Cygnet: TCPI 8

By RB Pahl

This is the eighth book in the TCPI Series,
Tracy and her crew are racing her partner, Lee Brooks, and she has brought her father along. It is the first time he has ever ridden with her on a sailboat. Tracy is in her element aboard a sailboat, especially if it is hers. She becomes saltier, more demanding, and tougher then she ever is ashore.
Once the race is over, the friendly bantering begins, with her father getting an earful about his Captain Bligh daughter. This continues until they are on the dock.
There is a hubbub, a growing din of many chattering people moving towards them. A very famous western singer is in the center of the mob. As they draw closer, the singer's roadie frees her from the crowd, and with the aid of some security people, manages to get the mob, including the Paparazzi back off the dock.
Shelly Summers, the singer, hails Tracy by name, then hugs Tracy's Father. Shelly has been Tracy's bff since their Sophomore year at RFK High School in Santa Monica.
She has flown to the Bay Area specifically to see Tracy. Shelly is being blackmailed. She recently was an inpatient at the exclusive Cygnet Program, a twenty-one day substance abuse hospital and campus in Southern California.
Tracy enters the program a couple of days later, going undercover by being committed to the detox ward by her pseudo husband, a local PI. She has gotten herself intentionally drunk for the occasion.
While in Detox, she discovers a fourteen year old girl, who is completely messed up with drugs. The girl can't seem to get rid of the stupor she came into Detox with. One minute she's getting better, the next she has "fallen" back into her hole.
Once Tracy has emerged from Detox, she agrees to take part in the program, figuring she would only be there long enough to find the blackmailer. She is also getting suspicious about the girl's condition, and something happens that confirms that the girl isn't getting the same detoxing that Tracy had.
Tracy manages to steal the used that was used on the girl and has her ersatz husband get it checked immediately. The tox lab results come back via Lloyd the next day, and show a high degree of sedatives and a small amount of cocaine in the tube.
Tracy presents her findings to the resident doctor, demanding to know why the teen is being kept sedated. The sedation is a complete shock to the MD, as he nor anyone else ordered anything for the girl except Narcan in the beginning and Vitamin B shots thereafter.
The girl is ordered released from Detox STAT, and assigned to Tracy's room. Tracy is hired to be her bodyguard.
The blackmailer's body is discovered in the game room at 2:00 AM.
Tracy says: "I came into the program as an undercover job, to simply find and identify a blackmailer. Something that should be an ordinary-enough case for a P.I..
Since that time, I’ve been hired by the owners of the Cygnet Program to be Mallory’s bodyguard and to find out who ordered her kept sedated. I’m now trying to solve the murder of the blackmailer just for something to do. To top the whole frigging mess off, I’ve discovered that I myself, am a latent alcoholic."
Chief Cunningham and Greg Phillips back up Tracy in the program. Mallory joins the group. Tracy sends Lloyd to find a connection between the nurse who sedated Mallory and Mallory's sister. One is made.
Through her logic, expressing disbelief that a homicide occurs at the same time as attempted murder, and major-league extortion going on for months in a population of twenty five people, Tracy makes a connection between the nurse and the blackmailer and Mallory's sister.
When Tracy leaves the program, Mallory is riding alongside, as Tracy has agreed to become the teen's Guardian. The plotting and planning that her sister tried backfires completely. And Tracy and Greg are engaged to be married.
Over twenty-five years ago, the author was in such a program. He draws on his successful experienc

• Language: English
• Publisher: RB Pahl
• Release date: Dec 11, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465817013

RB Pahl

RB Pahl is the nom-de-plume for Richard Pahl. He has worked in many industries, and is an expert in sailing, boating, flying, skiing, etc. An artist is an artist is an artist. A professional photographer-computer artist who has won many national print awards in professional competition, he began writing several years ago, and has polished his skills for many years. Now, he is beginning to sell. Please enjoy all his books.

Book preview

Chapter One

EASE that freakln' pole! I bellowed at the top of my lungs, my voice barely carrying over the clanks and clatters of a sailing yacht that was running with a bone in her teeth.

I gotta come up! Let that sonofabitch breathe!

I looked back, fighting my yellow foul-weather gear hood, and turned my boat towards the San Francisco waterfront, just enough to force my competition to go with me. Instantly, I felt the wham as the spinnaker pole jerked its new slack from my big crewman, easing it forward in the twenty knot apparent winds.

At this angle, twenty knots of apparent winds were close to thirty knots of actual wind speed over the water's surface. It was an un-typical spring day in the San Francisco bay. If this was summertime, the day would have been normal. There was heavy, fast-moving, gray fog overhead. The cold salt water was in a steep, ugly green chop, and the bone chilling, wet winds were howling in the taut rigging.

