Silicon Waning (Tin Can Mysteries Book 2) Read online

  SILICON WANING

  Tin Can Mystery #2

  Jerusha Jones

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2016 by Jerusha Jones

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  For more information about Jerusha Jones’s other novels, please visit www.jerushajones.com

  Cover design by Elizabeth Berry MacKenney.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Notes & Acknowledgments

  Sources

  About the Author

  Also by Jerusha Jones

  CHAPTER 1

  “Good morning.” He was out checking the lines on his gorgeous yacht in the A-11 slip. Not too big, not too ostentatious, but gorgeous all the same, with perfect understated elegance and a sleek design. And while the object I was admiring was the boat, the same could have been said for the man.

  His muscular legs beneath the snug-fitting white shorts were tanned in a manner that can only be achieved through spending months, if not years, in a sunny, tropical clime—which of necessity would be far, far away from the overcast drizzle currently manifesting at Marten’s Marina on the Willamette River.

  I cocked my head, blinked a few accumulated droplets off my eyelashes, and smiled. “Good morning to you too. Welcome to the marina.”

  “Thank you.” He had the tiniest hint of an accent—something I couldn’t quite place but definitely not from any of the English variations, something a little more exotic, something sun-kissed and mellow to match the tan. He swung a leg over the deck railing and landed agilely on the boardwalk. “You live in the Tin Can?” His hazel eyes sparkled with amusement as he gestured behind me toward my unique house which was constructed of a few cargo containers stacked together on a floating platform. My teenage friend, Willow Ratliff, had come up with the name, and it suited perfectly.

  “Indeed, I do.” Quite frankly, it was nice to see a boat in the A-11 slip because its last occupant had been Ian Thorpe’s dead body. Good thing this handsome stranger didn’t know about the slip’s morbid history, although river currents and final resting locations certainly couldn’t be controlled. I shuddered at the memory and extended my hand. “I’m Eva Fairchild. Will you be staying long?”

  “We’re considering wintering over here—it’s so beautiful.” He shook my hand, but with his other hand he offered a casual European palm-up flick that poked ironic fun at the steady, soaking mist that surrounded us.

  I laughed. “It gets better, sometimes.”

  He was still holding my hand with just his fingertips when he called over his shoulder, “Honey, come out here and meet a neighbor.”

  A lithe woman emerged from the yacht’s cabin. I’m afraid my mouth fell open. She had the most glorious long caramel-colored curly hair I’d ever seen. She was as tanned as her husband, but dressed more sensibly for the weather in a clingy gray designer sweat suit that probably cost more than I earn in a month.

  “We’re the Trussants,” the man said. “I’m Pierre, and this is Shira.” He helped her over the railing and presented her like royalty.

  Which they might as well have been. I almost curtsied and became painfully aware of my purely functional and not particularly flattering workout clothes. I doubted the marina had ever had such wealthy, distinguished, and beautiful visitors. They belonged in Capri or Mykonos or on the Costa del Sol. They were probably going to suffer from major culture shock—and in the very near future. Maybe even at my hands.

  So I clasped my hands behind my back and sidled sideways a step, the fewer limbs to give offense with. I bobbed my head again. “I certainly hope you enjoy your stay.”

  “Thank you,” Shira said as she clung to Pierre’s arm and smiled up at him. I noted enviously that her skin fairly glowed, even while wearing gray and standing under gray skies. “We’ve already been invited to a community potluck. Perhaps we’ll see you there?”

  “Of course.” I waved and hurried along the wooden plank walkway. Bettina Godinou, the resident social maven, had certainly been busy this morning if she’d already planned one of her epic parties. And there was no way I’d be allowed to regretfully decline. I was just surprised she hadn’t barged in to tell me about it yet.

  I resumed my original agenda and trotted up the gangplank toward the gravel parking lot. I skirted the largest of the puddles and skidded onto the narrow muddy track beside the dumpster.

  Once I was through the blackberry brambles and in the wildlife refuge, I slowed to a safer power-walking pace and inhaled deeply of the damp piney scent. My ankle was just healing from a nasty sprain, and I didn’t want to trip over a tree root and reinjure myself. But I needed the head-clearing benefit of early-morning fresh air and a trek in the woods.

  My breathing opened up—longer and deeper—and I pumped my arms in time with my steps. This, all by itself—living on the water adjacent to a forested nature preserve—had been well worth my recent move across the country from Washington D.C. Combine that with getting to live near my sister and her family as well, and I was in heaven. Or pretty close to it. In spite of the rain.

  Birds twittered in the shadowy canopy and big water drops fell from tree limbs, plopping softly onto the pine needle duff. A great horned owl whose circadian rhythm seemed to be off, or else he was finally settling in for the day, hooted eerily high above me. Nature’s biophony and geophony more than compensated for having to set my wake-up alarm extra early. I loved the mix of cheerful and melancholy sounds in one refreshing whole.

  Except for the surprised—and very human—tenor muttering, “Stupid crappy shit.” This was accompanied by the noise of vigorous scraping and shuffling.

