Ghost Ship

by P. J. Alderman

  “Who, and how many, are you talking about?”

  “Just the ones who live here—Hattie, Frank, and Charlotte. Michael Seavey lives at the Cosmopolitan and has only visited once.” She paused. “That is, that I know of.”

  Tom came through the back door, and she realized that it was blessedly silent once more. He walked around to sit in a chair at the table, a small cloud of sawdust puffing off his clothes. Gratefully accepting the espresso she’d made for herself, he reported, “Turns out the dry rot isn’t quite as bad as I’d feared.” He paused to take an appreciative sip. “It stops just above the French doors in the library, and it didn’t spread too far on either side.”

  “How can rot be dry?” she wondered out loud, tamping more coffee grounds.

  “It’s a fungal disease that invades lumber, among other things,” Tom explained. “The wood remains relatively dry as the fungi invade the fibers, causing the wood to become brittle and crumbly. But moisture has to be present for it to occur.”

  “Yuck.” She decided to avoid that side of the house for the next few weeks. Months, maybe. “Can you get the wall rebuilt today?”

  He nodded. “I’ve got a call in to Bill; he’s a whiz at framing, and he doesn’t mind the odd job on top of his bartending. Everyone else is already booked for the summer. But it’s much easier to frame when you’ve got two people,” he explained. “We’ll put up construction plastic for tonight, which will keep everything in the upper parlor from being exposed to the night air. I’ll come back tomorrow and reinstall the siding.”

  “If you need help, I can give you a half day tomorrow,” Jase offered.

  “I’ll take you up on that,” Tom replied. “The more, the merrier.”

  Jordan cocked her head. “I’m confused—I thought you were a painter. Explain to me why I’m not calling a carpenter?”

  “I am a painter,” he replied, “but I’ve done a lot of this type of work. When you work on old houses, you pretty much become a jack of all trades. Most of the really skilled carpenters I know are all working jobs right now; you don’t ever want to use one who doesn’t know what he’s doing. And that dry rot really can’t wait.”

  “Don’t worry,” Jase assured her. “We know what we’re doing.”

  “Do you think we need to put off trying to get into the wall safe?” she asked. “It’s not as high a priority.”

  “Not a good plan,” Jase replied, “in case the money is what the burglar is after. The sooner we figure out whether it exists—and if it does, put the rumor out that you’ve removed it from the house—the better I’ll sleep at night.”

  “Did something happen last night?” Tom asked.

  “Break-in,” Jordan replied. “Someone ransacked the library.”

  “That’s solves the alphabetizing issue,” Jase told Tom.

  Jordan slanted them a look.

  “We were concerned,” Tom allowed, grinning.

  “Keep it up,” she warned.

  “Did the burglar get anything?”

  “No.” She thought more about the framing project. “I’m a bit uneasy about how you all are always volunteering to help on the house. I don’t know how I’ll ever pay you back.”

  “Don’t sweat it,” Tom said with a shrug. “Around here, everyone pitches in when needed. And the time will come when you can return the favor. Until then,” he added with a grin, “the entertainment value for us is real high. You have no idea how much we appreciate that.”

  “If you’re feeling indebted, I need another bartender tonight,” Jase added.

  “Sure.” Since their cups were empty, she went back to pulling espresso shots.

  “I asked a couple of workers last night at the pub about the hotel job Holt was working on.” Tom settled back in his chair.

  “You’re referring to those guys I saw you seated with?”

  “Yeah. They said Holt definitely was losing money. According to the rumors on the street, Clive Walters was complaining that Holt’s work was substandard and asking him to redo a lot of it.”

  Jase shifted, frowning. “That doesn’t sound like Holt.”

  “Yeah, there’s no way Holt would have done a sloppy job,” Tom agreed. “In all the years I’ve known him, the only complaint I ever heard was that he took too long, because he was such a perfectionist. I never had a qualm recommending him for a job that I didn’t have the time to take on. So something’s rotten about that story. Crazy Clive is up to no good.”

  Darcy popped her head into the kitchen.

  “Hey,” Jase said.

  “Hey, yourself.” She turned to Jordan. “Did you know there’s a giant hole in the side of your house?”

