Ghost Ship: A Port Chatham Mystery (17 page)

Deadly Force

Cosmopolitan Hotel
July 13, 1893

M
ICHAEL
was still drinking his last cup of coffee, newspaper in hand, when he heard footsteps approach in the hall outside his suite. A fist pounded on the door of the sitting room where he took his breakfast each morning, a jarring intrusion in the peace and quiet of his routine. He frowned; his men knew better than to interrupt him at this hour.

Ever since he’d pulled himself out of the gutters of New York City, he’d made a point of taking time each day to appreciate the luxuries he was now able to afford. As part of the renovation he’d undertaken after purchasing the Cosmopolitan, he’d converted his sitting room into the style of the Turkish smoking room. Rich, golden, inlaid mahogany panels lined the walls, topped by warm white friezes sculpted in a Middle Eastern motif. Heavy maroon brocade curtains hung from the tall windows, gathered with twisted cords at frequent intervals and puddling on the hardwood floor, framed lace sheers hand-sewn in intricate patterns. Eastern rugs in swirls of dark colors graced the floor. When he relaxed in this room, he was able to temporarily push away the harsher realities of his workdays, and sometimes even the lingering grief.

The knock came again, this time more insistent. He folded the paper and laid it beside the remains of his breakfast, impatiently commanding, “Enter.”

Sam Garrett opened the door, dressed in soiled work clothes and boots, a heavy canvas sailor’s sea bag slung over his shoulder. He waited, his expression sardonic, for Remy to let him pass on Michael’s nod, then walked over and dumped the sea bag on the dining table, causing the fine china dishes to clatter. He tossed the key to the bag’s brass bar lock to Michael.

“Delivered as promised.” His tone was insolent. Without waiting for an invitation, he took a seat across the table, his soiled clothes probably leaving stains on the fine silk fabric.

After calmly pressing a napkin to his lips, Michael stood and fitted the key into the padlock, then removed the bar, opening the bag to peer inside. Watertight tins filled the sea bag to overflowing. He broke the wax seal on one to open it and examine the individual balls of brown-colored opium within.

“I trust that you made certain the quality meets my usual high standards,” he said.

“Of course,” Garrett scoffed. “I can lay my hands on as much as you can sell to your wealthy clients.”

Satisfied, Michael closed the bag and motioned to Remy. “The usual amount to Jesse Canby,” he told his bodyguard. “And prepare the rest of the deliveries, making certain you exercise the appropriate amount of caution, arriving at the servants’ entrances.”

“Sure, Boss.”

Michael returned to his seat, unhurriedly taking a sip of coffee. “I assume you weren’t foolish enough to rely on smuggling Chinese immigrants to fund this purchase,” he said to Garrett.

“What do you care?” Garrett challenged. “You got your shipment. It should be of no concern to you how I acquired it.”

“On the contrary,” Michael replied, keeping his tone mild. “The authorities are quite vigilant with respect to human trafficking.”

Garrett shrugged. “You worry too much, old man. I can easily elude the Customs agents. I was able to do so the other night, and will continue to do so in the future.”

Michael had to work to unclench his jaw. He found Garrett overly confident; such smugness in a business associate was a harbinger of unacceptably reckless behavior. “When Inspector Yardley sees fit to question me about the drowning of several Chinese, whose bodies were found just off North Beach, your activities are of the greatest concern to me. I’m not interested in attracting that kind of scrutiny. I fear you have knowledge of this incident?”

Garrett shrugged. “Yardley and his men came a little too close the other night—I did what I had to do. The Chinese were a liability.”

Michael stiffened. “Good Christ, man! Have you lost your senses? You’ve just admitted to murder.”

“Bull. I dumped them off the boat within sight of the beach. It’s not my fault that some of ’em didn’t know how to swim.”

“So you tossed the Chinese overboard, then stashed the opium on the beach, which resulted in its theft? Then you attempted to hang Lok. I can hardly comprehend the stupidity of your actions.”

Garrett’s eyes went flat. “Lok was on the beach. He either stole the drugs or saw who did. I was within my rights to question him.”

