Bodies in the Boatyard

by Ellen Jacobson

“No, man. Sorry, I haven’t,” Ben said.

  “Is this it?” I asked, holding up the phone. “I found it on the work table.”

  “That’s it! Thanks, Mollie. Got to go. Class starts in thirty minutes.”

  As he pulled away, I wondered why Liam was threatening him, and Darren before that. What was Ken mixed up in?

  * * *

  After sanding the bottom for a couple of hours and elevating my Smurfiness to a new level, I took another break. Okay, okay, I’d only been sanding for thirty minutes, but it had felt like hours. Was this bet with Norm really worth it?

  The answer to my question came in the form of a conversation I overheard between Liam and his uncle. The redheaded young man was on his phone, leaning against his car. “I’m telling you, at the rate this chick is going, you’d better plan on changing the name of your boat. On the plus side, ET is only two letters, so it won’t cost as much to get the vinyl decal printed up.”

  By the way in which he held the phone away from his ear, I guessed that he was getting chewed out. “Relax. I was just kidding.” He listened for a moment. “You want me to do what? Oh, come on, it’s just a stupid bet.” After another pause, he interjected, “Hey, just wait a minute. I did everything you asked—”

  My back was getting stiff from crouching under Marjorie Jane. I thought about coming out from underneath the boat, but I didn’t want to be seen, especially when the conversation was getting so interesting.

  “No way. I’m not going to. I’ve been asking around town about her, and—just let me finish, will you? Anyway, apparently she’s really nosy, always asking questions and getting involved in things that aren’t her business. The last thing we want to do is give her a reason to poke around in our affairs.”

  Norm must not have liked his answer because Liam held the phone away from his ear again. I could hear his uncle’s voice, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. I did my best imitation of a limbo dancer and crept under Marjorie Jane to get closer. I lay on the ground, grateful for once that I had a protective suit on. The dirt and grime on the tarp underneath the boat was disgusting.

  From my new listening post, I could make out about every other word that Norm said. “Paint…send message…scare…crazy…broad…Yoda…fish…” He also mixed in a lot of swear words, which I won’t repeat here. And yes, it sure did sound like he said “Yoda.” Of course, if Scooter were here, he would have said that perhaps I’ve watched the Star Wars movies one too many times and that Norm probably said something like “you shoulda,” and I misheard it.

  Liam ended the call after assuring his uncle that he would take care of the matter. I was beginning to worry that I might be the matter in question. I was shimmying backward when a cloud of dust swirled around me, causing me to cough loudly.

  “Mollie, what are you doing under there?” Liam asked.

  “Uh, just checking the…um…” I tried to remember what could be on the bottom of the boat that I would be looking at. Scooter had given me a book on sailboats for Christmas. Granted, it wasn’t one of his best gift-giving ideas, but at least it had been better than presenting me with another actual sailboat. One was enough. The book itself was really dry—I hadn’t made it past the first chapter—but it did make a handy coaster on my nightstand. It had a diagram on the back cover showing the different parts of a sailboat. I chewed on my lip while I tried to remember what was underneath the boat.

  “Checking the what?” Liam asked.

  “Um…the running rigging,” I said, hoping I had guessed right.

  “Do you mean the thru-hulls? Or maybe the sacrificial zinc?” Liam asked.

  I climbed out from underneath the boat. I tried to visualize the back of the book again, but drew a blank. I didn’t have a clue what a sacrificial zinc was, but thru-hulls sounded vaguely familiar. “Um, yeah, the thru-hulls. That’s what I said.”

  “No, you said ‘running rigging.’” He pointed upward. “Those are the lines you use with your sails.”

  “Don’t be silly. I know that. Everyone knows that.” I made a mental note to do a bit more studying up on sailboats going forward.

  Liam looked at me with a bemused expression on his face while he tapped his phone against his leg.

  “Hey, can I borrow your phone?” I asked.

  “My phone? Why?”

  “I need to call Scooter. You don’t mind, do you? I left mine at home.”

  He handed me his phone reluctantly.

