by Janet Dawson
“It says, ‘8/17, Marvella B, Santa Cruz.’” I took the report, folded it, and stuck it into my bag. “Bobby took Ariel out fishing with the Nicky II that night. They came across a cabin cruiser called the Marvella B near Point Pinos. Ariel saw Lacy aboard. She saw something that roused her curiosity. The next afternoon she went down to Point Pinos and saw two sea lions having seizures. I’m guessing she found the paint-can label at the same location. The following weekend you gave Ariel and her friend Maggie a tour of the yard. She asked lots of questions, about paint and chemicals and a boat called the Marvella B.”
Karl furrowed his brow. “Yes, she did. We worked on that boat.” He strode past me to the outer office and pulled open one of the filing cabinets. He riffled through the file folders, pulled one out, and flipped it open. “The Marvella B. Forty-five-foot Chris-Craft. Belongs to a couple from Santa Cruz. We had it in here the second week in August, for some work on the hull.”
“When did it leave?”
“August seventeenth.” His voice was subdued. “Lacy took it to Santa Cruz under its own power.”
“If I were heading for Santa Cruz, I wouldn’t be hanging around Point Pinos in the middle of the night,” I said. “Does she always take Frank Alviso with her?”
“Frank? I think so. I’ll have to check. Why?”
“When I was here a week ago Saturday talking to Frank, he kept looking in the direction of that storeroom near the machine shop where you supposedly don’t store any paint. It was obvious Lacy didn’t want me to talk with him alone. Frank is Lacy’s partner.”
“In what?” Karl frowned, still trying to make the connection between the report I’d shown him and the fact that Lacy had sailed the Marvella B to Santa Cruz that night.
“Dumping toxic waste in the bay,” I said. “Let’s take a look at that storeroom.”
Karl turned and went back into his office, hauled out one of the desk drawers, and poked at an assortment of keys. He pulled out a ring with several labeled keys on it and shoved it into his pocket. We followed him down the stairs, out to the yard. The workers in the machine shop looked startled as he hurried past them and gestured at the door.
“Is this the one?”
“That’s it.” I stopped near the workbench where I’d talked to Frank, Mother so close behind me that she trod on my heels. I reached out to steady her.
“There’s nothing in here but spare parts, tools, and—” He stopped abruptly. The key in his hand wouldn’t go into the door. He tried it again, then stared at the label on the key.
“When was the last time you were in that storeroom?” I asked him.
“It’s been several months.” He went down on one knee and examined the door. “Goddamn it, the lock’s been changed.” He scrambled to his feet and looked around, catching sight of the two workers who had been watching with avid curiosity. “Jo, Manuel, help me break down this door.”
“Be careful,” I said. “If I’m right about what’s in there, it could be dangerous.”
Mother backed up a few feet, to the doorway of the machine shop. I looked around for something we could use as a pry bar but Karl and the other two were already attacking the door with some tool I’d never seen before. It only took them a few minutes to haul the storeroom door off its hinges.
It was empty.
No tools, no spare parts, no containers of something that might be paint, or might not. But something had been stored in here, and recently.
“Flashlight,” I said. Karl handed me one. I shone the beam on the concrete floor. Dampness glistened in the far corner. I inhaled and caught a faint scent of something chemical. It didn’t smell like paint, but I was no expert.
“Do you have any idea where Lacy is right now?” I asked Karl, turning away from the now empty storeroom.
He shook his head. “I had to go up to Moss Landing to talk to a customer. When I got back, she was gone.” He glanced at Jo and Manuel. “Either of you seen Lacy?”
“She and Frank left,” Jo said, mystified. “I couldn’t tell you when, but they were supposed to sail a boat to Half Moon Bay. That thirty-four-foot Targa. We finished working on it yesterday. They put it in the water and loaded some gear into it last night. Frank had to overhaul an engine today, so they planned to sail it tonight.”
Tonight, because Lacy needed the cover of darkness. “Did you see what they loaded into it?” I asked, trying to keep the urgency out of my voice.
