On Fire

by Carla Neggers

  He was perched on a stool, close to the door. “You listen, Straker. Then you leave me alone and let me do what I have to do.”

  Straker glanced at the old man. He had on his khakis and black Henley, no obvious place for his .38. “You’re turning the lobstermen around here into accessories.”

  “Sam brought up the Encounter’s engine two weeks ago,” Emile said, ignoring his last comment. “Matthew Granger funded him. In secret.”

  “Your granddaughters figured as much. Have you talked to Granger?”

  “No. I don’t know if Sam even told him he had the engine. Sam had his own agenda. If it tied in with Granger’s, fine. If not—” Emile shrugged his stringy shoulders. “Tough.”

  Straker thought a moment. The air was damp, smelled of bad food and dirty socks. Blankets and a pillow were tangled up on a small air mattress in the opposite corner.

  “All right,” he said, “what happened to the Encounter?”

  “Sabotage.”

  Straker was silent.

  “It was a quick, easy job, if you know diesel engines. When Sam pulled up the engine, it was obvious what happened—it’s there in the pictures.” He nodded to a nine-by-twelve manila envelope amid his provisions. “Someone opened up the lube oil drain. The valve’s padlocked. The padlock’s cut, proving it wasn’t an accident.”

  “Cassain found it?”

  “So he says. I don’t know if the pictures are fakes or what. That’s why I want to find the engine itself. You cut the padlock, then just turn the valve. Easy as pie. Engine can’t run without oil. You get a main bearing failure on the crankshaft, which destroys the engine. On an old ship like the Encounter, that’d be the end of her.”

  “But the engine’s safety features should kick in,” Straker pointed out.

  “Normally, yes. There’s an automatic shutdown panel. Alarm goes off when there’s a problem, the engine shuts down. It’s like the engine’s brain.” Emile spoke clinically, as he did in his documentaries. This unusual mix of intensity and unemotional stating of the facts, keeping his natural drama in check, had served him well over the decades. He was credible, believable, principled. “Disable the safety features, and the engine doesn’t know it has a problem. It doesn’t automatically shut down. It just keeps running.”

  “Did Cassain find evidence the shutdown panel was defeated?”

  “Jumper wire. A piece of wire with two alligator clips. It’d do the job.”

  “It wasn’t destroyed in the fire?”

  Emile shook his head. “I think our saboteur got more than he counted on. The crankcase explosion by itself probably wouldn’t sink the ship. When you open the lube oil drain and defeat the alarm panel, you also defeat the controls to the number-two fuel tank. It overflows into the bilge, and now you’ve set off a fatal chain reaction.”

  “Number-two fuel’s more flammable than lube oil.”

  “Yep. Lube oil draining into the bilge is a mess. Number-two fuel’s a catastrophe. Meanwhile, the engine runs dry without lubrication, it explodes and ruptures a disk on the side—”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Sam brought up the ruptured disk. It’s in the pictures. With the disk ruptured, flames can pour out of the engine and light the mix of fuel and oil in the bilge.”

  “Jesus,” Straker whispered.

  Emile was very still, his expression grim. “It was a huge, tremendously hot fire. Not much burns hotter than number-two fuel. It warped the bulkheads, fed on the fuel in the main tanks. The Encounter took on water.” He sighed, looking tired and old, except for his eyes, which were alert, gleaming with determination. “With that kind of fire and flooding, she didn’t stand a chance.”

  “It couldn’t have been an accident,” Straker said quietly.

  “No.”

  “Once the shutdown panel was disabled and the lube oil drain valve opened, an explosion was virtually guaranteed. It’s just a question of whether the saboteur realized how catastrophic the explosion would be—the chain reaction he’d cause.” Straker imagined Riley amid this chaos, the Encounter burning, flooding, her friends dying. “What about timing? If the engine had exploded closer to land, you might have had a better chance of getting the fire out, getting the crew out. On the open sea—”

  “On the open sea, we were doomed. Timing with this kind of sabotage would be hard to predict. An explosion was certain, but when…” He shrugged. “I don’t think that mattered.”

