Claire Gulliver #04 - Cruisin' for a Bruisin' (23 page)

Their driver pulled up to the dock and Richard got out, holding the door for Claire. Then he thanked the driver and they headed down the long dock to the boarding ramp.

“Mrs. Bernbaum seemed quite worried about Anita’s disappearance when we talked about it last night,” she said tentatively.

“Yes, she is worried, but eventually she’ll think it through. You wait, when Anita shows up, Auntie will be relieved, but then she’ll be mad, really mad. That will be the end of Anita’s job. You’ll see.”

Claire saw from his look of satisfaction that he was certain he was right. But she was distracted with the flurry of getting her card out to run through the machine at the entrance to the ship. Inside she waved good-by to Richard and headed for her cabin to get rid of her heavy jacket.

When the call came she expected it to be Nate’s lawyer telling her he had managed to have the charges dropped because they had raised enough money to reimburse the investors for their losses. Instead he told her gently Nate had been taken to the hospital. They thought it was a heart attack. The doctors weren’t optimistic. He said he would meet her at San Francisco General. She should hurry.

Her footsteps echoed loudly as she hurried down the dim hall. She nodded at the policeman sitting on the chair outside Nate’s room, but didn’t wait for his permission before she pushed open the door and entered the dim hospital room. Her heart was pounding so hard she felt faint. She was afraid of what she would find.

There were two beds in the room, but only one was occupied. It would be hard to mistake Nate’s large form, even shrouded as it was by the sheets and attached by tubes to mysterious equipment around the bed. She crept forward, hardly daring to breathe, praying he was going to be all right.

But she didn’t need a medical degree to see that wasn’t likely. His face was a strange shade of gray, and his breathing was very shallow in spite of the oxygen mask strapped to his face. His eyes were open and he was watching her mutely.

She pulled the chair close to the side of the bed and sat down heavily, her legs wouldn’t support her any longer.

Gingerly she picked up Nate’s hand, squeezing it, as tears flowed down her cheeks.

“Flo, Flo, I need you to promise me something.” She could barely understand his words, garbled as they were by the mask on his face. She leaned closer to reassure him.

“Promise me, Flo, will you?”

“Anything Nate, you know that.” It was hard for her to speak without breaking down completely.

“Give it back.”

“Pardon, I don’t understand. Give what back?”

“Give it back. The Heart of Persia. It’s cursed. Evil! Give it back and make it all right again.”

“Nate, what are you saying? Give it back to whom? Why?” She wondered if he really knew what he was saying.

Now his voice came stronger, clearer. “I cheated. God forgive me for it. Remember that card game I told you about, the one where I won the jewel? It happened; it was all true, but what I didn’t tell you was I cheated. During all those winters in Skagway as a boy I didn’t just learn to play poker, no, I mastered a deck of cards. My fingers are like a magician’s. I can stack a deck while I’m shuffling. The guys in Skagway never allowed me to deal when we played cards. They didn’t trust me. They wouldn’t give me a chance to cheat them even though I never did cheat them. But, I did cheat that one time, that one game.”

“Nate, I don’t believe it. You wouldn’t. Tell me you didn’t.” Florence leaned close to her husband, willing him to change his story.

He shook his head only slightly, but she could see in his eyes he was telling the truth. He gave a pathetic smile. “You know what they say about ‘deathbed confessions’, love. It’s the truth and I need your help to make it right.”

She couldn’t contain the sob, struggling to calm herself so as to not upset Nate further. “What can I do?”

“Find him, apologize to him and give it back to him. He’ll be mad, I know.” His voice was getting weaker again. The words were slow coming, but she didn’t try to hush him, she could see he was determined to tell her.

“I remember it all so clearly,” Nate said and she leaned closer to hear him.

“It was a long game, lots of money on the table. We were waiting for our orders to go home, you see? Most everyone else was gone and there was nothing to do but play cards and wait our turn. I set him up. I didn’t know about the Heart of Persia, but I could see the amount of money he had already won. So I waited for my turn to deal and chose to play Seven Cards Stud. I was very clever. I didn’t just deal him a full house; I dealt another guy a flush and one guy a set of aces. Three of them were each sure they had the winning hand. None of them suspected the pair of threes in front of me matched a pair of threes I had in my hole cards. The betting kept accelerating. Then Rourke, the Irishman from Chicago, pulled the Heart of Persia out of his pocket and asked who could match its value. That’s when I offered the deed to my dad’s gold mine. I had it, you see, because when he died they sent the deed to me while I was stationed in England.

“The set of aces folded; he didn’t have the money or the hand to stay in despite the Heart of Persia and a genuine gold mine in the pot, but the flush stayed in. And of course I won it all.

“I was proud of myself. The Heart of Persia was gorgeous. I knew you’d love it. I knew my luck had turned when I met you. Only good things were going to happen to me from that point on. I thought taking that pot was one more example of what my life was going to be. I thought it was my right to take what I could. But I was wrong.

“These past weeks in jail have given me a lot of time to think about this. My decision to cheat to win that game was the equivalent of my dad’s determination to send my mom and sister outside for the winter, when she didn’t want to go. It was a disaster in the making. When I made that decision to cheat I sealed my fate.

“My dad was so sure he was right. He didn’t listen to my mother’s protests. He dismissed her dreams of disaster. He was certain he knew best. Later he was destroyed by that decision. It was as if he killed them himself. I grew up seeing what that did to him. You’d think I would have learned. I should have been more careful to protect what we found together.

