“You hush,” Bud growled at him. “I can stay right here.”


Terrors of the High Seas 207

Kerry leaned over and gave Charlie’s arm a squeeze. “Chase him out, okay?”

Charlie nodded, still chuckling. “Runnin’ some tests or suchlike on me. Checking my guts out,” he explained. “Hell, if they get their asses done, I’ll drag him over there m’self.” His bruised eyes went to Dar’s face. “Damned if you don’t sound just like your daddy.”

Dar straightened. “Thanks.” She gave him a gracious nod.

“C’mon, Ker. Let’s go light some fires.”

Kerry’s eyebrows went up. So did Bud’s and apparently Charlie’s, but it was hard to tell.

Dar cocked her head. “What?”

Kerry circled the bed and took Dar’s arm. “You can light my fires anytime, honey,” she assured Dar. “But you don’t need to brag about it.”

Dar opened her mouth to answer and saw the smirks. She closed her jaw and gathered her dignity, sweeping it around her like a cloak as she followed Kerry’s lead out of the room.

Bud glared at the door for a minute, then he released a sigh.

“Son of bitch, I hated doing that.”

“Buddy, Buddy, Buddy…” Charlie squeezed his hand. “She’s a friend, yeah?”

Bud stared at the bleached linen.

“We got any other friends who’d do what she’s doing?”

“It twists my shorts,” Bud ground out. “I ain’t a charity case!”

“Bud,” Charlie’s voice gentled, and he stroked Bud’s cheek,

“for her, it ain’t charity,” he said. “She’s Navy; she’s family. That runs deep, you know. If anyone from back then asked, and we could, wouldn’t we do it?”

“Almost anyone,” Bud muttered. “But…” He slumped a little.

“Yeah.”

Charlie ruffled his hair affectionately. “Well then, they gotta let me outta here, ’cause damned if I ain’t gonna stay with you in Blackbeard’s Inn.”

KERRY PUT THE phone down into its cradle and closed the room service menu. Dar was seated across from her with her laptop open on her lap, its cellular antennae poking up along the side. “Hey, sweetie?”

“Uh?” Dar looked up, blinking at her.

“Could I bribe you to do that from here?” Kerry patted the bed next to her.

“Sure.” Dar got up and carried the laptop with her, dropping down onto the bed and waiting as Kerry fluffed the pillow up behind her. She leaned back and was rewarded with not only a 208 Melissa Good backrest, but a body pillow that propped up her arm and twined between her legs. “What’d ya order?”

“It’s a surprise.” Kerry put her head down on Dar’s shoulder and examined the screen. “What’s that?”

“Police reports.” Dar scanned them. “Not that I really know what I’m looking at. I need a lawyer.”

“Sorry.” Kerry stifled a yawn. “Though, that was actually one of the acceptable alternative careers my family would have allowed me.” She reviewed the cryptic comments on the screen. “They were hedging their bets. I think they knew Mike wasn’t going to cut it.”

Dar rubbed the side of her thumb against the laptop, trying to imagine Kerry as a lawyer. “What kind of lawyer would you have been?” she asked curiously.

“No kind,” Kerry informed her. “I never even considered it.”

She scrolled with the thumb pad and clicked. “First thing I wanted to be was a fireman.”

Dar held back a chuckle. “That shoulda told them something.”

“Mm.” Kerry chuckled softly. “Yeah, now that I think about it,”

she agreed. “Then I wanted to be a research scientist, but I realized in high school that I didn’t have the aptitude for it.” She clicked again. “Then I found computers, and went… Ah hah!”

“Ah hah.” Dar examined the screen. It was a complaint filing, apparently by Bob’s grandmother at the time of his grandfather’s death. In the stark, impersonal language used by the police, the complaint involved the woman’s accusation that Bob’s uncle had somehow been involved in the sinking, and detailing why. Threats had apparently been made. The police had not been impressed, and merely had noted the complaint along with the comment that the woman had been extremely “emotional” when the statement had been taken.

“Hm.” Dar drummed her fingertips on the laptop keyboard.

“What do you think?”

“Well,” Kerry exhaled, “at least it wasn’t just some bs story Bob made up on his own,” she said. “Which does not excuse him from skunkhood for leaving Bud and Charlie behind.”

“Mm. Think you can find him? Where do you figure he went—

back to St. Richard?”

Kerry rolled over and squiggled across the bed, reaching for the island directory. The squiggling intrigued Dar, who enjoyed it as Kerry squiggled on back and opened the book.

“I’m betting he’s here in St. Thomas,” she said. “It’s bigger and busier than St. Richard.” Her finger traced a column of hotels.

