So—in a snap decision—she heaved open the iron doors in front of the dumbwaiter and proceeded to climb in. If it had been a good enough elevator for Millie’s invalid cousin Gerald all those years, it could certainly get her up to the third story without depleting every ounce of energy she had left. Except there was something in the way.
Several large items, wrapped with brown paper and string, that she could tell the minute she moved them, were paintings. But what were they doing here? Stella didn’t have to wonder whether or not they were expensive because every original item in the old Hollywood retreat known as Villa Nofre had been worth a small fortune. Which is why—when curiosity got the better of her—she peeled back a corner of the top frame and peeked inside.
It was that ghastly modern art Millie said she detested, and had packed away into the attic, years ago. Worth a fortune on the right market, though, which she had also told her. Stella counted the frames. Seven of them. Probably the whole collection. Surely they should have been left in the attic, with everything else up there, for the family of the deceased owner to go through. That is…
Unless Millie had another plan of her own that none of the rest of them knew about.
4
The captain’s quarters looked like an entirely different place than the day Stella had her first glimpse of it. Now there were brown plaid drapes at the windows, to lend privacy and keep out cold drafts on chilly evenings (Stella loved plaids, they were so homey), a chocolate-colored Berber area rug tacked over the old oriental, and a frosted glass globe of Edwardian design (from which the boat actually had its origin) to replace the tasseled lampshade from the bootleg era. Not to mention every inch of the wooden walls had been scrubbed and oiled until they shown like honey.
Her book collection was in place (as if the shelves had been made to exact specifications!), and even the old stove—which now had a warm fire crackling away just to see how it would feel—had been newly blacked and polished over all its nickel trim. There was a new comforter set with matching pillows (browns and plaid) in a lovely little bedroom adjoining the quarters, too. That included their own private bathroom with a shower.
It should have been heaven.
Instead, Stella sat on the couch (under her favorite rose-colored throw) beneath the Colonel’s questioning gaze from where he sat behind the desk (with his writing things all around) and – for the first time– felt uncomfortable in his presence. She was amazed at how quickly she slipped back into her old ways. Like a puzzle piece locking into place, the practice of diverting confrontation by bringing up a shocking but less dangerous subject, came as naturally as breathing to her. It always had. Yet, it was not having the same effect on her new husband as it had on the previous one.
“I don’t believe it,” he finally pronounced. “I just plain don’t believe it.”
“Do you regret all this then?”
“Stella, I would have married you if you were a hundred and three! Do you really think age has anything to do with it?” He rose up from the desk, unconsciously hiked up the back of his loose-fitting khaki pants, and began to pace.
In spite of the tense moment, she thought how all the rigors of the last few weeks were causing him to shed pounds, and wondered if he shouldn’t buy a smaller size. “Looks are deceiving, Oliver. Especially these days.” she went on.
“And that’s the point!” He turned around just as she was putting the cap back on the coconut oil that had become a nightly ritual to rub onto her face. “Stella--” His tone was imploring. “You can’t possibly sit there in those flowered silk pajamas, with that white, Chinese-collar robe thing that practically matches your hair, and expect me to believe you’re eighty-one years old! It’s ridiculous!”
“Longevity runs in my family.”
“Hogwash! Even face lifts and Botox have to be disguised with fancy hairdos and make up. You haven’t a thing under that oil but your natural skin.”
“Must be the Swedish coming out in me,” she mused. “Did I ever tell you my mother’s family immigrated to Minnesota from Sweden, Oliver? Way back in… the late eighteen hundreds, I think it was.”
He sighed and sat down at the desk, again, so heavily that the leather squeaked under the strain. “After all we’ve been through, Stel. It’s disappointing you feel you have to hide anything from me.”
“It isn’t as if I made a conscious effort to hide it. It’s just that the subject never came up. And now, only because you flipped through my passport.”
“It was sitting right here on my desk, where Gerald dropped the mail this morning —both of ours came—I was just taking them out of the envelopes. Besides, that’s not the point. I’m talking about whatever it is that’s makes you feel it necessary to pass yourself off as someone twenty years older. I already said I don’t believe the eighty-one-year-old bit. Not for a minute, I don’t.”
Stella didn’t know what to say about that, so, she didn’t say anything.
“Well… I’m sure you’ll tell me the real story whenever you feel safe enough. Let’s just let it go at that, my dear.”
How odd that he should use the word, safe.
“I suppose it’s this whirlwind romance of ours.” She gave a relieved sigh at having barely avoided catastrophe. “Do you realize I know as little about you as you do me? A military career and you write hero books. That’s all I know about you: outside of being divorced and having two grown-up sons you never see—they’re so busy off in the military, themselves. Why, for all I know, you could be a… a former inmate of a mental institution.”
“Oh, Stella – for crying out loud – don’t you think I’d have told you if there were something as serious as that in my past?”
“Not really.”
“Well, I would.”
