Chapter 20
Jerry Baugh
Jerry fixed the security camera on its mount, tongue between his teeth. The ladder wobbled beneath his feet from the swells
under the ship. Storm’s brewing, Jerry thought as he climbed down the ladder and surveyed his work. The camera overlooked the hallway of The Old Eileen. It would catch any suspicious activity, like something sneaking out of the bilges, and send an alert to his cell phone.
That had been Madden’s first recommendation when he called her days ago.
Right after she’d informed him about the recovered body.
Like Madden predicted, the media published their first stories before daylight, and they had only grown more grim. News vans
packed the perimeter of the marina gates, and more and more journalists became brazen enough to climb the fence to snap a
photograph of The Old Eileen or to call out to Jerry for a comment. This continued until Madden herself came by with a couple officers to state loudly
that trespassing could warrant up to sixty days in jail.
Madden’s second recommendation to Jerry had been hiring help, a pair of young deckhands who were now chattering up top as
they hosed down The Old Eileen’s deck. Jerry had hunted down Lainey and given her a job, and the other kid was a boy named Ricardo who was still in braces but knew his way around a boat.
Jerry did wish that Lainey and Ricardo hadn’t hit it off as well as they did so he could go back to some peace and quiet, but part of him was grateful for the company.
Something had been in the bilges that night.
Something he never wanted to encounter alone again.
Jerry tucked the ladder under one arm and headed to the deck. The smudged prints left by the army of coast guard and cops
last week in their investigation had been wiped clean by the two deckhands. Lainey took the ladder from him as he squinted
in the bright morning light.
“Camera’s set up,” Jerry said. He had told them about the person sneaking through the bilges in case it scared them off the
job, but Lainey and Ricardo had only found the prospect of a murderer (in Ricardo’s opinion) or a ghost (in Lainey’s) more
enticing.
“Cool. We finished with the bow and midships. All that’s left is the cockpit.” Lainey propped the ladder against the chart
house and waved the hose toward the stern of the ship.
Ricardo sniggered. “Cock-pit.” Lainey spritzed hose water at him.
Jerry walked along the bow and midships, inspecting for any missed spots. He had to look like he knew what he was doing with
The Old Eileen, or the hired deckhands would never respect him. He couldn’t find anything wrong, though, so he grunted his approval at the
sparkling teak wood and white deck.
“All righ’, keep working, then.”
The TV in the salon was still on. Jerry had powered it up as background noise so he wouldn’t have to listen to the ship creaking
while he installed the security camera, but now he settled into the cushy sofa in front of it. Boy, did he feel like a rich
man perusing the morning news while he paid a couple teenagers to scrub his yacht.
Jerry and Steve had grown up in a trailer park in Gainesville, knee-deep in swamp water and seventy-five miles from the sea.
They’d been raised by their ma and an occasional man claiming to be their father (Ma never confirmed any of them).
Growing up, the brothers associated wealth with the ocean: coastal mansions and private islands and the beautiful white sailboats that sat in wide blue backyards.
Steve had dipped a toe in that life, swabbing the decks of those yachts and chartering them to wherever their owners needed them to go.
The Old Eileen would have been Steve’s dream home.
So he couldn’t just sell it. The choice was extra stupid because he couldn’t bring himself to sell Sheila 2.0 either, and living off what he fished all year wasn’t gonna get both boats through a summer. And Jerry damn sure wasn’t getting
a landlubber job. He went round and round in circles with the problem, encountering new bouts of his own stubbornness at each
turn.
He wouldn’t sell the boats, he wouldn’t get a land job, he wouldn’t work for one of the yachting idiots, he wouldn’t take
out a loan, he wouldn’t sell the boats . . .
Something had to give. But he couldn’t for the life of him decide what, so instead he turned up the volume of the television
and propped his feet on the table.
“. . . reminding viewers that the state is currently on hurricane watch. Hurricane Ida is expected to make landfall in three
to four days,” the news anchor was saying.
Hurricane Ida, huh? Poor Madden. It couldn’t be easy having her dead partner’s name plastered all over the news.
Jerry made a mental note to find out how to secure The Old Eileen against the coming storm. With Sheila 2.0 he usually just tied a couple extra dock lines and bought beer.
Jerry surfed to another news channel.
“. . . and still no sign of the passengers of The Old Eileen, though police are racing to uncover clues about the body of the unidentified male found in the search site. Friends and teachers of the Cameron twins have come forward to express their horror . . .” The reporter pointed beside her where two photographs had popped up on-screen.
They were yearbook photos of the Cameron twins.
Tia Cameron was in a school uniform, hiding behind a curtain of long dark hair.
Rylan Cameron had a thin smile that didn’t reach his large, sad eyes.
They were just kids. Jerry hovered his thumb over the remote but couldn’t tear himself away.
Those kids had lived here on this boat. And now . . .
The reporter continued, never seeming to take a breath. “We have heard from a family friend that Nicolás de la Vega was not
meant to even be crewing for the Camerons that week, and in fact Ernie Carmichael changed his mind about the trip at the last
minute. We have a brief statement from Mr. Carmichael, who was a personal friend to both Francis and Alejandro.”
The screen flashed to what looked to Jerry like the outside of a miniature mansion. A pudgy man in a golf polo shook his head
at the camera. “I can’t even imagine what might have happened to them, to those poor kids. I just keep thinking if my mother
hadn’t fallen, if I’d been onboard too . . . maybe I could have stopped this from happening. Or, I—I don’t know, maybe I’d
be gone too.”
“How long have you known the Camerons, Mr. Carmichael?” a man asked from behind the camera.
Ernie Carmichael adjusted the microphone clipped to his collar. “I was there at the beginning stages of Prometheus Wire. Thirty years ago, right? He was my boss, a groomsman at my wedding. Good guy. I just hope wherever they are, they are safe.
I don’t believe for a second that the, er, the body that was found is him. Or any of them. I think they’re all still out there.”
Jerry turned off the television.
I think they’re all still out there.
All but one, right? Even then, the odds couldn’t be good. Still, maybe he was wrong.
Maybe one of these days the coast guard would scoop a boatful of shivering millionaires out of the water, and Jerry would
end up having champagne on deck with the captain who’d be more than grateful for Jerry looking after his beautiful ship. Those
two kids would be home playing up top with the hose like Lainey and Ricardo were now.
As Jerry’s ex-wife used to say, Everything comes out in the wash. And with a hurricane brewing, they were all about to get one hell of a cleanse.