MacMillan Wharf

MacMillan Wharf: Chapter Twenty-Three

Macmillan Wharf: Chapter Twenty-Three

by Richard Gifford

Annie was at the helm of the Whale Center rescue boat as they rounded the tip of Provincetown. She looked to her left and saw the old weather-beaten Coast Guard Station near Race Point Beach. This was nearly the exact spot where yesterday she and Juicy hauled Linda’s body onto the deck of the Explorer.

She looked around the boat. Bruce sat next to her, holding his arm in the sling that Annie fashioned out of a T-shirt. Juicy leaned against the stern, staring out at the water. She wondered if he, too, was thinking about what happened. For a moment, their eyes met. From the sad look he gave, she knew instantly that he was. All three were silent as the boat skipped over the waves.

When they were off shore of Herring Cove Beach, the large white hull of the Explorer came into view about a mile away. Annie knew that Captain Billy always kept his VHF radio on channel 11, so she made sure that her’s was on the same frequency.

“Whale Rescue One to Whale Watch Vessel Explorer. Do you copy?” Annie had spent a lot of time on the bridge next to Billy and she learned the nautical protocol.

“This is Explorer. That you Annie?” She heard Billy’s voice over the speaker.

“Yeah, Billy, we’re on our way back in.”

“Already? How’d you do?”

“It went pretty quickly. We freed her in about three hours.”

“Nice job guys. Come up alongside us, I’ll have the passengers give you a cheer.”

“OK.” Annie said with a nervous laugh.

Annie backed the throttle down as she approached the Explorer. She enjoyed the power and agility of the rescue boat and appreciated Bruce’s reluctance to give up the controls. She could hear the voice of Joyce Eldredge, a Whale Center volunteer in her late seventies using the public address system on the Explorer.

“Ladies and gentlemen, here are some real heroes. This is the whale entanglement rescue team from the Provincetown Whale Center. They just helped free a finback whale that was entangled in lobster gear off  Truro. Let’s show them our appreciation and give them a round of applause.”

Annie looked up at the open top deck and saw hundreds of people waving, clapping, and recording them on video. Annie and Juicy waved back to the crowd while Bruce smiled and nodded.

Angus Black was staring right down at her. Annie squinted, recognized him, and  waved to him.

“Hi, Tom! Hey, Bruce, look, that’s the guy who helped me earlier today.” Annie pointed directly at Angus.

“Tom Lawrence, what a charmer. Hi, Tom, enjoy the trip! Huh, why isn’t he waving?”

“That’s enough of the limelight, let’s get back to the dock. Go ahead and open her up, Annie.”

“You got it!” she replied with a big grin on her face. She pushed the twin throttles slowly forward and lowered the trim tabs to keep the nose of the boat level. The acceleration was immediate. She and Bruce were nearly pinned to their seats while Juicy braced himself against the aluminum frame of the boat’s canopy.

Annie looked down at the GPS which also registered the forward speed of the boat. They were going fifty-eight miles per hour. She thought that on a weekend day in August, there probably wasn’t a single car on Cape Cod going that fast.

“Why would the Coast Guard ever give up a boat like this?” She shouted into Bruce’s ear.

“Because the smugglers have even faster ones.”

Annie just shook her head in disbelief as the wind whipped past her. Their burst of speed was short-lived, as they reached the Long Point Lighthouse in less than two minutes. She slowed the boat to a more respectable twenty miles per hour as they entered the outer part of Provincetown Harbor. Once past the breakwater, she backed the throttle to idle speed as they approached the dock they shared with the Explorer.

“You want to dock it, Annie?” Bruce asked.

“You trust me?”

“So far so good. Just ease it right in.”

Juicy had already dropped the white rubber bumpers over the side so that the boat wouldn’t rub against the dock. Annie turned the wheel and let the boat drift sideways to the pier.

“Put it in reverse and swing your ass end around,” Bruce said matter of factly.

“Excuse me?”

He realized he was sounding a little too local. “Sorry, bring the stern around.”

“Gotcha.”

Annie inched the boat into position and felt a soft bump when it contacted the floating dock.

“Nice job.” Bruce said. “You too, Juicy. Good work today, both of you. Let’s get everything tied up and I’ll buy you both dinner.”

“Sounds good, mon! Where we eatin’?” Juicy asked as he secured the dock lines.

“How about burgers and beer at the Post Office? What do you say, Annie?”

“Fine, I haven’t eaten since this morning. I’m starving.”

Annie and Juicy finished putting everything away on the boat while Bruce waited for the handful of painkillers he took to kick in. Once everything was stowed away, Annie locked the cabin door and put the keys in her shorts pocket. She made a mental note to hang them up in the key locker back at the center.

