Chapter 56
Jerry Baugh
It had been one month since Jerry Baugh found The Old Eileen empty on the Atlantic. It had been eleven days since Agent Koshida told him his brother was murdered. And it had been twenty-eight
minutes since Jerry bought a clip-on tie from Walmart and sat down in the restaurant to meet with Detective Madden.
Madden sat opposite him and ordered a gin and tonic. Jerry scanned the many beers on the menu, then got a club soda.
“So . . .” he said, stirring the carbonated bubbles in his drink.
“So.” Madden steepled her hands and leaned in. “Here’s what we know.”
She reviewed the case in detail: everything from the half-baked meat loaf in the stove to Nico de la Vega’s drowned body (still
the only body they had managed to recover). She laid out the message in the mirror, the absent life raft, the cat left behind.
“Steve,” Jerry interrupted, suppressing a burp from the soda.
“Excuse me?”
“He’s not the cat anymore. I named him.” Jerry shifted in his seat and tried for a smile. It felt strange, so he dropped it. “Steve.”
Jerry might have been befuddled by his new sobriety, but he could have sworn that Madden smiled back.
“Anyhow,” she pressed on, “this case is going over my team’s head at this point. Now that the FBI are involved and all.”
Jerry adjusted his tie. He had thought about buying a real one before realizing he didn’t own a single shirt with a collar.
But this dinner meant something, so he’d done his best with the clip-on and a T-shirt. It was the end of an era, after all.
“So that’s it, then? You think we’ll never know?”
Madden opened her mouth, but their waiter, a perky teenager, came by to get their orders. Jerry asked for salmon, Madden steak.
She resumed when the waiter was gone.
“This is a high-profile case, Jerry. It’s not just gonna die out. Actually, Will—uh, Agent Koshida—informed me as a courtesy
that his people are taking Ernie Carmichael in for interrogation. They think that Cameron’s crimes ran deeper than just him,
and he had a whole network of friends like Matamoros doing it too, maybe. But as far as the missing people, well . . . We’ll
just have to see if time decides to tell, right?”
“Guess so.” Jerry creased his napkin over and over in his lap. “So that’s that, then. We just . . . move on.”
Madden nodded.
Jerry’s gaze dropped to his lap. He had moved on, at some point, from Steve’s death. But with everything churned up again,
he wasn’t quite sure how to proceed.
“Jerry . . .” Madden said. “I’m not supposed to say this. False hope and whatever. But I want you to rest easy from this whole
thing. For Steve. Uh, human Steve.”
False hope? Jerry braced himself. “What is it? What do you know?”
“They found another body. And they think it might be Francis Cameron’s.”
Jerry sat back in his seat. Madden watched as he tried to make sense of the whorls in the table. “I . . . He . . .” Jerry swallowed. “How did he die?”
“Drowned, they think.”
Drowned. Jerry didn’t know what to think. He didn’t know what to do or what to feel until a smile, a real one this time, broke
over his face. “Well, goddamn. Sounds like . . . I dunno . . .”
“Justice,” Madden said, and she lifted her gin and tonic to him and drank.
They sat in silence until their food was delivered, and they both dug in. The salmon tasted fine, but Jerry could tell it
wasn’t fresh. Summer was half over, and by November, hurricane season would be through. In four months, he’d be back on the
seas cruising in Sheila 2.0 and eating enough fresh fish to last a lifetime. Until then he’d live at the docks, day-fishing in shallower waters.
“So . . . What, uh, have you been up to besides all that?” Jerry asked.
Madden washed down a bite of steak with some gin. “I’ve been meaning to tell you, actually. I wanted to wait until Lainey
was here, but . . .”
“Yeah, she said she wasn’t feeling too good. She’s looking after the boats. And Steve. Cat Steve.”
“Right.” Madden reached for the barbecue sauce. “Well, I, uh, met someone. She was reporting on the case, asked me for an
interview, and we went out a couple times. Jennifer Byun.”
The name rang a bell. She was the author of that article, one of the first ones that had come out last month. “Oh. Congrats.”
“Thanks. And Jenni, well, she invited me to her neighborhood book club.”
Jerry set down his fork. The image of the ladies of Cherrywood flooding his old kitchen with strange smells and high-pitched laughter came back to him.
