Flyin' Solo by Peggy O'Neal Peden

Author:Peggy O'Neal Peden [Peggy O’Neal Peden]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House
Published: 2022-03-21T00:00:00+00:00

THIRTY-TWO

Walking out into the midday Miami heat was like walking into a wall. It had that kind of force. I didn’t have far to go from the door to the white rental car, but any shower-fresh feeling was gone before the air conditioning began to cool off the car. I wanted to get this over with and go home.

Captain Dave’s was not far, maybe a mile, mile and a half. In another climate I might have walked it. It wasn’t hard to tell that I wasn’t in Nashville anymore. Bikini-topped, short-shorted girls skated by, easily doubling the speed I was making in city traffic. Same-sex couples held hands as they strolled and window shopped. Shop windows openly advertised things folks would giggle about in Nashville. I pulled into the marina parking lot and felt I was back in a world I understood.

Captain Dave’s had a blue-collar feel. Boats were rocking gently at a short pier; others were out of the water, their keels awkward in dry dock. Power tools made noise, sanders and air compressors hard at work. I looked around and found a small, weathered shack that looked like it might be the office. No one paid any attention to me as I crossed the lot.

I opened the door to a single room. An aging, overworked, window air conditioner tried against all odds to make a difference in the temperature. Captain Dave looked up from a desk layered with papers so deep that some of them had yellowed. An iMac sat on one corner like a stylized sea bird.

‘Help ya?’

‘I’m Campbell Hale. From Nashville. For the Young family.’

Captain Dave stood and came around his desk, extending his hand as he reached me. ‘Ms Hale. I’m sorry.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s the first time anything like that’s happened to one o’ my boats, one o’ my clients. It’s hit us all hard.’ Boston was still there in his broad As.

‘Thank you. It’s been hard for everyone who knew Fly to take in.’

‘Fly?’

‘Mr Young. Old high school nickname. His initials. F. L. Y.’

He nodded. ‘He seemed the kind of guy you’d want around you if something went wrong.’

I nodded. What was there to say?

‘Well, let me show you to Mr Young’s boat. You’ll be wanting to look it over.’

Captain Dave, Dave O’Guinn, he told me, led me to the boat I’d last seen bobbing beside the Blue Moon in west Nashville. In spite of everything, I’d have been less surprised to see Fly pop out of the hatch of the Manana at that moment than I had been that night by the river.

We stopped on the pier beside the boat. Captain Dave turned to me. ‘You ready for this?’

I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t expected the lurch in my stomach at the prospect of collecting Fly’s things. I nodded. ‘Yeah.’

He stepped over the rail into the well of the deck and held out a hand to me. I grasped it, instantly aware of the strength in that arm. I stepped across and waited for the boat to steady.

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