  “Let me guess,” I said. “Is the password ‘YODA’ by any chance?”

  “What?” He snatched the phone back. “Give me that.” After punching in a few numbers, he handed it back.

  I clicked the text icon and scrolled through his past messages. Sure enough, there was the one he’d sent to Ken. There was also a very naughty one to a female friend. Then I saw an interesting series of old messages from Darren.

  Found a sweet fishing spot

  They’re biting! Gonna be a good haul!

  Crap! Patrol boat!

  Dumped overboard b4 they boarded

  “I thought you were making a call?” Liam said.

  “No, I said I was going to text him,” I said, quickly closing the incriminating texts. “You might want to get your hearing checked. I said ‘thru-hulls’ before, and you heard ‘running rigging.’ A minute ago, I said ‘text’ and you heard ‘call.’” I pointed at my ears. “Do you go to a lot of loud concerts? That can destroy your hearing.”

  “Can you just hurry up?”

  I looked at Liam’s sunburned arms. “You probably should start wearing sunscreen more often too.” I punched in Scooter’s number and reminded him to get extra tartar sauce when he picked up our fish-and-chips.

  Liam seemed confused. “But you just called him, not texted him.”

  I tapped my ears. “Really, go see the doctor. I said I was going to call him. Why would I text him? What if he texted back after I gave you back your phone?”

  The young guy looked like he needed to sit down and take a few minutes to process everything.

  “Hey, speaking of Scooter, he said you guys chatted about the game the other day.”

  He nodded and rubbed his temples.

  “So that’s your alibi for the night Darren was murdered, right? Watching a game? Watching it all by yourself?”

  He looked at me sharply. “You ask a lot of questions, don’t you?”

  “It’s called making conversation. So you said you watched the game at home, right? Where’s that?”

  “I’m staying with my uncle and Suzanne.”

  “Oh yeah, that’s right. But you’re a young guy. How come you don’t have your own place?” I pointed over at his car. “If you can afford that, I bet you could afford a nice apartment. In fact, I bet Suzanne could fix you up with a sweet one.”

  “Believe me, she’s tried,” he said. “She keeps saying how cramped it is at their house, and goes on and on about the fact that her precious son doesn’t have any place to stay when he comes to visit because I’m there. Not that he would ever come to visit. He can barely stand that witch either.”

  “She told me that she wants Xander to come back and take over your uncle’s business.”

  “He’s welcome to it.”

  “Really? I thought you liked working for him.”

  “No way! The man’s a tyrant. Always telling me what to do and giving me the crap jobs. He doesn’t want to get his hands dirty, but he doesn’t mind if I do.”

  I carefully considered my next question. While I knew that Liam was mixed up in something, I wasn’t sure if it was just poaching or if it was something more deadly. I felt safe enough talking to him in the middle of the day in a crowded boatyard, but the snippets of his conversation with Norm were causing knots in my stomach.

  “So, what do you mean by getting your hands dirty?” I asked tentatively.

  He clenched his fists and stared at me. “Working on boat projects. Cleaning fish. That kind of thing.”

  I laughed nervo
usly. “I know exactly what you mean. Just look at me. I’m covered in dirt and paint dust and who knows what else. I guess I get stuck with the dirty jobs too.”

  Liam’s posture relaxed. “Yeah, how come Scooter isn’t helping you?”

  “Good question. I’ll be sure to ask him.” I put my goggles back on, secured my Smurf suit, and got back to sanding. While Marjorie Jane’s old blue paint slowly came off, I thought about what other “dirty jobs” Liam was involved in. I was pretty sure there was more to it than just gutting fish and fixing Norm’s boat.

  * * *

  “I want to thank all of you for coming to the first in a series of lectures on alien abduction,” I said. “Tonight, I’m going to talk to you about the checklist we use to identify individuals who may have—”

  “Ahem. Mrs. McGhie?” I turned and saw Chief Dalton standing in the doorway.

  “May I interrupt your…” He stroked his chin. “Your performance for a minute?”

