Chapter 37

I walked the short distance to my house. The Jeep was parked on the driveway since I had already hitched the personal watercraft trailer on to it and loaded the Jet Ski.

Lady Anthea was sitting on the sofa, talking into her computer tablet. She liked to Skype home when she was here. I stayed out of her way and went to my bedroom to change into my wetsuit. She had been adamant that she would not wear one. She had agreed to the slacks, windbreaker, and walking shoes compromise.

When I came out, she stared. “That’s why I refused to wear one of those,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because I wouldn’t look like you. That’s why.”

“As long as your body does what you need it to do, what does it matter?”

I took two plastic sandwich bags out of a drawer and handed one to Lady Anthea. “For your phone.”

She took it and walked over to her handbag on the coffee table. Was she planning to take her handbag on a Jet Ski?

“Are you okay doing this?” She could be thinking about last night and not wanting to stay home alone. “You’re welcome to stay with Dayle on the beach. She’ll be keeping an eye on the Fouries. That should include Julie Berger, but in case it doesn’t, you could follow her,” I suggested. We assumed they would stay for all the congratulations at the finale, but wanted eyes on them.

“No, I’d rather go to the lighthouse,” she said.

I nodded. “That settles that. Everything okay at home?” I asked, pointing to the tablet.

“I had an inexplicable desire to talk to my brother,” she said. It wasn’t inexplicable to me, but I didn’t comment on her word choice. Just the fact that she had called him was quite the exposé on the state of her nerves. She had wanted to talk to family.

I looked at my watch. “Shelby came up with a password we’ll need to get back into Buckingham’s after seven.” I read it to her from my phone, “Did Elvis regret the cape?”

Lady Anthea gave a nervous laugh.

“It’s five-thirty,” I said. “Time to go.”

* * * *

We took back roads to Cape Henlopen State Park, both to avoid traffic and being seen.

“Oh, no,” Lady Anthea said when she saw the park was closed for the night.

“I have a friend in the park service who’s going to let us in.” When we were near the guard shack a young woman in the tan park service uniform came out and lifted the arm to the gate and we drove through. She never looked at us.

“She wasn’t very friendly,” Lady Anthea said.

“She didn’t see us, and we didn’t see her,” I said. “The park closes at sunset.”

We made a left at the fork, then another left, then a right turn for the two-mile drive north to The Point where we would launch the Jet Ski.

We parked in the parking lot and I began unhooking the trailer so we could get the PWC to the water.

“Is this where you and your friends come to surf?” she asked.

“We do come to Cape Henlopen, but not this part of the park. We surf at Herring Point. It’s not surfing like they do in California or Hawaii, but we have a good time,” I said.

The Harbor of Refuge Lighthouse and Delaware breakwater looked close enough to touch, but that was an illusion. The so-called sparkplug-style lighthouse also looked the size of a sparkplug, when it was actually seventy-six feet high. I pointed to our left. “We’re at the mouth of the Delaware Bay.” Then to the right. “That’s the Atlantic Ocean.” The Point extended north between the two. The breakwater where the lighthouse sat ran northwest before crooking off west. The Harbor of Refuge Lighthouse sat on the southern end, which made our trip a lot shorter. The breakwater was a mile and a half long.

“I see the yachts that came to watch the commemoration ceremony,” she said, pointing further up the bay.

My phone lit up with a text from Dayle. I read through the plastic bag, “Can’t find Martin.”

I didn’t want to think about the effect that bit of news was going to have on Rick.

I handed Lady Anthea a life vest, then I texted Mason, Rick, Dayle, Shelby, and Dana. Underway.

Mason’s cryptic reply came next. In position.