“By doing so, you’ve brought the authorities down on your head. Lok took his story to the police, implicating both of us. Yardley has already questioned me about the incident. I can’t rely on a business partner who is constantly in danger of being arrested for his ill-conceived actions.”

Garrett reached across the table to pick up a half-eaten piece of toast from Michael’s breakfast plate, biting into it. “You whine like a little boy, Seavey.”

From the corner of his eye, Michael saw Remy start forward. He gave him a slight hand signal to remain where he was for now. “No doubt Lok was on the beach because he was trying to help his countrymen come ashore. And he would have been a fool to admit as much to the authorities. But he could achieve a similar end by claiming that you attempted to kill him, could he not? The greater the scrutiny by Yardley, the greater the chance that we will be put out of business.”

Garrett swallowed the rest of the toast, then said, “Yardley is harmless. He can be controlled. After all, he doesn’t want his own secrets to come out.”

“Think, man! Do you really believe the operation Yardley has going, selling small amounts of confiscated contraband on the side, is valuable enough to bribe him to keep his mouth shut about
murder
?”

“Of course not,” Garrett retorted. “But he’s expanded far beyond the simple failure to report a few pounds of opium to the evidence locker. My sources in Victoria say Yardley’s been setting up his own suppliers, making plans to go into business for himself. With his fleet of revenue cutters, and with no one monitoring his agents’ trips in and out of Canada, he’s in the perfect position to import large quantities of opium without being detected.”

Michael leaned back in his chair, surprised. His men had heard nothing of these rumors. Yet if Garrett was correct, this was bad news indeed. Yardley stood to become a major competitor in the opium trade, driving the price so low that the risk to import the stuff would no longer be worth the rewards gained.

Even Michael had to admit, Yardley had put together a deucedly clever scheme. The Customs inspector had the authority to stop any vessel and confiscate whatever contraband he found. While at the same time, his revenue agents could move their own shipments without fear of detection.

“I see you have fully comprehended the situation.” Garrett looked satisfied with Michael’s reaction. “I now suspect Yardley is behind the theft of the shipment two nights ago. The man needs to be stopped before he puts us all out of business.”

“No,” Michael said abruptly. “This situation calls for finesse. And I refuse to be a party to any violence perpetrated against an officer of the law. I have no wish to hang for a capital offense.” Garrett didn’t reply, merely watching him with a slight smile, which Michael ignored. “I will have a quiet word with Mayor Payton, suggesting that he might wish to investigate possible corruption in the Customs Service.”

He took a moment to drink more coffee before changing the subject. “I understand you’ve been spending a goodly amount of time lately at the Green Light.”

Garrett gave Michael a wolfish grin. “Now why would that news be of interest to you, Seavey?”

“Any activity you engage in that draws attention concerns me.”

“A man’s got to relax from long, stressful days out on the water. The Green Light provides an excellent service for the price.”

“I have no quarrel with that,” Seavey replied. “However, you’d do well to spread your largesse among a number of the soiled doves, rather than concentrate on just one. An established pattern raises attention and leaves you open to being blackmailed, should you find yourself with a loose tongue one evening, admitting more than is wise.”

Garrett crossed his arms. “The soiled dove I’m most fond of, however, exhibits such a fresh innocence that I find it quite satisfying to teach her the harsher realities she can expect to encounter in her profession. And she seems to have very little tolerance for pain, which I might find most useful in the future.” His eyes gleamed. “I understand you might even know of the chit, Seavey. She goes by the name of Charlotte.”

“I know of her,” Michael admitted softly. “Nevertheless, do not be so foolish as to think you could use her to gain any leverage with me. I’ve never lifted a hand to help a soiled dove, and I never will.”

Chapter 11

J
ORDAN
came out of a deep sleep only hours later to the feeling of cold liquid running down her cheeks and onto the pillow. She heard loud hissing overlaid by Malachi’s anxious whine. Something rolled off the bed, thunking onto the area rug on the floor.

Someone had thrown her leftover tea in her face.

She reared up, swiping at the liquid. “What the—”

“Sshhhhh!” Someone whispered next to her ear.

Heart pounding, she leapt from bed and ran for the door. Malachi did his best to tangle his paws with her feet.

