Voyage of the Dreadnaught: Four Stella Madison Capers Read online

  When they broke for lunch at noon, everyone was so exhausted there were serious doubts about the whole endeavor. Only the baby seemed to be in his element, swinging contentedly between the starboard rail and a cabin corner, harnessed into some bouncing contraption called a “Johnny Jumper” that Mason had jury-rigged for him to play in. Millie’s efforts at serving lunch amounted to little more than flopping open the top of the picnic basket and letting everyone fend for themselves. After that, they were all granted a bit of “liberty” to regain their composure.

  The Dreadnaught was anchored just far enough out in the channel to make the city and surrounding mountains look picture perfect nestled between a blue sky and slate green sea. Stella knew they were “at anchor” because they had dropped and hauled the thing back in again, at least four times during training maneuvers. She knew starboard was right and port was left, and forward and aft meant front and back respectively. Now all time seemed to be suspended in its tracks just to wait for them to pick things up again.

  Everything felt incredibly peaceful.

  What little wind there had been in the morning was almost completely gone, and the sea was in a state of such flat calm inside the bay, that she had to try very hard to feel even the slightest twinge of seasickness. After Lou settled the Senator down with an exhausted Gerald (who performed quite remarkably for someone living on disability) for a nap in one of the main deck cabins, she returned to where Stuart was tinkering with something mechanical back on the afterdeck.

  “Can I fish for a while, Cap?” She set an icy can of root beer down on the deck beside him, and popped the top off an orange soda for herself.

  “Didn’t bring any bait this trip.”

  “How ‘bout I use a chicken bone?”

  “Suit yourself. You know where everything is.”

  Stella sipped at her cold tea and watched from the comfort of a faded blue deck chair pulled out into the sun. The Colonel was dozing in another deck chair beside her, with his feet propped up on a nearby winch drum and his head leaned back against the smooth teak railing in front of the row of cabins. Millie had retired to her cook’s quarters, and she had no idea where Mason had disappeared.

  “I’m going to catch you a big yellow tail tuna for supper,” Lou Edna announced.

  “I’ll wager five bucks you won’t catch anything but mackerel, barracuda, or shark with that stuff,” Stuart replied, without looking up from his project. “Ain’t any of which I like to eat.”

  “Orientals eat all those things,” the young woman bantered.

  “Yeah, and they eat bugs and rodents, too.”

  “Prejudiced, are you?”

  “Not me. I was married to a Japanese gal once after the War. Doesn’t mean I have to like eating junk food though.”

  “Junk food!” Lou Edna laughed and ignored the thin strap of her green tank top that slipped off her shoulder as she cast her line over the rail. “This generation junk food means a hamburger and fries.”

  “Now them I like.”

  Stella didn’t quite know what to make of Lou Edna. The lies, and taking advantage of Millie with rent and babysitting money, had made her feel critical of the girl, at first. On the other hand, she was clearly attached to them all, as if Millie and Mason were surrogate parents and Gerald some favorite Uncle. The Colonel she seemed a bit wary of. Probably because he was indifferent to the ruses she used so freely on the others, and made no effort to play along with her games. But for the most part, she was polite with him.

  Watching her easy banter with Stuart – Stella couldn’t help wondering what the girl was really after. Because it was obvious this supple blonde-haired beauty that smelled all over like tanning oil today, was definitely after something. Stella had seen enough of her kind in the high schools she used to teach in to practically recognize them on sight.

  Yes, Lou Edna was after something. The tears of last night had come and gone too quickly for such a hardened student of the rough life. Millie had also mentioned something about the girl having been raised in a long series of foster homes. But what really had Stella stumped, was that it just didn’t seem right how someone with the responsibility of a baby could so flippantly leave a decent paying job to trot off into the unknown where there might not be any job waiting at all. Did she think the “family” would simply take care of her and the Senator indefinitely? Stella could see how they all probably would, though, because that baby was about as cute as they came.

