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  “Alex can borrow you, right?” she asked him before I’d even had a chance to decide.

  “Sure, what’s up?” he said all too willingly.

  I paused, wondering for a moment how to get out of this, but as the saying goes (I know a lot of them in case you hadn’t noticed), when you’re going through hell, keep going. So, I did. “I’m going out of town to do some listings and I usually take someone to…you know…”

  “Sure, I’ll go. What do you need me to do?”

  I must admit I found his agreeableness worrisome. Was Russ planning to drop me off out on some remote highway and steal my truck? Was he hoping I’d give him a ride clear of town? Or was this just his way of making amends for a litany of undisclosed crimes? “Do? Oh, nothing. Just look as if you could do something if I needed you to.” I smirked.

  “Oh, trust me girl, he can look anyway you want him to.” Ags smiled a look of fond remembrance and my stomach turned a little.

  “Too much information.” I smirked back at her. By that time, Russ was beside her in an outfit from his tight jeans and University of Ohio t-shirt collection. His hair was gelled to within an inch of its life and the shadow on his face was well beyond five o’clock.

  When Ags noticed the tag on his t-shirt sticking out from the neckline, she adjusted it like a doting mother. “Oh, by the way babe, I hope you like Elvis. Alex can’t even take a trip to the grocery store without the king,” she sent a playful warning in Russ’ direction.

  “Not a fan,” he said flatly, shrugging.

  You know that feeling when you’re pretty sure your heart has stopped? That’s how I felt at that moment. I fluttered my eyelids briefly to process the sacrilege in the air, and my gaze drifted up to Ags. She looked back at me, her eyes big as saucers. She knows how seriously I take my Elvis and I was one foot back on the rage bus.

  “So, when do you want to leave?” Russ asked, jarring me from my homicidal thoughts.

  “What?” My thoughts went to my missing watch and what may be my only hope of seeing it again. “Oh, in an hour or so,” I said.

  “Sounds good.”

  I nodded and walked my empty coffee mug toward Russ, still wary of his latest character flaw —poor taste in music— and with the sole purpose of detecting whether his scent matched the one I’d smelled on my boat the day before. I couldn’t tell for sure but thought hard about it as I walked back to my boat to prepare for my trip to Hamilton with him. The paperwork was a no brainer. The real preparation was in psyching myself up for an hour ride each way with the guy who may have robbed the places in town, stole my father’s watch, drugged my dog, or all of the above. And as if all of that weren’t enough, he didn’t dig the king.

  ✽✽✽

  Russ Shears may have been a lot of things, but obtuse he was not. We were twenty minutes out of Marysville when he broke the frigid air between us.

  “You don’t like me much, do you?”

  And the award for being perceptive goes to… “I just don’t know you, that’s all,” was the diplomatic response I opted to give.

  “Well, if you have questions for me, go ahead and ask.”

  “Ok,” I said and noticed the road sign ahead indicated seventy miles to Hamilton. “Let’s start with the most pressing subject on my mind. Were you on my boat yesterday?”

  “No. Someone was on your boat?”

  “Yes, someone was on my boat, drugged my dog, locked my cat in the broom closet, and stole my father’s Rolex from my desk.”

  “Alex, it wasn’t me. I’d never do something like that. You’re like a sister to Aggie. I swear on my grandpa’s life.”

  “Mmhmm, while we’re on the subject… are you really Robert Shears’ grandson? I mean, you can tell me. I won’t spill the beans if you just disappear quietly.”

  “I am Robert Shears’ grandson. I swear.”

  “Then why no ID? What’s the real reason, and no phone when you showed up?”

  “You wanna know the real reason?” He sighed. “I guess we’ve got time.” He paused. “The real reason isn’t very flattering. I’m a screw up. I’ve always been one. I’ve got this addiction problem,” he said.

  “Oh,” I said lowly.

  “Probably not what you’re thinking, though. It’s gambling. See, where I was last was Vegas, and I could do no wrong with the dice. Then things went south.”

