“We can't always get what would be nice.” Walter put his eyes back to his scope.
I got up and went to the open door and stared out at the gray sand and gray tide pool boulders and gray sea beyond. Nothing to see out there. No inspiration to be found. Just fog. It was August, for pity’s sake. Summer should be bright. The sand should be gold and the sea blue. In truth, when this case popped up we both had reason to jump at the chance to head for the ocean, to get away from our home town, which had been our home town for only half a year. Our real home town — the one I grew up in, the one Walter settled in as a young man — no longer existed. Obliterated by a volcanic eruption. That, and the death of loved ones, had left us stunned. We'd relocated to another mountain town, nice enough but not home. Maybe someday it would be. Meanwhile, we put our noses to our work and slowly healed. And now we had gotten away. An intriguing case, a mystery at sea. The chance to reset, renew. If only the damn sun would come out.
I headed back to the dinette table to get a start on the sand evidence but I was interrupted by a knock at the door, the door that led to the motel parking lot.
I opened the door and found Doug Tolliver looking grim as the sea.
Tolliver said, “Got a call from Jorge at Morro Marine half an hour ago.”
We invited him inside.
“No time,” he said. “I'd like you to come with me — we've got another one.”
Walter moved to the kitchen counter to pick up the car keys.
“I’ll drive.” Tolliver shot a look at the grease-stained bag sitting near the keys. “Don’t even think about bringing those donuts in my car. Fair warning — I’m a neatnik.”
CHAPTER 3
It was a modest boat with a squat cabin up front and an open deck behind, a boat that sat its passengers down low to the water. Maybe that’s why it was named Sea Spray.
I couldn't get a close look at the stern rub rail but, as Captain Sandy Keasling was saying, the scrapes weren't going anywhere. She was. She had a boatload of paying passengers and should have been at sea five minutes ago.
Tolliver was unmoved. “I understand you found the spots this morning, Sandy.”
“Yep. And then I called Jorge and made an appointment to get a new rail installed. This weekend. Your friends can check it out then.”
“My consultants need to see it sooner.”
“Christ Doug, I’ve got a schedule to keep. How about the end of the day?”
“They’re here now.”
A deckhand on the boat yelled for Keasling. She shouted back, “Two minutes.”
The Sea Spray was docked in the narrow channel we’d seen yesterday afternoon. This morning’s fog was thin enough that I could get the lay of the land. The channel was narrow, littered with boats at anchor, squeezed between the waterfront and the long sandspit across from the docks. Southward, the sandspit grew into giant dunes and the channel swelled into a full-grown bay. Northward, the channel led to the mouth of the harbor and then out to sea.
Captain Keasling looked at her watch.
Walter spoke. “Do you know when the damage occurred?”
“No idea,” she said. “I was tightening a loose screw on the dive platform and saw the spots up on the rail. Wouldn’t have noticed them otherwise.”
I asked, “Have you noticed any unusual…turbulence…out there?”
She yanked down her ball cap, bushing out blond hair that had the orange tint of a bad dye job. Popeye the Sailor Man was stitched on the ball cap. “It’s the ocean.”
Tolliver asked, “You follow the same route every trip, Sandy?”
“More or less. I head for where the whales are reported.”
“Any chance you went out Saturday night?”
“Can’t see whales at night, Doug. It’s a daytime gig.”
“I didn’t ask if you went night whale-watching.”
She held Tolliver’s look. “I don’t go out at night. Period.”
“You and Robbie Donie have any disagreements recently?”
“Not since we were kids.”
“Come on, Sandy.”
“Doug, you’re not seriously asking if I had anything to do with Robbie going missing.”
“I’m asking if you two clashed recently.”
“We don’t socialize.”
“Come on, Sandy. You share the same waterfront. You run across one another.”
“Like ships passing in the night.” She gave Tolliver a dolphin smile.
“Sandy, my folks need to see those spots on your boat.”
She glanced at the boat, at the deckhand glued to the rail, at the passengers shifting, rising. She turned back to Tolliver. “How about this — I got an afternoon trip but I’ll give your folks the two hours in between. That do it?”
Tolliver looked to Walter and me.
We nodded. Good enough.
Tolliver considered. “Sandy, your normal route goes out to Birdshit Rock, that right?”
“Yeah. So?”
“So the Outcast and the Sea Spray both got dinged on something and since you say you’ve only been running your normal route, might be worth my geologists’ while to come along and see if there’s something on that shallow reef around Birdshit that’s dinging up boats.”
She stared.
“Since we have a couple of hours to kill,” Tolliver added.
She shrugged. “Twenty bucks a ticket. Your money.” She jerked a thumb at the little kiosk office and went aboard her boat.
“What do you think?” Tolliver asked Walter and me.
Made sense.
We rushed to buy tickets.
So we were going whale watching.
Walter grew a smile.
I got a Dramamine from the heavyset man on the bench seat next to me.
As we waited for Keasling to do whatever she did in the wheelhouse, I glanced at the next dock over, at the rack of bright-colored kayaks. That was my kind of boat.
The kayak shop proprietor — Captain Kayak, as the sign on his little office advertised — was stacking paddles. Despite the chill morning fog, he wore flip-flops and shorts and T-shirt and his arms and legs were sun-browned and lean, muscles corded like ropes. The main event, though, was his hair, which spiked up high and was colored deep green. He caught me staring. He stared back. He stood like a statue, a bronzed waterman with kelp-green hair showing the whale watchers just what he thought of us. Not much, it seemed. And then he scooped up a can that was sitting on top of a bucket and lifted it in a salute. Bud Light.
Nine o’clock in the morning, for crying out loud.
“Welcome aboard!” Captain Keasling came out of the wheelhouse. She had a voice that needed no amplification. “If you’re here to go see whales, be advised we’ve got some bird watchers with us and so we’ll be spending some extra time where the birds like to hang out. The bird watchers are paying the same as you whale people so we’re gonna set a course to satisfy all the paying customers. Any problems with that, talk to the deckhand. My name is Sandy Keasling and I’m your captain and I’ve got a course to steer. That’s why I’m at the pointy end of the boat.”
The German-speaking couple on the bench opposite us spoke to the deckhand.
The deckhand hurried to the captain. She leaned in close to listen. She was taller, big-boned, seaworthy-looking in her black fleece pants and cobalt blue windbreaker. The deckhand, a slight young man, looked as though he’d blow away in a strong wind. But he dressed in seaworthy black-and-blue like his captain and stood the slightly swaying deck with ease. Instead of a Popeye ball cap he wore a red knit beanie.