Chapter 9
Jerry Baugh
Jerry’s phone vibrated on the dashboard in the cockpit. He had turned off his ringer two mornings ago when the press had gotten
ahold of his number—God knew how—and they’d hounded him like piranhas for a statement, any statement.
What was he supposed to say? They knew everything he did. No, Jerry thought, they don’t want facts. They want emotions. They want me to say how scared I was that night, how unpredictable the seas are even after thirty years of me fishin’ them. They want a good story.
Just like when Steve died.
Jerry picked up his phone with half a mind to let it sit in the chum bucket for the rest of the day, but he paused when he
saw the most recent text.
Come to The Old Eileen.
Jerry’s heart made an uncomfortable trip to his throat. What the hell kind of ominous, cryptic shit was this?
His phone vibrated again.
This is Detective Madden.
Jerry mopped his forehead with his sleeve. He heaved himself out of his chair and made his way up top where Detective Madden was waiting, standing tall over him and Sheila 2.0 from her vantage point on the dock.
“Could’ve just hollered,” Jerry said, but if Madden heard him, she paid no mind.
She was a dark-skinned, trim woman with triangle earrings and a face that was achingly familiar to Jerry. In fact, now that
he was no longer in the heat of discovering a ghost ship in the middle of the Atlantic, he had time to really look at her
and sort out where he knew the detective from.
Cherrywood.
It was an unpleasant memory, the one of the neighborhood where Jerry and his ex-wife, Sheila, used to live. He could picture
Madden perched on a barf-pink sofa with a glass of lemonade in her hand, sandwiched between other neighborhood women. But
what was her first name . . . ?
“Brandy?” Jerry guessed.
The detective blinked at him. “Brenna.”
“Right. Neighborhood Watch?”
“Book club,” she said, and he faintly recalled being relegated to the garage while Sheila and the ladies ate key lime pie
and mooned over The Lovely Bones.
“Book club,” he repeated. “Must have been twenty damn years ago.”
“Twenty-four.”
Jerry scratched his head. “Guess that makes us old, then.”
Brenna Madden snorted. She hadn’t aged a goddamn day. “I’m younger than you. How’s Sheila? We stopped talking when I moved
to the city.”
“We’re divorced. Twenty-two years ago, I guess it was. And how’s . . .” Jerry racked his brain. Was Madden married? All those ladies seemed to be, but then again he hadn’t really talked to them directly. He cheated and glanced at her left hand. No ring.
“Ida,” Madden offered, after allowing him to flounder for a minute.
“Yeah. Ida.” Jerry found himself at a momentary loss. “How is Ida?”
Madden folded her arms. “Dead.”
“Oh . . . uh . . .”
“If we can get back to work, Jerry, I’m here to update you about your new property.” Madden turned on her heel and boarded
The Old Eileen, expecting him to follow.
He did, guilty and relieved that she’d given the conversation a merciful death.
The sailboat looked untouched from when Jerry was last aboard two days ago. It was as peaceful yet unnerving as it had been
that night. Jerry thought it would have looked less . . . wrong . . . in the light of day, docked and tied down, but he was mistaken.
In the day, it looked like a hollowed-out skull.
“Everything’s been photographed and taken into evidence,” Madden said as she strode across the deck. “Mostly the personal
items have been removed for legal use, and unless something arises, everything else on her is in your care. And if the Camerons
turn up to reclaim their property, you will still be entitled to a monetary reward for your role as salvor.”
Jerry let his fingers brush against the teak wood cap rails. Was this how everybody made their fortune? Through sheer dumb
luck?
Madden paused outside of the companionway to the chart house. “There is one thing we found that I want to see if you’ll help
me with.”
“Me? Help . . . ?” He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had needed his help for, well, anything.
Brenna Madden nodded sharply and turned to head down the companionway.
“Uh . . . um . . . first . . . what did they find? Wh-when they searched it all?” Jerry cleared his throat and tried again.
“Did they get any closer to what happened?”
Madden eyed him, as if searching for a sign that Jerry was the type to leak to the media. She seemed to decide he wasn’t.
“Not much was out of the ordinary, as you already know. The message on the mirror is of interest, as well as the ship’s log
that the captain kept. We found raw meat loaf in the fridge, which is of note because it likely means they were thawing it
out to eat within twenty-four hours. So they couldn’t have planned to leave too far in advance.”
Jerry frowned. “You think they just . . . left?”
“We’ve searched the ship. Every cranny and bilge. There’s no blood, nothing to suggest a struggle, unless you count items
that fell on the ground, but that could have been from the boat rocking. We have reason to believe that some or all of the
passengers could be alive.”
