A Sea Change (2 page)

Arnie and Lil Stannard were old family friends. Arnie had been her dad’s fishing buddy until her parents retired to Phoenix. They’d had enough of cold, endlessly wet winters. Her father’s boat, a small Bayliner cruiser he’d christened
QVII
, had been moored at the Stannard’s waterfront home ever since. Not wanting to sell her (“It’d be like putting a price on your mother,” he’d told Maddy), he left
Queen Victoria the Second
to his only daughter. And Maddy, knowing the boat had been named after her mother, agreed to watch over it. Her father had bought it new the year Maddy and Ted moved in together, and the years had taken their toll on the boat, too. Even though it remained covered during the winters, the interior was ratty. Foam rubber spewed out of tears in the seat cushions, and mildew – impenetrable by even the most toxic chemicals – grew from every corner. The exterior looked like hell, but the hull was in fairly good shape, and the outboard motor chugged along once it started.
If
it started. There’d be no one to help if it didn’t. The Stannard’s were visiting her parents in Arizona.

Maddy walked along the small, floating boat dock unsnapping the boat cover as she went. The drizzle had let up, but as careful as she was, the pooled water on the treated canvas still sloshed into the boat, and she swore. She finished the job from the inside and stowed the cover in the prow, her duck boots making sucking noises on the carpet below.

In a moment of faith, Maddy began unloading the Volvo. Four large suitcases, followed by a train case, a duffel bag, five boxes, a two-drawer file cabinet, and – finally – the rose were placed in the
QVII
with ballast in mind. The battery charger sat on the dock in anticipation of trouble; a classic case of cockeyed optimism.

As Maddy moved the car to the street, and then trudged back down the long drive, she thought about how many times she’d done this alone. Ted had always liked the idea of having a boat, but the
QVII
hadn’t been the yacht he’d envisioned. It was all or nothing with Ted. It proved to be his downfall.

She reconnected the battery and held her breath, shoving the key in the ignition. Nothing. Maddy closed her eyes and groaned.

Sitting on the Stannard’s covered deck, Maddy waited for the charger to do its job. As big a pain in the ass as this whole production was, she knew for a fact it was easier than going down to Salmon Beach on foot. Nearly two hundred stairs separated the parking area above from the beachfront homes. She was in pretty good shape but it would take her two days, and a case of Mentholatum, to move in. Taking the boat meant an hour – an hour and a half – on the water, and with the high tide working for her she could simply tie the
QVII
off next to the steps that connected Jaed’s deck with the little beach. She’d pick up the car later.

Maddy pushed the boat to twenty-five knots. Rain poured off her red slicker. The rain hat kept her hair dry but water ran down her face making it impossible to see. The towel she’d been using was soaked. It was only five miles to Salmon Beach, but it had taken her half an hour just to reach the Narrows Bridge from the Stannard’s place. The wind through The Narrows – always bad – had picked up, and the strong current caused the engine to labor. It was making a new, unhealthy, noise.

As she crossed under the huge suspension bridge, Maddy couldn’t help but look up. She always did. It was part reflex and part superstition.  She could hear the cars 180 feet above her, see their headlights flickering through the metal grate even though it was only one o’clock in the afternoon. And she never failed to remember that the first Narrows Bridge had collapsed one windy day back in 1940. She’d vowed she’d never be caught napping. If the thing was going to fall, Maddy wanted to know about it. That particular theory hadn’t seemed to apply to her personal life.

Just as the
QVII
came out the other side of the bridge, a massive gust of wind hit her full force. The blast buffeted Maddy and she gripped the wheel more tightly with her left hand while she throttled back with her right. As soon as she felt the boat respond Maddy raised her face to the steely sky and screamed, “I hope you’re watching and taking notes! And if you can hear me, take this down: Ted Perry was
not
one of your better efforts!”

Chapter Two

Nick McKay pul
led off his waders, tossed them into a crate next to the front door, and stepped inside. Water dripped onto the entry mat and formed a circle around his feet. As he hung his rain gear on the brass coat rack an enormous sneeze escaped him, and he shuddered. Nick waited for the obligatory second sneeze, and when it was out of his system, he walked straight to the telephone and unplugged it.

This had been the third time in less than a week he’d had to rescue Emily DeMille’s cat from her crow’s nest. Nick tried explaining to her that if C.B. managed to get up there, he’d figure out a way to get down, but Emily was persuasive. It was hard to say “no” to a woman who’d lost a husband and son to the sea but still managed to smile and get on with her life. Besides, she always brought over a cake or some muffins the next day.

Normally, C.B.’s circus act wouldn’t have been a big deal, but Nick’s morning had started with his own toilet backing up. It had progressed to a major roof leak at house Number 80, when Corina and Norm Nelsen woke up to water soaking through their down comforter.

The day had then moved a little further downhill when Sparky Karlson, whose nickname had nothing to do with being a fireman, called to report he “may have started a small blaze” in his kitchen at Number 12, Salmon Beach.

