A Shroud of Tattered Sails: An Oregon Coast Mystery (Garrison Gage Series Book 4)

by Scott William Carter

  "No?"

  "No."

  "But I don't—"

  "Listen," Gage said, "I'm getting tired of pointing this gun at you, and when I get tired, I get impatient. When I get impatient, I do stupid things. I suggest you get going. Be in that room tonight. If I decide to come see you, I'll be there late. If not, I won't. Don't tell anyone about our little encounter. Don't talk to the cops. Don't talk to anyone. We'll talk tonight and see where things lead."

  Omar, standing there in his fine gray suit, looking so polished and dignified that it was hard to imagine that they'd actually come to blows only seconds before, gazed at them for a long time before finally offering a slight nod. He turned to go, then, as if suddenly remembering something, stopped and looked at them again.

  "I have no intention of informing the police of our encounter," he said. "I would greatly prefer that what just transpired remain ... private. However, I must inform you that this may no longer be possible."

  "What?" Gage said.

  Rather than answer with words, Omar directed his gaze above them and to his left. Fearing a trick, Gage kept part of his attention on Omar while following the man's eyes. It took a few seconds to notice what Omar was talking about, to spot the trouble there leaning against the metal fence belonging to one of the houses on the bluff, but there was no mistaking what it was. A man. Not just any man. A man in purple, holding a large camera to his face, the lens glinting in the sun as it pointed in their direction.

  Gage, still pointing his Beretta at Omar, could almost hear the shutter clicking.

  Chapter 7

  It was no use. Before Gage even managed a few steps toward the bluff, Buzz Burgin flitted away as fast as a field mouse.

  That sinking feeling settling into Gage's gut was all too familiar. His past experience with the press—other than a wonderful relationship with Carmen Hornbridge, the previous owner of the Bugle who'd gone on to better things—already had him fearing the worst. Not just fearing the worst, but knowing the worst was about to come to pass. Who knew how long Buzz had been standing there armed with his camera, but it was long enough to snap at least the most damning picture: him pointing his Beretta at Omar, the brother of the missing man, and the mystery amnesia woman standing there looking terrified. Oh yes, it was going to be bad.

  Bad for Gage and the police.

  Bad for Miranda because of whoever might be looking for her.

  Just bad all the way around.

  "I will speak to you tonight," Omar said.

  Gage turned to reply, but Omar was already a dozen paces away. Hands behind his back, head lowered in contemplation, he could have been a man leaving a boardroom meeting rather than a fistfight. The sand swirled around his black wingtips, and the ocean, ceaseless in its rhythms, continued advancing and retreating upon the shore, ever oblivious to their problems.

  The cool breeze soothed Gage's aching face, though he knew by tonight Zoe would be joking about what an improvement the bruise made to his overall appearance. Slipping the Beretta into the side holster inside his leather jacket, he turned to Miranda. She still stood with her hands cupped over her face, eyes wet and bright, her whole body collapsed on itself like a turtle trying to retreat into its shell when its shell was missing. It made for a sad and pathetic sight, worthy of both sympathy and pity, and Gage could see the question in her eyes. Why? Not why Omar had attacked, but why was this all happening to her? He did not have an answer. He did not know why—why she was here, where Marcus had gone, or, most of all, why they could not unlock the door to her mind that would most likely lead to all the answers they needed.

  Instead, he had only more questions. An endless stream of questions.

  He saw that the thing she wanted most was for him to open his arms to her. A hug, that's all. If she was like a turtle without a shell, then he could be that shell. That was what she wanted. Protection. Safety. When the sky was falling all around you, a little safety could go a long ways, even if that safety was mostly an illusion. For now, a simple hug would do. Was that too much to ask?

  Yes, it was.

  Still seething at Omar's brazen attack, all that pent-up rage having nowhere to go, Gage could not help but direct some of that anger toward Miranda. It may not have been fair, but perhaps it was fair; there was still the doubt, after all. It lingered between them, in the gaps between the questions and the answers. No matter how pathetic a figure she made, she could have been playing him for a rube.

  "Let's go," he said, turning toward the Turret House.