  With a sudden squeal of delight that ended in a peal of musical laughter, Lou Edna began reeling in her line as fast as she could. It had been out there less than ten minutes. Just when Stella was thinking these waters must be teaming with fish, Lou tossed the empty pole down on the deck and proceeded to bounce up and down along the length of the rail as she waved at someone in the far off distance.

  “Over here!” she cupped her hands to her mouth and yelled. “Woooo-hoo! Over here, Cole!”

  Which brought the Colonel awake with a start, and the Captain to his feet to see who it was. Stella got up, too, arriving at the rail just in time to catch sight of an open speedboat that came smartly up alongside and cut the motor.

  “Hey –“ said a dark-haired young man with a beautiful smile who was sitting on the seat back instead of the cushion as he drove. “Looks like I found you.”

  “You sure did!” beamed Lou. “Got any ideas? This old man here’s working my tail off. On a Sunday, too!”

  “Want to drive out to one of the islands?”

  “She’s putting in for a position,” Stuart answered for her, “and I haven’t decided, yet.”

  “Oh, come on, Cap…” Lou Edna leaned against the older man and lowered her voice in a confidential whisper. “You know I’ve got everything down already, and I’m the strongest deckhand you’ve got so far. Right?”

  “Well…”

  “I need a little fun before I leave.”

  “What kind of fun?” Mason came up behind them and cast a glance over the rail. “Who the devil’s that?”

  “Cole Deforio.” The young man gave a nod of his head then turned his brown eyes back to Lou. “You coming, or not?”

  “Sure, but I have to wait until the Senator wakes up. Why don’t you come aboard and meet everybody?”

  “I’d be happy to watch him for you, Lou,” Stella interjected quickly – the thought of taking a baby into that miniscule little boat! “If you’d like to go on, that is. Seems a long trip to be starting out so late in a small open boat like that.” Why, she had heard it was nearly six miles across open ocean even to get to the nearest island. After the bumpy adventure she had personally experienced this morning just crossing the calm harbor, the entire idea was appalling.

  “Oh, would you, Stel? That would be great! He hasn’t been feeling the best lately, anyway. I think he’s got a bug, or something.”

  “No doubt.”

  “OK, change of plans – I’m coming down.” Lou Edna reached for the black windbreaker she had tossed onto the deck earlier, and fairly skipped toward the bow. “Pick me up under the anchor chain,” she called over the noise of the motor as her young man started the engine, again. “And don’t you dare let me fall in!”

  Naturally, everyone followed. They lined up along the rail to watch her crawl up and over with an agility only the young possessed. As Cole expertly maneuvered his little boat directly under the apex of the chain and the bow, Lou made contact first with her feet, and then lowered herself onto his shoulders with a playful giggle. He let the engine idle in neutral while he eased her down in a slow seductive slide against the front of his body, that ended in a sizzling kiss no self-respecting person would engage in while others were watching.

  “Dear heaven!” Stella fumed as the outboard revved into gear and they sped away. “And in broad daylight, too!”

  “Somebody ought to knock some sense into that girl,” Mason growled irritably. “Little flirt – what’d you let her go for, Stuart? Should have made her stay and suffer along w
ith the rest of us.”

  “Well, I would have,” the Captain was still watching the small boat as it receded into the horizon. “Only she’s right. She is the best deckhand I got going for me on this trip.”

  “Who is that kid anyway?” Mason squinted into the sun as if he might be able to tell if he kept looking hard enough. “I’ve never seen him before.”

  “Been hanging around the docks the last couple months,” Stuart replied. “Does a bit of work with the fleet now and again… came in on one of them cargo boats before that.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if he was the devil’s own cousin,” Stella pronounced. “And to think she was going to take the baby along!”

  “Rather strange he knew right where to find us.” The Colonel twisted the top off a bottle of chilled tea and drank half of it down without stopping.

  Stella couldn’t help thinking how at home he looked in this environment, with his khaki shorts, and Hawaiian shirt hanging loose and unbuttoned to reveal a thatch of curly gray hair. He must have spent a great deal of time at the beach over the years.

