G = Glass Trinket

You don’t have to imagine the Glass Trinket. Here is a photo:

This is Rhe’s sailboat and it features prominently is Death in a Red Canvas Chair. The Glass Trinket is a 12 foot Beetle Cat, moored at the yacht club from where Rhe sails.This was Rhe’s boat when she was growing up, and like me, Rhe finds a freedom and release in sailing that makes life worth living.

Cat boats feature a gaff-rigged sail and cedar hull with an oak frame, which meant Rhe has to spend time every spring  sanding, caulking, painting and varnishing.  A Beetle Cat has two distinct features: a quadrilateral sail, or gaff rigging, raised by and suspended from a pole or spar attached to the top of the sail, and a centerboard, a retractable keel that pivots out of a slot in centerline of the hull.

Rhe uses the Glass trinket to sail up the coast from Pequod and moor near East Almorel, a mansion serving as a high class brothel, which sits on a cliff overlooking the ocean. She climbs up the steep stairs from the beach and snoops around the mansion to confirm her suspicions that young Pequod college students work there as ‘escorts,’ and she almost gets killed in the process.

 The Glass Trinket will return in my fourth book, Death in a Mudflat.

I named the Glass Trinket for a boat owned by a friend of my parents.