The three walked down MacMillan Wharf and turned left onto Commercial Street. They walked into the Post Office Café and sat at a table next to the window. This was a prime spot for people-watching which was, by far, Annie’s favorite pastime in Provincetown. It was from this very spot that she once witnessed a drag queen on roller skates, dressed as Scarlet O’Hara, glide by while reciting: “with God as my witness, I’ll never go hungry again!” The image was indelibly etched into Annie’s mind.

When a waiter approached their table,  Annie immediately recognized him. She was one of Brad’s regular customers.

“Hi, Annie, jeez, what happened to you? You look like a chainsaw murderer!”

Annie looked down at her shirt and realized it was spattered with blood from the whale. She hadn’t seen herself in the mirror since 6:00 a.m., and was suddenly feeling very self conscious.

“Annie freed a whale today, but it got a little messy,” Bruce said with pride.

Brad was duly impressed. “No kidding! I feel like such a slacker. I slept till noon, then came to work. Saving whales, that’s so awesome.”

“Thanks,” Annie said sheepishly.

“So, can I get you three some drinks to celebrate?”

Bruce ordered a Sam Adams and Annie had the same. Juicy was pleased to see that they carried Red Stripe, his native beer from Jamaica. All three ordered cheeseburgers with French fries. They quietly stared out the window for a few minutes while they waited for the cold beer to arrive.

Annie learned in her first few days in Provincetown that the front table at the Post Office Café was one of the best seats in town. Behind their heads was a row of old post office boxes next to the bar. Looking out the window was like watching a microcosm of the entire world pass by. Annie enjoyed the constant parade, there were all sorts of couples strolling arm in arm, guys riding bicycles with parrots on their shoulders, people walking dogs with matching leather collars. She made a point to stop in at least every other day for a drink or meal.

When the beers arrived, Bruce offered a toast to Annie. They clinked bottles and drank in the hoppy coldness with gusto. In their efforts this afternoon, none of them had taken time to eat or drink anything.

Bruce thoughtfully peeled the label off his beer bottle. Finally, he turned to Annie.

“Do you think Mary Ellen killed Linda?”

“I don’t know. I’ve asked myself that a hundred times today.”

“She certainly was acting guilty this morning. Do you think she really would have killed herself?”

“That’s what the cop said that I talked to this afternoon. That reminds me, I need to call the chief, he wants to talk to me.”

“About what?” Bruce sounded nervous.

“About Mary Ellen, I guess. I don’t really know for sure.”

“Did you know she was pregnant?”

“Who? Mary Ellen?”

“No, Linda.  I didn’t know either. I heard it on the news conference this morning.”

“Oh, my God. I had no idea. Who’s the father?”

“I don’t know. They asked me to be a donor about six months ago, but I said no way. They must have gone to a clinic or something.”

“Now there’s two murders aren’t there? Linda and the baby,” Juicy said sadly.

Brad came back with a tray full of cheeseburgers and fries. Despite their gloomy mood, all three of them were starving and began to eat immediately.

Bruce continued, “I just hope they find whoever did this soon. I’ll tell you guys something that I haven’t told anyone else, I don’t think it was Linda they were after, but her research.”

“Her research?” Annie sounded alarmed.

“The report that she was going to present to the EPA in a few weeks would have put the entire Gulf of Maine off limits to oil and gas exploration, or so we hoped. She established that the entire ecosystem was critical habitat for right whales. The increase in ship traffic alone is enough to wipe out the species. We had ten whales killed by ship collisions last year. That’s over three percent of the species killed in one year. The biggest threat comes from the exploration. The oil companies use low frequency sonar to determine where to drill. These same frequencies disorient the whales, and some studies the Navy did showed that they caused them to beach themselves.”

“I know all about this,” said Annie. “I’ve been working to help Linda compile the research for her report.”

“That’s good because it all has to be done again. The hearings in Washington won’t be postponed. We need to sort it all out and write a new report. Without Linda’s testimony, the only ones to speak about oil drilling in the Gulf of Maine will be the oil companies. Whoever trashed her office smashed her laptop. She was very careful not to leave paper copies of the report lying around, so the only copy is in a secure file on her hard drive which is now dead.”

Annie looked across the beer bottles at Bruce, then Juicy, then back to Bruce. In a low whisper she said,

“That wasn’t the only copy.”

“What? Are you sure?” Bruce’s hushed voice matched Annie’s.

“Yes. She kept a draft copy on her computer at home, too.”

“Does anyone else know about this?”

“Mary Ellen must know about it. Sometimes Linda and I would go to her house to work on it there. Mary Ellen’s in jail and I’m sure the house is all locked up. I’ll talk to the chief and see if he can let me in their house to get the report.”

Lurking just outside the window, but out of Annie’s view, Linda’s murderer was listening intently to their entire conversation. He knew that the report was the bargaining chip he would need later that night and Annie would lead him right to it.

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