Rigged for Murder (Windjammer Mystery Series) Read Online Free

abandoned lobster traps. And over all of it an angry sky hurling down heavy sheets of rain. In the grip of the building gale there was a desperate isolation about this place.

     

 

2
     
    B RIE WATCHED THE EASTERN SHORE draw closer. She was looking forward to going below and warming up, maybe even taking a nap, once they’d anchored and had furled sail. Tim had stayed on deck at the captain’s request to help with anchoring. Tim’s presence had been valuable on this lightly populated cruise—he was strong, and he knew his way around a ship. He waited now as the
Maine Wind
glided slowly across the harbor.
    “Stand by to drop anchor,” DuLac called out.
    Pete, George and Tim moved to their assigned posts. Pete and George took their position near the foremast, and Tim went forward to the bow of the
Maine Wind
. There the windlass stood coiled with thick chain that ran through an opening in the starboard hull and attached to the anchor.
    DuLac stepped over to the stern and signaled Scott to cut the yawl boat engine. Scott veered away, idling the engine, and the
Maine Wind
glided silently upwind.
    “Scandalize the forepeak,” DuLac ordered.
    “Aye, Captain.” Pete and George eased the peak halyard, depowering the sail. They moved to the mainsail and repeated the task, then went forward to help Tim unlash the anchor. The
Maine Wind
floated to a dead stop directly up-wind.
    “Let go the anchor,” DuLac ordered.
    “Letting go the anchor,” came the reply. The heavy anchor chain thundered through the hull as a quarter ton of iron plummeted into the water.
    DuLac stepped to the aft companionway and called down. “All hands on deck to fold sail.” He walked forward and delivered the order to the forward cabins.
    It was a fact of windjammer cruising that the captain depended on passengers to help raise and lower the yawl boat and the heavy gaff-rigged sails. Folding sail at the end of the day was another all-hands-on-deck task. Brie welcomed all of it. She needed that kind of physical involvement right now. It took her mind off decisions she wasn’t ready to make, ones that weighed heavier on her each day.
    The passengers and crew hopped up on the cabin top and positioned themselves along both sides of the mainsail boom. The rain had temporarily slackened, making their job easier. Scott hoisted himself up and straddled the end of the boom, so he could guide the sail as it was folded and lashed off. Pete and Tim manned the halyard, slowly lowering the sail. George and the passengers worked the heavy canvas into large folds over the top of the boom and lashed it off with the lace lines. Then they moved forward and repeated the procedure as the foresail was lowered.
    Brie hopped down and walked across the deck to the rail. Sailing had always held the power to renew her spirit, and she wondered why she’d gotten away from it the past few years. She smiled now, recalling another mad dash for safe harbor. It was her twentieth summer. Her family had sailed their 45-foot cruiser out of Thunder Bay, Ontario, bound for the Apostle Islands off the south shore of Lake Superior. The big lake got in a temper on their last day, and before they knew it, they were running in 15-foot seas. She remembered her dad at the wheel, totally fearless. It was the last summer they’d ever sailed together. That fall, at age forty-eight, her father had succumbed to a massive heart attack, and a bright light in her life had been forever extinguished.
    “I felt you out there today, Dad,” she whispered, and for a moment, she had a fleeting sense of him standing right next to her.
    Lost in her thoughts, she didn’t hear DuLac approach and jumped when he laid a hand on her shoulder. “Sorry,” he said. “You look like you’re a million miles away.”
    Brie’s fiery blue eyes studied him as she decided whether or not to reveal any part of her thoughts. “I was remembering another time—another storm,” she finally said.
    “I saw you out