On the Rocks: A Willa Cather and Edith Lewis Mystery

by Sue Hallgarth

  “Yes,” Jameson’s wife drained her glass, “what possible hurry could there be? It’s not as though any of us are actually leaving this island. Matt has simply gone to a great deal of trouble to find good telephone connections with the States.”

  “Telephone service on this island is a joke,” Maggie Johnson pushed at the ground with her foot.

  “Can’t do business without good phones, you know.”

  Daggett thought Jameson’s heartiness hollow. Maggie Johnson rattled ice against the sides of her glass.

  “Here, let me fix you another,” Jameson leapt to his feet, “there’s plenty of time before dinner.”

  Jameson retrieved the women’s glasses and turned toward Daggett, an invitation in the lift of his brow.

  “None for me.”

  Jameson disappeared into the Inn.

  Daggett’s breathing had returned to normal during the drive from Seven Days Work. He headed straight for Swallowtail in order to arrive before Johnson could reach his wife and friends. What would Johnson’s story be, Daggett pushed the accelerator as far down as he dared on the loose gravel of the road to The Whistle. At Tattons Corner, he actually spun the Chevrolet’s tires, and when he arrived at the Inn, he leapt from the car without shutting his door.

  Johnson couldn’t possibly continue to pretend that he had gone to Eastport. But what did his wife or Jameson know of his plans? If Johnson intended to go to Eastport, why hadn’t he gone? If he never intended to go, then the whole thing was a dodge. But who was he dodging. And why.

  Daggett thought his best chance for getting answers involved alerting no one to the urgency of his visit. Jameson’s trek for more drinks could prove troublesome if he happened to notice the driver’s door standing ajar on the Chevrolet. But Daggett couldn’t be bothered about that now. It was the whereabouts of Matthew Johnson Daggett cared about most. Jameson and the others either didn’t know or were pretending not to know about anything Johnson had done since he left them this morning.

  It was all Daggett could do not to leap into the Chevrolet and spin away after Johnson. But where to look. And when he found Johnson, as eventually he would, what questions should he ask. What’s all this about Eastport? Why did you slip away from the S. S. Grand Manan? How did you spend the day? What were you doing on the beach? What did you put in your pocket? Why did you run? Yes, Daggett reached for his notebook and shifted his weight, when you saw me, why did you run. But Johnson was not there to give answers. Had he been? Could he be hiding now somewhere in the Inn? Daggett had no way of knowing. He turned back to Maggie Johnson.

  “Tell me about the business your husband felt he had to conduct.”

  “Business is business, Constable Daggett. It’s all one to me,” Maggie Johnson patted a yawn.

  “Business is boring, don’t you think, Constable?” Jean Jameson pushed the swing away with her foot.

  “I pay no attention to any of it,” Maggie Johnson leaned into the swing.

  Daggett pressed forward, “When did your husband decide to make this trip?”

  “During breakfast, I believe. We had nothing else planned for the day,” Maggie Johnson inspected her nails. Her hands lay idle in her lap.

  “Who did you say your husband planned to call?”

  “I have no idea,” Maggie Johnson found an imperfection. She rubbed the nail with her thumb.

  “Come, Constable,” Jean Jameson ran her fingers through her hair, “what has any of this to do with the case you are investigating?”

  BY the time Willa changed into her shoes and the two of them raced down the trail to Whale Cove, Edith was able to catch only a glimpse of Mr. Johnson. He had almost reached Church Lane on the other side of the cove. He was no longer running but still set a swift pace.

  Edith and Willa moved as fast as they dared across the rocky beach. Edith was glad the man had slowed. She had enough running the night before to last a very long while, and they didn’t want to catch Mr. Johnson, only keep him in sight.

  Neither of them knew why it was important to chase after this fellow, but they were certain they should. Willa said as much lacing her shoes. Edith had simply cried, “Let’s go.” The expression on Daggett’s face had been enough.

  The rough footing of Whale Cove demanded most of their attention, but Edith managed to see that the man did not, as she expected, turn right into North Head. Instead he slipped into the trees and headed up the trail toward Hole in the Wall. For a moment the man’s tennis whites flitted through the evergreens that wound in and out, rising above the shoreline with the trail.