“No,” Manuel said. “They did it last night after everyone left. I offered to help Frank close up. Now that I think about it, he seemed real anxious to get rid of me. And Lacy was upstairs in her office. She’s up there at all hours.”
I spun around, heading for the office. “I need a phone. And a description of that boat.”
Forty-one
“YOU’RE CRAZY, CUZ, YOU KNOW THAT?” BOBBY said. “What makes you think we can find that sailboat before the Coast Guard does? Besides, the Coasties won’t like us interfering.”
I fought down the nausea that began the minute I climbed onto the deck of the Nicky II. Now I sat on a bench in the wheelhouse, my hands gripping the edge of the chart table, as Bobby piloted the purse seiner into Monterey Bay. We were a skeleton crew this evening. And we weren’t fishing for squid. Our prey was a sailboat called the Windrunner, with Lacy Beckman and Frank Alviso its only crew.
The Nicky II rolled as it hit a swell. My stomach rolled with it. I clutched the table and stared down at the nautical chart of the bay, at the network of lines that represented its depth in fathoms. Here and there were little circles designating buoys and other symbols marking hazards. There were several more charts underneath, one for the coast and ocean south of here, toward Big Sur, others for the area west and north of Monterey Bay.
“It’s a big bay,” I said, sucking salty air from the open hatch nearby. “I figure the Coast Guard needs all the help we can give it. How much daylight do we have?”
I waved one hand in the general direction of the spectacular sunset outside. The boat was heading northwest, the curve of the peninsula on our port side. The windows of the buildings on Cannery Row and along Ocean View Drive caught the reflected glare of the setting sun, sparkling like glass palaces arrayed along the shore on the port side.
“An hour, maybe more,” Bobby said as the Nicky II chugged steadily toward Lovers’ Point, then Point Pinos beyond that.
According to the chart on the table before me, Monterey Canyon was ahead of us, plunging some ten thousand feet down to the ocean floor. Beyond that were the rougher waters of the Pacific Ocean. The bright yellow sun hung low in the blue October sky, streaking the clouds with red and orange above the water that glittered gold in the reflected light.
Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. But I was no sailor. Only the urgency of the situation could make me climb aboard a boat and face the unpleasant lurching of my stomach. Soon the sun would slip from sight behind the marine layer of fog forming a hazy line along the horizon. Day would plunge into night and the water and sky would be indistinguishable from one another.
“Lacy and Frank will dump that cargo as soon as it gets dark,” I said. “Then she’ll head for Half Moon Bay. Even if the Coast Guard catches up with her, there won’t be any evidence aboard that sailboat. Besides—”
I didn’t finish the sentence. The boat rolled again and I held my breath.
“Besides what?” Bobby said with a sidelong glance.
I released the breath I held and took another. “I’ll tell you later.”
Bobby looked exasperated as well as doubtful. “Good thing one of the guys at the marina saw the Windrunner leave the boatyard, or we wouldn’t even know when they set out. But they’ve got at least an hour’s start on us.”
“I know that. But they’re in a sailboat. We can outrun them in this. I hope,” I added, looking at my cousin for confirmation.
“Hell, yes. Running empty at full bore I can do eight knots,” Bobby said, looking out at the bow. “That Targa can do seven
or eight knots in ideal conditions. But the bay’s not ideal. They’re probably making six knots. Damned lucky they aren’t in some cabin cruiser with more horsepower.”
The luck of the draw, I thought. Lacy’s choice of vessel was dictated by which boats in the yard she’d contracted to transport. In this case, it was a thirty-four-foot sailboat with a center cabin.
“We gotta find them first,” Bobby continued. “The sonar’s good for three hundred, four hundred yards.” He shook his head, still doubtful. “Lacy’s a good sailor, Jeri. And so’s Frank, for all he’s a creep. They’ll be listening to the radio. They’ll know the Coast Guard’s looking for them.”
“But they won’t know we are, if we use the radio the way we planned.”
Knowing they were the object of a Coast Guard search might cause the two people sailing the Windrunner to make a mistake. Perhaps they’d make a run for it. Or they’d play cat and mouse with the cutter. Either way, though, they’d dump their cargo as soon as it got dark, poisoning the ocean with those solvents.
