J is for Judgment (Kinsey Millhone 10)

The Captain Stanley Lord was a thirty-five-foot Fuji ketch, derived from a John Alden-designed sailing vessel with the mainmast toward the bow. The exterior was painted an intense dark green with the trim in navy blue. Carl pulled himself up on the narrow deck and then extended a hand, pulling me up after him. In the dark I could make out the mainsheet and the mizzen-mast, but not much else. He unlocked the door and slid the hatch forward. “Watch your head,” he said as he moved down into the galley. “You know anything about boats?”

“Not much,” I said. I eased carefully down four steep carpeted stairs into the galley behind him.

“This one has three headsails: a one fifty Genoa, a one ten working jib, and a storm jib, then the mainsail, of course, and the mizzen.”

“Why is it called the Captain Stanley Lord? Who’s he?”

“It’s nautical lore. Wendell’s sense of humor, such as it was. Stanley Lord was captain of the Californian, allegedly the only boat close enough to the Titanic to have helped with the rescue. Lord claimed he never picked up the distress signal, but a later investigation suggested he ignored the SOS. He was blamed for the extent of the disaster, and the scandal ruined his career. Wendell used the same name for the company: CSL Investments. I never did get it, but he thought it was amusing.”

The interior had the cozy, unreal feeling of a doll’s house, the kind of space I love best, compact and efficient, every square inch put to use. There was a diesel stove on my left, and on my right an assortment of seagoing equipment: radio, compass, a fire extinguisher, monitors for wind velocity and the electrical systems, the heater, main switch, and the engine start battery. I was picking up the faint smell of varnish, and I could see that one of the berth cushions still had a sales tag attached. All the upholstery was done in dark green canvas with the seams piped in white.

“Nice,” I said.

He flushed with pleasure. “You like it?”

“It looks great,” I said. I moved over to one of the berths and dropped my handbag, sitting down. I stretched my arm out along the cushion. “Comfortable,” I remarked. “How long have you had it?”

“About a year,” he said. “The IRS seized it shortly after Wendell disappeared. I was a guest of the feds for about eighteen months. After that, I was broke. Once I got a little money ahead, I had to track down the guy who’d bought it from the government. I went through an incredible rigmarole before he’d agree to sell. Not that he had much use for it. It was a mess when he finally turned it over to me. I don’t know why people have to be such butts.” He peeled off his suit coat and loosened his tie so he could ease the button on his shirt collar. “You want another white wine? I have some chilled.”

“Half a glass,” I said. He chatted about sailing for a while and then I brought the subject back to Wendell. “Where’d they find the boat?”

He opened a miniature refrigerator and took out a bottle of Chardonnay. “Off the Baja coast. There are huge shifting sand bars about six miles out. It looked like the boat had run aground and drifted loose again with the tide.” He stripped the foil off the neck of the wine bottle, took an opener, and angered out the cork.

“He didn’t have a crew?”

“He preferred to single-hand. I watched him sail that day. Orange sky, orange water with a slow, heaving swell. Had this weird feeling to it. Like the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. You study that in high school?”

I shook my head. “In high school, most of what I studied was cussin’ and smokin’ dope.”

He smiled. “When you leave the Channel Islands, you sail out through a gap in the oil rigs. He turned and waved as he cast off. I watched until he left the harbor, and that’s the last I ever saw of him.” His tone was hypnotic, mild envy mixed with mild regret. He poured the wine in a stemmed glass and passed it over to me.

“Did you know what he was doing?”

“What was he doing? I guess I’m still not sure.”

I said, “Apparently, he was skipping.”

Eckert shrugged. “I knew he was feeling desperate. I didn’t think he meant to pull a fast one. At the time—especially when his last note to Dana came to light—I tried to accept the idea of his suicide. It didn’t seem in character, but everybody else was convinced, so who was I to argue?” He poured half a glass of wine for himself, set the bottle aside, and sat down on the banquette across from mine.

“Not everybody,” I corrected. “The police didn’t like it much, and neither did CF.”