  “ABSOLUTELY,” it was Rob Feeney’s turn to frown. “I swear he was on board. I saw him with my own eyes,” Feeney shuffled his papers into a pile, then folded his hands and rested them on his desk. He glanced at his calendar and at his clock.

  Daggett’s eyes followed Feeney’s. Ten after six. Feeney should have gone home over an hour ago. But he could keep his own time, he lived by himself.

  “Couldn’t Johnson have gotten off after you saw him board?”

  Feeney returned Daggett’s gaze, then let his eyes drift to Daggett’s collar and down onto his chest. Daggett knew that Feeney was not really seeing his collar or the buttons on his jacket. Feeney was looking again at the S. S. Grand Manan with Matthew Johnson on board.

  “Well, I was busy,” Feeney looked Daggett in the eye again, “I suppose he could have slipped off when I wasn’t looking.”

  The rise in Feeney’s voice made it almost a question. Daggett chose not to answer.

  “No, that doesn’t make sense,” Feeney shook his head. “Why would he do that,” Feeney’s voice became insistent, “and why would his wife not know where he was?”

  Daggett shrugged. Harvey Andrews had promised to send a boy over the minute Johnson turned up. Daggett glanced out the window. There was no one in sight.

  “I’m sure Johnson didn’t know Richard Miller, the other fellow on board. Sure of it,” Feeney’s eyes rose to an area above Daggett’s head and began to trace the edges of schedules posted on the wall across from his desk.

  Daggett watched Feeney think.

  “Or the couple from Rose Cottage.”

  The clock on Feeney’s desk said it would be forty-five minutes until the S. S. Grand Manan returned to its berth. Daggett wished he had help. An assistant, a sergeant. Almost anyone would do. It was not the first time in Daggett’s career that he experienced a need to be in three places at once or wanted someone with whom he could discuss the details of a case.

  Daggett reached for his pipe, “Tell me again what he wore.”

  “Tennis whites. Canvas shoes. One of those backpacks the hikers use. A red shirt.”

  “A red shirt? He was wearing it?”

  “Had it slung over his shoulder.”

  “And what exactly did he say?”

  “Nice day for a boat ride, something like that,” Feeney shrugged and took a pack of Players out of the center drawer of his desk. He extracted a cigarette, placed it between his lips, and struck a match.

  “I don’t know what I’m waiting for,” Daggett turned in his chair and stretched out his legs. He crossed them at the ankle, “He won’t be on board, you know.”

  Feeney exhaled.

  XVII

  “DAMN YOU, DAGGETT, let go of me,” Little John tried to shake free. “You have no right to do this.”

  Little John’s bluster was no match for Daggett, but Daggett loosened his grip only long enough to push Little John into the Chevrolet and latch onto Jocko.

  “You leave that man alone,” Eva McDaniels shrilled from behind, “and don’t you dare touch that boy.”

  Daggett shoved Jocko into the back seat of his car and placed his puppy in his lap.

  At that moment Daggett felt several sharp tugs at his sleeve. He turned just in time to see Eva McDaniels’ paisley clad arm fling itself high in the air and realized with astonishment that the satchel Eva carried for a purse was about to crash into the right side of his head. Daggett
deflected the blow.

  “What a woman,” Little John howled.

  “Try something like that again, Eva McDaniels, and I’ll consider your purse a weapon and lock you up, too,” Daggett roared and brandished the shotgun he had just wrested from Little John.

  “You wouldn’t dare,” Eva took a step back.

  “Now see here,” Little John tried to push open the car door.

  Daggett held it shut.

  “Don’t worry, folks,” Little John puffed himself up to address his remarks to the small audience he had assembled, “not even Daggett would throw a lady into jail.”

  The McDaniels, the Tinsleys, and Daisy Edwards were arranged in a semicircle before the open car window. Daggett wasn’t sure whether they just fell into that formation or meant to separate him from Eva McDaniels, who had lost none of her fierceness.

  Finally, Dan McDaniels put a restraining hand on his wife’s arm. Eva continued to glare at Daggett, but her anger had lost its edge.

