Mercury Rising (Tin Can Mysteries Book 1)

by Jerusha Jones

  I estimated an hour to enjoy the meal. If he was a gentleman, perhaps Norman would help with the dishes, occupying another half hour. So that put the financial discussion at seven-thirty—right around sunset. Perfect.

  It was warm enough; I just had to hope that Bettina would have some of her windows open. It’d be disastrous to my plans if they sat out on the deck to talk, but I was counting on the perpetual river breeze to prompt them to stay inside since they’d probably be looking over a lot of papers.

  I got everything ready: kayak, life jacket, paddle, binoculars, miniature digital audio recorder I still had from my college days, fresh batteries for the recorder, and my house key attached to a little block of foam on a chain around my neck. Check, check, check. I couldn’t approach on the floating walkways since they were reverberating soundboards, announcing the arrival of all interlopers well in advance, so my only option was to sidle up next to Bettina’s house by water.

  I was sorely tempted to request Willow’s assistance since my kayak-handling skills weren’t up to par yet. But the kid deserved a Friday night without adult worries.

  Even though my preparations reminded me of one of my favorite childhood books, Harriet the Spy, I had only a hint of vague uneasiness about what I was planning to do. And those misgivings were completely put to rest when I justified the operation by telling myself that I was doing it for Vaughn. I was certain he would want to make sure his mother was okay, and since he was so busy…and since he wasn’t supposed to have learned about Bettina’s latest heartthrob, at least not from me, given the sworn-to-secrecy thing…well, it was my unadulterated responsibility to scope out Norman, right?

  Right. Yes, absolutely. I wound my hair into a low, floppy bun and pulled a brimmed cap down low over my eyes. Just another random kayaker, out enjoying nature.

  Reflections from the walkway lampposts were squiggling in serpentine lines across the river’s surface, and the first few stars were winking in the east. The high berm on the river’s west side made sunset come just a few minutes earlier—minutes I put to use by tipping the kayak into the water, settling my long legs and fanny into the cockpit, and making myself comfortable. I had no idea how long I’d need to hang around under Bettina’s windows, and I couldn’t afford to have a muscle cramp cut my spying session short.

  I wedged the audio recorder—safely encased in a Ziploc plastic bag—between my legs for easy access and zipped my life jacket up to my chin. Then I grabbed my paddle off the dock and released my line. Away!

  It was so easy. Too easy, almost. I practiced dipping my paddle as quietly as possible—no flicks, splooshes, or weird cupping bubble sounds. Nice and easy. And slow. No rush.

  Bettina’s house was on the end of the E row on the far north side of the marina. So basically in line with my house, but I would have to cross the intervening B, C, and D rows. But the marina was blessedly quiet. The residents seemed to be either out for the evening or already settled inside for the night. No loud talking, smells of barbecue grills, clinks of glasses being refilled, or the putter of small engines returning from a day of exploring. Pretty unusual for a Friday night, but I’m in the habit of taking good luck when it comes around.

  Bettina’s house was lit up like the Fourth of July. All the windows and the sliding glass door to her deck glowed cheerily, and she had strings of colored lights strung all over her deck on the river side. My good luck continued in that most of her windows were open. Plus, her wind chimes were clanking dissonantly and steadily. I no longer had to worry about how much noise I might be making.

  While the wind chimes provided terrific cover, they also made it impossible to hear any snips of conversation through the open windows. I couldn’t even tell which room Bettina and her guest were in.

  I slowly paddled around the three sides of the house that I could reach by water, ducking down when I crossed in front of a window. The kitchen window was too high to see into from my vantage point, except to know that they’d at least finished washing up at the sink. The dining room had no human occupants, but there was a large vase of African daisies centered on the table. I wondered if they’d been a gift from Norman.

  Through the sliding glass door, I could see half the couch, half the coffee table and one recliner in Bettina’s living room. All empty. The living room’s large picture window revealed the other half of the couch and a second recliner. Again, no people.

