Bodies in the Boatyard

CHAPTER TWO | THAT SINKING FEELING-1

CHAPTER TWO THAT SINKING FEELING

“We’re almost there,” I said to the ball of fur perched on my shoulder and meowing loudly into my ear. Scooter turned into the parking lot of the Palm Tree Marina and pulled into a shady spot. I clipped Mrs. Moto’s leash onto her harness, opened the car door, and set her gently on the ground. She ran toward the path that led down to the marina, pulling me along with her. You might not think a cat could drag a human behind them, but they’re surprisingly strong when single-mindedly focused on their destination or chasing a lizard.

“She’s a real marina cat, isn’t she?” Scooter asked. “She loves poking around the docks, jumping on boats, chasing seagulls, and begging for treats from the tourists.” He nudged me. “I think she’d vote for selling the cottage and moving onto Marjorie Jane. If she could talk, that is.” The calico twined herself around his legs and made a chirping noise.

I stifled a laugh. “Allow me to translate. She said that she has no intention of downsizing her collection of catnip mice and giving up her air-conditioned house. That makes two against—and only one for—selling the cottage.”

Scooter pushed his tortoiseshell glasses up his nose and glanced down at the leash twisted around his feet. “You women always stick together, don’t you?”

After he untangled himself, we walked across the patio, nodding at people sipping on their coffees and enjoying the morning before it became too hot later in the day. Before we’d left for the marina, my husband had thoughtfully made me a mocha with a double shot of espresso, which would keep me going until lunchtime.

Scooter had a lot on his plate lately with work, and as a result, we hadn’t been down to see the boat for over a week. This meant that there was some serious boat withdrawal going on—on his part, not mine.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen someone suffer from this affliction. It’s not pretty, trust me. He had given up his beloved Froot Loops and had started eating Cap’n Crunch cereal practically nonstop to lift his nautical spirits. And I had caught him watching sailing videos on his laptop at two o’clock in the morning the other night while he and Mrs. Moto shared a bowl of cereal. He’d take a spoonful, then wait while she lapped up some milk. When I expressed surprise that he was eating from the same dish as the cat, he shrugged and said, “I didn’t think she’d mind.”

I don’t know what was worse—that he had eaten an entire box of Cap’n Crunch in one sitting and would be complaining about a tummy ache the next day or that the YouTube vloggers were so impossibly young and good-looking. Seriously, who looks that gorgeous after they’ve been on a boat all day? No one, that’s who. You inevitably end up with grease stains on your clothes, scrapes, bruises, and sweat dripping everywhere. If anyone tells you that sailing is a glamorous lifestyle, they’ve clearly never been on a boat. Sadly, I’d become all too well acquainted with the reality of boats over the past few months.

After spending a few minutes standing on the boardwalk and watching the tourists strolling on the beach, Mrs. Moto insisted that we remove her harness and leash. Before we’d adopted her, she had lived on a boat at the marina and had free run of the place. While she reluctantly accepted being restrained elsewhere, she refused to put up with our nonsense here.

She scurried away ahead of us toward B Dock, where we kept Marjorie Jane, while we trailed behind her. When the dilapidated sailboat came into sight, my husband let go of my hand, rushed past Mrs. Moto, and had what amounted to a tearful reunion with the other woman in his life. If he could have hugged her, he would have. But since she was thirty-eight feet long, he couldn’t quite get his arms all the way around her.

Personally, I didn’t get it. All I saw was red paint flaking off the hull, weather-beaten teak decks, and an old, rusty anchor at the bow. You would have thought that—considering all the money we had spent on her to date—she would have looked a lot better by now.

As I was thinking about our latest credit card statement, someone tapped me on the shoulder. “Hey there. I haven’t seen you guys in a while.” I turned and saw Ben Moretti, a wannabe pirate who lived on a sailboat that rivaled Marjorie Jane in the fixer-upper category. “She’s sure been missing you,” he said, pointing at my nemesis.

“I’d say the feeling is mutual,” I said. “At least on Scooter’s part. See him fawning over her?”

I tore my eyes away from the scene and looked at Ben. Something was different. Greasy brown hair tied back in a ponytail—check. Ripped khaki shorts—check. Goofy smile—check. Ah, that was it. “New T-shirt?” I asked.

“Yeah. How’d you know?”

“It’s clean, and there aren’t any holes.”

Ben chuckled. “That’s true. It’s hard to keep things looking brand new when you work in a boatyard. Maybe I should change into something else and save this one for a date.”

“Date? Who’s the lucky girl?”

Ben gazed down sheepishly at the ground. “No one yet. But there is someone I’m thinking of asking out.”

“Well, you might want to think about a different shirt before you do. I’m not sure one that says ‘Pirates get all the booty’ next to a picture of a scantily clad girl is the way to go.”

He glanced down at his shirt and frowned. “Hmm...I hadn’t thought about that.”

Scooter looked over at Ben. “Just the person I wanted to see! I was over at Melvin’s the other day, and I saw they had a sale on tung oil varnish. I wanted to get your thoughts on whether you think that’s the right way to go.”

While the two of them debated the pros and cons of synthetic wood finishes, I stifled a yawn and kicked my flip-flops off. The last time I had tried to get on the boat wearing them, one of them had fallen off into the water, and I had to scramble to get it out before it drifted out into the bay.

