Ghost Ship: A Port Chatham Mystery (2 page)

Darcy peered in the direction Jordan pointed. “Son of a bitch!” Jogging over, she knelt next to a black, rubber-encased body floating facedown in the shallows.

When Jordan started to follow, Darcy put up a hand. “Stay back.” She felt for a pulse, then turned over the body, pulling back the hood of the dry suit.

Jordan pressed fingers against her mouth. She would have recognized that bleached-blond buzz cut anywhere. “That’s …”

“Yeah.”

Holt Stillwell. Port Chatham’s most notorious womanizer, descended from a long line of infamous criminals, not the least of whom was the Pacific Northwest’s most ruthless shanghaier of the late nineteenth century, Michael Seavey.

Holt’s eyes were closed, and his skin had a weirdly translucent pallor.

He also had a bullet hole in the center of his forehead.

Chapter 2

J
ORDAN
didn’t have any experience with dead people, other than from the night she’d had to identify her husband’s remains. Her former patients, no matter how damaged when they came to her, had always been alive and kicking.

She couldn’t seem to quit looking at Holt’s face. Swallowing rapidly, she concentrated hard on not losing her lunch.

“You’re not planning to hurl all over the crime scene, are you?” Darcy asked absently as she studied the area around Holt’s body.

“Of course not.”

Darcy pulled out her cellphone, flipping it open and sweeping it in an arc. “
Dammit!
No signal.” Leaning down, she braced her hands on her knees and stared at the sand. “Okay, it looks like the tide has washed away any footprints, so I guess it doesn’t really matter. Get over here and help me.”

“What’re we doing, exactly?” Jordan asked warily.

“We’re moving him above the tide line. I can’t stand in forty-degree water, holding a corpse in place until the crime-scene techs get here.”

That made sense. Rubbing her palms on her jeans, Jordan edged forward.

With her grappling Holt’s bare ankles and Darcy at his shoulders, they managed to drag him out of the shallow surf and up the beach. They stood over the body, catching their breath. Jordan’s running shoes were now filled with sand and salt water, and her blisters were stinging big-time.

“The medical examiner is going to kill me for messing with the position of the body,” Darcy muttered, as if talking to herself, “but it couldn’t be helped.”

Holt’s torso was propped against a giant log, his head lolling to one side. There was no way Jordan was sitting down on that log to empty out her shoes. And she
really
didn’t want to stand there, staring at the nasty little hole in his forehead.

“What do you suppose he was doing way out here?” she asked, to distract herself.

“Good question. As far as I know, Holt wasn’t a dive enthusiast. And even if he was, there are far more interesting dives closer to town or off the west side of Vancouver Island.”

Jordan raised a brow.

“Old shipwrecks and the like,” Darcy elaborated.

“Shouldn’t he have been with a dive buddy? Don’t divers usually swim in pairs, for safety reasons?”

Darcy shrugged. “It’s not like Holt ever played by the rules.”

“True, but …” Jordan thought about the man she’d seen earlier. Had he been real after all? “Maybe the dive buddy
is
the murderer.” Maybe she’d just exchanged pleasantries with a cold-blooded killer. “Holt could’ve pissed him off, just like he did everyone else, and the guy lost it.”

“And shot him with the handgun he just happened to have in a watertight Baggie stowed inside his dive suit.”

“Okay, point taken.” Not to mention that if it had been the person Jordan had seen, his suit had lacked such conveniences as pockets. Did some people make their own dive gear? She didn’t know; she’d never been interested in the sport. “So what do we do now? Look for the murder weapon?”

“You’ve been watching
way
too many
CSI
shows. If you’d just shot a guy and dumped him in the water, what would you do with the gun?”

“Well, assuming I have homicidal tendencies
and
I’ve thought the crime through before committing it, I guess I would’ve tossed it as far out into the ocean as I could … No, wait.” Jordan reconsidered. “Unless I’m familiar with the local currents, I’d be worried the tide would wash the gun back onto the beach. And there’s no good place to hide it on this spit; you could bury a gun in the sand, but a good metal detector would find it in a heartbeat. I suppose you could toss it into the reeds on the protected side, but to be safe, I’d probably carry it back with me, intending to dispose of it somewhere else.”

“Exactly,” Darcy confirmed. “We’ll get teams out here to comb the driftwood and beach grasses, but I doubt we’ll find anything. The gun could be anywhere.”

