He turned to Winstein and told him to take over the bridge for a few minutes. The first mate finished drawing a line on the chart and then got up to stand by the helmsman. We were going through a channel with a lot of little islands planted in it—humps of earth with one or two trees or a scraggly bush clinging to them. The sun glinted off the gray-green water. Behind us, Thunder Bay was still visible with its line of elevators.
Bledsoe and Bemis joined me at the table. “You’re not supposed to come on board without the captain’s permission.” Bemis was serious but not angry. “You don’t strike me as a frivolous person and I doubt you did it frivolously, but it’s still a major breach of maritime custom. It’s not a crime, per se, but I don’t think that’s what you were referring to, was it?”
“No. What I really wanted to know was this: suppose you have someone on board who committed a crime while he was on shore. You find out about it while you’re at sea. What do you do with that person?”
“It would depend in part on what the crime was.”
“Attempted murder.”
Bledsoe’s eyes narrowed. “I assume this isn’t hypothetical, Vic. Do you think one of this crew tried killing someone? Who and why?”
I looked at him steadily. “I was the intended victim. I’m trying to find out for sure that someone here wasn’t after me.”
For a count of ten there was no sound in the small room but the faint throb of the engines. The helmsman kept his eyes in front of him, but his back twitched. Bemis’s jaw set in an angry line.
“You’d better explain that one, Miss Warshawski.”
“Gladly. Last Thursday night Martin Bledsoe here took me out for dinner. I left my car in the elevator yard. While we were gone someone cut through the steering controls with a cutting torch and emptied the brake fluid. It was a miracle that when my car crashed on the Dan Ryan I escaped with minor injuries. An innocent driver was killed, though, and one of his passengers is now paralyzed for life. That’s murder, assault, and a lot of other ugly stuff.”
Bledsoe gave an exclamation. “My God, Vic!” He fished around for something else to say but made several false starts before he could get a coherent thought out. I watched him carefully. Surprise is such an easy feeling to counterfeit. It looked genuine, but…
The captain looked at me with narrowed eyes. “You seem pretty cool about it.”
“Would it be more believable if I lay down on the floor and screamed?”
Bemis made a gesture of annoyance. “I assume I could radio the Chicago police and get some verification of this.”
I pointed to the radio on the port wall. “By all means. A Lieutenant Robert Mallory can tell you anything you want to know.”
“Can you give us some more detail on what happened?” That was Bledsoe, finding his voice and his authoritative manner.
I obliged with as much of the accident as I could recall.
“Now what makes you think someone on the Lucella might be involved?”
“There’s a limited universe of who could have done it,” I explained. “Only a few people knew I was down there. Only a few could identify my car.”
“How do you figure that?” That was the captain again. “There are a lot of vandals down at the Port and this frankly sounds like vandalism.”
“Captain, I don’t know what your exposure to vandals is, but I see a lot of them. I don’t know of any vandal who goes around with a cutting torch and a ratchet wrench to disable cars. It’s a lengthy procedure with a very high risk of getting caught, and there’s no point to it. Especially in a place like a grain elevator, which is hard to get to.”
Bemis’s brow creased. “You think just because the Lucella was tied up there we’re implicated somehow?”
“You people and Clayton Phillips are the only ones who knew I was down there … Captain, I’m certain that my cousin was pushed overboard last month—or underboard, to be literal about it. And I know someone else was killed in connection with my cousin’s affairs. The way I see it, the killer is either connected with this ship or with Eudora Grain. Now you’ve got a big machine shop here. I’m sure you have a couple of cutting torches lying around—”
“No!” Bemis exploded. “No way in hell is Mike Sheridan involved in this.”
“How long have you known him?”
“Twenty years. At least twenty years. We’ve been sailing together a long time. I know that man better than I know—my wife. I see more of him.”
“Besides,” Bledsoe put in, “there’s no reason for Mike—or any of us—to want to kill you.”
I rubbed my forehead tiredly. “Ah, yes. The reason. That’s the real stumper. If I knew what my cousin had found out I’d know who did the murders. I thought it had something to do with those grain shipment orders, Martin, but you assured me they were perfectly legitimate. But what if it had something to do with the vandalism to your cargo holds? You told me that was what Boom Boom called you about.”
“Yes, but, Vic, we all need this ship operating to make a living. Why would we put it out of commission?”
“Yes, well, something occurred to me about that, too.” I looked at my hands, then at Bledsoe. “What if someone were blackmailing you—something along the lines of ‘I’ll tell your secret history if you don’t give up that load.’ ”