Sins and Needles (31 page)

“Yes, that's the name on the stern. Have you heard of it?”

“Yes, it used to run all over Lake Minnetonka; I can actually remember seeing it when I was a little boy. I thought that old boat was wrecked years ago. How very interesting.”

“I take it the boat is worth something?”

There was a significant pause; Betsy could almost hear Mr. Warner stroking his chin. “Well, that would depend on the condition it's in.”

“Would you be interested in taking a look at it? I don't know when Stewart is coming to pick it up, so it would have to be fairly soon.”

“Yes, I think I can break loose half an hour if you can arrange it.”

“I'll have someone call you.” Betsy hung up and immediately dialed Jan.

“Jan, this is very important. A man who sells antique boats almost swallowed his tongue when I told him the
Edali
was in a shed on the late Edyth Hanraty's property. He wants to take a look at it.”

“He does?”

“Yes, and I think it might be a good idea.”

“All right. When?”

“He says any time you can arrange it, he can find half an hour to take a look.”

“Stewart is coming over tomorrow afternoon to pick it up. I think maybe we'd better do it before that. Problem is, we're booked solid here at the clinic. I'll bet Mother could do it. I'll call her. And we'd better get the estate lawyer in on it, too.”

“I want to see it, too, all right?” Betsy felt it was very important to hear what Mr. Warner had to say about the boat.

T
HE
next morning, Betsy watched while Marcia Weiner keyed open the padlock on the shed. The dining room table, its chairs, and most of the oddments that had blocked it had been moved back into the house in anticipation of the estate auction. Susan pulled open the other door so light could pour in and splash on the corroded red brown surface of a boat with an extravagantly long bow.

Todd Warner gave a very long, low whistle. He was a short man, muscular, with a craggy-handsome face, the sort who could be any age from thirty-five to fifty-five. He took off his Panama hat as if in homage as he approached the craft. He put a square hand on the side and pushed lightly. “How long has it been in here?” he asked.

“I think the last time it was on the water was in 1962 or '63,” said Susan.

“Jesus, the original trailer and everything,” he said, prodding a rotten tire with the toe of his shoe. He turned to them. “Did you know this is a car frame from a Pierce-Arrow?”

“No, I didn't,” said Susan. “I do know it came with the boat.”

He turned and started walking around the craft. He squatted at the stern to pull on a blade of the big bronze propeller—and, after a little effort, got it to turn. “Is the engine in it?”

“Yes, it is,” said Susan. “Aunt Edyth said it's an aircraft engine—and certainly I remember it as very loud.”

“Yes, it's a World War I Liberty V-12—if it's the original. Gar Wood bought forty-five hundred of them after the Great War as war surplus. He turned around and sold fifteen hundred of them to the Russian air force.” He stood and again put a hand on the boat. “Some have four hundred horses, some five hundred horses—” He turned toward them. “You know what one of these boats cost new?”

They shook their heads.

“Eleven thousand, eight hundred dollars for the five-hundred horse engine. That was in 1927, when you could buy a brand new car for six hundred dollars! This was the top-of-the-line runabout. Only the richest men in the world could afford one.” He stepped back to sight along the side of the boat, looking for evidence of warping. “Do you know who the original owner of this one was?” he asked.

“No,” said Susan. “Someone who was hurt badly when the market crashed in 1929, because he sold it to my grandfather for three thousand dollars.”

“The question I have today is, how much is it worth right now?” said Marcia.

“Can I look some more?”

“Sure,” said Susan.

“Got a ladder?”

“Yes.” She went to a dark corner of the shed and came back dragging an old metal stepladder.

Todd opened it, rocked it to settle it more firmly, then climbed up to get into the front cockpit, ignoring the dust and dirt. “Dash looks all original,” he remarked, running his hands over it. “Even the cigar lighter is still here.” He looked over the side at them. “These fittings are made of German silver. All they'll need is polishing—don't let anyone talk you into replating them. Or worse, replacing them. That goes for the instruments, too. They were built by Elgin, and originals are rare and expensive.” They heard his feet thumping on the floor. “Solid,” he said, nodding, and poked the green leather seat with a finger. Stiff and dry, it didn't give. “Leather will need to be replaced. Make sure they match the color,” he instructed them.