“Let’s see if we can find the little stinker.”

Dar watched in bemusement as Kerry selected a number and dialed it on the room phone. “He’s probably not registered under his real name,” she commented.


Terrors of the High Seas 209

“Last name, no,” Kerry agreed, waiting for an answer. “Hello…

Hi, um…” Her voice shifted to a slightly different tone. “This is kind of crazy, but I met this guy today… Yeah… I’m trying to find him again, and I only know his first name. Can anyone help me?”

She paused to listen. “Oh, thanks. You’re wonderful.”

Dar folded her arms over her chest.

“Hi, yeah. No, his name’s Bob, and he’s really cute… Oh, right, um…he’s got red, curly hair, and he’s really well built… Yeah, about that age. Yeah…okay, I’ll hold.” Kerry hummed under her breath. “No? Oh, what? Oh, I see… You did? Wow… Thanks!” She hung up. “They’re full. They sent their overflow to a different hotel, and she thinks Bob was one of them.”

“A different hotel?” Dar laughed.

“This one.” Kerry found the name on her list and proceeded to call it. “Want me to try Southern belle, next?”

“Is that how you conned those circuits out of Southern Bell last month?” Dar was still laughing.

Kerry grinned. “No, but…I’ll have to remember that.” She cleared her throat. “Howdy there… Ahm lookin’ for a real cutie I met down on the beach t’day… Kin you help me?”

Dar covered her mouth and continued her scrolling, keeping one ear on Kerry’s best efforts to sound like Dolly Parton. The information she’d recovered was straightforward enough, but the problem was, it was hard to tell if there was any truth to any of it.

What to do? She really felt in need of an expert to at least look at the case and give an opinion as to who was more likely to be telling the truth, if any of them were. The uncle had answered through a lawyer, in a tone almost insulting in its dismissal of the insinuation, and she instinctively favored the grandmother, but… Grandmothers can be sneaky, too, and maybe she was trying to hold on to her husband’s money. Dar sighed. She checked her address book and looked up a number, then dialed it on her cell phone.

It rang twice, then was answered. “Hello?”

“Merry Christmas, Richard,” Dar said. “It’s Dar.”

“Dar!” Her family lawyer sounded pleased, if a bit puzzled, to be hearing from her. “Merry Christmas and happy birthday, lady!”

“Thanks,” Dar replied. “Listen, I need a favor.” She paused.

“More or less a professional one.”

Richard Edgerton’s gears switched. “Well, sure, Dar,” he answered briskly. “You’re not in any trouble, are you? Hard to believe.”

“No,” Dar answered without thinking, then considered. “Well, not me personally, that is.”

He hazarded a guess. “Kerry?”

“No. We’re on vacation,” Dar explained.

“Uh huh.”


210 Melissa Good Dar could hear rustling, and she guessed Richard was getting a pad to write on. He was a very good lawyer, and he knew estate law like the back of his hand. “Don’t ask me how I got involved in this, but I am,” she began.

“Uh oh.” Richard chuckled. “Let me hold onto something. This should be a doozy.”

Dar sighed. “You don’t know the half of it.”

“He’s here,” Kerry’s voice interrupted her. “He’s staying in this hotel.”

“Hang on, Richard.” Dar looked at her. “Invite him over for a drink,” she said. “Tell him we’d like to chat.”

Kerry nibbled her lip. “I won’t let him know we know about Charlie and Bud.”

“Not yet, no.” Dar smiled grimly. “Wait until he gets here.”

Kerry nodded and went back to the phone. Dar did the same.

“Okay, Richard, here’s the deal. We’re out on St. Thomas—”

“Nice place to spend Christmas,” Richard replied amiably.

“Right. We ran into a guy who told us a horse’s tale about trying to prove his uncle murdered his grandfather to inherit the family fortune.”

A long silence preceded the lawyer’s response. “Dar, have you been at the rum?”

Dar sighed. “Yes, but not today,” she said. “Listen, if I shoot something over to you in email, will you just look at it and tell me what you think? It’s a pile of legal crap I don’t have time to figure out.”

Richard chuckled. “Sure, Dar, send it over. I was stuck watching my second cousin’s vacation video from Mexico. It’s a great rescue.”

Dar packed the files into an archive and sent it. “Thanks. You can call me on the cell once you see what you think.”

“What’s your percentage in this, Dar?”

Hm. Good question. “Like I said, I got dragged into it,” Dar replied. “Now some friends of mine got dragged in too, and they got hurt. I need to know what side the angels are on, so I can figure out what to do.”