Mysterical-E

He Said, She Says

Naut-a-Clue
By Larry & Rosemary Mild

Captain Rick Garvey stepped into the dinghy tied to the dock behind his Kaneohe Bay home. The title of captain was honorary, but Rick had earned it decades ago at the local yacht club, a well-respected marina on the windward side of Oahu.

The weather promised a relaxed day cruise: a robust but steady trade wind from the east-northeast, and a Delft-blue sky full of warm sun, punctuated with a few cottony puffs. Rick untied the tender line and rowed past the ancient Hawaiian fishponds out into the bay. His destination: the Cal-20 moored to a buoy some hundred-fifty yards offshore.

He secured the dinghy to the buoy and boarded the twenty-foot sailing craft he had dubbed Downsized after selling his larger Cal-30. He chuckled at a bit of irony here. The word “Downsized” barely fit on the Cal-20’s transom. He should have chosen a smaller name.

Leaning over the rails, the perpetually tanned, balding senior moved the cooler, loaded with a couple of beers and a few bottles of water, to the larger boat. Despite his age, he lifted it with ease. His sinewy body was still muscled from decades of what he modestly called “fussing around” docks and boats. This was his relaxation: man against the sea for the next four or five hours. He would return by sundown, at the very latest. At least that’s what he promised Peggy, his wife of fifty years. Oh, yes, Rick had also promised Peggy not to leave the bay because he was sailing alone. His children had grown up and acquired other interests, leaving him to sail solo much of the time. Peggy had plenty to worry about. She knew her husband still yearned to replay the earlier years of their marriage, when they cruised through choppy ocean waters to Molokai, Maui, and other outer Hawaiian islands. Kaneohe Bay was plenty big enough for sailing these days, Peggy argued. It stretched all the way from Mokapu Peninsula, the U.S. Marine Corps base, to the tiny conical island known as Chinaman’s Hat eight miles away.

Today was of particular importance. It was Rick’s seventieth birthday. Peggy had wanted to take him out to dinner or do something else special to celebrate, but he chose this beautiful day for a sail as his birthday gift to himself.

An hour later Rick was in his element. With both jib and mainsail full on his third westerly tack, he intentionally leaned to port and headed out the Sampan Channel. The boat ran fast with this high tide, and he sought to take advantage of it for as long as the depth-under-keel would permit. As he began to lay off the wind for an alternate tack, he noticed a dark shape on the horizon just beyond where the bay spreads out into the Pacific.

The shape grew larger and more defined as Rick continued to close the distance. Soon the strange object took the shape of another sailboat. But as Downsized approached, he felt a curious sensation and tightened his grip on the tiller. As the hull plowed through the churning waves, he did a double-take. What he saw was a nearly bare mast and a few shredded rags where the sails ought to have been. Closing in on the craft, he noticed the mast bent at least fifteen degrees about half-way up. Two of the shrouds flopped freely as the surf rolled. The sailboat was about thirty feet long and seemed to be adrift, working its luckless way through a gap in the barrier reef between the bay and the ocean. It tossed and turned about and revealed its stern, with Naut-a-Clue emblazoned across it. Rick lowered his mainsail and edged in on momentum. There didn’t seem to be anybody on board, but as the final distance narrowed, he noticed what appeared to be a thin fishing line trailing from a port-side cleat.

Fighting bobbing waves, Rick moved quickly as he lashed the two craft together, clamping a fender between the two boats with line fore and aft at the cleats. Trying to ignore his creaking joints, he struggled to maintain his balance as he climbed over the port gunwale. If Peggy had been with him, she would have begged him not to get involved, meaning not to get them into trouble, but to stay aboard their Cal-20 and call the situation in to the Coast Guard when they returned home. But Rick’s heart was beating like taiko drums against his chest wall, and inside his head, curiosity urged him on—the same curiosity that had propelled his successful engineering career. He was a problem solver. Besides, he had stupidly forgotten his cell phone and had no other means of communication on Downsized.

He found his footing and succeeded in climbing aboard the renegade boat. As he straightened up, he jerked to a stop. A man lay face-down in the cockpit in several inches of water. He appeared to be haole, middle-aged, with graying red hair, arms limp at his sides, hands blue, and the prominent veins even bluer. He was barefoot and shirtless, wearing only once-white shorts. A white peaked cap lay upside down a few feet away. The body looked rather slender, unmuscled, with narrow shoulders. Not a veteran sailor, Rick decided. The legs splayed out. Noting the sun-scorched flesh on the man’s back, calves, and arms, Rick speculated he must have been dead a few days. A fat wallet protruded from a rear pocket.

Rick pondered for only a split-second before pulling it out. A driver’s license identified the man as Merwin MacAlbee, five-foot-eight inches, 180 pounds. Rick whistled. The centerfold of the wallet held $1,592. A business card revealed that Mr. MacAlbee was a partner in a Honolulu seafood restaurant called MacAlbee and Harada.