“All that space forward,” said Betsy, lapsing into nautical terminology from her navy days, “what's in there?”

“Bracing and a watertight bulkhead, mostly,” he said with a smile. “It's fourteen feet of
style.
” He sat back in the dirty, cracked seat, chin up, one hand on the steering wheel, obviously seeing himself roaring across the water. “You know, there are only seven other Baby Gars in the world?” He grinned at them. “Three of the seven have passed through my hands—I have another one right now, fully restored.”

“How much?” asked Betsy, and he looked at her. “I mean, how much for the other one?”

“I'm asking seven hundred thousand—and it's not the boat I suspect this could be.” He stood and stooped to lift floorboards to check the inner planking and frames. “Sound, sound, sound,” he murmured in satisfaction. Then he turned and, drawing a breath, held it and lifted the bifold doors over the engine compartment.

“Ahhhhhhhh,” he breathed. “I was hoping, and there it is—five hundred beautiful horses, sixteen hundred and fifty cubic inches.” He reached down and caressed something. “All four carburetors intact. Beautiful.”

“My brother has claimed it from the estate,” said Susan. “He says that except for the engine he can do the restoration himself.”

Todd looked at her, shocked. “No, no, no! Only professionals should be permitted to work on this wonderful old boat.”

“What would it cost to have it restored by professionals?” asked Marcia.

He grimaced unhappily. “Well, okay, a lot. A proper restoration would start at two hundred fifty thousand. That doesn't include the engine. But it's worth probably a quarter million right now.”

Susan gave a little gasp of surprise.

“And restored, how much?” asked Marcia, notebook in hand.

“Name your price,” he said promptly.

“No, you name one.”

He gave her a charming, slightly wolfish grin. “A million, if we could get it into a bidding war. Maybe more if it belonged to a famous person. P. K. Wrigley's is out at a museum in Lake Tahoe and is not for sale at any price. If this one belonged to James J. Hill…”

“I don't think so,” said Susan, “or we'd know about it; that name wouldn't be forgotten.”

All at once there was the sound of tires on gravel. Someone was approaching the shed. Susan and Betsy went out to see an SUV backing a big trailer toward them. Its engine shut off, and Stewart climbed out from behind the driver's seat.

“Hi, Suze!” he said, waving cheerily. “Hello, Ms. Weiner. I've come for my boat.” Then he looked past them, and the smile died. “Who's that?” he asked.

Warner looked surprised. “You know me, because I remember you. My name is Todd Warner. You came out to my vintage boat store and talked to me, oh, last fall, I believe. You'd heard I had a Baby Gar for sale and you wanted to see it. But you changed your mind about buying it because the instruments were replicas and half the planking had been replaced and it had the smaller engine in it. You asked me what I'd charge you for an all-original, fully-restored, bigger-engine Baby Gar, and you smiled when I said a million dollars.”

Stewart's ebullience had melted away. He attempted a smile, but it was a travesty. He turned his back on them, heaved a big sigh, thumped the roof of the SUV. When he turned around again, he was looking assertive and confident. “Well, so what?” he said. “So what? I found the
Edali
in this shed, and I thought, by gum, here's something of real value, something I could treasure, something I want. Like Katie and that silver, just exactly like that, I want this boat. She's in love with the silverware, I'm in love with the
Edali
. But like that big old four-poster, I figured if you knew how much this boat could be worth, you'd never let me have it. So I resorted to—to subterfuge. And so what?”

“You knew about the
Edali
last fall?” asked Betsy.

“Sure. I was putting the dining room table and chairs out here—no way was I going to haul them up to the attic—and I saw it. I couldn't believe my eyes—the old
Edali
. Man, the great times we had on that boat, didn't we, Susan?”

“Yes, we did,” she said, rather neutrally.

