Crash Tack Read online

  Contents

  Dedication

  Maps

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Get Your Next eBook Free

  If You Enjoyed This Book...

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  To Heather: You are the wind in my sails and the sun on my back.

  And to all the early readers. It is so much more because of you.

  Chapter One

  I STOOD ON the dock of the Palm Beach Yacht Club, thinking about the America's Cup. I was a small boy growing up in Connecticut, only a couple hours from Newport, Rhode Island, where in 1983, an Australian crew beat the United States for the first time. After more than 130 years of America's Cup racing, it had been the longest winning streak in sports history. I recalled later my father talking about that day as if the Aussies had stolen the Declaration of Independence and used it for wallpaper. And I watched the television with him when in 1995, the Australians tried to win it back again in San Diego, only for their boat to break in half and sink into the Pacific. My father didn't rejoice. He just sat in our living room with a sense of bewilderment that such a thing could occur.

  The same sense of bewilderment now hung over the dock in Palm Beach, as we waited for a yacht to return from the Palm Beach-Nassau race with a trophy but without its captain. My mentor, friend and boss, Lenny Cox, paced along the dock to the end and back, and his labored action took me back to my coastal New England roots, and stories of widows pacing around railed platforms atop their Victorian mansions, waiting with a sense of growing dread, eyes cast toward the sea, searching vainly for vessels that had left but never returned .

  This wasn’t a cold New England morning, but it was mild for South Florida in the spring. The breeze had shifted around from the north and a chill had arrived with it. Banners along the dock that read Palm Beach-Nassau Classic 2008 had flopped around to the south, making the writing appear backwards to me. I stood in chinos and a shirt with small pineapples all over it, hands in pockets, watching faces both familiar and not, as they in turn watched each other and me and the gray Intracoastal Waterway. A couple of paramedics leaned against their truck, while a collection of law enforcement folks, county sheriff and two sets of local police swapped their gallows humor in whispers. A number of yachtie types, some dressed too well to truly be seaworthy, others as salty as the ocean itself, waited for updates from the Coast Guard cutter that had made its way down to West Palm from the station in Jupiter Inlet. A woman brought hot coffee out from the yacht club rooms, and it was being passed around when one of the Coast Guard personnel called there she is , and we all looked east at the yacht motoring toward us.

  A Coast Guard crewmember shepherded us away from the edge of the dock to allow the paramedics first access. There had been no reports of injury, but the expectation of shock. The sleek, comfortable-looking yacht pulled alongside the dock under the hand of a man who had the face of a walrus. He wore a mustache the color of smoke-stained walls, and a blue cap bleached streaky white by sun and sweat. Fenders were tossed over the side by a petite, dark-haired woman and the welcome sight of my friend and colleague, Ron Bennett. Ron’s silver hair matched the color of the water and looked suitably windblown, but his face was starved of emotion. The paramedics balanced on the stanchions, skipped across the guardrail and inspected each of the six crew, all of whom looked tired but otherwise unharmed. I made eye contact with Ron and he offered me a weak smile, the kind that said he was glad to be home, but somehow embarrassed by that fact.

  I felt a body brush my shoulder and noted the gray polyester suit that could only belong to Detective Ronzoni of the Palm Beach Police Department. I had crossed paths with Ronzoni a handful of times in my brief career as a private investigator. To say he was my nemesis would be to vastly overstate his impact on the world, let alone on me, but he was an occasional thorn in my side. No doubt the feeling was mutual.

  “Surprised to see the Palm Beach PD slumming it on this side of the bridge, Rigatoni,” I said.

  “It’s Ronzoni, smart guy, and the boat and its owner both reside in Palm Beach, so it’s professional courtesy.”

  I nodded. Professional courtesy was very big with the Palm Beach PD. The cities of Palm Beach and West Palm Beach shared two words in their names, and that was about all. Palm Beach was one of the most exclusive communities in the country, where exclusive is code for very, very rich. It sat on its own barrier island, separating the rest of Florida from the Atlantic Ocean. The bridge that crossed the Intracoastal Waterway between the well-heeled island and the regular Joes on the mainland was some kind of physical metaphor. Unlike Ronzoni and his colleagues, the West Palm Beach PD didn’t do professional courtesy quite so much. They were busy dealing with crime.

  “Why’s the yacht coming here if it lives on the island?” I asked Ronzoni, as we watched a twenty-something guy who looked like a Ralph Lauren magazine ad that had been crumpled in the mail get his blood pressure checked by the paramedics.

  “It just lives at the Biltmore. It races out of the yacht club here.”

  The club was called the Palm Beach Yacht Club, but it occupied a long dock off the promenade in West Palm. I had no idea why that was the case.

  “So no case for you. Shame.”

  “No shame, Jones. Whatever this is, it’s going to be a jurisdictional nightmare.”

  “How so?”