“Be quiet!” Hattie said, next to her. “He’ll hear you!”

Something zipped over Jordan’s head, and she heard Charlotte screech, “Call the fuzz, call the fuzz!”

Jordan skidded to a halt, grabbing Malachi’s collar and shushing him. “Who’s ‘he’?” she whispered blindly, shaking.

“Someone is in the library,” Hattie said quietly. “Frank wanted to get rid of him, but I said we should wake you first.”

“Nice outfit,” Frank remarked, his tone sardonic.

Jordan whispered to Malachi to
stay
, then snatched up her sweats to pull on over her tank top and underwear. She tiptoed over to the bedroom door, then stuck her head into the hall, listening.

After a moment, she heard it—screeching on wood, as if someone was opening drawers in the library desk. There was a distinct thump, then low swearing. Whoever it was, he had probably walked into the wing-back chair.

She eased back into the bedroom, moving away from the door.

“Do something,” Frank demanded. “Now is not the time to be cowardly.”

“Now isn’t the time to foolishly confront an intruder who might be armed, either,” she retorted, sotto voce. Charlotte was still flying about the room, screeching. “Get control of Charlotte before she knocks something over,” she told Hattie.

“I
heard
that,” Charlotte hissed. “The prior owner left a baseball bat in my room. Go get it and hit the thief over the head.”

“I am in agreement,” Frank said. “If you wait for the police to arrive, it will most certainly be too late.”

“I was dropped from the softball team in college because of my low batting average,” Jordan retorted. “I’m sticking with calling the fuzz.”

Moving silently to her nightstand, she picked up her cellphone and hit speed dial. When Darcy answered, she whispered, “There’s someone in the house.”

“Where?” Darcy said, sounding instantly more alert.

“In the library, I think.”

“I’m on my way,” she said, making rustling sounds in the background. “Jordan, do
not
go down there. Lock your bedroom door and wedge a chair under the doorknob, then get inside your closet and lock it. Wait there until I come get you.”

“But what about the ghosts? I can’t leave them to the mercy of whoever’s down there.”

“Yes, you can. They’re already dead—they can fend for themselves. Put Malachi in the closet with you, and don’t let him bark.” Jordan heard her car door slam. “Don’t hang up. I’m there in three minutes.”

Jordan crept over to the door to close it, heard shuffling, then heard the front door crash against something. “Is that you?” she breathed into the phone.

“No, I’m still a block away. Christ! You’re giving me a heart attack. Close the damn door and get in the closet!”

“He left,” Frank reported, floating back into the room.

Hattie zipped out into the hall, hovering for a second. “Yes, he’s gone,” she confirmed.

“Darcy, the ghosts say he’s left,” Jordan relayed in a normal tone. “Dammit!” She flipped on the hall light and stomped down the stairs, Malachi and the ghosts trailing behind her. “If he stole something valuable, it’s really going to piss me off.”

“
Don’t
go downstairs until I get there,” Darcy ordered. “I’m turning the corner.”

“Too late,” Jordan said. She walked through the front door, which had been left standing wide open, just as Darcy pulled up to the curb. She met Darcy on the porch.

“I goddamn
hate
civilians—you don’t take orders worth shit.” Darcy moved past her, gun drawn. “Stay out here while I check things out,” she ordered.

After a moment, she reappeared, holstering her gun. “The house is clear.”

“We already said that,” Charlotte pointed out, flying around Darcy’s head. “And you
told
her we said that. Doesn’t she listen?”

“Not real well,” Jordan replied.

“What?” Darcy asked, frowning.

“Never mind.”

“Since you willfully disobeyed my orders, did you at least catch a glimpse of the perp?”

“No.” Jordan went back inside, flipping light switches. She walked into the library, her jaw dropping. Books had been thrown about, lamps and chairs upended. Pictures pulled off the walls and dumped on the floor, their frames broken. Again.

She scrubbed her face and sighed. “I had just realphabetized those books.”

Malachi circled the room sniffing suspiciously and growling low in his throat, then sank down on the Aubusson rug, his expression watchful.