Better not go there, then, as that serious omission might give him an even worse shock. Even though there was a perfectly acceptable explanation if she was ever allowed to explain. “People often try to get others to think differently of them than they actually are,” she pointed out. “It doesn’t always mean they’re hiding something criminal. Take Mason, for instance.”
She got to her feet and walked over to push back a shock of gray curls that had fallen onto his forehead. “He lets everyone assume he’s nothing more than a self-centered, hard-drinking carpenter, and in reality, he won some sort of Medal of Honor he doesn’t want anyone to know about. Imagine being ashamed of a Medal of Honor!”
“Soldiers often feel guilty if they happen to survive when so many of their comrades don’t.”
She settled comfortably onto his lap and he locked his arms around her waist.
Thank goodness! She didn’t think she could stand it if there had been any true rift between them. “And look at Millie. All that fuss about Sam’s memory and… they weren’t even together until just before he died. He left her for a younger woman.”
“Maybe she likes to forget the bad parts and remember it that way, herself.”
“My point exactly, dear. Not to mention they were still married the whole time, so it wasn’t exactly an untruth, either. Still, it all hit her terribly hard. No money of her own to fall back on. Did you know she spent years squirreling things away for hard times? And not just food, either.”
“I take it you saw the famine chest.”
“A famine chest I can understand—we should all have one. Hers is a monstrosity, but I can understand it. But the art! Less than two weeks after J.D.--Mr. Willoughby, I mean—so graciously forgave her for selling off all that other stuff, too. There’s no way she could be trading it in to pay electricity and repair bills, anymore. Where could she cash something that famous in where it wouldn’t be found out? If I didn’t know better, I’d say she had an entirely different plan for herself. One that doesn’t include the rest of us. You know, I don’t even think Gerald knows—and he’s her cousin. Nobody does.”
“What art?”
“All those famous modern art pictures I found in the dumbwaiter, this afternoon.
The only reason I saw them is because I was late and needed a ride up instead of climb those hundreds of stairs. And there they were! All wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string—ready to mail. You don’t do that just to move something to another room or leave in a closet. And they certainly aren’t to decorate her cabin on the Dreadful, either.”
“Dreadnaught, Stell. You know how it physically pains Stuart to hear you call it that.”
“It’s a much more fitting name, if you ask me.”
“Try thinking about it as our gateway to adventure. By the time this trip is over, I’m sure we’ll be almost as attached to it as Stuart is. Look how our Captain’s quarters spruced up so well.”
“Oh, they did! You know I was almost envious of everyone else moving aboard before we did? I’m that fond of all this, already. I thought Millie was, too. She did tell me those pictures were worth a fortune, though. Then again, maybe she had second thoughts about leaving them in an empty house and decided to send them to the family directly. Do you think that’s what it was?”
“That sounds a lot more like our Millie than absconding with them. Remember how upset she got at the prospect of going to jail? She probably just forgot about the paintings in all this confusion of moving. What do you want to bet she’ll remember them halfway through Canada somewhere, and then fuss about it all the way to Alaska.”
“You’re probably right.”
“We’ll ask her.”
“Which is entirely possible, because we’ve all worked ourselves into a stupor this week, trying to keep up with Stuart. I wonder why the first thing we do, when anything doesn’t seem quite right, is to think the absolute worst of people? I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole thing turned out to be--”
The familiar strains of the Marine Band piped up from his shirt pocket, and Stella got up to put another log on the fire while he answered the phone.
“Henry, here. Oh, hello, Mason. Not back yet? No, just Stella and I. Villa looked all dark and locked up when we put the car back in the garage. Didn’t even go in.”
Stella stopped poking at the fire and turned around in time to see the Colonel’s gray eyebrows scrunch together into his thinking expression. “Course we will. Be there as soon as we can.”
She felt a tightening in her chest. “Now, what happened?”
“Millie isn’t at the house, and it’s been over an hour since she was supposed to meet Mason there.” He got to his feet and slipped the phone back into his pocket in one smooth motion. “Not answering her phone, either.”
5
What could only be called a “wild goose chase” ensued. Stella threw some clothes on over her pajamas, and rode back across the bay with the Colonel and Stuart (who was driving all out), to search for Millie. By that time Mason was an exhausted wreck, having called every emergency room in town, thinking her heart condition may have got the better of her somewhere with all the stresses and strains of the move. Then he single-handedly began a search of all nooks and cupboards in the mansion from the attic down.
By the time the others arrived, he had reached the kitchen on the main level.
Stella forced herself not to think the worst and hurried off to search on her own. But what Millie had told her earlier about being stranded in the frozen north, hundreds of miles from grocery stores (maybe even electricity!), she certainly wouldn’t blame her if she decided to go live back east with one of her children, after all. True, each of them had been sincere about sticking together. Especially after discovering what their individual prospects would be, should they all have to fend for themselves separately. All of them agreed they were more than capable of pooling their resources and living the same way they had here at the Villa, somewhere else. But Alaska!
To some place Mason had acquired in a card game, sight unseen.