  “South of Vegas? Must have been toasty,” I muttered, and Russ let out a chuckle.

  “You are funny, you know that?” He continued. “So, anyway, I got into some trouble and had to borrow some funds from a private lender, shall we say.”

  “Well, you didn’t have to,” I rationalized unhelpfully.

  “I took ten grand and turned it into twenty-five that night,” he said proudly, looking out at the highway ahead.

  “And then?”

  “And then I switched to cards, but the cards didn’t come.”

  “You mean you–“

  “I mean the cards didn’t come. I lost twenty.”

  “Twenty of the twenty-five?”

  “Twenty of the twenty—I had bought myself a few new things.”

  “Like?”

  “Like what does it matter to you?”

  “I was just wondering what a geography grad with a gambling problem buys himself.”

  “Women.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah.” He shook his head.

  “So, you couldn’t go to your parents?”

  “I’m not a trust fund kid like you, my dad owns a hardware store for Christ’s sake.”

  “You don’t know me very well, Russ. So, where did you find him?”

  “Who?”

  “The loan shark.”

  “Through a so-called friend of mine. In the back of some Italian restaurant.”

  “What’s the interest rate?” I looked over and asked.

  “Why?”

  “I used to be in finance, I’m just curious.”

  “Twenty-five per hundred per week.”

  “What! Are you nuts? You jumped at that rate?”

  “I had no choice, and I’ve been trying to make the money back since. They took my phone, my ID, my car—“

  “And you didn’t drive a rental car to Marysville, right?”

  “Yeah, that was a lie. I hitched a ride on a truck.”

  “So, you told us poker wasn’t your game. Why’s that?”

  “No, what I said was that it wasn’t for me. I could have cleaned you all out that night, taken all your money, but you’re friends with my gramps and I just couldn’t do it.”

  I nodded. Is this what they call honor among thieves? “So, you’ve given up gambling?”

  “Hell no, that’d be like asking you to give up coffee and apple fritters.” He smiled. “I’ve been hitting a few out-of-town games when I’m not helping Aggie.”

  “Is that how you could afford the necklace you gave her? I love that necklace, you know.”

  “Actually, I won it in a poker game the other night, here in town.”

  “Really? The guy you won it from, was his name Roddy? About forty years old, your size, anemic looking?”

  Russ shook his head. “No, older guy. David something.”

  I flitted my eyes. I don’t know any David’s except Sefton. “You, uh, don’t know who robbed the bakery, do you? Or the pharmacy?”

  He shook his head. “You mean did I do it? No, that’s not my style.”

  “So how about your watch? I thought you said you sold it to the store in town.”

  “I did. Then after I’d made some money at a game, I bought it back. My gramps gave me that watch when I graduated high school. I even graduated with honors, if you can believe it.”

  “Wow. That’s a lot of information. I’m sorry I didn’t ask sooner.”

  “It’s ok. It is a lot,” he said. “Actually, I’m kinda glad to tell it to someone.”

  By the time we got to Hamilton, I won’t say that Russ Shears and I were friends, but we were no l
onger enemies. I had told him a few of my own hard luck stories—not as hard luck as his, of course.

  ✽✽✽

  Now, you can probably guess that commercial marine businesses aren’t often, or ever, located in the fancy parts of town between, say, Starbucks and the nail salon. You’re more apt to find them beside a welding shop or a fish processing plant. As Russ guided me to our destination via the app on my phone, I laughed as I watched his eyes widen. This wasn’t the gritty city life he was familiar with. We were in actual grit, the kind that gets under your fingernails. I had just turned down Harbor Drive and headed into the chain-link enclosure of Jack Albright’s when we pulled up onto a chaotic scene. Albright and his crew were supposed to have been out of town. Instead, workers were moving hastily, cranes and excavators were on the go, and I spotted the police and a couple trucks from the Coast Guard. I looked to my right at Russ who was wider eyed than before.

