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Department: EDITOR'S NOTES: A KILLER YEAR by Linda Landrigan
Novelette: DEATHTOWN by Dick Stodghill
Novelette: DEATH OF A GOOD MAN by Eve Fisher
Novelette: THE NECKLACE OF GLASS by Mike Culpepper
Novelette: RUMBLE STRIP by Loren D. Estleman
Novelette: DEADLY PASSAGE by Donald Moffitt
Department: BOOKED & PRINTED by Robert C. Hahn
Novelette: REGARDING CERTAIN OCCURRENCES IN A COTTAGE AT THE GARDEN OF ALLAH by Robert S. Levinson
Novelette: RUSSIANS COME AND GO by Scott Mackay
Department: COMING IN DECEMBER 2009
It's awards season in mysterydom, and we have several authors to congratulate.
Jane K. Cleland's "Killing Time" (November 2008), featuring antiques dealer Josie Prescott, was a finalist for the Best Short Story Agatha Award at the Malice Domestic convention in May, and is currently a finalist for the Anthony Award for best story; the Anthonys will be presented at the 40th Bouchercon World Mystery Convention in Indianapolis in October.
Several other awards are also announced during Bouchercon: the Barry Awards, presented jointly by Mystery News and Deadly Pleasures; the Shamus Awards, presented by the Private Eye Writers of America; and this year the Short Mystery Fiction Society's Derringer Awards, which have already been announced, will be presented at the convention. We're delighted to have finalists or winners for each of these awards.
G. Miki Hayden's "A Killing in Midtown" (January/February 2008), featuring Ghanian transplants Miriam and Nana, is a finalist for the Barry Award for Best Short Story. And Robert S. Levinson will receive the Derringer Award for Best Long Story for "The Quick Brown Fox" (October 2008); Derringer finalists in the Best Novella category included "Haven't Seen You Since the Funeral" (December 2008) by Ernest B. and Alice Brown and "Panic on Portage Path" (January/February 2008) by Dick Stodghill.
Earlier this year we had the pleasure of attending the Edgar Awards with David Edgerley Gates, whose story "Skin and Bones" (December 2008) featuring Mickey Counihan, a mob fixer in late forties New York, was a finalist for the Edgar Award for Best Short Story.
So a round of applause, please, for all our nominees, and for all our authors who keep us supplied with killer fiction the whole year long.
Mike Culpepper's story, "How Aunt Pud, Aunt Margaret, and the Family Retainers Kept Me from Hanging," appeared in July/August 2009.
Loren D. Estleman is the author of The Branch and Scaffold (Forge); Alone will be published by Forge in December.
Eve Fisher, the author of The Best is Yet to Be (Guideposts Books), lives in South Dakota.
Booked & Printed columnist Robert C. Hahn reviews mysteries for Publishers Weekly and the New York Post.
Robert S. Levinson's novel In the Key of Death (Five Star/Gale) was published in March 2008.
Scott Mackay is the author of the historical mystery The Angel of the Glade(Severn House).
Donald Moffitt is the author of the science fiction novel Jovian (iBooks). "Feat of Clay" appeared in September 2009.
Dick Stodghill's story, "Jack the Tripper," was published in June 2009. Heblogs at stodg.blogspot.com.
I had forty-seven cents in my pocket when the gas gauge hit empty and I coasted to a stop in front of a roadside diner on the outskirts of a gritty place called Dealtown. I wasn't in the market for a deal, but a cup of coffee sounded good. A decent meal and a place to sleep that night sounded better. So did a tankful of gas.
The diner looked halfway clean---par for the course in 1940---so I took a stool at the counter and blew a nickel for rancid coffee in a cracked mug. That left me with forty-two cents and little prospect of a decent meal, a place to sleep, a tank of gas.
Aside from a waitress with a chip on her shoulder and a clapped-out short-order cook there was only one other person in the place. I had taken a few sips of coffee strong enough to bring an elephant to its knees when the other customer whistled between his teeth. I turned to look and he gave his head a jerk in my direction. "Come on over and sit down a minute, pal."
He was dressed like a dandy---dark blue suit with gold pinstripes, wide-brimmed black fedora, gold-and black-striped necktie---but he had the face and build of a street soldier in Capone's old mob or the Purple Gang in its heyday. The bulge under his left arm enhanced the effect. I picked up my mug and walked over to his table.
He sized me up at close range for ten or fifteen seconds. "Stranger in town, huh?"
"Just passing through."
"Down on your luck, right?"
"It shows, does it?"
"To someone who knows people like I do, yeah it shows."
"So what do you want to do, rub it in?"
"Do I look like that kind of guy?" He did, but I kept the thought to myself. "No, I was thinking of maybe offering you a job."
"What kind of job?"
"Does it matter?"
"Not much, but sometimes I'm fussy."
"Pays to be that way. This is just routine. Collect a little money from a few people that owe me, an odd job here and there, that's all."
"So what happened to your last enforcer?"
"He had a little accident."
"You mean somebody killed him."
"If you want to put it like that."
"What's the pay?"
"Hundred a week. Maybe a little bonus now and then. Interested?"
"Maybe. When's my first payday?"
"How about right now with a little extra thrown in. What do they call it, a signing bonus?"
He took a fat wallet from his pocket and laid four fifties on the table. I had myself a job.
He had watched me coast into the lot and figured I was out of gas. He called somebody from a pay phone on the wall and ten minutes later a pickup truck pulled in next to my '36 Ford. The driver took a red can from the back and started pouring gas into the tank.
In the meantime my new boss and I got around to exchanging names. He told me to drive downtown to the hotel and say Arnie Scarno sent me. "Tell 'em I said to fix you up with their best room and put it on my tab."
He said to take a day or so to just wander around, get to know the layout. And get a new suit, something fitting my position. I had to stifle a laugh because half an hour earlier my position had been down and out. He gave me the name of his tailor and said the suit should go on his tab. To some men, running tabs is a way of showing power. Arnie Scarno fit the image.
The room at the Deal House overlooked the main drag and had a private bath. I stretched out on the bed and wondered what in hell I had gotten myself into. All my wishes had been fulfilled, but Scarno wasn't the kind of man to give someone a helping hand out of the kindness of his heart. If a man was down, kick him, that would have been more like it. Sometimes it doesn't pay to do a lot of thinking, so I didn't.
When I went downstairs there had been a shift change and a young woman, a knockout, was working the desk. I turned on my warmest smile. "They've got you on nights? Seems kind of dangerous for a woman."
She raised her eyebrows and gave a little shrug. "Day or night, it doesn't make much difference in Deathtown."
"What did you say?"
"Day or night it---"
"No, I mean the name of the town."
"It's Dealtown, but some people call it Deathtown."
"Nice. Makes a stranger feel right at home. So why the moniker?"
"People are always dying. Sixty-seven out at the coal mine a few months ago, fifty-three last year. Somebody always getting killed on the highway. You know, all the hills and curves. A dozen murders in the past nine or ten months. Seems like death never takes time off around here."
"Great little place to settle down. Got a boyfriend?"
"Are you propositioning me?"
"No. Dinner might be nice, though."
"I'm working at dinnertime."
"Lunch, then."
"You're a fast mover, aren't you?"
"Sometimes it pays off. But I was thinking about a little talk. You filling me in on the town, that sort of thing."
Her soft brown eyes twinkled easily. "Okay, what's to lose?"
"Tomorrow?"
"You are fast, but why not. I'll meet you here at noon."
She told me the name of the best restaurant in town and that's where we had lunch. In a city of any size the joint would have been out of business in a month. It wasn't food I was interested in, though. Mary Dawkins---I didn't learn her name until we were seated at a table---filled me in on some of the things I wanted to know about Dealtown and some of its big shots. After hearing a few names and why they were important I said, "How about Arnie Scarno?"
I picked up on her all but imperceptible shudder. "He's not a nice man."
"I'm not looking for a character reference. What does he do?"
"Owns a roadhouse, a dime-a-dance place outside the city limits. He's a thug."
"Most men who own roadhouses are. So what else does he do?"
"Why do you want to know about him?"
"Just curious."
"And I suppose you pulled his name out of thin air."
"Ran into him yesterday, that's all. So what else can you tell me?"
"He's half owner of the coal mine. As if that isn't enough he's a loan shark, a bookmaker, anything else that offers the chance for a fast buck."
I couldn't suppress a grin. "Aside from all that you hate his guts. Why?"
She lowered her eyes. "I just do."
"Were you one of his tencents-a-dance girls?"
"Not for long. Not after he ripped my clothes off after work one night."
"He forced himself on you?"
"That's one way of putting it."
"Did you report it to the cops?"
"Are you serious? He owns the cops in this town."
"In Deathtown, as you call it. So how come he lets you work at the hotel?"
"He doesn't own the hotel, just the rest of the town."
"He sent me there. To the hotel, I mean."
"I know. I checked you out last night. You've gone to work for him, haven't you?"
"Needed a job. Needed it bad."
"You'll last about a month. Then you'll die like they all do."
"Thanks for the word of encouragement, kiddo."
"If you're working for Scarno, don't bother to call me again."
"I never have called you."
"You know what I mean."
I did indeed. And I knew she wasn't kidding. Those soft brown eyes could shoot daggers and a few of them hit me where it hurt.
It was late in the afternoon after I'd been wandering the downtown streets for a couple of hours that I found out the name of the mine was the Dawkins-Scarno. When Mary came on duty at the hotel I risked a rebuff and stopped by the desk. "Is your old man Scarno's partner at the mine?"
"My father ran off with a B-girl at the roadhouse when I was ten. I haven't seen him since. My ex owns half the mine."
"You're divorced?"
"I'll say this for you, not only are you a fast mover, you're a quick thinker."
"Look, kid, let's bury the hatchet. Lunch again tomorrow?"
"Scarno might forgive you for having lunch with me once. Twice, uh-uh."
"Look, I need a little dope on what goes on out at that mine besides methane gas explosions."
She glanced around to make sure no one was within hearing distance. "They've got union trouble. It's a wildcat mine and the union's trying to muscle its way in. John---that's my ex---wants to go along with it, but Scarno says nix. He's not about to pay union wages, and on top of that there'd be safety inspections."
"I thought the state handled inspections."
"It does, but that doesn't mean a thing if you have the inspector on your payroll."
"After two explosions and more than a hundred dead you'd think---"
"You don't get it, do you? Look, the manager just came in so here's your room key. Now scram before I'm in trouble."
After breakfast at a hole-in-the-wall diner where the smell of stale grease permeated the air, I took another stroll around town. There were a few empty storefronts and boarded up windows but not as many as some places I'd been. The Great Depression was winding down so there were people on the street who looked like they might have a buck or two in their pockets. That meant a little business was being conducted, and not only in Dealtown. I wandered through the courthouse, an ancient structure that could have been a refugee from a gothic novel, and was heading back to the hotel when a mug with cauliflower ears and a nose that had been flattened more than once tapped me on the shoulder. "Arnie wants to see you, sport." The words came out sounding like he was gargling with gravel.
"Where is he?"
"I'll drive you."
"I'll drive myself. Where is he?"
"If that's the way you want to play it, sport. He's out at the roadhouse."
It turned out to be a little nicer than I expected. Red carpet except on a high-gloss dance floor, a well-stocked backbar, everything in decent shape for that kind of dive.
Arnie was at a table in a dark corner. With him were three strong-arm punks who looked me over like I'd crawled out of a sewer. My escort joined them. Arnie, all smiles, held out a cigar for me. "So, what do you think of our little town now that you've had a chance to size it up?"
"I've seen worse."
He winked and leered in a way I didn't like. "Hear you've been stepping out with a broad."
"Word travels fast."
"Watch your step. She's dynamite in a pretty package."
"I can take care of myself."
"You wouldn't be here if I didn't think you could. Ready to go to work?"
"Just name it."
He did, and for me it began a couple of weeks of doing jobs any high school kid could have handled after the last bell. Collecting money from shopkeepers who opened the cash register as soon as they saw me coming in the door, picking up the receipts from half a dozen bookies after the last races of the day had been run and the newspaper's final edition was on the street with the closing numbers on Wall Street. Not the kind of work that paid a hundred bucks a week. I was curious to know when I'd really start earning my keep and what it would involve.
My evenings were spent at the roadhouse. The dime-a-dance girls were easy on the eyes and looked a lot cleaner than most of the guys with them out on the floor. Not too surprising for a coal mining town that also had a steel mill and a few smaller factories. The place was hopping every night with miners and steel puddlers eager to hold a pretty girl in their arms. A place like Arnie's offered the only opportunity many of them would ever have.
The girls gave me a wide berth and Arnie's four strong-arm boys kept their distance. There had been no introductions, formal or otherwise, so I tagged them Stan, Ollie, Curly and Moe. One night they decided to see what was going on at another joint so I said, "Maybe I'll ride along."
A husky one with a tic in his right eye, the one I called Moe, seemed to be their leader. He shook his head. "No room in the car."
The car so short on room was a Hudson town sedan that seated three in front, three more in back, but I wasn't all broken up about not being wanted.
A few nights sitting around a dive like that gets to be old stuff. Arnie wanted me there so I stuck it out by reading a paperback mystery. That alone was enough to set me apart from the crowd. Good sense told me I should take my next paycheck and hit the road. Sometimes curiosity wins out over good sense.
Arnie and his four plug-uglies came to attention the night a dapper stranger came in, picked out a redhead, and hit the dance floor. He was medium size with a pencil-line mustache and a smirk that showed everywhere except on his face. I was seated next to the boss so I said, "Who's the new shooter, the dude in a hundred-dollar suit?"
"Union man. He's got guts coming in here."
"One of John L. Lewis's organizers?"
"You called it. Look, I got a message for you to deliver when he leaves."
"What kind of message?"
"Nothing serious. Take the ball bat over against the wall and kneecap him."
"That's all, huh? So how's he going to drive out of the lot after that?"
"That's his problem."
I wasn't keen on the job, but as things turned out it didn't matter. He left on the stroke of midnight and a car with three goons inside was waiting at the door. So close to it that there wasn't room for me to step outside until he slipped into the front passenger's seat.
Arnie didn't look happy when I was back so fast. Before I could open my mouth, Curly, who had been outside all the time, hurried up beside me. "It was no go, boss. Some of his pals pulled up so close to the door they shoulda had to pay a cover charge."
Arnie brought a fist down on the table. "So it was a setup. They were playing games with me. Tomorrow we're gonna teach 'em one they haven't played before."
I wasn't so sure of that. The three toughs in the car had looked like they knew any game Arnie might have in mind. Tomorrow should be interesting. Not fun, just interesting.
It turned out I didn't get to see the fiasco. Eight strong-arm hoods, Arnie's regular boys and four more he called in for the job, left for the mine at ten in the morning in two cars, the familiar Hudson and a late model LaSalle sedan. A dumb move in my book, so I wasn't sorry when Scarno took me by the arm before I could get in the second car. "You stay here with me. We've got other fish to fry."
We went back inside the roadhouse. Deserted at that time of day with chairs stacked on tables and a cleanup crew at work, the place looked tawdry and smelled of stale cigarette and cigar smoke. Scarno ordered a flunky to bring coffee and get the chairs off his usual table. When we were seated he said, "I'm having trouble with my partner at the mine. He's a pussycat, thinks we should let the union move in. If those organizers don't get the message this morning and are still hanging around, the guy's got to go."
"You're going to buy him out?"
He spewed coffee all over the table. "Hey, that's a good one. But it's not exactly what I have in mind. You're going to pay him a little visit, know what I mean?"
You didn't need much up in your head to know exactly what he meant. In Chicago a fellow named Hymie Weiss had coined a phrase that expressed it more clearly: Take him for a ride. A one-way ride.
That might have fit the job description Scarno had for me, but it didn't fit mine. I didn't bother to say so at the time.
The wrecking crew got back from the mine an hour later. Five of them got back, the other three had been dropped off at the hospital. Curly was one of the latter group. The two part-timers still able to walk had gone home to nurse their wounds. Stan, Ollie and Moe looked like they should do the same.
Scarno was livid as he listened to the story of how his thugs had walked into an ambush and came out on the short end of what followed. A few shots had been fired but most of the action involved tire chains, ball bats, and clubs. Curly had taken a bullet in his left leg.
When the story ended and the trio had gone somewhere to lick their wounds, Scarno said, "Come on." I followed him into his private office. He knelt down and worked the combination on a small safe. When he straightened up he had a box in his hand. He opened it and took out a snub-nose revolver, a .38. From a carton in a desk drawer he took six rounds and slipped them into the chambers, then handed the gun to me. "Brand new. Can't be traced. Get rid of it after the job. I want it done tonight, understand? I'll fill you in on where and when later. Now scram out of here, I've got some thinking to do."
So did I. I drove into town and checked the hotel. I didn't expect Mary Dawkins to be there and she wasn't, but I found her name in the phone book. I was starting to get concerned because she didn't answer until the seventh ring. "Listen, I know you told me not to call you but this is urgent. I need to talk to you in private without anyone knowing and not on the telephone. Can you slip in the back door of the hotel and take the service stairs up to my room without being seen?"
"Your room? Exactly what do you have in mind?"
"Not what you're thinking. Look, this is serious. Big time serious."
"Okay, but it'll be half an hour. I just got out of the tub so I have to get dressed and fix my hair."
"Don't spend time on your hair, just get down here." I caught myself before making a crack about not bothering to get dressed. That could have scared her off altogether.
I left the door unlocked, so twenty minutes later she knocked a single time and then stepped inside. Every hair was in place. I laid Scarno's plan out in detail. "Are you on speaking terms with your ex?"
"I suppose so."
"Then you'd better tell him to get out of town. Now, before dark."
"It won't do any good. Even if he listens to me, it will only postpone the inevitable, that's all."
"That's enough for now."
"And if he doesn't, are you going to do what Scarno says?"
"I'm no angel, we both know that, but I'm not anybody's hired killer."
She turned when she reached the door. "Good luck when Scarno finds that out."
I followed a few minutes later in need of the strongest cup of coffee I could find. That meant returning to the diner where I'd first met Arnie Scarno. I got what I wanted, and it came in the same cracked mug, or maybe its twin brother.
I arrived back at the roadhouse a little after four o'clock. Arnie was alone at his table. He got up and motioned with his head for me to follow him to the office. He went behind his desk, then faced me and said, "Ready to do that job?"
"I'm here, aren't I? That means I'm ready."
"That's not the way I heard it."
"Oh yeah? From who?"
He raised his voice a couple of notches. "Come on out, kid."
A side door opened and Mary Dawkins walked in. I admit I was stunned. When I found my voice I said, "You told him? When did you switch over to his side?"
"When you said you weren't going to go through with the job."
"You go along with killing your husband? Ex-husband?"
"You can drop the ex. We're separated, not divorced. I go along because he's got a twenty-five thousand dollar life insurance policy and I'm the beneficiary."
"For that you're willing to see him murdered?"
"I won't see it. I'll be working at the hotel."
"You may not be there, but you'll see it all the same. And you'll be an accessory."
I'd been watching Scarno from the corner of my eye. His hand moved toward a desk drawer, but before he reached it the revolver was in my hand. "You slipped up, Arnie. You should have asked for the gun back before we started talking."
He knew I was right. That didn't mean he wouldn't try to bluff his way through. "Why should I have asked for it back? All you have to do is go ahead with the job, and all is forgiven."
"Like a rattlesnake forgives the guy who stomps on it. This is all you wanted me for right from the start, isn't it? You had it all figured out but needed a recruit, a sucker to do the dirty work so your four flunkies would stay clean. Then you'd turn me over to the cops on your payroll, but feet first so I couldn't tell an honest prosecutor or judge about your role in it. Make it seem like a freelance job, was that how you had it planned?"
"I've been square with you from the start. You're not some jerkwater punk who thought I was hiring somebody to keep the books."
He had me there. I backed out of the room. Before shutting the door behind me I said, "Don't try following me, Arnie." I waved the gun a little. "I'm pretty good with one of these things."
I drove off in a hurry, pulled into a lot halfway back to town, and parked between a derelict building and an abandoned panel truck. I hadn't even had time to turn off the engine before Mary Dawkins passed on her way to town. A few quiet minutes went by and then the puke I called Moe drove by headed toward the roadhouse. A short time later he went back the other way. As soon as he was out of sight I followed behind. A filling station on the outskirts of town had a phone booth off to one side, so I found John Dawkins's number in the book and dialed it.
Just as I figured when I hadn't tried to call him earlier, he didn't buy the story coming from a stranger. Telling him his wife knew about the plan made him even more skeptical. I kept trying until he said, "Hold on, there's somebody at the door."
"Don't answer it!" I yelled, but he was already gone. A long minute dragged by, then the sound of a shot came over the wire. A short silence, then several more in rapid succession. It seemed that Moe wasn't sure of his first shot or just enjoyed pumping slugs into a victim.
I dropped the phone on its hook and walked back to my car. Scarno's revised plan was clear in my mind. He figured he was killing two birds with a single shot. His partnership was ended, and I was still set up to take the fall just as he had figured from the beginning. Half a dozen people would swear I was a hothead who went wild after taking a beating at the mine that morning and went on my own to settle up with the man on the side of the union. He thought I'd be well on my way out of town, so he'd supply the state police with the information, complete with the license number of my car. I'd be pulled over within an hour, never suspecting I was about to face a murder rap.
There was nothing for it but to go back to the roadhouse. I hadn't a clue as to what I'd do when I got there.
Scarno was alone at his table. That was the first of several surprises; I had expected the full crew to be there aside from Moe and Curly. Moe'd be arriving close on my heels. Scarno motioned toward a chair. "Sit down. I've been expecting you."
"No you haven't, Arnie. You thought I'd be long gone by now."
"Not for a minute, I didn't. You may not be the man I had you sized up to be, but you're no common thief. You wouldn't take off without giving me back the gun. Look, let's forget the whole thing. Maybe you're not a shooter, but there's room here for a man like you. Those other mugs are okay for what they do, nothing more. I need a guy with something more above his neck than just a place to hang his hat."
I didn't believe a word he said but decided to play along. "You mean a second in command, a right-hand man. How do you think your boys would feel about that? They haven't exactly laid out the welcome mat the past few weeks."
"What they think don't matter. I run the show. They're just two for a nickel hoodlums, that's all."
"So what's the pay for this job?"
"You name it. Say two-fifty a week, how does that sound?"
Before I had time to digest that malarkey, a state police captain came in the door. Four troopers followed close behind. The captain walked to the table, stopping so he was facing Scarno. "Hello, Arnie. Before we get down to business, I'd feel more comfortable if you laid your hands on top of the table."
Scarno complied. "What's this all about? Why the tough cop act all of a sudden?"
"You're getting careless, Arnie. You should've checked a little closer. You'd have known we had a man covering Dawkins since that business out at the mine this morning."
"Why would that interest me?"
"Playing coy doesn't become you, Arnie. Our man was upstairs using the john so he was too late to spoil the play. The boy you sent down was quick on the trigger, did a good job so your partnership was dissolved an hour ago. That's the good news, Arnie. The bad is the punk took a couple of slugs himself and then turned canary. The worst news of all from your point of view is he'll live and be the star witness for the state."
Scarno seemed to blanch a little but was too tough and too fast a thinker to show yellow. It would be his word against that of a small-time hood, and that put the odds in his favor. "You're wasting your time and mine, Cap. I haven't a clue what you're talking about."
"Grab your hat, Arnie, we're taking a ride downtown."
So it seemed the state police weren't on Scarno's payroll. The second they walked in the door I ditched the gun he had given me. There was one of those shelves for holding purses about eight inches under the tabletop so I slid the .38 over in front of Scarno. It clinked against metal and you didn't need a college degree to know what it had bumped up against.
They patted me down, naturally, then ignored me, at least for the time being, after finding I was clean. All five were grinning when one of them checked the purse shelf where Scarno had been sitting and came up with two guns.
"Expecting a war, Arnie?" said the captain.
Scarno may not have heard because he was telling the bartender to take charge while he was gone. "Call that shyster lawyer of mine. I'll be back in an hour, maybe two."
When they were gone I went over to the bar and ordered a beer. Would Scarno be convicted of anything? Not likely. Moe would have a sudden lapse of memory, and if that didn't work a juror, maybe two, would find themselves a little richer before a trial even began. Guys like Scarno didn't get convicted, at least not in a place like Dealtown. To make it look good he'd probably have to let the union into the mine. He'd just jack up the price on everything at the roadhouse to make up the difference.
The phone rang just as I was finishing my beer. After hanging up, the bartender was busy at the cash register for a minute and then came over and handed me five one-hundred dollar bills. "It was Arnie on the line. He said for you to head out of town. Pronto, and don't leave no forwarding address."
So I would chalk up my stay in Dealtown to experience. Not a bad experience, all things considered. I had a new suit and about nine hundred more dollars in my pocket than had been there when I arrived. Aside from meals, gasoline, and fifteen a week for the hotel room, I hadn't spent a cent. Even the drinks and the cigars had been on Arnie.
At the hotel I packed up my belongings and took the stairs to the lobby. Mary Dawkins was checking in a new arrival, all smiles and charm. She was coming out of the sordid business fragrant as a spring breeze. Richer, too, by twenty-five grand.
It no longer was my concern. I went on out the door to my car and headed back along the road that had brought me to Dealtown. Deathtown---how right the newly widowed Mary had been about that.
On impulse I stopped at the roadside diner and had a cup of bitter tasting coffee in the familiar cracked mug. It just seemed like the thing to do, the proper way to say so long to a town I didn't expect to see again.
Copyright © 2009 Dick Stodghill
Connor blew into Laskin like an ancient prophet in a chariot of fire: a '72 Chevy Nova billowing black smoke. He managed to scramble out of the car right before it burst into flames. I saw the whole thing---I was at the Quikstop getting a pop---and I called it in and then rushed over.
"You okay?" I asked. He nodded. "You got any idea what set it burning?" He shook his head. I tried again. "Maybe it was overheated?" He shrugged. "What's your name?"
He looked at me for the first time. He had blond hair, large, clear blue eyes, and his head was slightly oversized. He looked like a puzzled five year old. "Connor. Connor Ashe."
"Where'd you come from?"
He shrugged. Now we don't get a lot of drifters in Laskin---we're not on any highway, and it's a small town---but when we do we usually try to get them to move on. And I'd already thought of all the things I could write him up for: reckless endangerment, public nuisance, hazardous driving. But somehow I found myself taking him over to Mellette's Lounge and buying him a cup of coffee. Paul Wilson joined us and ended up giving him a ride down to Job Service, where Marjorie Swenson took over and got him hired at Inveig Construction. And out there someone got him a trailer rental at the Koz-E Campground. Something about Connor made everybody want to help him.
He ended up staying over a year, which was longer than I would have expected. He changed jobs a couple of times, and he hung out a lot at the Norseman's Bar, but he spent just as much time at the library, or down at Mellette's, playing euchre with the old guys. He became part of the community. And then one day he blew out of town with no warning, and everyone figured that was that. Everybody missed him, but no one was surprised. Not until his body was found a year later under a stack of composting Christmas trees down by the creek. Someone had caved his head in.
The day after his body was found, I came in from patrol and found the station hopping.
"Grant!" Detective Jonasson barked at me. "You got a minute, run over to the meatpacking plant. Chuck's got some paperwork on that Connor guy for me."
"He also worked at Inveig Construction for a while. Want me to stop by there too?"
"No." He looked up at me. "You go down to the Norseman's Bar." It wasn't a question.
"Sometimes."
"He spent a lot of time down there, didn't he?"
"I don't know about a lot. He came in and had a red beer after work. Friendly but..." "Elusive" was the word that came to mind. "Mostly he talked with the old timers."
"No girls?"
