085 Sea of Suspicion

  Chapter One

  "Mmmm, this is the life," Bess Marvin said dreamily as she tied back her long blond hair with a scarf. "Renting a convertible was a great idea, Nancy."

  Nancy Drew smiled and patted the steering wheel of the creamy white sports car she was driving. "I thought a convertible would be fun to have for our drive to Key West," she agreed.

  Bess's cousin George Fayne spoke up from the backseat, "It's also the ultimate tanning machine. Right, Bess?"

  Bess's blue eyes twinkled as she reached for a bottle of sunscreen in the glove compartment. "You said it. We should have plenty of sun and fun on this vacation," she said, rubbing the lotion onto her shoulders. "Think of it—two whole weeks in Key West, Florida."

  Nancy smiled at the thought. She, Bess, and George had landed at Miami International Airport early that morning. Now they were nearing the end of the five-hour drive to Key West, the last in a chain of tiny islands that stretched out like piano keys off the southern tip of Florida.

  As soon as they reached the island, Nancy slowed down. The ocean drive was dotted with palm trees and old-fashioned, gingerbread houses.

  "I love these Victorian homes!" Nancy exclaimed.

  With the help of a map they'd gotten from the rental company, the three friends soon found their way to the Sunset Cove Inn, a rambling old hotel that was nestled into a small bay. They checked into their room, which had a ceiling fan and lots of white wicker furniture. Glass-paned French doors opened onto a deck overlooking the sandy beach.

  Bess walked out onto the deck. "Smell the ocean," she said, closing her eyes and inhaling deeply. "I could spend the whole two weeks right here on this beach."

  "Forget it, Bess," George called from inside the room. "I've got the rest of the day planned for us." George held up a guidebook as she and Nancy joined Bess on the deck.

  "That's right," Nancy said. "We have a reservation on an island tour boat. In fact, we'll have to hurry if we want to make it to the marina by two o'clock."

  Bess groaned and flopped onto a lounge chair. "Have you two forgotten that vacations are for relaxing? 5 ' she asked.

  "Come on, Bess," Nancy coaxed. "A little sight-seeing never hurt anyone."

  "Besides, this should be really exciting." George had opened the guidebook and was reading from it. "We're going on board a treasure-hunting boat called the Lady Jane. The owners give private tours to raise money for their expeditions."

  "Real treasure? Like gold and diamonds and stuff?" Bess suddenly sounded more interested.

  George nodded. "According to this book, there are at least two thousand sunken ships off the coast of Key West," she said, brushing back her curly, dark bangs. "And lots of them, they think, are old Spanish galleons that went down with treasure on board."

  "Just think of all that gold and silver under the sea," Bess mused. "Now there's a mystery for you, Nan."

  "No, thanks!" Nancy protested, and laughed. "This trip is strictly R and R."

  At eighteen Nancy's sleuthing skills had already brought her fame as a detective. She had just finished solving an important case back in her hometown of River Heights. Now she was looking forward to taking a break from crime.

  Nancy and her friends changed into shorts and T-shirts, stuffed jackets and extra gear into a bag and set off for the King Point Marina. Nancy drove very slowly to avoid a mishap with the many bicyclists. It seemed as if everyone preferred walking or bicycling to driving on the small island. In less than five minutes they were pulling into the parking lot of the marina, which lay just a mile down the shore from their hotel.

  The marina was crowded with boats of all shapes and sizes, and in the harbor beyond, sails dotted the horizon.

  "There's our boat, right over there," George said. She pointed to a large vessel that was tied at a nearby slip. Its white hull was long—George estimated its length to be about fifty feet. The deck was covered with high-tech equipment.

  Nancy could see a tall man and an ebony-haired woman working forward on the bow. The boat's name, Lady Jane, was written across the stern in blue letters.

  "Ahoy!" George called out to a deeply tanned, muscular young man who was cleaning some scuba gear closer to them on the rear deck.

  The young man raised his head at the sound of George's greeting. He was about twenty-five years old, and was wearing cut-off jeans and a light blue shirt. His face brightened when he spotted George.

  "Hi there!" He smiled warmly at the girls. His hair had been bleached to light brown by the sun, and his eyes were green.

