While Andi was ministering to Sloane, Max swung the boom back out over the raft and used the line Beth attached to winch the cumbersome platform out of the water. As it hung suspended over the deck, he and Beth opened its air valves and deflated it. Finally, they folded it up and stuffed it into the big lazaret under the captain’s seat.
“No point in hanging around here,” Max said quietly to Beth and Andi. “We should be fairly close to Aruba by now. I want to drop Sloane off with the police there.”
“We ought to tie him up or lock him up in the meantime,” Beth said, her free hand resting easily on the shotgun. “He’s facing some heavy time back home.”
“I know,” he started to agree, wondering at the same time if Beth didn’t look a little too comfortable with the firearm under her hand. “But he doesn’t look particularly troublesome.” He nodded in the direction of the survivor huddled under the canvas dodger for protection, propped up against the cabin bulkhead for support.
“If we’re going to lock him up, we ought to do it before he starts to look troublesome.”
“I know.”
“Mom, can you give me a course and distance to Aruba?”
“I’ll go below and figure it out for you. In the meantime, sail south, that’s the general direction.”
“You got it. Want me to stay at the wheel?” she asked Max.
“No, I’ll take it now. Why don’t you unfurl the genny and then I’ll turn off the engine.”
Beth switched seats with Max and opened the genoa. After receiving the exact heading to Aruba from Andi, Max turned on the autopilot and turned off the diesel. He continued to sit at the wheel, though, still thinking about locking up Sloane, feeling little in the way of comfort from the rigid form of the shotgun resting within easy reach on the seat behind him, its barrel pointed toward Sloane. Beth was right, though. As long as Sloane was sitting in the cockpit, they’d have to keep one eye on him.
He got up, motioned for Beth to get back behind the wheel, and went over to sit beside Sloane. “How are you feeling?”
Sloane looked at him wearily, still without any sign of recognition. “Better, thanks to you.”
“Leonard, do you remember me? I’m Max Swahn.”
Sloane looked at him, stared at Beth, and finally recognized them. “My eyes are so blurred from the salt and the glare that I’ve been having trouble focusing.”
“Leonard, who was on the boat with you?” Beth asked.
“Some native kid and a woman.”
“What were their names?”
“Vincent was the kid’s name. The woman was Erica Crossland. I think he drowned with Erica.”
“Erica drowned? When?”
Numbed by the shock of remembering, Sloane continued on in his disjointed fashion: “Overboard. She went overboard during the storm last night. I couldn’t look for her.”
“Why not?” Max asked.
“No engine…couldn’t start the engine…mast collapsed after the boat turned over. We were sinking.”
“But the boat didn’t sink. Why did you leave it?”
“It was sinking. I had to save myself.” His responses were rambling. Unable or unwilling to make eye contact, he was gazing out into nowhere, seeing nothing.
“Why did you leave Vincent behind?”
“I don’t know….Maybe he drowned with Erica. I must have forgotten Vincent was there….Beth, what are you doing here?”
“We were sailing to Aruba when we heard your Mayday call. Didn’t you hear our response?”
“I never heard any response….When Erica went overboard, I figured it was all over.”
“You must be very tired,” Max said. “Come below with me, now. I’m going to put you in a cabin for a while. Get some of your strength back.”
“My arm hurts.”
“I can get you a couple of aspirins,” Max offered.
“No, I have pills, but I could use some water.”
Max helped Sloane up and assisted him on his way down into the main salon, where Andi was still working at the navigation table. Max led him to the small cabin on the port side and opened the door. Sloane went inside, still clutching his yellow bag, and lay down on the bunk.
By the time Max returned with the water, Sloane was asleep, so Max used the opportunity to get a piece of rope out of an overhead locker and tie Sloane’s good arm to a grab rail. Then he closed the cabin door again, but for additional security, he jammed a bulky sail bag between the door and the head. Sloane would never get the door open. The narrow cabin had no hatch leading up to the deck, so their guest would not be coming up without assistance. By the time Sloane woke up, they’d be in Aruba.
“Why don’t you take a nap for a while?” Beth suggested to Max when he appeared topside. “I can take care of things up here.”
“Thanks, sweetie, but I’m too keyed up. I’ll stay up here. You can go below, though, if you want. Keep your mother company. I’d feel more comfortable if you were down there with her.”
“No, I’m too hyper also. She’ll be okay. I’ll stay up here with you.”
“Feeling a little drained?”
“No. Disappointed. I thought I’d feel more satisfaction after catching up with Sloane.” She shrugged. “He looks like such a zero….Abandoning ship while that kid was still on board. His girlfriend dead, the kid dead.” She shook her head slowly. “I don’t feel any sympathy for him, but I don’t feel any righteous gratification either, just disgust.”
“It’s like you don’t remember what got you so mad in the first place.”
“The chase was great, though, wasn’t it?”
“It sure was. We’d have made a great team of detectives, you, your mother, and me, tracking them to Antigua the way we did.”
“Not to mention sailing circles around them for the last four days. We’d have caught them even without the help of the storm.”
“Damn right!”