  * * *

  Trudging up the steps, Gage endured the trembling agony in his knee in stoic silence. The wind was so loud in their ears it would have been difficult to have a conversation in any case. He had his own shell, and he was happy to retreat into it when offered the chance; focusing on his pain offered its own form of healing.

  Back at the Turret House, Eve was in the foyer chatting with some new guests, an elderly couple up from California, and they all gaped at Gage and Miranda when they entered. Glancing in the full-length mirror by the door, he saw why. Dried blood, caked with sand, coated his chin, and the bruise under his eye had already started to swell and turn pink. Eve, after quickly offering her new guests a couple of good restaurants for dinner, hustled both Gage and Miranda into the kitchen. There were lots of questions, of course, and as Gage tried to calm down enough to answer them, Miranda told them in an anguished voice that she needed to go lie down. Eve asked her if there was anything she could do for her, but Miranda was through the swinging doors before Eve finished the question.

  "Poor thing," Eve said. "I'll bring her some lemon tea in a little bit. Help calm her nerves."

  "A good idea," Gage said.

  "Now, from the start, tell me what happened."

  He did. While he was talking, she wet a paper towel and cleaned up his face, then got him some ice wrapped in a cotton dish towel. The initial sting gave way to a comforting coolness. The sun, which had already passed its zenith, shined through the porthole window and filled the kitchen with a warm glow, brightening the white cabinets and giving the oak countertops a gauzy, golden glow. He heard the slightly too-perfect crooning of Barry Manilow coming from the dining room, and he decided to forgive her this lapse in musical taste. He would forgive just about anything when it came to Eve.

  "You know," Gage said, "if you ever decide to leave Alex, I'll be happy to take his place in a heartbeat."

  "Oh, stop, you," she said. She stepped over to the tea kettle on the stove, picked it up, then sighed. "Maybe we should cancel the dinner tonight."

  "No, don't do that."

  "I don't want to. I just ... do you think Miranda is up for it?"

  "I think it'll be the best thing for her. Right now, she needs people around her who truly want the best for her, not the worst."

  "You don't think this Omar person will come back?"

  "No. He'll wait for me at the hotel."

  "Okay. If you say so. I just have a bad feeling."

  "You have nothing to worry about," Gage said, "because I'll be here. As everybody knows, I'm a good luck charm."

  Eve smiled politely at this, but she was too nice to put him in his place. Zoe, however, came down when she heard the whistle of the tea kettle, took one look at Gage, and asked him who he'd managed to piss off this time. A study in contrasts, those two. Eve soon disappeared upstairs with a tray of tea and biscuits, the scent of lemon and apricot jam trailing after her, and Zoe made her daily run to the bank and grocery store, leaving Gage alone downstairs.

  Alone and brooding. He didn't want to tell Eve, but he had a bad feeling too, a queasy sense that terrible things were still to come—and maybe soon. He parked himself in one of the wing-backed chairs in the living room, where he had a good view of the front door and street. Nothing out there but a couple of seagulls pecking at the gravel.

  Yet there was no way he was leaving these three women alone. Besides, the way he felt at the moment, he wasn't keen on doing a lot of moving aro
und anyway. His face still throbbed, and already he could feel his muscles tightening, the adrenaline that had masked the assorted aches and pains beginning to fade. The chair would be just fine. It was only a few hours until dinner and this was as good a place to recover as any.

  He watched the street for a while, but the seagulls soon departed and left him nothing of even moderate interest to hold his attention. He flipped through some recent issues of National Geographic, reading a piece about New Guinea but none of the words stuck. Eventually, he dozed, waking with a start when someone put a hand on his shoulder. He'd already slipped his hand inside his jacket and gripped the handle of the Beretta when he looked up and saw that it was Miranda.

  "Sorry," she said.

  She blinked bleary eyes at him, and strands of her hair stuck out at odd angles, as if she too had been napping.

  "It's all right," he said. "I'm just a little jumpy right now."

  "I don't blame you. Are you feeling okay?"

  "I've had better days."

