The Dame on the Dock

by Louise Gorday

  “Bones, big egos, and T.E. Lawrence. Got it! I’ll head out today and nail down Darby’s story. Be back before nightfall.” Shoe pointed out the window. “Keys still in the flivver?”

  Tanner shook his head. “Hoof it down to the pier and take the mini-train up the boardwalk to the boats for hire. If you hit the ladies for hire, come back a ways. Ask for the Captain. He’s berthed around warehouse 20. He’ll take care of you.”

  As Shoe turned away, Tanner grabbed his sleeve. “Don’t rush into something stupid. Nobody else’s boat, hear? And don’t even look at that Hanner Mackall fellow—he’s the Sea Kingdom, and a bad one. It’s a rough crowd down there on a good day, Shoe. And with that lunatic running around . . .”

  Shoe left Tanner in his office humming “April Showers” and searching for an ashtray. Obviously he was more intent on hitching a ride on the coattails of a Pulitzer nominee than getting a hard-hitting news story in on a short deadline. That was okay. Tanner’s assignment wasn’t the albatross he thought it would be but instead might be just the softball assignment he needed and an excellent cover for snooping around. He’d stretch it out, put on a big show for Tanner. As for Mackall, as long as the cabbage wasn’t coming out of Shoe’s pockets, he wasn’t interested in negotiating the best boat fare to the cliffs.

  He swiped a stack of newsprint as he left.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Calvert Cliffs

  Shoe wasn’t whistling showtunes, but there was a spring in his step as he made for the dock. He was born to be an investigative journalist. How did he know this? By the adrenaline rush he got whenever he came out from behind the desk. Now the private-eye thing, it was okay, and it did allow him to be his own man. Well, maybe not, he thought, visualizing the dunning notices spilling out of Fannie’s in-box. Oh, poppycock, if he were being totally honest, he had taken on some real crappy cases just to stay afloat. It suddenly dawned on him there might be few pros to sleuthing. He hit the waterfront seriously contemplating a career change.

  The Baltimore-based Chessie Belle had berthed and the last of the passengers were making their way down the gangplank of the large white steamboat. He watched a steady stream of cargo begin rolling out of its stowage. There was an interesting, happy bustle in the air, and he didn’t think it was just him projecting his good mood on the world. There were evergreen wreaths and bows everywhere, even the surrounding businesses adorned with red bows on their doors. It brought to mind his promise to take Fannie to her Christmas tree lighting in Washington. He rarely reneged on a promise, but so far nothing was breaking . . .

  The wharf ran some five hundred feet. The amusement park tram was the easiest way to travel it. He verified that it was still running so late in the season—less frequently, but reliably, he was assured—bought a nickel ticket, and leaned up against a nearby light post to wait.

  He didn’t wait long, which was swell, because his dogs were getting cold and were cramping. The little red and white train— festooned with more red and green Christmas cheer—looped around the main pier and chugged his way. He waved at the conductor, who slowed down long enough for him to grab a pole and swing onto the rear bench. He tipped his hat to the family of three in the front seat and began searching for the Captain and warehouse 20.

  The tram moved at a fair clip but slowly enough for him to check the multitude of piers jutting out into the dark, rolling waters. The area near the steamboat landing was all about warehouses—all numbered but maddeningly out of numerical sequence. They were nothing fancy. A metal roof and thick walls sturdy enough to withstand the occasional nor’easter sufficed. Away and south moored the commercial fishing fleet—dozens of boats bobbing to the rhythm of the bay’s ancient song, sails and flags floating in the breeze. Most of the big boats were owned by oystermen and crabbers: graceful skipjacks; and white, low in the water, solidly built bugeyes and deadrises. A few others were probably owned by discreet bootleggers running something of value along the coast.

  In the distance, Shoe noted the respectable businesses giving way to a stretch of what could only be described as decrepit dives of the sin-and-skin variety. Flammable wood shingles replaced sheet metal roofs, and shanty-like buildings of questionable integrity replaced the earlier solid structures. Most certainly the tram would make a flip-flop before entering there, but to be on the safe side, he pulled the yellow bell-cord early and bailed out when the tram stopped. The family must have been of like mind and followed suit.