I could see Connor sitting at a table with a young blonde girl whose blue eyes almost matched his. "Susan Nelson."
Jonasson nodded. "Paula mentioned her. Said she'd be real upset." Paula is Jonasson's wife. I had no idea how she knew Susan, but here in Laskin almost everyone's connected one way or another. "You know her?"
"Just to speak to."
"Okay. Get on to Veblen's."
Chuck Veblen was waiting for me outside his office. "I knew as soon as I heard about his body being found that someone would be out here." I followed him inside. "I had Pat dig out all the paperwork." He handed me a stack of old time sheets and a W-2 carbon. "He was a good worker, no problems that I remember. Everyone liked him. I wasn't happy when he took off---when I thought he took off. But I wasn't surprised. Boy was a freeze-dried hippie."
"Drugs?"
"Not hardly. He didn't smoke, didn't cuss, didn't like dirty jokes. Worst he ever did was have a beer or two at the Norseman's on the weekend." Veblen shook his head at the waste.
"We were all a bit crude for him, weren't we?"
"Yeah. But he wasn't obnoxious about it. I can't think of anyone who'd want to kill him."
"Neither can I. Anybody he hung out with around here?"
Chuck shook his head. "Nah. Not that I remember." He chuckled. "You might ask Matt Stark."
"Matt!" Matt's real name was Martha Stark. In her sixties, she looked, acted, and talked about as feminine as an old boot.
"He hung out with her more than anybody, I think. They used to go hunting together."
"You're kidding."
"Nope. Ask her."
"Thanks. I might have to," I said, without any eagerness at all.
I took the papers back to the office, clocked out, and went home. Barry was sitting on my back steps, smoking a cigarette.
"Hi, Grant."
"Barry. Put the cigarette out and I'll make you a cup of coffee."
"I'd rather have a beer," Barry said, but he scrunched the butt out with his foot.
Inside, Barry sat down at the kitchen table. "I heard about Connor." I nodded and put the kettle on. "I liked him." Barry liked almost everybody. "He was really nice."
"That's true. He was," I agreed.
"I mean, he was really nice to me. Back when he worked construction for Neil."
That, of course, was why Jonasson had warned me off that. Inveig Construction had belonged to Neil Inveig, who had been murdered a short time ago. A young man name of Todd Johnson had been convicted of killing him, but there had been a rumor going around town that I did it, either because of Barry or an old girlfriend. Now I knew that the rumor was still active.
I turned around and spooned instant coffee into cups. "You got any idea why he quit working there, Barry?"
"He said the hours were too long. Plus he didn't like Neil."
"Why not?"
"I don't know. He didn't like the way Neil talked." I handed Barry his coffee, and he poured half the sugar bowl in it. He took deep slurps, saying, "He said Neil was cruel. I told him he was wrong, but he didn't listen. He said that was the worst thing ever. He said something about a haircut. I don't know what he meant." He looked up at me over his cup. "They had a fight, him and Neil. Neil said he was a Good ... Good ... Goody Two-shoes. He was glad to get rid of him. But I missed him."
A thread of an idea teased at the back of my mind. "Drugs?" I wondered, more to myself than to Barry.
Barry's eyes panicked. "I don't do that no more."
"I know. I was wondering if Connor..." I stopped myself. No matter what I asked, if it entailed drugs, Barry wouldn't remember.
That weekend was awful or touching, depending on how you looked at it. Jonasson was in a foul mood, but I expected that. He's a good detective, at least good enough for Laskin, but this was an old, cold case by now, and he didn't like it. On TV, when they investigate a cold case, there's all sorts of forensic evidence, and witnesses who remember every detail from twenty-five years ago come crawling out of the woodwork. In real life, most people can't remember what happened last week, much less a year ago. Although everybody remembered Connor. I heard all kinds of tributes myself, so I could only guess what Jonasson was hearing.
Joe Hegdahl over Saturday breakfast at Mellette's:
"He was a fine boy, you betcha. He used to come in the Norseman's every night about five, maybe five-thirty, have a beer and we'd talk. He was a good talker, told good stories. Clean ones, not like most you hear nowadays. He had a great one, about a bobcat in a suitcase, always cracked me up. You see, there were these two kids, out hunting one day and they found an old suitcase lying in the woods, just lying there, and they---" Joe shook his head. I think he'd forgotten the rest of it. "Yeah, jokes. We had a running joke about my nose, how I had nose like Andrew Carnegie, and Connor, he'd call me a retired philanthropist. 'How's the retired philanthropist?' that's what he'd say, every day. Just a joke, you know. Retired philan---" and I swear he broke down and bawled like a baby.
Vi, at the Norseman's, Saturday night, sighed and said, "I still can't believe he's dead. Connor was so ... alive. He just lit up the place. And his eyes---they were so blue, and so large and innocent, just like a child's. He was nothing but a big boy, really. He never would wear a hat or gloves, no matter how cold it was. I told him over and over again..." Someone called for a tap and she walked off, wiping her eyes.
"Oh, they had such a crush on each other," my mother said Sunday afternoon as we sat on her deck. She was talking about Connor and Susan Nelson. "I remember when she brought him to church---and don't you think it's about time you started coming?" I gave Mom the look. "Well, it broke her heart when he left town. For a while she could hardly sing at all." Susan was a soprano in the church choir. "I just wept for her, and I prayed for her. And now we know what happened. If whoever it was hadn't killed him, I know they would have gotten married. Oh, I can just see it now. It would have been so beautiful. They were so well matched. And sweet ... Like a couple of kids." I winced. "Puppy love," Mom said, sighing.
I was uneasy after talking to Mom. I remembered seeing Connor and Susan down at Mellette's, holding hands and giggling(!), and I remember thinking at the time that normal couples in their twenties weren't as sweet and innocent as they appeared to be---and feeling ashamed of myself for my coarse suspicions. Now, feeling ashamed of myself again, I needed to talk to someone coarser than I was. And that's why I finally went to see Matt Stark.
"I was wondering when you'd show up," she said when I knocked at her door.
"Me?"
"Jonasson doesn't ever come near me," she assured me. I understood. Her place was tiny, dark, and smelled of dogs and stale cigarettes. "Coffee?"
"Sure," I said. I sat down and her dog, a long-haired mutt, put its head firmly in my lap and looked up at me with Barry's eyes. "Hey, Whisper," I said, stroking its head. "I hear you and Connor used to go hunting together."
"We went hiking together. Connor didn't like killing things, and neither do I. Not animals, at any rate." She set a cup in front of me, sat down, and lit a cigarette. "He was a damn funny kid. I liked him. Hell, you couldn't help liking him. But..." She shook her head. "He was the kind of guy that causes a hell of a lot of trouble, never even knows it."
"What kind of trouble?"
She gave me a half grin. "Connor or his type?"
"Connor. I'm not interested in his type."
"You should be. You're a lot alike. You got more sense, but that's all." I took a sip of coffee: It was the real stuff. "You want his papers?"
I choked on the coffee. "Papers? What papers?"
"His writing, his books, that kind of stuff."
I sat up straight. "How did you get that?"
Matt shrugged. "It was my trailer he was renting. When he disappeared, I went and cleaned it out. It's all stashed in the spare bedroom." She got up. "Come on, you can look through it, take what you want."
The spare bedroom was about twice the size of a closet. Connor's clothes were in a black plastic bag, and there were perhaps two dozen books stacked beside it. I picked up the top one, a black sketchbook.
"He left all this behind?" I asked, leafing quickly through the sketchbook. It was full of writing. "Why didn't you tell someone?"
"Tell what? Connor always said he was just passing through."
"And the fact that he didn't take this stuff with him didn't arouse any suspicions?" I stuck the sketchbook under my arm and started flipping through the pages of the books. There was writing and doodles in the margins and flyleafs.
"No." Matt stubbed her cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray. "He was the type that leaves everything behind. Walks away clean. Or so he thinks."
"Then why'd you keep all this?" I waved my arm around.
"Well, I thought maybe someday he'd come back."
Before I could stop myself, I asked, "To see you?"
"No, to see his kid."
"What kid? Susan Nelson? She's never been pregnant."
Matt made a rude sound. "She's never been anything as far as I can tell. No, Maria Jensen. She worked at the meatpacking plant. She was also one of Neil Inveig's girls until Connor rescued her." I looked up from The Collected Stories of Ring Lardner, my mouth open. "Got her away from Neil, got her off drugs, cleaned her up, knocked her up. Or so she said." Matt lit another cigarette. "I asked Connor if he was sure the baby was his, not Neil's, and he said yes. As if he'd know. He considered himself committed. He told Susan, which was stupid---" I remembered seeing Susan, her head bent over a back table in the Norseman's Bar, crying her eyes out as Vi comforted her. I'd thought at the time she was crying because Connor had left town. "Typical Connor. Do the honorable thing."
"Get a drug addict pregnant?"
"Ex drug addict. And I'm sure she seduced him. Maria couldn't believe a man liked her unless he slept with her. Her mom was just like her, ended up with five kids by three different guys. She had Simon and Willie by that truck driver, Sally and Pat by Carl, and Maria by one of the Mexican guys that worked at the plant."
My mind was working furiously. Maria. Neil. Drugs. They had a fight. "How long after all of this did Connor disappear?"
"Couple of weeks after he found out Maria was pregnant. He usually came and played euchre with us at Mellette's on Saturday mornings. He didn't show up. I went by the trailer later on, and he wasn't there. I went by Maria's, wasn't there, either. I figured he panicked and ran, and that surprised me. I thought he had more guts. But you can't ever tell. I never thought of anyone killing him."
"Where's Maria now?"
"Over in Flandreau. Got herself a trailer on the south side of town."
I picked up the books Connor had written in. "I'm going to take these with me."
"I already said you could." Matt walked me to the door, and Whisper danced around my legs. "By the way, she had a girl."
"Who?"
"Maria. A little girl. Named her Angelita."
I went back home and started reading Connor's sketchbook. By seven, I'd had two beers and was wishing the Norseman's was open. The sketchbook was pretty much one long rant---in extremely small handwriting---on the corruption of modern society, with a lot of cribbing from Thoreau. It was about what you'd expect from an eighteen year old, but coming from a guy in his mid twenties I thought it was pretty depressing.
The only thing that kept me going was that every once in a while it got specific. Lots of verbal sketches about the meatpacking plant---most of them highly defamatory. Sketches of people who worked there. Of folks down at the Norseman's: Joe Hegdahl's nose and Carl Schmidt's wheeze "like an accordion with no keys." Susan got a lot of poetic crap---"the heart of the white rose waiting for dawn"---but was Susan or Maria the woman who "cried more than anyone I've ever seen, more than I ever imagined a woman could cry"?
"She cried until it seemed like I'd drown in her tears, salted and wet and warm like the sea..." And after that, in large letters, "My very life is my disgrace."
It must have been Maria.
I left the sketchbook and drove to Flandreau. I found Maria's trailer easily enough: I'd gotten the address from Burt, the Flandreau dispatcher. It was an old battered tan double-wide. Maria opened the door as I got out of the car. She was thinner than I remembered, and her eyes looked bruised.
"Maria, I don't know if you remember me---"
"Sure I remember you," she said. She had a deep, raspy voice that reminded me of Matt's. Her long black hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she was wearing blue jeans and a black Sturgis T-shirt. "You're Barry's brother." She looked up and down a row of trailers. "Well, this'll make the evening news. You might as well come on in, give them plenty to talk about." Inside, the place was worn and scruffy. "Who told you about me?" Maria asked, roughly. "Folks at the plant? Or that Nelson bitch?"
"Actually, Matt Stark," I said. "She had Connor's stuff."
She nodded. "I should have known." She waved at the kitchen table. "Sit down. Coffee?"
"Sure. You want to tell me about Connor?"
"No," she said, chewing on her lower lip as she went over to the stove. "But I guess I'm going to have to. We ... We fell in love. I got pregnant. I thought he just ran off. Most men do. I never thought he was dead." Her hands trembled, pouring the coffee.
I asked, "Why didn't you stay in Laskin?"
"What for? I couldn't go back to Neil. And I wasn't going back to the plant." She gave the world a tough look and set a cup in front of me. "So I came here. Worked at the casino for a while."
"What about the baby?"
"With my sister." I waited a moment, but she didn't offer any more explanation.
"When was the last time you saw Connor?"
"It was a Thursday. I remember because I was watching Ugly Betty. Connor said he was going---"
"Where was this?"
"My place. Connor was kind of staying with me, but he never gave up that rathole trailer of his. Of Matt's. I couldn't stand that place. He said he was going out for a while, but he'd be back later. He kissed me goodbye. And that was the last I saw of him."
"And he didn't say where he was going?"
"Connor never said where he was going. He said freedom was as important as trust in a relationship." She ran a finger around the rim of her cup. "What do you think?"
"Ideally, yeah."
"Oh, that was Connor. All ideals." I wasn't sure if she was wistful or resentful.
"You have any idea where he might have been going?"
"I figured he was going down to the Norseman's, have a couple of beers."
"Who do you think killed Connor?" I asked.
"God in heaven, I don't know."
"Do you think Neil could have done it?"
She looked at me like I was crazy. "Over me? Hell, no. Neil didn't give a rat's ass about me."
"Maybe over drugs."
"Connor didn't do drugs," Maria said.
"I know that. I was thinking maybe they fought about something Connor found out about Neil's drug dealing. From you."
She gave a harsh laugh. "Not hardly. I didn't know anything."
"Maria."
"Look, I was just one of Neil's girls. A piece of ass. Of course he gave me drugs, but he didn't tell me anything, and I didn't ask. We didn't have that kind of relationship." She enunciated the last word very clearly.
"What kind of relationship did you want to have?"
Her eyes dropped to her hands. "I thought I was into him. Until Connor came along. Then I saw I was just into the drugs. Take them away, and Neil was a rotten s.o.b."
"I agree."
She let out a great burst of air and said, "Look, Connor, I don't know who killed him." She closed her eyes tightly, and when she opened them again, they looked like they'd been burned black. What she needed was a good cry, but I didn't think it was going to happen. At least not with me there. "When he didn't come back, I asked around. Nobody'd seen him. Nobody knew where he was. I thought he'd run off. I should have known better. Not that it matters now." She got up, went to the cupboard, and pulled out a bottle of vodka. "You want a drink?"
A knock at the door made us both turn.
"Maria! You in there?"
"Oh, God," she said, and thrust the bottle back in the cupboard. "It's Manuel."
A short sturdy Mexican walked in, a scowl on his face. "Maria, what do you think---" He saw me and stopped. The scowl changed to concern. "What are you doing here?"
"What do you think?" Maria said. "He's asking about Connor."
Manuel nodded. Now he looked jovial. "The investigation begins. This is good. Connor, he was a good man. A very good man. I thought bad thoughts about him for a time, but now I know he never meant to abandon my little cousin here." I remembered Matt on Maria's parentage. "I, too, would like to find out who killed him."
"Do you have any suspicions?" I asked.
"I do not know. Connor, he was the sort of man you never think has enemies. But he made them, just the same. For instance, he was trying to help us."
"Manuel," Maria said warningly.
"Why not? Why not tell the truth? He was trying to help us, at the plant. Those who were legal and those who were illegal. I have my green card, I am legal, so I can say this. He wanted to help us all get better wages. Perhaps even benefits. I do not think Mr. Veblen liked that very much."
"I'm sure he didn't. Did he ever talk about calling the immigration authorities?"
"Oh, no. If he did that, too many people would get in trouble. Guillermo, for one, and he had a great fondness for Guillermo."
"Manuel!" Maria cried.
Manuel shook his head at Maria. "Guillermo has gone to L.A. Nothing here matters to him now." He smiled. "There were rumors that Connor was perhaps too friendly with Guillermo. Guillermo is Maria's nephew. She felt protective. So she went to have a little talk with Connor. The result, Angelita, who lives with---"
"Manuel!" Maria screamed.
"All right," Manuel said. "She is embarrassed. But we all wondered ... And we were proved wrong. We are all truly sorry that he is dead. I hope you find out who killed him."
"So do I," I said, getting up. "I've got to get back to Laskin."
The next day I took all of Connor's stuff to the station, and told Jonasson about my weekend. When I was done, he stared at the table for a few minutes.
"That's a hell of a can of worms to open up," he finally said.
"Somebody killed him."
"I know that." He pursed his lips. "Be better if it had been Inveig." I knew what he meant. The meatpacking plant was one of Laskin's few industries, and Neil was dead. "But he'd never have gotten his hands dirty with murder." Then, after a long pause, he added, "Illegal immigrants. I guess we're going to have to look into it." He picked up the sketchbook. "You start looking for his car."
"You mean that junker Dan sold him?"
"Uh-huh. Peterson did a title check, and it hasn't been sold. He called the used-car lots, nothing."
"It could be anywhere," I pointed out.
"So look anywhere." He shook his head. "Illegal immigrants. God help us."
I called all the used car lots back again, and then worked my way through the junkyards. Nothing. By then it was lunchtime, and I went down to the Dairy Queen. I ate my burger and fries, thinking about Lake Howard, and all the other lakes and ponds that riddled our part of the state. There were the endless acres of the Vermillion Hills. There was Dark Hollow. There was ... I looked up and saw Susan Nelson, sitting down in the corner booth with a banana split. She'd always been a big healthy country girl, but now she was getting fat.
"Hi, Susan," I said.
"Hi, Grant."
"How are you doing?" I asked.
"I'm fine." Her blue eyes, almost a mirror of Connor's, were clear as ever. "Everybody's asking that. Actually, it's kind of a relief to know the truth."
"I'm sure it is. I was wondering if I could talk to you sometime."
"Of course," Susan said. "But I don't know anything. We broke up..." And her bottom lip quivered, just a little.
"I know. But, before that, did he ever talk to you about the meatpacking plant?"
"Of course. He hated it. He hated the cruelty of it toward animals. He was a vegetarian, you know. He hated the exploitation of the workers. But he wouldn't quit. He felt that he had to fully understand what was going on, become one with the workers, work from within." Her lips tightened away to nothing. "Of course, there was another interest..." She got up, her untouched banana split in her hand. "I'm sorry, but I have to go home and practice."
She rushed out of there. She still loves him, I thought, as I got a pop to go.
I was driving the long way back to the station, around Laskin, when I spotted the Park and Sell lot on the bypass. I'd forgotten about that, and I'd bet so had Peterson. Steve Davison had opened it up a couple of years ago---anything to make money without hardly working---and there were always at least a dozen cars there. Today there were fifteen, none of them Connor's. So I called Steve.
"I've got a license," he said.
"I know that, Steve. I just want to know if you've sold a '97 Chevy Camaro in the last year."
"Why?" His voice was nervous, but it always is when he talks to the police.
"I can get a warrant," I said.
"I'll have to check my records."
"Sure. Can I check them with you?"
There was a pause, and then he said, "Sure, no problem."
"I'll be right over."
"Wait!"
But I clicked the cell phone shut and went. Steve's office is in his house, specifically, his garage. He was waiting for me.
"I've looked, but I haven't sold anything like that. I haven't even seen anything like that."
"You sure?" I started to look through his records.
"Uh-huh. You can check for yourself. Whose car is it?"
"Was," I replied. "Connor's. The guy whose body we found last week."
"Oh." Steve's relief was palpable. Something else to check into when I had the time. "No, I didn't handle anything like that."
He was telling the truth. "How many of these park and sell lots are there around?"
"Just mine in town."
"In the county?"
"Well, there's one in Howard, and one over in Flandreau, Brookings, and probably Huron."
"You own any of them?"
"No, this is my only lot. Though it's a nice money maker. Maybe I should expand."
"Maybe you shouldn't. You're barely keeping track of what you've got." Steve grinned, barely, and I smiled back. "Thanks for your help, Steve."
I went to Howard, but hit pay dirt in Flandreau. The lot owner was Wally Thielbar, and Connor's car was still on his lot. Well, I said it was a junker.
"I swear, I didn't know anything was wrong with the deal," Thielbar said at his office. "She brought it in with the title, made out to her."
"She?"
"Dark haired woman, in her twenties." He pulled out the paperwork. "Maria Jensen."
The little liar, I thought. Both her and Manuel. But why would Maria kill Connor? Unless Manuel did it. And the whole story about the baby and Connor was a lie. But Matt said she was pregnant, and Matt hadn't lied to me. Maybe Manuel killed Connor because he knocked Maria up? And Maria was afraid to tell because...
I looked up at Thielbar. "You think you could identify this woman if you saw her again?"
"Oh, sure," he said. "When she took off her sunglasses to sign the papers, I saw her eyes. Beautiful blue eyes. Very striking, for a woman with black hair."
When Susan Nelson opened her door and saw Thielbar standing next to me, first she looked like she was going to faint, then like she was going to run. You could see the options shaking through her. Then she turned around and went inside. I followed her, but she was only picking up her purse.
"All right," she said. "Let's go."
I took her out to my patrol car, and nodded to Peterson in his patrol car across the street. Thielbar rode with him. I started the car and wondered how she'd gotten the title---but of course, I realized, Connor would have just kept it in the car. I glanced back at Susan. She was staring at me in the rearview mirror, with those damned blue eyes.
"You shouldn't have taken off the sunglasses," I said. "It would have been a perfect frame-up if you hadn't."
She winced. Then she started crying. "He never touched me," she said. "Never, except to hold my hand. I thought ... I thought ... And then I found out he'd been with her, that she was pregnant. And he was going to marry her."
It broke my heart. Until I heard her make the same speech, with the same tears, at the trial. It got her sentence cut a little, to twenty years.
Copyright © 2009 Eve Fisher
Thorolf's farm was full of bustle. Neighbors who had not seen one another all winter slapped hands in greeting and fell into farmer-chat about the miserable spring, the new crop of lambs, and prospects for a good summer. Their wives embraced old friends, greeted less-liked women more coolly, and eyed one another's dress and decorations. Slaves bundled their masters' belongings into the long hall and herded their horses into the near pasture. Thorolf, the godi, looking as regal as possible, presided over all. Marta, his wife, welcomed the guests with words and gestures that subtly reminded them of her status. Gerda, their pretty, plump, sixteen-year-old daughter, chatted and flirted with Gunnlaug, a young man who had a small farm.
Ordinarily, Colm didn't like to attend the Sacrifices. Slaves usually didn't get to share the meat, and if they stayed back on their farm, they could run the place with a slack hand and enjoy being masterless for a few days. But this year Bjorn ordered Colm to accompany him to look after the horses and run whatever errand might come to mind. Even so, Colm didn't mind going to this Sacrifice because Gwyneth would be there, and there might be opportunity to share a few words with her, or even flirt a bit.
Bjorn's wife, Aud, had brought several slaves along. Aud's only daughter was married to a Hebridean, and her sons, too, lived far away. There were only slaves to look after her. She seemed not in good health, thought Colm, and looked as though she were losing weight. Gwyneth attended her carefully, steering her out of the crowd toward the benches where she could rest.
A sudden commotion caught Colm's attention and he caught the arrival of Magnus, a well-to-do farmer. But it was Ingveld, Magnus's wife, who was at the center of a hubbub of women, all exclaiming and marveling at her necklace. Ingveld's necklace held five large pieces of colored glass, two blue, two green, and the largest, a brilliant red, all polished smooth as eggs. Women chattered and reached forth tentative fingers as though to touch the object, then pulled them away. The men stood back silently, envious of Magnus that he could so adorn his wife. But Colm suspected that the necklace had actually been the gift of one of Ingveld's sons, Eystein, who had been raiding in Ireland.
Colm's eyes narrowed as he watched the crowd buzz around Ingveld and her necklace. He himself had been stolen from Ireland as a child, sold as a slave to Bjorn, then brought to Iceland. Probably the glass in Ingveld's necklace had once studded a reliquary or a crucifix and been turned into women's jewelry by a goldsmith---perhaps himself a slave---in a Norse holding in Ireland.
Ingveld's other son, Halldor, made his way through the women and tried to greet Gerda, Thorolf's daughter. But Gerda's greedy eyes were fixed on the necklace and she would not turn her face to Halldor. Eventually, the young man gave up and moved away.
Now everyone had arrived. It was time for the sacrifice. Thorolf, dressed in a white robe, hushed the crowd. People sorted themselves out, men to one side, women to the other, as Thorolf walked between them toward the stone-walled shrine that held the figures of the Gods. A white mare was tethered near the shrine. The only marking on the horse was a patch of brown on one flank---a vertical stripe with a crossbar. Maybe it looked a little like Thor's hammer or Tyr's spear or some other symbol of some other deity. Perhaps the Gods had marked this horse for their own. Bjorn turned the mare toward the crowd so that they could see the mark that had doomed this animal to sacrifice from the moment of its birth.
Colm looked at the mare's fat flanks and felt his mouth water. He hoped, for a moment, that he might have some morsel of meat from the feast but he knew that, with all this crowd, there would be none for the slaves. He pushed the hope from his mind before it could fester into resentment or anger or any of the other emotions that might lead a slave to his doom.
A large bowl was placed before the mare, who dipped her muzzle into it briefly. The crowd murmured its approval, thinking the horse was looking to its fate. But Colm thought the animal sought to find water or feed in the vessel. Thorolf flourished a great, sharp knife and spoke a few words, dedicating the sacrifice to the Gods, then he cut the mare's throat.
Blood gushed in a great spurt. The mare sank to her knees as Thorolf steadied her head over the brimming bowl. Blot was the word for sacrifice and blood was its meaning. Thorolf lay the dead horse's head upon the ground and took up a whisk of birch branches. He dipped it into the bowl of blood then entered the shrine. He chanted some words, then reappeared, dipped the whisk again, then went back inside. Colm knew that Thorolf was feeding the idols in the shrine, lashing them with blood. Thorolf came outside and dipped the whisk again. His white robe was spattered with red. Colm had heard that there were three figures in the shrine. One of Thor, the much beloved god; one of the goddess Freya, mistress of herds and crops and all fecund life; and one of Njord, who had to do with ships and sailing and also that final voyage, death. Thorolf kept returning and taking blood back inside the shrine until the bowl was emptied. Sometimes the men or women in the crowd would chant, not words so much but sounds from deep in the throat that made the hair on Colm's nape prickle. Mostly though, they watched in silence.
Now Thorolf, covered in blood, walked to the group of men and pressed his thumb to each man's forehead, marking it with blood and calling out the man's name as he did so. The women would have their own ceremony in the morning, possibly something to do with Freya, but that was something Colm knew nothing about.
Having named all the men in his community, Thorolf signaled to several who quickly skinned and butchered the horse. Just inside Thorolf's longhall, others built up the fire under a great cauldron. The women poured in water to boil, then added great chunks of horsemeat. Choice pieces, like the liver, were roasted separately and would be given to favored guests. Thorolf called all inside the hall to be seated and drink beer until the women brought around the horsemeat to eat and the broth to drink in toasts to the long life and good fortune of all present, to those who had passed on, and to the Gods that oversaw all.
A shout roused Colm from his contemplation of pagan rites. He was delegated with another slave to haul barrels of beer from the storeroom to a spot closer to the benches in the longhall, where the women could serve it. The casks were open, so they could not be rolled in. Instead, Colm and the other slave worked them up onto small sledges, then dragged them along to a spot just outside the storeroom and behind the benches. The other man was a big, powerful Slav. Colm allowed him to do the heaviest work. Which was only fair, he thought, since one of them had to supervise the operation.
The men's benches ran the length of the hall parallel to the pit where a small fire of dried dung smouldered. That fire would be built up bright as the evening progressed. Thorolf sat at the center of the group, a carved wooden screen behind him. Probably the screen normally stood in the stove-room, a smaller, warmer place off the end of the longhall. That was where the family and guests would gather on ordinary occasions, but there were far too many people here to be accommodated in that space tonight!
