kind of problem.

  We finally discovered John Reeve in a retirement village in Des Moines—a cliffside town on the Sound south of the airport but far enough north of Tacoma’s Poverty Bay to be free of the paper-mill stink of the mud flats at low tide. The locals pronounced the town’s name with the S at the end and sometimes in the middle, too. Des Moines sprawled along the shore in a wedge that was honed to a point by the westward swing of Interstate 5 near Saltwater State Park on the south end of the bluffs. On Zenith—the tallest ridge overlooking the sea and right in the middle of Des Moines—stood a shining edifice called Landmark; it looked like a grand country estate from an English period film, but in fact it was a fancy Masonic retirement home. John Reeve had lived there for a while, but he had moved when the market crashed and now lived in a humble one-story duplex in a seniors’ complex of identical duplexes on looping private streets on the north side of town, within walking distance from the beach and the Des Moines marina.