They heard footsteps on the front porch and Darcy whirled around, her gun raised. Jase came through the door, halting when he saw her weapon. His hair was mussed and his shirt unbuttoned, as if he’d hurriedly pulled his clothes on. “What’s going on? Is everyone okay?”

Darcy shook her head and holstered her gun. “Join the party.”

“We had an intruder, but he’s gone,” Jordan told him.

Jase looked around with a grim expression while Darcy carefully studied the room. “Anything missing?” she asked Jordan.

“I don’t think so.” Jordan walked over to set the wing-back chair upright. Again. “You know, this day
seriously
needs to be rewound. Two assaults and a burglary within twelve hours. That’s got to be some kind of Guinness world record.”

“
Two
assaults?” Jase queried. “I only know about one.”

“Long story,” Jordan muttered.

“Where’s that wall safe you were talking about earlier?” Darcy asked her. “Obviously, someone overheard our conversation in the pub.”

“What wall safe?” Jase asked.

“I’ll explain later,” Jordan told him. “Behind that bookcase. Since the bookcase is intact, they didn’t find the safe. Right, Hattie?”

“Yes, of course.”

“The ghosts are here with us?” Darcy asked.

“Sure. Where else would they be?”

“Indeed,” Frank retorted. “She can hardly expect us to vanish, given the events of the evening. It’s not as if we bother the humans who can’t detect us.”

“So what are they saying?” Darcy glanced around the room, as if she might catch a glimpse of something.

“That the safe is fine,” Jordan lied.

Keeping a wary eye on Jase and Darcy, Frank went over to inspect the bookcase more closely. “No sign of damage,” he reported.

“This may be about the papers Walters thinks Jordan stole,” Jase said. “The obvious next step was to break in here and see if you were lying about having taken them.”

“Maybe.” Darcy looked skeptical. “But the most likely scenario is that someone was after the money in the safe, heard you moving about upstairs, Jordan, and decided to hightail it before I arrived.”

“ ‘Hightail it?’ ” Hattie repeated. “What does that mean?”

Frank snorted. “If you and your friends would confine your vocabulary to what can be found in the
Oxford English Dictionary
, we wouldn’t continually be in need of elucidation.”

Jordan sighed. “I’ll explain later.”

“I don’t need you to explain a thing to me,” Darcy told Jordan, exasperated.

“That’s not—”

“The money is the strongest motive for whatever happened here,” Darcy continued. “And it’s not like people don’t know you and I are friends, or that I live a few blocks from here. Any planned theft would be risky, in terms of my response time if you called me. If I were the burglar, I’d be nervous as hell that you’d wake up while I was here. Therefore, why take the risk for a few old papers?”

“
What money?
” Jase asked in a cranky tone.

Jordan rubbed the bridge of her nose. She needed 180 proof alcohol. In large quantities.

Darcy walked past her into the hall to examine the front door. She straightened, nodding. “Just as I suspected—the door’s been jimmied. You’ll need to get someone out to repair it.” She cocked her head at Jordan. “Why is your hair all wet?”

“Er …” Jordan said.

“Tell them we woke you up!” Charlotte urged. “We
saved
you!”

“Did you see who it was?” Jordan asked Charlotte.

“It was too dark,” Hattie pointed out.

“Do you mean to tell me you can’t see in the
dark
?” Jordan asked.

“Of course not. Why would you think we could?”

“Oh, maybe because you’re ghosts?” Jordan replied sarcastically, and Darcy snickered behind her. From the corner of her eye, she saw Jase crack a smile for the first time since he’d arrived.

“As ghosts, we aren’t all-powerful,” Frank retorted. “Mostly, we have the same powers of deduction and senses that a human has, plus a few extras.”

“Oh, well,
that
explains it.”

“At least you’re sarcastic with everyone,” Darcy said. “I’d hate to think you reserve it just for us.”

Jordan ignored that. “So what
did
you see?” she asked the ghosts.

“He had some small kind of light he was holding, like a directed candle, but the flame didn’t flicker,” Frank said.

“A flashlight,” Jordan explained. “Probably a small penlight.” At Frank’s perplexed look, she added, “Too complicated.”

