“Me either.” Kerry relaxed, putting her head back down on Dar’s shoulder. She watched the scanning markers on the screen, her eyelids drooping shut after a few minutes of it.

Dar heard the faint change in Kerry’s breathing and she glanced over, suppressing a grin at her dozing partner. She carefully shifted a little to a more comfortable position and rested her head against Kerry’s, content to let her well-designed program do its job.

In her sleep, Kerry seemed to sense Dar’s emotion. Her fingers curled around Dar’s arm and clasped it, creating a warm band around her forearm.


128 Melissa Good

“KER?”

DAR’S VOICE nudged her out of a very pleasant dream, one that involved her, Dar, and a bunch of grapes. Kerry let her eyes drift open slowly, complacently taking in the glistening sunset for a moment before her mind kicked in and fully woke up. “Oh.” She lifted a hand to stifle a yawn. “Sorry.”

“For what?” Dar inquired. “Sleeping’s not a punishable offense, even in our division.”

“I know, but we’re supposed to be solving a mystery here.”

Kerry peered at the laptop. “Anything?" She could see a table of information in Dar’s usual structure on the screen.

“Lots,” Dar said in a dry tone. “I managed to exclude all the non-relevant shipwrecks. That took me forever, because they’re a dime a dozen around here.” She brought the laptop closer. “The wreck has to be this one.”

“Lucky Johnny?” Kerry read the screen. “Oh, I can see where they’d confuse that with Lucky Lady.” She observed. “Wonder if they have a thing about sexual confusion around here.”

Dar eyed her, both brows lifting.

“Well, if they thought Johnny was a lady, I mean.”

Dar chuckled soundlessly.

Kerry rubbed her eyes. “Okay, so maybe I should go back to sleep,” she admitted. “Anyway, what else is there?”

“Mm.” Dar pulled up a screen. “Problem is, there’s nothing special about the damn thing. It was just a forty foot working trawler, out catching crabs.”

“Ah.” Kerry read the details. “Storm?”

“Uh huh,” Dar confirmed. “Capsized and sank. Two survivors, both mates. Captain went down with the ship.” She brought up another screen. “This is Bob’s grandpa.”

Kerry peered at the whiskered, scraggly looking man in the blue Macintosh. “Holy pooters, it’s Popeye’s Pappy!” she yelped.

“Is there a picture of Grandma? You take a bet it’s Olive Oyl?”

“That explains a lot.” Dar chuckled. “He mostly trawled the North Atlantic. I don’t know what brought him all the way down south, but the boat couldn’t take it. It was his first, and last, Carib run.” She studied the picture. “Nothing on him—just a working sailor.”

Kerry’s head cocked to one side. “Yeah? I thought Bob said his family had money, though. At least that’s the impression he gave me,” she added with a touch of droll humor. “How’d they make that from a rig like this?”

“Well.” Dar tapped a few more keys. “He didn’t lie. According to this tax filing, old Popeye left a ton of cash to Mrs. Popeye, and they’ve got a place that’s worth another small fortune up in Maine.”

She scratched her jaw. “Maybe he already had wealth and just Terrors of the High Seas 129

decided to fish for a living because he could.”

“Maybe down here, Dar.” Kerry shook her head. “I’ve spent time in Maine. No one does that if they’ve got a choice. It’s a hard, dangerous life—fishing the North Atlantic.” She moused through the results Dar had called up. “Hm. You’re right, though. I know that neighborhood. Outhouses go for a quarter mil.”

Dar glanced at her. “You’d think places that expensive wouldn’t use outhouses.”

“They’re very traditional,” Kerry replied blithely. “I think they just got three- pronged forks.”

“Huh?”

Kerry chuckled and leaned her head against Dar’s shoulder.

“Never mind,” she said. “My snobby upbringing getting the better of me.”

“Okay.” Dar sent off another probe, this one into financial databases. “We’ll see what we can come up with for Popeye in Duks’ side of the house.” She leaned back. “Still doesn’t explain why a storm wreck is stirring up all this interest, all this time later.”

“No,” Kerry agreed. “If there was something really important in that wreckage, you’d think they’d have come after it before now.”

Dar drummed her fingers lightly on the keyboard. “That’s true,” she mused. “Unless…” The screen beeped and she looked up at it. “Huh.”

Kerry peered over her shoulder. “Wow,” she murmured, running a fingertip along the data. “Those must have been incredible hauls.”

