Page 40 of No One Aboard
“No.” Francis slid a hand over his wet hair and shook his head. “We aren’t stopping.”
“What?” Lila said.
Tia gaped at her father. Didn’t they have to tell someone what happened? Didn’t they have to admit this vacation was dead in the water?
“You heard me,” Francis said patiently. “We will finish this trip. We only have five or so days go, and MJ has family in Florida. We have an obligation to transport her body to them.”
“We have anobligationto report a death as soon as possible. We can worry about transportation later,” Nico responded.
“We will continue to sail,” Francis said, steel in his voice, and not even Tia could find the words to speak against him.
They stood there, the six of them, in an ugly silence, as the wind whispered against the sails.
At last, Alejandro unfolded his arms. “All right, then. I’ll clear out the freezer.”
The Convey
Body Found Has Possible Ties to Ghost Ship
Rachel Yura
The remains that have been recovered in the search radius for the Cameron sailing yacht belong to a male body. The Hallandale Coast Guard could not confirm the identity, but they have released a statement that, due to its proximity to where the schooner was found, they suspect it to be one of the men who was aboardThe Old Eileen: Francis Cameron, Alejandro Matamoros, Nicolás de la Vega, or Francis’s teenage son, Francis Rylan Cameron.
“We do not know as much as we would like due to water damage and decomposition,” Coast Guard Master Chief Petty Officer Beth Gemmel explained at a press conference. “With the absence of any Camerons to try and match DNA, we are searching for members of the Matamoros or de la Vega families to narrow down the body’s identity. In cases like these where human remains are not completely intact, cause of death may never be known for sure.”
Officials have reported they are no closer to findingThe Old Eileen’s missing life raft, which seems tobe the key to uncovering what happened to the remaining six people onboard.
Master Chief Gemmel concluded her statement by saying, “We have high hopes of finding the rest of the Cameron family and their crew alive and well.”
Chapter 20
Jerry Baugh
Jerry fixed the security camera on its mount, tongue between his teeth. The ladder wobbled beneath his feet from the swells under the ship.Storm’s brewing, Jerry thought as he climbed down the ladder and surveyed his work. The camera overlooked the hallway ofThe Old Eileen. It would catch any suspicious activity, like something sneaking out of the bilges, and send an alert to his cell phone. That had been Madden’s first recommendation when he called her days ago.
Right after she’d informed him about the recovered body.
Like Madden predicted, the media published their first stories before daylight, and they had only grown more grim. News vans packed the perimeter of the marina gates, and more and more journalists became brazen enough to climb the fence to snap a photograph ofThe Old Eileenor to call out to Jerry for a comment. This continued until Madden herself came by with a couple officers to state loudly that trespassing could warrant up to sixty days in jail.
Madden’s second recommendation to Jerry had been hiring help, a pair of young deckhands who were now chattering up top as they hosed downThe Old Eileen’s deck. Jerry had hunted down Lainey and given her a job, and the other kid was a boy named Ricardo who was still in braces but knewhis way around a boat. Jerry did wish that Lainey and Ricardo hadn’t hit it off as well as they did so he could go back to some peace and quiet, but part of him was grateful for the company. Something had been in the bilges that night. Something he never wanted to encounter alone again.
Jerry tucked the ladder under one arm and headed to the deck. The smudged prints left by the army of coast guard and cops last week in their investigation had been wiped clean by the two deckhands. Lainey took the ladder from him as he squinted in the bright morning light.
“Camera’s set up,” Jerry said. He had told them about the person sneaking through the bilges in case it scared them off the job, but Lainey and Ricardo had only found the prospect of a murderer (in Ricardo’s opinion) or a ghost (in Lainey’s) more enticing.
“Cool. We finished with the bow and midships. All that’s left is the cockpit.” Lainey propped the ladder against the chart house and waved the hose toward the stern of the ship.
Ricardo sniggered. “Cock-pit.” Lainey spritzed hose water at him.
Jerry walked along the bow and midships, inspecting for any missed spots. He had to look like he knew what he was doing withThe Old Eileen, or the hired deckhands would never respect him. He couldn’t find anything wrong, though, so he grunted his approval at the sparkling teak wood and white deck.
“All righ’, keep working, then.”
The TV in the salon was still on. Jerry had powered it up as background noise so he wouldn’t have to listen to the ship creaking while he installed the security camera, but now he settled into the cushy sofa in front of it. Boy, did he feel like a rich man perusing the morning news while he paid a couple teenagers to scrub his yacht.
Jerry and Steve had grown up in a trailer park in Gainesville, knee-deep in swamp water and seventy-five miles from the sea. They’d been raised by their ma and an occasional man claiming to be their father (Ma never confirmed any of them). Growing up, the brothers associated wealth with the ocean: coastal mansions and private islands and the beautiful white sailboats that sat in wide blue backyards. Steve had dipped a toe in that life, swabbing the decks of those yachts and chartering them to wherever their owners needed them to go.The Old Eileenwould have been Steve’s dream home.
So he couldn’t just sell it. The choice was extra stupid because he couldn’t bring himself to sellSheila 2.0either, and living off what he fished all year wasn’t gonna get both boats through a summer. And Jerry damn sure wasn’t getting a landlubber job. He went round and round in circles with the problem, encountering new bouts of his own stubbornness at each turn.