“I love you, Max. I’m glad me and Mom picked you.” She suddenly reached across to him with her arm, picked up his hand, and kissed it, holding it against her cheek before letting go.
“I love you too, baby,” he responded hoarsely, leaning over to kiss her softly on the forehead. All he could do after that was sniff and blow his nose. He abruptly went up forward to the mast and busied himself recoiling the halyards to his left-handed satisfaction.
A few minutes later, Andi stuck her head up out of the hatch, saw him standing by the mast, and asked him to come below. He went down the ladder and stood behind her at the navigation station. “What’s up?” he asked.
“See that blip?” She pointed to the radar screen.
“Isn’t that Atrophy?”
“No,” she replied, moving her finger to another blip. “That’s Atrophy. This is a new blip, very fast moving. Forty knots or more.”
“Who do you think it is?”
“It’s probably the Venezuelan Coast Guard finally heading out to Atrophy. That tanker must have forwarded on our message.”
“Maybe we can get rid of our passenger. Did you raise them on the radio?”
“No luck.”
“How can it be the Coast Guard if they’re not monitoring channel sixteen?” He stared at the radar screen, half expecting an identifying label to appear magically next to the blip.
“I guess you’re right.”
“How long before they reach Atrophy?”
“The way they’re moving? Say twenty minutes, a half hour at most.”
“Where are you going to be?”
“I’m going to stay down here and read for a while.”
“With Sloane? I’m not thrilled by that.”
“He can’t open his door with that sail bag wedged in. Anyhow, I’m comfortable stretched out on the settee. If his cabin door moves, I promise I’ll yell.”
“Keep an eye on the radar screen too. Let me know when that boat reaches Atrophy and what direction they take after they leave her.”
“I’ll watch them as long as they
stay on the screen. Atrophy is almost off it already. We’re too far away.”
“If that boat is heading for Atrophy and then comes looking for us, how long before they get to us?”
“Hang on a second.” Andi turned to her laptop and made a series of calculations before turning back to Max. “Figuring their average speed at forty knots and ours at 8.5 knots, I’d say we have at least an hour and a half. That’s without counting any time they spend nosing around Atrophy.”
“Okay. You stay down here and relax, then. Sloane is fast asleep and I tied up his good arm. I’m going back up topside with Beth.”
The brilliant sunlight streaming through the disappearing clouds signaled the final exit of the storm. Max stretched out on the cockpit bench across from Beth, who had already assumed a similar position, complete with eyes shut tight. “You sleeping?” he asked, doubling over one of Andi’s sweatshirts into a comfortable pillow behind his head.
“No. I’m thinking.”
“About what?”
“Whether or not I have any future with Bob.”
“Well, if you want to pursue the relationship, honesty is certainly the risk you’re going to have to take. It’s going to be even tougher if you have to testify against his father in a criminal prosecution.”
“I know. I guess there’s nothing I can do about it but tell him the truth and accept his decision.”
“You’re going to have to deal with Clifford also.”
“I know that too.”
“Was catching Sloane worth it?”
“Absolutely!” she replied emphatically. “I’d have risked anything to get him, but now that we’ve caught him, I’m feeling a letdown. How did such a pitiful creature engineer this whole thing? Did you speak to him about the money?”
“No. He was nearly incoherent when I took him below. Anyhow, that’s a problem for the police.”
“I know, but let’s ask him anyway.”
“Works for me.”
“If I’ve learned anything from all this, it’s that rules and fairness don’t count for squat in the real world.”
“I’m not sure I agree with that, and I don’t think you really do either. I think the rules were there. They were just different rules you hadn’t learned yet.”
“You mean if I’d been more experienced, I’d have seen through Len’s scam?”
There was no response from Max other than the sound of his heavy, peaceful breathing. Beth didn’t hear him start snoring because by that time she had also dropped off to sleep. The sun, their lack of sleep, and the easy sailing motion of the broad reach had achieved its effect.
Andi found them asleep on deck when she stopped reading and came topside an hour later. “Max, are you awake?” she asked, shaking him gently. “That blip on the screen. It’s heading our way.”
“I’m awake,” he said. “I was just resting my eyes for a minute. Is it the same boat as before?”
“I think so, but it’s moving faster than before. Almost fifty knots.”
“How soon before it gets here?” Beth asked, rubbing her eyes and sitting up.
“I figure about twenty minutes.”
“What’s their relative bearing?”
“They’ll be coming in right behind us, slightly off to starboard. You should be able to see them soon.”
“I’m going to go below, Dad.” She stood up and walked over to the hatch. “I want to talk to Sloane before we turn him over to the Coast Guard.”
“I’ll go with you,” he replied, following her down into the cabin. Beth took the small microcassette recorder out of the plastic bag in the liquor locker, turned it on, and stuck it into the pocket of her shorts.
Max removed the sail bag he had stuffed into the passageway and opened the door to Sloane’s cabin. Sloane was lying on his back, his eyes wide open, staring at the small patch of sky visible out the porthole. “Do you feel better?” Max asked him, untying his arm so he could take some water.
