Deep Sleep (Devin Gray #1)(25)

Whoever had tagged his vehicle with the two trackers had known what they were doing. He would never have found the transmitters without the aid of an RF detector. The placement was skilled enough to leave him wondering if they had installed a fail-safe. Something that transmitted far less frequently and would likely be missed on a typical electronic sweep. He’d spent an hour and a half at a little speck of a town on the Maryland-Pennsylvania border, testing that theory. Waiting for anything that resembled a surveillance team to drive down Main Street. Nothing suspicious turned up, which didn’t entirely surprise him.

The couple that showed outside of Starbucks had looked genuinely concerned about the tracker stunt. The guy almost looked scared. Devin had snapped a few hundred photos of the couple and their vehicle from the third floor of the parking garage on the other side of Baltimore Avenue. A digital camera with telephoto lens was part of his standard countersurveillance kit, among other things, like a handheld RF detector.

He couldn’t help but notice that the couple was older. Take away maybe thirty pounds from the red-faced guy who went fishing under the minivan for the tracker, and he’d look no different than either of the guys Devin had faced in the hotel stairwell a week or so ago. He’d revisit that thought later, when he asked Brendan Shea to run the couple’s Tennessee license plates. The connection between the Tennessee plates and his mother’s death couldn’t be a coincidence, but he sensed something else. He just couldn’t put his finger on it.

With the hour and a half expired and no bad guys in sight, Devin returned to his SUV and retrieved a small nylon day pack to carry whatever he found on the boat. He took another long look around the lot before making his way to the weathered stockade fence that separated the parking lot from the marina. After slipping through a rickety gate held open by a faded orange traffic cone, he emerged on a stretch of grass intended for marina members. The gate he’d just used appeared to be a convenience that facilitated dinner and drinks after a day on the water.

He spotted a sailboat on stands closer to the water and decided to head in that direction. His assumption was that he’d find Sadie on land, unless his mother had taken up boating—a possibility, given how little he appeared to truly know about her. The sailboat turned out to be Screamin’ Mimi, so he turned his attention to a tightly packed row of three boats tucked away in the farthest corner of the expansive gravel lot. Two sailboats, one without a mast, and a very neglected-looking powerboat with a flying bridge. They were parked bow out, so he couldn’t read their names.

He got halfway across the lot before he was accosted. A stringy-haired man dressed in grease-stained khaki pants and an equally grubby white T-shirt emerged from the trees along the waterfront, directly in his path. His weather-beaten face made it impossible to guess his age, but Devin would go with somewhere between forty-five and seventy if he had to estimate. He stood with his hands on his hips as Devin approached, appraising him the whole way.

“Looking for someone?” he said, cordially enough.

“Actually, I’m looking for a boat,” said Devin.

“Well. All the boats are over there,” he said, canting his head toward the water.

“Thanks. I’m looking for my mother’s boat, which I assumed was not in the water,” said Devin. “The boat is named Sadie?”

“Is that a question or a fact?” said the man.

“The boat name is a fact. I’m asking if it’s here,” said Devin, starting to get a little annoyed.

“Can I see some identification?”

“Sure,” he said, glad he hadn’t left his wallet back in the car.

The man, who he assumed to be more than a dockhand at the marina, scrutinized his driver’s license, glancing back and forth between the card and his face several times, like an East German border guard. He handed it back with a nod.

“Sorry about all that,” he said. “Your mother gave me some specific instructions, and a fair sum to back them up. Her boat is the one without the mast. It’s been at the marina awhile.”

“When did she buy it?”

“Last year, toward the end of the summer,” he said. “She’s only been up on it twice.”

“Do you remember the last time she came by?”

“Yep. Saw her about three weeks ago. She spent about ten minutes on the boat. Paid for the next three years of storage,” he said. “I kinda got the feeling she didn’t buy it for sailing.”

“I just learned about the boat yesterday,” said Devin. “She passed away a couple weeks ago.”

“Oh. Damn. I’m very sorry to hear that. She seemed like a nice lady.”

“Thank you,” said Devin. “How do I get up on the boat? They seem so high when they’re on those stands.”

“I’ll get you a ladder and meet you over there.”

Paying for three additional years of storage didn’t make a ton of sense, but her visiting the boat a few weeks ago appeared to be tied to whatever had happened ten days ago. The man returned a few minutes later with a tall wooden ladder that looked as though it had been constructed during the Revolutionary War. Devin glanced at it skeptically.

“I know. It looks like a relic, but I guarantee this’ll be around longer than one of those aluminum contraptions,” he said, placing it against the hull. “Just so you know, the boat needs a lot of work to make her seaworthy. Given what your mom paid me in advance for storage, I could get her in the water in time for you to enjoy the tail end of the season. If you’re interested.”