  “What did matter? What did the saboteur want to accomplish?” Straker narrowed his gaze on his old friend. “You have ideas, Emile. If the explosion was unpredictable, it’s unlikely a particular individual was the target—murder wasn’t the point. Our saboteur didn’t use this as a way, for example, to kill Bennett Granger.”

  “No,” Emile allowed.

  “You don’t believe the saboteur intended for the Encounter to burn and sink, killing five people.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Cassain?”

  “I need to find the engine.” Emile sprang up from the stool. “That’s why Sam’s place was burned down. Someone wanted to make sure the police didn’t find any evidence of what he’d been up to these past few months. Then they came up here and set my place on fire to throw suspicion on me.”

  Straker moved toward the old man. “If I found you, someone else can. Trust me, Emile. Let me get you the protection you need. You’re not safe here.”

  Emile nodded. “I know.”

  “Tell me about Sam. When did he bring you the pictures?”

  “Saturday afternoon, right in broad daylight. Riley got here Monday morning, found his body on Tuesday.”

  “I take it he didn’t come up here to apologize,” Straker said.

  “He had no reason to apologize. It wasn’t my idea to bring up the Encounter’s engine,” Emile said with a trace of disgust. “She was lost. I did nothing to find out what the truth was.”

  “You believed it was your fault.”

  “If I’d had a watchman on duty—”

  “Then you’d have six crew dead instead of five.” But Straker wasn’t here to make Emile feel better about what he’d done, or failed to do. “Was Cassain interested in the truth?”

  The old man slipped back outside into the sunlight. Straker followed. Emile was staring out at the glistening harbor. “He’d suffered this past year. He wanted his pound of flesh. If it was in the form of cash, the more the better. He showed me the pictures for my reaction.”

  “And?”

  “We both had the same idea about what happened—that whoever sabotaged the Encounter didn’t count on the day tank overfilling.” The old man continued to stare out at the lobster boats, sailboats, the odd yacht. His expression was unreadable. “I don’t know who sabotaged my ship or why. It could have been a crew member with a bone to pick with another crew member. Sam could have faked the evidence, the pictures. I have to find the engine.”

  “That doesn’t explain his murder, the fire at his house, the fire at the cottage. Go ahead, Emile. Speculate. Based on what you know, what’s your best guess about what happened to the Encounter, what’s going on now?”

  He inhaled, shifted his gaze to Straker. “Look at what’s happened in the past year. Look at what the loss of the Encounter accomplished—”

  “It killed the center’s chief benefactor and drove out its founder.”

  “No one could have predicted Ben’s death,” Emile said, “or that I would tuck my tail between my legs and flee home.”

  “From what Riley tells me, this past year has been a public relations disaster for the center.”

  “Initially. Henry Armistead, Abigail Granger, my son-in-law, Riley—the entire center staff has worked tirelessly to turn it around. I asked myself, and Sam asked himself, what would have happened if the Encounter hadn’t gone down in flames, if there hadn’t been any loss of life.”

  “If it was a near thing instead of a catastrophe, you lose the Encounter because of a crankcase explosion,
but no one gets hurt.”

  Emile eased back against the retaining wall. “People loved that ship—it was part of the romance and adventure of our work. A new ship was in the works, but it was underfunded. We weren’t sure when, or if, we’d be able to finish it. And our supporters, even some of our own staff, didn’t want to give up the Encounter.”

  “As long as it could put out to sea, people wouldn’t get excited about its successor.”

  “You can’t underestimate their sentimental attachment to it.”

  “A narrow escape for the great Emile Labreque and his crew would elicit sympathy and galvanize support for a badly needed new research ship. The old ship dies in battle, so to speak. Let’s honor her memory by building a new one.”

  “The Encounter II is back on schedule. Support’s up. The catastrophe of the Encounter was a setback at first—”

  “But now things are working out.” Straker frowned, shaking his head. “I don’t know, Emile. It’s a hell of a stretch. Wouldn’t our saboteur want the Encounter and any evidence of his handiwork at the bottom of the ocean?”

