Sara Paretsky - Deadlock

“No!” Bemis exploded. “No way in hell is Mike Sheridan involved in this.”

“How long have you known him?”

“Twenty years. At least twenty years. We’ve been sailing together a long time. I know that man better than I know-my wife. I see more of him.”

“Besides,” Bledsoe put in, “there’s no reason for Mike-or any of us-to want to kill you.”

I rubbed my forehead tiredly. “Ah, yes. The reason. That’s the real stumper. If I knew what my cousin had found out I’d know who did the murders. I thought it had something to do with those grain shipment orders, Martin, but you assured me they were perfectly legitimate. But what if it had something to do with the vandalism to your cargo holds? You told me that was what Boom Boom called you about.”

“Yes, but, Vic, we all need this ship operating to make a living. Why would we put it out of commission?”

“Yes, well, something occurred to me about that, too.” I looked at my hands, then at Bledsoe. “What if someone were blackmailing you-something along the lines of ‘I’ll tell your secret history if you don’t give up that load.’ ”

Bledsoe’s face turned white under his windburn. “How dare you!”

“How dare I what? Suggest such a thing-or bring up your past?”

“Either.” He smashed the table with his fist. “If I had such a past, such a secret, who told it to you?”

Bemis turned to Bledsoe in surprise. “Martin-what are you talking about? Do you have a mad wife stashed away in Cleveland that I never heard of?”

Bledsoe recovered himself. “You’ll have to ask Warshawski here. She’s telling the story.”

Up to that point I hadn’t been sure whether Grafalk had told the truth. But he must have to get that reaction. I shook my head.

“It’s just a hypothesis, Captain. And if there is something in Bledsoe’s past-why, he’s kept it to himself long enough. I don’t think it would be very interesting to anyone else these days.”

“You don’t?” Bledsoe pounced on that. “Then why would anyone blackmail me to keep it quiet?”

“Oh, I don’t think it’s very interesting. But you clearly do. Your reaction just now clinches it. What set me wondering was why you smashed a wineglass just because Grafalk made a crack that day about where you went to school.”

“I see.” Bledsoe gave a short laugh. “You’re not so dumb, are you?”

“I get by… I’d like to ask you one question in private, however.”

Bemis stood up politely. “I ought to look at the course, anyway… By the way, Martin’s occupying our only guest room. We’ll put a cot up for you in my dining room.”

I thanked him. Bledsoe looked at me speculatively. I leaned forward and said in a low voice, “I want to know that you didn’t get Sheridan to doctor my car while we were at dinner that night.” I saw a pulse start to move in his jaw. “Believe me, I hate to ask it. I hate even to think it. But that was a pretty horrifying experience-it shook my trust in human nature.”

Bledsoe pushed back his chair with enough force to knock it over. “Go ask him yourself! I’m fucked if I’ll put up with any more of this.”

He stormed down the stairs and the bridge echoed with the vibration of the slammed door. Bemis looked at me coldly, “I’m running a ship, Miss Warshawski, not a soap opera.”

I felt a violent surge of anger. “Are you, now? I’ve had a cousin killed and someone’s tried to kill me. Until I’m sure your ship and crew didn’t do it, you’ll damned well live in my soap opera and like it.”

Bemis left the helm and came over to lean across the table into my face. “I don’t blame you for being upset. You lost a cousin. You’ve been badly hurt. But I think you’re blowing up a couple of very sad accidents into a conspiracy and I won’t have you disrupting my ship while you do it.”

My temples pounded. I kept just enough control not to offer any grandiose threats. “Very well,” I said tightly, my vocal cords straining, “I won’t disrupt your ship. I would like to talk to the chief engineer while I am on board, however.”

Bemis jerked his head at Winstein. “Get the lady a hard hat, Mate.” He turned back to me. “You may question the chief. However, I don’t want you talking to the crew unless either the first mate or I am present. He’ll instruct the second mate to make sure that happens.”

“Thanks,” I said stiffly. While I waited for Winstein to bring me a hard hat, I stared moodily out the rear of the bridge. The sun was setting now and the shoreline showed as a distant wedge of purple in front of it. To the port side I could see a few chunks of ice. Winter lasted a long time in these parts.

I was doing a really swell job. So far I didn’t know a damned thing I hadn’t known three weeks ago, except how to load a Great Lakes freighter full of grain. In my mind’s ear I could hear my mother chewing me out for self-pity. “Anything but that, Victoria. Better for you to break the dishes than lie about feeling sorry for yourself.” She was right. I was just worn out from the aftermath of my accident. But that, in Gabriella’s eyes, was the reason, not the excuse-there was no excuse for sitting around sulking.

I pulled myself together. The first mate was waiting to escort me from the bridge. We walked down the narrow staircase, me following on his heels. He gave me a hard hat with his name on the front in faded black type; he explained that it was his spare and I was welcomed to it as long as I was on board.

“If you’re thinking of going down to talk to the chief now, why not wait until dinner? The chief eats dinner in the captain’s dining room and you can talk to him there. You won’t be able to hear each other over the engines, anyway.”

I looked at him grudgingly, wondering if he was deflecting me from Sheridan long enough to let Bledsoe tell him his version of the story.

“Where’s the captain’s dining room?” I asked.

Winstein took me there, a small, formal room on the starboard side of the main deck. Flowered curtains hung at the portholes and an enormous photo of the Lucella ’s launching decorated the forward wall. The crew’s mess was next door to it. The same galley served both, but the captain was waited on at table by the cooks whereas the crew served themselves cafeteria style. The cooks would serve dinner between five-thirty and seven-thirty, Winstein told me. I could get breakfast there between six and eight in the morning.

Winstein left me to go back to the bridge. I waited until he was out of sight and then descended into the engine room. I vaguely remembered my way from the previous visit, going through a utility room with a washer and dryer in it, then climbing down a flight of linoleum-covered stairs to the engine-room entrance.

Winstein was right about the noise. It was appalling. It filled every inch of my body and left my teeth shaking. A young man in greasy overalls was in the control booth that made up the entrance to the engines. I roared at him over the noise; after several tries he understood my query and told me I would find the chief engineer on level two inspecting the port journal bearings. Apparently only an idiot would not know about port journal bearings. Declining further assistance, I swung myself down a metal ladder to the level below.

The engines take up a good amount of space and I wandered around quite a bit before I saw anyone. I finally spotted a couple of hard-hatted figures behind a mass of pipes and made my way over to them. One was the chief engineer, Sheridan. The other was a young fellow whom I hadn’t seen before. I didn’t know whether to be pleased or disappointed not to find Bledsoe with Sheridan-it would have given a more solid direction to my inchoate searching to see them in cahoots.