  “Dry rot,” Tom offered.

  “Ouch.” Darcy winced. “My sympathies. All right if I have the lab tech dust the desk and front door for prints before any more sawdust settles on everything?” she asked Jordan.

  “Go for it.” Sawdust? She hadn’t even thought about sawdust. And she didn’t want to think about it, either. “Either of you need caffeine?”

  “Do you even have to ask?” Darcy headed back down the hallway and out of sight.

  Jordan spooned beans into the grinder and hit the button. At this rate, she’d need to stop by the deli this afternoon and buy more of their special blend. Running out of coffee beans was never an option.

  Darcy reappeared, apparently having put the tech to work. After taking an espresso back down the hall to him, she sat down at the table with Tom.

  “Did you talk to Crazy Clive yet and ask him about his alibi?” Jordan asked her.

  “ ‘Crazy Clive’?” Darcy raised an eyebrow.

  Jordan flushed. “Tom’s nickname, not mine. Though I have to admit—in a momentarily unprofessional lapse of judgment, that is—the name fits. The man really needs to chill.” She leaned against the counter next to Jase. “We were just talking about him,” she explained to Darcy, then told her about the rumors regarding the hotel job.

  “I’ve got a meeting set up with him this afternoon,” Darcy said. “So Holt was losing money, huh? And Walters was claiming he was doing substandard work? Not, mind you, that it’s all that unusual for Clive Walters to be at cross-purposes with his employees. But I wonder what was really going on there.” Her gaze shifted to Jase. “Did you check through your receipts for the night Holt was murdered?”

  “Yeah. Holt didn’t charge any drinks that night, so I doubt he was at the pub. I asked Bill, and he couldn’t remember seeing him, either. I also looked at the receipts for the previous two nights—nada, which is highly unusual for Holt. I can count on one hand the number of nights this year he hasn’t shown up for a beer and to hit on a woman. Have your men been able to piece together where he was that night?”

  Darcy shook her head. “So far, all we know is that he stopped by a dive shop downtown to pick up full oxygen tanks around six in the evening. The owner said he asked Holt where he was planning to dive, and Holt clammed up and wouldn’t say. So then he tried to chat up Holt about the local shipwrecks that folks like to explore, and he got what he called a cold, ‘mind your own business’–type reaction.”

  “Holt wouldn’t tell his workers at the hotel, either,” Jordan said. “So Holt didn’t want anyone to know where he was diving. Which leads to the question, how did the murderer know where he’d be?”

  “The murderer was the dive buddy?” Tom suggested.

  “Darcy and I wondered that the first day when we found his body,” Jordan admitted, thinking once again about the man she’d seen. But she was becoming more convinced she’d seen a ghost, not a human. She turned to Darcy. “Is there any evidence he had a dive buddy?”

  “Not according to the dive shop owner. He even lectured Holt on the subject, but Holt didn’t seem interested in hearing about how unsafe it was to dive alone. The shop owner chalked it up to stupid first-timer mistakes and Holt’s willingness to break the rules.”

  “Uh-uh.” Jordan shook her head. “I think it had more to do with Holt n
ot wanting anyone to know what he was up to.”

  “Well, someone knew where he was that night,” Darcy grumbled. “He didn’t shoot himself in the head, or we would have found stippling around the wound. And it’s not like he could have hidden the gun after he killed himself.”

  “So still no murder weapon?” Tom asked.

  “No, dammit.”

  “What about his truck?” Jordan asked. “Have you found it yet?” They all looked at her as if her “powers” had expanded to include prescience. “What? It wasn’t parked in his driveway yesterday, so it was kind of obvious that he must have left it parked somewhere else the night of his murder.”

  “We found it parked on a side street not far from the Hudson Point marina. A homeowner reported it after it had sat in front of his house for a few days and no one moved it. We’ve gone over it, but nothing unusual is showing up. No forensics other than what you’d expect.”

  “No business ledger or files of any kind?” Jordan asked hopefully.

  “Nope.”

  “Damn.”

