TWENTY-THREE

I swallowed down the lump of panic that had risen to my throat. Where were we headed? These tall ships were supposed to be anchored in the Bay overnight and not leave until midafternoon Sunday, so as to allow the maximum number of tourists to see them. My plan, such as it was, was to escape Houdini-like from this locked room, then make my way out a porthole or over the side into the water, where I would swim for shore. This was still possible even if we were moving, but it was a lot more dangerous if the engines were running. The farther downriver we got, the deeper the water would get and the wider the river, making the swim much more difficult for me. It would take a crew of at least four or five to run this tub, I figured, so there would be that many more pairs of eyes watching me too.

I worked frantically at the ropes and finally managed to extricate one hand by squeezing my hands together and then pulling them apart parallel to each other. My wrists stung, rubbed red and raw from the ropes, but I was free.

Not exactly free, I reminded myself. The engine was so loud there was no way to tell whether someone was stationed on the other side of the door. I gingerly twisted the knob and found it locked, just as I had suspected. Lock picking was not part of my skill set. If Dolly had been here, she could have lent me a bobby pin from the depths of her coiffure. Not that I would wish this situation on anyone.

My usual purse contained a metal nail file, but that was sitting in the Morristown police station waiting for me to retrieve it. Dismantling the pen in the bag I had with me might work, but would be messy. Ah, this was better. A small wirebound notebook, which read, “MacKenzie Motor Lodge, Bonaparte Bay, NY,” in gold foil letters on the cover. I began to uncoil the thin metal. Beads of blood appeared on my hand where I scraped the sharp end against my skin, and I winced. When the last coil pulled free, the papers fluttered loose to the floor in a shower of white, lined rectangles.

The wire was thin and floppy, and it surely wouldn’t work in its current state. I bent it in half and twisted it around itself, creating a two-ply rod that was much more rigid. I gave it a little wave like a movie swashbuckler. A giddy laugh escaped my lips. Who was I kidding? I was in way, way over my head. But the need to put an end to this giant fiasco, the need to keep my family safe, overrode my insecurities and forced me to press on.

Poking the wire into the keyhole, I felt resistance and tried again in another spot. Again and again, different angles produced no results and I bit my lip in frustration. This was not turning out to be as easy as I had hoped. Where was Inky with his early-life-of-petty-crime skills when you needed him? Something clicked. My heart leapt and I wanted to give myself a high five. But not only had the lock released, the doorknob was turning as well.

I yanked out my ersatz pick and leapt backward, into the puddle of soda. My feet went out from under me on the slick surface and I fell hard on my behind. Yelping in pain, I whipped the tool behind me just as my young pirate friend opened the door. He snickered as he saw me sitting there and I wanted to slap that snarky little smile off his adolescent face. “I see you’ve been busy untying yourself,” he commented. “Well, it doesn’t matter. The captain wants to see you.”

The captain? I knew it. That damned Captain Jack was behind this. If he really was Coast Guard (not for long, if I had anything to say about it), he could handle a ship like this. What his motive was, and how he thought he was going to get away with it, I did not know. We weren’t inconspicuous in this replica sailing ship, and there must be faster boats than this out there that could catch us. I was ready to rip into him, and I didn’t care what he did to me. Although, letting me live would be ideal.

“Follow me,” he said in a sonorous monotone, then cracked up. “Get it? I’m Lurch!” He was so young, he must have been watching that old show on the classic TV channel late at night.

“Funny.” I picked up my shoulder bag and exited behind him, my bottom uncomfortably wet. I’d be a sticky mess when I started to dry. We threaded our way through the maze of barrels. He put his black-booted foot on the bottom rung of the stairs to the hatch on the upper deck.

Here was my opportunity. He took a few more steps up. I slipped my wire around his ankles and pulled back as hard as I could, jumping to the side as he fell. He hit his head on one of the barrels, and tipped it over. He lay there stunned as I dragged him across the floor by his feet. He was awkward because of his gangly height, but he was skinny and didn’t weigh much. Should I try to immobilize him? No time for that, and he was out cold. And he wasn’t in charge. Maternal guilt squeezed my heart as I considered whether he needed medical attention. The kid was young, and he was somebody’s son. What if he had a concussion? I was sorry, but there were bigger fish to fry.

I maneuvered around the barrel the boy had tipped over. The top had come loose. Out of curiosity I looked inside. It was filled to the top with plastic bags. Each plastic bag was filled with a dry, grassy substance. I’d bet anything it was the same stuff I’d discovered out at Sunshine Acres. There must be hundreds of packages in a barrel this size. A quick look around showed at least fifty barrels in here. If all of them were filled with these little bags, the amount of marijuana this ship was carrying was staggering. And we could be headed anywhere. Anywhere. With enough supplies and a competent crew, this ship could sail all the way down the St. Lawrence and out across the Atlantic, I thought. Or, if we were sailing in the other direction, we could be on Lake Ontario in less than an hour and making our way through the rest of the chain of the Great Lakes to some Midwestern port.