  He retraced the tram’s journey, passing up the first few boats, which seemed too insignificant to be piloted by someone with the honorific The Captain. He wasn’t a fan of water travel, but he did know that the bigger the vessel, the smoother the ride. He scanned the moored boats, chose the biggest oyster boat there, and made his way down its short pier. Even if it wasn’t the Captain’s, they could direct him further.

  The buckeyes and the skipjacks, with their sleek lines and stately sails and rigging, were a pretty and noble sight to behold, but this vessel was neither. It was a flat-bottomed Chesapeake Bay deadrise, well designed for navigating the shallow coast, an old workhorse in dire need of a wire brushing and a new coat of paint.

  When he had closed half the distance to the boat, Shoe cut a wide path around a shaggy brown dog—cuffing behind his ear with his back foot—and his apparent owner, a hard-bitten, shifty type sorting fishing tackle from another deadrise. The man had obviously been watching him, for when he drew even, the man asked without looking up, “Boat for hire?”

  About as much as I need a knife in the gut and the loss of my wallet. Apparently, the seedy side of town didn’t need a dark alley from which to operate. Still, Shoe hesitated. “You the Captain?”

  The fisherman tipped his head toward the end of the pier. “Parker’s Bet, last one down. I’ll beat his price, though. Sea Kingdom’s a better boat.” The dog scrambled up and wagged his tail invitingly.

  Sea Kingdom? Tanner’s admonition came flooding back. Well met, Hanner Mackall! Shoe’s gaze shifted to Parker’s Bet. “Thanks, but I’ve already paid.” He pushed on with the distinct feeling that the man was still studying him.

  There was no activity on the boat. Swell. He wondered if the grifter knew the vessel was empty. The thought of running a gauntlet back past him needled Shoe to climb aboard. “Captain?” he called as he put a hand on the boat railing.

  A voice floated up from somewhere in the boat. “Be with ya shortly.” A minute later a white-haired curmudgeon popped up in the forward cabin and came aft. His face was stern like granite and looked as if the relentless sea had chiseled its features.

  “Good day, sir. I’m Tate Shoemaker from the Evening Star. Riley Tanner said you could take me down to the cliffs. I need to talk to a man named Darby. He’s conducting a dig—”

  The Captain jerked a thumb toward his boat. “Yep. Get on.”

  Shoe scrambled in and found a secure place to stand among the baited traps, tubs, and whatnot. After several minutes of watching the Captain putter about, he asked, “Are we getting along soon?”

  “Just making sure nobody else is coming.”

  Shoe saw Hanner still loitering at the end of the slip. He wasn’t looking their way, but he seemed tense and hyperaware, like a big cat about to spring. “I’m on a tight deadline. The newspaper will pay you double to make it just me.”

  “You don’t have to worry about him,” the Captain said, pulling a loop of bull rope free of one of the pier posts and tossing it into the front of the boat. He pushed the boat free of the pier. “Hanner Mackall does plenty good. He’ll catch another one soon.”

  Shoe shifted his gaze as Hanner turned his way. “What’s the story on him?”

  “Works as hard as anybody else. Been here forever. Never heard of Moll Mackall Dyer?”

  “No, can’t say I have. I’m not from here. Philly-born and raised.”

  “Like I said, he’s a Mackall. Family’s been here forever.” The Captain was silent a moment, and then he added, “Wouldn’t trus
t him with my ex-wife’s mother-in-law. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a place here.”

  Shoe supposed the early-bird and catching-the-worm thing applied to fish as well, but Mackall didn’t appear too busy. “And that would be doing what, exactly?”

  The Captain headed for the stern. “Best sit down. Water’s rough today.”

  Shoe found a small wooden bench and sat down portside. The water was choppy from a stiff wind that was coming in from the east, bringing with it a cold breeze that cut straight through his jacket. He pulled out the assignment sheet Tanner had given him. It fleshed out Nicholas Darby as a rather colorful figure in what he and his journo friends referred to as the rocks-and-crocks movement. Like many of his peers, Darby was an egotistical windbag. The international hubbub over Carter’s discovery of King Tut’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings must have been like a harpoon to the heart.