I glanced at the radio, its crackling lifeline an ally in our search. We could hear the Coast Guard cutter, and other vessels as well. If someone out there spotted the Windrunner, the Nicky II could set an intercept course.
We also had backup. Sal Ravella and his sons Joe and Leo were readying the Bellissima, planning to follow us out into the bay. All the Ravellas could communicate in Italian, but according to Bobby, Frank Alviso didn’t speak or understand the language. I hoped Lacy Beckman couldn’t either. We also planned to couch our radio communications in code. The Windrunner was, for all intents and purposes, a large school of sardines.
We were certainly far better equipped to find sardines than a renegade sailboat. An array of high-tech equipment occupied the console in front of Bobby. There was a sonar to scan for fish in front of the boat, a fathometer showing what was beneath us, and a small closed-circuit television set used to monitor the engine room below.
The radio crackled. I heard an exchange of voices between the Coast Guard cutter and another vessel. “What was that?”
“Coast Guard has both its patrol boats out in the bay,” Bobby said. “The cutter is farther out in the shipping lanes. They were just talking to a container ship. Nobody’s seen our fish so far. The wind’s picked up. I think we may get some weather.”
“Wonderful,” I said grimly. “That will make the boat rock even more.”
“I made some coffee.” Donna climbed the ladder to the wheelhouse from the galley below. In one hand she carried a big ceramic mug that she handed to Bobby. “Good lord, Jeri, you should see your face. It’s as green as this mug.”
“Thank you for that observation.” I tried not to think about my seasickness, focusing instead on the rapid succession of events that had brought the three of us aboard the Nicky II.
Lacy Beckman’s plan was simple and straightforward, repeating a pattern she’d used several times over the summer. She would sail the Windrunner to Half Moon Bay and pick up another boat that Beckman Boat Works had contracted to repair. That was what she’d done back in August, when Ariel and Bobby had seen her aboard the Marvella B. On paper she was merely taking that boat to Santa Cruz, where she picked up another to sail back to Monterey.
But somewhere below the deck of the Marvella B she carried a cargo of solvents concealed in paint cans, ready to dump overboard as soon as it got dark. Lacy had made a mistake that night, by jettisoning the cargo too close to shore, too soon after her encounter with the Nicky II. She’d been seen by Ariel Logan, and Ariel was curious about Lacy’s behavior. Even more curious the next day, when she saw the sea lions off Point Pinos. Apparently one of those paint cans smashed against some rocks and leaked its deadly contents, poisoning the creatures. Ariel had linked one image with the other.
Karl Beckman had difficulty believing this when I told him. I’d been in a rush, explaining between phone calls, finally telling him to go through his records and list the dates Lacy moved boats from one place to another. The Coast Guard duty officer sounded dubious, too, when I detailed what was still a theory, without much evidence to back it up. But I’d managed to convince him that something was up, and the cutter was out looking for the Windrunner, as were the two smaller patrol boats based in Monterey.
I was lucky to find Eric Lopez at his office. By now the county environmental health and safety specialist was at Beckman Boat Works, taking a sample from the glistening traces of liquid left on the concrete floor of the storeroom.
I tried to reach Sergeant Magruder but the sheriff’s office said he’d been called out to the scene of a double homicide east of Chualar. I left a message, then called Bobby and Donna, catching both of them at home. Leaving Mother and Karl at Beckman Boat Works, I headed for Wharf Two. By then Bobby had put his ear to the fishermen’s grapevine, gleaning the information that the Windrunner had set out an hour before, under power rather than sail.
Normally the Nicky II had a crew of eight, but this wasn’t a normal voyage. This evening we were in pursuit. All we needed was someone to steer the boat and someone to cast off the lines. Bobby had the first duty and Donna took care of the second. My role was to figure out what Lacy Beckman was going to do next, but at the moment I was trying not to throw up.
