“What kind of boat is it, Connie?”
“A Cal 40. Lovely old thing. They don’t make them anymore.” She took the rudder in both hands and wiggled it from side to side. “They’re great cruising and racing boats. Hal loves to race.”
I strolled around Pegasus, examining the hull. Like the other boats I’d seen, Pegasus stood upright, cradled between metal jack stands, curious V-shaped contraptions padded with carpet remnants. Below the white hull, the keel, painted brick red, extended down like an inverted shark fin, touching the ground.
Connie circled the boat twice, hands clasped behind her back, while I stood to one side, wondering what she was looking for. She started tapping on the hull with her knuckles.
“Why are you doing that?” I asked.
“Remember when Hal said his hull was delaminated? I’m checking for that. You know how you tap the wall to find a stud when you’re going to hang a picture? Same thing, except I’m listening for the hollow sound you get when the layers of wood that form the hull separate and get all mooshy.” Connie tapped her way all around the boat with one of her car keys, too, making sharp, bright cracking sounds. Nothing sounded hollow to me.
Then the tapping stopped. “Hmm, that’s odd.”
“What?”
“Come here, Hannah. Walk around the boat and tell me what you see.”
I circled Pegasus, looking at the hull and the keel, feeling like a total dummy. “What the hell am I looking for?”
“Did you notice that one side of the keel has barnacles on it? On the other side the bottom paint is fresh.” I could see what she was talking about. The side of the keel nearest me was pockmarked by circular shells the size of my thumbnail. The other side was smooth as a baby’s cheek.
“But Hal said it needed repair.”
“I know, but you’d expect to see blistering on both sides of the keel, not just one. And another strange thing… see that scum line?” She pointed to a brownish green ring that circled the boat several inches below the boot top, like the ring around the inside of a bathtub.
“What’s so odd about that?”
“Cal ’40s are heavy cruising boats. She ought to be riding lower in the water. This boat’s riding high.”
“Does that mean she’s lighter than she should be?”
“Exactly! Hand me that rag, will you?” Connie indicated a tattered, paint-stained undershirt that had been draped over a nearby sawhorse. I snatched it up with two fingers and tossed it to her. Connie began to rub vigorously on the freshly painted keel until the rag was red with paint particles. After a bit she stopped rubbing and bent over, her face close to the surface of the keel, then stepped back and surveyed the spot from several angles. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“What?”
“There’s fresh fiberglass here, right in the middle of what should be a solid lead keel.” I looked where she pointed and saw the hint of a rectangle, just a shadow about the size of a suitcase beneath the brick red bottom paint. “See, it’s duller than the rest of the keel. I suspect someone was in a hurry, and it wasn’t primed first.”
Connie looked at me with wide, startled eyes. “Shit, Hannah. Bill was right. Somebody’s taken a chunk out of the keel and then tried to cover it over. Someone could be stashing drugs in there.”
Somebody. Someone. Why were we pussyfooting around the issue? Who else could it be but Hal? I didn’t want to believe it. “But why go to all that trouble, Connie? Couldn’t you just hide drugs somewhere inside the boat? You could build a false bottom in one of the hatches. Hell, you could hide tons of illegal substances in the bilge.”
Connie shook her head. “The coast guard is trained to look for things like that. Lockers shorter than they should be. Fake water tanks. But this compartment would be under the water and almost impossible to detect.”
“Maybe Hal doesn’t know about it.” I recalled his gentle manner, his smile, the touch of his hand.
“Not a chance. He does all the work on Pegasus himself.”
Perhaps it was a reaction to breathing the chemicals in the bottom paint, but I doubted it. I hadn’t felt so sick to my stomach since my last chemotherapy session. It nauseated me that I’d actually entertained the idea, however briefly, of cheating on my husband with a man who could well turn out to be a drug lord.
Leaving Connie on her own with Pegasus, I ran from the shed, my stomach churning. Gulping air, I located a grassy spot under a tree and knelt down, resting my forehead against the smooth bark. When I judged that the danger of throwing up was past, I raised my head and looked around. Dozens of masts cast long shadows across the boatyard, and I watched a whole row of shadows disappear, one by one, as the sun dipped behind a patch of woods that bordered the boat yard.
A few minutes later Connie joined me. “C’mon, Hannah.” She wrapped her arm around my shoulder and gave me a sympathetic squeeze. “Let’s go find a telephone.”
I climbed wearily into the car, and as Connie backed around My Mink and headed toward the parking lot, I slumped in my seat, repeating, “I don’t believe it.”
She shifted into drive and the car lurched forward. “You can’t believe it! How about me? I’ve been working with Hal for years. If what we suspect is true, he’s been dealing drugs for at least eight of those years, with no one the wiser.”
Connie nosed into one of three parking spaces directly in front of the Ships Store, a neat wooden structure painted gray with white trim to match its neighbors. A sign in the window was flipped from Open to Closed. I was almost relieved.
“Never mind,” Connie told me. “The phones are outside anyway, around back, on the side facing the river.”
I was inclined to wait in the car, but Connie insisted I come with her. We circled the store to the spot where a wooden pier began, extended across the length of the building, and stretched off in the direction of the gas dock about one hundred feet away. Dock D, where Sea Song floated quietly in her slip, was just beyond.
Bell Atlantic had installed the public telephone on a wall directly between the rest rooms, one labeled “Buoys” and the other “Gulls.” I thought Connie was perfectly capable of handling the call on her own, so I headed for the “Gulls.”
Minutes later, in the privacy of the bathroom, I sat on a wooden bench in a shower stall, closed my eyes, and rested my head against the cool tiles. I hated to admit it, but it looked as if Bill were right. Hal must be dealing drugs. Is that what Liz and Frank Chase were so intent on covering up? Maybe there was something other than a pregnancy recorded in all that mumbo jumbo on Katie’s chart, something about her habit. I cursed my bad luck. Unless Dr. Chase still had Katie’s chart or was willing to talk about it, we’d never know for sure. I concentrated, trying to recall what else Dr. Chase’s father had written down about Katie, wishing I had one of those photographic memories, but it was no good. The important thing, I decided, was to pass on what I did remember to Dennis before I ended up having another inconvenient accident.
I rotated my shoulders, trying to relieve myself of the stiffness along my spine, then spider-walked my arm up the tiles until I felt the familiar tug of damaged muscles still recovering from surgery. I chastised myself for forgetting to do my daily exercises, yet in spite of my neglect, I was pleased to note that progress had been made: I could almost raise my arm overhead. Perhaps taking headers over lifelines and swimming out of ponds counted as physical therapy these days. For a few minutes I stood in front of the mirror and massaged my temples, which had begun to throb. Gawd, I needed a bath, my usual therapy, but figured I would have to settle for running a damp paper towel over my face and neck. I combed through my wig with my fingers but succeeded only in tipping it sideways over one ear.