“And I told you the truth about her over lunch the other day, really I did. It was like my ship had come in—” He snorted a laugh, swallowed, and continued in a wheedling tone, “It was like a
sign
, Susan! Something I really loved—boating—something I've never gotten tired of! How could this not work if I made a business of it?” He wiped sweat from his forehead and turned completely around, hands uplifted, desperate to make her understand. “I talked with Aunt Edyth. I asked her about the boat, did she still want it, could I maybe buy it from her? I said I'd give her fifteen hundred for it. I told her it was probably not worth that, it was the sentimental connection that made me interested in it, just like I told you. And yes, I knew it was a lie, because I already talked to Mr. Warner over there. And you know what she did? She
laughed
at me! She said, ‘There is not one item on my property I don't know the value of, from the china in my kitchen to that old motorcycle in my garage. I know the
Edali
is a Baby Gar, worth more than fifteen hundred, more than fifteen thousand, in her present condition.' Well, I pretended to be all surprised, and I said that I guessed I wouldn't be buying it from her after all.”

He laughed, recalling the jest he'd made. He'd probably laughed just that way then, too, though the joke was on him. “And that was the end of it. I kept coming out, doing chores, running errands, until she died. I tried to talk her into leaving my daughters something in her will, anything, just as a recognition that they exist. But she didn't. And okay, I worked to get you to agree that everyone could choose one thing from the house, so my girls could have their own inheritance, and I could choose the boat. I just
had
to have that boat.” He stopped talking then and just stood there with his head down, shamed.

“I understand,” said Susan. “Oh, Stew, what are we going to do with you?”

“Well, you could give me the boat.” He lifted his head to reveal a roguish smile.

“We can't do that. Mr. Warner, here, says that under no circumstances should an amateur attempt to restore this boat, that it's far too valuable to endanger it that way.”

Stewart came closer. “You don't know who you're talking about, Mr. Warner. I've been around boats all my life. I think I know about as much as most professionals do about how to repair a boat, even a wooden one like this.”

“Mr. O'Neil, this isn't just a wooden boat, it's made of African mahogany, which has special properties. You don't just scrape the old finish off and slap on a new coat of varnish. It needs special handling to ensure it looks like it did when new. The seats are Spanish leather, expensive, and dyed a very particular shade of green. This is a grand old boat, a national treasure, and it needs careful restoration.”

Betsy smiled to herself. Warner was speaking with deep feeling. It was obvious he'd already formed an attachment to the
Edali
and was hurt to think an amateur might fool around with it and perhaps damage it. But this was not her problem to solve—it was Susan's.

“Stew,” Susan said, “I'm sorry, I need to talk to Jan about this. I'm in favor of taking the boat away from you, but I'm pretty sure Jan is going to argue that we agreed you could claim anything you wanted, so the boat should be yours. I'll listen to her arguments—”

Marcia spoke up. “If there is evidence of fraud in this arrangement, then as protector of the assets of the Hanraty estate, I'll have something to say, as well. Mr. O'Neil, you have behaved, at the very least, very badly.”

Again the shamed look, which Betsy thought not quite so well done as the first one. Perhaps sensing this, Stewart did not attempt to continue the discussion, but got into his rented vehicle and drove away.

 

A
T
two the next day, Jan and Susan were sitting in Betsy's apartment, looking wretched. “Oh, God, what if you're wrong, Betsy?” asked Jan.

“Then he will be acquitted at his trial,” she said. “But I don't think I'm wrong. Neither does Sergeant Rice. Nor Mike Malloy.”

“What made you sure?” asked Susan.

“The boat. I should have looked into that boat earlier. Why did he want it? It would take time and money to fix it up, and it wouldn't be suitable to take fishermen out in, so why did he want it so badly that he'd pass up things he could sell to get the money he needed to start his business?”

Susan shook her head. “But to
kill
, to actually kill someone. I don't understand. I thought I knew him, my own brother! What kind of person was he to do that?”

“You told me yourself,” said Betsy. “You said he was ambitious, greedy, and lazy. He wanted to be an important businessman, but he wasn't willing to devote the endless hours it takes. He was incensed that you and Jan were to inherit a million or more dollars—when you didn't need it—while he, struggling and with four daughters to educate, got nothing. It wasn't fair. He probably was working on changing Edyth's mind when he discovered the
Edali
in the shed. Suddenly, he could see daylight. Oh, it would be nice to restore it and offer rides in it to select customers, but that notion only lasted until he found out that a restored Baby Gar was worth as much as a million dollars. That would even things up, if he could get a million just like his sister and niece!