  "I'm looking for Sean Mahoney," George said.

  "That's me," he replied, straightening up and stepping smoothly off the boat onto the dock. "Owner and skipper of the Lady Jane. What can I do for you?"

  "I'm George Fayne," George replied. "We spoke last week about your island tour."

  George introduced Sean to Nancy and Bess. While they were talking, Nancy noticed that Sean kept glancing at George.

  "Let's go on board. I'll introduce you to the crew," Sean said, touching George's arm lightly. "I was thinking of calling off today's tour because a party of ten just canceled on me. It's expensive to take the boat out for only a couple of people, but I guess I can make an exception in your case."

  As Sean and George led the way, Bess nudged Nancy's elbow. "I can't believe it. We just got here, and George has already dazzled a cute guy," she whispered, grinning.

  Nancy nodded. George and Sean really were hitting it off. She overheard them talking with mutual enthusiasm about scuba diving. As Nancy watched them together, she felt a slight tug at her heart.

  Bess spoke knowingly, "You're missing Ned, right?"

  "I am," Nancy admitted with a sigh. Just a week earlier Ned Nickerson, her longtime boyfriend, had had to cancel his plans to go on this vacation because of a last-minute crisis at his summer job. "I know he needed to take care of things at the insurance company, but I can't help being disappointed," she confided to Bess.

  Bess gave her friend a quick hug. "Well, let's try to have a great time, anyway," she said soothingly.

  "G'day, landlubbers!" Nancy turned to see an older man with a weather-beaten face smiling at them from a doorway that led below to the cabins. "I'm Rusty Jones, ship's cook and bottle washer," he announced with a toothy grin. "I hope you girls like conch chowder and Key lime pie, 'cause that's what we're having to eat today," he said.

  Rusty stepped forward to join the rest of the group on the deck, which was crowded with all sorts of diving gear and supply bags. As he approached, Nancy noticed that he walked with a slight limp.

  "Rusty's what we call an 'old salt,'" Sean said, glancing at the cook. "He grew up sailing and boating around here. He used to be my best diver."

  "I'd still be the best—if you'd let me prove it," Rusty replied with a trace of bitterness. He reached past Sean and picked up a supply bag that was overflowing with cooking supplies.

  "Rusty, we've been through this before," Sean said quietly.

  "Sean thinks I can't dive with this bum knee," Rusty explained to the girls, hoisting the bag over his shoulder. "But a fish swims without knees, and so can I." Rusty turned away silently and disappeared back down the companionway leading to the galley.

  Sean seemed to be embarrassed by the cook's remarks. "I know Rusty thinks I'm unfair not to let him dive, but he has bad arthritis," he said uncomfortably. "He just can't dive safely anymore."

  Nancy spotted a tall, rangy man making his way back to them from the bow. She recognized him as the man she'd seen working up there a couple of minutes earlier. He had pulled a cap on over his close-cropped hair now.

  "This is my first mate, Zach Hardwick," Sean said when the man reached them. Zach had pale gray eyes that seemed bleached of all c
olor by years in the sun.

  Zach nodded to the girls, then said to Sean, "I'll get the engine started." He added something else in a whisper, but Nancy could make it out: "I hope we don't have any trouble today." Sean only answered him with a glare. Zach shrugged and turned to stride back to the pilothouse, a small enclosure near the bow that housed the ship's steering wheel.

  Nancy couldn't help wondering what kind of trouble the first mate meant.

  "I'll take you girls forward so Talia, our marine archaeologist, can tell you about the tour and how we run the ship," Sean explained hurriedly.

  They walked along a narrow side deck to the bow.

  Nancy spotted the slender young woman she'd seen when they first arrived at the ship. The woman walked the short distance to greet the girls.

  "I'm Talia Ortiz—pleased to meet you," she said, smiling pleasantly. Talia's gleaming black hair was pulled back into a single braid. She had high cheekbones and large, hazel eyes.

  "This is Nancy, George, and Bess," Sean told Talia. "Give them the lowdown on the boat, would you, Talia? I'm going to help Zach get under way." With that, he headed for the pilothouse.

  The Lady Jane's powerful engine roared to life, and soon the ship was slicing through the blue-green waters beyond the harbor.

