Nick looked toward the doorway. And said best friend was now pissed off at him because… because what?...because he didn’t know who to believe?
Nick shook his head. He believed Jo. He had to. Otherwise, his actions were totally indefensible. If he really thought she was a mental case, then sleeping with her was a serious mistake, if not a completely dishonorable act.
And Mickey was missing, Nick told himself. Not that he wanted her to be, he wanted her safe and sound. And so did Jo. She didn’t want her to be missing, either. And neither did Pete. Although he seemed to think that Mickey had just gone off with someone else.
Nick thought over his last encounter with Pete. The guy seemed sincere, but then again, Nick told himself, the guy always seemed sincere. That was part of the problem. If Pete would only act like a murderer…
Nick grimaced. Be careful what you ask for, he told himself, recalling his grandmother’s words. Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it.
Nick turned to go below. He might as well face Jo sooner than later. He sighed. This could be a long day.
Jo sat on the sofa in the living room, with her arms crossed and a scowl on her face. “What fairy tale did he tell you this time?” she demanded, as soon as Nick descended the stairs.
“Aw, Jo, come on,” said Nick. “I didn’t say I believed him. I just said that was what he said.”
“Okay, fine,” said Jo, in a tone of voice that said it was anything but fine. “So, what did he say?”
Nick sighed. “He said that he hadn’t talked to Mickey since Charleston. He said that he got the impression that he was being dumped and that she had someone else, and he never heard from her again.”
“But he kept telling me he did,” insisted Jo.
“Yeah, I know,” said Nick. “He said he didn’t want to worry you, that he just wanted to get to Florida and get you home and straighten everything out.”
“Then why isn’t he?” asked Jo.
“Why isn’t he what?” asked Nick.
“Why isn’t he in Florida? Why did he come back yesterday? Why is he still here today? Why doesn’t he just go away?” Jo’s voice rose on each succeeding question, and on the last one, her voice broke. She put her face in her hands and started to cry.
“I don’t know, Jo,” said Nick, his voice tired. His psyche was tired too. He was sick of saying that he didn’t know.
“Look,” he said. “Let’s go have a shower. Then we’ll come back here and shove off. We can wander down the waterway a bit but still stay within phone range. We can duck into an inlet or something and wait there…like we did yesterday.”
Jo swiped at her eyes. “But still within phone range?”
Nick nodded. “Yeah. We’ll wait for Bernie to call before we go too far.”
“Okay,” said Jo, softly. “I just don’t want to be around…” Jo nodded in the direction of the Sunset Voyager. “…him.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~On the Sunset Voyager, Peter Crofton considered his options. He was glad he’d had the flash of insight last night that he needed to call Mickey’s mother this morning. It was fine to sell that idiot Carter the story that he thought Mickey might have run off with another man, but he had to put the idea into someone else’s head as well. Or at least the idea that he was worried about her.
Pete knew Jo wasn’t buying his story for a second, but that was okay. She was going to be dead before the day was over. She wasn’t going to be able to tell anyone her suspicions. Except she’d already told Nick. Oh well, he was going to be dead too. Pete just hoped he hadn’t passed on too much information to Bernie.
That’s an unknown factor, Pete told himself. You can’t do anything about that yet. All you can do is go with what you know.
What he knew was that it could be a very long day and he’d better be prepared for it. Pete prepared a cooler with sandwiches, fruit and bottles of water. He took it up to the bridge. He glanced over at the Lenore and saw Nick and Jo walking along the dock. Going to the showers, he guessed.
Pete went below and unlocked the cupboard that held the gun and the cell phone. He retraced his steps to the bridge and hid the gun in the small compartment used for maps. Then he took the cell phone down and into his bedroom.
Pete was a very orderly person. All his clothes were hanging neatly in the closet or were folded in the dresser drawer. His dirty laundry was in a mesh bag that sat between the bed and the dresser. Pete took the cell phone and shoved it down into the middle of the dirty laundry.
He went into Jo’s room and packed all her stuff into her suitcase. He folded it all carefully but quickly. He didn’t know how much time he had. He wanted to get the suitcase to the Lenore before Nick and Jo departed. He wanted it to look like Jo had decided to go off with Nick to get laid, not that she had done a midnight flight in terror.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Nick returned from the shower to find that Jo was already back. Man, the girl was fast, thought Nick!
Jo was in the kitchen, making sandwiches. “I figured I’d make up some lunch,” she said.
“Good idea,” said Nick. “I’ll get the cooler.”
“Oh, and this arrived while we were out,” said Jo, nodding at the suitcase, now sitting in the living room. “It’s my stuff. I guess I’m officially a member of the Lenore crew now.”
“Welcome aboard, Sailor,” said Nick, snapping off a salute. Then he leaned down and gently kissed her.
“I’ll put it in your room,” he said, picking up the suitcase and taking it up the hall.
Nick and Jo spent half an hour fussing over the cooler. By the time they were done, although they didn’t know it, they had almost exactly the same stuff in it as Pete did in his.
After they were done with the food, Nick got out his charts. He showed Jo where they were and the route he hoped to take. He showed her where they had lost cell phone range the day before, and they talked about how far they should go before they called Bernie.
Jo said that she was going to make the bed, and Nick said he would take the charts up to the bridge.
He came back down and found Jo sitting on the sofa. He stared at her, and she stared at him. There was nothing left to do.
“It’s not a nice day out there,” said Nick. “It might even rain.”
“Do we need rain gear?” asked Jo.
“Nah,” said Nick. “I’m don’t bother with it. If it rains, I’ll just stop, and we can come below.” He paused, then said, “I’m sure we could find something to do to occupy ourselves ‘til the sun comes back out.”
Jo laughed. “I’ll just start my rain dance then, shall I?”
“Come here.”
Jo stood up, but her stomach stayed on the couch. The look on Nick’s face was…
“Do you ever braid your hair?”
Jo reached her hand up self-consciously to her hair. It was wet from the shower and pulled back in an elastic. “I can’t do it myself,” she admitted. “It always skews off to the side. I look like I’m turning my head to talk to someone.”
“Let me do it,” said Nick. He held up his hands and waggled his fingers. “These are pretty nimble,” he said.
“Don’t I know it,” said Jo, under her breath. Only it wasn’t really under her breath, which she realized when Nick burst out laughing.
Another fifteen minutes ticked slowly by, as Nick stood behind Jo and ran his fingers through her hair, giving her the most thrilling quarter hour of her life that wasn’t horizontal. And it might have led to something horizontal if Nick’s phone hadn’t rung.
Nick stopped massaging Jo’s neck and grabbed the phone. “Hello…Bernie?”
Jo waited, her hands at her mouth in prayer.
“Yeah…okay…yeah, sure…bye.” Nick disconnected and looked at Jo. “That was Pete,” he said. “He was just checking in.” Nick looked at the phone. “I wonder how he knew the number. I didn’t give it to him.”
They thought about that for a moment.
“I guess he got it the other night,” said Jo. “When I used your phone to call him.”
“I guess,” said Nick.
He thought about that. So if Pete knew it was Nick’s number…Nick tried to decide if there was anything sinister in that. Did it matter when Pete knew that Jo had come to Nick? And maybe he didn’t know that night. Maybe he only guessed after he found out that Jo was on the Lenore. Maybe he figured it out. It wouldn’t take an Einstein to do that. Obviously, she had called from somewhere. Obviously, it wasn’t a hotel, since she didn’t actually go to one.
Jo sat and watched Nick turn it over in his head and come down on Pete’s side once again. It saddened her, and she wondered if it should make her scared as well.
Nick blinked and looked up. “So,” he said, “are we ready to get started?”
