U Is for Undertow

breathe and I hoped the bracing ocean air would clear my head. My usual morning jog didn’t bring me down this far. My circuit began and ended at the wharf, with its complicated history of good intentions gone wrong.
    Coastal Santa Teresa, despite its many assets, wasn’t blessed with a natural harbor. Early trade by sea was inhibited because shipping companies, fearful of exposure to rough seas, were unwilling to risk their cargo when faced with the rocky shore. In 1872 a fifteen-hundred-foot wharf was finally constructed, allowing freighters and steamers to unload goods and passengers. Over the next fifty years, earthquakes, winter storms, and arsonists laid siege to the wharf, and while it was rebuilt time and time again, it failed to solve the problem of safe mooring for the swelling number of yachts and pleasure boats owned by its wealthy citizens and sometimes wealthier summer visitors.
    In the early 1920s an informal engineering survey (which consisted of setting empty jugs and sacks of sawdust afloat at Horton Ravine beach and watching which way they drifted) indicated that locating an artificial harbor to the west of the town would be folly because prevailing currents would denude the beaches of sand and deposit it all directly into the proposed moorage basin, barring both ingress and egress. A $200,000 harbor bond issue was offered in support of this ill-conceived scheme, and voters approved the measure on May 4, 1927. Tons of rocks were barged from the islands and dumped just offshore, forming a thousand-foot breakwater. Thereafter, as predicted, 775 cubic yards of sand per day shifted to the inside aspect of the barrier, creating a sandbar of sufficient mass to choke the harbor entrance. It wasn’t long before the taxpayers were forced to buy a $250,000 dredge and a $127,000 tender in a perpetual effort to keep the harbor open, at an annual expenditure of $100,000. The sum has grown exponentially since then, with no permanent remedy in sight. All of this by way of improvement.
    I did a few preliminary stretches, keeping an eye on the beach. Ten minutes later I caught sight of Deborah Unruh, approaching from my left. Avis Jent’s description hadn’t prepared me for how attractive she was. She was barefoot and the wind had buffeted her silver hair into a choppy halo. She had to be in her late sixties, looking trim and fit in black velour pants with a matching jacket that she’d left unzipped, showing a red cotton T-shirt. Her eyes were brown and her face was youthful, despite numerous soft lines that came into focus as she reached me. “Kinsey?”
    “Hi, Deborah.” I reached out and the two of us shook hands. “Thanks for meeting me on such short notice.”
    “Not a problem. I’m just happy I wasn’t asked to give up my afternoon walk. I usually go as far as the wharf and back if that’s doable for you.”
    “Absolutely. What’s that, four miles round trip?”
    “Close enough.”
    I took a minute to pull off my running shoes and socks. The socks I stuffed in my jacket pockets. I tied my shoelaces together and hung my shoes around my neck, letting them dangle in back. I wasn’t crazy about the persistent bump-bumping between my shoulder blades as we trudged through the soft sand, but it was better than walking fully shod.
    She was already moving toward the surf at a pace I might have found daunting if I hadn’t been faithful to my jogging routine. On the ocean, waves broke a dozen yards out, and once we reached the hard pack, the water rushed forward in an icy flurry, covering our feet with foam before sliding out again. The Pacific is cold and unforgiving. You can usually spot a few hardy souls swimming in its depths, but no one had braved it that day. Two sailboats tacked toward the islands and a speedboat, at full throttle, paralleled the shoreline, keeping a para-sailor aloft, attached by a towrope scarcely visible against the pale blue sky. Hang gliding and parasailing are second and third down on my list of the one thousand things I never want to do in life. The first is have another tetanus shot.
    Deborah said, “I understand this whole business originated with Michael Sutton. What’s the nature of your relationship?”
    “I wouldn’t call it a relationship,” I said. “I met him for the first time a week ago when he hired me for a day’s work.”
    I sketched in the situation, starting with his appearance in my office and his story about the two pirates he’d seen in the