  “Immaterial. People would have been outraged at the idea of sabotage. Support would have poured in.”

  “And the police would have investigated.”

  “You’re an FBI agent,” Emile said. “You tell me how many criminals you’ve apprehended thought they’d get caught.”

  Straker didn’t argue. Emile’s theory was sound enough, if far-fetched. And he’d asked the old man to make his best guess. If this was it, this was it. “What about Cassain? Did you encourage him to go to the authorities with his evidence?”

  “Of course. He refused to listen.”

  “Blackmail?”

  “That’s my guess. He was getting his ducks in a row before bringing his proof to the saboteur and exacting his pound of flesh. He came to me to help solidify his theory.”

  “But he didn’t give you a name, any hint of who he thought was responsible?”

  Emile’s dark eyes shone with intensity. “I was responsible for the Encounter. It was my ship, my crew.”

  Straker let that one go. This was no time to try to out-argue a Labreque. “You know what I mean.”

  “Sam played his cards close to the chest. He knew I’d go straight to the authorities. I’m convinced he was still flailing around, figuring out his next moves.”

  “And he flailed in the wrong direction and got himself killed.” Straker could see it. He gave the old man a hard look. “We’re taking your pictures to the police.”

  Emile shook his head. “I need to finish what I started.”

  “No, you don’t. You need to let the police do their job. Sam was murdered, Emile.”

  Emile drew himself off the retaining wall, pointed down the slope. “You have bigger problems than stopping me.”

  Straker turned, and there she was, marching up from the water with her jaw set hard and her hands clenched into fists at her sides. She’d spotted them, but she had the sense not to yell out.

  “Nowhere to run,” Emile said lightly, “nowhere to hide.”

  “You should have shot holes in her kayak,” Straker muttered.

  Riley stopped between them. “Emile, Straker—what are you doing?” She was out of breath and talking through clenched teeth. “Emile, for God’s sake, you can’t keep sneaking around. You’re going to get yourself killed or tossed into prison for a million years.”

  “I’m leaving,” he said calmly.

  “You can’t leave. Your cottage—you must know what happened. They found all this firebug stuff in your woodshed. Someone’s setting you up.”

  He ignored her. Straker stayed out of it. Emile was as maddening as she was, and they’d been doing this dance over a variety of subjects ever since Riley started to talk. Her grandfather pointed a finger at her. “You never mind me and listen to Straker. Follow his advice. You know about cetaceans. He knows about arson and murder.”

  She inhaled. “I am not letting you go.”

  “You have no choice.”

  That didn’t sit well. She was prepared to argue her case, but Straker said, “We have a lot to talk about.”

  She glared at him. “You’re not letting him go!”

  “Someone sabotaged his ship and caused the deaths of his best friend and four of his crew. You nearly died. He nearly died.” Straker sighed, knowing he must have been infected by the Labreque sense of drama, their way of looking at things. “What would you have me do?”

  “Sabotage?”

  She was pale, could barely get the word out. Emile seized the moment to slip off. Straker didn’t stop him.

  Riley spun around, made a move to go after her grandfather. Straker touched her arm. “Don’t. You’ll just draw attention to him. He has a lot of friends up here. They’ll look after him. He left Cassain’s pictures of the engine and the evidence it was sabotaged. We need to get them to the police. Then they need to find the engine to make sure it really is the Encounter and not something Cassain faked.”

  “Do you think he faked it?”

  “No.”

  “I hate this,” she said.

  “I know.” Straker rocked back on his heels, eyed her and considered the various possibilities of how she’d found him. One stood out. “My mother ratted out my father?”

  Riley gave an absent nod, a small smile. “She doesn’t miss anything.”

  “There’ll be a battle royal over that one. Well, let’s go.”

  “You go on.” She fixed her dark eyes on Straker, and he could see her fighting to be reasonable, smart, not simply to inflict her will on everyone else. “I’ll head to Boston. You can pretend I never saw any of this.”

  Straker grinned. Her motives, he thought, were obvious.

