Zantree shrugged. “Sure I have. Why?”
“What did you say? What were the circumstances?”
“Well . . . it was on the fuel dock . . . I was pumping out the holding tank. Smelly business. She was . . . she was just sitting on the dock. She was sort of singing to herself and dangling her feet in the water.”
“At the fuel dock? Kind of an odd place to do that, isn’t it?” I threw in.
Blue-green sparks circled around Zantree’s head in my Grey-adapted sight. “Oh. Well . . . I guess it is. Didn’t think of it at the time.”
“What’s her name?”
“Name? Well, I didn’t ask.”
Solis scowled. “You didn’t ask this woman her name when you introduced yourself? This woman who did not look different from your old crush?”
“Well . . .” Zantree started, and then he went quiet and looked very confused. Peering at him through the Grey, I could see a wisp of the same dirty green color I’d seen suffocating John Reeve stroking around Zantree’s head and then sliding away. “I guess I just don’t remember anymore,” he said in a flat voice. Then he shook himself and added, “Hah! Guess I really am getting old.”
Solis rolled his eyes as if giving up the fight. “Do you have any other photos of Shelly?” he asked.
Zantree blinked, hesitated, and then pointed to another picture lower on the next page. “Just this one. It’s not very good.”
“Not very good” was an understatement. The color was less faded on this photo, but the photographer hadn’t been trying to shoot Shelly, so her part of the picture was even more out of focus than the last—and she had been caught in the act of turning so her braid was twisting and flinging around like a whip, her face obscured and her upper body looking misshapen. But I could tell her hair was a silvery green, not the apple green it had looked in the earlier photo. It wouldn’t have been too outlandish a color now—in fact it would have been too subtle for a lot of people to bother taking note of—but in 1985, when the only people wearing Kool-Aid–colored hair were rock stars, it must have been much stranger. The idea popped into my head that Linda Starrett must never have met Shelly because, as people kept telling us, you didn’t forget a girl with hair like that.
“May we take these?” Solis asked Zantree.
“Let me copy them for you,” Zantree offered, picking up the album and walking it back inside. “I have a scanner on my computer in here—my son helped me with it a couple of Christmases ago. C’mon in and I’ll fix you right up.”
We trailed after Zantree into the dimly lit main cabin and then down a short set of steps to a galley. A laptop computer and multiuse printer sat on a pull-down shelf hanging over the hull side of the built-in dinette. Zantree hauled the machines down to tabletop level and carefully removed the photos from the album to press them onto the glass plate of the printer.
As it scanned and spat out the photos, Zantree said, “Terribly clever thing my son made, yeah? He’s an engineer. Works for Boeing now. The other two kids moved out of state during the bank failures a few years ago, so Hale and his wife and kids are the only family I have left up here now. I really miss my family, but . . . I have the boat and all my friends here, which is more than a lot of people have.”
I was hesitant but went ahead and asked, “What became of your wife?”
Zantree’s face fell. “Ah. She left me. Back when the kids were all off to college, June up and said she was tired of living on a boat and it was time for us to move into a house like ‘real people.’ I disagreed. I love the boat life. I don’t want to move back up on the hard like a bug crawling on a tabletop. I never even knew she was unhappy. I guess she told me, but I must not have listened. . . .” He looked more shaken and sad than I would have expected, even for such a revelation.
“Where is she now?” I asked in a soft voice.
“She died last year. Complications after surgery. She had cancer, but she didn’t tell me about it and she asked the kids not to, either, so I never knew till it was over. That’s why I like to spend as much time with the kids and grandkids now as possible; I don’t want to miss anything else.”
We took the copied photos and left behind a much sadder pirate than we had met.
NINE
Pleiades was impressive. It shone like its namesake; every inch of paint and trim gleamed. Even in the Grey the big blue sailboat had a sheen to it that exuded a low hum of self-satisfaction. We stood on the finger dock and admired it for a few moments before Solis tried knocking on the hull as he had with Mambo Moon. This time there was no answer except the tiniest of shivers in the Grey. The moment of waiting silence passed and he glanced at me.
I shrugged. “If she’s in there, she’s not going to come out.”
“And we may not board without permission. Do you believe Miss Knight is inside?”
“I don’t think so. But I think she’s probably got some kind of alarm system, so even with permission from the owners, we still wouldn’t catch up to her.”
“If we entered under a warrant, the alarm would be directed to the police. We would already know the situation and ignore the call.”
I shook my head. “That’s not the sort of alarm system I meant.”
He eyed me askance. “You imagine something . . . extra?”
“I’m not imagining anything. I can see it, remember? When you knocked, it sent out waves and I don’t mean in the water. There’s something not normal about that boat.”
Solis stood still and studied me a moment in silence. Then he turned away, saying, “What do you suggest now?”
“I suggest you leave,” answered a voice from the main dock, a strange harmonic vibrating under the tone.
We both looked up. A pretty young woman stood at the beginning of the finger dock with her arms crossed over her chest and glared at us belligerently. She was a dead ringer for Shelly Knight except that her hair was red. I’ve known blondes who dye their hair red to combat brassiness or a tendency to go green from chemicals in water, but this didn’t look like a bottle job: It looked like her hair was alive in some strange way I couldn’t put a finger on that turned it the vibrant red of oxygenated blood. I didn’t dare sink deeper into the Grey right in front of her and everyone who might be looking this way, but even restricting myself to a mere glance, I saw her energy corona as a huge, writhing, barbed tangle of green, blue, and red that stretched out to each side and down toward the dock and the water like a thirsty vine run amok, rustling with the sound of talons on glass.
She narrowed her eyes as Solis produced his badge and ID card and walked toward her. I kept a step behind, letting him partially hide me from her view; I didn’t like the cold, squirming sensation that her scrutiny brought and I’m not always sure how much a paranormal creature can tell about me from a glance, so I preferred she get as short a glance as possible. The fish didn’t seem to like her, either, raising a drumroll of splashes just out of sight. The corner of her mouth twitched in irritation at the sound but she didn’t turn her gaze from us.
“I beg your pardon for the intrusion,” Solis began, drawing closer. “We’re seeking Shelly Knight or any relatives or friends here who may have known her twenty-five to thirty years ago.”
“I don’t know her.”
“Is not your name Knight?”
He didn’t say anything else, just looked at her with that bland, inquiring glance that tricked people into talking just to fill the silence.
“Jacque Knight. Not Shelly.”
“Related?”
“She’s not my mother or whatever it is you imagine.” Her voice swooped like poetry.
“I do not imagine. I only ask, since you bear a striking resemblance.” Knight tossed her head and the coiling strands of her aura flexed and tightened like snakes constricting on prey, throwing off a cloud of gray-green mist. “How lucky for her. Now shove off.”
Solis shrugged and cocked his head slightly. I couldn’t see his expression, but I thought he’d probably raised his eyebrows in an expression that needed only a muttered “meh” to imply her anger was a meaningless inconvenience. He’d pulled it on me often enough. “I apologize for taking your time.” He stepped around her and I followed him, cutting only the swiftest peek at her as we passed. I caught a disconcerting glimpse of something only half-human with hair that reached and coiled the same way as her aura. . . . I shivered, my skin instantly clammy.