Page 18 of Nightshade

THE CALIFORNIA YACHT Club was a vast complex of docks where the wealthiest of the wealthy kept their water toys. It was one of several private marinas that shared the inlet that was Marina del Rey. There were thousands of boats of all sizes and shapes. Without Colbrink, Stilwell would have had difficulty accessing the CYC dock grid and then locating the Emerald Sea . Colbrink’s insistence on coming along saved time and confusion.

It had taken them forty minutes to get there from Malibu, due to nighttime roadwork on the Pacific Coast Highway. During the drive Colbrink talked about his life and work, seemingly no longer bothered by Stilwell’s intrusion on his evening.

Colbrink had been an attorney who handled high-end mergers of businesses with nine-figure valuations. He’d retired early and now put his own money into mergers, and he’d built a life that included mansions and sailing yachts on both sides of the country. Like his father before him, he was an active member of the Black Marlin Club, for which he felt a sentimental love. He lamented the damage that a murder tied to the club might do to its reputation.

“I know it’s an anachronism, but my father was a member and his father before him,” he said. “And I don’t even fish—I sail. But I love the place and would hate to see its name splashed across the headlines in connection to a tawdry murder.”

“Well, we’re a long way from that,” Stilwell said.

For the rest of the drive, he thought about Colbrink dismissing the murder of a woman who had been wrapped in a bag and weighted down with an anchor as tawdry. It was clear that on his hilltop in Malibu, he was sequestered from many harsh and violent realities.

The guard at the CYC gate waved the Bronco through once he identified Colbrink in the passenger seat. They parked in the empty lot and headed down a gangway to the grid of docks lined with lights at every slip.

“How long will this take?” Colbrink asked. “You want to check the sail bags and the anchor. What else?”

“Depends,” Stilwell said. “When you were over there this past weekend, did you stay on the boat?”

“I did, yes.”

“By yourself?”

“Uh, no. I had someone with me.”

“Your wife.”

“No.”

Stilwell paused and waited.

“I married a woman who doesn’t like to sail… or do other things,” Colbrink said. “And that’s all I will say about that.”

Stilwell was willing to let it go for the moment. But he would come back to it.

“I understand,” he said. “What about your crew?”

“It’s basically a crew of one. My guy can bring others if needed.”

“Does he live near the marina?”

“No, he lives on the island—Two Harbors. He doesn’t stay on the boat. He comes over from the isthmus when I need him.”

“Who is that? If he’s in Two Harbors, I might know him.”

“Duncan Forbes.”

The name didn’t resonate with Stilwell.

“So he came with you to bring the boat back here after the weekend?”

“He did. Monday morning.”

“Did you have the boat cleaned after you brought it back?”

“Duncan did that, yes.”

“He do a good job?”

“I haven’t been back to see the boat, but, yes, he usually does. He’s been working for me for almost seven years. I don’t keep anyone that long if they’re not doing the job.”

“Then I think any sort of forensic evidence will be gone or compromised. So let’s just check the bag and anchor and go from there. I’ll get you back as quickly as possible.”

“Thank you.”

The Emerald Sea was backed into a slip at the end of a pier closest to the rock-lined inlet that led to the bay. As he got his first up-close look, Stilwell could tell it was a wood-hulled antique.

“How old is it?” he asked.

“It’s a 1960 Mayflower I had shipped in pieces from Wisconsin and then restored,” Colbrink said. “Took almost four years from start to finish. It’s a duplicate of my father’s boat, which went down in a storm.”

There were boarding stairs on the dock. Colbrink climbed aboard first, and Stilwell followed. Colbrink opened the hatch in the helm and carefully descended a set of steep stairs into the dark interior of the boat.

“Let me get some lights going,” he said.

He disappeared from Stilwell’s sight, and a few seconds later, lights came on inside the cabin and then from the top of both masts, illuminating the entire deck of the vessel. Colbrink climbed back up out of the cabin.

“Everything you’re interested in is up on deck,” he said. “Let’s check the sails first.”

He moved to the bow of the boat, where he unlocked and slipped back a hatch that was on rails on the forward deck.

“We keep extra mainsails here, along with the jib and the chute.”

“The ‘shoot’?”

“Chute, like in parachute . The spinnaker is what it’s really called. It looks like a parachute when it fills up with air.”

“Got it.”

Stilwell stepped over and looked down into the storage compartment. There were two white drawstring bags along with one red and one black one. Colbrink pointed into the space.

