Page 54 of Hidden Tide
The officer shakes his head. “The team is still checking. The main cabin and the captain’s quarters were searched. Cushions were removed. Drawers were emptied. One of the wall panels in the passageway was pried loose.”
“They knew where to look,” Thomas says.
Every head turns toward him.
He sits near the end of the evidence-room table, both hands resting on the top of his cane. He has been quiet since Keating ordered the searches, but his eyes haven’t left the photographs. We hadn’t even heard him enter the room.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
Thomas looks at Storm. “James hid things aboard that yacht.”
Storm frowns. “What things?”
“Letters. Charts. Records he didn’t trust anyone else to keep.”
“You knew about them?” Mom asks.
“Some of them.”
Her face tightens. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Because James asked me not to.”
“Dad has been gone for over three years.”
“And until the attack on Sea Whisper, I believed the danger he feared died with him.”
Thomas sounds tired rather than defensive.
Mom walks to him. “What danger?”
“I never knew all of it, Elanore. James stopped telling me everything after your husband died. He believed keeping us ignorant would keep us safe.”
“It didn’t,” I say.
“No.” Thomas looks at the surveillance list. “It didn’t.”
Keating pulls out the chair across from him and sits. “Tell me exactly what James hid aboard Sea Whisper.”
Thomas rubs one hand over the curved handle of his cane. “There was a compartment behind the chart cabinet in the captain’s quarters. He kept old harbor records there.”
Storm shakes her head. “I’ve taken that cabinet apart. There’s nothing behind it.”
“There was when James owned the yacht.”
“What happened to it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was there another compartment?” Keating asks.
Thomas hesitates.
Ben moves closer to the table.
“That hesitation tells me there was,” he says.
Thomas gives him a sharp look. “James showed me a narrow space beneath the floor in the passageway. It could only be opened by releasing two catches inside the linen cabinet.”
