She shrugged. “I think he opened up a crab stand.”
I shook my head and didn’t give Ziggy more thought because he was right about one thing. I had a shipwreck of a business mess to sort out. And I had no idea what to do for income until the insurance paid up.
Chapter 7
Captain Kendra’s Log: The business will break even this month if I don’t plan on eating.
“What do you mean,the policy lapsed?” I shouted into the brick phone. This was ridiculous. I stood in the living area of my houseboat, one foot on a padded bench, while I leaned toward the window, trying to keep a good signal on a cell network that went out of date two years before I was born.
“Ma’am, I’ll need you to calm down,” the insurance company man said over the line.
“Oh, no, you didn’t!” I shouted louder. “Don’t you know it’s sexist to?—”
A dial tone greeted the rest of my sentence. He hung up on me. After telling me to calm down.The nerve!
“Damn it!” I threw the phone against the wall of the boat. The phone, heavy as hell, took a chunk of fiberglass with it, but the phone itself looked brand-new. “Damn. It!”
The distant rumble of a ship’s engine filled the air as I tried to think. I sank into the worn leather couch in the lounge and began to sift through the piles of paperwork on my thrifted coffee table. I needed a better system, but today was not the day to reorganize my files. I needed to find that insurance policy. There’s no way it lapsed. I made payments every month.
A lightbulb went off, and I pulled up my bank account on my computer. That would show the payment and have a confirmation number that the insurance assholes wouldn’t be able to ignore. My heart sank as I stared at the digital display. The number was only a few dollars above zero. It had been a tough month; charters had been slow, and the agingNetfishengine required costly maintenance. I could do most of it myself, and by some miracle, I had managed to scrape by, barely making it through and into the black.
With my eyes fixed on the screen, I scrutinized my expenses and payments line by line, my heart racing with each mouse scroll. When I reached the end of September, my breath caught in my throat as I discovered something that made my stomach churn.
No.
No.
NoNoNoNoNoNo.
That can’t be.
I scrolled back and back until I reached the end of August. There it was—my last insurance payment. My stomach sank. If I hadn't paid in September, that meant I had no insurance on theNetfish,for this month. A wave of panic washed over me, and I could feel my heart racing as I realized the gravity of the situation.
I looked wildly around the room, hoping for divine intervention. I shuffled through the bills, ignoring the maxed-out limit on most of my credit card bills. I could get a personal loan to cover the gap, but doubt crept in as I questioned who would give a loan to a boat captain without a working boat or a steady income.
“Argh!” I screamed in frustration, knocking all the paperwork to the floor. I stomped over the pile, slipping on afew pages, and headed to the kitchen. Was it too early to start drinking?Asking for a friend.
The fridge didn’t have much inside. I planned to go to the grocery store after the last charter with the bonus money, but that money was gone, too. After the fire, the Myquelsons requested a refund, which was fair.
I closed the refrigerator and sank to the floor, landing on a pile of laundry. I grabbed a shirt off the pile and sniffed it.Passable. The distant rumble of a big engine grew louder, and I frowned. That didn’t sound like a passing ship. That sounded like someone coming in for a landing in Pleasure Point. We weren’t expecting anyone today.
I pulled myself off the floor and glanced out the window at the hulking black ship growing larger as it swung into the large berth at the end of the dock.
What the actual hell?
I didn’t have to see the pirate flag flying off the back to realize it was Pegleg Pete’s Pirate Extravaganza. In Pleasure Point.
Not on my watch.
I stomped out to the houseboat’s deck and listened as the crew shouted back and forth to one another. A college-aged kid dragged lines across the pirate ship’s deck and threw them down to a familiar face on the dock.
No fucking way.
I rushed down the gangplank and hustled across the docks to where my former first mate stood, tying off the lines for the ship.
“Et tu, Decker?”
At least he had the decency to look embarrassed. “Sorry, Skipper. I know you’re in a jam, but I have bills to pay, too. They offered me the job last night.”