  A sudden swell sent the front end of the boat upward and Shoe slid halfway off his seat. He clutched the boat side for the next few minutes until the ride smoothed out. When the boat ceased its bouncing and smacking against the water, he relaxed his grip and put Tanner’s notes away. He got the assignment: feed the ego, record a few jaw-dropping examples of what Darby was unearthing—if that was even possible with old bones—and romanticize the hell out of it. Readers would lap it up.

  The once-flat, tree-lined shore gradually rose to bare, impressive cliffs. There was also a subtle change in the boat’s course. For a time, the Captain had been running parallel to the shore, but now he angled his craft landward. In the distance, Shoe thought he could see the faint outline of a long pier. As they drew closer, specks that had been dark spots on the thin strip of beach became scurrying workers, tents, and all sorts and sizes of machinery. Several small boats and a sizeable barge were moored at the dock. This was no fly-by-night operation.

  Shoe made the Captain promise to stay put at the dock and took off to find Darby. He needn’t have worried about identifying anyone. Two steps off the pier he was intercepted by two serious fellows twice his size who desired conversation with him.

  “Shoemaker, Evening Star?” one of them asked, looking him up and down. For a second, Shoe thought he might frisk him.

  “Yes, Tatum Shoemaker.” Shoe extended a hand, which was ignored. “I’m looking for Nicholas Darby.”

  “And so, you have found him, Mr. Shoemaker,” said a third man, pushing his way between the greeting party. Dressed neatly in a khaki uniform with immaculate knee- high leather boots, he looked as if he’d momentarily stepped away from an African safari. He offered a chubby, calloused hand. Shoe shook it as he struggled to keep his eyes off the stylish khaki hat. “Nicholas Darby. I’ve been expecting you.”

  Darby’s gaze was keen and his grip vise-like. In the expression was a decision and in the grip a warning: he didn’t trust Shoe, and transgressors would be pursued until the heavens fell into the sea. Shoe wondered who was so deep into his business that he was able to give Darby a heads-up about his visit. And quickly at that! Certainly not Tanner. Once he gave out a story, you were on your own.

  Darby was already on the move, heading toward the long tents at the base of the sheer cliff. Shoe wondered if he’d be chasing him throughout the interview. He hurried to catch up.

  “I’m afraid I can only give you half an hour,” Darby said over his shoulder. “We’re very busy today. How about we start with me?”

  Of course. Shoe flipped open his notebook and scurried after, letting the man drone on a bit about his laurels before he nudged him into the particulars of the Calvert dig. “How far do the deposits go?”

  “Twelve miles north,” Darby said, pointing to his right, “and about the same the other way. And if you don’t want to traverse that, there’s up there,” he said, looking up the cliffside. “It rises a hundred feet in some places. Picture warm seas and cypress swamps covering this whole area.” He waved his hand like a magic wand that could make it so. “Eventually, the seas recede, leaving Calvert Cliffs behind. Chockablock with plant, mammal, and marine fossils. This is the only section of the cliffs with a beach wide enough to support all these people and equipment. Elsewhere we would be traipsing about in waders from dawn to dusk.”

  Darby was off again. He ducked under a rope and approached several tents pitched right up against the cliff formation. “You can see the layers quite clearly here. The earliest sediment—on the bottom, of course— is blue clay. And then about a quarter of the way up it changes to yellow sand and clay. Whales, porpoises, even a few rhinoceros, and mastodons. Nothing complete, mind you, but the diversity and sheer volume is staggering—the largest fossil deposit on the East Coast.” He let out a contented sigh.

  Shoe ran his hand across the clay and immediately jerked it back. The slice running across the tip of his finger was sharp and clean. And a bleeder. He fumbled in his pocket for his handkerchief.

  Darby offered no assistance in wrapping it. Instead, he presented the backs of his hands, which were covered in old scars and healing cuts. “Consider yourself one of us.” He pulled a small pick out of one of his oversized coat pockets and with a few taps on the rock plucked a dark, penny–sized tooth out of the rise and dropped it into Shoe’s good hand. “Shark tooth—just as damaging in death as in life.”

  “How old, Darby?”

