“But Bill was so insistent, so… triumphant! It made me wonder what kind of ax he has to grind with Hal.”
“Can’t imagine, unless… Bill used to work for the Calverts as a ship’s carpenter until Hal laid him off and started doing the repair work himself.”
“I thought Bill had gone to work for the army.”
“He did, but not until after he’d been laid off. There was a six-month period in there when he had to take a succession of odd jobs just to eat while he waited for the government paperwork to go through.”
I could sympathize with that, but as much as I despised Coop for laying me off, I doubt I’d have turned him over to the cops. Then I remembered the way he didn’t even look at me when he ushered me out of that conference room in Washington, D.C., all those months ago. On second thought, maybe Leavenworth was too good for the miserable worm.
“C’mon, Con. Dinner can wait.”
“No, Hannah. It’s a complete waste of time. Hal and I go way back. Bill is totally off base.” She ripped a piece of plastic wrap off a roll, stretched it over the bowl, turned it, and smoothed the edges down all around before putting it in the refrigerator.
I picked Connie’s car keys up from the kitchen table where I had laid them not five minutes before.
Connie opened a jar of spaghetti sauce, threw the lid into the trash, and turned to scowl at me. “And you can forget about taking my car.”
I tossed her keys back on the table and scowled back.
“Grow up, Hannah. You should see yourself. Pouting like a three-year-old.”
I didn’t feel like a three-year-old. I felt like a teenager who’d just been told she couldn’t go to a party because her mother knew there would be boys and booze there.
Connie stood at the sink, arms folded, the cleft in her chin deepening and becoming more prominent by the second. Emily had inherited that chin from her father. How many times had she glared at me the way Connie was glaring at me now? Hundreds probably. When I’d grounded her for lying about attending a mixed-sex slumber party, I got the full sulk treatment; we didn’t speak for days. But we Alexanders can be stubborn, too. I was now doubly determined to check out Hal’s boat.
I stomped over to the kitchen door and grabbed a key ring off its hook. “If you don’t go with me, I’m going to take that old truck out of the barn and drive over there myself.”
Connie snatched the truck keys out of my hand. “What the hell are you doing? You should be doing everything you can to get out of here and go home to Paul. He needs you, Hannah!”
“I told you. I don’t have his number.”
“Well, it doesn’t seem to me that you’re trying very hard to find it. You seem less interested in patching up your marriage than you do in running around Pearson’s Corner trying to clear the name of some potential lover!”
“Lover! And how about you and Dennis? Don’t think I haven’t noticed what’s going on between the two of you.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Why not? It’s not as if either of you are married.”
Connie stared at me with wide eyes, looking as surprised as if I’d slapped her. She opened her mouth to say something, then apparently thought better of it. “If you’re that determined,” she said at last, “then let’s go. Let’s get it over with.”
Connie stooped to pick up Colonel’s water dish, then thrust it in my direction. “Here. Fill this up while I lock up the house.”
I stood there for a moment, feeling foolish, holding Colonel’s dish in both hands. As I ran water into the bowl with Colonel frisking about my legs, I was determined that it would take more than a few dead bolt locks and an unreasonable sister-in-law to keep me away from the truth.
16
I slouched in the passenger seat of Connie’s car, uncomfortably strapped in, with the seat belt webbing chafing my neck. As we passed Ellie’s Country Store, I checked the porch, but there was no sign of Bill. I was glad. He’d have recognized the car at once and would have known exactly where we were going. I didn’t want him to think I’d paid the least bit of attention to all that garbage he’d told me about Hal.
Where High Street dead-ends at Ferry Point Road, Connie turned left. She pointed out the condo where Frank Chase lived, an attractively landscaped end unit, but his car wasn’t in the drive. I assumed he was still at his office, struggling to manage the workload alone. In spite of the lies he had told me, I felt a little bit sorry for the guy.
Five hundred yards ahead I could see the entrance to the marina which was marked by a sign, CALVERT MARINA AND BOATYARD, painted in bold blue letters on a white background. A pair of stout brick pillars flanked the entrance, from which a well-established boxwood hedge fanned out to form a fence, separating the marina grounds from the village of Pearson’s Corner. An anchor the size of a wheelbarrow, painted white, rested against one of the pillars.
Skirting the marina to our right, the road followed the water, snaking past the boat slips off docks A, B, and C and ending at a small parking lot. A large grassy area extended well beyond the edge of the parking lot, where boats of all types and sizes were stored, propped up by triangular wooden braces and paint-spattered metal tripods. To my surprise, Connie steered straight through the lot and onto the grass and began to weave cautiously between the boats.
“Where on earth are you going, Connie?”
“To park.”
“Excuse me, but wasn’t the parking lot back there?”
“When your boat’s out of the water and you’re working on it, it’s much more convenient to drive up and park right next to it.”
As we snaked through the land-locked fleet, I gazed out my window at a confusion of masts and rigging; some boats had been placed so close together that the bow pulpit of one vessel extended practically into the rigging of another. Beyond the boats, nearer the water, I thought I recognized the shed that Hal had pointed out to us when we went sailing, where he said Pegasus had been hauled.
Connie parked between a small blue cabin cruiser from Wilmington, Delaware, named My Mink and a large, nameless wooden vessel being painted dark green. When we climbed out of the car, seagulls were circling the area. One of them settled near an empty paint can and pecked halfheartedly at a discarded sandwich wrapper. I thought Connie’d feel right at home here among the boats and the birds, the fresh, sharp odor of paint and new varnish. From somewhere nearby the familiar whine of a power sander momentarily drowned out the cries of two angry gulls fighting over the remains of a hamburger bun.
“Hal mentioned he’d been experiencing chronic blistering problems on Pegasus,” Connie said as we wound our way on foot through the maze of boats toward the shed. “He’s had to repair her several times.” The shed loomed before us, an enormous white Conestoga wagon top, open at both ends.
Inside, the heat intensified. I expected the air to be heavy with moisture, like a greenhouse, but way overhead plantation-style fans nudged any stagnant air gently downward, to be swept away by the cool breezes that passed through the open ends of the shed.
Pegasus was a large boat, longer than Sea Song, I suspected, and it nearly filled the space, although there was room to work around her on all sides. I stood with my back resting against the vinyl-coated canvas wall of the shed and admired Hal’s boat. From the varnished teakwood trim to the six-inch-wide blue stripe that circled her bright white hull, she was a perfectly proportioned beauty.
“Nice racing stripe,” I commented.
“It’s called a boot top,” she snapped. Connie was still mad at me.
“Why?”
Connie stood at the stern, considering the rudder. “I don’t have the foggiest.”