“You were the one good thing that happened to me. Your love kept me safe on all those bombing missions. It was the need to come back to you that kept me going, no matter how dangerous those times were. And I jeopardized our future with that cheap trick of cheating. Why?

“For the money? Not really, more because I could. It was the fun of fooling them all and getting away with it. I thought the world was mine. I thought I could do whatever I wanted.

“I could have sold the mine for enough money to start a small business. I could have worked it myself to get enough to invest in something else. But no, I choose to go into business with that scum, Smithy. I believed him when he said we were going to be rich. What a joke.”

He managed a wobbly little smile. “Only it wasn’t so funny, was it?”

“Nate, honey, it’s not too late. Our lawyer settled with all the investors. They agree to drop their complaints. And you can get better and give the Heart of Persia back yourself. You know I don’t care about the money or the jewelry. I just want you.” She pleaded with him in a broken whisper. “Please, you have to get better. It can all be fixed.”

“No Florence. I’m sorry. It’s not going to happen. You can’t know how sorry I am to leave you, but I’m not going to survive this. And I don’t have time to fix it.”

Florence nodded. She knew he was telling her the truth, already his skin was taking on a slightly green tinge and she could see how much effort it was for him to talk to her.

“His name was Sean Rourke. He was from Chicago. I’m sure you can track him through the Army records. He’s going to be mad, but he won’t be mad at you.

“He said he got it from a Russian refugee he met in France. Rourke was shot down over France and somehow he made his way to the coast. Somewhere along the way he met up with this refugee and his daughter, who had been trapped in France when the Germans invaded. They were also trying to reach the coast, so he took them with him. The man was so grateful when they reached England he gave Rourke the jewel. The refugee told him it had been in his family for generations, but swore it was a small price to pay for his daughter’s safety. Rourke had been dumbfounded by the man’s insistence that he take it.”

Nate was quiet. The noise of the heart monitor seemed even louder in the silent room. “I guess the refugee understood the real value of the jewel.”

Florence put her face down on his hand resting on the bed and quietly wept. She wanted to scream and rail at all the tubes that were connected to him, keeping her from cradling him in her arms.

“Florence? Promise me you’ll return the jewel? It belongs to Rourke, he should have it.”

She nodded, not even attempting to lift her head. She didn’t bother to tell him she no longer had the Heart of Persia. It didn’t seem important just now.

“And Flo, love, take me back to Skagway. Bury me with my family, will you? That’s where I belong. My whole family was marked by tragedy. We need to be together again as a part of the Alaskan soil.

“You’re still young; you can have a good life, for both of us. I’ll be watching out for you. You know I love you more than I can ever tell you.”

He was so quiet that at first she thought he had died. But when she raised her head she could see he only slept. He didn’t die until later that night, but he didn’t speak again. There was nothing for Florence to do but hold his hand and pray. But God didn’t save Nate.

“Oh, there you are dear. I thought I’d find you around here.” Millie dropped into a chair sitting next to the cocktail table in the nearly empty lounge. “Have you seen Lucy or Ruth? I wondered if they were back yet.”

Claire shook her head, carefully inserting her bookmark in her book before slipping it into her tote bag. “I haven’t seen either of them, but I expect they’ll show up soon.

“How is Mrs. Bernbaum?” Claire inquired with concern.

“The poor dear. It’s not easy, you know. It doesn’t really matter that he died more than fifty years ago, a burial somehow brings it all up again. I took her to her cabin. She said she was going to take a little nap and frankly, I thought she looked like she could use one.

“She told me the story of when Nate died.” Millie proceeded to recount the story Mrs. Bernbaum had told her. “It’s so sad. She had already sold the
Heart of Persia,
along with everything else she owned, in order to obtain enough money to reimburse the investors. So, of course, she couldn’t give the jewel back. And then Nate died and she said she was in a fog of depression for months. She said she always intended to bury Nate’s ashes, but she could never bear to part with him.

“And after she married Bernie and several years later when he surprised her by repurchasing the jewelry she sold, she didn’t have the heart to tell him about the
Heart of Persia
. She just kept it and wore it. It made Bernie happy and so it made her happy.

“But she said she had promised Nate, and she always intended to keep those promises. Then one day she realized she still hadn’t followed through on either promise to Nate. And she thought she was too old then. She didn’t think she could make the trip to Skagway. That really depressed her. But then Richard arrived on her doorstep. He was full of optimism; he refused to believe ‘old’ was a good enough reason to give up. He encouraged her to make a list of things she still wanted to accomplish in her lifetime. He said he would help her fulfill her life quests. So while she was sad about leaving Nate in Skagway, she said she was relieved she finally delivered on her promise to him.”

“What about the
Heart of Persia
?” Claire asked. “She still wears it, so obviously she didn’t give it back.”

“You know, she didn’t mention it.” Millie thought a minute before saying, “I’m sure she is planning to do something about that, too. She seemed very determined to honor her promises to Nate. I felt so sorry for her. It was such a sad story and I could see how distressed she was even after all these years.

“Really Claire, I don’t care how valuable that jewel is. I think it’s really ugly. I just can’t understand why she would even want to wear it after all the grief it brought her.”

Claire nodded thoughtfully then changed the subject. “Well, I had an interesting discussion too, with Richard. Perhaps it wasn’t as interesting as yours with Mrs. Bernbaum, but it certainly gave me a different perspective. In fact, I think I may have misjudged the man.”