  "That bruise ..." She reached to touch his cheek, but stopped before her hand reached its destination. "I can't believe that man did that to you."

  "He'll have a few black and blue spots himself," Gage said.

  "Yes." She swallowed, glanced at where his hand still rested inside his jacket, then asked tentatively, "Would you really have shot him?"

  "Yes."

  "Just like that? Not even any doubt?"

  "I always save the doubt for later. Keeps me alive. Besides, doubt, guilt—those things always go down a bit easier with a shot or two of bourbon."

  "Oh. Well, I want to thank you."

  "No need."

  "I also want to show you something ... in my room."

  Either she read something in his expression, or she realized there was a definite implication to what she's said, because she blushed almost immediately—her face and neck turning nearly the same bright red as her hair.

  "Oh," she said, "it's not ... I just want to show you something. Something interesting."

  "Okay."

  "I just ... it's kind of private. I mean—"

  "It's all right, Miranda. Let's go."

  He followed her upstairs, her blush mostly fading by the time they got there, though she still kept an awkward distance from him and darted quickly to her end table and snatched up the drawing pad there. It was open to the first page. She thrust the pad at him, turning her head slightly away, like a child who'd been caught doing something bad and now feared the consequences.

  The drawing pictured a crescent moon over a sailboat, the ocean waves laced with silvery light. There was a hint of a pier in the foreground, the edge of a boardwalk and some posts descending into the water. It was only a sketch, just enough hint of detail to let the mind fill in the rest, but they were the right details, done with skill and flair, the practice and training obvious in each little scratch of the pencil.

  "Wow," he said, "this is wonderful."

  "You really think so?"

  "Living on the coast, I see a lot of art. A lot of artists, too. This is as good as anything I've seen. Do you know where it is?"

  She shook her head. "I wish I did. I woke up and this was in my head. Before I even realized what I was doing, I was drawing it. It really scared me. I didn't know I could do something like this."

  "Well, then you should do more of it. Maybe it'll help you remember."

  "I hope so," she said, but when she looked at the drawing, there was something troubling in her eyes—a pained expression, as if part of her did remember.

  The drawing also sparked something deep in the back of Gage's mind, not a memory exactly, but a flash of meaning that he couldn't quite discern. It was as if he knew he was looking not at a drawing, but some kind of puzzle. Where was this place? There was nothing distinctive, it could have been any of a thousand ports, but still, he sensed it was a particular port and that the details were all in the picture.

  Nothing came to him, so he filed it away to think about later. They went downstairs and chatted in the living room. It wasn't long before Alex came home from the store, joining the conversation until about six, when he departed to help Eve prepare. A half hour later, about the time Gage detected some wonderful beef and garlic aromas wafting from the kitchen, Tatyana showed up. She apologized for coming early, but she'd managed to extricate herself from her patients and it didn't make sense to head home only to have to head out again immediately. Mid-apology, she noticed Gage's bruised face and demanded to know what had happened. He let Miranda tell it this time.

  Tatyana may come straight from the hospital, and was dressed in the same blue V-neck shirt and charcoal pants as when they'd seen her earlier, but Gage thought he detected a hint of red lipstick that she had not been wearing before. The white scarf was also missing, the V-neck shirt perhaps unbuttoned just a bit lower—still tasteful, but revealing a little more cleavage. Was she flirting with him? He caught a furtive glance from her, and he thought it was the kind of glance that a woman gives a man when she's trying to assess the reaction her appearance has had on him, but what did Gage know? He was wrong about women far more often than he was right.

  She did, however, sit next to him on the small couch. Or, to be more accurate, Gage sat next to her. Miranda did not give him a lot of choice, directing her to the couch, and Zoe, who was now off work and had joined them, took the nearest armchair ahead of him. That meant Gage would have had to awkwardly pull one of the wing-backed armchairs closer if he didn't want to sit next to her, but he didn't even consider it. He was perfectly happy to sit next to Tatyana, not quite close enough that their legs touched, but still close enough that he felt her body heat and got a good whiff of her lilac-scented perfume. Had she been wearing that earlier? He didn't think so.