  Talia looked at the girls. "For our tour today we'll be circling the island and stopping at places where we're likely to see local wildlife," she explained. "Yesterday we were lucky and saw a family of dolphins."

  "Why is Sean's ship called the Lady Jane?" Bess asked.

  "Lady Jane is the name of the first sunken treasure ship Sean ever found, La Senora Juana. Sean just Anglicized it," Talia explained.

  "What kind of treasure is Sean looking for now?" Nancy wanted to know.

  "We've spent the past year looking for the wreck of the Ninfa Marina, a Spanish galleon," Talia explained. "She was the flagship of a Spanish fleet that went down in a storm off Key West in 1653."

  "Ninfa Marina —that means 'mermaid' in English, doesn't it?" Nancy said.

  Talia nodded. "Only this mermaid was a treasure ship carrying a load of gold bars and jewels that would be worth about fifty million dollars today."

  "Wow!" Bess gasped.

  Talia showed them around, reeling off the names of some of the high-tech gadgets used in treasure hunting, like the proton magnetometer and sidescan sonar. She said that both of these enabled the crew to comb the ocean floor for signs of old wrecks.

  Nancy stared at a small, tubular craft tethered to the side of the Lady Jane. "That almost looks like a tiny submarine," Nancy said to Talia. "Do you use it in your underwater searches?"

  The archaeologist nodded. "That's Rover, our manned submersible unit," she explained.

  Nancy caught sight of Zach in the pilothouse and remembered what she'd overheard him say to Sean. "Has there been trouble on board recently?" Nancy asked. "Zach mentioned something about it."

  Talia paused before answering. "I guess he was talking about the little mishaps that have occurred," she said. "But they're nothing to worry about," she added quickly.

  "Then nothing serious has happened?" George asked.

  "Not this year," Talia replied, a shadow crossing her face as she turned away.

  "What is it, Talia?" Nancy prodded.

  Talia faced the girls again. "It's just that talking about this reminds me of my brother, Jaime. He was killed last year in a diving accident," she said, her voice breaking slightly. "He was working for Sean at the time."

  Nancy reached out to touch the young woman's shoulder. "I'm so sorry if our questions brought back painful memories," she said gently.

  Talia shook her head. "I'm okay."

  Just then Nancy felt the boat slow down.

  Talia frowned. "That's funny," she said.

  "We're not at our first tour stop yet." Her frown changed to an expression of puzzlement as she drew in a deep breath. "That smells like smoke."

  Nancy sniffed the air. Talia was right— something was definitely burning. Nancy peered toward the stem where a layer of heavy smoke was rising from the aft deck.

  "Look at that smoke!" she cried. "The Lady Jane is on fire!"

  Chapter Two

  Nancy raced toward the Lady Jane's stern, with Talia and the others on her heels. She arrived on the rear deck just in time to see Rusty running, clutching a red fire extinguisher.

  "Fire in the hold!" he yelled. "I think it's in the engine hatch!" A stream of oily-smelling gray smoke was seeping up around the edges of the floor panels on the rear deck. The fire had to be underneath those panels, Nancy realized.

  Zach grabbed Rusty's arm to prevent him from opening the floor panels.

  "Don't open the hatch—the oxygen will just feed the fire!" Zach shouted. "I'll go turn on the foaming system." He hurried forward to the pilothouse. After a few moments Nancy heard a loud whooshing from underneath the floor panels.

  "Thank goodness, it sounds like Zach got the foaming system working," Talia said. "It releases a layer of foam inside the engine to put out any kindyOf fire."

  As if to confirm Talia's words, the smoke began to dissipate.

  Sean dashed up onto the deck from inside the ship. "I was in my cabin," he said breathlessly. His face blanched as he surveyed the scene and took in the situation. "Stand back, everyone," he ordered.

  Gingerly he removed the engine hatch. Below deck the engine was covered with a layer of foam mixed with black ashes. Sean stared glumly at the mess. "It's not safe to try to fix this at sea," he announced. "We'll have to call the Coast Guard for a tow." He half-smiled at Nancy, George, and Bess. "I'm afraid this ruins your tour."

  "Don't worry about that," Nancy said, reassuring him. "What do you think happened?"

