The Weekend of 080808
I am doggedly progressing through Austen’s “Persuasion”, determined to fulfill my stated summer vow to read her complete works by first frost (and counting on global warming to give me many more months before deadline).
How’s this for a strangler of a sentence: “Anne thought she left great happiness behind her when they quitted the house; and Louisa, by whom she found herself walking, burst forth into raptures of admiration and delight on the character of the navy - their friendliness, their brotherliness, their openness, their uprightness; protesting that she was convinced of sailors having more worth and warmth than any other set of men in England; that they only knew how to live, and they only deserved to be respected and loved.”
You see why I sometimes wonder if I am up to this task - it is like being pulled to the bottom of a murky pond by the weight of your sodden ball gown. Or perhaps the simile should (due to Austen’s topic) refer to saltier water - how about, “like being pulled into the frigid depths by a giant squid”. Or maybe not. Ah well.
I continue as well revising my mystery novel, RV-GO Down to the Sea. I think I will give you another chapter or two - then I’ll put the book into text format and email it to you if you want to read the rest. Just let me know. A free book! Such a deal! No paperback gathering dust after you find out who-done-it-and-why - merely push DELETE and, pooph!, mischief managed!
RV-GO DOWN TO THE SEA - Chapter 3
The first thing that occurred to me was that boats don’t have doorbells. I suppose I already knew that but it was not something I had ever thought about much. How, I asked myself, was I going to announce myself? Ahoy probably went out with shiver-me-timbers.
I found Angel Face easily enough. She was roped to the floating dock all the way at the end, her name boldly painted in red, outlined in blue across her stern.
“Hello! Anyone on the boat?” I yelled, feeling like the perfect fool and hoping that this Mert guy was not the type to shoot first and ask questions later.
“Anybody home?” I shouted again. This threatened to be a repeat of my visit to the charter office. I also had an uncomfortable flashback to the thug who ran me off Float 3 the day before.
A molty looking gull gave me the once over from an adjacent piling. I hoped he was not the security system because I was wearing my favorite navy blue jacket.
“Who is up there?” came a voice from the bowels of the boat.
“Cora Jane Dooley. Could I talk to you for a minute, please?”
“Am I supposed to know who you are?” he shouted back.
“I work at Bev’s Burgers by the Bay,” I said, knowing that didn’t quite explain why I was shouting at the man’s boat.
“Well, I guess that should mean something,” he said. “What did I do forget to tip you? I will be right up.”
A minute later he came clambering up the stairs - the very image of the Gorton’s Fisherman, yes. Flowing white hair and crisp silver beard. Would have made a fine Santa given a bit more beard, I thought. But there was nothing twinkly and cheery about his eyes. They were a warm brown, but sorrow-filled.
Cora Jane, you are a prize idiot, I told myself, the poor man just lost a friend. You ought to get yourself out of here and mind your own damn business.
“I am sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what I was thinking - didn’t mean to disturb you. I will go.”
“I am up here now. You said you wanted to talk to me,” he said. “Come aboard. Here, I’ll give you a hand.”
Getting down from the float to the boat deck was . . . interesting, holding his strong, rough hand. If I hadn’t known better I would have thought our hands clasped each other a little longer than they really needed to. He was one very attractive man, though. Steady on, Cora Jane, I said to myself.
“So, how much do you say I owe you?” he said.
“It’s not about money actually.”
“Well, what was it you had in mind then?” he said. “You looking for a charter? Need to check with the office about that. Nothing going out for a few months yet. Maybe not even then if the storm damage is worse than it looks.”
“I stopped by the charter office already and talked to . . . is it Marg? She said you would be down here,” I said. “What I wanted is to talk to you about your friend Carl.”
“I have talked about him all I want to talk for a while. Cops, newspapers. Why do you think I would want to talk to you?”
Here it is, I thought, the point of no return. If I tell him he could tell the cops and then I would have trouble landing on my doorstep like flies on cow pies.
“Carl showed me the lens at the museum not long before he was killed,” I said, watching his face while he processed the information. “I may have been the last person to see him.”
“I can see why that would worry you. You tell the cops that?” said Mert.
Oh my God, I thought, if this guy is the one who killed Carl he now knows I was there that afternoon. What if he thinks I saw something that will lead the law in his direction? Cora Jane, have you learned nothing over the years? You may have really landed yourself in it now. I’d have to be a bit more careful. I ignored the question.
“What I was wondering, Captain . . . I am sorry I don’t know your last name,” I began.
“Merton,” he said. Well, that explained the Mert.
“Captain Merton,” I continued, not having the faintest idea where I was going with this. “Something that has been bothering me since I heard about the old gentleman’s death.”
“Death can be pretty bothersome,” he said.
“Yes, I would say so, but what I wondered was why Carl would have been at the museum the afternoon I showed up. I understand he was night security.”
I was fibbing a bit here since I had not known he was night security until Marg had mentioned it but it seemed like a plausible line of inquiry.