On one side of Thorolf sat Colm's master Bjorn, who had become Thorolf's trusted lieutenant. On the other side sat Magnus, then his son Halldor. The women's table was set before the door into the stove-room, at a right angle to the men's table. Marta, Thorolf's wife, finished serving each guest his first drink with her own hands, then took her place at the center of the women's table. Ingveld took the place to Marta's right, Aud, the one to the left. Gerda sat next to Ingveld, then Gerda's friends. The older women sat next to Aud, their rank decreasing the farther from the center that they sat.
Lesser women and slaves continued the serving. Marta and Thorolf exchanged a glance, a silent signal, and Thorolf rose from his place. He had changed his bloody godi's robe for an elegant embroidered surcoat with great carved buttons of bone decorating the front. All eyes turned to Thorolf, and the hall hushed as he announced that he and his good friend, the prosperous farmer, Magnus, were uniting their families. Magnus's son Halldor and Thorolf's daughter Gerda were to marry in the fall. Thorolf then gave gifts to Magnus, a fine bow, a set of carved chessmen, and silk trousers from Greekland. Magnus gave gifts in return, excellent leather shoes and a decorated spearhead taken from the grave of an Irish High King. Each gift that was accepted indebted a man to the giver. Thorolf wanted very much to have Magnus in his debt since Magnus's farm was close to another godi's holding, and it was up to Magnus who he would ride with to Althing and who he would support in case of trouble. But a man would always support the father of his son's wife, especially if there were grandchildren.
Halldor smiled over at the women's table, clearly pleased with his bride-to-be, but Gerda had eyes only for Ingveld's necklace. She was practically drooling over it, thought Colm. Marta and Ingveld were exchanging gifts as well and making subtle signs to reinforce their status and position in the community. They seemed to get on well, though, and Colm thought that there would be few mother-in-law difficulties, always a potential problem. Ingveld took off her necklace and allowed the other women to hold it and examine it more closely. Slave girls bustled around the tables, bringing the gifts for exchange and cleaning up spilled beer.
Suddenly there was a commotion at the men's table. Halldor and Gunnlaug were shouting at one another. Gunnlaug shoved Halldor, who slapped his hand where his sword hilt would be if he had worn a weapon to the feast. He then lunged forward, but other men grabbed Gunnlaug by the shoulders and hustled him from the hall. Red faced, Halldor took his seat just as the slave women began serving the broth. Gunnlaug wouldn't be doing any toasting with the community this year, thought Colm. In fact, he had best leave the area, if he valued his life.
The hall had begun to settle when a sudden cry rose from the women's table. Ingveld was standing, hand at her throat, shouting for her necklace. The other women at the table glanced at one another and raised their empty hands to show that they didn't have it. Magnus shouted and rose from his seat to glare at the women's table. Thorolf sat frozen, his stricken gaze fixed on his daughter's face. Other eyes followed his and Gerda found herself the target of a dozen accusing stares.
"Search me!" Gerda spat out and rose from the bench, then climbed onto the women's table. Gerda looked defiantly about her, then unbelted her apron and pulled it over her head. She threw it down on the table and took off her blouse, her overskirt, then dropped her underskirts to stand completely naked before the crowd.
Colm caught a glint of pride and pleasure in her eyes. She's enjoying this, he thought. She enjoys being the center of attention.
Not to be outdone, two of the other young women at the table leapt up beside Gerda and began removing their garments. The older women glanced nervously about. They had no desire to have their bodies compared to these girls!
"Wait!" Marta rose and took command of the situation. "Come back into the stove-room. You can undress there." The women made their way through the door.
Ingveld's face was stricken with embarrassment. Gathering herself, she reached up a hand to Gerda and helped her prospective daughter-in-law down from the table. Ingveld snatched up some of Gerda's discarded clothing and draped them over her naked shoulders. As the two women followed the others into the stove-room, she cast a beseeching look back at her husband.
Magnus regretted his outburst now. He fell back into his seat. "Perhaps the women can straighten this out."
"Yes," said Thorolf, "This will be settled properly. We will have a toast." He looked about for a woman to serve the table but they were all in the stove-room. Thorolf got up himself and brought cups of broth to each place. Then he raised a toast: "To the wisdom of women! May there be much here tonight and always!"
But an hour later, Marta led the women back from the stove-room and told her husband that the necklace had not been found. Men dismantled the women's table and benches to make certain that the necklace had not been dropped there on the dirt floor, but there was no sign of it. The table was reassembled and the women returned to their places.
Ingveld and Marta held a quiet, worried conversation. Gerda sat proudly in her place wearing a self-satisfied smile. The other men and women spoke quietly, eyes shifting about. Thorolf turned to Magnus and offered him gifts: some valuable horses, cutting rights on a rare piece of treed woodland, the very surcoat he was wearing. Stone faced, Magnus refused them all.
Colm watched the uneasy scene. Thorolf had not called for more beer yet. Probably the godi was weighing the value of lulling his neighbors with alcohol versus the danger posed by a crowd of drunken men. Still, Thorolf would not want to be called stingy, and soon enough the beer would start flowing.
Bjorn approached and Colm stood up, attentive to his master. "You're a smart man," said Bjorn. "If you can think of anything that will help this situation, you will be rewarded."
Colm was amazed. Not only was he a slave, but he was half Bjorn's age, yet the man came to him for help! Once before Colm had solved a sticky problem for Bjorn, but that was not something they had ever discussed---better not to know of some things, or at least not to speak of them. Still, Colm had no choice now but to nod, agreeing to help as he might.
Colm made his way back to the storeroom to try to catch a moment to think. He did not think quickly, but given a little time, he could often solve a problem. Just inside the doorway, Gwyneth grabbed his arm. "You've got to do something!"
"Do? Me?" Why was everyone looking to him for help?
"If they don't find that necklace, then some slave girl will be made victim!"
That was true enough, thought Colm. Someone would pay for this crime and it might well be a slave. Even Gwyneth! He looked into her blue eyes. "I'll do what I can. Tell me what happened at the women's table when the fight broke out between Halldor and Gunnlaug. Where was the necklace then?"
"The young women sitting below Gerda were admiring it. I was at the other end, near Ingveld, and didn't see what happened to it," Gwyneth said. "I looked up at the ruckus---everyone looked that way---and when I looked back, the necklace was gone!"
"So one of the young women took it?"
"None of them had it on her when the women were undressed and searched. Anyway, which of them would have the courage to do that? I think this was done by someone very audacious, yet young enough not to be able to control her desires."
Colm knew who she meant. "Gerda certainly desired that necklace."
Gwyneth nodded. "And she was right there with her friends as it was passed around."
Colm thought a moment. "Who else was there near the young women?"
Gwyneth spread her hands. "No one."
"No one at all? No slave girl waiting on them?"
"Wait! Braga was there, before the fight, then I didn't see her. No! I saw her stand up later. She was down on the floor picking up the cups that were knocked off the table. But Braga hasn't the sense to be this thief!" Braga was thick and dimwitted. The other slave women teased her, and Braga always responded with an uncomprehending stare and a slow, broken-toothed smile.
"How did the cups get on the floor?"
"They must have been knocked over when the fight started."
"Do you think Gerda looked at the fight or the necklace?" Colm was forming an idea. "After all, she didn't raise her eyes from the necklace to Halldor before that, not even when her betrothal was announced."
"All right, but how did the necklace disappear?"
Colm smiled. "See if you can get Braga here."
"Braga? I can get her, but..." Gwyneth shook her head. "That's impossible!"
Colm said, "She's the only one around the necklace who wasn't searched. Once you eliminate all the others, you have to accept the only possibility that's left." Gwyneth began to speak, but Colm stopped her. "Quickly now, before Gerda speaks to her."
Gwyneth left and Colm stepped into the corner of the storeroom, just beside the door. The lamplight from the longhall illuminated a small area inside the door, but it was dark in the corner. That rule about elimination that he told Gwyneth was a pretty good one, he thought. He'd have to work it up into something memorable. Let's see: Eliminate the impossible ... Gwyneth's return interrupted his thought.
Braga was protesting. "Mistress Gerda wants me. I got to go."
Gwyneth soothed her. "Just a moment, Braga, that's all. Just in here."
Gwyneth persuaded Braga into the storeroom. Colm came up behind her and slipped his hand under Braga's apron. The slave girl started and jumped back. "None of that," she said. She gave Gwyneth an accusing glance. "I thought you was better than that!" Braga ran out the door.
Gwyneth wasn't certain yet whether to be angry or not. "So," she said, "did you make me fetch Braga just so you could fondle her big bottom?"
For answer, Colm held out his hand so that Gwyneth could see that he held Ingveld's gleaming necklace. "It was Gerda," he said. "When the fight started, she knocked the cups onto the floor. Then, when Braga was down on her knees picking them up, Gerda hooked the necklace on her skirt under her apron. There it would stay until she was ready to take it. No one would search her again."
"Of course! And if it was discovered then Braga would be blamed." Gwyneth looked at the glass baubles shining in the light from the hall. She said, "Any woman would be glad to own such a thing!"
It was true, thought Colm. The necklace was perhaps the most beautiful thing he had ever held in his hands. A cunning and seductive notion crept into his brain then. Colm raised his head and met Gwyneth's gaze. There he could see the same notion glittering in her eyes. Then both of them blinked and beheld reality. Colm saw the thin apron of second-grade cloth that Gwyneth wore over threadbare skirts, a cord of hemp making do as a belt. And he knew what she saw before her: a thin young man in a ragged shirt and trousers with patched knees. They owned nothing, not even their own bodies; what could they do with this bauble that was worth twenty slaves like themselves? Even so, if Gwyneth wanted it, she might have it, Colm thought. She might accept her certain doom and his, too, for a moment of pleasure. There would be few enough in her life.
But Gwyneth was a woman of sense. "Now you must find a way to get it back," she said. Colm nodded. A woman shouted, then another. Gwyneth turned to go, "They'll search the slave girls now that Gerda can't find her loot." She turned back to Colm, parted her lips as if to speak, then thought better of it and left the storeroom.
Colm squatted, his back against the turf wall, and thought about what he should do next.
It was an uneasy night and Colm woke before dawn, lying in the straw in the cowshed with some other slaves. He lay, listening to the snores of other men, as the first birds began singing and light began to break. He heard the murmur of women making their way to the shrine for their own secret ritual. Tense, he listened and waited. Soft chanting rose from the shrine, then.... A sudden shout! Colm knew that meant the necklace had been found.
The night before, Colm had crept to the shrine. There was no moon and only starlight lit his path. The shrine entrance was a black hole before him. Stifling a sudden terror, Colm ducked inside. He crouched, letting his eyes become used to the darkness, straining to see just a little. The chamber stank of blood. Suddenly, Colm saw two great eyes staring into his own. He started and almost screamed before he realized that he was looking into the carved orbs of Thor's face. The beloved god! The friendly god! Thor's cold stare pierced Colm like a weapon-thrust. This was no friend of his!
Colm broke free his gaze and examined the other idols in the shrine. Each of the three great stone slabs bore some sign of the deity it represented. Thor held a carved hammer, Njord's idol was decorated with a ship, and Freya bore breasts of stone. Smaller figures of carved stone or bone or wood stood up from the earth around the large idols. Lesser gods? Great kings? Ancestors? Perhaps no one but the godi knew.
Colm drew Ingveld's necklace from his shirt and examined Freya's statue. He had thought the Goddess might have her arms extended to drive her cart, as they were on the pendants women wore around their necks. But the only protrusions on this slab of granite were the two hard breasts. Probably they were formed by wind or water on this stone and, being noticed, caused it to be selected as an idol. Two sets of carved concentric circles were Freya's eyes and below them, a great semicircle meant to be her woman's smile. But now Freya's mouth was full of clotted blood that ran down her breasts toward a bowl at the idol's base.
Colm shuddered. He thought of pitching the necklace into the bowl but was afraid it might not be seen. If only this thing had a neck! Finally, Colm set the necklace on top of the idol so that the big red stone hung on Freya's forehead. "Be satisfied with that," he whispered, "You heathen creature!" Freya grinned at him but did not answer, something for which Colm was very grateful.
Colm let several of the other slaves get up and wander out before he rose. People were buzzing about in the new day like bees on urgent missions. Their eyes were bright and excited as they chattered about Freya having Ingveld's necklace! Oh, yes, thought Colm, that greedy goddess! He smiled.
A hand clutched his arm and drew him to one side. Colm's belly plunged in fear and then he found himself looking into Gwyneth's face and he felt his spirit rise and fill his chest. She was smiling, then her face dropped and her eyes widened in horror, and Colm was afraid again. "Here," said Gwyneth. She pulled him into the shadow of the cowshed and rubbed at his forehead. She spat on her thumb and rubbed again. "That's better." Gwyneth looked at her reddened thumb and made a face. "Pah! Horse blood!" She looked Colm over, head to toe, but found no other traces of blood.
"Can't have people thinking I took part in the ceremony," said Colm.
"No," said Gwyneth seriously, "They shouldn't think you put on the airs of a free man. Or that you were mocking them somehow."
"Well, that's easy enough to do," said Colm, "as I suppose you know."
Gwyneth smiled. "You did well. Everything should be all right now. Ingveld has presented the necklace to Gerda as a gift."
"So Gerda has everything she wants."
Gwyneth shrugged. "For the moment. I suppose she wishes for a different husband, but Gunnlaug has little to offer."
"It was you who told me how to do it, you know," Colm told her, "When you said that about any woman wanting the thing---well, there was only one that could have it without blame." Colm started in then with some tongue-honey about her being intelligent as well as beautiful but stopped when he realized Gwyneth was not listening but looking past him. She gave him a quick smile, then slipped away, and Colm turned to find Bjorn, his master, bearing down on him.
"Well, that turned out not so bad," said Bjorn. He was in a cheery mood. Probably he expected to win some credit with Thorolf for this turn of events, Colm thought. "Now I promised you a reward if things went well, didn't I?" Oh, yes, you did, thought Colm, but do I want it or dread it? One never knew what the master had in mind.
Bjorn was interrupted as Thorolf walked up. The two men greeted one another and Thorolf echoed Bjorn, "That turned out as well as it could." He took Bjorn's hands in his. "You have my thanks. And I have a gift for you as well as thanks."
Bjorn smiled and ducked his head. So he won favor, thought Colm. That would benefit him as well: A well-fed slave has a prosperous master. Thorolf turned his way. "Don't I know this slave?"
"He was present when we found Hastein's body."
"Ah. Yes. Another situation that could have gone wrong."
"Yes," said Bjorn. "In fact, I was about to reward this man. For, ah, his excellent service and so on."
"I see," said Thorolf. "What reward were you planning to give him?"
"I thought a sheep, one of the new lambs. I might let him choose the one he wants."
"Well, he seems a lucky slave to me. It is always a good thing to have lucky men about and one should encourage them. Would you allow me to give this man a sheep of his choosing as well?"
"Of course," said Bjorn. "Luck must be encouraged." And the two men smiled and dissembled and blathered at each other, but Colm paid no attention. Two sheep! He would choose ewes, of course, and this time next year he would have four! And eight the year after! Six sheep was a good price for a slave, but ... No! He would wait another year, until he had sixteen sheep. Then he would offer Bjorn ten of them for his freedom. No! He would offer him twelve! So that Bjorn would recognize what a man of worth he was!
Copyright © 2009 Mike Culpepper
Editor's Note: Some readers may have noticed that this story follows "The Icicle Judgment" (January/February, 2009); look for "The Trollfarm Killing," the concluding story of this trilogy, in next month's issue.
I ran off the road in the Lake Superior State Forest, straight at an old-growth pine. It was a rumble strip that woke me. The rubberized chevrons in the asphalt made my tires buzz and my hands tingle on the steering wheel and I stomped on the brake.
I'd driven eleven hours one way, following a bad-check artist clear from Detroit to Manistique, giving him time to lay down a paper trail long enough to hang himself. Now that he was in the capable hands of the state police and off my client's, I was on my way back and hoping to make Mackinaw City before I turned in. A judge in Detroit expected me in the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice at two p.m., dewy eyed and with my head chock full of salient facts in an unrelated case.
The trunk of the tree I'd almost smashed into was so wide my lights didn't show around it. The woods were as black as Lake Michigan on the other side. There wouldn't be any motels for a while.
I hate the woods at night; doesn't everyone? They're okay by day, with Disney creatures scampering about, but after dark, give me any gloomy alley and keep those black holes for yourself. When I'm in a deep funk I'm convinced I'll end up in some shallow depression covered with dead leaves instead of a cozy luggage compartment in Long-Term Parking. The Upper Peninsula is a great place to visit, but I don't want to die there.
I took the last tepid swallow of Mountain Dew from the two-liter jug I kept in the car for surprise marathons---my hand had begun to shake from the delayed reaction---backed around, and got back onto Highway 2 to look for a place that poured coffee. A modern one, I hoped, with cheery fluorescents and expired hot dogs revolving on a carousel.
No such luck. Happy's Diner looked like a New Deal roadhouse, built low and square from local pine and covered with cheap stain that still showed in shiny patches like peanut brittle. More recently it had been a bowling alley, but from the condition of the six-foot wooden pin by the entrance, no strikes or spares had been rolled there this century. The windows and glass door looked new and ground spots illuminated the name on a square sign in the little parking lot. All the lights were burning. I pulled in next to a new Escalade with heavily tinted windows and got out. Crickets serenaded me with their sprightly little ode to Restless Legs Syndrome.
The SUV was backed into its space, concealing the license plate from the road, but my instincts were on low battery. I got a whiff of coffee and pushed through the door like a herd smelling water. A gong sounded when it opened.
The air was dense with roasted beans, pine, and layer upon layer of fried grease. Machine-embroidered tapestries of deer in the wild hung from gilded ropes like Rotarian banners, and Windsor chairs surrounded eight or ten round wooden tables, deserted at present and probably usually. There was a counter with stools upholstered in green leather, separated by a sliding frosted-glass panel over a pass-through. I sat on a stool and asked for coffee.
"We're closed." The woman behind the counter, a creature of pumpkin-colored hair, sharp bone, and skin like Saran Wrap, stood in a pink uniform and white utility apron with her hands hugging her upper arms. She wasn't looking at me. I didn't know just where she was looking at first.
"The sign says you're open all night."
"Cook's got the flu."
"All I want's coffee."
"Last batch boiled away. You don't want coffee the way I make it."
"I thought everyone was born knowing how to make coffee. If you think it's too strong it's just right."
"Closed, sorry." Her voice went up half an octave.
I followed her eyes then. The pass-through panel was open a crack. That woke me up. An airhorn next to the ear would have been too subtle.
"Well, tell him get well soon." I got up and headed toward the door, moving as casually as a marching band.
Which wasn't casual enough. The gong rang again and I lunged for the bar across the glass door, to pull it shut on the hand coming around the edge with a gun in it, but the panel behind me opened with a whoosh and a bang and a shell slid into a chamber with an oily metallic slam that can't be duplicated any other way. That was to get my attention; the shell that was already there made a brassy tinkle when it landed on the floor.
"I'd stop," someone said.
I was already stopped. The door was open now, and the man standing there held a deep-bellied Magnum braced against his hip. He was big and broad, soft looking, in a gray hoodie and old black jeans, which with his dark, mixed-blood face had blended with the shadows inside the tinted windows of the Escalade out front. "I should flag you for trying to bust my wrist." His tone was a bottomless guttural. A hundred fifty years ago he'd have worn buckskin leggings and plaited his hair. It was as black as the woods at night.
"Plenty of time for that. Feel him up."
This was one of those hand-me-down Swedish singsongs you still hear sometimes in the North Country. I turned around and held out my arms while the Indian went over me with one hand top to bottom. The man leaning inside the square opening to the kitchen---the owner of the singsong voice---might have been his photographic negative, drawn thin: colorless hair cut close to the skull, narrow pale face, and a tubular torso in a plaid flannel shirt over a black Zevon T-shirt. The hand resting on his stainless-steel nine-millimeter had a swastika tattooed on the back. Maybe there's hope for peace when skinheads and redskins start hanging out together.
The Indian pried my wallet out of my hip pocket. "Amos Walker. Private investigator, from Detroit."
"I knew he was a cop when he made for the door. Where's your piece, Amos?"
"I left it home. It's not big enough for bear."
He watched me. He didn't appear to have developed eyelids. He raised the semiautomatic.
"Don't!"
He looked at the woman behind the counter. She had her hand to her mouth. "He some kind of friend of yours?" he asked.
"I never saw him before. Just don't kill him---please."
"Suppose I decide to kill you. Think he'll beg for you?" He turned the pistol on her. He held it sideways, the way you see in movies. I hoped he was that green.
I made a decision and started toward the counter. The muzzle swung back my way and squirted white flame. The slug smashed through a glass display case containing a slice of coconut cream pie on a stand and buried itself in drywall. The woman screamed hoarsely. The echo of the shot rang like raining hubcaps.
"Man said no shooting," the Indian said.
"That's 'cause he's a city feller. Somebody's always popping off in the woods." Skinhead looked at me. "First jokes, now this. You're starting to tick me off. I was saving that pie for later."
"No more shots. State cops patrol these roads."
"You sure spook easy for an injun." But he put down the pistol.
That was all the encouragement I needed. I took another long step. I just wanted to get closer to the kitchen. The floorboards shifted behind me. I turned away from the blow and lifted a shoulder, hoping to absorb most of it with tendons and muscle and not skull.
I was only partially successful. The barrel of the Magnum caught a piece of posterior lobe on the follow-through. Sparks flew and I sprawled out full-length on the floor. I didn't try to catch myself; that's how wrists get broken, and I needed all my limbs now more than ever. The Indian kicked me hard in the ribs and told me to get up. I groaned---it came easily---pushed with both hands, and when I was standing I had the ejected cartridge from Skinhead's pistol between two fingers.
"Get him in here out of sight before anybody else comes in. You, lock the door and turn off the outside lights."
The Indian said, "They might miss the place in the dark."
"The man picked it out, not us." He looked at the woman. "Lock. Lights. Now!"
She hurried around the end of the counter while the Indian shoved me toward the swinging door to the kitchen, using his empty hand. He'd handled hostages before; enough anyway to know better than to use the one holding the big revolver. His was the stable half of the partnership. I wasn't sure which one to take out first.
In a little while we were all crowded in a narrow room with the usual equipment, including a six-burner electric range: the woman, the gunmen, me, and a black man as big as the Indian but older and harder-looking, sitting on the floor in a corner with duct tape around his ankles and across his mouth and his hands behind him. One eye was swollen shut with a gash over it that had bled down the side of his face onto his white T-shirt. He raised his head high enough to take me in with his working eye, then put his chin back on his chest. That's the kind of confidence I usually inspire.
I said, "He doesn't look happy."
"Shut up." The Indian made a motion with the gun as if measuring its heft.
"Let 'em jabber." Skinhead had my wallet now and was going through it. "Passes time. What kind of diner don't have no TV or radio?"
The woman found her voice. "Luke says it distracts him."
"Who the hell's Luke?"
"That's his name. We called the place Happy's to get people's attention."
He'd lost interest. He took out my cash and threw the wallet on the floor. "No credit cards. No pictures neither. Looks like nobody's going to miss you, Amos."
"You and Luke are partners?" I asked the woman.
"Fifty-fifty. We're married."
"Hear that, Roger? That's what this country's coming to, mixing the races like chocolate chip cookies. I'm glad now I didn't eat that pie."
The Indian grunted. He didn't look like a Roger. "I'm French-Irish on my mother's side."
"I wouldn't eat pie in your place neither." Skinhead grinned at me. His teeth seemed to have come in any old way. "Luke gave us grief. Them people don't understand the basic principles of occupation."
"Military man," I said. "Power Rangers or Hitler Youth?"
The grin went. He played with the pistol, then shook his head. "You're tired of living, but I'm tireder of being the only white man in the room. It ain't natural. But we brung plenty of duct tape."
"We need to save some," Roger said.
"We're good."
His voice dropped. "We talked about how this was going to go down."
"You talked. I thought all you people said was 'ugh.'"
I smiled at the woman. The name Pearl was embroidered above her breast pocket in white script. "Bake your pies here?"
"No. We order them from a place in Marquette." She stroked her upper arms as if she were cold. Actually it was close in the room even with the stove turned off.
"Jo's Bakery," Skinhead said. "Our Christmas pies came from there."
Roger said, "Now who's talking too much?"
I said, "All this pie talk makes me hungry. Okay if I ask Pearl to fry me a couple of eggs?"
"Mister, you don't want me to cook. I burn salads."
"Anybody can fry an egg," I said.
"You heard her," Skinhead said. "Be hungry."
"I need to keep my up my blood sugar. I could faint."
"So faint. We could use some quiet around here."
"I'll do the cooking." I took a step toward the stove.
Roger shifted his weight to his gun side. I stopped. But I was in reach of the controls.
Luke started coughing, a strangling sound behind the tape across his mouth. Everyone looked at him, bent forward and looking a little green, his chest heaving; everyone but me. I made a try for the knob under the nearest burner.
Pearl spoiled it. She pushed me out of reach and started toward the man convulsing on the floor.
"Whoa." Skinhead jerked up his pistol. His lidless eyes had all the humanity of dripped paint.
She put on the brakes. Her face was white. "He has trouble breathing through his nose. He broke it playing football."
"Why ain't I surprised?"
"Please! He'll suffocate."
"I guessed that already."
Roger stuck his revolver in his hoodie pocket and crossed the room in two strides. Luke's eyes were rolling over white when the Indian bent down and tore away the tape. Luke sucked in air like a swimmer breaking the surface and fell back against the wall, rattling all the pots and pans hanging from it. His chest emptied and filled and emptied again and his natural color returned.
"Buzzkill." Skinhead lowered his weapon.
Pearl sagged. I caught her. She hadn't fainted; the wire that had been holding her up all this time had worn through.
"Shoot 'em both if he opens his mouth for anything but oxygen." Skinhead looked around, eyes bright. "Well, what do we do for fun now?"
"The man said no killing," the Indian said.
"He should've told his boy that years ago. It was the same way with my old man: Too little, too late."
Something glimmered then; this was no ordinary hostage situation. I gave Pearl's thin shoulders a reassuring squeeze and she straightened and stepped away from me. "What about those eggs?" I said. "I can't be the only one who can use a bite."
"It's always eggs with you," Skinhead said. "What are you, part weasel?"
Roger said, "I could eat."
"No time."
"We don't know how much time we got. These things never come off on schedule, the man said."
"Mitchell don't know squat about how things work up there."
The Indian looked around at the rest of us, then went over to Benny and whispered something.
"You worry too much. Big Chief Worry Wart, that's you."
Roger retreated, falling silent. He was troubled by something other than insults.
His partner stuck the nine-millimeter under his belt. "I'm going to the can. Keep 'em covered, and see he makes mine runny. I like to lick the plate."
The Indian grimaced. "Jesus, Benny."
He looked like a Benny. I wasn't sure why.
I wasn't crazy about the timing. Electric burners take time heating up, and Benny didn't seem like the type who stopped to wash his hands. I didn't know if I could take both men at once. I didn't know if I could take even one, but from the way the skinhead slung information around, there was only one way this thing was going to end if I didn't start cooking. I knew who Mitchell was. For once in my life I wished my hunch had been wrong. I turned to the range and twisted the knob all the way to High. "Eggs, please."
Pearl stared at me a moment, but the Luke incident seemed to have sapped her of the will to protest. She opened a Sub-Zero refrigerator and took out a carton.
"Skillet."
Roger was standing by the pots and pans. When he turned his head to take one down, I took the pistol cartridge out of my pocket and tucked it back between my fingers.
"No butter." He passed me the skillet by way of the woman. "I'm fat enough."
I put it on the burner. "I hear they pile on the starch in Marquette. Makes it hard to squeeze your gut through a tunnel."
