by Don Prichard
He stopped halfway through. The scissors were dull and he looked like road kill.
A sharp knife would do. He headed for the kitchen.
Ginny’s perfume bottle on the vanity stopped him. His throat tightened. She’d worn it for as long as he’d known her. He didn’t even know the name of the fragrance—it was just … her. The essence of Ginny distilled. He removed the stopper and brought the bottle to his nose. Tears flooded his eyes.
He took the bottle with him to the kitchen. He’d give it to Dana. She’d want her mother’s perfume.
No. The fragrance would haunt him. He’d toss it, bring closure. It was time to move on. Time to focus on finding Eve, bring her home. On finding Captain Emilio, bring him to justice.
He held the bottle over the trashcan. Grimaced. Put the bottle on the kitchen counter.
He poked around in a kitchen drawer until he decided on a knife sharp enough to slice through his wiry hair. He also decided about the perfume. Dana should have it—she could decide what to do with it.
He picked up the bottle, grunted as it slipped from his grasp. He caught it in midair, but not before half the perfume splashed onto the floor. The sweet aroma fluffed into the air like a ballerina’s tutu in Swan Lake. Disgusted at the waste, he slipped the kitchen knife into his belt and grabbed the shirt he’d been given in the Philippines. Orange and blue flowers the size of elephant ears weren’t quite his style—no harm using it for the spill. He was going to get rid of the shirt, anyway. Maybe he’d give it to Toby Miller, make him wear it while he finished mowing the lawn. Jake snickered at the picture. He wadded the shirt into a ball, mopped up the spatters and hung the shirt on the back of a dining room chair.
A pile of mail strewn across the dining room table caught his eye. Brett had told him he’d picked up the mail from the post office before dashing back to West Point. Jake’s mouth fell open. He had expected a few envelopes, not an avalanche. He added sort mail to his list, plus visit post office to start up delivery.
The post office. He halted. Perhaps there’d be a letter from the U.S. State Department. It had been only two days since he’d called them from the embassy in the Philippines, but they had been eager for his information, had asked him to FAX the details about Captain Emilio and the murders on the cruise ship. It wasn’t unreasonable that he’d have an answer from them by now.
The doorbell rang, and he jumped.
Toby Miller? Jake put on his best scowl and stalked to the front door.
Chapter 8
Orville Marsh cast another glance across Chalmers’ yard. Not at all what he had expected for this interview. He eyed the lawn mower. Dull blades, gauging from the path of torn grass, but still no excuse for abandoning the machine mid-lawn. His gaze shifted to the taller grass bearing tiny beads of seed next to the house, and from there to the weeds spiking above brown clumps of, well, what surely must have been flowers. Petunias, perhaps?
Orville huffed. No doubt the neighbors had hoped for more than this from a Marine Corps Reserve officer. A Viet Nam hero no less, decorated with a Purple Heart and the Navy Cross. Promoted to full colonel only a month ago. For a moment Orville wondered if he’d made a mistake and come to the wrong address. But no, the house number matched the address given him by the U.S. State Department and further documented in Chalmers’ military file.
He ran the palm of his left hand over his bald spot and smoothed a thin film of sweat into his hair. Too hot for a suit. He should loosen his tie.
The front door burst open and Orville’s heart leaped into his throat as a half-naked man with wild chestnut-red hair and a mangy beard glared out at him.
Orville swallowed and gripped his briefcase tighter. “I’m looking for a Mr. Jacob A. Chalmers.”
“Are you a salesman?’
“I’m here on business. Orville Marsh from the U.S. State Department.”
The man’s eyebrows jumped and his mouth formed an O. “I’m Jacob Chalmers. Come in.” He stepped back and beckoned with his hand. “Please, come in.”
Orville squared his shoulders and stepped inside. The room was dark except for the outline of drapes drawn tightly over two windows. The odor of neglect and animal filth hit his nostrils, and his stomach lurched. It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust and see that Chalmers had extended his hand to him to shake.
“Could we have some light?”
“Of course.”