  I maneuvered the kayak around the corner and alongside the narrow strip that served as Bettina’s front porch. That door was closed, and the louvers on the shutters that covered the accompanying window were angled in such a way that I couldn’t see inside from down at water level.

  Craning my neck, I could just peer down the land side of Bettina’s house, and noted that the light in the bathroom was on. They couldn’t both be in there, could they? Or maybe Norman had bailed early—that would be a relief. Or he’d gotten sick. Or Bettina had taken my advice and pretended to fall ill herself. All excellent possible outcomes.

  I swung the kayak around, intending to make a second tour before calling it a night. The bedroom was on the far corner, and in the name of due diligence, I did need to try to get a peek in that window as well before my conscience could be considered clear on the matter.

  Just as I was rounding the corner to the long, river-facing side of Bettina’s house, the sliding door opened, and a tall man dressed in jeans and a pale-blue polo shirt stepped out onto the deck. I gasped and collapsed in half, face planted into my knees, the shaft of the paddle digging into my waist. The only possible way I could go without being seen was to become suddenly much, much smaller. Without guidance, my kayak started bobbing like a lost cork and bumping into the edge of the deck. I blindly stretched out a hand and tried to shove off—gently, not hard enough to attract attention.

  And that’s when the rest of the massive wake hit me. I’d seen the tug go by, pushing a flotilla of four barges, but that had been, what, twenty minutes ago? Fifteen? Ten? I’d completely forgotten about the delayed reaction of wakes and of how big they were when that much tonnage was moving through the water.

  I tipped over in an instant. One moment, excruciatingly uncomfortable but dry; the next, cold, soaked through, and tangled up in my equipment, with gritty water in my mouth. The life jacket thrust me to the surface and forced an awkwardly angled list to all my movements.

  No splashing, the eerie, woodenly calm, and practical voice in my head demanded. She sounded like a robot, this girl who took charge, but at least she wasn’t talking out loud. She couldn’t, because I had the zippered edge of the plastic bag containing the audio recorder clenched in my teeth. I must have made a reflexive movement to shove it there—to free my hands for treading water and to save my old college backup device which wasn’t worth more than the batteries inside it at this point.

  Terrific. I clung to a slender baluster—part of the railing that bordered Bettina’s deck—and took further stock.

  No paddle—it was completely gone. My kayak was riding the wake in toward shore—a dark blob on the dark surface of the water about twenty feet away.

  “It’s a limited time offer, darling,” Norman said. “I can only guarantee returns greater than twenty percent to those who invest within the next month. You know how it is. These things go up and down, but right now they’re going up.”

  Now that I was in the water, my head was below the level of the deck. I couldn’t see them. If they had cared to look toward the sound of a hastily stifled splutter through clenched teeth, they would have seen four white fingers wrapped around a railing support post.

  Bettina’s answer was short and muffled. But there were thumps and then light tinkling sounds as though someone was swirling a teaspoon around inside a fine china teacup. The noise could have come from a wind chime—but it would have been a well-mannered and proper wind chime, which didn’t really match my experience with Bettina’s eclectic collection so far.

  Whatever she’d said hadn’t deterred him, becaus
e Norman carried on. “An opportunity of a lifetime, returns like this. And you can rest assured the fund is under good management. Any profits in excess of twenty percent will be reinvested, so you end up earning twenty percent of a growing pie. The bigger the pie, the bigger the slices, better for everyone.”

  Better for everyone, my ass—not to put too fine a point on it. Rats, rats, rats. My options at the moment were rather limited, and my body was quickly stiffening, turning into leaden, immobile weight. Whatever the air temperature was, the river felt at least thirty degrees colder.

  “Well, it’s certainly appealing,” Bettina piped. “A chain of restaurants, you said? Aren’t those kind of hit or miss?”

  “Not these,” Norman huffed. “Location is everything. Surely you’ve heard that. Location, location, location. Our restaurants will be perfectly situated in rapidly growing suburbs, where families will eat on their way home after a long day, and where they’ll spend their weekends because they don’t want to face the long drive into the city again. We’ll have a captive clientele.”