Jordan glanced around. “Where’s Holt’s gear? You know—oxygen tanks, flippers? You don’t suppose someone
robbed
him, do you?”

“I doubt they killed him for his dive equipment,” Darcy replied drily, “though a friend of mine regularly complains about the cost. But you’re right—it’s odd that he doesn’t have any.”

“Maybe he was killed somewhere else and then dumped here. Maybe the killer was hoping the tide would carry him out to sea before someone noticed him. After all, normally he could’ve counted on a fair amount of time elapsing before someone would come along and notice. It’s not like anyone in their right mind takes this hike
willingly
.”

Darcy gave her an exasperated look. “I shouldn’t even be discussing this with you.”

“Hey.” Hadn’t she just solved a murder? A hundred-year-old murder, no less?

Darcy checked for a signal again, then swore. “See if you have cellphone coverage; your carrier is different from mine.”

Jordan did as she asked, with the same result, then gazed in both directions. No one in sight, not even the other diver, who seemed to have disappeared. She spread her hands and gave Darcy a shrug.

“Okay.” Darcy drew a breath, sounding businesslike, “I need to stay with the body, to protect the integrity of the crime scene as much as possible. So I need you to continue on to the lighthouse.”

Of course she did.

“You should be able to pick up coverage there,” she added. “Call 911 to report the crime.”

Jordan hesitated. With the exception of Darcy, she still didn’t feel completely comfortable around cops, given her recent experiences with the LAPD. And she’d be calling to report a murder, which might lead to all kinds of speculation. After all, it had only been in the last week or so that the speculation over her husband’s murder had finally died down.

Darcy correctly interpreted her expression. “Relax. I can verify what you tell them—they aren’t going to jump to any conclusions about your being out here. And put in a call to Jase—have him come pick you up. He can borrow a power boat and bring it to the landing area on the south side of the lighthouse.”

The aforementioned sublime pub owner. Damn. Jordan was finding it hard to remain in denial when her hormones rioted every time he came within twenty feet of her.

The implication of what Darcy had said sank in. “You mean we could have taken a
boat
out here?”

“Sure. But then we wouldn’t have found Holt, would we?”

Jordan risked another glance and suddenly found herself with a lump in her throat. “I was going to ask him to bid a portion of the paint job,” she admitted. “You know, to be fair.”

Darcy nodded, and they were silent for a long moment.

“Will you be all right here by yourself?” Jordan asked, noting the lines of strain on the other woman’s face.

“I’m tired but fine.” She grimaced. “I’d just hoped to leave this type of crime behind when I moved from Minneapolis.”

“I could come back and wait with you,” Jordan offered.

“Not necessary.”

“How about I call one of your deputies to come out, then?”

Darcy shook her head. “The local police will respond to the 911, and I’ll have to wrestle them for jurisdiction before I can involve anyone from my force in the investigation.”

“
You
want the case?” Jordan was surprised.

“Damn right I do. Whoever killed Holt may live in Port Chatham.”

Jordan didn’t like the sound of
that
—she preferred any local murders remain in a different century. “Who do you think might have done it?”

“No clue yet. But a good place to start would be any of the women Holt bedded within the last several years. They all walked away mad enough to kill.”

*   *   *

S
INCE
Jordan was eager to put as much distance as possible between herself and the crime scene, the last mile of the hike went by quickly, wet, sore feet notwithstanding. And Darcy had been right—the minute Jordan reached the edge of the lighthouse grounds, bars popped up on her cellphone. She placed calls, then sat down at a picnic table in the sun, trying not to think about Darcy’s wait in much less pleasant circumstances.

The grounds at the end of the spit were landscaped simply—just grass and a two-rail, painted wooden fence that separated the buildings from the surrounding tide flats. The lightstation—a single-story, rectangular building with a pitched roof—stood to one side, its lamp perched atop a circular white brick tower with a conical red metal roof. Across the grass on the other side of the fenced area was the keeper’s quarters, a Cape Cod–style bungalow with a covered porch, square, divided-light windows, and shutters. The buildings were painted white to match, with green trim and red metal roofs. Despite their century and a half of exposure to harsh elements, they were well kept. Darcy had explained that a nonprofit association used volunteer lightkeepers to maintain the site, now that the Coast Guard had been forced to slash its budget for lighthouse personnel.

