Masquerade (33 page)

"That tanker was empty when it went down, Miss Jardin. At some point, between the time it was loaded here in New Orleans and when it sank in the Gulf, that cargo of crude was off-loaded. Once the tanker ran into the storm and heavy seas being reported in the Gulf of Mexico, it was sunk—probably with the aid of some strategically placed explosive charges."

"But you don't know that for a fact, do you?" The conversation she'd overheard in the solarium —she remembered that her father, Gabe, and Marc had been talking about finding out what proof the insurance company had, if any.

"Miss Jardin, there are basically only two ways to scuttle a ship—open the sea cocks and flood her, a process that could take as long as twenty-four hours, or blow out her bottom with explosive charges and send her to the sea floor within minutes."

"And you think that's what happened to the
Dragon?"
she managed to challenge him before taking a slow sip of her coffee, wondering if it was true and telling herself it couldn't possibly be. So that was why her family had sounded so worried. These were serious charges.

"I'd bet on it."

Remy shook her head in denial. "I'm sorry, but your theory doesn't make good sense—or good business. Why would we deliberately sink one of our ships simply to collect on a cargo that you claim wasn't on board?"

"The
Dragon
was an old tanker, Miss Jardin. I doubt she could have had more than a few voyages left in her before she would end up in a scrap heap. You probably collected more from the insurance company for the ship than you could have got if you'd tried to sell her . . . not to mention the tax losses the company will get out of it."

"But if she was that old and in such bad shape, then she could easily have broken up in the storm and gone down
with
her cargo of crude oil."

"Then why wasn't there any oil slick?"

"Maybe her tanks—or whatever you call them —weren't ruptured," Remy argued, then lowered her cup to the table, lacing her fingers tightly around it. "In any case, these charges against the Crescent Line are preposterous. My family would never involve itself in such dishonest activities."

"What about Cole Buchanan?" His quiet question hit her like a fist.

"Cole," she repeated dumbly, then tried to laugh off her shock, conscious of the sick feeling in her stomach. "Don't tell me you suspect he's behind this so-called insurance scheme?"

"Why not?"

"Because it's absurd. What would he have to gain?" At the moment Remy was too stunned to think it through for herself. She needed the insurance investigator to provide the answer.

"Money, of course."

"How? Where? Not from the insurance company. The claim money would be paid directly to the Crescent Line . . . unless you're about to suggest that he's stealing funds from the company."

"Not directly. But he could have sold the shipment of crude oil, off-loaded it onto barges waiting downriver—or into a pipeline—and pocketed the money himself. Your company wouldn't be losing anything, since it would be collecting on the shipment from the insurance."

"I don't believe that." Yet she found herself remembering the comment Gabe had made about Cole's name being linked with some shady dealings in the past.

"Why not?"

"Because I don't." She loved Cole. How
could
she believe that about him?—but then she wondered if it wouldn't be closer to the truth to say that she simply didn't
want
to believe it. She went on as if she had no doubts. "If that's what you think, you should confront Cole with your suspicions, not me."

"I have. Naturally, he denies everything."

"Then why are you talking to me? I've already told you I have nothing to do with the comp—"

"But you do have something to do with Cole Buchanan." He smiled. At least Remy thought he did. With that thick, silvery growth of whiskers above and below his mouth, it was difficult to tell. "I think it's safe to say you know Cole Buchanan quite well—certainly well enough to visit his apartment."

"It's no secret that Cole and I have been seeing each other, but I don't see what that has to do with this."

"I thought perhaps he might have said or done something unusual in the past few months— bought you an expensive present or been a little freer with money, maybe received some unusual phone calls . . . anything out of the ordinary."

"Nothing that I can remember." Which was the truth. Of course, she didn't tell him she could remember almost nothing about her past, including these last few months.

"Think about it. Maybe something will come back to you. If it does, my phone number's on the card. Be sure you call me. I wouldn't want to see you get into trouble over this."

"That almost sounds like a threat, Mr. Hanks."