A light in the ceiling switched on, and Orville took in a quick glimpse of his surroundings before focusing on his host. At the sight of Chalmers he sat down hard on the nearest chair. The man’s body was covered with scars, front and back. A knife—a kitchen knife with a long, serrated blade—was stuck in his belt. Orville could count every rib above the belt.
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting company,” Chalmers said. He disappeared into the next room.
Orville craned his neck and saw it was a dining room. The table was piled high with unopened mail. He straightened when Chalmers came back into the room. He had put on a wrinkled T-shirt featuring large orange and blue flowers. It looked like it had been worn non-stop for weeks. Orville cringed at the thought of the stench he was in for if Chalmers got too close.
“Mr. Chalmers, if you could have a seat over there, we can take care of matters quickly enough. I’m sorry to have disturbed you—”
“I’m in no hurry. This is important to me.” Chalmers sat down on the couch. He brushed something off the end table next to him and turned on a lamp with a red shade.
Orville’s eyes widened at the sight of Chalmers’ chopped-up beard. It looked like he had used the lawn mower on it. Orville averted his eyes and fumbled to turn on the lamp near him. Dotted across the dark cherry wood was what Chalmers must have swept off his end table. Mouse droppings. A long-legged, pale spider dropped out of the lampshade, and Orville saw his hand had broken the creature’s web.
“Maid must be on vacation,” Chalmers said.
Orville managed a weak smile. He opened his briefcase and took out Chalmers’ FAX. “Before we begin, Mr. Chalmers, I need to see your I.D.”
Chalmers withdrew a wallet from his back pocket and stepped forward to hand a piece of plastic to Orville. The sweet bouquet of a woman’s perfume wrapped itself around Orville like a boa constrictor.
Orville sneezed. Several times. His skin itched and his shirt clung to him in wet blotches on his back and stomach. “Would it be possible to open a window?” He took off his suit coat and laid it next to him, decided to remove his tie as well.
“Sorry, I’m used to the heat.” Chalmers drew back the drapes and opened both windows. The warm air wafted the perfume like a peacock tail behind Chalmers as he moved about the room.
Orville held his breath as long as he could and examined the piece of plastic Chalmers had handed him. Driver’s license. The face was a match for the man now back on the couch, but with a military haircut, no beard, and two thin, jagged scars on his right cheek. Orville examined the data. His eyebrows twitched. “It’s expired.”
“Not much opportunity to renew it last year.”
Orville compressed his lips into a straight line. He put the license on the table as if he might need to look at it again. Anything to avoid the cloying power of Chalmers’… scent.
“Your communication, Mr. Chalmers, claims the explosion of the cruise ship Gateway was—”
“Claims? Are you disputing my report?” Chalmers’ face turned as red as the lampshade.
Orville could see the bulge of the kitchen knife under Chalmers’ shirt. “Informed us,” he said. “You informed us the Gateway’s explosion was not an accident but that the cruise ship passengers died—”
“Were murdered,” Jake exclaimed. “It wasn’t the cruise ship that exploded. The passengers were herded into two boats, set adrift, and intentionally killed by explosives. My wife was among them.”
So that was it. Orville nodded his head in sympathy at the poor man. First Nam, then the wife. “I’m not clear on how you s
urvived, Mr. Chalmers.”
“I was below deck. When Captain Emilio discovered this, he forced me to jump overboard. After the explosions, I secured one of the boats and sailed to the nearest island.”
Orville jotted down notes. Lifeboats can survive explosives? Equipment includes a sail?
“And what became of the captain and crew, Mr. Chalmers? There’s been no word of their survival—”
“Their escape. They fled with the Gateway. That’s why I contacted you, to set the record straight and start the hunt. I want that murderer Captain Emilio found.”
“Of course. And you say you ended up on an island for a year with three women …”
“Yes. The four of us survived the massacre.”
“Can you give me information about them? Names, birth dates?”
Chalmers rattled off the information with ease. “Eve… rather, Eva Gray, May 3, 1948. Betty Parker, September 18, 1917. Crystal Oakleigh, spelled O-a-k-l-e-i-g-h, October 16, 1970.”
