Sea Beast, Part One

Rachel was swimming in Lake Michigan off the side of the Sea Beast, a 44-foot cruiser with four bedrooms, two cockpits, and a sun deck in the bow. Two other women swam with her, laughing, staying close to the hull, while Rachel’s long legs kicked in the water.

            I was supposed to be working, but Rachel in a bikini always distracted me.

            Robert Conroy came up behind me, holding a beer and smoking a cigar. In his fifties, with thin, steel-gray hair and a blunt jaw. “Anything yet?”

            “I did a quick search. Your brother’s room was locked.” I watched Rachel slither under the soft waves. “Is he still up there?”

            “Yeah. Making sure we stay close to the girls.” One of them was Conroy’s wife, Cecile. The other was his brother Jim’s girlfriend, a young blond named April. Rachel had jabbed her elbow at me more than once when she caught me checking her out.

            “I’ll have to get into his room. If you want.”

“I’ll see.” Conroy was a co-owner of his brother’s boat, so it was at least semi-legal for me to poke around.

Something caught my eye in the water.

            No, not Rachel, as much as I liked watching her in a bikini. This looked like a fin. A long, narrow fin, maybe ten feet from front to back, undulating side to side. I could see something large and dark just under the surface.

            “Rachel!” I waved. “Get out of the lake!”

            I don’t know if she heard me. But the other two women did. Cecile, hanging onto the ladder off the starboard side near the stern, turned in the water and saw the fin.

            “What the—” She grabbed the ladder and started pulling herself up. April followed, so close I thought she might pull Cecile off the rungs. 

            Rachel twisted around in the water, saw the fin, and then dived down, swimming hard toward the boat.

            The fin didn’t follow. It curled in a half circle, then slid slowly beneath the surface of the water.

            Conroy helped his wife into the boat. “Jim!”

            I helped April, hoping Rachel wouldn’t notice. She turned and leaned against the rail, panting, peering at the crisp blue water. “What is it? I don’t see anything.”

            “It was—” I pushed her aside, as politely as I could, when Rachel came up the ladder. “Are you all right?” I grabbed a towel. “Did you—feel anything?” Rachel’s at least partly psychic. And that fin hadn’t looked like anything natural.

            “I felt it on my foot!” She stamped a bare heel on the deck. “It was long and rough, and big. What the hell was that?”

            “I don’t know.” But it was gone. For now.

Conroy had hired me two days ago. “Tom Jurgen, right?” He shook my hand in his office in one of the tall buildings in downtown Chicago—one with a wide view of the lake.

            That’s me—Tom Jurgen, ex-reporter, now a private detective. “What can I do for you, Mr. Conroy?”

            “It’s my brother James. Jim.” He sat down behind his long mahogany desk.  The office was big, filled with books on real estate and framed photos of boats, large and small, old and new, between the bookcases. “I’m worried about him.”

            “Worried about what?”

            “He’s my kid brother. He lives on a boat—I own half of it. He used to work with me.” He gestured around the office. “But a few years ago he just quit, and I don’t know what he does anymore. I’m afraid he’s into drugs.”

            That might be a break from my usual routine of cases involving vampires and demons from hell. On the other, getting involved with drug dealers might be even less conducive to maintaining my anxiety levels. “What do you want me to do?”

            “He takes us out on the boat every other weekend in the summer. I want to bring you on Saturday, if you’re available, and you can search the boat for drugs. It’s okay—like I said, I’m half-owner. And I don’t want him arrested. I just want to know what he’s doing.”

            Sounded simple. Which usually meant it wouldn’t be. “You could do the search. It’s be cheaper than hiring me.”

            Conroy shook his head. “He’ll know if I’m doing anything like that. I can distract him while you check the boat out. It’ll be Saturday and Sunday, but it’s big boat. Sleeps eight. And the weather’s going to be nice.”

            I looked out at the lake, calm and blue. I could do with a quiet weekend on the water. “Can I bring a friend?”

We met at the Grant Park harbor at 11 a.m. on Saturday. Rachel wore shorts and a Chicago Blackhawks T-shirt, carrying a bag with clothes for the weekend. “Is that it? Wow. I’ve never been in anything bigger than a canoe.”

            Rachel’s my girlfriend. She lives upstairs from me, and she helps me on my cases. She’s somewhat psychic, which works out when I’m dealing the monsters and demons. I hoped this wouldn’t be one of those cases.

            Jim Conroy looked, predictably, like a younger version of his big brother, but his hair was still mostly black and his bare shoulders were brawnier. “Hi. Tom?” He took Rachel’s pack and mine on the short gangplank. “Welcome aboard the Sea Beast.”

            Robert Conroy and his wife were already aboard. Conroy wore a blazer without a tie, and his wife Cecile, about halfway between his age and Jim’s, wore a wraparound skirt and a light sweater.

            A blond woman came up from below, in white shorts and a red bikini top. “Are we ready?”

            “Help me cast off. This is April, my girlfriend. Tom Jurgen, and uh . . . Rachel?” They shook hands. “Nice to have you aboard.”

            Rachel jabbed me in the ribs as April bent over to start untying the boat from the dock. “What are you looking at?” She gets territorial whenever another woman’s in sight.

            “N-nothing.” I turned around to look at the lake.

            A few wispy clouds hovered in the sky, and the sun was beating down on the water. Cecile took us down to show us our room. Tight, but workable for one night. “We’ll have to share the heads.” She pointed to one door, and then another. “That’s what they call it on a boat.”