He shrugged, accepting her answer. “I caught a glimpse of a mask, as well. Not just over the eyes and nose—bigger, as if he’d pulled it over his head.”

“Like a ski mask,” Jordan concluded.

“I have no idea what that is,” Frank replied.

“His clothing was dark, and he wore a hood over his head,” Charlotte contributed.

“Sounds like the same person who attacked me at Holt’s house,” Jordan deduced as she propped a fallen portrait against a bookcase, then set a toppled plant upright. Again.

“Wait, don’t tell me: dark hoodie and jeans, right?” Darcy asked.

“Close enough,” Jordan replied, inspecting the plant more closely. The poor thing—it had almost no soil left in the pot.

“You were also attacked at Holt’s house?” Jase asked grimly.

“I’ll explain—”

“—later,” Jase finished for her. “Got it.” He shook his head and started picking up books, replacing them on their shelves.

“Aren’t you going to dust for prints or something?” she asked Darcy.

“I’ll send someone around to dust the door and the desk in the morning,” Darcy replied. “But it’s not like you want fingerprint powder all over those rare books. And it would take forever to try to locate a fingerprint on them.”

“So that’s it?” Jordan asked.

“Yeah.” Darcy yawned. “I’m going back to bed. Your intruder is gone, whoever he was. I doubt he’ll be back tonight, but you seem to have a good warning system in place. If anything happens, call me.”

Jordan followed her outside. “Well, thanks for coming over.”

“That’s the job.” She nodded her head toward the house. “Get some sleep, and we’ll talk again in the morning. If I were you, I’d make it a top priority to see if that cash is still around, and if it is, get it into a safe-deposit box at the bank. We can let the story float around town that you’ve found it and removed it from the house. That should discourage any more nighttime visitors.”

“
If
that’s what he was after,” Jordan said.

“It’s a safe bet. Those papers Clive Walters claims were stolen are worth only a fraction of the forty thousand Hattie says is in that wall safe.”

“Yeah, but Charlotte and Frank described the intruder as looking like the person I saw at Holt’s this afternoon.”

“Yesterday afternoon,” Darcy corrected mildly. “It’s way past midnight.” She stretched, then stood for a moment, checking out the neighborhood. “Seems quiet enough. I’m out of here.”

Jordan watched her drive away, then came back inside. Jase, who had followed them out and listened quietly to their exchange, stayed where he was. “I’ll bunk down here tonight. Just in case.”

“Bunk down on what?” she asked, grabbing the first excuse that came to mind. She wasn’t sure she was ready to deal with a sleepover. “My furniture is piled in the second-floor parlor. There’s only the wing-back chair in the library, or the desk chair, and you can’t sleep sitting up all night. Besides, the ghosts will alert me if anyone tries to break in again.”

“Yes, you can count on us to remain vigilant,” Hattie assured her.

“
Hattie!
” Charlotte hissed. “If he stays here, they might end up making passionate love! We should leave, so that he feels compelled to protect her!”

“Whoa,” Jordan protested. “I don’t need ghosts playing ma—” She glanced at Jase, who had his arms folded across his chest and one eyebrow raised, listening with amusement to her side of the conversation. Swallowing the word “matchmaker,” she sent Charlotte a scorching glance.

“I’ll be fine,” she told Jase.

He studied her for a moment in silence, then gripped her shoulders with warm hands and leaned in to place a light kiss on her forehead. She felt tingles all the way down to her toes. In the background, Frank snorted.

“I’ll get out of your hair, then,” Jase told her. “Pleasant dreams.” Jogging down the front steps, he disappeared into the night.

“Huh.” Jordan stared after him. “He didn’t even put up a fight.”

“You know
nothing
about attracting men.” Charlotte hovered in the entry. “If you had acted as if you were indisposed with a fit of the vapors, he would have remained by your side throughout the night.”

“Indeed,” Hattie agreed, “he seemed to be looking for any excuse to do so.”

“This is a conversation I wish to avoid,” Frank said.

Jordan shook her head. Then she shooed all of them back inside, closing the door. “Go back to your portals, or wherever you go at night to sleep.”