  “So whatever boat Holt used to get out to Dungeness Spit was moored at the marina,” Jase concluded. “And since you didn’t find it anchored nearby, the boat probably belongs to whoever killed Holt.”

  “Possibly. I’ve got my men looking over the boats as we speak, but we can’t board without a search warrant. So unless they find something suspicious in plain sight, we’ll have to figure out who killed Holt first, then execute search warrants on his house and any other vehicles or boats registered in his name.”

  “What about the ballistics?” Jase asked. “And the fact that Holt was shot execution-style? That tells me the shooter was probably a man, and professional. I’ve heard of professionals using silenced .22s.”

  “The ballistics report came back this morning—no match to anything in the criminal databases. So whoever our shooter is, he’s not in the system.”

  “It’s possible that he hasn’t been caught yet,” Jase pointed out.

  “Yeah, but I think Holt knew his shooter, and that the bullet-in-the-forehead thing is misleading. An amateur can take aim and fire, hitting in that location simply out of sheer luck.”

  “What’s the ME say about angle of entry?”

  “What’s that?” Jordan asked.

  “Determines height of the shooter,” Jase briefly explained.

  “Nothing, yet,” Darcy answered him. “The autopsy report isn’t back.”

  “Do you intend to ask Crazy Clive whether he owns a .22?” Jordan asked.

  “Yeah, but he isn’t known for being cooperative, so we’ll see if he deigns to give me an answer. The man is paranoid as hell—it never occurs to him to simply tell the truth.”

  “People who suffer from severe paranoia read all kinds of meaning into other people’s statements that isn’t there,” Jordan said. “He probably counters every question you ask with a question, the purpose of which is to figure out your hidden agenda, right?”

  “Yep.” Darcy gave a silent nod to the lab tech, who had appeared in the kitchen doorway. She stood and stretched. “I’ve got to go. You coming by the pub tonight?” she asked Jordan.

  “Bartending,” Jordan replied. “But I want to hear all about this meeting with Crazy Clive. That’s what constitutes entertainment for us therapists.”

  “As long as he doesn’t decide on a repeat performance,” Jase warned.

  “Not to worry,” Darcy said. “If he darkens the pub’s doorstep, I’ll shoot him. Nobody messes with my downtime two nights in a row.”

  * * *

  AFTER Darcy left, they reconvened in the library. While Tom and Jase examined the bookcase and determined the best way to dismantle it without causing damage, Jordan cleaned up more of the mess the burglar had made. Tom set to work with a drill and hand carpentry tools, and after observing for a few minutes, Jase wandered over to help her reshelve books.

  “Humor me and summarize what happened yesterday,” he said. “I’d like to see if anything pops out at me.”

  She described her trip to the Historical Society, the articles she found, then her visits to the Cosmopolitan and Bob MacDonough at the Wooden Boat Society headquarters. She also told him about her conversations with the ghost of Michael Seavey and agreeing to take on the investigation of his murder in 1893. “He was on the Henrietta Dale the night she went down,” she said, handing over a stack of books. “He believes he died in the shipwreck, but the old newspaper articles list him as a survivor.”

  “Have you been able to figure out who his competitors would have been back then?”

  “So far, I have two names—Sam Garrett, who was his business partner in the opium smuggling and, according to Seavey’s personal papers, a growing problem, and the Customs inspector back then, a man by the name of Yardley. Seavey and Garrett were convinced that Yardley was running his own smuggling business on the side. So Yardley might not have appreciated the competition.” She remembered something else. “This was interesting: Bob’s great-great-grandfather was the one who built the secret compartments into the hull of the Henrietta Dale, where the opium was hidden. I don’t think Bob believed me, actually—he sounded a bit put out when I mentioned it.”

  Tom had been listening to their conversation while he removed shelves and set them on the floor. “Sounds like Bob,” he remarked. “How’d you find out about the secret compartments?”

  “Seavey wrote about his plans for the Henrietta Dale. He’s got an entry in his papers discussing his trip down to the docks to direct Grady MacDonough to construct the secret compartments. MacDonough was concerned that the extra weight would slow down the ship.” She rehung an ancestral portrait with Jase’s help. “I don’t see what the big deal is, really. So Bob’s ancestor helped someone smuggle contraband. Sounds to me like something that would be entertaining to tell your houseguests.”