  I had given up on sanding the boat and had escaped to the air-conditioned lounge at the marina to rehearse. I felt my face grow warm. Rehearsing in front of a cat was one thing, but having the chief overhear me was another.

  “Uh, sure. I was just practicing my speech for the FAROUT meeting tonight.”

  The burly man raised one of his bushy eyebrows. “FAROUT? Is that the little club you belong to? We had something like that when I was a boy. The meetings took place in our tree house. There was even a secret handshake.”

  My face grew warmer, but this time it was due to anger, not embarrassment. I was tired of everyone mocking what I did. “It isn’t a club. It’s a nonprofit organization. We even have an accountant.”

  He raised his other eyebrow. “Oh, an accountant,” he said dryly.

  “Listen, if it wasn’t for the work we do, your phone would be ringing off the hook.”

  “Is that right?”

  “If people want to report alien activities, they can call the FAROUT hotline. We take their calls seriously. When they contact the police, they just get mocked.”

  “No one in our department would mock anyone, no matter why they were calling,” the chief said.

  “Are you sure about that?” I asked. “When’s the last time anyone reported an alien abduction or UFO sighting?”

  The chief scratched his head. “Well, I’m not sure. I don’t recall seeing anything like that in the monthly reports.”

  “That’s because people are too afraid to contact you. Either you’ll make fun of them, or worse, you’ll bully them.”

  “Hey, hang on there, Mrs. McGhie. We certainly don’t bully people.”

  “Oh yeah? How do you explain your treatment of Melvin Rolle the other day? The man is grieving. First, he lost his wife, then his nephew, and all you could do was grill him as though he was a suspect.”

  Chief Dalton furrowed his brow. “How would you know if he’s a suspect or not? That kind of information is confidential.”

  “Because he’s not on my suspect list, that’s why!”

  Both his eyebrows shot up. “Your suspect list?”

  I pulled out my notebook, opened it, and held it up to him. “See, there it is. Now why don’t you have a seat, and I’ll take you through it.”

  The chief smiled. “Why not? I could use a break. This should be entertaining.”

  As he was lowering himself onto one of the armchairs, Mrs. Moto growled.

  “That’s her spot,” I said. “Come on, Chief, you know the rules when it comes to cats. They get first dibs on all the comfortable spots. You can tell which ones they like by all the hair they leave behind.” I pointed at the couch. “Why don’t you sit there instead?”

  While he eyed Mrs. Moto warily, I sat on a chair opposite him.

  “Well, first on the list are Ken and Leilani Choi. They were on their catamaran when the murder took place. He told me that they had the AC running, and the TV was blaring, and that they couldn’t hear anything that took place outside over all that noise.”

  I tapped my pen on my notebook. “On the face of it, their alibi seems solid. They can both vouch for each other. Of course, Leilani couldn’t have done it with her broken arm. I would think you would need two hands to lift the paint can up in the air and hit someone on the head with it. But there’s something about Ken that makes me wonder.”

  “Such as?” the chief asked.

  “Well, on the day of the murder, I saw him and Darren arguing in the boatyard. Then this morning, I saw a number of texts on Ken’s phone threatening to expose him as a fraud. Most of them were from Darren, but there was also one that Liam had sent.”

  “Dr. Choi showed them to you?”

  “Well, not exactly.” There went those eyebrows again. “Look, it was an accident. I thought it was Scooter’s phone when I picked it up. But then there were all these pictures of turtles. Totally not what I expected.”

  “What were you expecting?”

  “Smurf photos.”

  “Smurfs?”

  “You know, the little blue people.”

  “Are they any relation to the little green men that you’re so fond of?”

  I sighed. “Can we just get back to the topic at hand?”

  “Why not?” he said. “Let me try to recap. You took Dr. Choi’s phone without his permission. You looked at his pictures and you read his texts, again without his permission.”

  “You’re forgetting the most important thing here.”

  “No Smurfs?”

  I threw my hands up in the air. “No, the threatening texts!”

