Rogue Wave by Susan Dunlap Page A

slap of rubber boots against planking, and the splash of water being rinsed off decks. She made her way along the pier trying to see the names of the boats in the dim light, and finally spotted Nelda’s Dream. It was the size of an eighteen-wheeler. The front two-thirds of it were enclosed. Kiernan walked out onto the slip. The cabin light was on, and through the mist-shrouded windows, she could make out a man looking at a clipboard.
    “Ben?” she called. “Ben Pedersen?”
    “Yeah. Who’re you?”
    “Kiernan O’Shaughnessy. I just need a few minutes of your time. To ask a couple of questions.”
    “I’ve got paying customers who’ll be getting here in twenty minutes.” He turned. In the light the bearlike form looked more like a grizzly than a teddy. The lines on his weathered face suggested snap decisions and little tolerance. And he was nearly the size of Tchernak.
    “Being up at this hour is more painful for me than it is for you, believe me.”
    “You another reporter nosing around about Robin Matucci?”
    “Private Investigator. It’ll take you less time to talk to me than decide if you can be bothered. Can I come aboard?”
    He tapped a meaty hand on the rail, considering. “Okay. Ten minutes. No more. Step’s are back there,” he said pointing toward the dock.
    Kiernan climbed the three-step wedge in place next to the boat. Once aboard, the boat seemed smaller. The decking, which she had pictured as polished teak, was covered with rough gray paint, a non-skid surface. Pedersen motioned her forward, inside a room that resembled a small diner, with four booths and Formica tables. Farther forward was the room with the steering wheel and radio, was that the wheelhouse? Or the cabin? Or, dammit, was this the cabin?
    Without asking, Pedersen poured a second mug of coffee, held it out to her and sat in the nearest booth.
    “Thanks.” She slid in across from him.
    “Private eye, huh? The insurance company trying to squeeze out of paying? You working for them?”
    “No. I’m no fan of bureaucracies. I get up at four in the morning so I can work for myself.”
    Pedersen took a swallow of coffee. He looked only slightly less suspicious.
    On the radio a tenor voice said, “Probably be socked in all day. Whaddya think, Deke?”
    Pedersen was watching her, but his head was cocked toward the radio. She said, “I heard Robin Matucci was the most successful captain on the wharf.”
    “Who told you that?”
    Kiernan smiled. “Someone who didn’t like her. So I paid attention. Why do you think she attracted so many customers?”
    “Because her people caught fish, that’s why! That’s the name of the game.” He rapped his fingers on the table. “She always had the best equipment, the latest in everything. Whatever it took, Robin would do it. She deserved her success,” he said, bitterly.
    For a man in hock “up to the gills,” that bitterness wasn’t hard to understand. Was this the time to challenge Pedersen about that? From the dock voices grumbled, muffled by the fog.
    The voices on the radio cut in on each other. “What about up toward Bodega?”
    “Windward of the Farallons?”
    No, keep the finance question as an ace in the hole. “What was Robin doing out in such a bad storm?”
    “She left the day before. The storm hadn’t started then. It wasn’t supposed to get that bad.”
    “So it doesn’t surprise you that she could have drowned?”
    “No. Not going out in a storm like that,” he said angrily, but for the first time looked pained.
    An abandoned lover or would-be lover? That threw a new light on Pedersen. “Would it surprise you if Robin didn’t drown?”
    He lifted his coffee mug, but didn’t drink. And when he set it down it vibrated against the Formica. “Don’t you think I’ve thought of that, wished for it, changed the weather in my head? Suppose it’d cleared instead of getting worse? What if the rain had started Monday morning instead of Monday night? Then maybe she