"You and Benny both talk too much," he said.
"Give me some credit. Prison's the only circle the two of you would ever travel in together."
"He's got his good points. Up there you need a friend in the White Power gang if you want to live till parole."
"The joint's a great leveler. Where else would a couple of bums hook up with a rich kid like Emmet Mitchell Junior?"
"He drops names, Benny does. I told him it wasn't cool."
"I didn't need the hint. I keep current. Emmett Senior spent millions trying to acquit his boy. Looks like he had a few left over. Junior's a serial killer. Benny's got an excuse; he's a psycopath. What's yours?"
"Mister, you don't get no more unemployable than an Indian ex-con. Even the casinos won't touch me. What's it to me how many night-call nurses got themselves raped and killed so long as the old man pays cash?"
"Emmett Mitchell," Pearl said. "I heard that name."
I said, "They moved him to maximum security in Marquette State Prison after he tried to escape from Jackson. That was before DNA linked him to Victim Number Six. Not even the press knows when they're taking him downstate for the hearing. But Roger and Benny know. It's tonight. You need a bankroll like Emmett Senior's to buy that kind of information."
The eggs were starting to sizzle, but just then Benny came back in. I could tell by his face he'd overheard plenty, but he wasn't upset. He looked like a man who had won a bet with himself. He leveled the pistol at me.
"Private cop walking in just when he did," he said. "He was laughing at us the whole time, us talking all around what he knew already."
"You're wrong, Benny. Why would he have his ID in his wallet if he was undercover?"
"Cops are dumb, that's why. They keep talking about the world's dumbest criminals, but they're the ones make all the mistakes. Our boy Amos made two: The day he was born and the day he died."
I concentrated on the eggs. It was an argument I couldn't win. The trick was to keep him close without pushing him over the edge.
"You're smarter than you look," I said. "If Old Man Mitchell is paying the officers transporting Emmett Junior to stop here, and he's paying you to tie them up and maybe knock them out to make it play like an old-fashioned escape set up by a couple of Junior's former inmates, you can be sure he's paid someone else to make sure you don't turn state's evidence against him when you get caught." I chose that moment to let the cartridge drop into the middle of a yolk to avoid making noise.
"So we don't get caught." The skinhead placed the muzzle against the bone behind my right ear.
That was too close. Any sudden disturbance would startle him into jerking the trigger.
"Pearl, they're fixing to kill all of us."
This was a new voice, hoarse from lack of use. Luke had recovered from his choking fit. He sat in his corner perfectly alert, his good eye glistening.
Benny didn't move. "Roger, I told you what to do the minute he opened his mouth."
"I don't flag people. They only got me because I wouldn't shoot."
"Luke's right," I told him, watching the skillet. The brass shell was almost submerged in yellow goo. "Mitchell Senior can't afford to leave anyone behind, Benny knows that. Not even the cops he bought. That's the way the two of them worked it out. You won't need any more duct tape."
"Benny?" Roger's tone was less guttural, almost shallow.
"Don't be a dumb digger injun. If you wasn't so skittish we'd've done this at the start and saved all this jabber."
I knew then I couldn't wait for a diversion. If I moved fast enough ... but no one was that fast.
No one except Luke. He shoved himself away from the wall, rolling, and caught Roger behind the knees with a bulky shoulder. The Indian folded like a cardboard cutout, the gun flying from his hand when his elbow struck the floor, but for a man running to fat he wasn't clumsy. He dove to retrieve it.
Benny pivoted that way, taking the pistol away from my head. I swung the skillet with all I had, catching him square on the corner of the jaw with the edge, spraying hot egg over both of us, grabbed his gun arm in both hands, and broke it over my knee. He shrieked and his fingers lost their grip. I caught the pistol as it fell, but by then I didn't need it.
Pearl was faster than all of us put together. She'd beaten Roger to the Magnum and stood in a feral crouch, covering him with the weapon in both hands. He remained motionless on all fours.
A loud report made us all jump. The pistol cartridge from the skillet had continued to heat up for a second after it hit the floor, and went off like a kernel of popcorn. The slug dug a hole in a baseboard. I'd worried about what direction it would take.
"You work for Mitchell?" Pearl seemed ready to include me in her firing trajectory. Her pumpkin-colored hair hung in her face.
"Don't make me lose respect for you. I'm only here because of a rumble strip."
"What?"
"You know. Those things they put on the edge of the highway to warn you you're drifting off the road."
"We can use those other places," she said.
I found the roll of duct tape and trussed up Benny, clucking over his screams when I jerked his shattered arm behind his back. I remembered to take my money out of his pocket. Then I saw to Roger. There was enough tape to go around after all. Finally I helped Pearl cut Luke loose. "Good tackle," I said.
He grinned lopsidedly; his bruised eye was a kaleidoscope of color. "You should've seen me on the field."
"NFL?"
"St. Helens High. They overlooked me in the draft."
"Too bad I'm not a scout."
"Now what?" Pearl repaired her hair, a pin in her teeth. "They cut the phone wire."
"Now we stop a prison van and reunite father and son." I went out to the car to get my cell.
Copyright © 2009 Loren D. Estleman
"We damn near had a mutiny on our hands, captain."
Lucinda Hale lowered the sextant that Eban had given her on their first voyage together and, squinting against a blinding tropical sun, jotted down the angle of elevation on her slate.
She turned from the rail in time to see Eban emerging from the after-cabin with his precious Earnshaw Pocket Chronometer in his hand. She could only hope that he had noted the exact moment of observation.
"Well, Lucy my love," he said. "Did you get your sighting?"
"Don't I always?" she said, trying not to show her annoyance. She knew Eban trusted her navigational skills implicitly, but he was a fusspot, like all men. Especially sea captains.
"What would I do without you?" he said by way of apology, an unrepentant grin on his face. "Well, my dear, let's look it up in the Bowditch. We could have waited till noon, you know. It would have been simpler."
"I know," she said, relenting. "But I couldn't wait to see how much progress we've made since last night. After the awful time we had trying to round Cape Horn. Ninety-four dreadful, dreadful days of constant tacking, bending, and unbending sail in howling storms with the rigging covered with ice! Being driven backward more miles than we covered!"
Eban frowned at the memory. "The homeward passage will be easier, Lucy."
"I thought we'd have to give up. Turn around and go around the world in the opposite direction to get to China, like Captain Pendleton did on his last voyage."
"We made it. Pendleton didn't. Nor did a lot of other fine captains."
"I know, Eban. I'm sorry."
He brightened. "Well it's clear sailing now. We've got the trade winds and the equatorial current with us. We'll anchor in Whampoa in a month. Look at those sails! Full of wind, all the wind they can hold, from the courses to the skysails."
He gestured proudly upward. From where they stood, just aft of the mizzenmast, Lucy's field of vision was a crowded universe of billowing canvas. Perched on the main topgallant yard was a tiny figure, the lookout. The boy was pointing wildly at the horizon, and seemed so agitated that Lucy was afraid he'd lose his grip on his holdfast.
"Sail oh!" he was shouting. "Sail oh!"
There was a rush of the men on deck to the starboard rail. The first mate, Mr. Dawson, made no effort to call them back to work. He cupped his hands and shouted upward, "What see you, lad?"
The answer came from above, "It's still hull down, sir, but it's a bark. A four master. I can see down to the royals and topgallants. They're taken aback---plastered right against the masts, they are. But they're bracing the yards now. They're trying to get on the starboard tack."
Eban turned to Lucy, a troubled expression on his face. "The damn fool thinks he can intercept us. Beat his way windward, sailing close hauled. But even on the best starboard tack possible, he'll pass us far wide of hailing distance."
Lucy chose her words carefully. To a captain making good headway in a fair wind after being thwarted for ninety-four days by Cape Horn, what she was about to hint at verged on heresy, even from the captain's wife.
"They may not have seen another ship for weeks or months. What if they're in some sort of distress?"
Seeing him hesitate, she pushed a little further. "It may be our only chance to send our mail home for a while."
Eban gave a sigh. "I'll take pity on the poor lubber. Mr. Dawson, prepare to shorten sail. Put the helm down and bring her into the wind."
Mr. Dawson had calculated nicely. The two ships lay side by side, well within speaking distance. He had dropped the mainsail, braced the cross-jack yards sharp aback, and put the helm aweather, so that they matched the westward drift of the big bark. Lucy could make out the bark's captain at the rail of the quarterdeck, a miniature dandy in a stovepipe hat, the speaking trumpet obscuring his face.
"Ahoy there!" he bellowed. "What ship is that?"
Beside her, Mr. Dawson grumbled, "By God, his manners could stand improvement, begging your pardon, ma'am."
Eban, imperturbable as always, overlooked the Salem captain's breach of etiquette. "The Mary Small, out of Searsport, bound for Whampoa!" he shouted back.
There was a pause as the other captain digested the information. "The Everett Parsons out of Salem, back from Shanghai and the South China Sea, bound for San Francisco," he finally offered.
"You must have been fighting the trades for some time, Captain," Eban said tactfully. "You'd do better on a more northerly course."
The other captain didn't seem to understand the implied criticism. "Yes, it's been a lonely voyage," he said. "Yours is the first ship we've seen since Samoa. The wife will be glad of the company. She's already arranged with the steward for two guests for dinner."
Eban looked perplexed. "Is he inviting us aboard for a gam?" he said to Lucy.
"Yes," she said. "But not, it seems, Mr. Dawson." She had participated in enough gams to know that the first mate usually accompanied the captain and his wife, while the second mate took charge of the ship.
"That doesn't bother me, ma'am," Mr. Dawson said. "But he didn't say anything about allowing an exchange of visits by the men in the forecastle. That cannot be a happy ship."
Eban shook his head. "I suppose we'll have to do it. That top-hatted booby may not mind losing a day's sailing, but he seems to take it for granted that we won't either."
Lucy's hands flew to her hair. "I must be a sight. My hair's a bird's nest. And I've been wearing this old gingham wash dress since the Horn."
"Don't despair, my sweet," Eban said. "There's time for you to change."
Mr. Dawson nodded toward the men still laboring to clew up the topsails. "I'll get up a boat crew to row you over, Captain." He grinned wolfishly. "We'll need at least four hands. No, six! And a coxswain. By God---excusing my language, ma'am---we'll give at least a few of our boys the chance of a gam!"
The other captain's name was Phineas Potts, a roundish man with a sun-blotched face adorned with a fine crop of muttonchop whiskers. He was dressed a little too formally, even for the kind of master who left the quarterdeck mostly to the mate. It occurred to Lucy that he wore the stovepipe hat in imitation of the Everett Parsons whose dominating figurehead graced the bark's bow. That was another thing. The shipowners of Searsport had dispensed with the frippery of figureheads for a couple of generations. The bow of the Mary Small was decorated with a simple carved billet-head.
Now they were in the ship's saloon, and Captain Potts was introducing them to his wife. Lucy had time for no more than a hasty glance at her surroundings before Mrs. Potts was rising from an elaborate Chinese chair, a pudgy hand extended. There was a fleeting impression of mahogany paneling, velvet upholstery, a luxurious Belgian rug---no doubt a Hong Kong forgery---and a stained-glass skylight that cast long splotches of rainbow light around the interior. In the center of the saloon a rosewood dining table had already been set with fine china and crystalware that should have been packed safely away for the calmer waters of a port anchorage. Some of the dishes had already slid to the edges of the table and fetched up against the fenders.
"So good of you to come," the woman said in a mannered voice, just as if she were in a Boston drawing room and not in the middle of the ocean sharing an impromptu encounter between two passing ships.
"Delighted," Lucy replied in the same artificial tone.
The woman went on obliviously, "And this is our passenger, Mr. McKay. Mr. McKay joined us in Shanghai and stayed with us while we completed a charter party to Canton. I believe he has business in San Francisco."
"Charmed, I'm sure," McKay said, straight-facedly mimicking Mrs. Potts while giving Lucy a twinkle of complicity. Mrs. Potts did not appear to have noticed that she was being made fun of.
"I don't know what we would have done without Mr. McKay to entertain us," Mrs. Potts went on. "He's such a marvelous storyteller. And he plays the harmonium so well. He knows all the latest music hall songs from England." She smiled archly at McKay. "I'm afraid some of them are quite naughty."
Eban broke in with a question directed at Captain Potts. "You mentioned a charter party in Canton, Captain," he said. "I take it you were able to find sufficient coasting business to keep your ship busy whilst you were plying the China seas."
His voice was casual, but Lucy knew that he was pumping Captain Potts for information about the current state of coastal commerce at their destination. She knew very well that he had substituted the word "busy" for the less tactful "profitable." And that he had slyly flattered Potts by calling the four-masted bark a ship. Some of the older captains insisted that no vessel, no matter its size, could legitimately be called a ship unless it had three masts, all fully square rigged---a matter of considerable annoyance to the captains of the larger vessels like Potts.
Potts visibly preened. "Yes, indeed, Captain Hale. I unloaded a cargo of Yankee cuckoo clocks at Canton for a good profit, then sailed to Peking to discharge my consignment of case oil, in the meantime filling the empty portion of my hold with rice. At Peking, or I should say Tienstin, I picked up a passenger---a wealthy Chinese merchant named Woo Lin, who chartered me for Shanghai and then Canton. He had business with Mr. McKay in Shanghai, and Mr. McKay joined us there."
Mrs. Potts was pouting at being left out of the conversation. She interrupted: "The Chinese are mad for cuckoo clocks. Phineas picked up a deal of them from a clock maker in Connecticut on our way south from Salem and sold them at an absolutely exorbitant price to the co-hong at Canton. And got paid in gold, not silver, to boot."
Eban smiled politely at Mrs. Potts, but turned his attention to McKay. "So you know Woo Lin, do you, McKay?"
McKay gave a laugh of amusement. He was a tall, spare man, dressed like a dandy, and Lucy decided that she didn't like him. He was a little too affable, and his eyes kept straying to her bosom.
"Who doesn't know the old reprobate?" he said dismissively. "If you want to do business on the coast of China, that is. He's rich as Croesus, and he runs the co-hong like an autocrat. And he isn't above doing a little underhanded business if there's a few dollars in it for him."
"Why Mr. McKay," Lucy said with an innocent flutter of her eyelashes, "your business with him wasn't underhanded, was it?"
He laughed again. "I'm afraid so, Mrs. Hale," he said. "He sold me some antiquities that must have come from the Forbidden City. That's what he was doing in Peking. If he'd been discovered, he would have been beaten to death in the Hall of Supreme Harmony."
"Phineas had nothing to do with it!" Mrs. Potts said hastily. "He bought a perfectly legal cargo of Chinese export porcelain from him, made in one of the Whampoa factories!"
"The beggar insisted on being paid in gold instead of the usual silver specie," Captain Potts grumbled. "He got half of my profit from the cuckoo clocks. He knew I had it in gold pieces, y'see."
"Of course he did," McKay said. "There's nothing Woo Lin doesn't know. I had to pay him in gold too. He wouldn't deal otherwise. My theory is that he's at the bottom of the East China Sea, weighed down by all the gold he was carrying."
"Bottom of the sea?" Eban said, raising an eyebrow.
"Just a thought. He vanished somewhere between Shanghai and Canton. No one saw him leave the ship except the Chinese cook, who swears he saw him disembark before daylight, when we anchored overnight at Foochow."
"Disembark? But not on the captain's gig, though?"
"No. On one of those pesky sampans that swarm about a ship as soon as we make port, trying to get aboard to sell things."
"To steal things, you mean," Mrs. Potts said.
"Of course, there are always scoundrels among them," McKay agreed, "but mostly they're just competing with one another for our custom."
"Be that as it may," Captain Potts said, "but we'd had a job of it fending them off when we arrived. Our mate, Mr. Willis, frightened them off with a few shots from his pistol. They backed off to a safe distance, but they wouldn't go away. I suspect they were competing for the chance to take Woo Lin ashore. They'd spotted him on the quarterdeck, and some of them jabbered up at him in their heathen gabble, but Woo Lin paid them no more mind than the dirt under his feet."
"We don't know that, Phineas," Mrs. Potts said. "He might have signaled one of them somehow. You never can trust these heathens."
"I suppose a sampan might have sneaked up alongside during the night," Captain Potts allowed. "The cook says that's what happened. But there's something peculiar about it. As persistent as those beggars are, by first light they'd all fled."
"And what do you make of it, Mr. McKay?" Lucy asked.
McKay appeared to be thinking it over, but Lucy had the impression that he was faking his hesitation.
"Well, the cook says he saw Woo Lin leave," he said. "But it's deuced strange that no one else saw him. Mr. Willis and the larboard watch were below, of course, but Gilkins, the second mate, should have been on deck."
"I wouldn't set much store by what Gilkins said," Captain Potts grunted. "He probably was spinning yarns with his old friends in the foc'sle when Woo Lin parted company with the ship. Our first mate, Mr. Willis, doesn't have much confidence in him."
Lucy kept her expression neutral, but she knew what she thought of a captain who would disparage his own officers in front of visitors. "Gilkins," she said thoughtfully. "That's a Searsport name. I wonder if I know his family."
Captain Potts had missed the iciness in her tone, but McKay had not. He spoke quickly to smooth things over. "And then there's the matter of the sampan fleet taking off. That's not like them. You're right, Captain. They didn't want to be anywhere near us."
Potts nodded. "Some cheeky character among them sneaked Woo Lin off the ship, and there was no reason for the others to hang around."
"No, that's not it," McKay mused. "They still had their vegetables and other goods to sell. They would still have been hovering nearby, hoping for the best."
"You're suggesting they were afraid to be near us," Eban said.
"Exactly right, Captain Hale. It bears out what I said earlier. Either Woo Lin missed his footing when he attempted to transfer to the sampan and sank like a stone with all his gold or, more likely, was knocked on the head by the cutthroat he'd hired and then dumped overboard after his gold was taken. Either way, the other sampan rabble fled. Woo Lin was a mandarin, after all, and the Chinese authorities are merciless. The beggars would have been afraid of being implicated. A public beheading would have been the usual thing."
"Please, gentlemen, let's not talk about such dreadful things!" Mrs. Potts said.
"I do beg your pardon, Mrs. Potts," McKay said. "I didn't intend to upset you."
She favored him with a forgiving smile and said gaily, "Let's all sit down to a lovely dinner." She turned and raised her voice. "Briggs!" she called. "Where is that rascally steward?"
A withered old sailor in a patched smock came hurrying into the saloon, a towel draped over his arm. "Yes, mum," he said in what Lucy took to be a pronounced Welsh or Shropshire accent.
"Is the roast done, and is the gravy ready?" Mrs. Potts said.
"Yes, mum," he replied.
"Did you have any trouble from the cook?"
"Oh, he didn't like my taking over the oven, as usual, mum. He'd killed a chicken special for the men, seeing as there was company in the forecastle." His eyes went to Lucy and he gave her a nod to indicate that the Mary Small's sailors were being taken care of. "He waved a knife at me, but he calmed down all right when I showed him my pistol."
"He had no right to kill a chicken without permission," Mrs. Potts said indignantly. "Salt beef and biscuit are quite sufficient for the forecastle." She turned to Lucy. "I'm sure that your men are used to it."
"We all are," Lucy said dryly.
Mrs. Potts went on without skipping a beat. "Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding are Captain Potts's favorite, but of course we consumed our fresh beef on our outward bound voyage. But I had Briggs slaughter a pig for a nice pork roast, and we took on plenty of fresh vegetables and provisions at Samoa. Briggs makes a quite acceptable Yorkshire pudding, and I made a prune whip and a special cake myself. Briggs put it in the oven with my instructions, and it came out very well."
She dismissed Lucy and turned her attention to Eban. "And I'm sure the fine claret you brought will go perfectly with my little repast, Captain Hale."
At this point a small boy came running breathlessly into the saloon and went to Mrs. Potts with hardly a glance at the Hales. He was dressed in a little blue sailor suit with short pants and an imitation straw sailor's hat.
"Ma, Ma!" he blurted. "Can I eat forward with the men? They're telling such fine stories and Pulver is playing his fiddle and Cookie made a plum duff!"
"Where are your manners, Nathaniel? Say hello to our guests." To her husband she said, "He's been climbing up the rigging, Phineas. And he's got tar on his suit again. I don't like him associating with common sailors."
"Nonsense," Captain Potts said. "It's perfectly natural for him to want to climb the rigging. I did when I was a boy on my father's ship, and I'll wager you did, too, Captain Hale. Why the boy climbs like a monkey, and it's good for him. And there's nothing wrong with him hanging about with the crew if they'll put up with him and he doesn't interfere with their work. Run along, lad."
He gave little Nathaniel a pat on the rump and the boy ran eagerly off.
Mrs. Potts grumbled, "They're so lenient with the boys. When I was a girl I wasn't allowed forward of the mainmast. Unseemly, my mother said. And then when I was ten they sent me home to stay with relatives and go to finishing school. I didn't go to sea again till I married Phineas."
Lucy saw her chance to make amends with Mrs. Potts. "Yes, I know exactly what you mean. I was so jealous of my little brother having the run of the ship and climbing to the highest spar, while I was stuck aft with Mother, learning to sew. I had to stay with relatives, too, and finish my education at Searsport High School while Josh stayed at sea and was tutored by Mother."
Sweet, loyal Eban added, "And that's why she's a better navigator than I am, Mrs. Potts. Searsport being the seagoing town that it is, the high school takes you all the way to the trigonometric formula given in Bowditch. The girls learn it, the boys are at sea. I picked up navigation as best I could from my father, who picked it up from his father."
"It's not seemly for a woman to have anything to do with the running of a ship," Mrs. Potts sniffed. "She should confine herself to womanly occupations in the cabin."
"You Searsporters are an insufferable lot, all right," Captain Potts interjected with a heavy-handed attempt at humor. "Sail into any port in the Orient and the harbor's already full of ships from Searsport. I've heard that in the early days of the China trade, the Chinese thought Searsport was a country becuse the ships from your little flyspeck on the Maine coast outnumbered the ships from some of the European nations."
Eban laughed. "We're hardly a flyspeck, Captain Potts. We're a healthy town of two thousand people. Of course, about two hundred of them are sea captains."
Lucy added wickedly, "And we've got eleven shipyards. One of them was started by Eban's great-grandfather."
Captain Potts opened his mouth to retort, but before he could say anything the companionway door was flung open and a burly man in rough clothes and a knit cap came stomping in. With no more than a glance toward Eban and Lucy, he made for Captain Potts and said, "I've left Gilkins in charge, Cap'n. Both watches are having their dinner. I hope he doesn't let the men get out of hand."
With a warning glance that indicated the Hales, Potts said brusquely, "We'll allow the men to have a gam with their visitors, Mr. Willis." He turned to face Lucy and Eban with a forced smile. "This is my first mate, Jack Willis," he said. "He'll have dinner with us."
"And Mr. Gilkins?" Lucy said, though she knew the answer.
"He'll eat at second table," Willis growled.
"Mr. Willis..." Mrs. Potts began, and trailed off. Lucy didn't know what she intended to say, but she could tell that Willis made her uncomfortable.
Willis remembered whatever passed for manners with him. "Ma'am," he said grudgingly, "Captain."
"Let's all be seated, shall we?" Mrs. Potts said brightly. Willis took a spot at the far end of the table. He did not remove his cap. Mrs. Potts rang a bell for the steward, and he brought in the first course, some sort of clear soup served in little cups that Lucy recognized to be Chinese export ware in the ubiquitous Mandarin pattern---probably from Potts's cargo. Nobody seemed inclined to talk; Mrs. Potts appeared flustered and distracted, Willis sat like a sullen lump, and even McKay, whom she would have expected to have a ready supply of small talk, sat silent, with a faint, unreadable smile on his lips. Lucy cast about desperately for a topic of conversation, and her eyes lit on the central serving platter---a huge reticulated dish that was decorated with a garden scene of peacocks and blossoming trees.
"That's a spectacular centerpiece, Mrs. Potts," she said. "Wherever did you find it?"
Mrs. Potts came to life again. "Isn't it impressive?" she responded with sudden animation. "Mr. McKay loaned it to me for the dinner party. It's from his collection. Wasn't that good of him?"
Lucy looked inquiringly at McKay. "Collection?"
"More like booty, Mrs. Hale," he said with a veiled hint of boastfulness in his tone. "It's part of the lot of antiquities I got from Woo Lin. Private cargo."
"Mr. McKay didn't trust me to stow it away in the hold with my cargo of export china," Captain Potts said jovially. "You should see his cabin. Tiny as it is, it's jammed to the eaves with his bric-a-brac."
"Oh, I trust you all right, Captain," McKay said. "But I didn't want my little treasure trove to get lost amongst your reproductions. I doubt your sailors would know the difference."
Briggs came in with the roast then, and further talk about the stolen platter broke off as everyone turned their attention to the meal. Lucy paid the necessary compliments to the wonders Mrs. Potts had accomplished with the cook's selfishly guarded oven in the galley and the little parlor stove in the afterhouse, and dutifully admired Briggs's gravy and Yorkshire pudding. McKay ate efficiently in the English manner, the fork never leaving his left hand. Willis was a study in contrasts, tearing into his meal with primitive voracity and helping himself to a second portion when the others had barely started. Lucy saw that Mrs. Potts was trying not to look at him. Conversation picked up somewhat when the next course was served, and she seemed to relax. By the time Briggs brought out the special cake and the prune whip that were supposed to be the captain's favorites, she was urging McKay to entertain them with some of his amusing stories. He obliged with a couple of tall tales about his supposed adventures along the China coast. Lucy didn't believe them for a moment. And, she could see, neither did Willis.
McKay was finally prevailed upon to play the parlor organ that dominated the saloon. It was a stately piece of Gothic furniture, all polished mahogany with an elaborately carved backboard complete with a tall mirror. It put the Mary Small's unpretentious ship's piano to shame.
McKay obliged with a Stephen Foster song that was still popular and followed with "The Last Rose of Summer" in a clear, pleasing tenor voice. Willis was drumming his fingers impatiently, obviously anxious to be out of the saloon. He got up while McKay was still drawing out the last high note.
"It sounds like the men are skylarking on deck," he said. "It was a mistake promoting Gilkins to second mate, Captain, if you'll excuse me for saying so. He's got the men thinking it's dogwatches all the time. No discipline." He glowered accusingly at Eban and Lucy. "It's having strange sailors aboard for a gam that makes them think they can get away with being rowdy."
Eban gave the man a hard stare, but since Captain Potts hadn't reprimanded him, Eban held his tongue too.
Lucy cocked her head and could make out the sounds from the forward deck. She heard a fiddle and men's voices singing in rough unison. She recognized the tune---a familiar halyard shanty that she had always enjoyed. The words of the chorus came drifting faintly aft:
The cap'n was drunk and he went below,for to take a pull at his bottle, O!So early in the morning.
A glance at Mrs. Potts showed that she had heard it too. Her face had turned chalky white. "Nathaniel!" she said with trembling lips. "I won't have him exposed to such indecency!"
"I'll take care of it, ma'am," Willis said. He strode purposefully from the room, one hand straying toward a leather case at his belt.
"Now, now, Henrietta," Captain Potts said soothingly. "Don't take on so. The boy is fine. He's used to sailors' talk. I'm sure Willis will soon have the situation in hand."
Eban said in a deliberately casual tone, "What's all this about Gilkins? Your Mr. Willis doesn't seem to care for him at all."
"Willis can be a bit harsh with the men, but he runs a tight ship," Potts said defensively. "He doesn't trust Gilkins because Gilkins signed on as an ordinary seaman. When we moved him out of the forecastle, Willis thought he'd be too sympathetic to his fellow tars. You know as well as I do, Captain Hale, that every time you take on a new crew, you're going to have a fine crop of scoundrels. Foreigners, heathens, cannibals from the South Seas, murderers, mutineers. And every man jack of them armed with a knife at the least, and maybe with brass knuckles or a gun as well."