Orville wrote the names down and read the information back to Chalmers for accuracy. “Thank you, Mr. Chalmers. This is all I need to get started.” He stood, gathered his coat and tie in one hand, his briefcase in the other, and made a beeline for the front door.
He looked back when he reached his rental car. Chalmers had closed the front door, but Orville had no doubt the man was watching him through one of the windows. A bead of sweat dribbled down Orville’s forehead. He mopped his face with his handkerchief, then got into his car and turned the air conditioner on full blast.
He’d heard stories from his colleagues about Viet Nam veterans falling apart. Now he had a story of his own to tell.
Chapter 9
At precisely five o’clock p.m., as agreed upon in their flight home yesterday, Crystal Oakleigh slipped into Aunt Betty’s living room to call Jake. Her heart thumped in pace with the stuttering ring of the phone on the other end.
“Hello?” A deep voice, warm and way too far away, answered.
“Jake?”
“Crystal?”
They laughed. She pictured Jake’s eyes twinkling with smiles the way they had the time she’d discovered him sitting on the beach, reading his pocket Bible, his bare feet in the water and tiny crabs crawling all around him.
“How was the homecoming, Pumpkin?”
She shrugged. “Fine. We arrived a couple hours after you got off. Grandpa met us at the airport but not Grandma because it was so late.” Grandma used an oxygen tank now, hooked up to her nose. She said it was because Grandpa’s smoking had ruined her lungs instead of his. Grandpa just snorted and said a cigar now and then didn’t hurt anyone.
Crystal turned her back to the living room doorway and lowered her voice. From the kitchen came the clink of dishes as her grandmother set the table, and the grumble of her grandfather complaining about something. Probably about the burnt onions soaking everything in the house with their blackened odor.
“Aunt Betty’s mad,” she whispered as loudly as she dared. “Really mad, I can tell. Grandma is her sister, and she and Grandpa moved into Aunt Betty’s house because they thought she was dead. They changed things all around and even took over her bedroom.” Crystal looked at the four couches rearranged into a large square in the middle of the living room, and the antique highboy moved from the dining room to a recess behind the couches. Grandma had also replaced all the paintings and pictures on the walls with her own. “I’m glad, though, because this way I’m not living all by myself with them again.”
“They love you, Crystal. They’re happy to have you back and know you’re alive. Both you and your Aunt Betty.”
Crystal’s lower lip trembled. “When are we going to look for Eve? And come live with you like we planned on the island?”
“We’ve been back two days, Pumpkin. Even the Marines can’t act that fast.”
A corner of Crystal’s mouth tucked up. “Do you still have your beard?”
“Shaved it off this morning. But I got a picture before I did. It’s being developed now. I’ll mail it to you first thing after I get back from West Point.”
The news popped tears into her eyes. She remembered the first time she’d seen Jake on the cruise ship. He’d been sitting on the other side of the dining room with his wife. He didn’t have a beard then. But the Jake she’d come to love as a father did.
No, she reminded herself, what would make everything perfect was not Jake keeping his beard, but finding Eve. Then Eve and Jake could get married and be her mom and dad, and she and Aunt Betty could move in with them.
“How long till you come back from West Point?”
“I’ll go this weekend. If the private investigator hasn’t located Eve yet, then Brett and Dana and I will take a little vacation.”
She bit her bottom lip to silence the sniffles attacking her nose. On the island, she was the one who went everywhere with Jake. Now it was his kids who got to go with him.
“Is Betty there, sweetheart?”
She forced a big swallow in order to answer him. She was no longer a crybaby, remember? The island had made her tough, not even afraid of snakes anymore. “Uh-uh. She’s gone to get that private investigator. She said she’d be back—”
“Crystal, time to eat.” Her grandfather’s voice boomed across the room, and she whipped around, a second big swallow leaping into her throat.
“Jake, I have to go.”