“It doesn’t make any difference,” he answered. “I heard what you were talking about up on the deck. The Coast Guard will be here in a few minutes.”
“What happened to the money?” Beth asked him.
For the first time since his rescue, a look of total comprehension crossed his face. “I guess seeing you at the Admiral’s Inn last week wasn’t such a coincidence.”
“You could have had me disbarred with that scam.”
“We had planned it for years. We were only waiting for the opportunity. If it wasn’t Jasco, it would have been something else.”
“How did you move the money?”
“With Erica’s connections, we had it wired in and out of eight banks around the world so fast it was totally untraceable and converted into triple-A bearer bonds within four days.”
“Where is it now?”
Len was silent for a moment, reluctant to give up the last vestige of his scheme. “That could be a problem,” he finally answered.
“How so?” Beth asked.
“It’s in a bank safe-deposit box, but it takes three keys to open it and Erica had one of them on her when she fell overboard. The president of the bank has a key and I have the third one here.” He reached up and removed the necklace from around his neck and handed it to Beth. “Here. You keep it. The chain is eighteen-karat gold.”
“I’ll turn it over to the Coast Guard.” She put the chain into her pocket.
“Don’t be silly. Turn over the key but keep the chain. It cost me over twelve thousand dollars. Consider it a gift for saving my life.”
Beth ignored the gesture and continued, “Did you convert it all into bearer bonds?”
“The whole seventy million except for five hundred thousand in cash we kept for living expenses. Erica had that in a money belt she was wearing.”
“So where’s the bank?”
“Forget it. I’m saving that one for plea bargaining.”
“Where were you guys planning to live happily ever after?”
“New Zealand. A couple of years ago, I bought a house in Auckland with money I borrowed from Leung. Erica and I planned to live there. We bribed a clerk on Antigua to issue us phony passports.”
“You took other money from Leung before Jasco?”
“He never missed it.”
“Tell me something. If you were headed for New Zealand, why not just fly there?”
“I planned to, but then things started going bad between me and Erica, so I kept postponing the flight in case I decided to break up with her.”
“Did she know that?”
“No. I just told her we had to sell the boat and the house on Antigua first. When I saw you at the inn last week, we had just taken a deposit to sell both to a French doctor. Then I spotted one of Leung’s brothers out at the airport, so Erica insisted we sail to Panama and fly to Auckland from there.”
“You saw one of Leung’s brothers out at the airport? Which one?”
“I forget his name.”
“What was he doing there?”
“Same thing as you, I guess.”
“What about that phony Mayday you pulled in Puerto Rico?” Max asked.
“It was the perfect way to fake our disappearance.” Whether from simple fatigue or complex amorality, he showed no remorse at all.
“How did you do it?”
Sloane, proud of the achievement and feeling more alert, was eager to provide the details. “On paper it was easy. Doing it was the tricky part.”
“I know you chartered Sindicator under a phony name and chartered Satin Lady under your real name. What happened then?”
“After a few days on Satin Lady, I sabotaged her engines, and while she was laid up for repairs, Erica and I flew to Guadeloupe, picked up Sindicator, and sailed her to St. Croix. Then we went back to Satin Lady, got rid of the captain, and headed for St. Croix.”
“And scuttled Satin Lady?”
“Exactly, and broadcast the Mayday from Sindicator.”
“What then? You changed he
r name to Atrophy and removed her mizzen to disguise her as a sloop?”
“Right!”
“But why did you store the mast at your house? That’s what finally led us to you.”
“Son of a bitch!” he exclaimed. “Erica couldn’t bear to dump the damn mast overboard. Figured one day she’d restore the ketch….And then she started screwing around with Vincent.”
“Who was Vincent?” Beth interrupted.
“Some kid she hired to work on the boat.”
“Did you chain him up?”
“Erica did it to punish him.”
“But how could you abandon ship and leave him on board? He’s dead, you know, and you’re responsible for his death.”
“We were sinking. I had to get off. I didn’t know he was in the forward cabin. I thought he washed overboard with Erica.”
Their conversation was interrupted by Andi’s presence at the cabin door. “Max, Beth…,” she said, “I need you. Can you come topside?”
Without another word, they quickly left Sloane in the cabin, closing the door behind him. Beth jammed the bulky sail bag back in place and followed Max and Andi up the ladder, remembering to turn off the tape recorder still running in her pocket. Andi handed Max the binoculars and pointed off in the distance. Although still too far away to identify, the wake of a fast-moving speedboat pounding through the heavy seas was unmistakable.
“I can’t identify it,” Beth said. “It’s heading toward us bow on. I can’t see any markings.”
“It’s too fast and too low for a Coast Guard boat,” Max said, his eyes glued to the glasses.
“I should go below and keep trying to raise the Coast Guard,” Andi suggested, moving to the companionway.
“Good idea.” He reached for the throttle control on the pedestal, pumped it once, and then leaned down to turn the key for the diesel. As soon as the engine started and was running smoothly, he moved the throttle back to its idling position, leaving the transmission in neutral. “We’ll continue sailing on our course,” he said to Beth, “but I want the engine warm and running.”
Noble Chase Page 23