  Though the sun had not yet set, it was low enough that the light coming from the living room window—on the eastern side of the house—faded quickly, the sky dissolving, the shadows in the room deepening. They talked for a few minutes, mostly Zoe, who entertained them with a story about a guest at the Turret House a few weeks back who'd come to Oregon from Boston and had been shocked to find a real civilization and not a scattering of log houses and teepees. Where could he go to find a real live lumberjack, he wanted to know. To Gage, Zoe seemed strangely animated, talking quickly, laughing loudly, not at all her usual edgy, sarcastic self. When the doorbell rang, she jumped out of her chair and flew to the door as if she'd been fired there by a rocket.

  It didn't take Gage long to realize what all her nervous energy had been about. In stepped young officer Zachary Gilbert, the two of them grinning at each other like idiots. No police uniform this time, not even a trench coat. He wore dark designer jeans and a blue blazer that was a bit tight in the shoulders, not tight in an I-got-too-fat-for-my-jacket sort of way, but in an I-deliberately-chose-a-jacket-too-small-to-show-off-my-muscular-body way.

  "What are you doing here?" Gage asked.

  "Oh," Zachary said, "sorry, I didn't—"

  "Ignore him," Zoe said, and then, pointedly to Gage: "I invited him."

  "Actually," Alex said, sweeping into the room, "I'm the one who invited him. I just asked Zoe to relay the message. Come in, come in! Ignore the grump on the couch. He's fine as long as he's medicated. You're just in time. Dinner is served!"

  There was a bit of an awkward dance as they made their way to the dining room: Zoe trying to stay close to Zachary, as Zachary was obviously trying to keep his distance from Gage. Miranda, who'd done her best to force Gage and Tatyana together on the couch, seemed to do everything she could to position herself between them as they walked. Yet when they got there, and Gage took his seat, Miranda quickly pulled out a chair next to him and gestured for Tatyana to sit. She actually took a chair opposite Gage, next to Zoe and her earnest law-abiding suitor. The way Zoe kept glancing at Zachary, as if she was waiting for him to turn into a butterfly at any moment, was disturbing enough that he barely noticed that magnificent spread before them until his sens
es were overwhelmed by the sheer goodness of it all.

  Chickpea soup, garlic mashed potatoes, creamy cheese baked pasta, Horiatiki Salata, which Eve had explained to him once was the real Greek salad since it contained no lettuce—the green silk tablecloth was decked out with a wide array of both Mediterranean and American food, as was Eve's custom. While the living room had grown dark with the onset of dusk, the dining room, located on the western side of the house, was filled with the warm orange light of the setting sun—a copper disc half sunk beneath a flat and tranquil ocean. It gave everyone in the room an ethereal glow, their skin rosier, their eyes brighter, as if the whole scene had been recreated by a Renaissance painter. Even the water inside their crystal glasses shined like liquid gold.

  Rare was the time that Gage ate in the dining room and didn't feel like he was eating in a restaurant with a clear view of heaven. Today was no different.

  The potatoes were smooth and buttery, with just a touch of garlic. The boiled green beans had just the right mixture of vinegar and salt. The two bottles of a California Chardonnay Alex had opened for the occasion offered just the right combination of tartness and sweetness. The food was so good, in fact, that no one spoke for a good while, and the silence was neither awkward nor even missed. It was not until Miranda let out an involuntary sigh, one obviously prompted by how delicious everything was, that everybody laughed and the conversational gates flew open. Alex talked about an interesting collection of Easton Press leather-bounds he'd bought for the store, which led to questions from Tatyana and Zachary about the book business and how Alex had gotten into it.

  "Oh, I was a book lover long before I had any interest in the FBI," Alex explained. "I worked in a used bookstore when I was going to college at UNC at Chapel Hill, not the big one near campus that sold mostly textbooks but a little dusty shop at the edge of town. It was run by a grumpy old guy who taught me a whole lot about the business, both the used paperback trade and the antiquarian side of things. Now most rare books are sold online, but back then it was a totally different business—you'd create a catalog and send it out to other dealers, or you'd put a listing in one of the main trade magazines of stuff you're looking for or selling."