“This is horrible, so horrible,” Dirk moaned as Abby tried to comfort him.
Malachi came back over to them. “That was Detective Caswell,” he said. “The medical examiner’s office has the young woman cleaned up. He says she’s still pretty rough to look at, but they’ve gotten all the river gunk off her and he wants you to come down and see if you recognize her. I told him Abby could probably come make the same identification. He suggested you both come.”
“I’ll change first,” Abby said.
“I’ll go.” Dirk’s voice broke. “She worked for me. I owe her.”
Aldous and Bootsie each set a hand on his shoulders. They reminded Abby of the Three Musketeers—one for all, and all for one. It must be nice to have such close and steadfast friends. She didn’t lack friends but a friendship like theirs, like the one they’d shared with Gus, was pretty special.
“Be right back.” She ran up the stairs, stopping to throw the file folder of notes David Caswell had given them into the bottom drawer of Gus’s desk. Something made her hide it beneath a stack of other papers.
She paused, looking around the room. “Blue?” She waited. “Gus?” she said hopefully.
But she spoke to the air.
Leaving the office, she hurried to her own room to dress. She put on one of her white tailored blouses and lightweight blue pantsuits. She was going to the morgue. It felt important to dress properly.
*
Malachi found a perch on the bar stool next to Bootsie. Sullivan asked if he wanted anything; he decided that if he was going to sit there commiserating with the tavern’s intriguing trio of barflies, he should have a drink so he ordered a light beer.
“Sad business,” he said. “But, Dirk, this might not be Helen. Abby doesn’t seem to think it is. Still, it’ll be best to know for sure.”
Bootsie turned to him. “Yeah, I guess so. I mean, you can hope the girl just went off on a whirlwind romance, but...”
“Helen was responsible,” Dirk said. He lifted his glass. “Ah, Helen.”
Dirk might be a little too far gone to recognize anyone, Malachi thought.
“Dirk, did Ms. Long have any tattoos or birthmarks? Anything that might help if her face is too...damaged?”
“Damaged?” Aldous repeated with a shudder.
“Um,” Dirk said thoughtfully. “She, uh, did say she had a tattoo. But she never said what it was—or where it was. She liked to tease her pirate cast mates aboard the Black Swan. Make them guess. They were a phenomenal group of young people to work with—Helen, Jack and Blake. They got along so well.” He shook his head. “Blake had a major crush on Helen. She liked him well enough, but said she wouldn’t date anyone she worked with. Would that she had!”
“We don’t know that it’s Helen,” Malachi repeated.
“And if it’s not—then where is Helen?” Aldous asked. He stared at Malachi and, in turn, Malachi stared at him. He was definitely unique and hard to miss, a big, powerful man with his shiny head and gold earring.
“Hopefully, alive and well somewhere,” Malachi said. He gave Aldous a smile. “Sir, do you work on the pirate ship now and then? You’ve certainly got the look.”
“Hereditary baldness,” Aldous told him. “Sometimes—say, around St. Patrick’s Day—the city gets crazy busy and then I work with my friend here.”
“You’re a captain, as well, though? Different kind of ship, if I remember our conversation from before,” Malachi said.
“My family’s been in the shipping trade for generations. We were bringing goods back and forth from the Old World before the colonies became a nation. I own Brentwood Shipping. We have ships all over the world. My dad was old school. I started work as a deckhand on a nine-hundred-and-six-foot container vessel. I’ve sailed on almost everything known to man, but these days, I mostly use my little fishing boat. She’s a thirty-three-foot Boston whaler with a fine cabin and a galley. I can take her out for a few days on my own when I feel I need the water beneath me. But, yeah, there’s fun in playing a pirate. I’m still on the company board, but I already put in my time. Now, I do the world a favor and give people jobs to keep the company afloat.”
“That’s a good thing. We all need jobs,” Malachi said.
“What about you? You spend a lot of time on the water?” Bootsie asked.
“I spent some time with friends on shrimp boats down in Louisiana,” he answered. “And I’ve been on a cruise—does that count?”
Dirk managed a smile. “Hardly! You’ve got to have the wheel in your hands, really feel the power of the water, even on a river. Feel the wind whip around when you aren’t sure you can fight your way back to the docks. Now that’s being on the water.”
“Hear, hear!” Bootsie shouted as he thumped the bar with his fist.
“Then you gentlemen have it all over me,” Malachi said, smiling. “What about you, Bootsie?”