“That is true enough. He supplemented his pension working security. And that bothers you?” He shook his head. “I do not see what you are getting at. You think it was weird he showed you around? He was a volunteer docent as well as a guard - retired Coast Guard - so if someone came around the museum while he was on shift he would be inclined to show them around even when the place was closed. Nothing odd about that.”
“But if he was night security, what was he doing there in the early afternoon?”
“Afternoon? Damned if I know. Maybe he had to start work early for some reason.” He paused. “Which might explain a few things, come to think of it. He was supposed to meet me for supper but he did not show. What time was it you saw him?”
“Around two. I had just gotten off at Bev’s and I thought I would see something of the town.”
“The museum is closed for the season.”
“I found that out.” This was going nowhere. What had I expected to find out from this man anyhow? And to what purpose?
“But you say Carl was there . . .” He seemed to be chewing the information. “As early as two.”
“Yes. He let me in to see the lighthouse lens. He turned it on for me.”
“I can’t make head nor tail of this. Why would Carl be at the museum that early? More like him to be taking a nap around that time,” he said. “The cops said at first they thought Carl died some time after he began his rounds at seven until I told them he had not shown up for supper at six so he could have been dead by then. Now if you say he was at the museum as early as two . . . that might be important. Could be the cops would like to hear what you have to say.”
Damn, Cora Jane, when are you going to learn to keep your big mouth shut, I thought. Now, even if I do not speak up, this guy is sure to blow the whistle and the questioning will start. And they will want to know who they are talking to. It will all begin again.
“By the look on your face I would say you are not too keen on cops,” he said.
“I guess you could say getting involved with the legal system does not give me a warm fuzzy feeling,” I said. “In my experience too many times a person starts out trying to help and ends up being caught in the gear teeth.”
“Have to agree with you on that one.” He scratched his bearded chin and gazed past my shoulder toward the open harbor. “How about I make us a cup of coffee and we chew on this for a bit.” He motioned toward the stairs leading down into his boat.
“Thanks, but I should be going. I have taken up enough of your time already, Captain Merton. I can see you have a lot of work to do here.”
“Not the trusting type, I see,” he chuckled. “I can’t say I blame you with a murderer in town. ‘Course, come to think of it, could be I should be the nervous one, you being a stranger here. It does not take a man to kill a man . . . necessarily.”
“No, it does not. But of course being new in town I would not have a motive, would I?”
“Killers in novels have to have motives, little lady. Seems to me the real world operates more free form than that.”
I decided to let the “little lady” comment slide. He was after all a disturbingly attractive man.
“You have a point. Still, I can not imagine your friend’s death in little Westport was the result of random violence,” I said, shifting my attention back to the topic. “From what I read in the local paper’s police blotter the worse crime you folks see around here is the poker crowd getting rowdy on Saturday night. They may break a few beer bottles in the parking lot of Pines Tavern but they don’t seem to me to be the kind to butcher harmless old men for no reason. Or am I wrong? As you say, I am new around here.”
A curious gull made a wide swoop over our heads, settling with a flutter on a piling by the bow. He cocked his wedge of a head, weighing the possibilities.
I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with the salty scents of low tide and desolation, knowing that I should have just kept driving down the coast highway because here I was caught in the spiny net of by my own insufferable nosiness. Every community had its fair share of sad dramas and tragedies, Westport being no exception - every bronze-plaqued teak bench along the esplanade told stories of wrenching loss and grief - I didn’t need to become ensnared in these people’s problems in the off chance of briefly escaping my own.
“Truth be told, he was a pretty odd bird,” said Captain Merton.
“Odd bird?” For a second I thought he was talking about the gull, then realized he had been saying something about the old man that I had missed.
“Carl. I liked the fella well enough, do not get me wrong. Sometimes he helped me around the boat. If he were alive he would be right here helping me today - a good man with boats, was old Carl,” he said. “Always wanted to know what was going on around the marina. But now that I think about it he never let slip much about himself. He was kind of secretive that way.”
“You are saying if he had enemies or someone he was having trouble with he kept it to himself.”
“He did not mention anything to me, no.”
“And he did not seem worried or upset about anything?”
“Not that I recall,” he said. “What did you say your name was again?”
“Cora Jane Dooley. People call me C. J.”
“Figures. But you do not look like a Cora Jane to me. You know, if you had a boat, C. J. would not be a bad name for it. You would want to spell it s-e-a-j-a-y. though,” said Captain Merton. “Well, Dooley, if you will not let me make you coffee onboard how about we step across the street to the Spindrift and I buy you a cup?”
“Thanks, but I have to be off.”
“Maybe some other time, then,” he said. “I will be seeing you at Bev’s.”
“Sure thing. See you at breakfast.”
* * *
I kicked myself all the way back to RV-GO. A nice guy wants to spend some time with me and what do I do? I bolt like a winged doe. Understandable I suppose, considering that my choice in men had not ever been the wisest. What irritated me most was that I had just blown a golden opportunity to learn more about the old man, Carl Heslop, which might have helped me understand how the man came to be killed.
I was convinced that Merton knew more than he let on. From what Cindy told me, Mert and Carl ate dinner together two or three times a week. That was more often than most married couples see each other. I had to think that if something was bothering the old fellow his friend should have picked up on it if he was the least little bit observant.