  I halted mid-stride. I almost never encountered other people in the wildlife refuge. There was public access, of course, but the refuge was tucked in an out-of-the-way place and I was pretty sure only the most local of locals knew about it.

  I cautiously rounded a bend in the trail and dodged behind a conveniently large fir tree. My arm brushed against the pepper spray canister in my pocket in a reassuring fashion.

  More muttering.

  I took a deep breath and peeked around the tree.

  Ancer Potts, a fellow marina resident, was determinedly dragging the sole of one of his bright, multicolored sneakers in a tangle of ivy beside the trail.

  I choked back a snicker. My sister, Sloane—the proud new owner of six hens in an A-frame coop in her urban backyard—would have knowingly called his one-legged dance the barnyard shuffle. However, from what I could see, wild animals have the same propensity to relieve themselves wherever convenient just as her chickens do when they’re let out to forage in her garden, and Ancer had stepped squarely in the aromatic pile centered in the path.

  I eased out from behind the tree and cleared my throat so I wouldn’t startle him. “The riverbank’s not far. You could go stomp in the shallows and clean it off,” I suggested.

  Ancer’s head popped up, and he blinked at me from behind the steamed-up lenses of his glasses.

  “Can’t.” He grimaced. “These shoes aren’t supposed to get wet.”

  “Uh, it’s raining.” I’m fabulous at pointing out the obvious.

  Ancer braced himself against a tree and bent his knee in order to inspect the sole of the offending shoe. “I mean immersed. They should be able to handle a little moisture.”

  According to Bettina, Ancer is a genius. From my few brief encounters with him on the marina walkways or in the parking lot, his social skills had matched what one would expect of a hyper-focused brainiac. In other words, monosyllables and vacant stares at best. At worst, a rude bump with his shoulder as he passed by me without noticing at all.

  However, I was encouraged that he’d just uttered two complete sentences. So it was my turn to toss back the conversational ball. “Are you trying out a new pair of cross-trainers? I don’t recognize that brand.” Not to mention I’d never seen Ancer enjoying any sort of physically strenuous activity before. Firsts all around.

  “Huh? Oh. Yeah, sort of.” He wasn’t enjoying it now, either. He dropped his foot and hopped over to a big glob of sopping moss that was growing out of a tree stump.

  Ancer briskly swiped the bottom of his shoe on the moss. But at the third pass, his whole body jerked spastically. He emitted a strangled grunt and collapsed in a heap.

  “Ancer?” I darted forward, arms outstretched.

  “Don’t touch me,” he said through gritted teeth. His chest was heaving and his face had blanched to a sickly white. Rain drops splashed on his glasses so I couldn’t see if his pupils were dilated or not.

  I knelt beside him. “This is no time
for modesty.” I reached for the zipper of his jacket at his neck in order to ensure his airway wasn’t constricted.

  “No,” he whined, and twitched his shoulder to block my attempt.

  “What can I do?” I whispered. “Do you need an ambulance?”

  “No, no,” he said, his voice finally gaining strength. “Look at my shoes. Are they still touching the moss? Or in a puddle?”

  I rocked back on my heels and frowned at him. But it was a simple request. A quick glance and I shook my head. “They’re on the dirt, and one of them is touching a pinecone.”

  “Then you could undo the closures. Be careful. Only touch the rubber parts.”

  Upon closer inspection, Ancer’s cross-trainers were like no other shoes I’d ever seen. Sporty, for sure. The bright colors correlated with overlapping lines of thin, plasticized tape that fanned out from round disks positioned at different spots on the shoes—the toes, heel, instep, arch. The web of interconnected lines looked suspiciously like circuits. Thin strips of a very pliable metal were embedded everywhere in the mesh fabric uppers.

  I gingerly picked at the toggle clasps and pulled at the tongue of each shoe by the rubber grip on its top edge until the shoes loosened.

  “That’s good,” Ancer grunted. He sat up. “I can take it from here.” He pedaled first one leg and then the other. The shoes sailed off and landed several feet down the path.

  I frowned and glanced again at his pasty white face. “Did you just electrocute yourself?” I rose and stretched out a hand.

  He let me haul him to his feet. “Mild shock. Apparently they’re not as water-resistant as I’d thought.” He swiped a forearm under his drippy nose and shoved his glasses up in one continuous movement. “Back to the drawing board, I guess.”

  He was a good three inches shorter than I am. But that’s not unusual. More than half the men I meet are shorter. You would think I would have gotten over the awkwardness of my height by now, but it’s something I notice every single time I stand next to a shorter man.

  “Don’t you have a way to test them that doesn’t include you as the guinea pig? In a lab or something?” I countered.

  Ancer’s knit cap was dark with saturated water, and some of that wetness was streaking down his face. He sniffed again, almost pathetically. “I am the lab.”

  “Is that even legal?” I couldn’t hide the dubiousness in my tone. But then I realized that perhaps Ancer was doing this product testing on his own, as a sort of hobby, without the benefit of the government’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s oversight.