“Mm.” Dar frowned. “But it’s still not making sense, unless he took a pile of that money, converted it to gold coin, and it went down with him in the storm,” she said. “Why would they be interested in that hulk now, is the question.”

They both were quiet for a moment.

“Unless the ‘why’ behind those numbers went down with him.”

Dar spoke slowly. “And now that ‘why’ is worth something.”

“Has the family become society now?” Kerry asked suddenly.

Dar gazed at her with a droll smile. “I don’t know, hon. Where do you check for that kind of thing?” she said. “They didn’t teach that in my redneck hacking classes.”

Kerry slid her hands between Dar’s and started typing. “That’s easy.” She hit a few keys. “The local newspaper, and let’s hope they actually use public archives.”

“Let’s say they are nouveau riche,” Dar said. “You think it has something to do with the whole thing?”

“I think people will do a lot to avoid family embarrassment,”

Kerry stated in a quiet, very flat tone. “Especially if they have 130 Melissa Good something to lose by it.”

Dar put her arms around Kerry and pulled her closer, not saying anything.

Kerry pushed the laptop away a little and accepted the comfort.

“You know what I think about the most, when I think of what my father did to me last year?”

“What?” Dar asked.

“How awful it felt knowing I was such a disappointment to him,” Kerry whispered. “When I woke up in that psych hospital, how ashamed I felt.” She paused. “Before I got so ripping mad that I put that aside.”

“You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of,” Dar said.

Kerry sighed. “I know that now,” she said. “Heck, I knew that then, but it brought home to me how family and love can take second place to image and ego.” She watched the screen. “Pride does strange things to people.” Her finger traced a headline on the list that popped up. “So, maybe you’re right. Maybe what went down with that boat is information—a secret someone doesn’t want anyone to find out about.”

“Uh huh.” Dar studied the screen. “If that’s the secret they think we brought up from that wreck, we could be in a whole new ballgame right now,” she said. “And where, I wonder, does Bob fit in?”

Kerry untangled herself from Dar’s embrace, but not before giving her a healthy hug. She stood up and stretched, working a kink out of her neck. Then she walked to the window and opened it, letting the ocean breeze blow against her face. After a moment, Dar joined her, perching on the sill and gazing out over the water. “So, what’s the plan?” Kerry finally asked.

Dar folded her arms and thoughtfully nibbled the inside of her lip. “We’ve got a couple of choices,” she said. “We can just get the hell out of here and leave them to their games.”

“Mm.”

“We can call in legal, make a mess for them for the bugging and the attempted pullover.”

“Mm.”

“We can play it by ear and see if we can find out what the real story is, then decide what we want to do about it.”

Kerry grinned.

“Yeah, that was my choice too,” Dar admitted. “But we could be playing with fire, Ker.”

The blonde woman’s lips twitched into a faint grin. “We could be,” she acknowledged. “But I love a good mystery. I’d hate to just walk away from this and not know what the deal was.”

Dar leaned back against the window frame. She had no real desire to get deeply involved in what seemed like a big mess, but Terrors of the High Seas 131

she also found herself curious. “Let’s see what we find out,” she said. “Maybe it will be enough to convince them to leave us alone.”

“You think they’ll make the next move?” Kerry asked. “Or will they wait to see what we do?”

Dar considered the question. “I’m guessing they’re waiting for us,” she said. “So why don’t we get moving and go find us some calypso dance music, and see what happens?”

“You’re on.” Kerry held out a hand. “They’re not gonna know what hit ’em.”

They shut down the laptop and walked out the door hand-in-hand, heading down the path toward the casual, beachside restaurant from which they could already hear the sound of drums rising. “Hey, Dar?” Kerry suddenly asked. “Remember what I said about rum and the samba?”

Dar eyed her. “Yeeesss?”

“This could get dangerous.”

“Ker?”

“Yeees?”

“I never did tell you what happens when I get into too much rum, did I?”

There was a thoughtful pause. “No, I don’t think you ever mentioned that,” Kerry allowed. “I guess this might get really dangerous, huh?”

“Only to your reputation.”

“Wh…. Oh.” After another pause, she stammered, “You mean you…might get, um…”

“You do like the way I kiss, doncha?”

“Way too much.” Kerry grinned rakishly. “Maybe we’d better stick to beer.”

As the light faded to twilight, they joined a string of people headed in the same direction. In the shadows behind them, two other figures slipped in, trailing them with watchful eyes.