  “Strange or not,” Stuart turned away from the rail and headed back toward his project, “did you see them muscles? I could use a good hand like that on this trip.”

  “Good Grief!” the Colonel muttered to himself. “Then we’d really have problems to contend with!”

  “Two of them acting like that night and day, nobody would miss the movies,” Stuart chuckled.

  Mason suddenly stood up straighter and shielded his eyes as he tried to catch a last glimpse. “Just what I thought… circling right back to shore.”

  3

  Packing up an apartment was nothing compared to packing up a mansion. Especially one that had been lived in for nearly twenty years. True, very few of the Villa’s furnishings actually belonged to Millie, but Stella soon discovered that the latter years of financial troubles had turned her newfound friend into a packrat. Specifically in the food department.

  “What in the world!” Stella retied her red bandana to fit more snuggly around her ears as she stood gazing into a wine cellar that was stacked almost to the ceiling with a veritable mountain of food.

  “It’s my famine chest,” Millie explained as she dragged a stack of plastic storage bins up close to the nearest edge. “Left over from our prepper years. Sam was one of those survivalist types that thought World War III was going to break out any day. Either that, or the California coastline was going to drop off into the ocean during the hundred year biggie.”

  “The hundred year biggie?”

  “You know – the big one. The next earthquake that measures over eight points to hit smack along the San Andreas fault. We even have a stash of guns and ammunition in case we ever have to defend ourselves when total chaos breaks loose in the cities.”

  “Goodness – it must have cost a fortune!”

  “Not exactly. Sam was a real wheeler-dealer. Before he left me, we always had plenty of money. Here. You can take half of these bins and start on that end, while I get busy on this one.”

  Stella retreated to her specified area and began to pack can after can of condensed soup and beef stew into the containers. “This hardly looks like your cupboards, Mil… you being such a stickler for cooking fresh from scratch and all.”

  “In case of a real emergency, there’s not always a working kitchen at hand,” Millie explained. “Look at all the people who were stranded in their own front yards after that last big one. Water lines broke. All the power went out. Streets and highways were busted or buckled in so many places you couldn’t even drive out.”

  She stopped for a moment as if remembering, and then shook off the memory to get back to work. “Nope. The houses were too dangerous to stay in, so – what with the aftershocks going off for days afterward -- most people were stuck camping out in their own front yards with whatever they had on hand in their cupboards. Which this day and age isn’t much, considering how almost everybody works and eats out most of the time.”

  “It’s true -- hardly anyone cooks at home anymore,” Stella agreed. “I had a neighbor back at my old apartment complex who was always dieting, so she didn’t want any food around her place at all. Just went to the grocery store every day or so, and ate out every night.”

  “A lot of people do. Anyway, that’s why most of this stuff you can just open up and eat cold right out of the can. Don’t have to cook anything and it will last for years.”

  “Well…” Stella looked in awe at the towering mountain of food that seemed hardly diminished even though they had both been packing it away steadily, at their respective ends, for the last ten minutes. “All this sure is going to come in handy on the Dreadful. So, maybe Sam’s survival tendencies weren’t such a bad thing after all. And what do you mean he left you? I thought you said he died.”

  “Before he died he left me.” Millie looked at several jars of home-canned something that could either be light gravy, or applesauce, but had lost the labels. Then packed them into her container, anyway. “Went on a fling with some younger woman and only came back when he found out he was dying.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  “So was I. But I didn’t have it in me to turn him away – not after being married twenty-two years. Look here – have you ever tried any of these?” She held up a tan package with black lettering on it. “They’re MRE’s. You know, military food rations.”

  “Not hardly. Where did you get so many?”

  “From the Colonel. Said he could get more, too.”

  Stella stopped loading her containers and looked over at Millie. “I thought you said all this was Sam’s idea. Oliver’s only been here a little over a year, hasn’t he?”