“How small is small?” Nick had asked, as he quickly stepped into his boots and tried to calculate how much time it would take him to run from his place to Sparky’s, uncover the fire hose, and douse the fire before it spread to Karlson’s newly remodeled living room.

“Well,” Sparky had said in his maddeningly slow way. “It seems to be confined to the stove area at the moment.”

Nick had stopped in his tracks and taken a deep breath. “How about using that fire extinguisher I installed last month.”

And Sparky had said, “Well now, Nick, I would but you remember that one exceptional day we had last week?”

And Nick had shut his eyes in frustration because he knew that Sparky Karlson would take as long as it took to get to the point, and nothing you could say or do would hurry him along. “Yeah, Sparky. I remember.”

“Well, the day before, almost as if I’d had a premonition, I’d gotten the most beautifully marbled piece of top sirloin at the Albertsons.  You know the one up on Pearl?”

Nick could picture the kitchen curtains going up in flames. “Sparky! Tell me the rest of the story when I get there.” And he’d grabbed his own extinguisher and raced out of his house, along the dirt path.

Five minutes later Nick was shooting foam at Sparky’s oven, while the old man calmly finished telling him the story of the steak, and the barbeque, and the deck awning he’d set fire to, which was the reason he couldn’t use the extinguisher Nick had mounted on his kitchen wall.

So, by the time Emily DeMille called, Nick’s – usually limitless – patience had worn tissue-thin. He’d been polite to Emily, but as he’d climbed the ladder to the crow’s nest on her roof – and C.B. began to hiss at him the closer he got – Nick lost it. “Don’t give me any lip, you worthless furball. If it weren’t for you I’d have a lot more spare time on my hands.” He’d grabbed the howling C.B., who promptly sank his teeth into Nick’s hand. Fortunately, his leather gloves absorbed the assault. “It’s a good thing you have a really nice mommy,” he’d said, as the cat stubbornly reattached himself to Nick’s arm.

Emily had been waiting below and stretched her hands out as Nick hopped off the ladder and onto her balcony. C.B. had sprung into her arms and begun to purr.

“You should’ve named him after an actor, not a director,” he’d said.

Emily had smiled sweetly and said, “Be sure and add this to my monthly bill.”

Nick now stood in front of the open refrigerator, but it didn’t take him long to decide. He opened a Heineken and took a long pull from the bottle. Then he wearily sank into an oversized leather armchair and stretched his legs out onto the ottoman.

The chair was strategically placed. It afforded a view of the Narrows and most of the lower beach. Nick gazed out the sliding glass door, but this afternoon all he could see were endless shades of gray. He held the bottle up to his eye. The grays turned to a sickly green. He stuck the bottle between his thighs and let his head fall back.

“The next time that moth-eaten excuse for a feline gets caught up there in the rain he’s seagull food,” he said, and closed his eyes.

The year-round residents of Salmon Beach were as quirky as the houses they occupied. And in the sixteen months he’d lived there, Nick had come to know and like every one of them. What else could these people be but extraordinary? They lived in a gated community that restricted car access, yet allowed anyone to walk right in. They had to descend nearly two hundred steps that had been constructed down a sheer 500-foot cliff in order to reach their homes. Worse, they had to go back up those steps just to take out their trash. And even worse than that, there was no pizza delivery.

Moving in meant hiring a barge, which also meant that a lot of big-ticket items stayed with the houses once they were sold, or re-let. The leather armchair Nick sat in had been in the house since 1983.

The rainy season brought the very real threat of mudslides. The dry summers, fire. Insurance was astronomical, and full-coverage was a pipe dream. When you dialed 911 the E.M.T.’s arrived on a fireboat. Most of the places were on city sewer, but a few – and it wasn’t hard to tell which – weren’t.

One of the beauties of living on Salmon Beach was you discovered who your real friends were. One trek down, and up, those stairs was the acid test. The isolation of Salmon Beach suited the residents just fine. It was an eclectic community of fishermen, artists, musicians, professors, writers, and retirees with one common desire: to tell as much of their story as they felt you needed to know, and to have it accepted no questions asked. Which was exactly what had brought Nick McKay there.

Nick struggled to fight off sleep. He had no business napping in the middle of the afternoon. What was the date? He couldn’t remember, but he seemed to recall it was Opening Day. It was too early in the day for the Mariner’s game, but surely there was baseball being played somewhere in the country. His eyes slowly opened and searched for the remote. He didn’t immediately spot it and then remembered it didn’t matter anyway. “Cable’s out again,” he said.

Just as he nodded off, a thought came to Nick.
You’re talking to yourself way too much.

Nick was having that same nightmare. It always started like a regular dream, but in the end he’d be reaching for something – didn’t matter what: a coffee cup, a book, a pen – and just as it was within his grasp it would disappear. His hand would grab at nothing, and he would fall forward into blackness.

He jerked awake, disoriented, with his heart pounding. He caught the Heineken before it had a chance to spill and sat up straighter. The wind had picked up and the rain slanted across the Narrows. Truly a crappy day.