He braced himself in the sloshing water caused by the boat’s uncontrolled rocking, then gently rolled the victim over on his back and confirmed the man’s face against the driver’s license photo. The bare-chested body gave no indication of the cause of death—not a mark on him. Perhaps a heart attack, Rick thought.
While searching the small cabin. he checked out the galley: only about a day’s worth of canned food and a can opener. Tucked into a slot above a fold-out writing ledge, he found the equivalent of a ship’s log. He took the notebook out on deck, where the light was much better and sat down on a vinyl cushion to study it. The first entry was eleven days earlier, made as the victim set out from leeward Oahu. But the log revealed much more than the basic itinerary, weather, and directional settings. It also served as a diary. Mr. MacAlbee had planned a two-week solo journey at sea with no particular destination. But reading on, Rick discovered that the purpose of the sailor’s cruise was to clear his head. Merwin MacAlbee had confronted his partner with charges of embezzlement and had given Len Harada fourteen days to return the money to their corporate account. The tone of the diary reflected a bitter anger over his partner's betrayal and a disgust with himself for not recognizing the signs—the drop in cash flow—a lot sooner.

Rick's pulse quickened. He felt as if he had walked, unwelcome, into a stranger's life. His eyebrows came together in a deep frown as he pondered the boat's unusual name. Did Naut-a-Clue have a specific meaning? Had MacAlbee named it immediately after he found out that his partner had skimmed off thousands of dollars from the restaurant? Or was it just a clever, whimsical pun he had given the boat years before, a wry comment on his own personal lack of sailing expertise?

For the most part, the entries described Mr. MacAlbee sailing in a great circle around Oahu, at least fifteen miles offshore. His last entry was three days ago. That entry contained no hint of anything wrong. The damage to the sails must have occurred after his death, during the big storm the day before yesterday. Rick surmised that the sails were probably old—but also weakened from the sun’s ultraviolet rays and shredded while luffing wildly during the storm.

Now shadows fell as the sun began to set over the Koolau mountain range, so he rigged a stern line from his Cal-20 to the orphaned boat’s bow cleat. He set sail—wing and wing to run with the wind at least partway to the Kaneohe Yacht Club. As a member, he knew which piers were for visiting boats. Once there, another club member helped him secure Naut-A-Clue.

Rick called the police and left to moor his own boat at his usual buoy and row his dingy back to the family dock. He accomplished this in roughly forty-five minutes, plus a hasty briefing to his wife. A five-minute car ride brought him back to the club dock, arriving there just in time to greet the police.

Detective Frank Akiona headed the group. Rick immediately recognized the tall, burly cop with inky-black hair and keen dark eyes. He and Frank had taken the same marine biology course at the University of Hawaii a few years ago.

A three-man crime scene team pored over the boat and found nothing more than Rick had described. Flash bulbs exploded right and left, and all the fittings were examined for prints. The body was carted off to the morgue, and the boat was declared a no-man’s-land with yellow police tape. The crime team left for the night, leaving a uniform to guard the premises. Rick drove home to Peggy.

Over a cold supper Rick told her his story in detail. She rolled her eyes, but suppressed the urge to say “I told you so.” But she was definitely ticked off. Three years before, he had complained of chest pains. An ambulance had rushed him to the Emergency Room and, after a few tests, the cardiologist had asked him: “When did you have your heart attack?”

An annoyed Rick said, “I've never had a heart attack.”

“Oh, yes you have,” the doctor said. Peggy would never forget that ugly scene. A stent was inserted to open up the blockage in the offending artery. Little did she know, her husband would think of that fragment of metal mesh as a green light to go about his sailing adventures, even if they no longer included ocean cruising.

They finished supper, and an exhausted Rick went right to bed. But he spent an uneasy night knowing there was something he’d seen and not mentioned to the police, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember what. It haunted him like something he’d misplaced.

Just after eleven the following morning, Detective Akiona called, asking Rick to come on down to the station to sign a formal statement.

“Sure, Frank. By the way, how did MacAlbee die?”

“A preliminary toxicology screen says it was a quick-acting poison. A more extensive screen will be needed to identify the exact poison and its source. It’s definitely a homicide. We studied the log and diary entries, and we’ve got the partner in for questioning now. So far he looks good for it, but the evidence is still circumstantial. We can’t figure out how he managed it. We’ve got motive and means, but no poison was found aboard the boat. The unopened cans of food and drinking water were clean. I’m afraid we haven’t been able to establish opportunity.”

Rick cut in. “Mind if I throw in a comment?”

“Be my guest.”

“I’m just speculating,” Rick said. “I didn’t know Mr. MacAlbee, of course, but I read his log pretty carefully. I didn’t get any idea that he was despondent or suicidal—more angry, I’d say. Was anything of value missing from the boat?”

“We have no way of telling,” the detective said. “As you discovered, $1,592 was in his wallet—in large bills. That rules out robbery. Did you notice any signs of a third party on board?”

