There was a small hand purse in the pocket of her jacket containing her driver’s licence and credit cards, and an organ donor card with her next of kin. Caitlin Campbell’s roommate said she was out for the weekend on a sailboat with a friend. The name of the sailboat was Arrow, and Clarke knew the friend had to be Jared Kane.
Clarke rolled the cigar around his lips and blew smoke rings across the room and thought about life’s coincidences while he waited for the call back from Lauren Campbell’s sister. Trust Jared to get caught up in something like this. For a man who tried to keep his life simple, he had an uncanny knack for attracting trouble.
Chapter 4
Cat slammed the radiophone down and went across to the main cabin and jerked open the door. As it swung back and resonated against the bulkhead Jared shot bolt upright, blinking the sleep out of his eyes. He glanced at his watch and then at the small woman standing there, glaring at him, arms akimbo.
“Hi. Good nap that, guess I must have needed it.”
In retrospect, he thought he might have overserved himself with wine at lunch.
“Who the hell is Clarke, and what does he want with me?”
“Clarke? You mean the detective?”
He’d never told Cat about the big man and their unlikely friendship, it had never come up. There were a few things about him that had never come up between the two of them, he reflected, but then they’d only been going together for a few months. He’d learned over the years to release his confidences sparingly, letting each be absorbed to build up tolerance before progressing to the next one, like increasingly strong doses of medicine.
“Yes. That would be the one. He called Arrow on the VHF, wants me to get in touch with him. ASAP. Asked me to say hi to you.”
The level grey eyes bored into his. They were one of the first things that had attracted him to her. That and the way she handled herself, the prickly standoff exterior and sardonic tongue that masked her generous nature. She had a strong moral streak at the core of her that Jared was wary of, echoes of the old school Puritanism he himself had been schooled in. In theory he supposed a warm, fun-loving Mediterranean type would suit him better, but in practice he was mostly attracted by the difficult ones. The more Jared got to know Cat, the more he realized just how difficult she was.
“We’re friends. Maybe he called up to warn you about me,” he said in a feeble attempt at jocularity.
“Whatever it is sounded serious.”
Jared said, “I guess you should have brought your cell phone along.”
He had finally succumbed to the nagging of his friends and bought one, but rarely turned it on. At the moment it was lying mute in the drawer under the chart table. If he’d been at the helm, the VHF would have been shut off as well, and they wouldn’t have been bothered.
“Sod that. This is my getaway time. Those bastards would never leave me alone.”
She was, of all things, a fashion photographer. A very successful one, it turned out. It was so at odds with her character, being associated with such a lightweight profession, that Jared had assumed she was joking and made the mistake of laughing when she first told him. He’d have bet money that she was in one of the serving professions; a doctor, a teacher, a feminist lawyer, something along those lines. She’d coloured fiercely, the bright spots glowing above her cheekbones as she snapped back at him about part-time seasonal fishermen criticizing the work of real people with real jobs.
It was at their first meeting, although encounter might have been a better word, and she’d never brought up her career again. She was busy and successful by all accounts, but had no connections with that world outside of her working hours. Jared sometimes wondered if her relationship with him was simply an anti-fashion statement.
He went to the sink, splashed water on his face, and went out on deck. They were nearly across Georgia Strait now. Three miles ahead he saw the break between the islands that was Porlier Pass. The current had set them a little north, and he shut off the autopilot, picked up the tiller, and steered Arrow onto her proper course. The wind moved aft of the beam on the new track, and he debated setting the mizzen staysail to pick up a little extra speed but decided it wasn’t worth the effort. There were no boats around to contend with at the moment, and Arrow had nothing left to prove to him. Cat sailed Arrow fiercely when the wind was up, but he preferred to glide easily along. Some people might say their sailing styles kind of summed up their differing philosophies of life, he reflected.
He wondered what Clarke wanted with Cat and felt a twinge of unease. It damn sure wouldn’t be good news, of that he was certain.
Chapter 5
“Good to see you, Jared. It’s been awhile.”
The big detective might have been wearing the same clothes he’d been in the first time Jared had seen him in court all those years ago. A wrinkled brown suit hung on his bear-like frame, and a crushed hat was tipped back on the bald head over the creased face with the potato nose. Clarke realized he presented as something of a caricature and cultivated the image to his advantage. He was a lot smarter than he looked. He rose clumsily to his feet and shoved a chair towards Cat while extending a large white hand to Jared.
Shortly after Clarke had hung up on his call to Arrow, Cat had been on