  “Coast Guard says the skipper went overboard just west of the Biminis, which is Bahamas territory. The Coast Guard was called in to search because it’s a US vessel, so they’re all over it. But they don’t investigate boating mishaps in foreign waters. If that’s anyone, it’s the FBI. The skipper was, is , a resident of Palm Beach, but the boat has landed here in West Palm, so maybe that’s West Palm PD, maybe it’s the sheriff. That’s a lot of paperwork for nothing.”

  Ronzoni had a pathological aversion to paperwork and, it seemed to me, a similar aversion to every other kind of work. What he didn’t have was an aversion to taking credit for the work of other departments, and that I guessed was more the reason for his attendance than any kind of courtesy.

  It seemed that the county was taking lead on events, because it was a tall, blond investigator whom I recognized but didn’t know
who took control. He spoke to a deputy whom I certainly wouldn’t have minded knowing, but didn’t. She made the green uniform of the sheriff’s office look like haute couture . Her brown hair was tied back and it gave her face a determined look that did all sorts of things for me. I watched her talk to the woman who had brought the coffee from the yacht club, and then she began ushering the crew off the yacht and into a room in the club. I moved toward Ron as he stepped over the guardrail and Lenny met me there. Lenny gave Ron a hug. He was that kind of guy. I followed with a hug of my own. If it was good enough for Lenny, it was good enough for me and Ron looked like he needed it. The attractive deputy didn’t move us along, waiting for me to pull back from Ron before giving him a tap on the shoulder and shooting me a smile that I suspected was supposed to convey compassion, but actually made me feel like the sun had just burst through the clouds. I watched the petite, dark-haired woman from the crew lead the others toward the clubroom. She was followed by another woman, a thin blond with mousy features, and the preppy guy. Another guy, perhaps thirty or so, with coal-black hair and a Roman nose kept his eyes to the ground. The walrus who had been at the helm brought up the rear. We dropped in step with Ron as he walked toward the clubroom.

  “What happened?” asked Lenny.

  Ron shook his head. “I don’t know. I really don’t know.” He moved his eyes to us but his vision was somewhere else, recounting events perhaps, trying to make sense of it all. He walked like a robot into the clubroom with the others, and the sheriff’s investigator put up a palm to tell us that we weren’t invited.

  “What’s happening?” I asked him.

  “Just a few questions, that’s all. We’ve still got a missing person out there.”

  I nodded and Lenny remained mute, and we watched the attractive deputy step inside and close the door. Lenny wandered over to the paramedics, and I headed for the Coast Guard cutter. One of the men was coiling a rope on the deck, and I threw him a nod.

  “You guys find anything? ”

  He shook his head. “Nup. We’ve got boats and choppers still looking. If he’s out there, we’ll find him.”

  “When did they call it in?”

  “Far as I know, they didn’t. We called them.”

  “How does that work?”

  “The guy was wearing a PLB.”

  “A what?” I asked.

  “PLB. Personal locator beacon. It’s a satellite beacon that can be triggered in an emergency. Helps us nail down where he is.”

  “So you know where he is?”

  The guy shrugged. “We know where the signal is.” He nodded to end our chat, and returned to his rope coiling. I wandered back to Lenny. The paramedics had packed up and headed off, and Lenny leaned against the rails where the dock met the promenade. There were some impressive yachts in the slips, a lot of mine is bigger than yours .

  “Coast Guard says the skipper’s still out there. They’re tracking some kind of beacon,” I said as I leaned my back against the rail.

  Lenny nodded. He was wearing a shirt with lots of bikini-clad women on it, each leaning against a long surfboard. It wasn’t the most PC of garments, but Lenny wasn’t the most PC of guys.

  “Paramedics said they’re all okay, just tired and shaken,” Lenny said. “It’s not easy to lose someone overboard.” Lenny said the last part staring out beyond the throng of masts and rigging, across the island and ocean to somewhere a long way away and a long time ago, somewhere I had never been and would probably never go. Somewhere he too had lost people. Lenny ran his hand through his thick mane of red hair, let out a deep breath and shot me a wink from his creased, well-tanned face. I wasn’t sure if the wink was for my benefit or his.

  We waited in silence, which was okay for both of us. Lenny could wax poetic with the best of them when he was in the mood, but he was equally comfortable with silence, and I was generally the same. I thought about Ron, how he seemed to have aged a decade in a week, and how it must feel to lose someone at sea. I didn’t know the guy who was out there, but I felt a chill as I pictured him floating in the deep black Atlantic, no land in sight, watching his yacht sail away. It made me shiver and I shook the sensation out through my shoulders, and then I looked along the dock to see the door to the clubroom open and the attractive deputy step through. Then six weary sailors shuffled out, each looking in their own way like they were living a nightmare.

  Chapter Two

  WE TOOK LENNY’S pickup and delivered Ron home. He didn’t speak on the drive, preferring to stare out the passenger’s side window. Lenny piloted us down I-95 past the airport and pulled onto Forest Hill Boulevard. We drove by the entrances to a stream of homogenous housing subdivisions before we turned off to the apartment complex that Ron was calling home.