“I’m going to open the hatches up and air this place out,” I said. I climbed up onto the boat, adding a new bruise to the collection on my shin. Mrs. Moto executed a graceful leap on board, then stretched out on a tattered cushion in the cockpit. I gave her a quick scratch behind her ears before unlocking the boat.

I cautiously made my way down the narrow ladder into the cabin below and stepped onto the floor, straight into a puddle. This was not good. While I didn’t know a lot about boats, I did know one thing—water belonged on the outside of the boat, not the inside.

After turning on the overhead light to see exactly what was going on, I ended up sliding on the floor and landing on my butt with a thud. Great, now it wasn’t just my feet that were wet.

I ran my fingers through my hair, which I realized was probably a stupid thing to do—who knew what was in that puddle?—and assessed the situation.

There was at least three inches of water above the floorboards. Or maybe it was three centimeters. My mom and I were planning a trip to Canada, and I’d been trying to get the hang of the metric system, but I had to admit that it wasn’t going all that well. In any event, there was water everywhere, which wasn’t good, no matter what units of measurement you used. Thankfully, she was on a trip in Europe for the next few weeks and didn’t know how to use her cell phone over there. Otherwise, she’d have been texting me constantly during the day, as she usually did, so I was glad I didn’t have to explain the latest issue with Marjorie Jane to her.

As I got to my feet, Mrs. Moto scrambled down the ladder and leaped onto one of the couches. The way she was staring down at the water, it seemed like she expected some fish to swim by any moment now.

I called out to Scooter. “You’d better get down here. We’ve got a problem.” I put my purse on the galley counter, grabbed a dish towel, and wiped my hands.

“I’ll be down in a minute, my little panda bear.”

I glanced at the water again. “I’m not sure we have a minute.”

The boat rocked back and forth in her slip as Scooter climbed aboard. He poked his head down the companionway. “What’s going on?”

I pointed at the floor. Scooter gasped, uttered a few curse words that would have made any salty sailor proud, and scrambled down the ladder, splashing water onto Mrs. Moto. She did not seem amused.

“Ben, get down here!” Scooter yelled. “Now!” He put his head between his hands and whimpered.

“Here, sit down next to Mrs. Moto,” I said as I led him to the couch. I reached into my purse and pulled out a pack of M&M’S. Scooter doesn’t deal well when things get dicey. I’ve found that having an emergency stash of chocolate comes in handy in circumstances like these. He popped several pieces into his mouth while Ben made his way aboard.

“That’s not good,” Ben said. He leaned down and flipped a switch on the wall near the galley. “I wonder why the bilge pump isn’t coming on.”

Scooter crumpled up the empty bag in his hand and looked at Ben with a worried expression. “It isn’t?”

Ben fiddled with the switch. “Nope, it isn’t. I guess it’s one more thing to add to your to-do list.”

“Is the boat going to sink?” Scooter asked. He wrapped his arms around himself and rocked back and forth while Ben pulled up an access panel on the floorboards, peered into the bilge, and examined the pump.

“Well, the water doesn’t seem to be rising, so that’s a good sign.” Ben ducked into the passageway and opened up the engine compartment. “It doesn’t look like the water has gotten into here, which is a plus.”

Scooter held up the empty M&M’S bag with a pleading expression in his eyes.

“Sorry, I’m out of chocolate,” I said, squeezing his shoulder.

Ben walked back into the main cabin. “Maybe your water tanks are leaking. Or maybe it’s because of those heavy storms we had last week. Water could be coming in through the deck.” He glanced down at the floor. “Tell you what—why don’t you taste the water? If it’s salty, then you’ll know it’s coming in from outside the boat. If it’s fresh, then you’ll know it’s not.”

Scooter c****d his head at me.

I shook my head. “You’ve got to be kidding. I’m not going to do that. You do it.”

“No way,” he said. “Not after I ate all that chocolate.” He turned his gaze to Ben.

Ben shrugged, bent down, and stuck his finger in the water. He put it in his mouth. “Can’t really tell. Listen, you were saying you needed to do work on the bottom. Why don’t you just get the boat hauled out now and take her into the boatyard? That way you can find out for sure what’s causing the leak. Give the office a call and see if the Travelift is free. Just make sure you tell them it’s an emergency.”

“What exactly is a Travelift?” I asked.

“It’s a big blue crane-like thing with straps.” He paused and rubbed his chin. “I’m really not sure how to describe it. Basically, it lifts boats out of the water and moves them around on land.”

“Sounds weird,” I said.

“Well, you’ll see it soon enough,” Ben said.

Scooter got out his phone and had a quick conversation. “Okay, they can pull us out now,” he said.

Ben clapped his hands together. “Good. Let’s get this baby fired up.”

As he and Scooter tried to start the engine, I began to feel pangs of guilt. What if I were responsible for the leak aboard Marjorie Jane? After all, just last night I had been thinking about different ways to get rid of her, including having her spring a leak and sink to the bottom of the sea. Did some vindictive mermaids use their ESP to read my thoughts? Did they decide to teach me a lesson by convincing a shark to chew a hole in Marjorie Jane’s hull? But, more importantly, would our insurance company pay up if she sank before we could haul her out?

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