An osprey flew overhead, hunting for its next meal in the tide pools beyond the fence. Other waterfowl Jordan didn’t recognize perched on driftwood or floated in the water just offshore. A few people—smart enough to have traveled by boat, she surmised, since she hadn’t seen them before now—wandered in and out of the lightstation. If the cameras they held were any indication, they were tourists, not ghosts. A slender woman wearing a loose cotton smock, wooden gardening clogs, and a floppy straw hat was planting daisies and snapdragons along the foundation in front of the keeper’s quarters. The scene was quaint and peaceful … as long as Jordan didn’t factor in Holt’s body lying on the beach less than a mile away.

She raised her face to the warm rays and willed herself to think about something—anything—else. With so many recent stressful events in her life, she found herself savoring those short stretches of time when she could close her eyes and feel at peace.

Until a year ago, her days had been … well, predictable. She’d had a thriving therapy practice in L.A., based on the tenets of Rational Therapy. Her husband—she’d believed—had been in love with her. But that life had disintegrated into a media frenzy surrounding her very public divorce and Ryland’s murder. Though she hadn’t admitted as much to Darcy, her reluctance to take on big challenges or set goals was really an attempt to remain calm and centered while she struggled to adjust to her new life.

From a psychological standpoint, figuring out what made a person reach the point of committing murder was fascinating, in a somewhat morbid way. She knew people killed for all kinds of reasons. Her own stalker, for instance, had killed on the spur of the moment, out of an irrational need to eliminate his perceived competition. What had Holt done to cause his assailant to reach such a breaking point? Or had the person simply been mentally unbalanced, and Holt had done nothing to incite the violence?

She hadn’t known Holt all that well, except by reputation as a womanizer. Her only real contact with him had been to ask him for access to his family papers, which had included the personal diaries of Michael Seavey, the 1890s shanghaier, who had been at the top of her list of suspects when she’d investigated Hattie’s murder.

Though Holt had professed indifference to what she’d discovered about his ancestor, she’d always thought he’d secretly cared a great deal. She suspected a good portion of his “bad boy” reputation had been based on an attempt to live down to the low expectations of the locals, who considered Stilwells to be at best societal misfits, at worst hardened criminals.

Jordan had heard that in recent weeks, Holt had been working on a job at the historic Cosmopolitan Hotel in downtown Port Chatham, which had at one time been owned by Michael Seavey. Rumor had it that the basement of the hotel still had a door leading to the underground tunnels used by the shanghaiers back in the day to hold recalcitrant sailors. Had Holt bid on the job partially because of some sense of connection to his past?

He hadn’t been around the pub much lately, which she’d simply chalked up to long work hours. However, she now had to wonder whether he’d been taking trips out here for dives. And if so, why? She found it difficult to believe that he was diving for historic artifacts on sunken wrecks. Even less credible was the idea that he was diving because he enjoyed watching the fish. As far as she knew, the only hobby Holt enjoyed was bedding women—a different one every night.

Jordan squinted at the distant horizon, holding a hand up to shade her eyes. A black speck had appeared, slowly growing in size. Some kind of commercial fishing trawler, by the looks of it. But as she watched, the speck gradually became separate sticks—masts, she realized. A beautiful old sailing ship rose up, coming toward her, almost as if it had emerged from the sea. Logically, she knew it only looked that way because of the curvature of the earth, but still, it was a wonderfully romantic sight.

The ship had three masts, each supporting rows of squared-off sails that appeared to be completely unfurled. It was running before the wind, moving silently through the water, small white waves curling back from its cutwater. The closer the ship came to shore, the more stunning it appeared to be, its bowsprit rising and falling with the swells. Jordan could just make out the carving of a woman whose dress flowed back in soft folds, molding to her feminine figure.

“Gorgeous, isn’t she?”

“Hmm?” Jordan turned her head toward the voice.

The gardener stood beside the picnic table. She lifted a hand to point at the ship.

“Oh! Yes.” Jordan smiled. “I hear there’s quite an active wooden boat society in this area, dedicated to refurbishing old ships.”

The woman hesitated. “I suppose that’s true, yes.” When Jordan gave her a questioning glance, she shrugged. “I don’t get to town much.”

“That’s understandable. If I lived out here, I wouldn’t want to leave, either. It’s an arduous hike.”

“Oh, I’d take a boat,” the gardener replied matter-of-factly. “Nevertheless, I find it difficult to leave.”