  I just about choked again, but instead I tore the bag from my teeth, pinned it against the front of my life jacket and pried it open with my free hand. I let the bag slip away as yet another piece of human-negligent litter in the river, and carefully held the recorder up out of the water while I pressed the start button.

  I slid the recorder behind the baluster closest to the wall of Bettina’s house and propped it against the cedar shake siding. Just a small black box deep in the shadows. It would run until the batteries wore out, and I would have to figure out a way to retrieve it later.

  I can swim. But it would be a long distance, in the dark, in a frigid and dirty river. Besides, I was shivering so hard, I didn’t have full control of my limbs.

  Bettina and Norman were still talking. Well, Norman was talking, and Bettina was making encouraging sounds at appropriate intervals.

  My brain was too cold to listen anymore. I forced the fingers on my left hand to release the baluster, and I slowly, hand-over-hand, dragged myself along the edge of Bettina’s deck. Past her front door, and across the width of the shallow front porch below the clanging wind chimes and through the orb of light from the lantern beside her door. I couldn’t feel my fingers, my toes—all of my legs, really. Numb beyond description.

  I was having a hard time keeping my eyes open. Which is why I didn’t notice right away that someone had hold of my wrists—both of them.

  CHAPTER 14

  “I’m not spying,” I murmured. “Not really. It’s not what it looks like.” And then I was lying face-first on the walkway. Someone was swinging my lower half up and out of the water too. My life jacket was a dripping heap a few feet away.

  “Shhh,” he whispered. “You’re doing fine.” Then he was taking off my sandals and rubbing my feet. “You’re going to have to walk out of here, okay? Wiggle your toes.”

  I tried. I really did. But whatever movement I was able to conjure apparently wasn’t impressive. He rubbed with renewed vigor.

  Eventually, I sat up. “Okay,” I croaked.

  “Good.” Cal grinned at me from where he was kneeling by my feet.

  Not that I wanted him to stop or anything, because the way he was pressing his thumb into my arch was heavenly, but I thought some words were in order. “How did you—” I started, but Cal held up a warning finger.

  He glanced over his shoulder at Bettina’s brightly-lit house. “Let’s get you out of here first, then we’ll talk. I think Norman’s wrapping up his spiel.”

  Cal levered me upright and wrapped a sinewy arm around my waist. As though we were playing a slow and ungainly game of Simon Says, he showed me—by feel as much as by sight—how to tread silently on the floating walkway. Which explained why he always seemed to be barefoot.

  He’d collected my sandals and life jacket in his other hand, and they made soft splatty sounds as they dripped beside us. We had to take the long route—up the E walkway, along the main linking walkway to the locked gate, through the gate, along the rest of the main walkway to the A walkway.

  “In here,” Cal murmured. “It’s better if the lights in your house don’t come on just yet. We left a big wet spot and footprints on Bettina’s walkway. She’s not the suspecting sort, but Norman could be.” He guided me to secure footing on the deck of his sailboat and opened the cabin door, which was just as silent as he was. The man must keep a fifty-gallon drum of WD-40 onboard.

  He put a hand on the top of my head to show me how low to duck, and I scrabbled over the threshold and collapsed on something soft and cushiony inside. I could feel Cal moving about in the darkness behind me and the air pressure change when he closed the cabin door. Then a match flared, illuminating his face while he lit an old-fashioned oil lamp.

  “Open flame,” I murmured.

  “In the hands of a responsible person and owner of this boat.” Cal emitted a subdued chuckle at his minor infraction of the marina rules. “They’re technically illegal, all Roxy’s precautions. I’m in my own domain here, not on marina property. I guess if I want to burn my own boat to the waterline, I can, as long as I don’t let the fire spread.”

  “Hard to do, tied in a slip surrounded by wooden walkways.”

  “It won’t happen. The lumens are lower with this kind of light. Less risk of it being seen through possible cracks in the shades.”

  I didn’t have the gumption to argue. Cal certainly seemed to know what he was doing. He plugged in an electric tea kettle and rummaged in a cupboard while I hastily and surreptitiously tried to get my bearings in the cramped cabin.

