I shook my head. “I know. Take me home. Do as I say. I’ll be fine.”
He glanced over his shoulder at Solis outside the truck. “She’s being stubborn, like I said she would.”
“I could arrest her for impeding an investigation,” Solis suggested.
“Bullshit,” I gasped. “My investigation.”
He shrugged. “True. But we need to find the cove mentioned in the logs—and by the ghosts. I need Blaine with me. We have reason to believe time is short.”
“I can find the cove,” Quinton said, “if you have a latitude and longitude. And I can pilot a boat but I don’t have one.”
A new, shaggy head hove into view over Solis’s shoulder. “We’ll take mine. You guys don’t know your way around the Sound—if you’ll pardon my saying so—and this isn’t a place to go messing around where you don’t know the tides and currents. Kills people, and I think there’s been plenty of that.”
Solis turned and I could see that the owner of the shaggy head was Paul Zantree. “How’s Ms. Blaine doing out here?”
“I’m fine,” I lied.
He peered at me and snorted. “You’ll manage but you’re not going to like it. So, are you going to do the smart thing and take an old hand or be a bunch of damned fools? And did you talk to that girl before she took off?”
“Girl?” Solis asked.
“On Pleiades. The Knight girl. She took off late last night—no one saw her go, but the hatches were all open when her neighbors went by this morning and her stuff was all gone when they checked on her. The place is kind of wet and mildewed, too. The owners are going to be pissed when they get here. And, damn, she looked like Shelly, but Shelly would never have left a boat in a state like that. I knew you guys were interested in her, and now she’s gone. So . . . did you talk to her? Did she know Shelly?”
That might explain the lack of magical energy around the boat this morning—and Zantree’s sharper memory of Jacque and Shelly Knight now that no strange tendrils of olive-colored energy were ringing around his head. I wondered what had scared her off: me, the otters, or the ghosts.
“She claimed no relationship and refused to answer other questions,” Solis replied.
I caught Solis’s eye. “Running.”
He nodded. If she was connected to Shelly Knight and the mystery of Seawitch—and there was every evidence that she was—we’d have to get to the cove as soon as possible. It seemed highly likely that she was heading back to the place the mystery had lain hidden for so long. She hadn’t taken the sailboat, so she had some other way to get there. “We’ll need a boat,” I reminded him.
“I told you we’ll take mine,” Zantree repeated.
Solis assumed control of the conversation. “You have a date to go fishing with your grandchildren.”
Zantree looked pugnacious. “They canceled. Can’t make it out here. I got nothing to do and a lot of questions to answer about my old friends, so why not help you guys? You do need my help.”
He wasn’t crazy about taking a civilian, but I could see him make up his mind. “We do. But Ms. Blaine is injured.”
“Well, get the woman to a sawbones, then! And where are we headed when you get back?”
“Somewhere near Haro Strait?”
“Up in the San Juans? That’s a full day or more, depending on tide and weather.”
“Can you still take us?”
“Not for six hours.”
Solis and I frowned. Quinton made a face. “The tide’s the wrong way around, isn’t it?”
Zantree nodded. “Coming in. We’d be against it all the way up to Port Townsend. Barely make headway, even on an iron wind off twin Cummins. Better to go out with the next tide and hitch a ride on the outgoing swell. Take about the same time, give or take a couple of hours.” He came closer and stuck his head in the truck to look at me. “You go get a doctor to look at you and if he says you’re seaworthy, get your gear and be back here by seven tonight. We’ll cast off at eight when the tide turns. OK?” He was grinning like his pirate self again.
Solis frowned in concern. “I must come, too. And there will be some paperwork. Can you accommodate all three of us?” I guessed Quinton had already made it clear he was going to stick to me like gum on a sneaker sole.
Zantree looked at the lot of us and grinned wider. “Hell, we raised three boys on that boat. I got room for all of you. And I’m not afraid of a little paperwork. Bring it on, and bring your woolies, too—it’s cold as a witch’s tit out there at night. Oops! Pardon me, Ms. Blaine.”
I shook it off. “Seven. See you then.”
Zantree saluted and trotted off, whistling happily.
I glanced at the men and they returned blinking expressions, as if they’d been swept up in a twister and deposited again without harm in the middle of Oz. “We have a timetable,” I reminded them.
“Right,” Quinton said, crawling out of the rear and getting into the front seat of my Rover. He turned his head to Solis. “Back here at seven?”
“D dock,” the sergeant corrected. “I shall see you both there.”
We wasted some time at my doctor’s office because Quinton insisted. Dr. Skelleher confirmed I had a cracked rib and asked if I wanted an X-ray. I said no, since we knew what it was and taking its picture just wasted time. He said no one tapes up ribs anymore, since it doesn’t help and only leads to shallow breathing and pneumonia, which made me stick out a sarcastic tongue at Quinton. I should take it easy, the good doctor continued, have a large and potentially black-market lucrative pill—or smoke some tobacco alternative, as he put it—if the pain was too much to stand, and otherwise come back if I started spitting up blood or had more-than-ordinary difficulty breathing. “Ordinary difficulty” made me laugh, which hurt a lot, but I didn’t mind too much. Skelly is weird and probably skirting legality and the medical board, but he gets the job done—and he’d referred me to Ben and Mara Danziger long ago, which probably saved my sanity and my life. I gave Quinton the “I told you so” face as we left and headed back to my place to pack up some clothes and make sure the ferret had enough food and water for a couple of days. We also left a message with my neighbor, to cover any possibility of the trip lasting longer. Then I took a nap while Quinton searched maps online for the latitude and longitude I’d cribbed from Seawitch’s log book.
I woke to the sound of whispers; for once they didn’t come from ghosts but from living people in my kitchen. It’s a bad idea to discuss secrets in a kitchen or bathroom; there’s not much cushy furniture or swags of curtains to absorb voices and the walls and floors are usually hard and slick, reflecting sound like crazy for any sharp-eared eavesdropper like me to hear without much effort. I lay on my right side and listened for a minute, making no effort yet to get up and see who was talking to Quinton in such an urgent and demanding murmur. It was a voice washed clean of accent and deliberately modulated so the consonants were softened and the words mushy.
“. . . enough time to—” Quinton was objecting in a low voice.
“You’re done.”
“Over my dead body.”
“Again? Aren’t you tired of that fiction yet?”
It didn’t sound like my neighbor Rick or any of our small number of mutual acquaintances. As I listened, I thought it was a voice and tone deliberately hard to understand at a distance. With that and Quinton’s recent worries in mind, I had a good idea who it had to be, even though I’d never seen or heard the man before that I knew of. I eased out of the bed, breathing carefully and quietly through my nose even when I had to bend and twist, which sent a kick of pain through my chest and back. Maybe pneumonia wouldn’t have been so bad. . . .
On my bare feet I padded carefully down the short hall to the living room, making sure I was between the kitchen and the condo’s main door. I didn’t want our guest to bolt until I was ready to let him. I needed a good look first.