  “Actually, I’ll bet it frosted Bob big time,” Jase said.

  She gave him a questioning look, but Tom was the one to explain. “Bob takes his role at the society real seriously. His reputation in the community is a big deal to him. The fact that he descends from a line of famous ship’s carpenters is something he’s quite proud of.”

  “A bit too proud,” Jase replied.

  Jordan remembered another tidbit she’d read. “And get this: Charlotte and Jesse Canby knew each other back then. Seavey was worried about her association with a man who was slowly succumbing to his opium addiction. So was the owner of the brothel where Charlotte worked, Mona Starr.”

  “Remind me who Jesse Canby was?” Jase asked.

  She explained about Eleanor Canby, the ownership of the newspaper, and Jesse’s addiction.

  “I remember now. And weren’t Mona and Hattie briefly friends right before Hattie was murdered?” Jase asked.

  “Yes,” Jordan replied. “Mona tried to help her get Charlotte back from the kidnappers.”

  “Pretty interesting stuff you’re digging up,” Tom said. “I didn’t know half of it, and I’ve read fairly extensively about that time period.”

  “Which reminds me,” Jordan said. “I’ve been meaning to ask if you knew of any other major players in the opium smuggling back then.”

  Tom frowned as he used a crowbar, leveraged against a block of wood that protected the plaster, to gently pry a section of the bookcase away from the wall. “Well, obviously, you know two of them—Seavey and Garrett. And I knew about the rumors surrounding the Customs Service. I’m pretty certain there were some Asian players—folks who ran ‘laundries’ on the waterfront. I read a newspaper article from that period about a huge sale of opium to one of the people who owned the most prosperous opium den. Why do you ask?”

  “Just curious.” Jordan picked up another painting and replaced it on the wall. “Seavey stopped his partner from hanging a Chinese farmer—I think I mentioned that to you. There was some question as to what the man was doing on the beach that night when Garrett brought the contraband ashore. Garrett initially thought
he stole the shipment, but Seavey believed otherwise.”

  “I suppose he could have sold it to one of the opium den owners, so it’s possible,” Tom mused. “But why take the risk? Seavey and Garrett were known to be scary dudes you didn’t ever want to cross.”

  “What strikes me about everything you’ve turned up so far is that your investigation—even just into the murder of Michael Seavey—is potentially putting you in harm’s way,” Jase said. “You go out to Holt’s house to return papers and look for the ones you claim he might have removed from the hotel, and someone attacks you because he doesn’t want you to know he was there. You visit the Cosmopolitan and get assaulted by Walters after the fact. And then last night, someone breaks into your home.”

  “The attack at Holt’s could have been just pure bad luck,” Jordan pointed out. “If I’d been a few minutes later, my attacker might have been gone. He wasn’t necessarily there for any reason related to what I’ve been investigating.”

  Tom pulled the last board off the wall, setting it aside. Jordan stared at the small wall safe he had uncovered, stunned. “I don’t believe it! Hattie was right—it really is there.”

  “Of course I’m right,” Hattie said from beside her. Jordan, who was becoming more used to the ghosts’ sudden appearances, didn’t even jump. “Did you think I had lied to you? I kept track over the years—none of the other owners ever thought to look behind there, thank goodness.”

  She noted that Hattie still wore her nightdress and had her hair tied with pieces of fabric. She also wore a scowl on her face. “It’s very hard to get any beauty sleep around here with all the noise,” the ghost complained. “We were up fashionably late, and etiquette dictates that you don’t allow visitors on the premises before a more respectable hour.”

  “We were eager to see what’s in the safe,” Jordan explained apologetically, avoiding mention of the hole in the parlor wall.

  Tom and Jase looked at the space beside Jordan, their expressions curious. “So we have company?” Jase asked Jordan.

  “He’s the company,” Charlotte sniffed as she materialized on Hattie’s other side. In no better state of dress than her sister, she peered sleepily at Jordan. “I trust the hole in the upstairs parlor wall is necessary, and that you will have it fixed prior to the wedding,” she said archly.