  As far as apartment developments go this was a nice one. Two levels of condos surrounded the ubiquitous man-made lake, with well-tended St. Augustine grass and tropical plantings. It wasn’t the down-at-heel bachelor hotel one usually associated with a freshly divorced man. But the inside of Ron’s apartment couldn’t have said divorcé more if it was lit in fifty-foot neon in Times Square. Although tastefully painted and furnished in a business hotel style, it bore the empty walls and takeout food scent of a single guy who wasn’t designed to be that way.

  Ron dropped his sailing bag inside the door and flopped onto a microfiber sofa that was too red to be his. I asked him if he wanted a drink and he said it was a bit early, even for him. I hadn’t meant an alcoholic drink, but I decided he wasn’t firing on all cylinders so I let it go, and poured a glass of water from the faucet and handed it to him. He nodded thanks as if the previous question had never been asked. Lenny leaned against the wall, clearly not planning on hanging around. I had a whole list of questions to ask Ron, but was mindful of the ordeal he had been through.

  “You should get some rest,” I said, motioning to Lenny.

  Lenny bounced his butt from the wall. “You be okay?”

  Ron looked around the room. It was a one-bed apartment, so that didn’t take very long, and then he looked at Lenny.

  “I won’t sleep right now. Why don’t we go to the office?”

  “You sure?” said Lenny.

  “I might not be up for a pop quiz, but I can pack boxes.”

  We waited for Ron to change from his sailing gear into a fresh polo shirt and a pair of blue trousers, and then we jumped back into Lenny’s truck. He cut up North Military Trail to Okeechobee Boulevard. Just after Cross Country Mall Lenny pulled into a seventies vintage strip mall of faded blue stucco with a parking lot that had been bleached gray by years of tropical sun and rain. He stopped in front of a store that had the vertical blinds pulled despite the cloudy day, and we got out. The air was heavy with incense and spices emanating from the Indian grocery next door. Lenny pushed the door with his name stenciled on it, and held it open for Ron and me. We stepped into the air-conditioned front office, where our receptionist, Lizzy Staniforth, sat waiting for us to appear.

  “Big night, boys?” She scowled through her heavily painted red lips. Lizzy looked like she had just wandered in from a goth nightclub, lots of black clothes and attitude, but she was in fact incredibly organized. She had been working for Lenny when he invited me to join his firm eighteen months earlier, and she was yet to offer me a smile.

  “Ron was sailing,” I said. Lizzy shot me a look like that was a likely story, until she recalled that he had indeed been away for the week sailing in the Bahamas. Ron offered a weak smile and stepped through into the inner office that was separated only by a partial wall. Lenny gave Lizzy a wink and she beamed like he’d just offered her a raise. I tried not to take it personally and leaned across the desk, speaking softly.

  “They lost a man at sea,” I told her, and her jaw dropped before she spoke.

  “Oh my, Lord,” she said. “Is he gone?”

  I shrugged. “They’re still looking.”

  “He must be distraught,” she said, glancing at the wall between her and Ron. />
  “He’s been better.”

  “Is there anything I can do for him?”

  I looked around at the half-packed boxes. “Just keep this place going, like you always do.”

  I thought it was a nice thing to say, and I gave her a smile and got a nod in return. She turned to her computer and began typing, and I took that as my signal that I was dismissed.

  The office beyond was actually one large room that in a previous life had been a video library, and there was still a box of random VHS tapes in the storeroom that was there when Lenny arrived and would be there when he left. Two desks punctuated the office space, along with a sofa, a coffee station and a water cooler. We never chatted over the water cooler. Most of our conversations happened with Lenny sitting on the edge of his desk, me sitting behind mine and Ron kicked back on the sofa. I found them both in those positions, and I took my seat .

  “You wanna get it off your chest?” asked Lenny. He had a disarming personality that made a lot of people open up when they acted like clams with everyone else. Ron propped his head up on the arm of the sofa and looked at Lenny.

  “Like I said, Lenny, I just don’t know. We had done the race—it should have all been smooth waters.”

  “How did you do in the race?” I asked.

  “We won our division.”

  “So what happened then?” Lenny asked.

  Ron shook his head. “We were on our way back from Nassau and had just crossed the Great Bahama Bank. I thought we were going to anchor for the night at Bimini or Cat Cay, but I was down below and Drew came down and said Will had decided to keep going since we had a sou’easter, and Drew divided us into shifts. Will, Felicity and Drew were going first watch, so the rest of us hit the hay. We were pretty darn tired.”

  “Which one was the skipper?” I asked.

  “That’s Will. Will Colfax. He owns the boat.”

  “So who is this guy? Will Colfax?” I asked.

  “He’s pretty well known around the club. Businessman. Import-export, that sort of thing.”

  “You didn’t know him that well?”

  “Well enough, but you know with things like sailing. Probably the same when you played baseball. You kind of know people within that environment but not necessarily out of it. He was one of those guys. Big, loud. Charming in a boorish sort of way.”