chapter Thirty-nine
Casey woke Eric at six. He came to the door in a wrinkled T-shirt and shorts.
“Come on,” Casey said. “We’ve got things to do.”
He blinked. “Can I have a few minutes?”
“Make it quick.”
Nine and a half minutes later, during which Casey was completely alone except for the cars passing on the other side of the motel, they were walking very quickly downtown.
Eric smoothed down his still-wet hair. “Where are we going?”
Casey explained what she’d found out the night before. Eric listened, then said, “What do you think we’re going to find?”
“What could we find in designs for houseboats?”
“I think it’s obvious. Hidden compartments for smuggling. We’re right across the Gulf from Cuba, and that was the early nineties. All kinds of stuff went down then with smuggling. People coming over illegally, cops taking down boats full of drugs, causing tons of deaths on both sides, all sorts of violence and betrayal and theft. Nasty stuff.”
Casey remembered Robbie talking about smuggling when they’d first gotten to the hotel, although he was talking partly about human trafficking. “I guess it depends how big the boat is.”
“Or how big the inventory is. Could have been anything. Drugs. Cigars. Diamonds. Even cash. You could squeeze a lot of those things in small spaces.”
“But don’t they usually use speed boats to smuggle? Or bigger yacht-type things? Houseboats aren’t exactly fast, or even seaworthy, not out in the middle of the ocean.”
“Guess we’ll have to see what’s on the plans.”
They arrived at the Betsy and Scott’s house. A light was on in one of the upstairs rooms, so they wouldn’t be waking everyone. Casey rapped lightly on the door, and listened for footsteps. When they didn’t come, she tried again, a little louder.
The door opened, and Scott stood there, looking much like Eric had twenty minutes earlier, in shorts and a stretched-out T-shirt. “You’re up already?”
“So are you.”
He smiled. “True.”
“Can we come in? Is Betsy up?”
“Sorry, of course, come in. I’m not quite awake. I’ll go get Bets.” He shut the door behind them and padded up the stairs.
Betsy came rushing down, tying her housecoat. “What is it? It’s not Wayne, is it?”
“No, he’s fine. But he gave me an idea of what the men were looking for. Can we have another look at your boxes?”
“They’re still in the dining room.”
Casey went right to the memento box and popped the end off of the mailing tube. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the blueprints right where she’d left them.
“Those?” Betsy said. “They’re just some of Cyrus’ old stuff.”
Casey shoved the boxes aside and lay the blueprints flat on the table. Eric held down one half while she held the other.
“I guess it’s a houseboat,” Eric said. “But it kind of looks like a yacht.”
The first drawing showed the dimensions of the outside of the boat, as you would see it from the side if it were floating up above the water. It was a typical pontoon-style houseboat, just like Casey had imagined. In the lower right hand corner was a logo which said simply, “Private Boats, Inc.” Casey peeled that top sheet off and let it slide to the floor. The second drawing showed the same outside view, but from the front and back, while the third showed the opposite side. Each of them had the same logo imprinted on the bottom corner. Casey got rid of them, too, and finally saw the interior.
The top sheet was an overview of the entire layout. Kitchen, bar, lounge, bathroom, two bedrooms, and two bunk rooms. Lots of room, but then, if someone was really living on it, it would have to be somewhat sizable. All of the rest of the papers were individual sections of each room, as well as electrical, venting, and water pipe diagrams.
“Why is it important?” Betsy asked.
Casey didn’t know. There was nothing obvious. Nothing saying, “Hidden compartment for smuggling drugs.”
“Give me a minute,” Eric said. He flipped back and forth between several sheets, muttering to himself, for several minutes. “Hand me those other sheets, will you?”
Betsy grabbed the ones on the floor and put them on the table.
“The dimensions,” Eric said. “They don’t add up between the outside and the inside.”
“What else?” Casey was used to looking at set blueprints from back in her theater days, but that part of her brain had rusted, and these drawings just looked like a bunch of lines and angles with no real meaning.
Eric scanned the sheets again. “I need more time.”
“Can I help?” Scott was standing in the doorway. He’d taken a shower, and was wearing khakis and another blue button-down. Things you’d expect a high school teacher to wear.
“Please.” Eric stepped aside. “You’re physics, right? Maybe your kind of brain could figure this out better. We think these are plans for some kind of smuggling boat. Cyrus drew them.”
Scott leaned over the drawings, saying things like, “Um-hmm.” And “Oh, sure.” And even, “Huh.” “Okay,” he finally said in a normal speaking voice. “Look here.” He ran his finger along the outer shell of the layout overview. “There’s a buffer all around the sides of the boat. Space in-between the inner walls and the shell.”
Casey followed his finger. “They were hiding things between them?”
“Ingenious, really. That way no police could find things just by going through the boat. The cupboards, storage spaces, closets—they’d all be filled with legal belongings. There would have to be an opening somewhere…I don’t see it yet.”
He took his time looking over the schematics, going back and forth between sheets. “There. This paneling. It would look like solid wood paneling, but see here? He’s drawn in sliding sections. He would have had it constructed so no one would even think it was anything but a normal seam. You can see them all over—in the closets, behind the kitchen cabinets, even the breaker box. Behind each storage space is a hidden compartment. Fairly small.”
“But plenty of space for drugs or gems or cash.”
“Absolutely.”
Casey and Eric looked at each other.
“What does this mean?” Betsy asked.
“It means your uncle really was a criminal,” Casey said. “Or was at least working for some. And that opens up all sorts of possibilities as to who would want him dead.”