  I was sitting on a padded bench that I suspected was capable of folding out to meet the bench on the opposite side for a bed. The curved walls were lined with railed shelves, and Cal’s sparse belongings were neatly tucked into them. Books—lots and lots of tattered paperbacks, the spines so cracked and worn that I couldn’t make out many of the titles. Several dozen hardbacks that were in similar condition, the lettering worn off the covers. A marine radio occupied one nook.

  In the galley area where Cal hunched over the minuscule sink, there was one each of the basic implements either hanging from hooks or propped on slotted shelves—tin plate and cup, fork, spoon, butter knife, steak knife, butcher knife, cutting board, bowl, can opener, sauce pan, cast iron frying pan, spatula, tongs. There was also a heavy-duty, battery-operated flashlight—so he did own more modern equipment.

  Somehow, observing Cal in his habitat reminded me of the pictures I used to see in children’s books about hobos. The ones where the raggedy man with holes in his coat and a scruffy beard held a stick propped on his shoulder with a large handkerchief tied in a bundle around all his worldly possession at the other end.

  Cal’s sailboat was his bundle, his whole life. Neat and tidy—which was a necessity in a space so small—but very, very meager. I suddenly realized I had nothing to complain about, even with my currently limited income. I probably threw away more stuff than Cal used in a year.

  He sidled into the narrow slot between the benches and handed me a steaming mug before taking a seat across from me. His own cup appeared to be the cap from an ancient thermos. One of each essential; no more.

  “I should have asked you for help.” I sipped the potent brew—some kind of herbal mint concoction that immediately opened my sinuses. “Thank you.”

  Cal tipped his head, an acknowledging gesture. “You didn’t have to ask.”

  “Were you watching the whole time?”

  “Just about. I pulled your kayak up onto the bank just north of the marina. It’ll be safe there until tomorrow.”

  “Operation disintegration,” I muttered and took another big gulp. Whatever the drink was, it was going down easy. Warmth radiated out from my core, spreading along my limbs. It was just beginning to prickle at my knees and elbows.

  “You need to work on your tradecraft,” Cal agreed. “But you got the recorder in place?”

  I nodded in wonder. He knew abo
ut that too?

  “I’m afraid you’re going to need that recording in order to convince Vaughn that Norman is a more serious problem than the others have been. I’ll swipe it off her deck tomorrow when she’s out.”

  “Wait,” I blurted. “You’ve been keeping an eye on Bettina through all of her boyfriends?”

  Cal shrugged and slurped.

  He wasn’t going to answer. I could tell by the way his blue eyes found something to examine on the shelf behind my head. So I brought up another issue that had been bothering me. “I thought you said that style of kayak is the most stable.”

  My words brought Cal’s attention back, along with a quirked smile. “But not foolproof.”

  Sensitive subject. So I switched topics. A human pinball—that’s me. “Why is your boat named Ecclesiastes?”

  Cal was unperturbed. “Have you read it?”

  “The book, you mean? In the Bible?”

  He nodded.

  “Yeah, parts, I guess. Quite quotable.”

  Cal took my empty mug and stood. He leaned over the galley counter and poured more of the tea through a strainer, and puffs of fragrant steam rose toward the ceiling. “Read the whole thing. Then we’ll talk.”

  We finished our refills without additional conversation, listening instead to the creak of the Ecclesiastes against her lines, the dull thuds of her bumpers hitting the dock finger, the sputtering hiss of the oil lamp’s flame, and the wary hoot of an owl in the wildlife refuge.

  oOo

  Things seem smaller and more manageable in daylight. The next morning while I was out on the roof deck luxuriating in the Five Tibetans, another tug rumbled past, nosing a single barge full of sawdust upriver. The resulting wake barely registered as a blip, adding a little sideways loll to my table top stretch position. I did not tumble over.

  I doubted three additional barges, as had been the case the prior evening, would make that much difference. In other words, my nighttime expedition had been profoundly ill-conceived, and I needed to get my act together. I also needed to quit putting myself in a position where other people had to rescue me.