  Mrs. Moto jumped onto the back of the couch and sniffed the side of the chief’s face. She pressed her paw on his cheek and meowed loudly before bounding back to her chair.

  “See, she’s trying to tell you to pay attention.” I flipped over a page in my notebook. “Let’s just continue, shall we?”

  “By all means.”

  “We should probably talk about the other texts.”

  “Wait, there were more on Dr. Choi’s phone?”

  “No, Liam’s phone.”

  “Did you accidentally borrow his too?”

  “No, he loaned it to me. He was standing right there when I read the texts.”

  The chief furrowed his brow. “He knew you were reading his texts?”

  “No, of course not. I think he would have been really embarrassed if he knew I saw the one he sent to a girl named Fiona.”

  “So this is about what, sexting?”

  “No, this is about poaching. Pay attention.”

  “I’m trying, but this conversation is starting to remind me of one of those telenovelas. You know, those Spanish-language soap operas with the overly dramatic, convoluted plots.”

  “You don’t strike me as the kind of guy who watches soap operas.”

  “I don’t. My ex was into them. Is there a point here?”

  “Liam and Darren were taking fish illegally. I know that’s not your department’s responsibility, but you should touch base with the Fish and Wildlife people about it.”

  “Noted.”

  “Ready to go on?”

  “Sure. This is almost better than TV, even soap operas.”

  “Next up are Norm and Suzanne Thomas. They’re another one of those husband-wife alibis. Suzanne told me that both of them were working in their office the night of the murder.”

  “I heard that you’ve listed your cottage with Mrs. Thomas.”

  “What? Where did you hear that?”

  “I’m the chief of police. I hear everything.”

  “Well, did you hear about all the fights?” I leaned forward in my chair. “Melvin and Norm appear to have a long-standing feud. They nearly got into blows on Valentine’s Day, and then they really got into it at the Tipsy Pirate on Sunday night.”

  The chief perked up. “Hmm. Go on.”

  I took a deep breath and continued. “And, of course, getting back to Norm’s nephew, Liam, he isn’t much better. He got into a fight with Darren on the night of the ba
rbecue over Alejandra Lopez. He claims he was watching a basketball game on TV that night, but I’m not sure if he has anyone to back up his alibi.”

  I scrawled a few notes down on things I wanted to follow up on. I noticed that Chief Dalton had his arms folded over his chest. “How do you keep track of all this, Chief? Don’t you have a notebook or anything?”

  The chief tapped the side of his head. “It’s all here. Carry on. This is most enlightening.”

  I leaned back in my chair. “Maybe it’s your turn to enlighten me. Did Suzanne talk to you about her charm?”

  “It would be inappropriate for me to comment on whether a woman is charming or not. Especially a married one.”

  “No, I meant the charm that fell off her bracelet.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Didn’t she call you about it?” The burly man shook his head. “We found it in the boatyard near the murder scene. I recognized it from Suzanne’s charm bracelet. I considered telling you about it, but it wasn’t in the cordoned-off area, and when I returned it to Suzanne, she said it wasn’t any big deal. She thought maybe her husband had dropped it. But she did say she’d tell you about it.”

  The chief got a small notebook out of his pocket and scribbled something down. “You said ‘we found the charm.’ Who was with you?”

  “Mrs. Moto. She’s actually the one who found it. I just returned it to Suzanne.”

  “Mrs. Moto found it?”

  “Yes, she’s a very clever cat.”

  The calico began purring loudly. The chief watched as she kneaded the cushion.

  “She also appears to be a cat in need of a collar and license,” he said.

  I looked at Mrs. Moto’s neck and put my head in my hands. “I can’t believe she’s managed to lose another one.” She rolled onto her back. I walked over, sat on the armrest, and rubbed her belly. “She doesn’t like wearing a collar. They’re too constrictive.”

  “If she’s going to be an outdoor cat, she’s going to have to learn to wear one,” he said sternly. “My two Yorkies manage to wear their collars without complaining.”

  “Maybe we just haven’t found the right one yet. She’s very particular about what they look like.”