The radio came to life with several voices in English, as two vessels communicated with the Coast Guard cutter. Bobby listened intently, then told us the first transmission came from a salmon boat out of Moss Landing, now in the waters off Davenport. The second was a party boat, hired to take customers out fishing. They were somewhere in the bay between us and Santa Cruz. The party boat may have seen the Windrunner.
“Hand me those charts,” Bobby ordered.
Donna grabbed the charts off the table and spread them on the console where Bobby could look at them. Then the radio spoke again, this time a rush of Italian. Bobby reached for the mike and replied. The Bellissima was now patrolling with us. So was another boat from the Monterey fleet, the Guiliana.
“Another purse seiner. The skipper’s a friend of mine, a paisan,” Bobby said as he translated the conversation for Donna and me.
“Busy out here,” I said, looking out at the brilliantly colored horizon, watching daylight slip inexorably into the sea.
“It is. A lot of traffic moves up and down the coast at night. And when the fishing boats go out, it gets downright crowded.” Bobby turned the wheel, changing the Nicky II’s heading. “So cuz, assuming we do find the Windrunner. What are we gonna do then?”
“I haven’t figured that one out yet,” I admitted.
The Nicky II hit a trough and bucked like a rodeo bronc. I grabbed the chart table and clamped my mouth shut.
“Come on down to the galley,” Donna said, grabbing my arm. “Maybe you’ll feel better. At least you’ll be closer to the toilet.”
I followed her down the ladder to the galley, a roomy and comfortable space, with a general air of musty male untidiness. At the bottom of the ladder I’d just descended was a hatch and another ladder leading down to the noisy room where diesel engines powered the Nicky II and everything on it
I stepped past this hatch and steadied myself, left hand on the edge of the large square table. Its wooden surface was scratched and scarred and it was surrounded on three sides by padded benches. Above the table, built into the woodwork, were a TV and VCR, the latter with a couple of videotapes stuck into the space next to it. Stacked on one end of the table I saw several board games, a deck of cards, and some books and magazines. All these diversions occupied the crew on those nights when they had to travel several hours to get to the fishing grounds.
There were two bunkrooms, off the galley and under the wheelhouse, each with three berths, spread with blankets and sleeping bags. Toward the stern, where a door led out to the lower deck of the boat, was a small head. It contained a toilet and a shower, though at the moment the shower was occupied by several lengths of pipe and hose.
The Nicky II had a kitchen with a refrigerator
, a four-burner stove, a microwave, and a coffeemaker. The stove had bars welded around the edges, to hold pots on the burners while the boat was under way. The stove could have used a good wipe-down and there were dirty dishes in the sink. Visible on one of the shelves above the counter were several boxes, most of them containing cereal. The one that didn’t, according to its label, held sea-lion bombs, the small explosive devices used to scare the creatures away from the boat’s catch.
Donna poured me a cup of strong black coffee. “Here. I hope this settles your stomach. Or maybe it will clean it out.”
I took the mug from her, sipped the brew, and gave her a crooked smile. “Too early to tell.”
“You didn’t have to come with us.”
“Of course I did. I have to get some answers from Lacy Beckman. If the Coast Guard gets to her first, I may not have the chance.”
The boat rolled and I groped my way unsteadily toward one of the benches at the table. Donna remained standing. She had better sea legs than I did. She poured herself some coffee and looked at me with troubled blue eyes.
“You don’t have this all put together, do you?”
“Not as much as I’d like. I’ve got lots of hunches, though.” I reached for my handbag, which I’d discarded earlier on the bench. I pulled out my notebook and flipped through the pages.
“Lacy Beckman started transporting boats from one marina to another in June, according to Karl, who thought it was a good idea to bring in some additional income. But it looks like she’s doing more than simply moving boats from one place to another. If she’s dumping toxics in the ocean she’s making a hell of a lot of money. Then we have Frank Alviso. Bobby fired Frank at the end of June and he went to work for the Beckmans. Frank’s definitely the kind of guy who holds a grudge.”
“Why are the dates important?” Donna asked.
“Timing. And those pelican mutilations that you and the SPCA are so concerned about.” I tapped the page where I’d made notes.