  “Let’s see what’s going on,” I said. The truck in park, I stepped down and into an oily puddle, and when Russ met me on my side of the vehicle, we headed toward an older man who was giving orders. When he noticed us, he issued a speculative expression.

  “Hi, there,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  “Hi. You from the paper or something?” he asked.

  “No, I’m from Marysville. I’m a boat broker, Alex Michaels. Mr. Albright invited me to come list some of his things.”

  The man shook his head, lifted his cap, and rubbed his forehead with his massive hand tanned and stained with grease. “I’m sorry, I forgot to let you know. I’m Jack Albright,” he said, extending handshakes to Russ and me.

  “So, what happened?” I asked, giving the man consoling but inquisitive eyes.

  “Fire on one, she’s sunk. Took the barge down with her. The other’s still floating, barely. They’re pumping her out.”

  “Any idea what happened?”

  He shook his head. “I keep my stuff in great shape,” he said, and when he looked at me, I thought I saw a tear in his eye. “Can’t understand it. Coast Guard’ll let me know,” he went on, looking at the ground and shaking his head. Something caught his eye and he shifted into boss mode. “Michael, get in a boat and move that other barge, we’re takin’ her out!” he yelled to his worker.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “You’ve got your hands full, so we’re going to get out of your way,” I said, hitching my thumb toward the truck.

  “If you need anything, if we can help in any way, don’t hesitate to ask, ok? You know how to reach her,” Russ said to the man, his look sincere and, even though there’s nothing Russ could do for him and would certainly never see him again, it was the fact that he’d said it, that he wanted Albright to know that someone cared, that got to me.

  The man nodded and made a stoic expression. “Thank you,” he said and, in no time, we were on our way back. Even though we took the identical route back to Marysville, it seemed different. With the humanity I’d seen Russ display toward Jack Albright, and the way he unabashedly disclosed his faults and failures to me, I saw him through a new lens and, by the time I’d parked the truck back in the Marysville marina, I was ready to bid Russ a pleasant rest of the day and really mean it.

  CHAPTER 15

  “Bye, hon,” Lisa Claire called out and waved to me from the stern deck of the Fortune Cookie as she and Jack Junior motored out of the marina early the next morning. I could see him through the window into the wheelhouse, sitting at the helm and wearing the awful hat she’d bought him. You know the type, white cotton captain’s hat, black brim, black and gold insignia on it, the kind of hat no captain really wears unless doing so offers the prospect of getting laid. They were off for a day of fishing and bonding with little grown-up Roddy who simply nodded at me as I waved back politely from the stern deck of the Alex M., where I was stretching before my morning jog.

  Once the boat passed, I rolled my eyes at Pepper, who was watching me from his chair. I swear he rolled his too. I put on my favorite hat, pulled my ponytail out the back of it, tapped my ear buds in, and before long my feet were pounding to the beat of Don Henley smashing on the drums for the Eagles. Ironically, the song was “Witchy Woman”. Up the hill from the marina and to Main Street and then State, I tried to clear my head of nagging thoughts. And, when Elvis came on with “Suspicious Minds”, I nearly skipped through, but it’s Elvis after all and nobody skips an Elvis song, do they?

  When I crossed over the intersection of Main and Vine, I looked left down the street toward the Vine Street Inn and wondered if or when Lisa would ever divulge that she was not living on the tony side of town as she’d said, but rather in the two steps up from a flop house Vine. I just couldn’t get her and Roddy off my mind. When Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero” came on, I spotted hunky Officer Hagen. He was walking on the opposite side of State Street, his trim, tall figure in his dark blue uniform and jet-black hair cut an unmistakable figure. I whistled at him in cat call fashion and, when he turned to spot the culprit, his look of agitation instantly changed to one of amusement. His bright white smile flashed against his tanned complexion. I sped up my pace in case he was watching, but thoughts of him didn’t distract me. For long. By the time I was on the return part of my circuit, my mind was racing faster than my feet. At the intersection of Main and Mergl, I turned down Vine toward the inn.