  “Take her home now, Dan. Please,” Daggett stood braced against the car door. “And the rest of you folks, you leave now, too.”

  “Dan, Eva,” Jason Tinsley offered, backing up to unlock the door to his pharmacy, “why don’t you come in and sit down.” He turned to the others, “You can all come. Soda’s on the house.”

  Little John pushed against the car door.

  “Not you,” Daggett blocked Little John. “You sit right there and listen to what I say.”

  Daggett stepped away from the car, his voice pitched to the small crowd.

  “There will be no vigilante justice,” Daggett shook Little John’s shotgun, “not while I am constable on this island.”

  “Fine constable you are,” Little John growled, “arresting an honest man and letting the guilty go free.”

  Daggett swung back around, “No posse. No shotguns. No nonsense.” He shook the gun again.

  Little John turned forward, deliberately ignoring the constable.

  Daggett waited until he heard the pharmacy door close behind him, then he popped the shells out of Little John’s gun and walked around the car. He tossed the empty gun onto the back seat next to Jocko and put the shells in his pocket.

  Jocko took up no room at all. Only his eyes looked large in the back of the car. Daggett slid behind the wheel, opened the choke, and hit the accelerator with his foot. The Chevrolet coughed.

  “That woman is a bat out of Hades,” Little John hissed between clenched teeth.

  “Stop that,” Daggett eased in the choke.

  “She’s guilty as sin,” the hiss continued. “Killed him because she hates men.”

  The engine sputtered and died.

  “It’s plain as day. But you, you’re doing nothing about it,” Little John’s eyes darted left. His mustache twitched violently.

  Daggett pressed the starter. It whirred.

  “Why don’t you arrest her?”

  “Little John,” Daggett’s voice threatened.

  “Everyone knows she wears men’s clothes and lopes through the woods. Jodhpurs and shirts,” Little John sneered.

  Daggett began an audible count. The engine had flooded.

  “It’s not natural what she does, you know that.”

  “Eight, nine …”

  “She’s cut off her hair. She makes pots out of mud. Acts like a man herself and wears tall lace-up boots.”

  “Little John,” Daggett warned and tried the starter again.

  “Do you arrest her? No, you arrest me,” Little John turned in his seat and gestured toward the rear of the car. “Me and my young son here. And even his dog you threw in the car.”

  “Now,” this time Daggett’s voice actually reverberated. “Stop that now.”

  Little John’s mustache clamped down, hiding his lips. His jaw twitched.

  The engine caught and they jolted forward just as the S. S. Grand Manan sounded its warning.

  The steamer always blew twice when it passed by Whale Cove, after which it remained silent until its final swing into Long Island Bay toward the dock at North Head. It would be less than thirty minutes before passengers disembarked.

  Daggett gripped the wheel. He already had guessed the ship would reach North Head before he could dispose of Little John. Daggett rarely swore, even to himself, but he damned Little John now. Once again he would have to trust Rob Feeney’s eyes.

  Daggett realized he would miss the boat’s landing the minute James Enderby had burst into Feeney’s office to report that Little John Winslow was in the middle of the main street shouting about how the island should turn out to wrestle the Briggs witch down and tie her to the stake. This is one harlot who won’t be getting up out of any circle of fire, Little John was reported to vow. He was trying to rouse all of North Head to follow him to The Anchorage to break up what he had labeled Brunnhilde’s Blasphemy. A bunch of women, he roared, swaggering around in men’s armor and dress.

  There was to be an entertainment tonight, Daggett suddenly remembered. Men’s dress is right, Feeney had pointed out. That’s when warriors wore short skirts that weren’t even called kilts. Feeney had started to laugh. Daggett considered joining him until Enderby added that Little John was carrying a shotgun and waving it in the air.

  Serious as Daggett considered Little John’s offense, he had no intention of putting Little John in jail, only of disarming him and forcing him into silence. A more serious problem for Daggett was finding a way to impress Little John’s errors upon Jocko without entirely destroying the father for the boy. The size of Jocko’s eyes reflected in the rear view mirror suggested that the lesson might already be working.