"I'm sure you've heard the term
accessory"
He stood up, took a money clip from his pocket, peeled two one-dollar bills from it, and dropped them on the table. "I appreciate your time, Miss Jardin. Let's stay in touch."

Alone at the table, Remy let in the wash of questions she hadn't dared think about with the investigator looking on. Was it true? Was there an insurance fraud? Was this the trouble she'd sensed? Was Cole a part of it? Had she known that? Was that the reason she'd broken off with him? Had she seen something or heard something, as the bearded Mr. Hanks had suggested? Was that why it seemed so imperative that she be here?

"More coffee, Miss?"

Startled, she glanced at the stained-glass pot in the bartender's hand and quickly shook her head. "No—thank you," she said, breaking free of the questions whirling about in her mind and gathering up her purse.

By the time she reached La Louisiane, the shock of the information had worn off. She swept into the lounge and spotted Gabe at the large mahogany bar, the gleaming centerpiece of the elegantly appointed room. He'd obviously been watching for her. The instant he saw her, he picked up two drinks and gestured to a quiet corner table. She met him there.

"It's about time you got here," he said. "I was starting to worry about you. You realize you're almost fifteen minutes late?"

"I was detained."

"I gathered that."

She opened her purse, took out the investigator's business card, and laid it on the small cocktail table in front of her brother.

"What's this?" Idly he picked it up, then went still. "Where did you get this?" he asked, too casually.

"Mr. Hanks gave it to me personally."
 

"You've seen him?"

"Yes. He had some questions to ask me"—she closed her purse with a sharp snap—"about insurance and fraud—and the sinking of the
Crescent Dragon.
That was what you and Father and Uncle Marc were talking about this morning, wasn't it?" she said stiffly. "Why didn't you tell me about it then? Why did all of you pretend there was nothing to worry about, when you knew better? When you knew this man—"

"Remy, you've already been through enough this past week. We all agreed there was no need to tell you about this. And we were right. Look at the way you're trembling."

"It's because I'm mad," she said, and tried to cool the angry tremors of her hands by wrapping them around the cold, moisture-laden sides of the iced drink. "You should have told me."

"Maybe we should have, but you don't have any involvement in the company—"

"But I
am
involved with Cole—as Mr. Hanks was so quick to point out."

"What exactly did he say?"

"He all but accused Cole of being the one behind this fraud scheme, and he suggested that I might have seen or heard something suspicious."

"What did you say?"

"What could I say? The little I can remember might as well be nothing." An olive was impaled on a red plastic saber in her glass. Remy seized the miniature sword and began stabbing at the ice cubes.

"Is that what you told him?"
 

"I said I didn't remember anything unusual happening. I didn't tell him why."
 

"Is that all?"

"Why all the questions, Gabe?" she demanded. "Am I being cross-examined by you now?"

"Of course not." He smiled at her so gently that she felt churlish for having snapped at him. "I was curious, that's all. I hate seeing you all tense and upset like this. It's what we were trying to avoid."

"Is it true, Gabe?" She turned to him, earnestly, seriously. "Was the
Dragon
deliberately sunk? Is it fraud? Is Cole a part of it?"

"To tell you the truth, Remy, we don't know. Obviously we don't want to believe it, but ... I can't imagine that the insurance company would throw around accusations without having some proof of wrongdoing, though we haven't been able to find out what it is. And Cole's not talking." He paused for a fraction of a second. "Hanks didn't happen to reveal anything to you, did he?"

"No," she said, and sighed. "Unfortunately, I didn't ask whether he had any proof. . . . The more I think about it, though, most of what he said sounded like conjecture."

He absently rattled the ice cubes in his glass as if considering the possibility, then shrugged. "It could be they're just fishing," he conceded, taking a sip of his drink.

"Fishing? Why?"

"Insurance scams involving old—and supposedly fully loaded—ships on the high seas happen more frequently than any insurance company cares to admit, and they're next to impossible to prove with the evidence 'twenty thousand leagues under the sea,' so to speak. The
Dragon
might fit what they see as a pattern."