"You're too hard on the poor fellows," Eban said. "I take on a crew of mostly Searsport lads at the start of voyage. Local lads who I know and who know me, maybe getting a start up the ladder to becoming a captain or first officer themselves. Or at least on their way to an able seaman rating. When I have to fill berths, I don't use crimps. The men know they've been robbed and cheated, and maybe shanghaied---a sure recipe for a resentful ship. By and large, they don't jump ship. On the return voyage, I've got at least half the men I started out with."
"What made you elevate this Mr. Gilkins to second mate when your first mate was so set against him?" Lucy ventured.
"I had no choice," Captain Potts scowled. "My second mate deserted in the Pacific Islands while we were taking on water. Went native, he did, at some godforsaken little ring of atolls. Lured by some native woman, I've no doubt. No time to hunt him down. No way to sign on a replacement. Nothing to do but recruit from my own foc'sle. Gilkins was the best choice. He could read and write. He even understood the rudiments of navigation. Not that Willis would trust him with a sextant. As for keeping the log book, Willis wouldn't let him anywhere near it. The boy made his entries on the log slate, and at the end of his watch, Willis copied out his observations. Never without disputing his calculations. But he never caught Gilkins in an error."
"What about you, Captain? Didn't you ever examine the slate?"
Potts flushed. "That's the mate's business," he said. "I don't interfere with Mr. Willis, and the ship runs smoothly."
Eban was about to open his mouth, but Lucy interrupted sweetly, "Does that mean that when you interfere with him, the ship doesn't run smoothly, Captain?"
Potts's face became even redder at the outrage of having a woman question him. But before he could explode, the companionway door opened, and a young sailor came in, holding little Nathaniel by the hand.
The boy broke free and ran straight to his mother. "Ma, ma, Mr. Willis knocked Pulver down and broke his fiddle. He's awful mad!"
She buried his face in her bosom. "There, there, you're safe with mama now, and no one can hurt you." She looked up fiercely and glared at the young sailor.
He avoided her glance. He stepped forward, hat in hand, and said to Captain Potts, "Mr. Willis sent me back with the boy, Captain. He said he'd be along shortly."
"What's going on forward, Mr. Gilkins?" Potts asked.
"Mr. Willis said to tell you that he has matters in hand," Gilkins replied vaguely.
"What matters?" Potts said, his patience evaporating.
Gilkins shuffled his feet. "The men weren't too happy about being ordered back inside. They'd had their dinner on deck, and they were spinning yarns and singing shanties and generally having a lark."
"You let them have the run of the deck, both watches together?"
"I didn't see the harm in it, sir," Gilkin said miserably. "It was a fine day for eating outside, and the ship was lying-to, without the deck watch having to work the rigging, and there were the sailors from the Mary Small, aboard for a gam."
"That's enough, Mr. Gilkins, you may go," Potts said. He turned to Eban and Lucy and spread his hands, as if to say what did I tell you.
Gilkins turned to leave, but Lucy stopped him by saying coolly, "Are you a Searsporter by any chance, Mr. Gilkins? It's a common name there. Did you know any of our men?"
He glanced nervously toward Captain Potts and said, "N-no, ma'am. That is, I know who Alvah Goodspeed is. The Goodspeeds have a farm on the south side of the bay. My family lives near Sandypoint."
"Then your father must be the Jeremiah Gilkins who works in Captain Merithew's bank," she said in her best social voice. "I can place him now."
Captain Potts had reached his limit. "I said that'll do, Mr. Gilkins," he exploded.
"Yessir," Gilkins said gratefully, and made his escape.
"You see what I mean," Captain Potts said, directing his words pointedly to Eban alone. "He may sleep in the steerage with the carpenter, but his sentiments are with the men in the forecastle. And now we see he has a connection with your crew as well. It's no wonder he can't keep the men under control."
Eban ignored the slur. "Steerage? Not a mate's berth in the afterhouse opposite the first mate's quarters?"
"Willis wouldn't hear of it. He told Gilkins to his face that a donkey's breakfast was good enough for him."
Lucy was appalled, but she held her tongue. A donkey's breakfast was what the sailors called an improvised straw-filled mattress that they supplied themselves when nothing better was provided.
Captain Potts wasn't through with his complaint. "And he kept his sea chest in the forecastle and slept there like any common sailor for over a week after we made him second mate. He's just not made for any sort of command."
"He doesn't get much chance to try it, does he," Lucy murmured under her breath. Fortunately for her, Willis chose that moment to return. There was a cut on his forehead and a bruise below one cheek, and he was breathing hard. Lucy saw with a shudder that his knuckles were bloody.
"There'll be no more trouble on Mr. Gilkins's watch," he announced. He stood there, rocking on his heels and glowering until Captain Potts cleared his throat and spoke.
"Very good, Mr. Willis." He made it a question.
"We damn near had a mutiny on our hands, Captain," Willis said. He did not apologize to the two women for his language. "I saw Jenkins's hand feeling in his pocket for his brass knuckles, and I took a pistol away from that skulking cannibal chief, Wiremu. I always knew he had one."
"I'm going to faint!" Mrs. Potts announced. She was fanning herself frantically with a napkin. "We might have been murdered in our sleep!"
Captain Potts spoke soothingly. "Now, now, my dear, calm yourself. We're in no danger."
He turned to Willis. "Well done, Mr. Willis. How did you subdue them?"
Willis gave a sharklike grin. "I showed them Mr. Peavey. Had to use him a couple of times."
Lucy was getting Mrs. Potts quieted down with a glass of water from the pitcher on the table, and pretending not to pay attention, so Eban saved her the trouble of asking the question.
"Who is Mr. Peavey?"
Willis, still grinning, dug into the leather case at his belt and brought out a bizarre contraption that seemed to be a combination double-barreled derringer, knife, and brass knuckles.
"Invented by the same Mr. Peavey who thought up the hinged canting hook that loggers use. Sold so many of them that he had to open a manufacturing company, and he started inventing things. This was one of them. I was first in line to buy one. Does the work of three."
"I should think it would be awkward to use," Eban said mildly.
"I've had a lot of practice," Willis said.
And then, to Lucy's disgust, Willis started holding forth on his methods of enforcing disclipine. "Things haven't been the same since the Dana Act did away with flogging. But the law only prohibits lashing a man to the mast and using the cat-o-nine-tails. It says nothing about an officer using his fists or a belaying pin to quell willful disobedience. Or to use a gun in case of mutiny."
"The law allows quite a bit of leeway in what constitutes mutiny," Eban protested.
"And a good thing it does," Captain Potts expostulated. "Otherwise you'd have men refusing to go aloft in a storm."
"You've got to nip it in the bud," Willis said. "Now when a man comes aboard, I have a sheath knife muster. I break off the point of his knife and give it back to him. No exceptions."
Eban frowned. "A sailor can't do without a sheath knife. He needs it for splicing, cutting a stopper rope, even eating his dinner."
"Aye," Willis said. "A sailor needs a knife to do his proper work, but he doesn't need a point on it to stab his messmates in a drunken brawl. On any ship where I'm first officer, having a knife with a point is evidence of mutiny."
"Except for your own sheath knife, of course," Eban said.
Willis looked at him suspiciously but said, "Aye. That and Mr. Peavey."
Lucy, still tending Mrs. Potts, broke in. "Mrs. Potts is fatigued," she said. "She needs to rest. Captain, will you see her back to your quarters?"
"Yes, perhaps that's best," Mrs. Potts said as Lucy helped her to her feet. Captain Potts rushed to her side and took her arm.
"Thank you for a marvelous dinner, Mrs. Potts," Lucy said in her best formal voice. "It was a feast one might expect in port, but not at sea. I hope you'll allow me to reciprocate tomorrow."
Mrs. Potts accepted the compliment as her due. But she evaded the invitation coyly. "I should love to come, Mrs. Hale. I don't know if my..." She hesitated meaningfully. "...delicate condition will allow me to risk a bosun's chair."
Lucy was having none of it. "I shall hope for the best, Mrs. Potts," she said.
Captain Potts became brisk and businesslike. "Mr. Willis, will you see to getting Captain Hale's sailors rounded up? And have a bosun's chair rigged up for Mrs. Hale."
Lucy could not resist a last chance to scandalize the Pottses. "I won't need a bosun's chair. I climb like a monkey."
As she turned to go, McKay was at her side to say his farewells. He took her hand with languid gallantry and said, "It's been a thoroughly engaging encounter, Mrs. Hale. I'm sure I've never seen such a lovely monkey."
"What was that all about?" Eban asked.
They were seated in the stern sheets of the longboat, facing the six sweating sailors at the oars. The wind and the spray were in Lucy's face, and the hem of her good dress was soaked from the last dip the rope ladder had taken during the descent, when the bark had rolled in an unexpected wave. She hoped fervently that Captain Potts had not seen the mishap, but she doubted it; the crew had been banished from the rail to protect them from the sight of a woman in skirts climbing down a rope ladder.
Lucy replied, "She was letting me know, woman to woman, that she was expecting a little brother or sister for Nathaniel. That's why he humors her so. Like stopping in mid-Pacific for a gam when he can't afford it. Or indulging her delicate condition."
"That's a relief. I don't think I could put up with another dinner party with them."
"Oh, they'll row over to the Mary Small tomorrow. She won't miss the chance to lord it over me. McKay will come, too, invited or not."
"My poor martyred Lucy! We can't match that roast beef."
"We'll have roast chicken. And dumplings. And we have all those fresh vegetables and fruits we onloaded at the Marquesas."
"What about a special dessert?" he teased her. "Your captain's favorite?"
She pretended to think. "Perhaps a plum duff."
He roared with laughter. The sailors facing them stole sidelong glances at them.
Lucy had never thought it was beneath her to speak to the sailors, and they had never taken advantage. Or if one did, he was soon set right by the others. She smiled at the one she had caught looking at her. "Yes, you heard me correctly, Goodspeed. There'll be chicken for the men too. And I'll bake enough gingerbread for the forecastle as well."
He returned a suitable smile. "We'll all appreciate it, ma'am. The grub 'board the bark was salt horse and weevils, and not much of it. The cook was a decent old Chinese who tried to do a little something extra for the men, seeing we was having a gam, but that bucko mate, Willis, came by and blew up a storm. We could hear him slamming the old man around in the galley and yelling like a banshee. The old man was yelling back, but Willis said something in Chinese that shut him right up."
Lucy had picked up a smattering of trade Chinese, and she supposed that was all Willis knew as well. "Were you able to pick up any words?" she asked. "Think hard."
Goodspeed wrinkled his forehead. "I don't know, ma'am. Maybe wo or something."
"Could it have been something like Woo Lin?"
"That's it, ma'am. What does it mean? It scared the stuffing out of the old man."
Eban scratched his head. "Why would a lowly Chinese cook be frightened by something involving a mandarin like Woo Lin?"
"What happened then?" Lucy asked.
Goodspeed had lost his rowing rhythm. There was a delay while he straightened the boat out with a couple of powerful strokes, then he said, "Well, Willis came out with the cook's tub and dumped the men's dinner into the sea. It was some special stew he'd made, with chicken. The men were looking forward to it. The old man stood by and didn't say nothing. You couldn't read his face, but he had a black eye and a cut lip. Then the mate went aft, and a little while later the cook brought out a sorry mess of burgoo made of salt horse and biscuit crumbs."
"Wasn't it Mr. Gilkins's watch? Didn't he have anything to say about it?"
"He tried, but Willis was in a fury. Later---"
"I know what happened later."
Later, aboard the Mary Small, they told Dawson what Goodspeed had said. Dawson didn't raise an eyebrow at the spectacle of the captain's wife chatting with a sailor. He was used to Lucy Hale and her ways, respected her brains, and unlike what would have been the reaction of many first officers, was not at all put off by her participation in the navigation of the ship.
"Goodspeed's a bright young lad," he said. "He's gone from boy to ordinary seaman to able seaman in only two voyages, and he's taught himself navigation. By the time we get back to Searsport, he'll qualify for a second mate's berth. He'll be a captain like his father and grandfather before he's twenty-five."
"He doesn't have much use for this Willis fellow," Eban said. "Talk about your bucko mates. This one takes the cake."
"I know a little about Willis. He's notorious from Liverpool to Zanzibar. The sailors call him Kicking Jack Willis. They've even made up a shanty about him: ''Tis larboard and starboard on deck you will sprawl, for Kicking Jack Willis is lord of us all.' I'm surprised this Captain Potts was able to scrape up a crew."
"Well, a stranded sailor doesn't have much choice. The crimps get hold of him and he wakes up aboard a hell ship."
"He sounds like a real villain," Lucy said.
"He is. He was once first mate to Bully Hayes."
"The pirate?"
"Yes ma'am. The same one. He claims to be a missionary now, but in the bad old days of the Queensland Labor Act, he was the worst of the South Sea blackbirders who sold natives to the less principled planters. He could have been hanged for piracy if the planters hadn't been so politically powerful."
Lucy dipped into her memory and quoted the statute she had learned in her maritime law class. "It is also piracy and punishable with death to be engaged in kidnapping or decoying any Negro or mulatto with the intention of making them slaves."
"Well, I don't know what skulduggery he might be up to now, but he's safe with Captain Potts," Dawson said.
"What is wrong with this man?" Lucy said angrily.
"Captains like Potts find it makes it easier for them to have a mate like Willis. As long as they look the other way."
Lucy shook her head in disgust. "Goodspeed told me that a sailor with a religious bent had painted the maxim 'Keep Hoping, Ye Who Enter' over the transom to the forecastle. When Willis discovered it, he got a paintbrush and added another p to hoping."
"Speaking of hopping, my dear," Eban said mirthlessly, "if the captain and his lady condescend to come visiting tomorrow, you have a lot to do."
"I may poison the chicken," Lucy said.
Lucy was up at the crack of dawn to take a sighting. The sea was flat and calm, and a gentle breeze blew in from the east. A blazing tropical sun was just perched on the eastern horizon as she raised her sextant and adjusted the vernier. She had already seen the dead reckoning estimate that Dawson had entered in the log, and she was anxious to see how closely her reading matched it. Though the sails were all reefed, the steady pressure of the southeast trade winds against the bare poles, and the assistance of the South Equatorial current, had brought the Mary Small, she was sure, at least twenty miles closer to China during the night. Potts, of course, had lost another twenty miles of headway. Eban, poking his head out the companionway door, nodded to let her know that he had jotted down the chronometer reading at the appropriate moment.
She was about to join Eban when a flutter of movement across the way caught her eye. The two ships had drifted farther apart during the night. They were beyond speaking distance now, but Lucy could see that the bark was hoisting a signal flag aloft, a red X on a white field. "I need assistance." And a single-letter signal meant it was urgent. Could Mrs. Potts's time have come prematurely? No. A medical emergency was a blue and white bordered red rectangle.
Eban came hurrying to her side. Dawson dropped what he was doing and began scanning the bark's deck with a telescope.
"A lot of activity on deck, Captain. I can see Potts in his top hat, waving his arms about. I don't see any evidence of a fire, or any working of the pumps that would indicate a leak!"
"What the devil kind of emergency can it be?" Eban said. "Try to find out, Mr. Dawson. Get a line on what kind of gear we need to bring over to them."
Dawson sent a sailor scurrying to the flag locker. A minute or two later, a yellow and blue flag was climbing to the main truck, the letter K used as a single-letter signal.
They waited several minutes. There was no response.
Dawson squinted through the telescope again. "He isn't even bothering to look toward us. Wait a minute. Somebody in a pea jacket is dragging a sailor to him by the scruff of the neck. He just gave him a backhanded swipe that knocked him flat. The fellow's triced up. Now he's hauled him to his feet again and he's frog marching him 'midships. They're out of sight. The captain's yelling at the other sailors. It looks like the whole crew's on deck. They're milling about like cattle."
"No more flags?"
"No."
Eban sighed. "Get a boat crew together, Mr. Dawson. We'll have to go over and see."
Lucy spoke up. "I'm going with you."
Eban shook his head stubbornly. "Not a chance. We don't know what's going on. There may be danger."
"I'm going with you, Eban. That's settled. Whatever's going on, Mrs. Potts may need a woman."
"I'll have my Smith and Wesson," Dawson said. "You better stick a gun in your belt too, Captain."
The boat crew was composed of the same six men who had rowed them across yesterday. Alvah Goodspeed couldn't conceal a lively curiosity, but Dawson's presence kept him quiet. "You men stay in the boat," Dawson told them. "But be prepared to swarm up the rope ladder if I call you."
Yesterday's ladder was still in place, which was a good thing, since nobody aboard the Everett Parsons seemed to be aware of their arrival. Dawson swung himself up easily, followed by Eban. When it was Lucy's turn, Goodspeed and the others averted their eyes without having been told to do so by Dawson. There was nobody at the top to give Lucy a hand, Eban and Dawson already being out of reach as they forced their way through the chaos on deck to get to Captain Potts, so she hoisted herself to a sitting position on the bulwarks, gathered her skirts together, and swung her legs over the side. She pushed her way through the mob of sailors and joined Eban.
Eban was doing his best to get a coherent story out of a distracted Potts, who didn't look any too happy to see him and Dawson, and even less happy to see Lucy.
"...and we searched all the sea chests in the forecastle to find the murder weapon, and then Mr. Willis remembered that Gilkins had moved his chest to the steerage only a few days ago, and sure enough, there was the evidence in plain sight on top of his belongings. So he searched Gilkins and confiscated his knife, and I've got it locked up with the rest of the evidence until we can get Gilkins to the nearest U.S. Consul..."
Eban turned to Lucy and explained, "Mr. McKay has been murdered."
"Mr. McKay, murdered?" Lucy exclaimed. "And the Gilkins boy suspected of it? How horrible!"
"You needn't concern yourself, Mrs. Hale," Potts said. "We have everything under control now. We'll hand Gilkins over to the American Consul at the Marquesas, and he'll be shipped home for hanging."
"We're familiar with the American Consul at the Marquesas," Lucy said. "His facilities are limited, and so is his hospitality."
But Potts was not paying any attention to her. He was talking to Eban and Dawson, and saying, "When we discovered McKay's body, our first thought was that a mutiny was in progress. In these latitudes I naturally suspected the Malays in the crew of plotting to cut a few throats and, when the men were terrorized, steal the longboat and desert. So I immediately ran up the signal flags requesting your help." His eyes ran over the pistol at Eban's belt. "I see that you and your mate are armed."
"It seemed a wise precaution. We didn't know what the trouble was."
"But Mr. Willis very bravely waded into the forecastle, and after knocking a few heads, concluded that there was no conspiracy. So that left us with the job of ferreting out the murderer."
"And you lit on Mr. Gilkins?"
Captain Potts's eyes narrowed in a way that Lucy didn't care for. "So you see, Captain Hale, that your assistance is no longer required," he said.
Before Eban could respond, Willis appeared from the direction of the after hatch. "I've got Gilkins locked up in the sail locker, Cap'n," he said. "Double manacled, just to be safe."
"Very good, Mr. Willis," Potts said. He turned back to Eban, and Lucy could see that he was about to suggest strongly that Eban and Dawson and the interfering woman they had brought with them were free to leave the ship.
She spoke quickly, with her sweetest smile. "Poor Mrs. Potts must be terrified. She'll need the comfort of another woman's company."
Before Potts could object, she turned on her heel and marched sternward toward the afterhouse, lifting her skirts daintily to keep them from dragging on the wet deck. When she reached the companionway, she turned briefly to verify that no one was coming after her. No one was. Eban, bless him, was keeping Potts and Willis busy.
She was in the forward section of the afterhouse now, and the doors lining both sides of the cabin were shut. She didn't want to risk blundering into the steward's quarters. After a moment's thought, she decided that would be the door adjacent to the pantry. The first mate's berth would be the first door on the starboard side. The next two cubbyholes would be for storage, or passengers if they had them, and one of the doors was ajar.
She pushed the door open and poked her head inside. The tiny room had clearly been McKay's domain. One wall of makeshift shelves was cluttered floor to ceiling with the bric-a-brac that Captain Potts had described. Some kind of struggle had gone on. Shards of broken porcelain---fragments of priceless antiquities, if McKay could be believed---littered the floor, and there was a small scattering of silver trade dollars that the murderer had not bothered to pick up.
The magnificent reticulated serving dish that Mrs. Potts had borrowed for the dinner party was nowhere in sight on the shelves, and Lucy could see no fragments in the floor debris that could have come from it.
She turned her attention to the narrow bunk opposite. A sheet draped form had been left there, presumably by Potts and Willis, who wouldn't have wanted any help from talkative sailors.
After a quick glance over her shoulder, Lucy edged over to the bunk and pulled back the sheet. It was McKay all right, as dead as a mackerel. His face was badly battered; the marks looked as if they had been made by brass knuckles. That proved nothing. Brass knuckles were as common in the forecastle as knives and homemade blackjacks.
She pulled the sheet down farther and saw the wound that had killed him. The shirt had been torn apart to expose the wound. She could tell from the direction of the cut that it had been a downward thrust. She had doctored enough bungled wounds to know this would be unusual if the attacker were sober and had murderous intent. But the knife had slipped in cleanly anyway, without being deflected by the rib cage, and penetrated the liver or spleen, with the fatal result she was looking at. It suggested that the killer had stabbed McKay in a rage while he was lying on the floor, felled by the savage beating he had received from the assailant's brass knuckles. A determined killer indeed. It did not fit her picture of Gilkins.
There were footsteps and loud voices outside the companionway door. She replaced the sheet and slipped out of the little bunkroom. A few swift steps took her to the door leading to the saloon, and the door closed behind her just as the companionway door opened.
She did not know if she had been seen. She hurried across an empty saloon and let herself into the captain's stateroom at the rear.
Mrs. Potts was sprawled across an overstuffed settee at the far end, surrounded by Chinese knicknacks on a profusion of little tables. A birdcage hung swaying from a stained-glass skylight overhead.
Lucy hurried to her side. "My dear Mrs. Potts," she said, "are you all right?"
She raised Mrs. Potts to a sitting position and propped a pillow behind her back. Mrs. Potts was gulping air and clutching at her chest. "I'm having palpitations," she quavered. "And I want Phineas. I'm sure my heart's about to stop."
"I'm sure your husband will come as soon as he can. Would you like the steward to bring you a cup of tea?"
"I don't know where the steward can have gone to," Mrs. Potts said, and burst into tears. "Oh, what shall I do?"
"Calm yourself, Mrs. Potts. Stay there and don't try to get up. I'll be back in a minute."
She crossed to the captain's desk on the other side of the stateroom and found the medicine chest that all ships of this size were required to carry. There, among the rows of numbered bottles and basic surgical tools, she found a stoppered smelling bottle containing some sort of camphor compound. She brought it back to the settee and held it under Mrs. Potts's nose. Mrs. Potts tossed her head back and forth and tried to push the bottle away, but after a minute her color improved and she seemed less agitated.
"There," Lucy said. "Now you just rest, and I'll go make you a cup of tea."
She needed another look at McKay's cabin. Why had the platter disappeared, and what else might have been taken? If robbery had been the motive, why had all those silver trade dollars---the favored currency in the China trade---been left behind? The galley was only a few steps from McKay's cabin. She only needed a minute or two.
The door swung open and Captain Potts entered, followed by Willis. Eban and Dawson came crowding in after them.
Potts gave Lucy a hard look, and went to his wife. "Phineas, how could you be so thoughtless?" she admonished him, the vapors abandoned and replaced by a practiced sulk. "To leave me alone at such a time!"
"Now, now, Henrietta," he said with forced patience. "Mr. Willis and I have much to do if we're to keep you safe. We've made a thorough search of the crew's belongings, and ferreted out the culprit. That dissembling wretch, Gilkins, as we thought! We have him safely locked up now. You have nothing to fear. And now we have to see to poor McKay. We'll give him a decent burial at sea, with all proper ceremony. I shall have to borrow your Bible and find an appropriate text."
That was Eban's cue, and after an exchange of glances with Lucy, he took it. "You don't want to do things too hastily, Captain. There are legal forms to be observed, and if you want to stay out of trouble you'll follow maritime law. Fortunately, you have myself, Mr. Dawson, and Mrs. Hale aboard as disinterested parties to sign the necessary depositions. And Mrs. Hale has a grounding in maritime law, thanks to her class at Searsport High School, so she can make out the properly worded forms for the American Consul and any local authorities he has to answer to. Of course we will have to view the body and the evidence."
"If I'm not mistaken, Mrs. Hale has already viewed the body," Potts growled.
"The hell with all that!" Willis shouted in a fury. "I say we just hang Gilkins from a yardarm and have done with it. We're three thousand miles from the States. I say he's guilty and so does the captain, and that's enough!"
"Those days are gone, Mr. Willis, along with abuses like flogging," Lucy said.
She turned to Captain Potts and aimed her next words at him. "When a captain takes shortcuts, he's liable for five years imprisonment and a thousand dollar fine. I'm sure you've heard about what happened to Captain Slocum, the skipper of the Aquidneck. He shot two sailors who tried to rob and kill him, and they put him on parole even though evidence was presented that one of the dead men was still clutching a knife when they found him. He'd had the good sense not to touch the dead bodies till he had witnesses."
That got to Potts. Lucy could see that further argument at that point would only cause resistance. She patted Mrs. Potts on the shoulder and said, "I'll get your cup of tea now, dear."
As she left the stateroom, she could hear Mrs. Potts getting querulous again: "I won't feel safe until that man is off the ship. I don't care if he is locked up!" A sob. "Mrs. Hale is the only one who cares about my feelings!" followed by a rumble of male voices reassuring her.
There was still a fire in the steward's stove. Lucy poked it up and added a couple of sticks of wood. She put a tea kettle on to boil, then listened at the corridor. The stateroom door remained closed. She waited another moment to be safe, and let herself into McKay's cabin again.
The scene was as before: a dead body on the bunk and broken crockery on the floor. She peered more closely at the silver coins. Mostly American Seated Liberties, with a few Mexican and British trade dollars. What they had in common was that the silver content exceeded the face value, so that they were not circulated in their countries of origin. That was fine with the Chinese, who went by the weight of the silver anyway.
Where had the coins come from? Lucy's eyes found McKay's steamer trunk. It had been ransacked. The latches were bent and twisted and the lock smashed. The trunk had been pried apart, and the sliding drawers on either side hung halfway out, spilling their contents---shirts, undergarments, toilet articles, and more silver coins. The leather bag that had held the coins had been slashed, but the murderer had left the scattered dollars behind.
But the big bottom drawer had been pulled all the way out, and it was empty.
She was taking a step forward for a closer look, when there was movement behind her and a rough voice said, "Well, captain's lady, did you get a good look at the corpse? And maybe tamper with the evidence?"
It was Willis, and she hadn't heard him come in. He was too close, but she stood her ground. "Yes, Mr. Willis, I've seen what I had to see," she said.
She could tell that he had expected her to be intimidated, and was puzzled by his failure to frighten her. "A dead body's no sight for a lady," he tried. "If you are a lady."
"I've seen my share of dead bodies, Mr. Willis," she said in a steady voice. "And I'm not a shrinking violet."
He took a step toward her, and she said coldly, "You wouldn't dare." He stepped aside as she brushed past him. The walk back to the captain's stateroom seemed long, but she refrained from looking back over her shoulder. It had taken all her resolve to go back to the galley for Mrs. Potts's tea.
But when she re-entered the captain's stateroom she was relieved to find that Willis had not followed on her heels. He had gone off to God knows where to do his mischief elsewhere.