Bored, Nick got out of the chair and went to the window. He rarely had trouble amusing himself but today none of his projects interested him.

He’d just about talked himself into doing laundry when the boat caught his eye. He had to blink to be sure he wasn’t imagining it.

No, it was a boat all right. Sort of. Only a couple of running lights were on, and it listed badly.

“What kind of idiot would be out in this weather?”

Nick watched as the small vessel slowed alongside his neighbor’s deck, and then drifted in a little further. The boat reached the stairs that, during low tide, led to the small beach that separated the two houses, and then it stopped.

A figure in a red slicker and rain hat leaned out and, after a couple of attempts, finally got a grip on the railing and pulled the boat next to the steps.

“Well, that explains it,” he said to himself. “Jaed’s back.” Entertainment was at hand.

Jaed August Dawn Cohen would probably tell you she was named after the beach, month, and time of day she was conceived.  That, and the fact that her parents had attended Berkeley in the 60’s and were, “you know – hippies to the max.” But if someone asked her where
Jaed
Beach was, she’d shrug and tell them the attending midwife transposed the last two letters in her name and that bureaucratic shit happens.

She was truly one of the flakiest human beings Nick had ever met. Kelloggs had nothing on this woman. A few hours with Jaed could make his head hurt, but on days like this she was worth the mental hangover. One night she’d invited him over to read his palm. It had taken her a long, frustrating hour of consulting a book on palmistry every few seconds before she finally said, “I see romance in your future.  Wanna fuck?” He’d taken her up on it because it had been about three months, and the words ‘Jaed’ and ‘commitment’ were never used in the same sentence.

As she tied off the first line her hat suddenly blew off. Unless Jaed had gone brunette and sprouted about a foot and a half of hair, it wasn’t her, and Nick was a little disappointed.

He tracked the bonnet as it got lift and soared over Jaed’s house. The woman made a fruitless grab for it. Nick couldn’t hear her, but could read lips and he grinned. She turned back, picked up another rope, and tied off the stern. Then she climbed out of the boat.  The water nearly reached the top of her boots. She waded up the stairs and disappeared around the corner of the deck.

Nick sighed. Not as entertaining as he’d hoped. He headed for the bathroom to get rid of the beer and on his way back to the living room reconnected the phone. It immediately rang.

“Nick, what’s going on at number seventy-six?”

Carrying the phone with him Nick played dumb. “I don’t know, George. Why don’t
you
tell
me
?” He knew damned well that, as they spoke, George Gustafson had his telescope trained on Jaed’s property. Nick peered out the window but didn’t see any sign of the woman.

“Don’t you think you should investigate?”

“Investigate what?”

“A dark-haired woman just entered Jaed’s house. Didn’t you see the boat pull up?”

Nick was trying not to laugh at Gustafson’s legendary paranoia. “Now that you mention it, I
do
see a boat. Probably just a friend of Jaed’s checking up on the place while she’s gone.”

“In a boat? In this weather?”

“Like I said, she’s probably a friend of Jaed’s.” The small joke drifted past Gustafson. “But if it’ll make you feel better, George, why don’t you keep an eye on the place?” As if he had to ask. “If you see anything suspicious, I know I can count on you to let me know.”

“Oh, I will,” Gustafson said in a conspiratorial tone.

Nick rolled his eyes and set the phone down on the arm of the couch. When he turned back, she was walking back across Jaed’s deck and down the stairs. She hopped into the boat and went forward. Nick craned his neck but couldn’t see what she was doing. “Getting as bad as Gustafson,” he said, then realized he’d said it aloud. “You’re gonna have to quit this…or get a dog.”

And then he began to laugh. Because this woman – and now there was no doubt in his mind she was one of Jaed’s loopy friends – struggled to the side of the boat lugging some kind of plant in a huge plastic pot. This was theatre of the absurd at its best, and Nick leaned against the wall to watch.

She wasn’t tall enough to lift it high enough to get it up to the first dry step, and he wondered why she didn’t just put it down anywhere. “Oh. Right. Salt water.” He answered his own question.
And stop talking to yourself.

Nick could see her frustration mounting. Her body language said it loud and clear. For a fleeting moment he thought about going out to help her, but this morning had left him feeling decidedly unchivalrous. Besides, anyone nutty enough to sail out on a day like this didn’t need his help. They needed a licensed therapist.

She stepped back onto the staircase and tried to lift the pot over the boat rail but couldn’t get enough leverage. Nick watched in amusement as she stripped off her slicker and threw it on the deck. God, she hadn’t even been wearing a life vest! This could very well be the stupidest woman alive.

She slipped, caught herself, climbed to the top step, and sat down. She yanked off one boot, tossed it on the deck, and then let the other one fly. Her socks followed. She stood up and looked from side to side. She seemed to stare right at Nick when she looked across the beach, but he knew she couldn’t see him in his dim living room. Nick waited, but in a million years couldn’t have predicted what she did next.

“Oh, shit, no!” He stood frozen, because he knew that no matter what he did he wouldn’t be quick enough. And he was right.