“Nothing’s missing as far as I can see,” he said. “We’ve got two mains in white, the spinnaker in the red bag, and the jib in the black. Color-coded so we know which is which. Sometimes you change sails on the fly.”

Stilwell looked down into the hatch, but the contents were in shadow. He saw the colors of the bags but little detail.

“Can I pull out the jib?”

“Be my guest.”

He crouched, grabbed the black bag’s drawstring, and yanked it up onto the deck, where the lighting was better. Still crouched, he pulled out his phone and turned on its light. He ran the beam over the bag and noticed a gridwork of creases.

“This looks like a new bag,” he said. “Still has creases from being folded. Did you recently get this?”

“No,” Colbrink said. “Had that sail and the bag for years.”

Stilwell loosened the drawstring and opened the bag to reveal the folded jib sail inside. The sail was white but worn by use in the sun and wind. It was clear to him that the bag was newer than the sail. He felt a slight whisper go down his spine as he realized that he wasn’t spinning his wheels. He had made a significant jump in the case. The woman in the water had been stuffed into a sail bag from this boat.

“The bag has been switched out,” he said, more to himself than to Colbrink.

“Okay,” Colbrink said. “What’s that mean?”

Stilwell turned his head and looked toward the front of the boat. A stainless-steel anchor was secured on rubber rollers on the prow.

“It means I want to look at your anchors,” Stilwell said. “You’ve got that one at the front. Any others on the boat?”

“Yes, we carry a stern anchor and a spare,” Colbrink said. “You’ve got to be able to securely anchor the boat. The winds off the barrier islands are formidable.”

“Different sizes of anchors?”

“No, all the same. That way they’re interchangeable.”

“Can you show me the others?”

“This way.”

Stilwell kept his phone light on as they made their way back to the stern. Colbrink stepped down into the helm, where the boat’s wheel was located. Behind the wheel was a bench with a white pad on it. Colbrink lifted the pad, revealing another storage hatch underneath. This one had no locking device. He reached down to open it.

“Hold it a second, Mr. Colbrink,” Stilwell said.

Colbrink straightened up.

“What is it?” he asked.

Stilwell was pulling a pair of disposable gloves from the pocket of his windbreaker.

“The sail bags would not have held prints,” he said. “But the lid of that compartment may. Let me open it.”

Colbrink stepped back and Stilwell opened the hatch, revealing two anchors with chains and coiled rope attached.

“Nothing missing,” Colbrink announced.

Stilwell aimed his light into the hatch. The two anchors appeared to be a match to the one that had been used to weigh down the body in the harbor. He wanted to pull them out for further examination but thought better of it. Even though the boat had recently been cleaned, there could be fingerprint evidence on the anchors.

“Do you know the weight and brand of these?” he asked.

“Twelve pounds each,” Colbrink said. “Made by a company called Hold Fast.”

Stilwell nodded and bent down farther, using his light to study the two anchors for any indication that one was new.

“Does that mean anything to you?” Colbrink asked.

Stilwell ignored the question.

“Mr. Colbrink,” he said. “I’m going to give you my card so we can be in contact. I ask that you stay off the boat and keep others off it until I can get a forensics tech out here.”

“I thought you said any evidence would be gone by now,” Colbrink said.

“I changed my mind. Especially with these anchors being in the compartment. You opened the front hatch with a key. Did you bring that with you?”

“No. It hangs on a hook in the cabin by the chart table.”

“So it’s always on the boat.”

“That’s right.”

“And the cabin hatch is not locked?”

“Not usually. The CYC has armed security on the premises twenty-four seven. I never lock the boat. That way I can have Duncan come out and make sure the bilge-pump battery hasn’t lost its charge.”

“Not sure what that means.”

“Old boats like this leak, Sergeant. The bilge pump clears the water out so that the boat stays afloat. If the bilge pump goes down, the boat could go down. It’s important to keep the battery charged.”

“Got it.”

Stilwell stared down at the anchors and thought about the timeline. It had been ten days since the unusual activities associated with the Emerald Sea had occurred in Avalon Harbor. If he assumed that those activities involved moving a body onto the ketch and then out of the harbor to the place where it was bagged, wrapped in an anchor chain, and dumped overboard, then there had been plenty of time to replace the anchor and jib bag with duplicates.

“What are you thinking, Sergeant?” Colbrink asked.

Stilwell was thinking that he wished it were his case so he could make the moves he knew needed to be made. But he didn’t say that to Colbrink.

“I’m thinking that I’d like to look around inside the cabin,” he said instead.

And he was thinking that he needed to talk to Colbrink’s crew member and cleanup man, Duncan Forbes.