Crew members scurried around the ships, cleaning and polishing.
That empty space of lapping water where no yacht floated seemed significant.
Casimir strolled down the sidewalk to where an especially large yacht, a superyacht around a hundred meters long, occupied two berths vertically and lay beside the empty slip that so intrigued Caz and Arthur.
Time to turn on the charm like he was facing a jury.
If only Roxanne were there, they could double-team the poor sods and elicit the information they needed in half the time.
But Rox should stay with Gen. If someone didn’t properly coddle the pregnant countess and keep her company, Arthur would be beside himself with distraction. It was better that Roxanne hold down that fort.
“Hello, there,” Casimir called out to the two staff members who were scrubbing oily film off the port side of the superyacht, lest it damage the fiberglass and steel.
Two white girls with wide faces that seemed Eastern European stopped what they were doing, glanced at each other, and then looked back at Casimir. Their white shorts were too short for this chilly December weather and for working on a ship, but workplace and anti-harassment laws don’t apply on the high seas. Both had long blond ponytails flowing down their backs and wore identical white baseball caps that were blank on the front.
One of the girls, her face painted with thick make-up, raised her hand to greet him. “Yeah, hey?”
Casimir smiled his friendly grin that usually worked on younger women, an exuberant and unassuming grin. “Hey, I’m a new member of the club. I just joined up, and this is my first stop here. I don’t want to look like an idiot. My ship is offshore. They’re working on where to park my ship closer in, but I took a tender to shore. I’m a little hyper after sailing down here fromKoninklijke Nederlandsche Zeil en Roeivereeniging,I mean, the Royal Netherlands Yacht Club.”
“Oh, yeah. We go up toEnkhuizenmarina in the summer sometimes. It’s nice.”
“We had to go all the way around Spain, and we were at sea for a week! I just wanted to get off that boat, you know what I mean?”
The girl he was talking to smiled a little. “Yeah, cabin fever.”
“Exactly. I want to dock my ship closer to the club. Is this the only slip that’s open right now?”
“Oh, it’s not available,” the girl said. From the appearance of her plump cheeks and arms, Casimir thought she couldn’t have been older than twenty-four.
He spread his arms at the empty water. “Looks pretty open to me. Do you know if I could just park there? I mean, if it’ll fit. I don’t know if it will.”
“How long is your yacht?” the girl asked. Her accent might have been Russian or something Slavic like that. It certainly wasn’t Dutch.
“Seventy meters,” Casimir said. That would be classified as a superyacht but not an ostentatious one.
The girls nodded approvingly. “You might be able to park it there, but I doubt they will let you. That slip is where the Grimaldis keep their yacht.”
Grimaldis.Maxence’s family name was Grimaldi.
“Oh, really?” Casimir laughed, desperate for more information. “The Grimaldis’ yacht usually parks there?”
“Yeah, I don’t know where it went. It was there yesterday, and I thought I heard it move sometime before midnight. We were in bed, though, so I could be wrong.”
The yacht belonging to the Grimaldis had left the harbor around midnight, shortly before Pierre’s security team had called Arthur.
Casimir’s veins chilled. He said, “But Rainier Grimaldi is such an old guy. Surely, he just sits around the boat and doesn’t take it out.”
“Not that Grimaldi,” the other girl said, coming up to stand with her friend. She wore matching blue eye shadow and bright red lipstick, as well as her uniform shorts. “The other one, the hot one. We’ve been in and out of port here for the last few years. We saw him and his wife several times last summer, right after they were married.”
And his wife. After they were married.
“Oh, you mean thatPierreGrimaldi guy, not his uncleRainierGrimaldi,” Casimir said.
“Right! That one,” the girl agreed, her shiny, red lips smiling more broadly at him.
Casimir looked over at the empty boat parking space as if he were measuring it. “Do you think a seventy-meter ship will fit in there? I have eight staterooms and some sporting stuff. I don’t want to block you in.”
“I don’t know? The yacht that’s usually there is about fifty or sixty meters. It looks like it has three or four cabins. It’s calledThe Last Toy.”