  “Middle Miocene, but that won’t mean much to your readers. Tell ’em it’s ten million years old. Keep it,” he said when Shoe tried to give it back. “Nobody’s going to miss a tooth. They’re everywhere. Come on, and I’ll show you what we won’t be giving away.”

  Shoe slid the tooth into the same pocket as his notes. A tooth and a scar—two souvenirs in one trip. Lucky him.

  Darby took him into a long green tent—postwar Army surplus, no doubt—pitched flush against the cliff. Inside, workers were nose to wall, working like dentists with small picks and other fine instruments to uncover something shoulder high on the rock wall. No common shark teeth, Shoe guessed.

  “Like I said, shark teeth are plentiful,” Darby said. “The locals say you can come out here after a good nor’easter and fill up a bucket. But the bigger specimens? Elusive . . . until now.” He walked up behind a worker, who began to move out of his way. Darby stayed him with a hand on the shoulder. “Stay put, Bradley. Just want to show us off a bit. Take a guess, Mr. Shoemaker,” he said, motioning to the area the worker had been picking.

  Shoe peered over the worker’s shoulder at the rock-like protrusions stretching about twenty feet from left to right. “School of porpoises?”

  Darby laughed. “Not a bad guess, actually. What would you say if I told you this was a single mammal? And if it’s what we think it is, that it’s going to rock the scientific community?”

  “Camel?” Shoe said, taking another stab at it. It would be his last. He came to ask questions, not to answer them.

  Darby laughed harder, clearly enjoying his little game. “Oh, they’re here, all right. The climate was much warmer in these earliest deposits. We have pieces.” Darby’s look became conspiratorial and he whispered, “It’s a mastodon. And we think it’s all here. All of it.”

  Shoe studied the fossilized bones again. “How—”

  “—do we know it’s whole? Experience, son—position, fossils in close proximity, its location high up on the cliff where there’s less erosion. And when we prove it, all eyes are going to be on Calvert Cliffs. The name Nicholas Darby will be on the front page of every newspaper that’s worth reading. Write us a nice story, son, and you can say you broke it first. Be quick about it. Even the Museum doesn’t know the extent of what I’ve found here. All of that will change when I submit my first formal paper in two weeks. This discovery will change everything. What a spectacular way to ring in the new year.”

  Shoe ignored the patronizing son as his competitive side began to dance. “You’re giving me the exclusive here?”

  Darby’s eyebrows arched. “Of course this is exclusive. Tanner and I have an agreement. Did you t
hink I let every Tom, Dick, and Tanner interrupt my work? Next time bring ham sandwiches,” he said, moving toward the tent flap. “We’ll sit out on a blanket and watch the sun set.”

  Shoe scrambled after him. “Oh, no. I’m afraid we’re off on the wrong foot here. I wasn’t sure you were going to give me so much valuable information today. What with you being such an important person. Mr. Tanner made it very clear this was an exclusive.” Just like pigs can fly and their ears make excellent purses.

  In an instant, Darby was back to babbling about how wonderful his world was. Shoe tried to appear engrossed, but truth be told, he had enough information and enough of the man. It was hard to believe no one from the Museum was keeping tabs on what he was doing. Shoe could smell mismanagement in the venture all the way. He gazed out across all the activity and equipment spread out before them and tried to formulate an easy, quick question and a graceful exit.

  “One last question, Darby, and then I’ll get out of your way. Where’s the funding come from for an initiative this size? I would image there’s some fair cost. I wouldn’t think the National Museum has the budget to underwrite all this.”

  “Heavens, no! Everything you see here, as well as other worker bees and specialists doing additional study at the Museum annex in Washington, is underwritten by a hefty grant from the Benedict Weathersby Foundation.”

  “Benedict Weathersby,” Shoe repeated. He stopped writing midword. “As in the Newport Weathersbys?”

  “None other. I take it you’ve met?”

  Oh, if you only knew the half of it. “No, sir, but maybe one day. Does he, uh, come out here often?”

  “Not to my knowledge. Occasionally I hear he’s been in town, but it’s after the fact. He’s supposed to have deep ties to Nevis.”

  “Seems odd he’d throw money into the project and not come take a look.”

  Darby drew back and glared. “When you reach a certain eminence in your field, Mr. Shummer—”