Anne Bonny's Wake. Dick Elam

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      “I hope you will join us for dinner. You’ll like Min,” I said.

      “Thank you. You’re kind to include me. But I feel like the stranger crashing a family supper. I’ll just explore Oriental by foot. Then stay aboard. Besides, I don’t have dinner clothes.”

      “No problem. Bill will help me solve the clothes problem. The motel room is for you. Here’s the key to room six. Got a shower, and you can shampoo your hair. Some shampoo in the head. Take that.”

      “That’s nice, but why don’t you take the room, and I’ll sleep aboard.”

      “Maggie, when you get to know Bill’s wife, Min Havins, you’ll know why I wouldn’t dare, even if I wanted. I’ll shower in the men’s dressing room.”

      She thanked me again. Maggie had parlayed a ride to Oriental. Invited herself to sail to Wrightsville Beach. Yet she acted surprised at my generosity. Or was a ride all she wanted, and now, like Greta Garbo, she “vanted to be alone”? Or, she flinched because she didn’t bring her dinner clothes? I planned to solve that problem.

      “I’ll help you unrig, and then I’ll go to the room,” she said. “I thank you, but I can’t pay you now for the room. I’ve got a few coins in my jeans, but no currency. I’ll reimburse you when we get to Wrightsville Beach.”

      “No problem. We’ll settle then.” I wondered if she would really pay me, and how, but we had moved to one understanding: she wasn’t asking to be a kept woman.

      Unrigging a sailboat takes a while, even when your jib rolls up like a window shade. We spread the spinnaker on the grass and repacked it in its bag. While I hooked up shore power, Maggie took the bagged sail below. She pumped the bilge, emptied the trash, and, at my insistence, sat in the cockpit while I coiled lines and stowed winch handles.

      I went below and entered log notes:

       Oriental Dockside. 2:47 . . . Need: refuel, buy stretch cord, etc. for MM

      Then I gathered two beers, a can of Vienna sausages, cheese slices, and a box of saltine crackers and carried the food, plus paper towels, into the cockpit. Maggie thanked me for the beer, ate some cheese atop crackers, but she declined my other hors d’oeuvre.

      The early afternoon May sun shone warm, but not hot. The wind blew away the cannery smell across the Oriental harbor.

      Oriental took its name, so the natives say, from a wrecked ship nameplate that washed ashore sometime in the 1700s. Now some two hundred sailing yachts berth in Oriental. Most of the racing yachts moor at Pierce Creek Marina. Transient yachts drop anchor in the harbor or moor at Bill Havins’s Dockside. Only a few skippers use the city dock that shallows when a north wind blows.

      In our peaceful anchorage, l determined to interrogate Miss Maggie Adelaide Moore.

      First I complimented Maggie on her sailing. Where had she learned so well?

      From her father: Ashley Jerome Moore, who treated his timid daughter like a shipmate. Maggie sniffed after she named her father. Remembering must have struck a nerve, but her face brightened.

      Where did her father sail?

      Wherever the company sent him.

      What was her father’s business?

      Accounting.

      Was Dad a certified public accountant?

      No.

      For what company did Dad work?

      Different oil companies that sell gasoline to service stations.

      Where did they live?

      All over the South.

      You show me a service station, and I’ll show you an oil wholesaler. Ashley Jerome Moore’s job was difficult to categorize by region.

      Maggie answered cheerfully, apparently animated by my interest in her racing training. She didn’t provide enough information to categorize the Moore family by sailboat class. I shop all the time for another sailboat. You tell me what sailboat you own, and I can estimate your boat investment. Maggie said they’d once owned a family sailboat, but now she crewed for other people.

      Before I could ask what kind of boat they had owned, Maggie added details about her family: Her dad had died when she was fourteen. (She sniffed.) Her mother lived on annuities. Mom lived in Hilton Head, but traveled extensively, renting out her condominium and visiting relatives.

      Tracing Maggie Adelaide Moore would be an easy task for the Havinses. I knew Min would snoop in her customary, bosom-buddy, prying way. And I had gathered some data Bill could trace through his Washington, DC, connections.

      I refrained from follow-up questions. Deferred to the mental adjustment that follows a sailboat race—a moment of recuperation. Sensed that Maggie understood the social graces of the after-race snack: easy talk, compliments to the crew, a few complaints—and only directed against yourself. Always followed by a restorative spirit, a mental refurbishing, and another drink.

      “How about another beer?” Maggie asked.

      When I nodded, she danced into the cabin. She passed a beer up through the hatch, opened and raised her beer in salute. I responded.

      “Hersh, I hope you won’t mind me noticing all the books you keep in the shelf below. I would like to read the Russian’s book about opening chess moves. Otherwise, your books are tomes about justice, police, and testimony, except I detected a slim pamphlet with Herschel Barstow’s name on the cover, and pages turned down.”

      “Guilty. That’s my first textbook. I’m working on a revised edition.”

      Maggie beamed. “I noticed the title: Just the Facts. Sounds like Sergeant Friday on the TV show Dragnet.”

      “Guilty, again. It’s a manual intended to teach future cops how to write short sentences. Write active verbs. Avoid using the pronoun ‘I.’ I hear the students call my writing course ‘Police Blotter 101.’ But I teach them how they ‘write it down’ at the cop shops.”

      Maggie saluted me. “Yes, sir. Know the drill. I told you I worked at the Wilmington police station once. My uncle Glenn got me the temp job. He’s been a policeman all his life. Professor, did you go to a criminal justice college or work in law enforcement?”

      “Neither.” I smiled back, but I dropped my eyes because I wasn’t ready to expound my criminal justice teaching credentials, and I didn’t want her digging into my previous government service.

      “Because I went back to college for an advanced degree and learned about computers, I wrote a dissertation about collecting crime, espionage data and—”

      “Aha.” She raised her index finger to accompany her amused smile. “And do you have your own code number, like 007?”

      “No way. But who will ever forget that number? I read the first of the series. Remember the year was 1953. Borrowed that first James Bond book from a dorm friend. Should have studied for my Spanish final exam, but didn’t finish reading the book until the morning of the exam.”

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