The Winemaker's Daughter by Timothy Egan

Author:Timothy Egan [Egan, Timothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307429636
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-18T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

ON THE OTHER SIDE of the Cascades, the clouds cling to the land and the seas are high, with an uneven roll, making it difficult to find anyone in the waters off Whidbey Island. The storm blows freezing rain and wet snow, no breaks between sheets of moisture. The Coast Guard helicopters cannot see anything, and the patrol boats are doing little better. They fight the current in Deception Pass and search along the base of the high rocky cliffs, looking for any sign of the lost fisherman. For three days they look, circumnavigating Whidbey, peeking into the harbors of the San Juans, testing the wall of waves in the Strait of Juan de Fuca to search around Port Townsend, into the entrance of Discovery Bay, off Protection Island. The storm is a weeklong lash.

Brunella is in the bathtub of her home in Seattle, well past midnight on day three of the search, when a call comes from a Coast Guard lieutenant.

“Fishing boat washed up on shore, broken trolling pole on one side, spotted by the watchman at the Dungeness Spit lighthouse. There’s a crew on the ground hiking out there now.”

Brunella is still awake in the predawn hours when the second call comes in.

“SoundGardener. Registered, Washington State, to Almvik, Shepson D., address unknown.”

“That’s Duff. Oh, Jesus. How is he?”

“He’s gone. Lost at sea.”

“You mean you didn’t find a body? You couldn’t tell if . . . he went down fighting? Like a warrior?”

The dispatcher explains that Duff was reported by witnesses to have disappeared late on the night the storm first rolled into Puget Sound. Apparently he fell overboard; he was never seen again.

“Witnesses?”

“Yes. His passengers. Two women, mother and daughter. Cindy Godden, age fifteen, and her mother, Nolanne, age forty-one. They were with him at the time he fell overboard.”

“But that’s impossible. Duff always fished alone.”

Brunella wants a last look at the SoundGardener, which has been towed to a Coast Guard dock on the waterfront south of downtown. At midmorning, she finds Duff’s boat among a dozen or more vessels behind a fence at the Coast Guard pier. The hull is scuffed and scraped, two windowpanes are broken, a trolling pole has snapped off, but she still looks seaworthy.

“We should hold on to the boat,” says Brunella. “It’s got historic value.”

“It’ll be in impound for most of a month,” says the duty officer at the dock. “And then they’ll probably auction it off.”

“Mind if I touch?” she says.

“I don’t get your drift, ma’am.”

“I want to touch the boat.”

“Help yourself. You’d think somebody who’d been fishing that long could keep the prop lugs snug and his main blade sharp enough to give him an even steer.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The prop was so loose it’s a wonder he made it out there. One blade was folded clear back, like it’d been bent.”

“You think somebody deliberately sabotaged it?”

“I can’t say that. But that’s one guess. Still, even with a mangled prop, he hooked himself one helluva last catch.”

“The salmon,” she says.

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