each carrying a bucket filled with cleaning products. But they pulled up short and gaped when they saw me just calmly sitting on the cabin couch.
“Excuse us,” said the first one, a blond with a short ponytail and a light dusting of freckles across her nose. “We didn’t know Mr. Monroe rented this yacht out already.”
“He didn’t,” I told them levelly.
The blond exchanged a nervous glance with her partner, a brunette with ruddy cheeks and hair in a long French braid.
“Well…” said the brunette slowly, “should you be on here then?”
“No. I shouldn’t. But I couldn’t help myself. You see I’m only here because of true love.”
The girls eyes widened. They exchanged glances again, but not nervous ones. They were clearly now excited and curious.
“You see, I was having a drink at Bay Bar, you know the one, in Southampton, where the boats can just pull up and dock?”
The girls nodded enthusiastically. No doubt they’d heard of it. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d even gotten into the popular place using fake IDs.
“Well, there I was,” I continued, “minding my own business when this man sent me a bottle of champagne.”
Again their eyes went wide.
“He sent you a whole bottle?” the blond asked.
I nodded. “It was Cristal. It must have cost him five hundred dollars.”
“And he didn’t even know you?” the brunette asked.
“I think it was love at first sight,” I said. “For me it was. The moment I saw him and our eyes met…I knew.”
The blond’s mouth gaped. “You knew?”
I nodded again. “I knew he was the one.”
The two exchanged glances and sighed.
“I was about to ask the man to join me when I saw him answer his cell phone. I think it must have been a personal emergency or something, because he threw down some cash at his table and raced off to his boat. And that’s the last time I saw him.”
“You mean you didn’t even get his name?” the brunette asked. Both girls look absolutely horrified.
“I followed him out to the dock, but by that time, he was already motoring away. The only clue I had to finding him was the name of this boat.”
I did my very best to look devastated, and the two girls stared at me for a long, silent moment.
“I don’t know how to tell you this, ma’am,” the blond said, “but this is a rental. We don’t know who the man is you met last night. Whoever he is, he rented the boat to go out late. And we just work in the mornings.”
“She should just go talk to Mr. Monroe,” the brunette told the blond.
But the blond shook her head. “Monroe will never give her that info. He always says all rentals are confidential.”
The brunette shrugged. “Then I guess she’s out of luck.”
“Girls,” I said softly. “If you would do me the favor of looking up the name of the man who rented this boat last night, I’d be so very grateful.” I placed the two twenty dollar bills on the small coffee table bolted to the floor in front of the salon’s couch.
The girls stared at the twenties. Then they looked at each other.
“It’d be really easy to look it up, Janice, you know that,” the blond whispered to the brunette. “Monroe’s always schmoozing outside with the owners.”
“I don’t know, Pam…”
“Come on, Jan, you heard the lady. It’s, like, for true love!”
Inside of a minute, the girls had finished their debate and took me up on my offer. The brunette named Janice went topside and returned with news on her boss’s whereabouts. As they’d predicted, Monroe was already out of the office, hanging at the other end of the marina, chatting with the young yachtsman on the deck of his boat.
Under the pretense of needing more cleaning supplies, the blond named Pam returned to the office and let herself in. She came back in record time, but the look on her face was one of defeat.
“I snagged the only notation I could find for yesterday under Rabbit Run. No address and no name. Just a phone number. Weird.” She handed me a yellow Post-it note with the number scrawled on it.
“Sorry, ma’am,” said Janice. “Guess that’s the best we can do. Want your money back?”
“Not a dime,” I told them. “This is perfect. This is all I need.”
I climbed off Rabbit Run and didn’t…run that is. I was tempted to, but I walked instead, very casually toward my car. I could see the portly owner at the other