She didn't believe that, and she didn't think Gabe did either. He was only trying to play down the situation for her benefit. It wasn't working.

"What if Hanks is right, Gabe? What if I do know something?"

"About all this?" His glance was openly skeptical. "You would have told us, Remy. If not me, then Dad."

Maybe not. She might have kept silent—not necessarily to protect Cole, but to give him a chance to quietly rectify the situation. Maybe she had even threatened that if he didn't, she'd go to her family with what she knew and give them grounds to demand his resignation—or to break the contract and vote him out of office if he refused to resign. Yes, she could think of a dozen reasons why she might initially have kept silent. It might have been why she'd planned to go off by herself for a few days in France—to give herself time to think and decide what was the best thing to do.

"You're worried." He reached over and covered her hand with his, giving it a squeeze. "Don't be."

"Why don't you tell the Mississippi to flow backward?"

"I mean it, Remy. In the first place, there's nothing you can do. And in the second, you need to concentrate your energies on getting better and not get all worked up over this. Let us handle it. OK?"

If he'd patted her on the cheek and told her not to worry her "pretty little head about such things," his message couldn't have been plainer: leave it to the menfolk to handle. Southern chauvinism, in its place, could be nice; it could be sweet. But this was life, her life, and her business—as much as it was theirs. But Gabe would never see it that way. He couldn't.

"You will tell me what's going on, won't you? I'm in the dark about so much now that I don't think I could stand not being kept informed about this."

"The minute we have some hard facts, I promise I'll tell you."

Which meant that he'd only tell her things that would reassure her. If she wanted something more than a watered-down version of the truth, she'd have to find it herself.

 

 

 

 

22

 

 

The minute her mother left the next morning to keep her standing Thursday appointment at the hair salon, Remy headed for the public library, a drab concrete and glass example of fifties architecture located at the intersection of Tulane and Loyola avenues.

She scanned the newspaper article printed on the computer screen. The account on the sinking of the
Crescent Dragon
had been relegated to page 3 of the paper's front section, running only slightly more than half a column in length and obviously not deemed newsworthy enough to rate a follow-up story.

Why should it be? she thought. There'd been no loss of life, no daring rescue at sea, no harrowing days spent in lifeboats by the crew, and no major oil spill, and no one in the crew had been from the New Orleans area—or even from Louisiana. If it hadn't been for the fact that the tanker was owned by a local shipping company and went down in the Gulf of Mexico, Remy doubted the newspaper would have devoted more than a paragraph to the story—if it had covered it at all.

She read the article again. According to the captain—one Titus Edward Bartholomew from Cornwall, England—the combination of the vessel's age and the heavy seas had caused a structural failure in the tanker's hull. At approximately 10:00 p.m. on the night of September 9, the ship had begun taking on water. Twenty minutes later, with the pumps unable to handle the flow and the tanker foundering badly, the captain gave the order to abandon ship. Twelve hours after that, a passing freighter saw the distress flare fired from the lifeboats and picked up the crew. A search of the area by the Coast Guard yielded some debris, but no evidence of oil spillage.

The only thing Remy found in the entire account that was even remotely suspicious was the tanker's failure to issue a distress call, or Mayday—evidently the ship's radio had chosen that moment to quit working. In fact, problems with the equipment had been reported earlier— perhaps conveniently?

What had she hoped to find? She wasn't sure. A clue, maybe—something that would lead her to look somewhere else. If there was one in the article, she didn't see it. Just the same, she asked for a hard copy of the story and waited while a word processor printed it out.

Where did she go from here? Would the company files have more information? They would definitely contain the names and addresses of the rest of the
Dragon's
crew. But how was she going to get to see them? She'd never taken an active interest in the shipping business before, so she couldn't just walk in and ask to see the files without drawing attention to herself—and her search.
That
was the last thing she wanted to do—especially after last night.