She poured Mrs. Potts a cup of tea and coped patiently with her threats to faint. The men were clustered together in a little masculine group that excluded her. That was fine with her. She caught Dawson's eye, and he gave a little nod. He excused himself to Captain Potts, saying that he had better check on his men, who had been waiting in the longboat for some time now. Potts gave absent-minded assent and went on talking to Eban.
She waited until there was a break in their conversation and got to her feet. When Potts's eyes turned in her direction, she said offhandedly, "I had better talk to Gilkins. When we get back to Searsport, I shall have to see his family and give them any last messages from him."
Potts turned instantly apoplectic. "I cannot permit you to see him!" he sputtered. "It's out of the question!"
Eban gave a tolerable imitation of male solidarity. "Captain Potts is right, my dear. You can't be alone with a dangerous killer."
"Nonsense!" she said. "I'm in no danger. I believe Mr. Willis said that he's manacled as well as confined. And in any case, I can't believe that he would harm me."
She was on the right tack. Her quarrel was now with Eban, not Potts, and it softened the challenge to his authority. "It still isn't proper," he said halfheartedly.
"He's amidships in the sail locker," she said in a reasonable tone, "so I won't be venturing alone into the crew's territory."
"When you put it that way..." Eban said with a convincing show of reluctance.
With a husband's tacit permission providing the necessary balm to his dignity, Potts dropped his objections. Lucy was halfway to the door before he could offer to escort her.
The after-hatch was just aft of the mainmast, and fortunately for Lucy, Willis had not replaced the hatch cover after locking Gilkins up. She descended the ladder into a dank darkness, and looked around at shadowy stacks of stowed cargo. The bulk cargo such as tea would be farther forward to make it more accessible to the main hatch. She located the sail locker behind a pile of crated export ware, and tapped on the door.
"Mr. Gilkins, are you in there?" she said.
"Mrs. Hale, is that you?" came the muffled reply from within.
The latch was a simple wooden bar that swiveled on a peg. The door swung open when she rotated it to the vertical. Gilkins was sitting on the floor with his back resting against the stiff folds of the spare sails, his hands fastened behind him, and his ankles tethered by a chain. He tried to get to his feet, but constrained as he was by the manacles, he failed.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Hale," he said.
"Don't worry about it, Mr. Gilkins. With luck, we'll have you out of those chains by eight bells."
"I don't see how," he said miserably. "The captain says he has all the evidence he needs to hang me."
"We don't have much time. Tell me what happened."
"Mr. McKay's body was discovered at the start of the morning watch. He didn't come out for breakfast, and the steward knocked on his door in case he'd overslept. When there was no answer he looked inside and saw the body. He got the captain, and the captain went wild. He ordered Mr. Willis to search the forecastle, and Mr. Willis tore the place apart. He wouldn't let me help. He told the captain I was just another sailor as far as he was concerned. He's had the captain against me from the start."
"So I've gathered. What happened then?"
"Well, of course he didn't find anything. During the dogwatch yesterday, seeing that there was a gam with Alva Goodspeed and the others, they decided everyone would overhaul his chest---you know, move the shirts to the left, tobacco to the right, diaries and letters to the top, and so forth. Then rotate them back again. You may think it's foolishness, but---"
"I understand, Mr. Gilkins. It's called a comfort turn. There's little diversion on a long voyage, and sailors devise their own forms of entertainment."
"That's it exactly, Mrs. Hale. So if a man were to hide evidence of murder, he wouldn't hide it in his sea chest, when the whole forecastle had been watching him rearrange his belongings."
"So having followed the captain's orders and found nothing, Mr. Willis turned his attention to you?"
"Yes. He asked me where my sea chest was. I told him that when I was made second mate, I moved it to the space in the steerage that I shared with the carpenter. He took me by the elbow and hustled me there, and I showed him my chest."
"And surprise of surprises, when he opened the lid, there was evidence of your guilt lying in plain view on top."
Gilkins's cry of anguish was unfeigned. "I swear to you that I don't know how that stuff got in my chest, Mrs. Hale! When I last looked inside, just before the second dogwatch, everything was neat as a pin, just as it should be. Nothing could have been hidden there."
"Calm yourself, Mr. Gilkins. What exactly was there that shouldn't have been?"
"There was a big Chinese plate, broken in three pieces. And one gold coin---a Double Eagle. Worth more than my pay for an entire voyage. At a mate's wages. I've never seen a Double Eagle before, except once or twice."
"Supposedly stolen from Mr. McKay?"
"That's what Mr. Willis said."
"But Mr. McKay traded all his gold to Woo Lin for the stolen Chinese antiquities. And Captain Potts paid Woo Lin in gold as well. Presumably Woo Lin had all the gold. McKay would have been left with the unspent portion of the usual silver specie. If you were robbing Mr. McKay, why didn't you take the silver Liberties as well? They would have been easier to dispose of. For that matter, why just one Double Eagle? It doesn't make sense."
"I didn't ... I didn't..."
"I know, I know. You didn't steal anything. I believe you. But why the one solitary coin?"
A sob escaped Gilkins. "Mrs. Hale..."
"I'll tell you why. It was solely to throw suspicion on you. It was worth sacrificing one Double Eagle to point the finger of blame in your direction. But stupid and greedy. It would have been convincing to plant two or three of the gold pieces if it had been any captain but Potts. He was already primed to think the worst of you."
She paused, thinking of the big empty bottom drawer in McKay's sea chest, and what it must have held. A surmise began to grow in her brain.
"And the broken china plate," she went on. "What was that supposed to prove? The same thing. That you were the one who killed McKay. Everybody knew the plate belonged to him. But it's another example of a stupid person not thinking it through. What were you supposed to do with a white elephant like that? Even unbroken, it would take a confidence man like McKay, with shady confederates in the States, to know how to dispose of that kind of illicit treasure."
He was not following her, but he looked at her hopefully anyway. "I don't know about the platter, Mrs. Hale. But what about my knife?"
"Ah yes, the knife."
"After he found the platter and the gold piece, he confiscated my knife. He told the captain that there was blood on it, and that it clinched the case against me. But, Mrs. Hale, I swear there was no blood on the blade when I gave it to him. I'd just been using it to splice a line."
She straightened up to leave. "What did the captain do with all this so-called evidence?"
"I suppose it's still in the steerage."
"Don't despair, Mr. Gilkins. Your case is not hopeless."
She left him locked up as she had found him. She threaded her way through mountains of cargo and found the warren where Gilkins and the carpenter slept. There were two sea charts at opposite ends of the space, and the donkey's breakfast that served as Gilkins's bed was next to one of them.
The lid of the chest had been left open and the three pieces of the broken platter were displayed on top of Gilkins's clothing. Displayed was the only word that Lucy could think of; the pieces were arranged too carefully to be the product of accidental breakage. Gilkins's ditty box had been emptied of its contents and used as a receptacle for the gold Double Eagle and Gilkins's clasp knife.
She picked up the knife and examined it. The point of the knife was broken off, as she had known it would be. The blunted end could not have been the cause of the wound that had killed McKay. It would have left a ragged tear instead of the clean puncture she had seen. She turned the knife over in her hand. The bloodstain that was supposed to hang Gilkins was there---a dried oval smear that had been carelessly applied at the center of the blade, nowhere near any possible cutting edge.
"A lubberly job," she muttered contemptuously under her breath.
She replaced the knife and found her way back to the ladder leading to the after hatch. When she emerged on deck, she saw Dawson coming out of the forecastle. He was followed by Alvah Goodspeed, who wasn't supposed to be aboard the ship. Willis was close behind him. He and Dawson were having some kind of altercation, to judge by all the angry arm-waving.
Goodspeed broke away and escaped over the side and down the rope ladder to the Mary Small's longboat. Willis leaned out to watch him go. Lucy could hear him shouting from where she stood.
Dawson saw her, and hurried across the deck to her side. "What was all that about, Mr. Dawson?" she asked.
"Goodspeed got tired of waiting, and climbed aboard to be with his friends in the forecastle. I found him there and had a little talk with him. Willis came by, and was some mad to find that Goodspeed had been talking to the crew. He was going to beat him up. I told him that if anyone was going to beat up my men, it would be me. He didn't like that."
Lucy laughed. "Good for Goodspeed. The boy has initiative."
"He found out some interesting things. For one thing, Willis and McKay had a shouting match a few days ago. They could hear it all the way from the forward house. For another, though Willis had the crew generally terrorized, he left the cook pretty much alone, since the cook isn't part of either watch. That is, until the ship stopped at Foochow and there was all that pother about that Chinese passenger. About then he started picking on the cook, and the crew had the idea that the old man was frightened out of his wits about something. That Willis was somehow threatening him."
"Very interesting, Mr. Dawson."
"But Goodspeed being a clever sort of lad, he somehow got the old man to talk. Maybe the old man thought that since Goodspeed was not a member of the crew, and would soon be off the ship, he could risk talking to him."
"It must have been an interesting conversation. Goodspeed doesn't speak Chinese, and I gather that the cook's fund of pidgin English was limited."
"Just so. But Goodspeed wormed out of the old man the fact that he had not seen Woo Lin leave the ship the night he disappeared. In fact, Willis had coerced him to say so. What he said to Goodspeed as near as Goodspeed could reproduce it was something like 'Suppose my tellee cap'n Woo Lin go way on sampan chop-chop, suppose no makee my killee.'"
"A death threat?"
"Looks like it."
"Thank you, Mr. Dawson. Now I know exactly what happened and how. Let's go see Captain Potts."
Dawson kept pace with her as she hurried back to the afterhouse. They found Potts still deep in conversation with Eban. Mrs. Potts was sipping tea, listening but not trying to join them.
Potts was doing his best to ignore her. Lucy said sharply, "Captain, there's a killer aboard, and it isn't Gilkins. You must be ready to move quickly."
"What are you talking about, Mrs. Hale?"
"Do you have a gun?"
That got his attention. "I keep one in my quarters. Why are we talking about guns?"
"You had better get it. And you had better put Mrs. Potts in a safe place."
That threatened to send Mrs. Potts off into another attack of the vapors, so Lucy took her by the hand and said, "There's going to be some unpleasantness, my dear. It's for your own safety."
Mrs. Potts surprised both her and the captain by rising to her feet without any fuss and saying, "I shall lock myself in the privacy. No, don't come with me, Phineas. Do as Mrs. Hale says, and get your pistol."
Potts shook his head in bewilderment, and retrieved a Colt revolver from his desk drawer. He put it in the pocket of his frock coat, the long barrel making it an awkward fit.
Eban and Dawson unobtrusively moved closer together, making a protective triangle around her with Potts. It would have to do. She had known it was going to be dangerous.
The timing was close. Willis returned just then from bullying the men in the forecastle or intimidating the cook or whatever else he thought might do him some good. His eyes darted from Lucy to Eban to Dawson to Potts, whose tense posture had alerted him to his position. "Captain---" he began.
"Don't bother, Mr. Willis," Lucy said firmly. "We've unraveled the details of Mr. McKay's death, and they exonerate Mr. Gilkins."
Willis attempted to dominate the situation in the way he always had. "Captain, we don't have time for any foolishness. There's a light breeze starting from the west. It won't last long. I've got to get all hands aloft and hoist canvas. And we've got to get these people off the ship."
He turned to leave, and found Eban standing in his way. "Stay where you are, Mr. Willis," Captain Potts said. "We'll listen to Mrs. Hale."
"First of all," Lucy said, "you and McKay were in collusion, weren't you? He knew that Woo Lin had all that gold, and he wasn't going to let it get away from him. He killed Woo Lin in his cabin and took the gold, after arranging with you to dispose of the body during the night. What did he promise you? A half share of the loot?"
"I don't have to listen to this," Willis said, and made another attempt to leave. He found Eban blocking his way again.
Lucy continued. "He needed you to get rid of the body for him because he had no business on deck at night. There was no helmsman because the ship was at anchor, but he couldn't risk being seen by a member of the crew. You, on the other hand, could order the men about, forbid going on deck for a smoke, and so forth. It wasn't far from the afterhouse companionway to the rail, and you could keep a mast or a corner of the galley deckhouse between you and the forecastle. Then splash!"
Willis showed the dangerous stillness of a trapped bull. Lucy regarded him thoughtfully before going on.
"But the galley deckhouse was the problem. The cook should have been asleep, but he wasn't. And he saw you dump Woo Lin's body overboard. No doubt weighed down by some heavy object not as precious as gold. Mr. McKay had all the gold by that time."
An animal growl escaped Willis, and Eban and Dawson shifted position slightly to keep him boxed in. Lucy plunged on more confidently.
"The cook was easy to take care of. He was scared half to death. It was no trouble at all to get him to say that he had seen Woo Lin go ashore in one of the sampans surrounding the ship. The sampan inhabitants had seen Woo Lin's body go over the rail too. But that was no problem. They were frightened also. They didn't want to be found anywhere near this ship. And they were never going to say a word to the Chinese authorities. It didn't matter. You were going to leave Foochow with the first land breeze anyway."
Potts had decided on a show of indignation. "Is this true, Mr. Willis?" he said. Willis gave him a look of contempt, reserving a black scowl for Lucy.
"But McKay kept putting you off about the sharing of the gold, didn't he?" Lucy went on, undeterred. "The ship continued its coastal stops down the South China Sea, and finally made its passage through the Sunda Straits and set an eastward course for home. And still no sharing of the loot. Very imprudent of McKay. Perhaps he thought he could keep putting you off until it was too late, and get you to settle for a pittance. In the meantime, you had the job of keeping the cook quiet. McKay had committed the murder but you were the one at risk. I can imagine the rage that must have been building up in you."
Lucy kept one eye on Willis's right hand. The fingers kept flexing minutely, though Willis himself seemed to be unconscious of it.
"When poor Mr. Gilkins became second mate somewhere past Samoa, you took out some of your rage on him, didn't you? But your real anger was reserved for McKay. A few days ago it reached the boiling point, and you had a set-to with him. If he'd had any sense, he'd have settled with you then, but he didn't. So last night, toward the morning watch, you let yourself into his cabin and started beating him up. I saw the marks of the brass knuckles. I don't know what happened then. Perhaps he tried to fight back. Perhaps your rage spilled over. Perhaps you'd intended to kill him all along. So you finished him off by stabbing him.
"The gold was in the bottom drawer of McKay's steamer trunk, wasn't it? Once you had it, you had to move quickly. There was no time to bother about the petty cash in silver, or about McKay's other valuables. You thought quickly but not intelligently. You grabbed the first thing that might link Mr. Gillis to McKay's murder---the Chinese serving platter that everyone had seen. And since there was a lot of broken crockery on the floor from the struggle, you smashed the platter into three big pieces. The gold Double Eagle was an afterthought. It would have been smarter to scoop up a handful of the silver coins, but you weren't thinking clearly. At that point no one but you knew about McKay's cache of gold, so you were opening a door that it would have been safer to keep closed."
She gave a weary sigh. Willis had controlled himself longer than she had expected, but he was near his breaking point. But she had done what she had set out to do. Captain Potts was thoroughly absorbed in her account and she could almost see a little window opening in his brain to let in the light.
"But you made a mistake," she told Willis. "Gilkins's knife could not possibly have killed McKay, not with the clean wound I saw, because you'd broken the point off. Just as you'd clipped the knives of the rest of the crew. You told us that yourself at dinner last night. And if the stabbing took place during the beating, how is it that you were able to switch from brass knuckles to a knife in the same hand without a pause? You gave us the answer to that too."
"Damn you to hell!" Willis lunged at Lucy with the Peavey weapon in his hand, knife point forward.
She did not move. Dawson rapped Willis on the side of the head with the barrel of his revolver before he could reach her. Willis went down like a stone. Captain Potts was still struggling to free his pistol from the lining of his pocket.
Eban was kneeling beside Willis. "He's out. Do you have a pair of manacles here? We'll trice him up and carry him down to the sail locker. Mr. Gilkins will be glad to be set free."
Potts was acting stunned. "I'll..." And then he remembered that he had no mate to carry out his orders.
"Mr. Dawson and I will see to it," Eban said. "He picked up the Peavey weapon and turned it over in his hands. "There's still blood on the knife blade," he said. "We'll add that to our depositions."
Mrs. Potts emerged from the convenience. She must have heard most of it from there. "I won't have that man on the ship," she quavered. "Not even for one night. I wouldn't sleep a wink. Please, Phineas!" She was in fluttery mode again.
Poor Captain Potts was at a loss. "What am I do to do? It will be at least a week before we reach the Marquesas." A new thought struck him. "And I don't have a first mate to see to the working of the ship."
Lucy glanced at Eban to see if he was thinking what she was thinking. He nodded at once. "Don't worry about it, Captain," she said to Potts. "There's a solution to everything..."
They were in the after-cabin of the Mary Small with Dawson. Eban had opened a bottle of port, and they sat companionably around the gimbled table with their glasses, Dawson only a little awkward at the invitation.
"Well, my dear," Eban said, "I can only hope we won't regret taking charge of Mr. Willis."
"With a fair wind, we should be at Samoa in a week," she said. "Then we can turn Willis over to the American Consul, General Churchill. Lord only knows how long it would take Captain Potts to reach the Marquesas against a head wind, with all the more opportunity for Willis to escape and do mischief. And then, could he be trusted to turn the depositions over to the U.S. Consul there and swear to them himself? By then, Willis could have him wrapped around his little finger again, and have Gilkins back in the sail locker. The business is far safer in our hands."
"Perhaps," he admitted. "You seem to have thought it all out."
"Besides," she laughed, "Mrs. Potts will be able to sleep nights."
"You have a silver tongue, Mrs. Hale," Dawson said. "I don't know how you persuaded Potts to elevate Gilkins to first mate after the shabby way he'd been treating him."
"He had no choice. Gilkins will make a good first mate if he has the opportunity to show his stuff. By the time they reach San Francisco, he'll be able to get a berth aboard any of the Searsport ships there and ship home as first mate."
"And then," Dawson said admiringly, "persuading him to take young Goodspeed on as second mate. I'm sorry to lose him. I had my eye on him myself."
"Goodspeed jumped at the chance, and I don't blame him," Eban said. "You know as well as I do that the Mary Small won't need a new second mate for some time to come."
"I hope not," Dawson said, and they all laughed.
Lucy suppressed a yawn. It had been a long and trying morning. "It will be pleasant to visit Samoa again," she said. "General Churchill is such a thoughtful host, and so is Mrs. Stevenson. I do hope Mr. Stevenson is well. He was looking so frail the last time we saw him."
"I'm sure he has many a tale left in him," Eban said. "Kicking Jack ought to make him a fine villain."
Dawson raised his glass. "I'll drink to that."
Copyright © 2009 Donald Moffitt
Too often when children appear in adult mysteries, they are either briefly sketched or drawn as unlikely paragons of good or embodiments of evil. This month we look at a few authors who manage to capture the real fears and struggles of kids and teens as they find themselves caught up in crime.
Alan Bradley's delightful debut, the sweetness at the bottom of the pie(Delacorte, $23), introduces an unforgettable eleven-year-old heroine named Flavia de Luce who combines the courage, curiosity, and deductive abilities of the best adult detectives with the mischievousness and wonder appropriate to her age.
Flavia and her two older sisters, Ophelia, seventeen, and Daphne, thirteen, live with their father, Colonel de Luce in Buckshaw, an odd, old Georgian pile with Victorian wings. It is 1950 and the family lives with a cook, Mrs. Mullet, and the Colonel's factotum, Arthur Dogger (the children's mother died when Flavia was only one year old). The Colonel's all-consuming interest is philately, leaving the girls to fly in their own orbits: Ophelia with her music, Daphne with her books, and Flavia with her chemistry.
The precocious Flavia possesses a first-rate chemistry laboratory, once the province of Uncle Tarquin de Luce, "replete with German glassware, German microscopes, a German spectroscope, brass chemical balances from Lucerne, and a complexly shaped mouth-blown German Geisler tube." The lab, sealed since Tarquin's death in 1928, becomes Flavia's "sanctum sanctorum," where the youngster evinces both fascination with and talent for using the equipment as her knowledge "of what could be extracted so easily from nature" increases.
One morning the de Luces find a dead jack snipe on their doorstep with a rare stamp pierced by its bill. Shortly thereafter, Flavia discovers a dying man in their cucumber patch who manages only to whisper "vale" before expiring.
Bradley spins a clever web that reaches far into Colonel de Luce's past, the vagaries of stamp collecting, and old-school traditions. It is up to Flavia to sort out the connections that bind her father and the dead man, and the circumstances that lead the police to consider her father the prime suspect.
The sibling rivalry between Flavia and her sisters brings plenty of smiles, and Flavia's ability to maneuver in a world run by adults, using a brilliant array of tactics, is captivating. Her chemistry skills repeatedly prove invaluable, but ultimately it is her courage and heart that will win readers completely and leave them eagerly awaiting an encore performance.
THE ODDS (Minotaur, $24.95) is Kathleen George's fourth mystery to feature Richard Christie and his Pittsburgh Police Department colleagues. The children here---Meg, Laurie, Susannah, and Joel---are scene-stealers who take over the book and capture readers' hearts.
George's series features a fine ensemble cast of police officers, and with Commander Richard Christie in the hospital as the novel opens, detectives Colleen Greer and John Potocki here take the lead. Greer and Potocki catch a call for a boy found dead of an overdose---possibly an accident, possibly a homicide. Their victim, and the witness they find to identify him, are part of an ongoing narcotics investigation, and the two homicide detectives find themselves "borrowed" by the narcotics division.
Intertwined with the police investigation is the story of four remarkable kids trying to make it on their own: After their father dies, their immature and incompetent stepmother abandons them in the middle of the night. The oldest child, Meg, is almost fourteen. Joel, the only boy, is nearly twelve, followed by Laurie, eleven, and Susannah, seven.
Intent on at least delaying the specter of foster care and their almost inevitable separation, the kids, led by Meg and Joel, find impressive and inventive ways of coping with school, jobs (car-washing, babysitting, etc.), cooking, and the myriad little crises of running a household. And if that wasn't enough to contend with, Joel finds a dead man and a wounded man in an abandoned house.
The wounded man is Nick Banks, an ex-con paying off a debt and caught up in a drug dealer's mess. He pleads with Joel to help him and not to call either the police or the hospital because someone is trying to kill him. The upshot is that the kids undertake to help Banks in spite of their own difficulties.
It would be easy for an author to stumble while handling a situation in which four children must cope, believably, with all that the resilient Philips children must. George not only manages it beautifully, but also invests each of the children with their own evocative strengths and weaknesses. The result is a thoroughly satisfying mystery that boasts memorable children and a heartwarming resolution.
Robert B. Parker is best known for iconic private eye Spenser, first introduced in 1973 and scheduled to return in October 2009 in The Professional. In the meantime, chasing the bear: a young spenser novel(Philomel, $17.99) introduces the teenaged Spenser as the adult character confides a tale of his youth to his long-time paramour, Susan Silverman.
While aimed at readers "ages 12 up" according to a press release, Spenser fans will enjoy the book's insights into the adult character. And the narration is pure Spenser, although the sexual innuendo common to their exchanges is toned down considerably.
Spenser's mother died during his birth and he was raised by his father and his two uncles: "all over six feet, all more than two hundred pounds, and all of them hard as an axe handle." They taught him some tangible skills, such as boxing, but mostly they taught him the values and the toughness so evident in his adult self.
The fourteen-year-old Spenser befriends classmate Jeannie Haden, whose parents are divorcing. Her father is an abusive drunkard, known to Spenser and his friends as the town boogeyman---a brawler, poacher, and thief. Spenser's first adventure involves trying to protect Jeannie from her father in a situation where he must rely on his own wits and ingenuity to save both of them.
Spenser also gets an early lesson in race relations when a small Mexican boy, Aurelio Lopez, becomes the target of school bullies. Spenser's actions place him in the middle of a developing struggle between Mexican kids and white kids---another situation where he can get advice from his male relatives, but must stand on his own.
The lessons young Spenser learned are illustrated in actions and encapsulated in the dialogue between Susan and Spenser: "Every person is afraid sometimes. Thing is not to let it run you. Thing is to go ahead and do what you need to do."
If Parker is successful in capturing the youthful audience Chasing the Bear is aimed at, he stands to gain a growing future audience for his adult Spenser novels.
Copyright © 2009 Robert C. Hahn
I was making mad love to Jean Harlow, who was begging for more, when the call woke me up. It was barely five in the morning, daylight still a rumor outside my bedroom window, an hour invented for poor graveyard shift types and those early-to-bed-early-to-rise working stiffs earning their daily bread navigating trolley cars or parking milk bottles at kitchen doors.
I recognized Strickling's voice from his stutter once I shook my head clear of brain fog and the delicious Jean, also because nobody had ever taught my boss at MGM about an invention called the clock or because he'd never learned to tell time---definitely not when there was a real or imagined crisis involving one or more of the actors whose images he created and protected as head of the studio's publicity machine, a responsibility that also gave him jurisdiction over my job, keeping our stars safe from the real world.
"Did I wake you, Al?" he said, sounding as fresh as a floorwalker's boutonniere.
"Never," I said, covering the mouthpiece to hide the sound of me clearing my throat of the night's collection of phlegm. "What's buzzin', Strick?"
"Need you to hit it on all sixes over to the Garden of Allah in that jalopy of yours," he said.
I knew better than to wait or ask for a reason. Strickling wasn't one to trust Ma Bell when it was anything more than small talk or some mundane assignment, like shepherding a Crawford or a Gable to an interview at the Derby or to a premiere at Grauman's Chinese.
I said, "How's an hour sound?"
"Excellent," he said, "although thirty minutes would sound better."
The Garden of Allah, on the Sunset Strip at the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Crescent Heights, was the hotel paradise of choice for picture business types with a common interest in revelry, ribaldry, and chronic alcoholism. A main building and twenty-five villas spread over three and a half acres of formal gardens, palms, and other tropical trees played home to celebrated actors, musicians, artists, and, farther down the status scale, authors such as Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Fitzgerald.
The resident clown was one of Metro's contract players, writer Robert Benchley, who considered drinking a hobby when he wasn't making it his business. He was asleep in a wheelbarrow in the lobby when I got there, still in the bib-and-tucker he had on last night at the Biltmore Bowl for the Academy Awards dinner where his New York cronies Hecht and MacArthur had picked up an Oscar statuette for The Scoundrel.
I threw a smile at Dusty, the middle-aged switchboard girl I'd yet to see without a Camel dangling from a corner of her mouth or ashes powdering the shoulders of the fashionable dresses that frequently came her way as thank-you gifts from residents who sought her out for more than their phone messages.
"He beat you here by five minutes," she called over to me, too discreet to mention Strickling by name. "Said for you to meet him at the cottage." She lowered her voice to a whisper in sharing the cottage number, like she was protecting a state secret.
Somehow, it got a rise out of Benchley, who opened half an eye and wondered, "Mind wheeling me over to my domicile, my good man? A generous tip awaits you for services rendered."
Dusty said, "Don't pay Bobby never no mind. He's been fried like that since he got here."
"Ah hah!" Benchley said, shooting a finger at the ceiling. "I thought I recognized the smell on his breath. Curse of the working man, or so I've been told." He shut his eyes, settled his chubby face back on a shoulder, and was sawing wood within seconds.
I double-timed my way into the courtyard and around the pool Alla Nazimova had ordered the builders to shape like the Black Sea, to remind her of Yalta, her birthplace. It was the silent screen star who transformed the hollow below street level, what once was a millionaire's dominion, into the drinkers' paradise that Louella Parsons's Examiner column revealed was driving Valentino's one-time leading lady broke.
I reached the cottage, and before I could knock, the door creaked open and Strickling pulled me inside. He replaced the chain lock and flipped the light switch, double-checking that the thick drapes were fully drawn.
"Anyone notice you this time of morning?"