  “It was Sam’s idea to start with. But I’m a firm believer in taking care of myself during a national emergency. You think I’d be like some of those people you see on the news, just sitting around waiting for someone to rescue them? Some even dying? Not me. Not on your life! I’m going to be handing out help, not waiting for it. I never go to the store without bringing back a little something for my famine chest. Force of habit.”

  “I can see that. But Millie…” Stella straightened up for a moment and put a hand to her aching back. What a long week it had been! “It’s obviously been more than could fit into a chest for years. Look at the size of this thing!” She looked up at the pile that nearly touched the ceiling in some places. “There’s no way this is all going to fit into that galley pantry, even if Stuart does move all his paint stuff somewhere else. Shouldn’t we prioritize?”

  “Mason already built some water-tight crates so we could store the extra down in the hold. Believe me, we’re going to need all of it when we find out there isn’t a grocery store for a hundred miles up there, and we get snowed in until spring in some frozen wilderness.”

  “Good grief, Millie!” Now, she couldn’t help stealing the Colonel’s phrase. “Doesn’t that thought just send chills up your spine? Surely Mason wouldn’t let us all get into such a--”

  “He certainly would,” her friend informed her. “Mason thinks he can survive anything, and figures he can take care of half the rest of the world while he’s at it. On account of he was in one of those prison camps during the Vietnam war.”

  “I didn’t know that!” Stella stopped packing again, and looked back over at Millie; this time noticing she had split a seam on the side of her lavender colored pants from so much bending and stretching. “He doesn’t seem the type.”

  “Nobody’s that type, believe me. Don’t let on to him I told you – he’s real touchy about it. But you know what? It’s because of that experience we ever met the Colonel. On account of he wanted to use Mason’s story in one of the chapters of his hero book. Mase got some kind of medal for something he did back then, but I never could get him to show it to me.”

  “One of Oliver’s heroes for a history book-- I never would have dreamed! Isn’t it rather amazing the way all of us have come together, Mil? I mean, it’s almost like �
�� like destiny, or something.”

  “It’s destiny all right. Because while Mase figures it doesn’t matter what condition that Alaskan lodge of his is in, since we can live under a tree and survive off pine nuts if we have to, he’s going to be pretty darn glad I brought my famine chest along. Plenty of moose and salmon up there, he says. I say nobody wants to live off the same thing for eight months straight, no matter how much the stuff sells for down here in the states. He wouldn’t last two weeks without hankering after a pot of my homemade chili, anyway.”

  “None of the rest of us would, either,” Stella pointed out.

  “So, get ready for the worst, is what I always say, then celebrate like crazy if nothing happens. Hey -- do you realize what time it is, Stel?”

  Stella glanced at her watch. “Why, it’s three o’clock already, and I’m supposed to meet Oliver downtown at four! We have to get some last minute things for our cabin.”

  “Better take my car.”

  “But we might not be back until late.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Mase is coming in to take the last of the stuff aboard, and I’ll be staying out there from now on. Everything of mine is in, already. Just make sure and lock up the garage when you bring it back, will you? The man who bought it won’t be by until Saturday, and Lou’s picking up a swing shift tonight. Trying to get in all the hours she can before we sail.”

  “Thanks, Mil!” Stella missed the last words of instruction as she fairly flew up the cellar steps and into the basement.

  One more flight of stairs in such a hurry only brought her to the kitchen, and she was already exhausted. How could she possibly clean up and get downtown in time? She certainly couldn’t arrive in blue jeans, a checkered blouse and a babushka! Not that Oliver hadn’t seen her in the worst of all possible conditions before. It was just that they were planning a farewell dinner at the Luau Palace, since they were practically still on their honeymoon.

  Such a thoughtful man she had married… he never ceased to amaze her. Which is why she had no intentions of having him pacing the isles of the curtain department in a store down at the local mall because she completely lost track of time. She had enough shortcomings that would come out sooner, or later, and had every intention of making the “honeymoon period” last as long as it possibly could.