I shouldered my bag and took a deep breath as I ascended the ladder. The kid had left the hatch open and I poked my head up cautiously. Seeing no one, I came up onto the deck, squinting into the bright sunshine, and considered. Where would I find the captain? He could be driving the ship, or he could be anywhere on board while he left the driving to some underling—what were they called? Right, mates. The wheel of the ship must be up front. I hadn’t seen any kind of raised bridge from which to navigate. The shores were whizzing past me at a pretty good clip, too fast for me to get a good look at any of the houses or other landmarks on either side. We hadn’t come about, so I figured my first guess was right: we were headed out to the open sea, not inland.

I moved toward the bow of the boat, doing my best to keep my balance as the boat rocked and swayed. A little wave of nausea rose up and I closed my eyes and took a deep breath to quell the queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. What a time to get seasick. I kept my eyes straight ahead and not on the passing shorelines to either side, and made my way to the bow. There was, in fact, a ship’s wheel there, but the helm was empty. Huh? What was this, some kind of ghost ship? Who was driving us? Another glance around showed a little glass-windowed cabin I had missed before. A figure stared out at me, but the facial features were indistinguishable. I squared my shoulders, adjusted the bra strap that had fallen onto one upper arm, and headed for the structure.

Someone grabbed me. It wasn’t my young friend who’d abducted me from the mainland, but another guy, dressed in a black-and-white horizontally striped shirt, a long wig with a tricornered hat, and a luxuriant dark mustache he’d waxed to stiff, curly points on either side of his lips. His eyes were rimmed with a heavy application of black eyeliner, which intensified their chocolatey depths. They would have been beautiful if they hadn’t been bloodshot and watery. Based on the stale-sweet quality of his breath, he’d been drinking rum, and a lot of it. He didn’t have a good grip on me. Almost without thinking I reached for one of the gold hoop earrings he was wearing and yanked as hard as I could, wincing as the flesh tore. He let go with a curse and put his hand to his bleeding ear. I gave him a sharp elbow to the gut. The breath whooshed out of him as I kicked his kneecap for good measure and ran to the side of the boat.

We were at least twenty feet above the surface of the water. This boat had a big engine and I could easily be sucked into it. My diving experience? Nil. I climbed up onto the edge and prepared to jump out as far away from the boat as possible. But I was grabbed. Again. This was getting tiresome. He pulled me back down onto the deck. This assailant had me locked in his arms and began to drag me toward the cabin despite my struggles. I heard a staticky noise. I owled my head around as far as it would go to see that the guy was wearing a headset, a wig, gold earrings, and a scarf tied around his head. His puffy white shirt with ruffles edged in scratchy lace irritated the rope burns on my wrists. He tightened his grip and I cried out in pain. Dragging my feet in an attempt to impede our progress or, even better, to trip him up, proved impossible since he was at least a foot taller and sixty pounds heavier than I, and almost certainly in much better shape. He manhandled me to the cabin door.

The door was ajar and he brought me in, depositing me on a small couch. “Don’t move,” he warned, pulling out a gun and training it on me. I glared at him, but complied.

“Who’s paying you?” I spat out at him.

He didn’t answer, but looked toward the front of the cabin.

A chair spun around with agonizing slowness. A knife twisted in my gut and my throat went dry. I looked into a face I knew well, and had hoped to know much better.

“Keith,” I whispered.

“Now, now, Georgie, don’t look so sad.” His voice was patronizing. “This will all work out very well for all of us, if you’re smart.”

“What’s going on here? What do you want with me?”

He chuckled. “Now, that’s a loaded question.” He gave me a leer, his eyes lingering on my chest. He waved his hand to his henchman. “Go find something to do,” he told him. “I can handle this from here. Now, Georgie,” he began.

“Yes?” I hoped the hurt and betrayal and disappointment I was feeling did not come through in my voice. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction, if I could help it. “How long have you been dealing drugs?”

He laughed again. “Honey, dealing is for amateurs. I run more of a wholesale operation. That’s where the money is.”

“But you have lucrative legitimate businesses going with the boats and the furniture. Surely you’re making a comfortable living at that?”

“Chump change,” he snorted. “I’ve got my eye on a villa in the South Pacific. With this score”—he waved his arm around—“and the treasure from the Bonaparte House, which I’m still waiting for, by the way, I’ll be set for life.”

I fought back my disgust. “I haven’t found that, you know. If it’s not the table, I don’t have the foggiest idea what it is.”

“Now, you see, Georgie, this is what is so hard for me to believe.” He tapped his fingers together in the classic steeple formation of villains everywhere. “You’ve lived in that house for a number of years.” He lowered his voice and said confidentially, “We won’t say how many.” My hackles rose and my hurt was elbowed out of the way by anger. “How is it possible that you don’t know that Joseph Bonaparte left a stash of jewels in that house for the use of his brother Napoleon when he escaped?”