Madden’s words sounded upbeat, but her face was grim.
“What reason?” Jerry asked.
Madden ran her tongue over her teeth, taking a deep breath. “One of the ship’s two expandable life rafts is missing, and there
was a painter line attached to the ship that they would have used to launch it. The raft would be big enough for them to all
be aboard.”
They could all be alive . . .
But that was too good to be true, wasn’t it?
And it didn’t quite make sense to him.
“But the . . . the vessel is perfectly seaworthy.” Jerry took off his cap and tossed it from hand to hand. “There was no reason
for them to abandon ship. No flooding or boat malfunction or . . . or something.”
“I think we should take it as a hopeful sign, Mr. Baugh. There are hundreds of coast guard members out there right now searching for that life raft. If the Camerons return safely home, you can go back to your life with a substantial reward for salvaging their property.” Madden climbed down into the chart house. Jerry followed after.
“And . . . if they don’t turn up?”
“Then The Old Eileen is yours.” Madden continued, “Now for the thing that I was talking about earlier. Here he is.”
“He?” Jerry came down from the last step and turned to see a large cage inside of which was an almost-as-large striped cat.
Sheila had had a cat toward the end of their marriage. Jerry had suspected that the dreadful creature was her preemptive replacement
for him, and he had hated it since the moment it set its fluffy white paws on his carpet. He’d always been more of a dog person
anyway and had fantasized about taking a dog with him on Sheila 2.0. The beloved border collie of his childhood came to mind.
“You found . . . a cat? On this ship?”
“Yes.” Madden seemed almost as disgusted as Jerry. “He gave us quite the surprise. He somehow managed to hide all throughout
the initial search that night, but we found him in one of the cabins under a bed during the second search yesterday.”
“And you want me to . . . what?”
She faced him, lips turned down. “The rule of salvage, Mr. Baugh. This ship is yours. So far no Cameron relatives have turned up to claim it, and the legal officials who are reviewing Francis Cameron’s will seem to agree that it was not intended for anyone who isn’t currently MIA.
So for the time being, while we conduct our search, will you keep an eye on him?
” She jerked a thumb at the cat, who had paused his pacing to watch the two of them, as if aware their conversation was about him.
Jerry ran a hand through his thinning hair, then put the cap back on. “I think there’s probably someone better for a job like
that, Detective.”
“My next person to ask is whoever owns the nearest pound,” Madden said dryly. Jerry couldn’t be sure if she was guilting him,
but it damn well felt like it.
“Shit,” he muttered. “Just a couple days, then, until you figure things out.”
“That’s the spirit, Jerry. I’ll be in touch.” Madden turned to head up the companionway.
“Wait!” Jerry called. He should say something to her. He should acknowledge this whole situation they were caught up in, acknowledge
the past somehow, right? He rummaged for words for a full thirty seconds as Madden stared him down.
“I, um . . . I’m sorry. About Ida,” Jerry said at last, because he was sorry. He wondered how Ida had died.
Madden didn’t say a word. She gave him a curt nod, then took the steps of the companionway two at a time. Something buzzed
in her pocket when she reached the top, and she fished it out.
Jerry stepped up after her. “H-hold on, now. That’s it?”
Madden glanced back. “I’ve got roughly ten billion more things that need doing today.” She waved her ringing phone in the
air. “Thanks for all of your help. Oh, and there’s cat food in the galley.”
“Hold on!” Jerry repeated, reaching the deck. “Y-you can’t just . . . I don’t know how to . . . I mean, it’s not like I want
him put down or nothing, but . . . Detective Madden?”
Madden stopped dead, and Jerry nearly plowed into her. She turned to face him.
“Look, Jerry. We’re on a major time crunch with this case.
We’re looking for a nine-by-five-foot orange life raft in a search radius that spans over three hundred nautical miles, and we sure as hell better find it before hurricane season is in full force, so if you could just keep the cat alive until then, it’d be very much appreciated. ”
Jerry opened his mouth, then shut it again. He scratched his neck and looked down at his feet. “How . . . how long have they
been out there?”
Madden blew air out from between her lips. “You located the boat just after midnight on June ninth, yes?”
Jerry still remembered the fleck of blood on the face of his watch from the sailfish. “Nine minutes after, I spotted it, yep.”
“Well, the last boat check we have is dated at twenty-three thirty, just over ninety-six hours before your sighting.”
Jerry worked to do the math in his head, keenly aware how his pulse beat in his own throat. “So . . . that means . . .”
“It means that half an hour before June fifth,” Madden finished for him, her umber face grim, “at least one person on The Old Eileen was still alive.”