Why, the only reason Stella wasn’t quaking in her own boots, right now, was because it would be a grand adventure just getting there. Sort of an extended honeymoon. And if things turned out too badly, she and the Colonel still had enough money to rent something small to get by on. But the others didn’t. And considering how attached they had all become she hadn’t thought twice about not pitching in.
The truth was, pitching in for this little misfit family was beginning to change her life. It had brought her out of some of her own thin places, and she had no desire to go back to those, again. She couldn’t go back! Which was why she wanted to have a private talk with Millie, in case she really was thinking of desertion. They had to stick together!
If they didn’t, the whole thing could turn into a disaster, and nobody would succeed.
She was thinking of all these things as she headed down to the wine cellar (whether by premonition, or it was simply the last place she had seen Millie), and threw back the latch on the door. Even though it was impossible to accidently lock oneself inside, and her friend could only have latched it if she had come out.
Which was exactly how Stella discovered an unconscious Millie, draped over a row of plastic bins, as if someone had conked her on the head. Something that proved false, as did a heart attack. In the end, it seemed the heavy door had somehow closed on its own, and –after realizing her cell phone wouldn’t work in a place that could have doubled as a fallout shelter in case of World War III—she proceeded to console herself in the emergency liquor supply while waiting to be rescued.
Something that could happen to anybody, especially if they were claustrophobic.
Still, with one problem after another faced and solved by the increasingly brave band of adventurers, they did actually manage to sail out of the protected southern California bay, three days later.
It was a glorious spring day, the sea was calm, and the Dreadnaught behaved beautifully. So beautifully that the trip seemed charmed. So, it was no wonder, after ten days of worry-free voyaging (they even did several stints of night-traveling because the moon and stars were bright and spectacular), and only brief stops in San Francisco and Portland, they finally ended up anchored off Vancouver, Canada, to show their passports and wait for a border inspection to proceed north.
Captain Stuart did everything by the book. In fact, he had made this run several times in his working days (on more modern vessels, but the course was the same), and left his little group of passengers to rest and relax on board while he collected all their passports and set out to take care of business. All of which went through without a hitch. Even during the long, and thorough, inspection. After that, a few hours of sight-seeing and the purchase of a few last-minute items, and they were soon on their way, again.
It was a very long way to Alaska.
However, the coast of British Columbia is a wild one, with long stretches of wilderness places, and weather that can change as fast as one’s feelings. There were a few mornings they woke up enveloped by a thick fog (that Stuart referred to as a “pea souper”), and had to wait until it lifted to continue their journey. Something that had little effect on the happy group. Whether it was because of the marvelous sea air, or the fact they had enough supplies on board to get by for an entire year if they had to, no one knew.
Because, not only were they all getting along splendidly, they had become quite comfortable (and proficient) in their respective “sea duties.” Even Stuart had to admit the voyage was turning out to be one of the best he had ever made. Mostly because of the food. With three women aboard who loved cooking, the meals were fabulous. He even started to contemplate the possibilities of taking on a few charters, after this trip was over, in order to complete renovations.
But all that was before their first storm.
Up till that point, most of the travel had been motoring. Outside a time or two of raising the sails (in order to keep up skills, as Stuart put it), the entire trip, so far, had felt like nothing short of a delightful holiday cruise. For everybody.
Even Gerald, who took his “turn at the wheel” with the utmost seriousness and respect, was actually becoming dependable. He stayed precisely on course,
did exactly what the Captain told him at all times, and was even getting a bit of color back into his face. Of course, he had to make a few concessions, considering his condition. He rarely left the main deck (where his cabin was situated), and—except for the few steps up to the wheelhouse—avoided stairs and companionway ladders, altogether.
He was cold most of the time, too, but solved that problem by wearing a black navy watch cap (both waking and sleeping), as well as half a multicolored Mexican poncho that was cut off at elbow-length so that he could still do his work. Something that made him resemble the haggard form of Lincoln, moving through hallways of the White House, during the last dark days of the Civil War. Without the beard, and should you come up on him from behind.
However, that part of sea—which funnels through the straits from the “big water” (as Stuart called it) outside the islands—can turn suddenly wild and dangerous with hardly any warning. And considering they had known nothing but idyllic conditions the entire way, all hands were caught horrifically unaware when one of those famous storms crashed into them. That is, all accept Captain Stuart.
Who knew exactly what to do in such conditions, if he only had at least one person who could lift more than fifty pounds in a full gale. He could only hope everyone else could handle at least twenty, and still manage to stay on their feet. This because the sea was so rough the engine propellers were out of the water half the time, and the old schooner was much more stable with her sails up than without them. After all, it was what she had been designed for.
Meanwhile, everyone except the Captain was seasick. Not counting the baby, who was never bothered by anything, and having a delightful time bouncing wildly, back and forth, in his “Johnny Jumper” attached to a cabin ceiling as he watched his “Uncle Gerald” throw up into a bucket. His mother and Mason were out on deck, doing their level-best at hauling the mainsail up, as Stella and Millie grappled with “taking up the slack” in the sheets.
Voyage of the Dreadnaught: Four Stella Madison Capers Page 3