"Far as I could tell, only Dusty and Benchley."
"Dusty's never a problem for us, and Bobby has enough trouble remembering his own face in the mirror," Strick said, his cultivated voice still betraying his West Virginia origins, familiar from all those movie trailers the studio had him narrating. "Getting so he gives drunks a bad name. Fitzgerald's a match, shot for shot, and not one story out of him worth making into a picture since Mr. Thalberg put him under contract. Gatsby may have been great, but definitely not Scott."
"I hear Fitzgerald's writing a book about Mr. Thalberg?"
"Scott'll be done for before any book like that ever gets finished," Strickling said, not quite to himself as he slicked back his neatly trimmed black hair and craned his face around the room looking for a soft landing spot. "You forget I ever said that, Al," he said.
Nothing ever got past Strickling, who at thirty-nine years of age had the intuitive smarts of the late detective Billy Burns. He was Metro's "fixer," who knew how to stash under the rug anything that might damage the studio's reputation.
He'd seen I was panning for hidden significance to the remark, my mind linking it to the curious circumstances surrounding the supposed suicide of Paul Bern, Jean Harlow's husband, about four years ago. This happened before I did some favors for Strickling and he sweet-talked me into the Metro fold at four times what I was pulling down as a private investigator chasing after alimony-delinquent daddies and setting up Kodak evidence on cheating spouses, small-change favors that skirted the law, kid stuff compared to some of the stunts I'd since pulled for him that not only skirted the law, but dressed it in head-to-toe chichi Chanel.
"Forget what?" I said.
A grin that flickered and disappeared like a burst balloon showed he endorsed my answer.
"Notice anything strange?" Strickling said, throwing a hand around the room.
Nothing looked out of place or out of the ordinary since the last time I was here a week ago, depositing Wally Beery for a rendezvous. Wally was cheap as well as cautious.
By going through Strickling he saved himself the bundle it cost to import a germ-free dish who knew all the moves and could be counted on to keep her mouth shut. Usually, it was a dancer angling to trade up from the back row of the chorus line in a MacDonald and Eddy or Eleanor Powell musical.
Wally wasn't the only occasional guest. The cottage was a private refuge bought, paid for, and maintained by Metro for the exclusive use of people of value on and off the Culver City lot, a confidential medium of exchange for favors requested and received, for whatever purpose and no questions asked.
The sitting room was pure Cedric Gibbons art direction, overstuffed elegance out of a Grand Hotel suite, while the dining area was more upper crust Dinner at Eight and the modest kitchen looked like a scaled-down version of the standing set for Mickey Rooney's new Andy Hardy series.
I said, "What am I missing, Strick?"
"Check the bedroom," he said.
I passed through the curtained doorway into a lavish bordello of a bedroom, the walls dressed in crimson silks, the ceiling mirrored over a circular bed the size of Rhode Island in the center of a floor layered in exotic Persian rugs on plush carpeting taller than uncut grass. The room resembled on a grander scale the suites in the executive building where anxious starlets were groomed for stardom by Metro's cadre of producers, whose casting couches sometimes did more business than some of their movies.
The air, as usual, smelled like a rose garden in full bloom, the source: bottles of room freshener strategically placed around like mouse traps, only meant to kill lingering sweat and other body odors. It clogged my nose and coated my tongue, set off an allergic reaction.
"Gesundheit," Strickling said as I sneezed my way back into his company. He had settled on one of the burnished leather sofas facing an antique burl walnut coffee table and signaled me to settle on the other. "You find anything strange now?"
"Actually, nothing to sneeze at."
He didn't get the joke.
"No sign anyone used the cottage earlier?" he said.
"Not even Goldilocks or the three bears."
If Strickling got the joke this time he made it one of his secrets.
He narrowed his eyes and said, "What about Gable?"
"Clark? What about him? I haven't seen him since the Oscars at the Biltmore Bowl last night. I got him to his car and waved him on his way home not long after Mr. Griffith stepped up to the podium to announce the Best Actor award was going to Vic McLaglen for The Informer. It might have been a different outcome if Clark, Charlie Laughton, and Franchot Tone weren't all in the running against him, all from Mutiny on the Bounty. At least you were able to win the picture itself an Oscar."
Strickling's expression hardened against the compliment, and he did that thing with his hair again before climbing back on his train of thought. "Not what you were supposed to do, Al."
"You have me there, Strick. I don't understand what you mean."
"It was afterward, after Miss Davis in her Plain Jane dress finished acting modest about winning the Best Actress Oscar. Clark came over to Mr. Thalberg's table and sought me out. He checked around to make sure we could not be overheard, then wondered if the cottage was already spoken for and, if not, might he borrow the key. He gave me a Gable wink and a smile that said he had something better in mind than to get loaded, drink away any disappointment at losing. He was already a bit tipsy, so I told him fine, provided he let you tag along. I didn't want some cop pulling him over, recognizing him, and going after a headline. Clark laughed and said something about three being a crowd, but he promised to find you and respect my wishes, so I fished the key off my key ring and handed it over."
I raised my hand like I was taking an oath. "Not what he told me, Strick. He found me and asked me to clear his path to the parking lot. There were stops along the way for hugs and handshakes from well wishers, all telling him how he should have won. Clark, gracious as ever, saying how McLaglen did a bang-up job and deserved the trophy. After the parking attendant brought around his Duesenberg, he told me thanks, go home, pack it in for the night, he'd see me tomorrow at the studio ... I swear, Strick, never once did Clark spill about getting the key to the cottage or your wanting me to be his Siamese twin."
Strickling stared at me briefly, like there might be some other truth buried in my eyes, what I'd come to expect from someone whose entire career in publicity rested on a concrete foundation of invention, misinformation, half truths, and whole-strength lies.
He nodded acceptance and said, "Not long afterward, I led the Mayers and the Thalbergs to their limousines and headed home satisfied Clark was in safe hands, your hands, until I received a call on my unlisted number from Mrs. Gable, Rhea, saying she was sorry to trouble me and wondering if I knew where her husband was."
"That's right, Clark was stag at the dinner. He's been showing up solo to events more and more lately. Curious, huh?"
Strickling leaned forward and propped his elbows on the table, locked his hands under his dimpled chin, and sounded off like a professor delivering a lecture, saying, "It's better to be photographed by the papers and fan magazines with his peers than with a wife eighteen years his senior, old enough to be his mother, with every crow's foot and wrinkle on constant display."
"Doesn't love trump looks or age?"
"Love conquers all, but not if you're a picture star. Certainly not if you're a picture star named Clark Gable. Clark understands this. So does Rhea, if you want to believe her when she claims it. In any event, I told her what she likely was hoping to hear, no matter what she was suspecting, soothing words about having left Clark celebrating their shared defeat with Laughton and Tone, and that you were there to guarantee he got home safely. That seemed to satisfy her for the time being, especially hearing your name."
"We've hit it off the few times I've seen her."
"I then phoned the Garden of Allah and had Dusty put me through to the cottage, to warn Clark about Rhea. There was no answer. I asked Dusty if she'd seen him. She hadn't. I called you, dressed, and drove over, fearing Clark may have taken his loss tonight harder than he'd let on. Fearing what I might find here. Damn actors and their egos. Momentarily relieved when I found nothing at all."
"And now?"
Strickling rose to leave.
He said, "Now, go find him, Al. Find Clark and make this problem go away."
I checked my Omega.
Not quite seven.
Life was stirring outside the cottage. The morning twitter of the birds blended with shuffling footsteps and the roll of housekeeping and catering carts on the concrete walkway, swimmers splashing laps across the pool, and the drone of Sunset Boulevard traffic.
Clark had told me his call on the Parnell set was for six, so maybe he was there and Strickling's panic was for nothing.
Clark wasn't.
I had the studio operator put me through to the picture's director, Johnny Stahl, who couldn't hide his irritation with his star.
"Al, baby, it's that damn Gable demonstrating his distaste for a role he didn't want, forcing me to shoot around him, some pickup shots with Myrna Loy. Bob Taylor would've been better in the role than that big lug and his ego as oversized as his ears. I'd gladly settle right now for starting all over again with that hambone John Barrymore in the title role. Or Lionel Barrymore. Or Ethel Barrymore."
I hung up thinking, so unlike Clark, who earned his two thou a week by practicing the advice he'd gotten earlier in his career from Spencer Tracy: "Always be on time, know your lines, and don't bump into the furniture."
I discarded the notion to call Rhea Gable as quickly as it came to mind.
If Clark was home, he'd have delivered his own alibi.
If he wasn't, I'd have to do a Fred Astaire explaining why I was no longer looking after him, playing with the slick line of gab Strickling had handed her. They say in court truth is the best defense. Whoever "they" are, for sure they've never met Rhea Gable when she's gone off like a Roman candle over some perceived harm to Clark or his career.
I was alternating visions of Mrs. Gable heading after a divorce if she were to learn the truth and Strickling heading me to the unemployment line, when I heard what sounded like someone trying to force open the kitchen door. The door fronted on Havenhurst Drive, the tree-lined residential street a block west of Crescent Heights often used by Garden of Allah tenants and guests to park and enter the compound or a cottage without being seen.
My internal alarm system went off.
There had been a rash of robberies and burglaries in the neighborhood, including three weeks ago at Dorothy Parker's Garden cottage. She'd gone around telling everyone, "At least they couldn't steal my career from me," to which Robert Benchley had observed, "Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer beat them to it, Dottie."
I grabbed a bronze Brancusi sculpture from the end table by the sofa, a sleeping head the size of a small grapefruit and heavy enough to crack a skull, and took cautious steps toward the kitchen. My heart was imitating a Krupa drum solo as I did a quick turn through the kitchen arch, ready to strike with the sculpture.
Gable was in the doorway in disheveled, messy-haired majesty, one hand braced against the jam, his sculpted double-breasted tuxedo a mass of wrinkles, ruffled silk shirt open at the collar, bow tie hanging loose, the patented Gable cheek-popping grin offset by glassy, bloodshot eyes he struggled to keep open, his square jaw sporting an early trace of five o'clock shadow.
"I surrender," Gable said, escalating an eyebrow. "What in the name of sweet Jesus and all the saints are you doing here, Al? Shouldn't you be home?"
"Shouldn't you?" I said, my voice rising, too relieved not to be angry.
Without waiting for Clark to answer, I settled the Brancusi on the kitchen counter, wheeled around, and headed back to the sitting room and the telephone.
"Where you going?" he said, tracking after me.
"To call Strick and let him know you showed up here in one piece, or should you call Rhea first?"
"Don't, Al." Clark picked up the pace. I hardly had the phone receiver in hand when he snatched it from me, moved it behind his back, and shoved me onto the sofa, like he was Killer Mears in The Last Mile, the stage role that got him a contract at MGM, or one of the criminal underworld types he was typecast as in his earliest pictures.
I don't let anybody push me around.
Clark at thirty-five was four years older than me, but otherwise we were about the same height and weight. He had an inch on me, maybe a few pounds. We both worked out regularly at the studio gym, so I had no qualms about whipping his tight behind, which was about to happen if he tried anything as I lifted myself onto my feet, fists cocked for action.
In those few moments his entire demeanor changed. His expression alternated between pain and panic. His grey eyes turned lifeless and tears streamed down his face. "Al, hear me out first, then do what you want," he said, pleading with too much sincerity for him to be playacting.
"My job's on the line here, Clark."
"My life's on the line, Al."
"I'm listening," I said, and sat back down.
Clark hung up the phone, jammed his hands in his pockets, and started wandering the room like a lost legionnaire, pausing to adjust the gilded frame of a small Degas oil painting dominating the wall by the bedroom door. "How much do you know about Loretta Young and me?" he asked over his shoulder.
When I hesitated answering, he said, "Come on, kiddo, we both know Strick trusts you enough to tell you ... things." He stepped back to check the frame and, dissatisfied with the new angle, moved it a half inch to the left, then another half inch.
"You and Miss Young got ... close when you were making Call of the Wild, is that what you mean?"
"How close?" Clark said, easing the frame a quarter inch back to the right. Satisfied this time, he resumed patrolling the room.
The story was nothing I had to hear from Strickling, and I told that to Clark.
It was widespread industry gossip, begun while Bill Wellman had his cast and crew on location in Bellingham, Washington. Winter storms erupting unexpectedly, not enough heat in living quarters meant for summertime weather. Gable and Young generating heat of their own, the way it often happened when movie stars perfected their on-screen chemistry off the screen. Although never seen together in public, continuing their personal call of the wild after the company returned to the Culver City lot.
Strickling, of course, had worked his magic. He kept the rumors from reaching the public and they eventually flamed out.
"And what else you hear from Strick?" Clark asked after I finished telling him this.
"That's it, that's all. If there's more to your romance than that, you know how closemouthed Strick can be."
"Bless him, yeah," Clark said. He managed a sad smile. "More to it, you said? Al, you hardly know the half of it. The half that could have destroyed my career and my life, hers too." His hollow gaze settled across the room, where the wall met the ceiling. "Last year, the sixth of November, 1935, the date mean anything to you?"
I thought about it. "No."
"Everything to me, Al. It's when Judy was born, the baby girl Louella Parsons reported Loretta had adopted."
"Didn't Louella lead off a column with the adoption news, Sheilah Graham a day later?"
"But nobody got the date of birth, only about the adoption. Loretta and her mother, Gladys, knew the date; so did Strick and Harry Brand over at Fox. And I knew the date, because---should I tell you why? I'll tell you why. Because baby Judy wasn't adopted, Al. Loretta was baby Judy's natural mother, and I was baby Judy's natural father."
"Jesus!"
"We made the baby while making Call of the Wild," Clark said. "Gladys spirited Loretta to Europe before she began showing and Strick and Harry got a story worked out, how it happened that Loretta came back sick and doctors had ordered to bed rest, keeping her at home and out of sight until baby Judy was born four months ago and Strick and Harry could go to town with their cock and bull story."
"And you bought into it."
"And Loretta, I mean, think about it, what choice did we have? Scandal has ruined more than one career. We would have been crucified if word got out, Loretta and me. The morality clause in my contract, hers at Fox, we'd be out the door faster'n the damn Legion of Decency could get screaming for our scalps, especially the two of us being Catholics."
He pulled a pack of Luckys from inside his tuxedo jacket, shook one up and used his lips to draw the ciggy out, and lit it with his sterling silver Tiffany lighter. A trail of smoke sailed across the room.
I had no idea what his surprise revelation had to do with him having gone missing, but I held back asking, hoping Clark would get there on his own. He did after three or four minutes of silence, during which he finished off the Lucky, mashed it in the ashtray on the coffee table, and lit a new one. All I could do to keep from coughing my lungs out because of the tobacco clouds, certain to stain Clark's teeth a darker shade of yellow than they already were.
"We made plans," he said. "Loretta was supposed to meet me here last night after the Oscars, bringing pictures of the baby for me to see. Four months and I still hadn't seen my daughter, had no idea even what she looked like, and it was eating away at my guts, Al. I parked the Duesenberg out behind and waited for her to show up. Waited and waited and finally quit. I drove over to her place and rang the damn doorbell. Gladys told me through the peephole that I had my nerve. Loretta couldn't see me and don't show up like this ever again, or she'd call the police. For Loretta's sake, I didn't tell her what I thought, her being my child's grandma. I stewed out front in my car and fell asleep until daylight snapped me awake, when I headed back here."
"Why not straight home, Clark?"
"And tell Rhea what when she asks where I was all night?"
"That's still in the cards."
"Yeah, but here I could get a call in to Strick, get him to tell me what to say."
"Rhea woke him up during the night, worrying about you, and he told her how you, Tone, and Laughton were out on a bender, consoling one another over losing the Oscar, me along to keep the three of you safe, if not necessarily sober."
"See, I never would have thought of that, kiddo. Man's a genuine Grade-A genius. Where's that phone? I'll call Rhea now."
"No," I said. I quick-stepped over and latched onto Clark's forearm before he could lift the receiver. "Better I should make the call, lay the groundwork. Back up Strick's story and explain I stopped here with you to make sure you were drowning in coffee and in shape for the drive home before sending you on your merry way."
His face exploded a smile, and he yanked me into a bear hug, planted an oversized kiss on my cheek. "That's for Strick; let him know," Clark said, then he ambushed me with his lips on mine. "And that one was for you, Al," he said, pulling back. He broke into laughter, that familiar Clark Gable laugh which he used to cover a multitude of sins, and headed to the bathroom to make himself presentable, wondering aloud: "Anybody ever tell you you're a better kisser than Crawford?"
I walked Clark out to the Duesenberg and ran over the story with him one last time before he climbed behind the wheel. His line reading was perfect, punctuating every key point with some of the best acting I'd ever seen out of him, on-screen or off. He gave me a thumbs-up, gunned the motor, and tore up Havenhurst toward Sunset.
I watched him inch through traffic into a cautious left turn and out of sight, hurried up the walkway to the cottage, anxious to phone Rhea and afterward share the good news with Strickling.
The door was wide open.
A surprise was waiting for me in the kitchen.
He was a distinguished-looking gent, a politician's suntanned face under a mane of snow white hair, wire-rimmed eyeglasses enlarging hazel eyes, the left one drifting slightly off center. He wore a bottle-green blazer over white linen slacks, highly-glossed cordovan wingtips, like he could have been a costumed day player in some high society picture set in Palm Beach or at a racetrack.
Except, the revolver he was aiming at me suggested otherwise.
"You need to be more careful about locking your door when you go out," he said, sounding like Mickey Mouse. "You never know who might drop in unannounced."
I thought he was kidding, I mean, that voice---come on.
I said, "I'm guessing you're part of some new nutty gag cooked up by Benchley. You had me going there for a minute."
His brow furrowed and he gave me a Popeye the Sailor squint. "Benchley, whoever the hell? No. I'm the guy who's going to plug you if you don't come up with enough jack to send me away happy and you with your ticker still in working condition."
So much for guessing.
"By jack you mean money?"
"Yeah. Scratch. Dough. Cale. Mazuma. Meantime, I got a question for you. Was that Clark Gable I seen you gabbing with just now a few minutes before?" I nodded. "He's something, that Gable. You see him in It Happened One Night? I ain't worn an undershirt since. He won an Oscar for that movie, you know, like he should have won just last night for the Mutiny movie. I'd-a told him so myself, asked him for an autograph, if I wasn't on the prowl here."
"Maybe we can work something out, and I could get you Clark's autograph? On a still, maybe a nifty gallery portrait by Hurrell?"
"Who?"
"Georgie Hurrell, Metro's studio gallery photographer. He shoots all the stars, not only Clark. Even Garbo."
"Whoever. Me, I only shoot people who don't come through for me, and right now it's your scratch I'm after." He thumbed back the hammer on the revolver. "Lead the way, brother. And I'm sure hoping for your sake you got enough scratch to satisfy my itch. You wouldn't be the first to come up short and wind up pushing up daisies."
Security for Metro is pretty much facing down unruly fans at a Grauman's premiere trying to bust out of the bleachers to get an autograph or cop a feel from a Gable or Shearer or some up-and-comer like Mitzi Miles or Virginia Grey.
Harmless stuff like that.
It had been a while since I was obliged to face down a bad egg or a weapon in my old line of work, but self-defense is like roller skating or riding a bicycle, once learned it's a skill you don't lose.
Passing the kitchen counter, in a single motion I got a grip on the Brancusi bronze, rolled around, whacked the guy on the side of the head. Heard a noise like a sledgehammer cracking a coconut.
The guy dropped the revolver and followed it onto the linoleum, landing on his side and rolling over onto his stomach.
I stood my ground, telling him, "There's more where that came from, brother, you so much as try to reach for the gun or get up."
He didn't try either.
He didn't move at all.
I put down the Brancusi, swooped after the revolver, tucked it inside my belt, and squatted alongside the guy to check for a pulse.
No pulse.
If he was breathing, he was keeping it a secret.
I was breathing enough for both of us, panic-breathing while I convinced myself the cops would see the situation for what it was---self-defense.
Except having to explain about the cottage and what I was doing here and dragging the studio into it and maybe Clark and---
I jumped to my feet, slammed the back door shut, got it chain-locked, and went after the phone.
I reached Strickling at the studio, stammered out the situation in a jumble of words I hardly understood myself. He broke in when I paused for a round of deep breaths, gently urging me to slow down, begin again, tell him everything. "Everything, Al," he said. "Start with why you're still at the Garden and all that happened after I left you there. Everything, down to the last detail."
When I finished, he said, "Excellent, Al, thank you. Now listen carefully to me. I want you to phone Mrs. Gable, as planned, quickly, before Clark gets there. Afterward, lock up the cottage and go home. Stay home until you hear from me and say nothing to anyone. Do you understand?"
"But, Strick, the dead guy in the kitchen---"
"Al, I'm hanging up now so you can phone Rhea," he said, calm as a drifting cloud.
The phone went dead in my ear, as dead as the guy in the kitchen.
I phoned Rhea.
A week later I was back in my office.
I'd scoured all the newspapers every day, every edition, but nothing appeared about the Garden of Allah, except for Louella Parsons reporting in her Examiner column about a burglary at the cottage of Johnny Weissmuller and his wife, Lupe Velez, while they were visiting her relatives in San Luis de Potosi, Mexico.
Nothing on radio newscasts.
No cops knocking on my door.
The "fixer" had worked his magic.
When Strickling dropped by unannounced, I hoped it might be to tell me what had happened. It wasn't. He was as closemouthed as ever, but his visit gave me opportunity to back into the subject after he settled by my desk and handed over a key, explaining, "This is to the garden court cottage the studio has leased at the Beverly Hills Hotel, for you to check out before or after it gets used tonight by Wally Beery."
I said, "Is this in addition to our cottage at the Garden of Allah?"
"We're no longer using that cottage."
"Should I guess why?"
"Not now or ever, Al, not with me or anybody. Understand?"
I didn't hesitate. "Understood."
He unleashed a slash of an iceberg smile.
Pushing across the desk the sealed interdepartmental envelope he'd brought with him, Strickling said, "I'd like you to run this over to Gable on the Parnell set, but don't let on it's from me. Get it?"
"Got it."
"Good." His smile this time carried almost an inch of reality.
He leaned forward for a handshake almost tight enough to crack a bone, pushed up from the desk, and headed for the door, where he momentarily paused to say, "By the way, quite a substantial raise will be showing up on your next paycheck," but not a word about what I'd done to merit the raise.
It wasn't necessary.
We both knew why.
A payoff for keeping my mouth shut about the Garden of Allah.
The main access street through the studio was teeming with players in costumes you'd expect to see at a League of Nations assembly, studio personnel, and recognizable faces traveling between soundstages and sets on foot, bicycle, golf carts, and buses meant for eight or ten passengers. It took me about ten minutes to reach the Parnell stage at the south end of the lot, including a delay for hugs from Bob Montgomery and Roz Russell, out for a stroll in the clear March air while the camera and lights were repositioned for a medium shot on their Night Must Fall set.
Johnny Stahl was rehearsing a take with Myrna Loy and Edna May Oliver when I got there, Billie Burke fluttering about like a lost bird with nowhere to land, George Zucco monitoring a game of chess: a taunting Don Crisp sucking on his pipe while Eddie Gwenn pondered his next move, vocalizing every change of mind under his breath.
An A.D. directed me to Clark's dressing wagon.
I stepped up to the door and knocked.
"Sure, c'mon," Clark called out.
He was stretched out on the lounger, studying the script, but tossed it aside, rolled into a sitting position, and lunged forward when he saw it was me, growing a smile the size of China and grabbing me like a long-lost love.
"Hey, kiddo, you're a sight for sore eyes," he said.
"Not as sore as the last time I saw you, Clark."
"That's for damn sure, but you sure turned the trick with that call to Rhea."
"Strick's idea, remember?"
"Like with writers who crank out the words, however fine, it still takes an actor to bring them alive. You did that with the call, kiddo. Thanks to you, all quiet on the western front. For now, anyway."
He pointed me to the vanity chair and settled back on the lounger after lighting up a Lucky from the gold cigarette case in his robe. He pulled a deep swallow and let the smoke drift out his nose and the corners of his mouth.
I said, "How's the shoot going?"
"I should be dragged out behind the barn and shot for agreeing to take the role, but it was either this or Louie B. whooping my ass with a suspension. I take off the robe, you'd see the kind of monkey suits they got me in."
He carried on that way for a few more minutes before dismissing the subject with a wave. "Anyway, kiddo, to what do I owe this visit and the pleasure of your company?"
I held up the interdepartmental envelope and sailed it over the narrow divide. He caught it mid-air, one-handed, and cocked a curious eyebrow. "And this is?"
"For you from me," I said. "See for yourself."
Clark parked the Lucky on an ashtray, gingerly worked open the flap and inched out an 8x10 color photograph, which he studied for an eternity, his eyes filling with tears, making deep throat noises I took for anguish before he said, "God, she is so beautiful, so very, very beautiful, the baby, my baby, my baby Judy. No mistaking who her daddy is, not with those ears. My ears, the poor little darling." He looked up at me. "Thank you and God bless you, Al," he said, knuckle-wiping his eyes and returning to studying the photo.
That's how I left Clark---playing out a typical Hollywood happy ending.
Robert Benchley staggered by the office three days later, a full load on although it was barely past eleven, to tell me I'd be getting a call from Police Detective Danny Crowle. "Nothing serious, old man," he said. "He has some questions for you about Pete Shaker."
"I don't know any Pete Shaker," I said.
"Of course you don't."
"Help me out here, Bobby. What's a Pete Shaker?"
"A friend of mine I met at the Masquers Club, or maybe somewhere else. You've seen one club you've seen them all, or at least one. I was setting up a naughty prank with Pete last week at the Garden, to play on Weissmuller, but Tarzan, it so happens, was away somewhere, and then I caught sight of you gabbing it up with Clark Gable. Gable's better than Weissmuller even in a jungle. Red Dust, right? So off Pete goes, and might I interest you in a modest pick-me-upper, old man?" Benchley revealed the flask he always carried in his hip pocket. "A fine Bombay Sapphire, wets your whistle like the Johnstown flood."
"I'll take a rain check. Tell me the rest about your friend Pete."
"Just it," Benchley said. He flipped open the lid, raised the flask to his mouth, and reared back his head, took a large swallow, finger-dried his lips, and snapped the lid shut. "I didn't see Pete after I sent him off, not for days, so I called the police like a standing up citizen is supposed to do and reported him missing. What Police Detective Danny Crowle will be calling you about. And Gable, if he's not off in the jungle somewhere playing Hide the Banana with Harlow."
"Bobby, on second thought I will have that drink," I said.
Copyright © 2009 Robert S. Levinson
As Penny Snow eased her police cruiser up to her brother's house, she saw that his van wasn't there, and that the morning newspaper hadn't been taken in. She pulled into his drive, got out of her radio car, walked to the side door, and knocked.
"Leo?" she called through the glass. The corners of her lips tensed and her shoulders rose. She listened. "Leo. Come on. Open up. It's me."
She waited for an answer but none came.
Giving up on the side door, she walked to the front one, knocked loudly several times, then listened for his footsteps. She heard nothing. Her apprehension increased.
Reluctant to invade his privacy, but knowing the events of last night warranted active and perhaps even urgent measures, she pulled out her own key---the extra he'd given her to water his plants while he'd been away in Europe---and went inside.
The house was quiet. She walked to the kitchen. "Leo?"
She got no answer. She took a deep breath and tried to keep her worry under control.
She pulled out her cell phone and dialed his workplace.
Bob Leckie answered after the third ring.
When she asked Bob if Leo had come to the garage, the owner said, "I was expecting him a half hour ago. He's usually never late. Is everything all right?"
She glanced around the kitchen, looking for blood, her nervousness getting worse. "We had a big birthday party for me last night at Bluefield's, and him and Gavin Booth got in a fight."
