Page 38

Chapter 38

Charting the Stars

Dante

I’m wiping down the main galley island when Sassy appears. “Good morning, Sassy. How did you sleep?”

“Great. I heard you were up early and causing mischief.”

“Guilty as charged. How did the Viking take it?”

She cocks her head at me. “How did Sam take it?”

“About the same, I imagine. But do you want an egg?”

“Yes, please.” She pulls a stool from the stew pantry into the galley and watches as I get things ready to take to the back deck.

“Did Zane talk to you about Rocky’s notebook?”

“No, he was focused on getting out of the primary cabin without Calvin exploding all over him.”

“Fair enough. While we were watching the horizon, we bounced ideas around about what some of Rocky’s codes could be about.”

“Did you come up with anything?”

“Nothing that doesn’t sound crazy. So, no. But we got chatting about all the deckhands and the engineers who left on the other raft. Easton hated Emily’s boyfriend, and he wants to blame as much of this on Brick and Candy as possible. You know where the evidence is. Candy switched the real diamond with a copy.”

“Or someone else did.”

“Right. Someone else could have done it too.” I cock my head at Sassy. She’s not going to like what I have to say. “Like Shayla.”

“No way.” Her eyebrows rise. “Plus, Shayla was on the old boat last season, right? She worked her ass off to get the boat ready.”

“Okay, so not Shayla. We’ve searched the primary cabin. There’s still Emily and the one that Brick moved into. Plus all the other crew members.” I pick up the things I need for the back deck and take them out with me. A few seconds later, I’m enjoying the noises coming out of Sassy’s mouth as she cleans her plate.

Things are washed, and after the two of us make a quick visit to the engine room, I realize there’s nothing we can do to help them. They’re trying to figure out how to make a grinder work.

I turn to Haley. “You want to go play Nancy Drew?”

“Oh, I had a Nancy Drew computer game. I seriously loved it. Yeah, let’s go investigate. I’ll get a notebook.” She jumps up. “And we’ll need to find a flashlight.”

And now I’m trying to forget the crush I had on the actress who starred in the remake on some cable show.

“Take good notes for me,” Zane calls out from under a pipe.

“I will,” Haley says.

And we’re out in the corridor. “Where do you want to start?”

“Shayla’s cabin. So I can prove to you she has nothing to do with it.” Haley’s down the crew hall to the crew mess. From out of a cubby next to the crew day board, she takes a notebook. “My list of things to do. Look...” She shows it to me. “Find somewhere to store the extra box of horse statues Shayla found in the back of Emily’s closet.”

“I’m guessing Sam already found something to do with them.”

“Yeah, they’re trotting with the fishes.” She laughs.

“Notebook found. Shayla’s cabin?”

Haley nods. The place is immaculate, and the bed hardly looks slept in. Haley pulls open the first drawer and picks through the carefully folded clothes.

“What if she’s stuffed something in between them?”

Haley glances at me and frowns. “Right.” She pulls each piece of clothing out, shaking it. There’s not much to be found but a box of melted candy bars hidden in the bottom drawer under her jeans. No photos or much personal stuff. But that’s the thing with working on a yacht. The more you work, the less you bring. Only the most important stuff comes with you. Because it’s a bitch when you have to leave. It set me up for van life. For the stint I did a few years ago.

“Across the hall or next door?”

“I’m next door. I mean, if you think you need to search my room, go ahead.” She holds out her arm like a game show assistant.

“I think we’re good. My cabin’s next to yours. Do you want to shake out my drawers?” I grab her around her waist.

“Dante?” She laughs, but her soft lips hit mine. My dick hardens in my pants, and I’m thinking I don’t care about who might have done anything to the ship. But Sassy pulls away. “We need to keep looking.”

“Right.”

“Over here?”

“Let’s do it.” This cabin is a pigsty. It looks like someone has already searched it. But then I remember walking past it when we were on board, and it was kind of like this.

“Oliver and Cruz.” She picks up a few pieces of clothes and puts them on the top of the empty dresser. It’s hard to tell whose things are whose. “They both sure are slobs.”

“Yes. But other than clothes, a collection of colognes that together probably total more than five gallons, protein powder, and enough vapes to last a year, there isn’t much else.” I lift the mattresses.

“Oh, that’s good. I didn’t even think to do that,” Haley says.

“All right, next cabin. Who lives here?”

Her blue eyes shine at me. “Zane and Luke. We should wait to do that with Zane.”

“All right. Last cabin on this side is Anders and Calvin.” That I knew. “You want to wait for Calvin too?”

“I think that would be polite. Let’s go back down the other side of the hall.”

I point to the next one. I didn’t have much time to figure things out on board before we abandoned ship. I was still trying to learn the galley and praying we had enough provisions until we got to the next port. But Haley had done a good job of ordering things for me.

“I’m not sure about these two cabins. Mitch, Waldo, Ryder, and Daxton were here, but they were switching around. Waldo snored, and there was some argument. So I have no idea who ended up in which cabin.”

