Marcia Talley - Without a Grave

‘Bel bato, n’est-ce que pas!’

Ah, I should own such a boat. A cobalt-blue hull, color so pure and deep I felt I could dive right into it. Woodwork varnished to a high gloss, glowing in the sun. Someone was very lucky.

‘Ki-moun posede sa bato?’ I asked Daniel.

Daniel grinned. ‘Mister Jaime.’ With his paintbrush, Daniel gestured toward the stern of the vessel, which I took as an invitation to check it out for myself.

At the stern I found another worker up on a ladder lettering A-L-I-C-E I-N W-O-N-D-E-R-L-A-N-D on the transom. That figured. The jerk probably thought that naming a boat after his wife would make up for the black eye.

As I admired the boat, though, I grew increasingly uncomfortable. Like luggage on airport baggage carousels, many boats look alike – their fiberglass bodies are laid out one after another in identical molds, after all – yet this one seemed familiar.

I stepped back for a broader view. The Alice in Wonderland had two masts, the smaller of the two mounted in the stern, behind the helm. So it was a yawl. An unusual rig for a boat these days. I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of yawls we’d seen in the Abacos since our arrival.

Trying to act casual, I paced off the distance from bow to stern. Forty feet, more or less.

My heart did a quick rat-a-tat-tat in my chest. Frank and Sally’s Wanderer was a forty-one foot yawl.

I couldn’t count the number of times we’d sailed the Chesapeake Bay with the Parkers on Wanderer . I remembered one long day on the bay when Frank, trying to beat a squall, plowed Wanderer into a piling, gouging her bow. I walked around to the bow of Alice in Wonderland and reached up as high as I could, running my fingers along the rounded seam, feeling for any sign of damage. But if there’d been any, it had been repaired.

Paul would tell me that I was letting my imagination run away with me.

And yet as I stared at the boat, at its distinctive keel, I flashed back to a Sunday afternoon at the Naval Academy marina where Paul and I had helped Frank and Sally roll anti-fouling paint on Wanderer’s hull. I’d painted around that propeller shaft myself, or one exactly like it.

If I were to prove that this vessel was Frank and Sally’s boat, I’d have to get inside. But I couldn’t do that while Daniel and his co-workers were on the job.

I thought about the problem as I walked to the grocery where I picked out the supplies I needed – alas for Paul, no English muffins – and set them down on the checkout counter. I visited with Winnie for a while, killing time until noon when I hoped the boat-yard workers would break for lunch.

‘How’s Lisa?’ I asked as I packed my purchases into the Trader Joe’s bag I’d brought with me. There’d been a benefit supper for the seven-year-old, Winnie’s granddaughter, at one of the local churches. Hand-printed signs announcing the event had been tacked up on every telephone pole in town.

‘She’s in good spirits,’ Winnie told me. ‘Ted took her to Nassau yesterday. They may have to do surgery.’

‘That’s too bad,’ I said, meaning it. I’d rather straddle a log and dog-paddle to a hospital in Florida than have surgery for anything more serious than a hangnail in Nassau. ‘Do you mind if I ask what kind of surgery?’

‘It’s a heart valve defect. Congenital.’

Yikes, I thought. That’s one for the Mayo Clinic, not Princess Margaret in Nassau.

We chatted until the clock over Winnie’s head read eleven fifty-five, then I picked up my groceries, wished her goodbye, good luck and God speed, and made my way back to the boatyard.

As I had hoped, Daniel and his co-workers were at lunch, most of the men sitting on upturned buckets in the shade of a tree, playing cards, using the top of a cable spool as a table. Daniel sat with his back against an upturned dinghy, eating a sandwich and reading his Bible.

I waved casually, nodded, smiled and walked on, but as soon as I was out of their sight, I ducked around the corner of a utility shed and into the boatyard.

Alice in Wonderland appeared deserted, Daniel’s ladder still propped against her hull.

After a quick look around, I stashed my groceries next to an empty trash can and scampered up the ladder. I threw my leg over the lifelines, hopped into the cockpit and crouched down, hardly breathing, feeling about as inconspicuous as a fly on a wedding cake. Tools lay on the cockpit bench where they’d been neatly arranged by one of the workers who had apparently been in the process of installing an autopilot when he broke for lunch. The instrument itself hung half in and half out of the control panel on the steering pedestal, dangling by its wires.

No sirens, no alarms, no shouts of ‘Hey you!’ so I got slowly to my feet and sat down behind the wheel. I remembered my sister-in-law Connie’s sailboat, Sea Song , had its hull identification number stamped into the fiberglass on the stern. Taking a chance I’d not be spotted, I peered over the stern, searching the transom. But if there had ever been any numbers inscribed there, they were gone now.

I needed to look inside.

I hustled down the companionway ladder and found myself standing in a rich, teak-paneled cabin as familiar to me as my own living room: a dinette to port, a galley to starboard, a navigation station to the rear. Many boats were laid out that way, however, even Connie’s.

Where Frank and Sally had a liquor cabinet, there was a microwave, and although our friends had never had a TV, a flat screen hung on the bulkhead of the V-berth in the master cabin.

A stainless-steel cover was drawn over the stove. I checked under it quickly. Three burners. Just like Wanderer , but thousands of other boats, too.

It was the upholstery on the cushions throughout the boat that really got my attention: a distinctive red, green, blue and black tartan. Sally’s maiden name was McDuff. Their dog was named Duffy. Sally’d picked that fabric out herself, the tartan of Clan McDuff. That was proof enough for me.

Jaime Mueller might have been able to hire a crew of Haitians to strip, clean and repaint a boat within a matter of days, I thought, but reupholstering was another matter. I knew from Pattie’s Net bible that there was only one guy in Marsh Harbour who reupholstered boat cushions, and his waiting list was a mile long. He ordered all his fabric from the States, which took forever. Even all of Jaime’s daddy’s money couldn’t turn boat cushions around that fast in the Abacos.

Think, Hannah. If you go to the Marsh Harbour police with your suspicions, they’ll listen politely, then show you the door. Plaid, madam? I could hear the laughter now.

I checked my watch. Daniel and his co-workers would still be at lunch. By my calculations I had twelve minutes, no more, before they came back. Sweat rolled down my cheeks and between my breasts.

There had to be something to prove that this was the Parkers’ boat!

I checked the medicine cabinet. Empty.

I opened the door under the sink where Sally had kept her cleaning supplies. Spotless.

I peeked into the fridge. Not a speck of food.

Someone had scrubbed the stove, too, polishing its stainless-steel surface to a high gloss. Even the oven gleamed. It could have been new.

I leaned back on the stove, and it moved, reminding me of one of my less stellar cruising maneuvers.

Nautical stoves are gimballed. They swing with the motion of the boat, so that pots and pans stay level while you’re cooking under way. I got down on my hands and knees in front of the oven and pushed the stove back, squinting under it into the narrow space between the bottom of the oven and the floor.