The tops of the waves sprayed off to form spume and mist that created rainbows when the sun peeked through the low cloud cover. The spinnaker took a new, more proper shape, and the knotmeter inched a few tenths faster.

Sheet! I yelled loudly, Dammit, watch the friggin' sheet!

I wasn't swearing with a Mexican accent, I was shouting for the crew to stay with me. The Sweet Tart heeled sharply. I braced my left foot against the side of the cockpit, and turned the wheel to adjust for weather helm, the tendency of the boat to veer upwind in a gust. I looked at the boom, which was bending under the incredible load.

If something wasn't done, and right now, it would break. Vang! Dad! Uncleat that rope in front of you and ease it off! Dammit, move! We're going to have aluminum spaghetti around our freakin' ears if you don't get your ass moving!

Poor Dad. First time he comes for a social visit and he's subjected to me in my element, which is sailing, more particularly racing, and even more particularly racing Leland S. (Stands for second place) Brooks, my Business Partner.

Goddammit, watch it! Jenn! Help him! He's going to lose his freakin' fingers!!

Jennifer jumped in and snubbed the line, then took it from Dad's hands before they were pulled into a sharp-edged jam cleat. She managed to do what I wanted without further cussing on my part.

That's better. Come on, you beautiful bitch, I urged more speed out of my boat, "Go! Go baby, Gogogogo!'

I looked behind me and relaxed just a bit as the bow of a gorgeous midnight blue classic C & C 43 directly on my stern began to fall back. My move had held him off. But it was too damn close. He was hard on my stern, doing everything he could to snare my air and pass my pride and joy, the Sweet Tart.

This was an impromptu practice race between me and my partner Lee Brooks. His boat was so much bigger and faster that we had developed a head start handicap for these affairs, so that the real one-on-one would be at the finish line. Now his faster steed was coming down on me hard. Also not to mention, this race was the battle of the sexes.

Mano et Fe-mano

Watch it! He's goin' up! Jennifer, a regular member of my crew yelled. I snapped my head around and saw Lee taking a broad reach to my weather side. It was decision time. I could turn and stay with him, but with the new angles, he would throw a wind shadow. I could duck him, but that would involve a Spinnaker jibe, and that isn't a thing of joy in these winds. I could ignore him and sail my own course. The turning mark wasn't that far away. He would be coming back down on me on a minute or less.

Then I saw it. An airborne flock of sea-gulls was being tumbled wildly by something over the waterfront, not half of a quarter mile away. No wind marks showed on the water, but gulls don't normally do snap-rolls and lazy-eights. Not unless Jonathan Livingston Seagull lives.

I knew what was coming.

Douse it! I yelled at my crew. Now!

Dante Spanos, the huge man on the foredeck, knew better than to discuss the matter.

Sweet little Tracy tended to get violent after a race if my orders weren't followed immediately. Within seconds, the One-Twenty Genoa was heading up the mast and the spinnaker was coming in under the mainsail.

What the hell are you doing? Dante yelled while ensnaring the spinnaker and throwing it down the front hatch. We have a good five hundred yards to the buoy!

Trust me! I didn't even face him as I watched the sails being squared away. Let's jibe this sombitch! Lemme know when' . . . .

Go for it!

Okay. Go! Headache!

I put the tiller over hard and unconsciously ducked my head as the boom swept over with a wicked clank. I didn't need to duck, as the boom was a good three feet over my head. Now I was sailing by the lee, something that is considered suicide in these winds. Sailing by the lee produces uncontrolled jibes, aka goosewing jibes.

An uncontrolled jibe could rip everything off the deck, including people. A goosewing jibe is where the bottom of the main comes across, but the top doesn't. The Vang is designed to prevent this from happening. But nothing is taken for granted on the San Francisco Waterfront in a blow. If the goosewing isn't resolved quickly, the sail can tear itself in half. Then I (being the smallest one in the crew) have to go up the mast with a sharp knife, and slice up a two thousand dollar sail to get it off. Can you just imagine the sheer embarrassment of slinking to my berth with that mess in the sky?

Our boat took an angle back towards the mark, to the south and downwind of Alcatraz, while Lee and his crew gave me a derisive hoot for chickening out early. Dante and Jennifer began shouting at me, telling me that I was crazy, and that the whole standing rigging was going to be around our ears in seconds.

Only Dad kept quiet. Fortunately he didn't know what was coming. I just smiled at them, mentally crossing my fingers that I had made the right decision. I looked over and grinned at my competition, and gingerly eased away from where their mast would be in a few more seconds.

The explosive gust hit Lee's larger boat like a hard stiff-arm from an invisible running back, a hundred feet tall. His red, white and blue tri-radial spinnaker snapped violently, new air filling it from the wrong side, and the boat skewed sideways, completely out of control.