“No, no one,” Rick answered. “It was weird. And sheer luck to encounter a sailboat in open seas, with no apparent sailing plan. But—” A thought flashed across Rick’s mind, then slipped away. “Frank, before I come down to make a statement, would you allow me to have another look at the boat? Something’s eating away at me. Maybe another look will trigger it.”

The detective was quick to respond. “Of course. I hate that dead-end feeling, if you’ll excuse the expression. You can go over to the yacht club this afternoon, about two.”

But Frank hadn’t relayed permission to the officer guarding the boat. The guard used his cell phone to check back with the lieutenant before allowing Rick aboard. Even then, the officer was hardly cooperative. They finally compromised. Rick borrowed a pencil from him and used it to pull up the hardly noticeable fishing line tied to the port-side cleat. The skimpy remains of a dead papio dangled from the end of it. Rick examined it for a few minutes, then dropped the color-drained fish and line in the water once more, leaving the line tied to the cleat. Rick’s blue eyes lit up behind his sunglasses. His heartbeat quickened, this time with fresh knowledge. He now knew how the victim was murdered. Not only that, Rick alone had the “opportunity” aspect of the crime all figured out. He returned to the clubhouse and called Frank from a pay phone. Detective Akiona decided to come and look for himself.

An hour later, Rick and Frank were on their way to the police station with the dead fish and nylon line in an evidence bag. MacAlbee’s tackle box was in the police cruiser’s trunk. Hook, line, fish, and box went to the crime lab immediately. Rick dictated his statement to a stenographer and waited around for it to be typed before signing the statement. Then he returned home.

The Garvey phone rang at three-thirty the next afternoon. It was Frank Akiona. “Rick, I owe you one. The lab did a second tox screen. The poison was tetrodotoxin, from a blowfish. Symptoms can occur as early as twenty minutes after ingestion: nausea, dizziness, numbing of the tongue, shortness of breath, even paralysis. If symptoms are untreated, death occurs in four to six hours. We’re fairly certain the killer was the vic’s business partner, Leonard Harada.”

Blowfish, also known as pufferfish or balloonfish. Yes! Rick could barely conceal his feeling of triumph.
Frank explained how he believed Harada had administered the poison: via the fish hook. “When our lab people discovered that the fish had died from the very same poison, they examined the other hooks in MacAlbee’s tackle box. They found traces of the poison there as well and became extremely suspicious.”
“Wait a minute, Frank,” Rick blurted out. “Wouldn’t any poison on the hook be washed off, or at the very least, be so diluted in all that water, especially salt water, that it would be ineffective?”

“Ordinarily, yes” Frank said “But Harada was quite clever in that respect. He coated the hook with multiple layers of poison, allowing them to dry in between. Then he sealed the poison in with an outer coating of clear fingernail polish. The fish teeth gnawed away the protective coating, exposing it to the deadly potion. Apparently, MacAlbee filleted the fish and discarded the remains overboard before preparing the meal and consuming it.”

“If he got sick so quickly,” Rick said, “wouldn’t some of the fish have been left on a plate?”

“Well, friend, I can only guess. Papio is a small type of ulua, another food fish. Either he finished it all, or he deep six-ed the remainder because it didn’t taste good.”

“Harada probably figured on MacAlbee eating the fresh food stores first,” Rick said. “It would be a number of days out to sea before the man started to live off the ocean. A pretty good alibi, wouldn’t you say? That would be a problem for you.”

“Of course,” Frank said. “That’s what stumped me.”

“Are you saying you don’t have enough to make a case against the business partner?”

“No, I’m not saying that,” Frank countered. “Thanks to you, my friend, we have now established opportunity for him to commit the crime. In a search of the Harada home this morning, the team couldn’t find any trace of the poison. He probably took extraordinary care to get rid of it. But a half-bottle of clear nail polish turned up in his outside trash—same brand, same formula. The man lives alone. No potential female users. Oh, one more thing. A skosh bit of poison appeared on the brush applicator. Besides that, leaving his fingerprints on the bottle ties him directly to the hooks and the murder. That about wraps it up.”

“Ironic, isn’t it?” Rick said. “Blowfish properly prepared in a restaurant is considered a delicacy.”
“Yeah,” Frank said. “But only by diners who like living on the edge. The toxicologist told me that in restaurants where it’s served, Japanese chefs are specially trained and licensed to prepare it. Believe it or not, some of the toxin is deliberately left in because it gives the diner a kind of euphoria, which is the whole point of ordering it.”

Rick remained silent for a moment, taking in all this sinister detail, when Frank spoke again, this time in a much lighter tone.

“Hey, Rick, how about a beer one night next week? Or even better, a seafood dinner? It’ll be on me—a thank-you for your help. And by the way, wasn’t it your birthday this week? We’ll make it a belated celebration. I know a great place in Waikiki. They serve excellent fresh fish.”

Rick Garvey’s weathered face suddenly turned seaweed green. “Maybe next year, pal.”