  One thing Daggett was certain about. When he delivered Little John and Jocko to Anna and insisted they stay home, Anna would see that they did. Anna might be in the midst of giving the silent treatment to Little John, but she was the one person on Grand Manan who could make Little John listen. Anna was a reasonable woman. She would speak to Little John and do whatever she needed to take care of her son. The shotgun would stay with Daggett.

  AT Hole in the Wall, the man called Johnson paused briefly and leaned against a tree. Then, rather than head for the trail to The Swallowtail Light as most people did, he turned inland on a little-used path that went sharply uphill until it met several old logging roads high in the woods. Any one of them, Willa observed, would allow the man to drop down into North Head without being noticed.

  It was, Willa said when Edith pointed out the way he had gone, like taking the back door into town. But, she added, it was a back door he didn’t seem to know much about. He was going the long way round.

  Because Edith and Willa knew a shortcut, they decided to take advantage of the man’s meandering. Edith badly wanted a rest. Shortly after Church Lane she had tripped on a root and stopped herself from falling by grabbing a tree limb with her bandaged hand. The palm still throbbed and she was having trouble concentrating on the trail.

  Willa found a comfortable spot on the arch above Hole in the Wall, and Edith stretched out flat, raising her arm in a vertical slant. Once she slowed the flow of blood, the throbbing would cease. Edith closed her eyes and drew her mind inward, then let go of the man and focused on her breathing. Her pulse slowed and muscles relaxed. She sent inner breath to her wound. Finally, she let go of the wound. Her hand dropped to her side.

  Two long wails from the S. S. Grand Manan broke the silence. Edith let its measured pace slide across her mind. The steamer was crossing the mouth of Whale Cove. Soon it would dock in North Head.

  “Blue. Didn’t you say you saw blue?”

  Willa’s voice seemed to come from a distance. Edith opened her eyes. Willa stood at the far end of Hole in the Wall, her back toward Edith. She was staring not at the steamer but at a point half way along the trail they had just come.

  “Look for blue,” Willa turned her head, “isn’t that what you said?”

  Edith saw the blue from Eel Brook again in her mind, “Brilliant blue, a flash, yes.”

&nb
sp; “Brilliant, yes,” Willa repeated.

  The blue at Eel Brook had been a transitory flicker near the beach. It never left the woods.

  “I just saw it,” Willa pointed, “there.”

  Edith followed the direction of Willa’s hand in her mind and registered the image of a blue-shirted figure moving their way. Quickly, she sat up and stared at the trees along the trail.

  “Someone else must also be tracking Mr. Johnson.”

  “Yes,” Edith long ago had ceased to be surprised whenever Willa read her mind.

  “YOU’RE wrong, Feeney. You must be wrong,” Daggett lost control of his voice. It was much louder than he intended.

  Feeney flinched.

  “Johnson did not get off that ship.”

  Feeney backed to the side of his desk.

  Daggett advanced, “I saw him myself not two hours ago. He was on the beach below Seven Days Work.”

  “I know, I know,” Feeney nodded energetically, “that’s what you said.”

  “He couldn’t be on the beach and on the boat. That’s a physical impossibility.”

  “I promise you he was on the boat,” Feeney’s shoulders rose to the height of his ears in an extensive shrug, “he came down the gangplank.”

  “Tall? Physically fit? Tennis togs? Chestnut hair?” Daggett touched his hair with his hand, “Deep vees on each side?”

  “That’s the man.”

  “Can’t be.”

  “WELL, we’ll just have to wait a little longer,” Willa chose a spot on the top step and settled her back against the door to Daggett’s office.

  Edith took the next step, drawing her knees to her chin. She wrapped her arms around her legs and balanced the bandaged hand loosely on top.

  “I hope he comes soon,” Willa began to rub Edith’s shoulders, “I am famished.”

  Edith’s stomach grumbled in response.

  “You, too?”

  “Starved,” Edith glanced up, “and exhausted.”

  If they chose the right table, the Rose Cottage dining room would give them a view of Daggett’s office. Edith could almost feel the surge of energy a cup of tea would provide, and Mary Robbins would certainly find them some leftover stew or a bowl of chowder.