This coming from a woman who had believed for two decades that her husband was merely a harmless if slightly shifty car salesman! What the hell did I know?
I heated up some leftover spaghetti from the night before and opened a bottle of screw top cabernet. Seated at the RV’s Formica booth enjoying my freedom from interpersonal complications I listened to the couple from the single wide next door squabble over the remote. They were at it every evening at six o’clock since I’d been living at Blue Moon Bay Mobile Manor. She wanted the channel five news but he liked seven. Said the sports coverage was better. Since RV-GO was parked five feet from their living room couch I was treated to every enthralling word.
Sometimes I wished they were more interesting people. But not tonight. I had about all I could take of interesting. I wound the spaghetti around my fork and listened to the woman argue that she had to hear Jean Enersen’s Health Link report on colon cancer treatments. I set the fork down and sipped my cabernet. Suddenly the spaghetti had lost its charm.
I wonder about people who get so excited about television news broadcast from a city almost two-hundred miles away when so much was happening in their own town. Maybe they had not heard about the murder. Or maybe since it was not covered by the big city Seattle media it did not have sufficient glamour to keep their attention. Poor old Carl Heslop would not make it to prime time for those two.
I scraped the congealing spaghetti into the trash bin and screwed the cap back on the cabernet after one more swig. For a brief second I had the urge to bawl like a baby at the mental image of a solitary youngish-elderly lady scraping pasta into a garbage can. I wrote it off to the depressive affects of wine and homicide, checked that the side door was locked and took my sad self off to bed.
* * *
The moon broke through the purple clouds as the pirates flooded up over the railings, pouring over the decks like a tide of shiny insects, their gleaming knives flashing through the salt spray spewing over the plunging bow - the captain, where is the captain, I ask the wind. He was at the helm just a moment before, struggling to hold our course into the storm as the dark ship gained on us - now as the screaming cutthroats grapple with the crew the helm spins free, moonlight streaming through the spokes like blood. I stand at the cabin door fixed like a splinter in the flesh of the night, mouth open in a cry still lodged in my frozen throat as they come aboard, as they advance across the heaving decks - bellowing and brandishing death with every stride. Nowhere to hide but the hold and they will be there soon enough - nowhere to go but over the side into the roiling waves, the plunging depths - but he has me before I turn to run, clamping his iron hands to my arms, drawing me to his cold naked chest, his snake covered skin, squeezing the breath from my lungs - as he bites through my throat, as salt stings my eyes and the slick deck slides out from beneath my feet and night swings wide as a torn sail.
* * *
I woke to the alarm at four o’clock with a stiff neck and a red wine headache. Cindy was counting on me so I could not exactly call in sick - even if I could afford to lose a day of work, which I could not with space rent due at the end of the week. Vowing there would be no more midweek cabernet sessions on an empty stomach I threw on a pair of jeans and a blouse, hurried through my bathroom routine and biked off to Bev’s for the breakfast shift.
Cindy had things well underway when I arrived ten minutes later.
“’Morning, C. J.,” she said, handing me a coffee pot. “Jeez, you look like hell. What happened, all night party at the mobile home park?”
“I had a bad night. This murder thing upset me more than I realized,” I said, starting the coffee. “Cindy, do you want me to top off the salts and peppers too?”
“Yeah, that would be cool.”
In a headachy fog I took the chairs off the tables, put the place settings out and filled the condiments. Cindy unlocked the front door, flipped the open sign and who was the first person through the door? Captain-Silver-Fox-Merton. What a day to have skipped the lipstick in my mad rush for work. This was going to be one heck of a long morning. Fortunately we got busy fast and I did not have time to worry about how I looked until Merton waved me over.
“You got my check, Dooley?” he asked. Dooley. Oh well, I probably looked more like a Dooley than a C. J. to him, especially this morning.
I tore it from my pad and handed it to him. He glanced at it and handed it back to me.
“You forgot to put the coffee on it, Dooley.”
“That is okay. My treat,” I said.
“So how does this work? I ask you out for coffee and you refuse but now you’re buying me a coffee? Is this some sort of women’s liberation thing?”
“No, more like an apology,” I said. “I am sorry I refused your invitation. It would have been nice to have coffee with you, so I hope that you will give me another chance to accept.”
“Well, I insist on paying for this coffee because I don’t want you accepting an invitation from me just so you can be paid back.”
“You are one sly customer, Captain Merton.”
“Maybe you should call me Mert since we’re involved in this complicated beverage transaction, Ms Dooley.”
I could not decide if he was asking me out or brushing me off. Surely I was way too old for this sort of boy-girl tap dance. Not to mention that my brain was seriously lagging behind the conversation. I added coffee to his bill and handed it back to him. He wedged a bill under his coffee mug and got up.
“I will get you your change, Mert.”
“Keep the change,” he said as he headed for the door.
“This is a twenty not a ten,” I called after him.
“You will owe me,” he said.
Damn him anyway, I muttered to myself. The ball was back in my court. Still, I had to admit that was a pretty cute move on his part.
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