The new air direction was the direction we had just set up for.

Lee's ponderous headsail sank and filled with water. In seconds his classic C & C 43 was broaching under a fifty knot gust, his boat's half-exposed keel trying to compensate for many tons of sea water in his heavy foresail. Sweet Tart snap-rolled wildly one time, then settled into a hull-speed broad reach for the mark. I rounded the mark, and was beating back up the waterfront when I sailed close to Lee's stricken vessel.

My regular crew properly saluted the sopping wet men with a peculiar pose, sometimes known on land as Mooning. I heard Lee cussing his crew, who were just now getting back under way with the white top five feet of a shredded spinnaker still flying from the masthead. It looked like a flag of surrender.

Another fine example of the Cunningham luck, Dante grinned. You have to admit, if you hadn't looked at the waterfront that precise second, at that precise location, we would have tangled masts with Lee, sure as hell.

That's part of the Cunningham mystique, I grinned down at my totally shocked and still speechless father. We never know if it's luck or skill, do we Daddy?

Now that was exciting! One helluva race, skipper! Jennifer grinned as we sailed across an imaginary line between the Saint Francis Yacht Club bar and a black buoy.

Thanks, Jenn, I said. In a blink of an eye, I transformed myself from a hard-nosed, blue mouthed, Captain Bligh to my other job as ship's mascot. I turned to a new course that would take us across the bay to my home club, the West Bay Yacht club. When I waved once more to Lee, the thought crossed my mind, the old Tracy would have never made it to here. Wonder what I'd be doing now?

Exhausted, I turned the helm over to Jennifer and went below to change my clothes. When I came back out, I had shucked my foul-weather jacket. I had on a bulky white turtleneck sweater under my suspenders for my oversized foulie pants. I stood out of the wind, on the second step leading below.

Well, I popped open a can of beer, handed it to my Dad, and opened one for myself. What do you think about sailing?

You are a tyrant! Dad looked at me in amazement and shook his head slowly. Captain Bligh would look like a charm school teacher next to you.

Takes one to know one, I grinned and pecked him on the cheek.

I watched his eyes with mischief. At least my tyranny is only in force during a race or race practice. Want to sign aboard this hell-ship?

Oh hell no! he said in what looked like horror. "This is your world, child, and I'm not going to get involved with it.

Awww, Pops. Do you feel like you have no control of the situation? Little scary, isn't it? I leaned back and took a long, satisfying drink of beer.

A little!?, he grinned. Do you still do keelhauling or walking the plank?

Hell, Chief, Jennifer grinned, She hasn't had the plank out all winter.

Beeeerrrr!! Dante Spanos, my other crewman, called out huskily. His foredeck work finished for the day, he hopped agilely into the cockpit, sat next to Dad and popped open the can of beer I was silently holding out. He gulped it down in one long pull. A black-haired, blue eyed Greek, Dante is a big man, six foot four, lanky and a good friend.

His dusty shout for beer was a ritual aboard the boat. Without a word, I reached behind me and held out a second can of brew. Dante tossed the empty can into the cabin, popped the second, which he half drained before setting the can down, his immediate thirst slaked.

Sorry, Chief, he grinned. But it's real thirsty work up there, and you notice the boss doesn't allow any booze during a race.

"Now that you've seen your darling daughter in action, it's time Jenn and I give you the straight poop on the meanest little skipper in Northern California.

Jennifer said, First of all, the good news. The Strumpet was the winningest damn thirty-footer in the bay.

Dante chimed in, Not the always the fastest boat, but the always the smartest sailed. Notice the word 'Cunning' in Cunningham. Our little skipper's got more savvy, more salt and more guts than any male sailor I've ever worked with.

Now for the rest of the news, Jennifer said. I learned words I didn't know existed. Her sailor's vocabulary is second only to her sailing ability, an' I'm not just talking about her nautical terminology. Before the season was over, I was cussing her for willfully attempting to commit suicide with me on board.

My father looked at me with something like awe and trepidation. I do not know this woman. What's she like when she's mad?

Both Jennifer and Dante began belly laughing. Chief, this was a cake walk today, Jenn said.

There wasn't anything but honor at stake. Wait 'till we start racin' for hardware.

Tracy starts salivating at the idea of having her name engraved on some old dust-collector that most women would toss out the moment everyone's back is turned.

Especially if it's a perpetual trophy that stays on display in some yacht club.

And if we're slugging it out against her partner, well then she . . .

Would you two giraffes quit picking on me? I interrupted with a broad smile.

I think you've given my Dad the message.