“I’ll take the top bunk while you take the lower berth.”

“I thought I would be able to figure out who was sleeping in which room by looking at the clothes. But I don’t think anyone had moved their clothes yet.” This drawer has a mixture of differently labeled crew shirt from Daxton, Mitch, Ryder, and Waldo.

“Ryder was the quiet deckhand with the pointy ears, right?”

“No, that was Mitch, the engineer.”

“Right, I knew that,” I say.

“Okay, so anything we find in these two rooms at least narrows it down to the four of them. Waldo was quiet. I don’t think I got two words out of him the entire time we were on board. Not that I had much time for socializing.”

“Right, same. Okay, you take the bottom and I’ll do the top bunk.” There isn’t much. A bunch of dirty socks inside the sheets which, after being left there for months, have developed quite an odor.

We’re through. I even pull the lid to the tank of the toilet back in each of the rooms, but there’s nothing in them but stale water.

“I think we can call the first room,” Haley says.

“I agree.”

The next room is a lot more of the same. I pull the sheets back, and between the mattress and the wall is a stash of magazines. I try to push them back, but Haley catches sight of them.

“If I had to shake out Shayla’s underwear, you can pull out the deckhand’s dirty magazines.”

When I pull out the first magazine, two pictures flutter to the floor.

Haley bends. “What are those?”

It’s two black and white photos. One is of a girl in her early twenties, with dark hair. She’s sitting on a bed, the kind you might find in a summer camp you don’t want to be at. A cross hangs on the wall behind her. The other photo is of the back of a girl wearing a backpack. It might be college, boarding school, or even a high school. It’s hard to say.

Haley looks at me. “This is weird. Are these old pictures? I mean, who has black and white pictures anymore? Unless you’re trying to be artsy?”

“If this is art, then so is boxed mac and cheese.” I shudder.

“Maybe it’s some sort of photography contest?”

“For the worst photo? This one’s barely in focus.” I tap the picture of the girl on the bed. “And this one? What the heck is it even of?”

Haley cocks her head. “Are they the same girl?”

“I don’t know. With them being black and white, it’s hard to tell. They could be. But they’re modern. Look at the clothes and the backpacks. That guy is wearing one of those Only Good Vibes T-shirts that are really popular right now. Or at least they were popular when we left.”

“Did Waldo, Ryder, Daxton, or Mitch have a girlfriend?” she asks.

“Hell if I know. But these pictures say ‘I’m a stalker’ more than ‘I’m going to ask you for a date.’”

Haley nods. “Yeah.”

“Let’s see what else is around.” I shake the rest of the magazines, but nothing else comes out. Then we search through both rooms again. We find an address book under the frame of the built-in bed.

“Whose is it?” Haley asks.

The front page lists Waldo’s name and his 207 phone number. “Waldo. I didn’t think Waldo was from Maine?”

“Why do you think he’s from Maine? Oh, wait, the area code. That makes sense.” She taps the front page, where Waldo has his number printed in sloppy handwriting.

“That makes a bunch of the crew from or tied to Maine: Anders, Waldo, Mitch, and Daxton. How weird is that? Plus, I think Easton lived in Maine for a while too.” I flip through the book, but there’s nothing else of value. There are stars next to girls’ names and some detailed notes of what they are willing to do. It’s nothing but the desperation of a twenty-three-year-old dude-bro who clearly doesn’t know the value of a relationship and has never had a quality woman in his life. You don’t rate women in a book. Not without having it come back to haunt you. That shit needs to be locked up tight. But the Maine thing tumbles through my head.

“I was hoping we would find something more. Besides some photos and a phone book.”

“Yeah, me too.” I close the address book. “We should put this with Rocky’s notebook. Maybe Zane can find a correlation between one of these phone numbers and something Rocky has written down.”

“Yes. But do you really think ‘Janie five star wow, wow’ has anything to do with Rocky’s notebook?”

“No. You never know, though. Maybe Janie is into some weird shit.” I wiggle my eyebrows at her.

“Just your type of girl,” Haley says.

“You are my only type of girl, Sassy. And don’t you forget it.”

Her smile lights up the dark room. “You are so full of yourself.”

“I like it better when you’re full of me.”

“Dante?” She tilts her head back and laughs. Leaving her long, delectable neck available for me to kiss. “Whoever put those stickers on the tanks to make them look level? They must have had a second set. What would they have done if the first one went crooked?”

“We didn’t find any.”

“Right, because they put them on and they worked. But what would they have done with the other ones? If they had extras? Thrown them away, right? We need to search the trash.”

“The trash?” Trash is a big deal on a yacht. Rich people tend to make a lot of it. It’s the first thing we deal with when we get to port. “I made linguine for crew dinner with chicken that night. I watched Shayla clean up. If that trash was still in the crew mess, we wouldn’t be able to stand in here.”

“Sam must have gotten rid of it. But did he put it in the pit on the bow, or did he pitch it overboard?”