He vaguely remembered Ida Graves seated beside Madden on the futon, and how could he forget Sheila shooing him out to the garage just when it was time to serve key lime pie?
“Sounds . . . uh . . .”
“And I wanted to see if you’d like to join,” Madden said, meeting his gaze over the rim of her glass.
“Me?” Jerry spat a fish bone from his mouth, then regretted it and covered up the saliva on his plate hastily with his napkin.
“I, er . . .”
“For old times’ sake,” she went on. Almost gentle. “And for new times’ as well.”
Maybe this wasn’t the end of things in all the ways Jerry had thought. Maybe he and Madden would continue to be . . . well,
whatever it was that they were. Almost friends.
“I’ll, uh, see if I’m busy then,” he mumbled, knowing full well he had nothing on his calendar until the end of time. Maybe
the ladies at book club would enjoy some strong coffee and fresh-caught fish?
“Good.”
Madden finished off her meal. Jerry drank his club soda and tried to think of the last time he’d read a book that wasn’t about
tying cow hitches and bowline knots. The silence sat more comfortably between them.
“Lainey’s invited too,” Madden added once their plates were cleared. “Although I’m sure she’s got better things to do than—”
“Than go to book clubs with old people?” Jerry grunted.
Madden sniffed. “I’m ten years younger than you. You’re the old one, Baugh.”
“Ehh.” Jerry thumbed through his slim wallet to pay in cash, but Madden waved his money away.
“My treat,” she said so grudgingly that he almost forgave her for being so nice.
They paid and left the restaurant behind. Madden got into her Volkswagen and rolled down the window. “Tuesdays at seven. Think
about it.”
Jerry tapped his temple in a solemn promise and watched the detective drive off down the street. He hooked his fingers in
his pockets and walked back to the marina. The sun was setting on Hallandale, showing off the proud masts of the sailboats
in the yard.
The Old Eileen was the prettiest of all, ghost white and tall without a speck of damage from the hurricane or otherwise to reveal her haunted
interior. It was a shame to sell a ship like this. Jerry hoped Steve (the cat) would be able to accept living in Sheila 2.0 and that Steve (his brother) wouldn’t hate him too hard from the grave for giving up the chance to sail.
Jerry’s footsteps fell heavy on the slats of the dock, but he hesitated before climbing the catwalk to the sailboat to check
on the cat and on Lainey, who was sick in bed.
Something was off . . .
He studied The Old Eileen. She stood tall and shining beneath the moon, a survivor of God knew what, and the old home of the man who’d killed Steve.
Unwind Yachting Co., her life preserver read from the stern. Jerry could see the orange shining from where he stood on the dock.
Safe to sail in any gale!
Eileen wasn’t likely to change anytime soon, Jerry thought to himself. So that couldn’t be it. He looked around, stumped, until
it hit him all at once.
Sheila 2.0 was gone. Her absence looked like a gap in the teeth in the marina’s pearly smile. Jerry stared at the vacant space of water. Then he saw the piece of paper weighed to the dock by a brick. He moved the brick and picked up the paper, his heartbeat a distant drum as he read.
I didn’t mean for things to go this way. I didn’t mean to end up liking you so much. Or relating to you. Sometimes I even
wished things could stay like this, me working for you on your boats, talking about lost brothers and drinking away bad storms.
But there’s someone I need to find, and—who knows!—maybe this kick in your ass will be the best thing that ever happened to
you. I’m sorry for taking Sheila (though, truly it was time you moved on from her), but now you have no choice. Good-bye, stinkpot! Hello, sailboat! It’s
time, old man.
Face your fears.
A thrill built up in Jerry’s stomach unlike anything he’d experienced before. Adrenaline? Fear? Maybe even determination.
He didn’t understand fully what had happened, only that fate had forced his hand. And that he wanted to make Lainey and Steve—both
Steves—proud.
If it was even from Lainey at all. There was no signature at the bottom of the page, just an object bound by tape. Jerry stared
at it, unsure what it meant or if he was even supposed to know. He peeled it back from the paper and held it up to the moonlight
that beamed from behind the mast of his sailboat.
It was a thimble.