I thought back. What had Inky told me about Joseph Bonaparte? That he had stolen the Spanish crown jewels before he was deposed and used them to finance his lavish lifestyle in the Americas. Was it possible there was a cache of priceless jewels hidden somewhere in my home?

“I’m telling you I’ve looked everywhere in that house and I have not found anything,” I said.

“You are beautiful, even when you’re lying.” The color rushed up into my face. This guy had some nerve.

“Where are we going?”

“We have a meeting with an outbound laker in a few hours up toward Gaspé.”

“Gaspé?” That was a peninsula at the far tip of Quebec out on the Atlantic seaboard.

“Yes, Gaspé.” He spoke as if to a child. “We’ll be off-loading our cargo and on our way by evening.”

“What do you mean, ‘our way’?” I had a bad feeling about this, even worse than having been kidnapped.

“You’re coming with me.”

I gulped. “Where?”

He smiled and a dreamy look came over him. “Tahiti.”

I stalled. “What about my restaurant? I can’t just leave.”

“You already did.”

I tried another tack. “Did you kidnap Spiro?”

“No.” There was that patronizing tone again that I was beginning to hate. “I did not kidnap Spiro. I paid someone else to do it.”

“But why?”

“He is a damned nuisance.” I couldn’t argue with that. “He finally paid me the money he owed me, but he refused to deliver up the real prize, the jewels. I had planned to kill him—that would solve so many problems for everybody—but I needed him alive in case you couldn’t find the jewels. Which you say you can’t.” He gave me a penetrating gaze. “And, since I want to get our relationship off on the right foot, I’ve decided to believe you.”

What was that expression Cal always used? As if. But I played along. “What about Big Dom? Did you take care of him too?” I gave him what I hoped was an encouraging smile.

“Oh, yes. He was another nuisance. He owed me money too, and he took too long to get it back to me. And then he threatened to go to the Feds about me and my enterprises.”

I gulped again. Drug running, extortion, and kidnapping were one thing. Murder was quite another.

“Those people at Sunshine Acres, are they part of your business too?”

“They’re just my growers. Or, I should say they were my growers. We’ve already harvested, and I’m getting out of the business. I’ve instructed them to burn off any residual crop, not that there better be much left, and plow under all the fields.”

“The rumor around town is that the Sunshine Acres people are running the money operation.”

He snorted. “Hah! That bunch of gray-bearded burnouts? You’ve got to be kidding me! Still.” He paused. “It did suit my purposes to have everyone believe that it was them, rather than me.”

“What are you going to do about your businesses? Your house? Your shop?”

“That’s the beauty of this plan. I’ve mortgaged everything to the hilt. I’ve maxed out all my credit cards with cash advances. I’ve taken all that cash, along with the money I’ve made from my other endeavors, and invested it all in offshore accounts. It’s completely safe from the Feds. I’m just going to walk away. Or I should say sail away. And never come back. Never live through another six months of winter again. And you, my love”—he picked up my hand and brushed his murderous lips against my damaged wrist—“get to come with me.”

I fought back a wave of revulsion and smiled at him. “What about this ship?”

He chuckled. “I had only intended to borrow it and pick up something else to get me to the islands, but I’ve rather come to like it, you know?” He caressed the varnished wood steering wheel. “It has style. So I’ve decided to keep it. The price was certainly right.” His lips twisted into a grin. “I’ll make a few alterations when we get there, and no one will ever be the wiser. Now, come over here.”

With only a moment’s hesitation, I complied. He pulled me down onto his lap, knocking my rib cage on the steering wheel. I sat down rather harder than I had intended and he let out a breath. His face darkened, but then he smiled. “We’ll get you a chef and a personal trainer when we get to the villa.”

Jerk. I batted my eyes at him flirtatiously. Well, I hoped it was flirtatiously. He reached around me with both arms and put them on the wheel, pinning me in. It would have been sexy if he hadn’t been a criminal. I thought of Cal being motherless, and it called up the pain of my own mother abandoning me when I was younger than she. Something in me changed. I smiled at him and put my left hand up to his ear, which I lightly traced with one finger. He made a little coo of pleasure. “Plenty of time for that later, honey,” he said, but he was enjoying it.

I raised my right hand, and he took his eyes away from the water for a moment to see what I’d do next. I touched my throat with my fingers, and trailed them slowly down into my cleavage. He sucked in a breath, and I could feel him shift under me. “This is so tempting, honey, but I have to get this cargo delivered.” I fingered the V-neck of my T-shirt and he started to breathe heavily. I reached down inside my bra and I thought he was going to pass out.

“I always fantasized that you were like this, you know.”

I did the thing with my other hand and his ear. I reached farther down into my bra.

“Just give me a few hours and I’ll be able to help you with that.” His eyes were almost popping out of his head and I wished he’d keep them on the water so we didn’t crash into anything, like the Ogdensburg Bridge to Canada, which I could see coming up far ahead of us. Could the masts of this ship fit under the bridge? No time to worry about that now. I arched my back so he could get a better view of my chest and neck, reached down beneath my cleavage, and pulled out Marina’s tiny gun.