Chapter 3

"Because I was there when they laid it," I said.

Priya Raman sat down in the chair across from me like she was taking a break she hadn't been given. Twenty-six, maybe. Dark hair pulled back, a company lanyard around her neck with a pen clipped to it.

"I've only been here four months," she said. "I'm still learning the inventory. But I've read the 48 file twice, and the spec sheet doesn't say anything about the keel."

"It wouldn't."

"Why not?"

"Because the keel is the part nobody sells. Buyers want to see the galley and the berths and the electronics. The keel is where the money actually goes, and it's under the water where nobody looks."

She looked at me for a second. "You're not a delivery driver."

"No."

"Then why does he think you are?"

I shrugged. "Because of the boots."

Across the room, Derek was on the phone with the sheriff's office, and he was talking loud enough for the whole floor to hear. He said the word "trespass" twice. He said "unpredictable." He said, "No, he's not armed, he's just-" and then he laughed at something, and the two clients in linen shirts laughed with him, because that's what people do when a man in a good suit tells them a joke.

A few minutes later he came over to the counter, close enough for me to hear, and gave the linen shirts his version.

"Some guy who did odd jobs at a yard back in the nineties," he said. "Did a little drafting on spec, got paid, and now he's decided he built the place. Happens every couple of years. They read about a launch online and they show up thinking there's a check in it for them."

One of the clients nodded slowly. "Sad."

"It is sad," Derek said. "But I've got a client coming who's worth more than this building, and I'm not going to let a guy with a grudge stand in the middle of it."

I drank the water. I didn't say anything. Twenty-five years of boatyard arguments taught me that a man talking that fast is already losing.

Priya stood up. She looked at Derek, then at me, then at the hallway that led back to the records room.

"I'll be right back," she said.

She was gone six minutes. When she came back she was carrying a rolled lines plan in one hand and a manila folder in the other, and her face had gone the color of the paper.

She stopped in front of Derek. She unrolled the plan on the counter and turned it so he could see the corner, where the draftsman's block was filled in by hand in pencil.

"The designer of record on hull 48-207," she said. "It's in the file."

"So?"

She looked at me, then back at him.

"It's him."