            The engines started up. I climbed the stairs to the main deck and then another set of stairs to the upper cockpit, where Jim had one hand on a steering wheel and the other on a throttle, backing the boat up, then navigating slowly past the other boats tied up in their slips or maneuvering out to the lake.

            His brother stood next to him. “Where are we going?”

            “Down to Benton Harbor. A couple of hours.” He tapped the GPS. “This will get us there. If it gives out, I’ve got maps. On paper, even. We can stop to go swimming. I’ve done this a dozen times, remember?”

            “I know.” He patted Jim’s shoulder. “You’ve really done good with this boat.”

            Jim nodded, “It’s my home.” He peered through the window.

            “What do you do otherwise?” I fished for sunglasses in my shirt pocket.

            “Favors. Odd jobs for friends.”

            “Kind of like Travis McGee?” A fictional “salvage expert” who lived on a boat, in a series of detective novels I’d devoured as a teenager.

            He grinned, recognizing the name. “My role model.”

            “Tom’s a reporter.” Conroy glanced at me. Since I used to actually be a reporter, it was the easiest cover story we could come up with.

            “Cool.” Jim steered us out of the harbor. “We’ll head out for a few hours, have some lunch . . . Hey, April, bring me a beer? You guys?”

            “I’m fine.” I don’t drink much these days. April brought up beers from a cooler on the rear deck and sat down in the co-pilot’s chair.

            Rachel joined us. She’d already changed into a black bikini with a white cover-up. “So, life on the water, huh?” She had a beer too. “How’d you guys meet?”

            “Right here.” April tapped a foot on the deck. “There was a party. I came with some friends. He called me the next day. I don’t even remembering giving you my phone number.” She slapped Jim’s shoulder. “The usual. How about you two?”

            “Oh, I was living upstairs from him, and some of my friends were making noises.” Rachel winked at me. “He came upstairs to check it out, and we sort of—clicked. The usual.”

            It was almost true. Except for leaving out the vampires.

            Cecile Conroy came up, also in a bikini that, uh, looked nice. “I’m going out on the sun deck up front, Rob.”

            “Oh, me too.” April swigged her beer. “You ‘re okay, right, Jim?”

            “Absolutely.” He grinned.

            Rachel joined them. In a few minutes, they were putting sunscreen over their skin on the front deck, laughing with each other. At least now I could watch April without Rachel assaulting me.

            What? I’m a guy. But Rachel looked better than either of the others.

            “So.” Conroy took the seat that April had left behind. “Everything going okay, Jim?”

            “Fine, Rob.” He turned the wheel slightly. “Why ask?”

            “These odd jobs—I just worry about you.”

            “Relax, Rob. I’m not stupid.” He laughed. “I’m just not an office guy like you. But I did pretty well at the firm, didn’t I?”

            “One of the best.” He sipped his beer. “I never understood why you left.”

            “For the open sea.” Jim chuckled, shifting the wheel again. “Or the open lake, I guess.” He looked at me. “What about you, Tom? What do you like about being a reporter?”

            I thought back. “Finding things out. On land or sea or wherever.” I was still doing that now.

            The land disappeared behind us. A few boats sailed by. Jim kept one eye on the GPS and his other one on the lake. He finished his beer but didn’t ask for another one, even when his brother went down for more.

            We bounced gently on the water. After half an hour I went down to use the head—“That’s what you call it, right?”—but really I wanted to do a quick preliminary search. With Conroy talking to his brother and the women up front, I figured I had a few minutes free.

            Conroy’s small cabin was open, but the other one—Jim and April’s—was locked. I swept the galley, looking in the small refrigerator, checking the freezer, running my fingers under the drawers, and looking under the sink. Nothing. I searched both of the heads, used one for its original purpose, and went back up to the cockpit.

             The women came back to the aft deck. “It’s just a thing I bought,” April was saying. “It really does work.”

            Cecile snorted. “I’ll have to borrow it from you.”

“I’ll show it to you later.” They laid down on deck chairs, sipping beers. I took off my sunglasses and winked at Rachel. She ignored me.

Conroy went down to the galley and brought up another cooler full of sandwiches, vegetables and fruit. He set it next to a big locker at the stern marked “LIFEBOAT,” and then headed back up to the upper cockpit, a sandwich in his hand. “I can take the helm, Jim. If you want.”

            I unbuttoned my shirt. Rachel sat next to me, smelling like sunscreen and sweat. Jim came down and set next to April.

            I leaned over to whisper in Rachel’s ear. “Is Jim okay?”

            “He’s a little high, I think. But I smelled the dope on his breath when we shook hands.” She stretched her legs and closed her eyes. “You want me to touch him?”

            “Uh, no.” Jim had his shirt off, and his chest was . . . somewhat more muscular than mine. “That’s all right. Thanks for asking.”

            She smiled. “Anything for the team.”

            April rose up and walked toward the steps leading back down stern. “I want to go swimming.”

            “Sounds good.” Jim headed for the cabin. “I’ll cut the engine. Wait a few minutes.”

            The motor went off two minutes later. The boat kept surging forward through the water, but it finally slowed and began drifting in quiet, gentle circles on the soft waves.

            Conroy came down. “Okay. Just stay close.”

            April jumped for the ladder. Cecile followed her. Rachel gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. She didn’t use the ladder—she hurled herself off the side of the boat, laughing until she hit the water.

            Conroy came up behind me as I waited for Rachel to come up for air. “Anything yet?”

            That’s when the big fin came up.