  “Quit acting like you know what I’m thinking,” she said.

  “I do know what you’re thinking.”

  “I’m just trying to be sensible and reasonable.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re looking after your own skin. You’re afraid if you go to see Lou Dorrman with me, he’s going to put you in protective custody or otherwise restrict your movements. I think he would. He’s pretty much had it with you Labreques.”

  “I’m going.”

  Straker fought the urge to stop her, to bring her to Lou Dorrman for safekeeping. “Don’t make me regret not tying you up in my boat.”

  She smiled faintly. “You’ll be in touch?”

  “Count on it.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Straker was telling Emile’s story to Lou Dorrman, who if he didn’t understand oceanography, did understand boats. “That’s a hell of a damned thing to do to a ship setting out to sea.”

  “So is Emile off the hook?” Straker asked.

  But he knew the answer. It’d be his answer, too, if this were his case. The sheriff scowled. “No. And neither are you. Sit down.”

  Straker sat, and after he told his story to Lou one more time, he had to wait for the state detectives and tell it to them. They weren’t pleased with him for letting Emile go. Straker wouldn’t have been pleased, either. A seventy-six-year-old man and a trained FBI agent—he could have brought him in.

  “Next time,” Teddy Palladino said, “you’d better.”

  “Next time, I will. Meanwhile,” Straker said, “I think we’re giving Riley St. Joe way too much time to get herself back into hot water.”

  Palladino agreed, and Straker was on his way.

  Fourteen

  Sig plopped down on a squishy, comfortable sofa in the front room of her house on Chestnut Street, not far from Matt’s childhood home on Louisburg Square. They’d picked this house together. Although she hadn’t contributed a dime, she’d never felt it was any less hers than his—and he’d never indicated otherwise. That wasn’t how they operated. They were partners, equal, even if his bank account had more zeroes than hers.

  Her babies jumped, startling her. It was their strongest movement yet. She placed a palm on her lower abdomen and sank deeper into the cushions
. She’d fought melancholy during the long drive from Camden, could feel it again threatening to overwhelm her. She wanted to be plucky and resilient, but just couldn’t summon the energy.

  Her gaze drifted to a framed picture of her father-in-law and Caroline at their wedding. Matt so missed his father. He was self-contained, not one for open displays of emotion. He’d insist his actions in recent months had nothing to do with his grief, but with facts, logic, truth and justice. He and Bennett weren’t demonstrative or openly affectionate, but they’d enjoyed each other’s company.

  Her father-in-law had been delighted when she and Matt had announced they wanted to marry. Bennett and Emile had been friends and partners for fifty years. “I don’t care if you know a whale from a dolphin,” Bennett had told her. “I’m thrilled to have a Labreque in the family.”

  His tragic death had changed everything, shattering Matt’s world, and thus, Sig thought, her own.

  She imagined her husband standing in their elegant living room in tattered jeans that hung low on his slim hips, his hair tousled, his eyes that memorable, piercing blue. He didn’t hide his intelligence, his education, his money, nor did he flaunt them.

  “Hell’s bells,” Sig breathed. “You’re getting maudlin.”

  She popped up off the couch and headed straight for the front door before her thoughts could get away from her, take on a life of their own. She might not be a fighter like Riley, but damned if she’d turn into a brooder.

  It was warm outside, warmer than Camden would be at this time of the afternoon. She walked down to Charles Street, saying hello to a neighbor she recognized, enjoying the feel of the brick sidewalk underfoot, the sense that she was home and trying, at least, to take charge of her life.

  The markets and coffee shops, the flower shop, the antique shops, were all crowded with people coming home from work. She stopped at a small market for milk, juice, bread, coffee. Could she live here without Matt? She didn’t think so. It was difficult enough making a place for herself on Beacon Hill with him in her life. Without him, she’d probably always be known as Matthew Granger’s ex-wife.

  The thought made her gasp, unable to get a good breath. She’d felt the same way in Emile’s loft with the smoke oozing up the stairs. Matthew Granger’s ex-wife. But that was where they were headed.