  The parking lot was mostly empty save for a few vehicles with out-of-state plates. Folks looking for something cheap and cheerful on their way to somewhere else. Well, at least they got half of what they were after. From where I stood—I won’t say skulked—behind a tree, I could see that Zane was inside the gate, sunning himself by what passed as a pool and chatting to what I assumed were guests. From where I stood, I still won’t say skulked, behind a tree, I spotted the upper row of rooms. 214 had to be there. I recalled the room number with ease courtesy of a memory trick that’d make Mr. Hives himself proud. 214 was the squadron number from what came to be known as Black Sheep Squadron. Making the association between Lisa and Black Sheep seemed natural.

  The Vine Street Inn is an L-shaped place. The office and the doors to two levels of rooms face Vine Street and the balconies to the rooms either face the Glass Half Full winery to one side or an empty field behind the water treatment plant. A car passed me and I pretended to stretch my hamstring. I proceeded closer to the Vine. What harm could come from a little peeking in the window of Lisa’s room? I walked through the parking lot like I was staying there and quietly took the stairs two at a time. I turned down the volume on my ear buds so I could hear if anyone called out to me. At the top of the stairs, there was a helpful directional arrow. Rooms 200 to 220 to the right.

  I walked past 214 slowly. The curtains were open on the big window that faced the street. For the benefit of anyone looking, I pretended to check my reflection. Then I walked back and tried the door. Now, you have to understand that the Vine has not been marred by modern conveniences such as key cards, and I also hadn’t spotted any security cameras. These features tend to keep the nightly room rates low and, besides that, the Vine caters to folks who probably don’t have much to steal and don’t want to be seen anyway. I took a bobby pin out of my hair and, just on a lark, put it in the lock that had to have been vintage 70s. A jiggle here, a look over my shoulder there, and voila, the lock gave way. Trust me, I was just as surprised as you.

  Now, even if I had doubted my little memory trick that this was Lisa’s room, once inside the suite, my olfactory senses confirmed it. Through the musty air being pumped out noisily via the dusty air conditioner fins moving ancient thick polyester curtains, I could smell Lisa’s perfume—a musky blend of spicy scents mixed with cleaner. I closed the door quickly and quietly behind me. To my immediate right was what we’ll call the kitchenette—a microwave that looked like it could have been one of the first produced and a scratched stainless-steel bar sink set into a four-foot span of countertop with chipped edges. It looked like it was once off-white but now resembled some
thing in the greige family. There was a particle board cabinet beneath it, along with a tiny fridge that sounded like it was just clinging to life. On top of the counter were Lisa’s go-to grocery staples. Store brand potato chips, those tri-color wafer cookies I didn’t think they made anymore, and a box of pinot noir.

  The bed was straight ahead and, for a housekeeper, I’d expected it to be made, but it wasn’t. Maybe she’s like those accountants who don’t like to do their own taxes. Anyway, there was nothing remarkable about the bed. Built on a particle board platform, there was nothing to see under it. Which is fine, because I didn’t know what I was looking for other than an indication that Lisa and/or Roddy were somehow tied to the robberies. A stash of money, powdered sugar from the bakery break-in, just something that would confirm my suspicions.

  When I pulled the string to turn on the closet light, I found it stuffed to overflowing with trendy looking outfits… for a twenty-year-old. However, Lisa was pushing sixty-five and the off the shoulder and spaghetti strap numbers in the closet had passed their expiration date as far as she should be concerned. There was also her pink Maxi Maid uniform—the color of a certain liquid antacid. Looking down, there was a jumble of painfully cheap high heels and one pair of athletic shoes.

  I poked my head into the second room of the suite where the sofa bed was opened. Another bed unmade. On the chair near it was draped the shirt I’d seen Roddy wearing the only other time I’d seen him. I remembered it because it looked so ill-fitting. I nosed around the closet space he shared with the extra pillows and blankets and opened a couple bureau drawers. Nothing remarkable. I did note that he’d managed to score a hoodie from Pike’s machine shop, but Pike gave those out to everyone.