Bob hesitated. "Like a physical fight?"
"You remember the one they had ten years ago, when me and Gavin broke up?"
"Everyone in town remembers that."
Her eyes narrowed anxiously. "This one was a lot worse." She glanced around the kitchen. "Leo didn't phone or anything, did he?"
"No. And I'm a little surprised."
She took a moment. "If he shows up, have him call me."
Once she ended her conversation with Bob, Penny tried Gavin, and grew doubly concerned when her old high-school boyfriend's phone went directly to voicemail.
She left a message. "Hi. It's me." She couldn't keep the apprehension out of her voice. "I just want to make sure you guys are all right." She looked up at the clock, her stomach churning. "Things got pretty out of hand last night. I'm at Leo's house. He didn't come home. And I guess you didn't either." She paused. "Last night was ... weird. What's gotten into you two?" She glanced out the window where she saw a couple birds land on the drive. "Anyway, I hope you're all right. Call me when you hear this."
She left Leo's house, distracted, consumed with worst-case scenarios.
She drove to the Lincoln County Sheriff's Department, the next department over from hers, and talked to Gavin's father, Sheriff Carl Booth.
She found Carl, a man of sixty-one, in his office. He looked up from his computer. "Well, well, well. What brings you here?" Carl did a double take. His grin disappeared. "You look like you've just eaten roadkill. What's wrong?"
Her lips tightened as she felt the troubling events of the previous evening press down upon her. "Leo and Gavin had a big fight last night at Bluefield's."
His eyes narrowed. "At your birthday party?"
"Yes. Then Leo gave Gavin a lift home, but the fight wasn't really over yet, and I'm afraid they might have gotten into it again while they were on the road. Now I can't find either one of them. Have you spoken to Gavin today?"
The corners of Carl's mouth turned downward. "No. Were they drinking?"
"Gavin was. That's why Leo gave him a lift home." She paused. "Did something happen between them over in Europe? I've never seen them like that before. Not even when me and Gavin broke up."
Carl's face sank, and in a tone that was halfway to resignation, he said, "They met a girl, is all. Christine somebody-or-other."
She stared at him, assimilating this information. Then she said, "The fight got way out of hand. I had to break it up. Gavin had a bloody lip and Leo had a bloody nose. Do you think they would let a girl make them fight like that?"
"I wouldn't think so." Carl sighed. "I'm sorry they wrecked your party, Penny."
Penny stood there. "I hate to have to tell you this, Carl, and I don't mean to worry you unnecessarily, but Leo more or less threatened Gavin. And it was a real serious threat."
Carl squinted at her. "And after that, they left in the car together?"
"By that time they were trying to patch things up. But when Leo said the threat, it scared me."
"Don't bother sugarcoating it for me. What'd he say?"
She hesitated. "Well ... it wasn't flamboyant or inventive, or anything, but it sure was dead to straits. He said, and these were his exact words, that he was going to kill Gavin if Gavin didn't shut up."
Carl stared at her as a puzzled arch came to his brow. "Shut up about what?"
Her frustration crept through in a sudden outburst. "I don't know! That's why I asked you if something happened in Europe because they haven't been the same since they got back. I don't think they would kill each other over a girl, do you? Gavin didn't mention anything else about Europe, did he?"
"No." Carl's voice took on new firmness. "And you better tell Leo not to be making death threats, not in my county, and especially not against my son. He should know better, what with his prior record."
"I know, I know, but the fight got so bad I guess he couldn't help himself. What scares me is that he was stone-cold sober when he made that threat."
"And by the time they left, they were okay?"
"Seemed to be. But I'm worried the fight, whatever it was about, might have flared up again. That threat Leo made wasn't just bar talk. He was serious." She shook her head and sighed. "Which is why I'd feel real happy if we could find them."
At work two days later, driving around her own jurisdiction of Jefferson County with her partner Matt Oldham, Penny said, "Leo still hasn't come home."
"Has Carl heard from Gavin yet?"
"No. He has the guys in patrol keeping a lookout for both of them, though."
Matt shook his head. "It's getting a bit much, isn't it?"
Penny nodded. "Especially because Leo always tells me his job at Bob Leckie's garage is the best one he ever had. It's not like him to miss work. And he always calls every day, no matter what. And he hasn't."
Working the night shift, Penny got home at six thirty the next morning.
After having something to eat, she checked her phone messages and found one from Carl.
"I thought I'd better let you know. Gavin's back, and he's beat up real bad, in the hospital with two fractured ribs, a broken hand, and three big cuts to his head." Carl paused. "Leo can't be doing that. He's twice Gavin's size. I'm sorry, Penny, but I'm afraid I've had to issue a felony warrant on him."
Though she should have gone to bed, she was so frantic about her old high-school boyfriend, and so worried about Leo, she decided she would have to talk to Gavin personally to get more of the details. So she showered, changed, and drove to Lincoln County Regional Hospital.
She found Gavin lying in his hospital bed, propped up, dazed. He had two sutures over his brow and a small one at the corner of his mouth. His left eye was swollen shut. Penny tried to clamp down on the old emotions of tenderness she used to have for him, but found it hard.
She shook her head to stop the way her eyes were misting up and hurried over. "Gavin, I'm so sorry."
He tilted his head. "Penny?"
"Look at you. What happened?"
Over the next five minutes, Gavin, in a disjointed halting fashion, filled her in on what had occurred after he and Leo had left Bluefield's.
"We wound up at Avery's Truck Stop." He lifted his hand, which was now in a cast. "Leo pushed me over, and I fell on my hand. That's how I broke it. The ribs I think broke when I crashed into a car mirror. I also knocked my head on the asphalt and must have passed out for a while. Then he drove off and left me there. I actually don't remember the police coming to get me. All I remember is waking up here."
Tenderness, heartache, regret, and worry pervaded her soul. "And do you have any idea where Leo's gone?"
He shook his head. "I have a vague recollection of him taking off down the highway." Gavin swallowed. "I'm sorry, Penny. We messed up bad. I wanted you to have a nice birthday party. The last thing I should have done was gotten into a big fight with your brother."
The next day, she showed up at Carl's office and offered, on behalf of Jefferson County, to help Lincoln County find Leo.
The sheriff motioned at the coffeemaker. "Help yourself. And there's a box of donuts in the lunch room."
She got coffee, skipped the donut, and sat at the evidence clerk's terminal all morning.
As Lincoln and Jefferson Counties had the same software system, she had no trouble finding her way to Leo's file.
After some initial study, she couldn't help thinking with a great deal of puzzlement that there was some questionable police work concerning Avery's Truck Stop.
She read the police report carefully: "Victim saw the perpetrator flee Avery's Truck Stop at twelve-thirty Sunday morning and head south on Highway 111 at a high rate of speed."
But there were no follow-up entries regarding Avery's. No one had gone out to question any possible witnesses, which at first struck her as perhaps an oversight, but then, after a minute, seemed odd, because Carl generally never overlooked anything.
What got her thinking something really wasn't right was what Gavin's admitting physician, Dr. Jamieson, had written about Gavin's hand injury.
The breakage, in Dr. Jamieson's report, was described as a boxer's fracture. She looked up boxer's fracture on the Internet and discovered that these kinds of fractures were invariably caused by someone throwing a solid punch, one so hard it broke the hand. She further learned that they virtually never occurred from a fall. She remembered Gavin's words precisely: He pushed me over, and I fell on my hand.
She sat back, took a sip of her coffee, and stared at the statue of Lincoln out the window near the fountain.
If a boxer's fracture was invariably caused by throwing a punch, why was Gavin trying to hide the cause of his injury by telling her he had fallen?
The discrepancy made her nervous, and she began to get a different idea of why Leo wasn't coming home. The idea took hold, and she recalled all the ways her big brother had gotten himself into trouble at various times throughout his life. For several seconds she simply sat there, unable to move, imagining the worst case, her shoulders tightening as her lips squeezed together at the bleak prospect of the kind of trouble Leo might have gotten himself in this time.
She got on the phone to her partner, Matt, and after explaining the situation, said, "So I don't think Gavin fell on his hand. I think he's just trying to hide the fact that he punched Leo. Given he broke his hand, he must have punched Leo awfully hard. I'm thinking Leo might be hurt real bad somewhere." Her voice caught. "Maybe even dead."
Matt rushed to reassure her. "I don't think he's dead."
But the unconvinced tone in her partner's voice made her even more apprehensive than she already was.
Wanting to give Gavin the benefit of the doubt, and not willing to trust entirely to the Internet for her medical information, she called Dr. Jamieson to get his professional opinion on the matter. "Is it possible Gavin might have gotten his boxer's fracture from a fall? He told me he fell."
Dr. Jamieson was firm. "No. When people fall, they open their hands, not close them. If he fell, he would have gotten a FOOSH fracture---a full-open-outstretched-hand fracture. A boxer's fracture is caused by somebody throwing a punch, usually fairly hard."
She lifted her chin. "And if he got a boxer's fracture from punching someone, might his victim be seriously injured?"
"It's a good possibility."
"And if he punched someone in the face, could it have caused more than a serious injury? Could it have killed someone?"
Dr. Jamieson thought for a moment. "Any blunt instrument, even a fist, can sometimes cause death if the blow is forceful enough."
Her throat tightened. She felt suddenly breathless.
She thanked the doctor and put the phone back on the cradle. She tried to steady her breathing but found she couldn't. She looked at her hand and saw that it was shaking.
She then phoned Matt Oldham a second time and outlined for him her troubling new theory.
"I don't think I'm drawing any unreasonable conclusions here, Matt. Leo hasn't come home. He hasn't phoned Bob at the garage, and he especially hasn't phoned me. Even if he doesn't want Carl to find him for beating up Gavin, he still would have called me." Her immense worry now became mixed with the anger she felt toward Carl and Gavin. "And when you take the intentionally sloppy police work at Avery's Truck Stop, and combine it with the way Gavin lied to me about his hand fracture, it seems to me Gavin and Carl might be trying to hide something from me on purpose." Her voice tightened and she couldn't hide her distress. "Lord knows, it won't be the first time Gavin's lied to me."
The manager at Avery's Truck Stop said, "Jilly saw a couple guys fighting out in the parking lot around midnight. She was bringing in ice from the back."
"Did she happen to see what kind of vehicle they were driving?" asked Penny.
"Didn't say. But Jilly's going to be here in twenty minutes. Stick around and you can talk to her."
When Jilly arrived, the manager pointed her out to Penny.
The two went to a booth, and after some preliminaries, Jilly gave Penny the details of what she had seen on Saturday night.
"Had to be eleven thirty, twelve o'clock. The big guy is pushing the smaller guy around, and it's like the smaller guy explodes, and punches the big guy right in the face. The big guy staggers, then sinks to his knees. I'm thinking I should call an ambulance because he looks real hurt. But then the little guy helps him into the van, and they drive off. So I don't call an ambulance after all."
Penny's heart beat faster. "So the small guy drove?"
"Yes, ma'am."
When she approached Carl with this witness account the next day, the sheriff shrugged it off. "Gavin had it all confused because of his concussion. He now tells me they both got in the van and left Avery's together. They stopped on the highway and started fighting again. That's when Leo knocked Gavin out. He left him at the Garfield county line and drove off down the highway."
Penny tried to control her building frustration. "Then why would Gavin lie about the police picking him up at Avery's and taking him to the hospital from there? And why isn't there a notation about that in the report?"
"Because it was the Garfield Sheriff's Department that picked him up, and they haven't sent their short-form on it yet. Didn't you read? The file status is incomplete." Carl's face settled. "Anyway, it's a wonder Gavin remembers anything at all. His concussion mixed him up pretty bad."
Her tone grew agitated. "But according to this waitress, Gavin hit Leo, and hit him hard. She says he fell to the asphalt. I'm thinking Gavin hit Leo hard enough to kill him, since he broke his hand." Her tone took on an edge. "Do we have any new John Does at the morgue this week? Ones I'm going to have to identify?"
The corners of Carl's lips sank. "Settle yourself down, Penny. What we have here is not a John Doe. All we got is a missing felon, one with a prior record, on the run for assault and battery. Doesn't that seem more likely than a darn John Doe?"
In the coming weeks, as Leo still didn't come home, she cleaned out his fridge, got rid of all his plants because she couldn't look after them, and hired a local boy to cut the grass and rake the leaves. Her worry gnawed at her. Gavin came to talk to her one day, but she grew so angry, she could hardly speak. He went away after only ten minutes.
Every time the phone rang, she thought it might be Leo, but it never was.
She tried to keep her hope alive, but she became prone to moments of despair, when she was convinced she would never see her brother again.
She canceled his newspaper and cable.
Bob Leckie at the garage called her. "I can't keep his job open forever, Penny. Have you heard from him yet?"
"No."
"Because we're really backed up here."
A knot formed in her throat, and she said, "If you have to fill the position, Bob, I'll understand."
She then phoned Matt to tell him the latest developments. "The gas, water, and electric companies tracked me down. They're pestering me to make arrangements for Leo's bills."
Matt paused. "And I guess the bank is going to be on about his mortgage pretty soon, too, huh?"
"As a matter of fact, they already called. They say he's already thirty days overdue, and they can't wait much more than another month before they foreclose, especially because he hasn't contacted them to make any alternate arrangements." She felt herself getting choked up. "He worked so hard to get that house, too. The only way I can think of to stop them is to raise money by selling some of his stuff. You want to meet me there on Saturday? Maybe we can haul some of it to an auction house."
On Saturday afternoon, she met Matt at Leo's house. Books, CDs, sound equipment, Leo's wide-screen TV, furniture---anything that might make a buck---was loaded onto the back of a U-Haul trailer and taken to the local auction house.
After that, when Matt went home to be with his family, Penny went through Leo's basement by herself.
That's when she found a videotape in an old filing cabinet stuck in the corner. It was in a large padded envelope and had her name on it. She withdrew the tape. A note came tumbling out. She picked up the note and read, "Penny, if you find this, it means something bad has happened to me. Please play. Love, Leo."
She grew cold. She shook.
Once she got her emotions under control, she drove to Jefferson County Police Headquarters and played the tape on one of the players there.
Leo blinked onto the screen, the lighting not that great. He stared at the camera as if he were taking a few moments to figure out what he was going to say. Then he began.
"Penny, I don't want to make this tape. I know you still got feelings for Gavin, and I know you never really got over Alison Chesney, and I hope you don't get too mad at me for saying what I got to say about Gavin, 'specially about what he did over in Europe." He paused. "I haven't told you yet, Penny, but some bad things happened while we were there. Real bad. The kind of stuff that can change your life. It was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime, but it turned into a nightmare."
Leo then talked about a Russian they had met, a Moscow man named Arkady Odinstov.
"This was in France. Saint-Etienne. Lots of Russians come looking for work in France on temporary permits. We were looking for work also because by that time we had run out of money. We met this Arkady guy, and he got us jobs under the table at this hotel he was working at. It was at this hotel that we met this girl, Christine. Her father owned the place. We were all crazy about her."
He then explained how Christine and Arkady had a romantic thing going before he and Gavin got there.
"I guess the flame had been burning high for a while, but when Christine saw Gavin, things began to cool real quick. Christine got interested in Gavin, and Gavin got interested in her. I know that probably makes you mad, Penny, and I hate to have to tell you about it."
Leo then revealed how Odinstov routinely mistreated Christine. "You know the story, Penny, what with all the domestics you handle. The guy is hurting the girl, but the girl stays with the guy anyway. Me and Gavin thought we would teach Arkady a lesson about the way he was treating Christine. So one night when we were at the Café de la Bourse near this village called Firminy, we roughed him up a bit, gave him a bit of his own medicine in the hope he would learn his lesson. I guess it got out of hand. Gavin picked up this big stone and smashed him over the head with it. Arkady went down hard, and he never got up."
Leo looked down at his hands and didn't say anything for nearly ten seconds. Then he looked back at the camera and stared at it for another five. Penny could hardly see his face, the lighting was so bad.
"We thought we might call an ambulance. But then we realized he was dead already. For the next few minutes we couldn't make up our minds. Finally Gavin said we should bury him, because if we didn't, we would end up rotting in a French jail. Especially me, because of my prior record. I went along. There was this shed out in a field. We took Arkady over there. We found a couple old shovels in the shed. Then we dragged Arkady to this creek. We buried him a quarter mile south along this creek, near this rusted old Citroen. Afterwards, Gavin acted real funny. For the rest of the trip he would sometimes look at me, mistrustful as could be, like he was thinking of ways to shut me up for good. That's why I made this tape. I'm afraid he's going to shut me up somehow. And if he does, I want you to know the truth."
When she showed the tape to Carl, the sheriff sank into his chair. At last he asked, "Do you have a grudge against Gavin? Were you never able to get over Alison Chesney?"
Her eyes widened. "Carl, I know it's a hard thing for you to face up to, but you have to at least entertain the possibility that Gavin might have killed this young Russian guy while he was over in Europe. And that he might have even killed Leo." She tried to keep her voice even, but found it difficult. "I've checked some of the things on this tape. There's a Hotel le Bois in Saint-Etienne owned by a Gerhard Artaud. That's Christine's father. There's a Firminy, and in Firminy, there's a Café de la Bourse. I've checked a map. I've seen this creek. The tape isn't lying."
Carl contemplated her. "Simmer down, Penny. If you didn't have your history with Gavin, you'd be looking at this in an entirely different way." He motioned at the videocassette. "Why don't you give the tape to me? I'll bring it to our Interpol liaison here in Lincoln County and see what he makes of it. Maybe our liaison can talk to someone in Saint-Etienne and see if they can find this Russian guy."
Her shoulders rose as she remembered the sloppy police work at Avery's. "The Russian's gone. I've already determined that. The paper in Saint-Etienne has a Web site with back issues. I went into one of these back issues from around the time he disappeared and found an ad taken out by his family. They were looking for him. He was missing." She raised her chin and tried to get her emotions under control. "So I think I'll just hang on to the tape, if you don't mind."
Carl sat back. "Just because the Russian's missing doesn't mean Gavin had anything to do with his disappearance. Same thing with Leo."
"So you don't care about Leo's tape?"
Carl's tone hardened. "Come on, Penny, this is Gavin we're talking about. The man you nearly married. The man you loved. How can you think he would do something like this?"
She couldn't help herself. "Because I know what he did to me."
Carl frowned. "Give me the tape. It's the only way we can move forward with this."
She found his insistence suspicious. "You can keep this copy, Carl. But I have several copies, so it's not like it's going to disappear as evidence or anything."
She booked the following week off and, without telling any of her colleagues or friends, flew to France.
In Saint-Etienne, she met Inspector Yves Chabot, a middle-aged man with a mustache, broad shoulders, and a thick neck who spoke English passably well.
Chabot watched Leo's dying deposition on the video player. As the tape finally went blank, the inspector turned to Penny.
"We have so many Russians here these days. They come and go on temporary permits, mademoiselle, and I'm afraid we didn't take much note of the comings and goings of this one." He paused. "But let us see if your brother speaks the truth. Let us go to Firminy and find this body down by the old Citroen."
It took Chabot an hour to assemble a team to look for---and possibly exhume---the alleged grave.
Joining the effort was a slight, sad man who introduced himself as Fougier, from Forensics. When they reached the scene, Fougier got a translucent plastic body suit from the trunk of his Renault, slipped into it like a caterpillar into a chrysalis, lit a Galois, and gulped lungfuls of smoke, staying by his car while the rest of the team went down the hill to see if they could find Arkady Odinstov.
Penny went with the exhumation team and soon spotted the rusting Citroen, burgundy with a black roof, close to the creek.
The officers discussed for a number of minutes, according to Chabot's translation, where they should start digging, consulting the notes Chabot had made from the tape, and finally decided on a spot thirteen yards south of the car, where the weeds looked small, new, and the ground disturbed.
As they dug, Penny grew sadder and sadder. She couldn't believe her old boyfriend could do something like this, especially when she had loved him so much back in the old days.
Chabot took off his jacket and helped dig.
After ten minutes, animated French conversation broke out.
It seemed they had found the body.
Chabot stepped toward the hill and called, mouth to hand, "Fougier, venez ici."
The thin small man soon appeared at the top of the hill and made his way down through the trees. He now carried a large red case.
Once he was at the excavation site, he withdrew a mask and put it over his face. He then delicately removed a layer of dirt with a trowel, and swept some final particulate away with a paintbrush.
Penny saw a badly decomposed body.
Fougier went into the victim's right pocket and pulled out a wallet. He then withdrew a French employment permit, and showed it to Chabot. Chabot read it, turned to Penny, and gestured at the body.
"This is indeed our Russian. Arkady Odinstov."
Penny's shoulders sank. There could be no doubt now. "So Gavin Booth is our killer."
Chabot wasn't so quick to agree. "I suggest we talk to Christine Artaud first to see if she has anything to add."
Chabot met Penny at the pension she was staying at later that day after he had spoken to Christine Artaud at the Hotel le Bois.
"I'm afraid your idea about the whole thing has turned out to be terribly wrong, mademoiselle. Christine Artaud remembers the events of that evening well, and says she was with Monsieur Gavin the whole night, first at her father's hotel, then at her flat. The last time she saw Odinstov was earlier in the day, around five o'clock, when he and your brother boarded the Firminy bus for the Café de la Bourse. Your brother was the only one to accompany Odinstov to Firminy. As I say, our witness and Monsieur Gavin went to her flat. When Mademoiselle Artaud spoke to your brother the next day, he told her Odinstov had taken the train to Paris. She didn't question it, nor did she report it. Why should she? She knows as well as anyone that Russians come and go here all the time."
Her forehead grew warm. "In other words, you think my brother killed Odinstov?"
"The evidence certainly supports that conclusion."
"What about my brother's tape?"
"In my opinion, it is carefully staged to cast suspicion on Monsieur Gavin."
Her heart beat more quickly as she considered this possibility. "So you think my brother tried to frame Gavin?"
Chabot shrugged. "He is not without a criminal past. You yourself have told me he has a prior record."
She felt light headed. "But why would my brother do something like that? He and Gavin are best friends."
Chabot offered a reasonable explanation. "Perhaps because he understands that as a second-time offender he would be facing a life sentence in a French prison if the magistrates here were to convict him on the murder of this Russian transient."
Tears thickened in her eyes. "But don't tell me you think my brother's guilty just because this girl says he is. It's obvious she's romantically involved with Gavin. She's trying to protect him." She remembered Alison Chesney. "It's not the first time he's gotten girls to lie for him."
Chabot's lips arched in a sad grin, and he at last sat back, took out a Gitanes, lit it, and contemplated her through a blue stream of smoke. "As far as my case against your brother is concerned, Christine Artaud's statement will be used only as corroborative testimony. The fact is, I have strong physical evidence that places Monsieur Leo in Firminy with Odinstov on the night of the murder. Fougier has lifted some useable fingerprints from an old shovel recovered in a nearby shed. He has matched them to your brother's file prints from his previous arrest on your own country's AFIS system. The day he killed Odinstov it must have been hot. The varnish on the shovel was soft, and he left an indelible latent which has lasted all this time. There can be no doubt. Your brother buried the Russian. And if he buried the Russian, we must assume he killed him too."
Penny's heart beat fast. She gripped the edge of the desk, and her whole body felt heavy, as if at any moment she might sink into the ground. "So my brother's the guilty one."
Chabot nodded. "Since such is the case, I've had no choice but to issue an Interpol Red Notice on him. I've also been in contact with Sheriff Carl Booth, and he has made the manhunt for your brother the top priority for his Criminal Apprehension Team."
Five weeks after she returned from Europe, her brother was captured in Canada and returned to Lincoln Country for possible extradition to France.
Carl led her down to the Lincoln County lockup so she could talk to her brother. "He was in British Columbia for a while, then hid out in Saskatoon. He got picked up for running a red light in Regina, and the police up there IDed him off the Interpol Web site," he told her.
"So he ran because he thought Gavin was going to tell you about the Russian?"
Carl nodded. "And I guess that's what he was trying to get Gavin to shut up about the night of your birthday party. But Gavin finally decided not to tell me anything. He was trying to protect Leo."
"And Leo turns around and makes that tape.... Is my brother really that mean?"
Carl's eyes narrowed as he raised his chin. "Maybe you don't know your brother as well as you think you do. He made the tape the night of your party. He dumped Gavin way out at the Garfield County line to buy time, then doubled back. He recorded the tape in partial darkness because he didn't want anybody to see the injuries on his face."
Her eyes misted up. "And now he's facing a life sentence in a French prison, all because I wouldn't let go of the idea that Gavin killed him." She felt mortified by how badly she had treated Gavin in the last little while, and began to think that maybe Alison Chesney had had something to do with it after all.
"It's just darn ironic the way things turned out." She wiped a tear away. "Here I was trying to put Gavin away, and I end up putting Leo away instead."
"Which is the way it's got to be anyway, Penny. You did the right thing, even though you didn't know you were doing it at the time."
"Yes, but he's my brother."
"Now, now, don't go blaming yourself. His big mistake was making that tape. No one would have been none the wiser about the Russian if he hadn't made that tape. But once he tried to frame Gavin, he more or less wrote his own arrest warrant."
A year later, it was her birthday again.
"And he's taking you out?" asked Matt, as they finished their shift and were driving home.
"He's picking me up at seven."
"And there's no hard feelings about anything anymore?"
"It was rough at first. We had a lot to work out. We both made a lot of mistakes."
"But things are okay now?"
She paused. "We were side by side a lot while Leo was going through extradition. And I guess we got close again and saw things in each other we remembered from high school. Once they took Leo to France, we spent even more time together because we didn't have anyone else. I didn't have my brother and Gavin didn't have his best friend." She felt a lump in her throat, and for a few seconds she couldn't go on. "He kissed me for the first time in ten years the other night. I forgot how good that felt. And you know what he finally said to me last week?"
"What?"
"That Alison Chesney was the biggest mistake he had ever made."
Matt thought for a moment. "So where's he taking you tonight?"
She made a face. "Definitely not Bluefield's."
Gavin pulled up to her house a little before seven.
She went out to his car with her pearl earrings on, in her cowboy boots and denim jacket, her step light, sure of itself, her anticipation masking her slowly fading regrets.
She saw Gavin smiling in a hopeful way behind the wheel of his pickup truck, all the scars on his face from last year gone.
And she understood that this was going to be her best birthday ever.
Copyright © 2009 Scott Mackay
Out of Her Depth by John C. Borland
Boudin Noir by R. T. Lawton
O'Nelligan and the Perfect Man by Michael Nethercott
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ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE (ISSN:0002-5224), Vol. 54, No. 11, November 2009. Published monthly except for combined January/February and July/August double issues by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications. Annual subscription $55.90 in the U.S.A. and possessions, $65.90 elsewhere, payable in advance in U.S. funds (GST included in Canada). Subscription orders and correspondence regarding subscriptions should be sent to 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855. Or, to subscribe, call 1-800-220-7443. Editorial Offices: 475 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016. Executive Offices: 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855. Periodical postage paid at Norwalk, CT and additional mailing offices. Canadian postage paid at Montreal, Quebec, Canada Post International Publications Mail, Product Sales Agreement No. 40012460. © 2009 by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications, all rights reserved. Dell is a trademark registered in the U.S. Patent Office. The stories in this magazine are all fictitious, and any resemblance between the characters in them and actual persons is completely coincidental. Reproduction or use, in any manner, of editorial or pictorial content without express written permission is prohibited. All stories in this magazine are fiction. No actual persons are designated by name or character. Submissions must be accompanied by a self-addressed stamped envelope. The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork. POSTMASTER: Send changes to Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855. In Canada return to: Quebecor St. Jean, 800 Blvd. Industrial, St. Jean, Quebec J3B 8G4. GST #R123054108.
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