  Sean shook his head, bewildered. "We have a very sensitive fire detector that's supposed to sound an alarm at the very first hint of smoke," he said. "Why do you think the alarm didn't go off?" he asked Zach, who had returned from the pilothouse.

  "I'll check it out, Sean," the first mate replied. "There've been too many weird things going on around here lately," Zach mumbled, turning to go. 'Til radio the Coast Guard," he called over his shoulder.

  Nancy heard a sound and watched as Rusty collapsed onto a deck chair. His face was ashen. "Did you see anything when the fire started, Rusty?" she asked him.

  "I don't want to talk about it," he snapped. "I just smelled smoke and ran up with the fire extinguisher—isn't that enough?"

  Nancy was struck by the cook's defensiveness.

  Sean, too, acted mystified by Rusty's response. "Maybe you'd better go lie down for a while, Rusty," he finally suggested.

  The cook shook his head. "I'm okay," he insisted. "If any of you want to come with me to the galley, I'll fix you up with a slice of Key lime pie," he offered.

  "I could go for some pie," Bess told him. "But just a sliver."

  "I'll take one, too," Talia added quickly, and followed Bess and Rusty through the doorway that led down to the ship's galley.

  Nancy and George sat hunched over the edge of the engine hold, watching as Sean scooped foam up from the engine into a plastic bucket.

  "Is this the kind of trouble that Zach was talking about earlier?" Nancy asked pointedly.

  Sean heaved a sigh. "We've had several unexplained incidents like this recently," he reluctantly admitted. "Normally I wouldn't even mention them. Wouldn't want to scare off the paying customers."

  "Don't worry about scaring Nancy," George said. "She's a detective."

  "A detective? Really?" Sean asked. Then he sighed. "It would take a sleuth to figure out what's been going on around here, that's for sure."

  You're on vacation, Drew, Nancy reminded herself. Still, she couldn't resist saying, "Tell me everything that's happened—from the beginning."

  "It all started about six months ago," Sean began. "That was when I found a gold ingot belonging to the Ninfa Marina."

  "Talia told us about the ship—it was a Spanish treasure galleon, righ
t?" Nancy said.

  Sean nodded. "Ever since I found that ingot things have been goiijg haywire. We've had a mysterious fuel leak, damaged equipment, and now this fire."

  "How awful!" George exclaimed sympathetically.

  "At first I thought they were all just accidents," Sean explained. "But now I'm beginning to suspect sabotage." He frowned, scooping more foam into the pail. "To make matters worse, we've had some run-ins with another treasure hunter. His name is Leif Doming. He runs a big outfit called Sea Scavengers."

  "What kind of run-ins?" Nancy asked.

  "He deliberately ran his boat over our equipment towline last week and cut it," Sean said indignantly. "We had to send a diver down to retrieve the monitoring equipment we'd been towing."

  "Do you think that Doming might be the ope who's been sabotaging your ship?" Nancy asked.

  Sean nodded his head. "He'd probably do anything to find the treasure of the Ninfa Marina, but I don't have any proof that these mishaps are sabotage or that Doming's responsible."

  Sean focused intently on something he had scooped up with the foam. "What's this?" he murmured. He brushed the foam away from the remains of a folded rag.

  Nancy crinkled up her nose, then reached out and lifted the rag to sniff it. "This has been soaked in gasoline," she stated.

  "Gasoline!" Sean exclaimed. "I guess that answers our question about sabotage," he said grimly.

  Nancy nodded. "I don't think there's any doubt that this fire was deliberately set," she agreed. "The question is—by whom?"

  "Your friend Doming?" George volunteered.

  Sean thought for a moment. "One of his men could have tossed the rag into the hold before we set sail and let the engine's heat ignite it."

  Nancy hesitated before adding, "Or maybe one of your crew set the fire. Maybe someone who's working for Leif Doming."

  Sean shook his head. "I refuse to think that one of my crew could be involved," he said adamantly.

  "You have to consider all the possibilities," Nancy said gently.

  Sean's shoulders slumped forward. "This situation has gotten totally out of hand," he said, wearily rubbing his eyes. "I can't afford any more problems with this expedition. Last year we lost a member of our crew in a diving accident."