  He snorted righteously. “Red tape is never healthy for scientific advancement. John Paul Stapp, Nathaniel Kleitman, Jonas Salk, Kevin Warwick...all the best did it.”

  “Did what?”

  “Experimented on themselves.” He stooped to retrieve the shoes, pinching them expertly by the rubber tips of the tongues. Mud gooshed between his toes with every step. “But this was a waste of a couple good months of research. And they should have worked. My calculations were flawless.” His words dwindled into a mumble as he pushed past me and splatted down the trail toward the river.

  “Um, Ancer?” I called.

  “Huh?” He partially turned and blinked at me through his still steamed-up glasses.

  “Where are you headed?”

  “Back to my boat, obviously. I’m on a deadline.”

  “Which would be that way.” I hitched a thumb over my shoulder.

  “Oh. Right.” And he pushed past me again, the trail being entirely two narrow for a brilliant tinkerer to navigate courteously while he was in a brain-wave fog.

  I skulked behind him, not wanting to crowd the genius but also not entirely sure he had the wherewithal to find the marina, let alone his own sailboat, by himself. I wondered exactly how much he could actually see through those glasses.

  oOo

  Roxy Sperry, the marina manager, chuckled until her merry black eyes watered when I told her about Ancer’s misfortune.

  I’d followed him to the top of the south gangplank and had stood there, watching, until he’d safely traversed the walkways to his blue-tarp-coated deathtrap of a sailboat in the B-4 slip. Couldn’t let the fellow pitch into the water and drown on my watch. Although it wouldn’t surprise me if his sailboat sank one of these days, with him in it. The poor, derelict twenty-six footer could certainly use the attention of its owner’s calculating brain in the form of paint, caulking, rust removal, and mast repair.

  “He’s an enigma, all right,” Roxy tittered. “Hardly says boo to anyone. Sounds like you’ve become his confidante.” She took a long drag on her omnipresent cigarette and scrutinized me. “It’s your calling.”

  I groaned. “How long has he lived here?”

  She shrugged but pursed her lips, thinking. “Without looking in his file I’d say four years, maybe five. Yes. It was the same summer Willow came to live with me for the first time. Took some getting used to, having a kid underfoot again. Yeah.” She cocked her giant black beehive to the side and tapped her fingers—and the cigarette between them—on the countertop, her gaze still distant. “It was the end of May. I remember now—he couldn’t give me a former address or references for the lease. I got the impression he’d been living with his parents up until then but was too embarrassed to admit it. Ironic, considering.” Another long, thoughtful drag on the cigarette. “I let him in anyway, took pity on him.” She added another shrug. “It was the season for strays. He’s always paid the rent on time.”

  So Ancer managed to pay attention to some of the more mundane details of life. “Any other death-defying near-accidents during his tenure?” I asked.

  Roxy flicked the ash from her cigarette into a wobbly half clamshell at her elbow. “None—that I know of.”

  I cracked a smile at her caveat.

  “Potluck tonight.” Roxy switched the subject with an exhale of pewter-blue smoke. “Bettina was in a hurry, but she insisted I inform you of the matter.” One perfectly plucked and re-drawn black eyebrow pitched up, and I understood the full weight of her comment.

  “Oh, I’m going,” I said. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world. Even though I already met the Trussants in A-11 this morning.” I added a wide-eyed gawk to my emphasis on the slip number, indicating that I recognized the significance of the location.

  But Roxy is nothing if not practical. She had to rent as many marina slips as she could, and she didn’t bat a single one of her extra-long stick-on lashes. “Plus the McBrides,” she added with another puff on her cigarette. “And the new bachelor out in D-12. His name’s Doug Schrugg. A real looker. Thought you should know.”

  Oh, really. I didn’t dare ask what she thought I ought to do with that knowledge, mainly because I was trying not to laugh at his rhyming name. What had the poor guy’s parents been thinking? Besides, the word showing on Roxy’s word-a-day calendar—four days past date, but what the hey—was auspicious. I decided to take the hint and leave well enough alone.

  “That’s a lot of new move-ins,” I commented instead.

  “Business is booming.”

  CHAPTER 2

  My need for early-morning, mind-clearing fresh air had been generated by a scheduled job interview. Don’t get me wrong. I love the work I do. I just hate the sales spiel I have to produce in order to get the gig—namely interviewing potential clients while they also interview me.

  I dressed in my nicest, but casually appropriate to the Pacific Northwest, meet-and-greet outfit and hauled my massive tote bag up the gangplank to the parking lot. My ancient Volvo roared to life with an enthusiasm I usually wanted to throttle. Except when I needed to get somewhere on time. Like now. But someday somebody will do me a profound favor and steal the thing or wreck it to smithereens when I’m not in it.

  My trusty map got me to the general vicinity, but the company, Prox-E-Dyne, was located in an industrial complex that was newer than my map. Half of the development was still obviously empty with large For Lease signs plastered on the sides of the identical boxy buildings. Good thing the streets within the complex were named after native flora and fauna and in alphabetical order. I pulled into an immaculate parking lot just off Beaver Lane.