Once in calmer waters, we pulled the sails down and motored into the city-owned harbor where I had a permanent slip for my bright red J-109. Sweet Tart is the second boat that I actually owned. She is a hotrod in all meaning of the term

The J-109 (a thirty-six footer) was in top shape, having gone through a complete overhaul and painting when I bought her. The spars were brand-new, black anodized aluminum, tapered and streamlined. All the deck hardware had been replaced with oversized equipment, and she was equipped with two brand new mainsails, one for heavy weather, one for light air. The hull color is primarily fire-engine red, with orange and white graphics which makes the boat stand out against all the white-hulled boats in the bay. The name Sweet-Tart isn't actually painted on the transom.

Under the waterline I have a cartoon character, a cute woman in a microskirt and a tight tee-shirt looking forlornly at two silver coins resting in her open palm. In the background was the image of a man, stepping away jauntily. The only time you get to see it is when the boat is on her lines, and leaving you in the dust … If I'm your competition.

Putting the boat to bed was a practiced routine that everyone knew well except Dad. At my insistence, he stood on the dock and watched the drill. The rest of us moved around the boat so quickly, that he realized if he tried to help, he'd only be in the way. In five minutes, when I checked the hatch padlock for the last time and stepped off the boat, I was my old self.

My timing couldn't have been better. Greg, my (audible sigh) very significant other, arrived. He and Dad did a manly hug, shook hands and immediately began talking cop-shop.

I turned my attention to the dock when I heard growing background noises increasing in volume. Some people were running. Shouted voices became discernible. Someone was making their way down the docks towards us. It was impossible to see who it was, as the short person was surrounded by a few fawning people, with more joining the circle. Every once in a while the coterie would stop and pieces of paper would pass back and forth as the one inside signed autographs.

My gawd! Dante blurted, Do you know who that is?

Who?

Shelly Summers! The singer!

Want her autograph? I'll run right out there and ask her if you want.

Would you really?

I wasn't sure if he was teasing me. No.

Dante watched the slow movement of the throng, then looked toward the end of the dock at a large yacht. She must be headed for that big cruiser on the end.

I doubt it.

Why?

You'll see.

In a few moments, we heard a female voice call out, Hey Tracy!

I shouted back, Hey, Shel!

We hugged mightly. When we separated, she saw my father. Chief! I didn't know you were going to be here! You look good enough to eat!

Dad beamed widely and gave her a hug. Hi beautiful.

I turned to Dante and said, Dante and Jen, allow me to introduce my dearest, oldest and best friend, Shelly Monk, AKA Shelly Summers. Shel, these are my crewmen, Jennifer EuClaire and Dante Spanos..

Hi, she said deliciously and shook their hands.

And this guy, is my man-friend, boyfriend, the guy I'll probably marry, Greg Phillips.

Her eyes twinkled as she sized him up. Hi. I knew it would take someone like you to civilize my friend.

No one can do that. Least not yet. He put his arm around my waist possessively. I love it.

At the beginning of my sophomore year, when Shelly Monk transferred into Robert F. Kennedy High School, we became close friends. Call it opposites attracting. Part of the friendship was trading clothing, unless it was some sort of fitted top owned by the thinner of us. I was one of the few people in the world who was not in awe of Shelly Summer's physical beauty. I knew Shelly when she wasn't the awesomely attractive woman she was now. There was even a time before our senior year when the boys at school considered me the fox.

It was during the vacation before our last year at RFK that Shelly metamorphosed in the singular beauty she was now. And a pair we were, too, during our final year at high school. I had come off a six-months grounding, which had been preceded by the most severe whipping I had ever gotten. My father would only let me go to 'Official School Functions,' and then I could only double-date with Shel. What he didn't know (and still doesn't) was that Shel wasn't as squeaky-clean as he thought. A lot of times, we'd split up two blocks from my house, and my date and I would go do our thing, then meet Shel and her date later. Shelly was the one who every boy thought would be the ultimate in the sack. But she maintained her virginity back then, and would never consider allowing any of them freedoms.

On the other hand, I was the one built for speed. I was the girl with the small boobs and the best tush in the school. I was the one who enjoyed the company of a male, all the way. I was the one you could feed a six-pack of beer and get in the back seat without-a problem, sometimes on the first date. Both Shelly and I were aware of the fantasy of every male at RFK, student or instructor.

The dream date at RFK was me in Shelly's body.

We went into the West Coast Sailing Club, and settled into a nice big booth, where a waitress took our drink and snack order. Shel sat on one side of me, and Dad sat on the other. Jenn, Dante and Ernie sat across from us.

We chatted inanely, then Jenn and Dante peeled off. The two of them had plans. Shelly said, TJ, I need to use the powder room. Wanna go with me?

Sure. I grabbed my little clutch purse and we walked to the women's