Chapter 7 - The Missing Minutes

The memorial video contained forty-three minutes.

The security camera aboard the Second Wind recorded fifty-one.

Eight minutes were missing.

Pete discovered it.

He called Sam, who called me.

By noon we were aboard the boat with Adrienne and a digital-forensics consultant named Luis Ortega.

I avoided the spot where I had assaulted Vanessa.

The shattered tea set had been collected into three padded boxes.

I had not yet opened them.

Luis connected a laptop to the onboard security system.

“Camera feed stores locally for fourteen days,” he explained. “There’s also remote administration.”

“Who has access?” Adrienne asked.

“According to the account list, Mr. Daniel Calder did. Sam Whitaker. Phillip Calder.”

He clicked again.

“And Vanessa Calder.”

Sam swore.

“I never gave her access.”

“Someone did.”

Luis opened the audit log.

The deletion occurred at 6:14 p.m. on the night of the memorial.

Thirty-seven minutes before Vanessa broke the tea set.

User:

PCalder-Admin.

Phillip.

My chest tightened.

“Could she have used his account?”

Luis nodded.

“Technically yes.”

“Can you tell where?”

“Possibly.”

The login originated from the marina guest Wi-Fi.

That told us almost nothing.

Half the memorial guests were connected.

But another artifact remained.

The deleted portion had not been fully overwritten.

Luis recovered fragments.

We watched them without sound.

Vanessa entered the wheelhouse before most guests arrived.

She moved directly to the navigation console.

My pulse jumped.

“She knew about the safe?”

Sam leaned toward the screen.

“No.”

Vanessa opened drawers.

Checked behind charts.

Photographed papers.

Then Phillip entered.

They argued.

Without sound, their gestures became strange choreography.

Phillip pointed toward the door.

Vanessa shoved a paper against his chest.

He read it.

His shoulders collapsed.

Then she kissed his cheek.

Phillip walked out alone.

Vanessa remained.

She looked directly toward the security camera.

Then the video fractured.

Missing frames.

Static.

When the picture returned, she was gone.

Adrienne paused playback.

“What paper did she show him?”

No one knew.

Sam rubbed his jaw.

“There was something Daniel kept in that wheelhouse besides the safe.”

“What?”

“A notebook.”

I looked at him.

“Which notebook?”

“His red logbook.”

Daniel recorded everything.

Fuel.

Repairs.

Crew schedules.

Weather.

Business calls.

Arguments that annoyed him enough to remember.

For years I teased him that someday historians would know exactly which marina electrician had disappointed him in 1998.

“Was it in the safe?”

“No.”

“Where did he keep it?”

“Top chart drawer.”

We opened the drawer.

Empty.

Daniel’s red notebook was gone.

Luis returned to the system logs.

Someone had deleted the eight minutes from the security feed the day of the memorial.

Someone using Phillip’s account.

Then another detail appeared.

The deletion had been initiated from Daniel’s own laptop.

The laptop that disappeared from the marina office after his stroke.

“Who took it?” I asked.

Sam looked at me.

“I thought you did.”

“I never saw it.”

Pete, who had been quiet, cleared his throat.

“I saw Vanessa carrying a computer bag that morning.”

All eyes turned toward him.

“When?”

“The day Daniel collapsed.”

“Before the ambulance?”

“After.”

Pete’s face tightened with regret.

“I thought it belonged to Phillip.”

My hands curled against the chart table.

“What was she doing at the marina?”

“She arrived while the paramedics were here.”

“Who called her?”

Pete shrugged.

“Maybe Phillip.”

No.

Phillip had been in San Diego that morning for a vendor conference.

I remembered because I called him from the emergency room.

He had sounded shocked.

It took him three hours to reach us.

Vanessa arrived before I did.

At the time, she told me Sam had contacted her.

Sam looked stunned when I reminded him.

“I didn’t call her.”

A cold pressure formed beneath my ribs.

“How did she know?”

Luis raised his hands.

“That’s outside my lane.”

Adrienne was already writing notes.

“Phone records may answer it if litigation gives us a proper discovery route.”

I stared at the empty chart drawer.

Daniel’s stroke remained natural unless evidence showed otherwise.

I refused to let grief turn suspicion into fantasy.

He had hypertension.

A history of atrial fibrillation.

Doctors had found no evidence of trauma.

But Vanessa had been close enough to Daniel’s final confrontation to know he planned one.

Close enough to reach the marina during the emergency.

Close enough to remove his laptop.

That mattered.

Sam moved toward a cabinet.

“If she took the red log, Daniel might have copied it.”

“Where?”

“He was paranoid about losing records at sea.”

Sam opened a waterproof compartment beneath the emergency radio.

Inside were flares.

Maps.

A sealed plastic pouch.

And three photocopied pages torn from a red notebook.

The first two concerned engines.

The third contained a note dated three days before Daniel’s stroke.

V. came by alone.

Threatened to tell Evie about Phillip’s theft if I block sale.

I told her I would tell Evie myself.

Below that:

She said, “Then you’ll lose both of them before you die.”

I read it twice.

Sam whispered, “Jesus.”

There was one more line.

Check Ruth’s key.

I looked toward the brass key Daniel had left in the safe.

Until that moment, I had assumed it belonged to the boat.

It did not.

Stamped into the metal was a number.

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And beneath it:

LAX.