“Okay, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“I miss you,” she whispered. She wanted to say more but her grandfather had stepped into the room and was glaring at her. Already the palms of her hands were sweaty. She hung up without waiting for Jake’s goodbye.
Her grandfather’s eyelids lowered halfway as they shifted from her to the telephone. “Who was that?”
“Jake.”
“That man from the island?”
She nodded.
“I don’t want you calling him. He’s busy with his own life now, and he doesn’t need you bothering him.”
All the air in the room slammed into her lungs and exploded out again in hot tears. “I’m not a bother!”
Her grandfather’s mouth fell open, and her heart stopped. Before her year on the island, she would’ve never yelled at him. Her heart started up again like a scared jumping bean. She took a step backward. “I’m sorry,” she mewed.
Her grandfather’s eyebrows furrowed lower over his eyes, and he turned on his heels toward the kitchen. “We always eat at five o’clock, remember? No more being late.”
She clenched her fists and choked back sobs until they were only little hiccups. It’s okay, she told herself over and over. She wiped escaped tears with the back of her hands, then her hands on the back of her shorts.
All she had to do was wait. It wouldn’t be long. Aunt Betty was getting the phone number of the private investigator right now. Just a few more days, that was all.
***
The taxicab pulled away from the curb, braked, and honked along with three other drivers at a car ahead of them. It had stopped at a yellow light instead of dashing through the intersection. Betty Parker stood on the sidewalk and heaved a sigh of relief. Thank goodness she had taken the cab rather than attempt to drive in downtown Detroit traffic at 5:00. She was nervous enough as it was, just thinking about what she was going to have her lawyer do.
Pigeons scooted away from the tap of her cane, but only far enough to avoid her reach had she wanted to swat them. She didn’t, but she knew a few people she’d like to. Neal Oakleigh, her sister’s husband, for one. Made the hair on the back of her neck bristle, the way he had insinuated himself into her life—and her house—since she’d returned home. He deserved a whop.
She craned her neck to look up at the office building her husband had built two decades earlier. Taller buildings rose above it now, but none as handsome. Leaning heavily on her cane, she mounted the steps to the entryway one at a time. Pink Rosato marble, her favorite, framed the doorway. She paused to run the flat of her hand over the sto
ne. In spite of the summer heat the marble was cool under her palm, its glossy surface soft as a satin pillow.
The entry door outweighed her, and she struggled to balance herself on her cane and at the same time pull on the heavy wood. Finally a man exited, held the door open for her, and she hobbled inside. A year ago she wouldn’t have needed help. Not that she regretted her life on the island with Jake and Eve and Crystal. God had given them to her as the family she’d always wanted. Her foot injury was worth it.
She took the elevator to the top floor. Parker and Snyder, Attorneys at Law, embellished the frosted glass door of the office suite. With satisfaction, she noted Oakleigh, her brother-in-law’s name, hadn’t been added even though he’d told her he was now a partner in the firm.
The receptionist announced Betty’s arrival, and Leroy Snyder came out of his office to greet her. Tall and gaunt, if he’d had a beard he’d have looked like Abraham Lincoln. He opened his arms wide and enveloped her in a hug, stooping to align his head alongside hers and kiss her on the cheek. “Betty, Betty, Betty. How good to see you! What a wonder you’re here!”
She glowed at his welcome. “Thank you for the late appointment, Leroy. It’s good to be back.”
She liked Leroy. He was practical and unpretentious. When her husband had taken Leroy on as a partner thirty years ago, brain and charm had melded together in a match between the two men that skyrocketed the law firm to success. How in the world had Leroy found Neal Oakleigh, of all people, suitable to replace Franklin Parker’s charm?
“Coffee?”
“Please.”
Leroy buzzed his secretary to bring in two coffees while Betty sat down on the red leather couch she and Franklin had bought eight years ago for his office. Two matching chairs completed the suite, but the Bottocino marble-topped coffee table next to them was a prize they had found later in Belgium. She leaned forward and sniffed fresh flowers arranged in a crystal vase on the table. No doubt the receptionist still changed them every three days.