On the Rocks: A Willa Cather and Edith Lewis Mystery (14 page)

Jamie reached up to give the shirt a sharp tug. Anna lifted its sleeve out of his reach, barely breaking the stride of her words.

“Everything Little John wears winds up on the floor,” she glared at her husband then at Daggett. “He has a closet, but he makes no,” her “no” continued, growing louder, “no use of it, no use at all,” she gave the shirt another shake.

Little John looked again at Daggett.

“I don’t remember it ripping. The button. Well, I don’t know about that either,” Little John shook his head. “The pup,” he began. “The shirt was all right when I wore it.”

“And when was that?” Daggett reached for his notebook.

Little John took a moment to consider.

“Day before yesterday,” Anna remembered.

“That’s right, it was,” Little John agreed.

“Were you wearing it when you arrived at Whale Cove just after Eric Dawson brought the body in?”

“I don’t remember.”

“He never knows what he has on.”

“What do you remember?”

“Putting it on in the morning. It was new,” Little John’s hands ran down the front of his chest, “I liked the way it felt.”

Daggett jotted in the notebook, relieved that Little John was cooperating. The brief session in Daggett’s office, where Daggett had managed to curb his own temper long enough to ask Little John about buying the red shirt after Rebecca Jackson informed him about all the purchases, had taken some of the puff out of Little John’s sails. Now, Anna’s scolding and Little John’s apparent surprise had further subdued him. Daggett didn’t know how much of Anna’s tirade could be an effort to cover for Little John’s sins. He would think about that later. For now it was enough that Little John’s bluster had blown itself out, even if the lull was only temporary.

“I hauled nets and poles for Herb Gordon all day that day. Back and forth, back and forth, from The Whistle to Whale Cove. I suppose I got wet a couple of times. I don’t remember whether I changed clothes. Sometimes I do when I come home for a hot meal at noon.”

Little John’s eyes had grown serious. Daggett turned a page in his notebook.

“I don’t remember either,” Anna watched Daggett write.

A high yelp intervened. Everyone jumped. The yelp was followed immediately by the sounds of furious feet and several loud shouts. Then Jocko’s puppy burst into the room and careened full tilt around the outside pattern in the carpet, a blue-and-white shirt locked between his jaws, its sleeves streaming, buttons clattering. Then Jocko arrived with a roar, and together the boy and his pup raced out, leaving Jamie shrieking with delight.

T
EN
minutes later Daggett stuffed the two telegrams Captain Whitson handed him into his pocket and strode aboard the S. S. Grand Manan. The business with Little John had taken much too long. The telegrams would have to wait until he finished interviewing the crew and returned to his office where he could read them without interference.

“It’s a pity you didn’t arrive an hour sooner, Constable,” Captain Whitson admonished Daggett as they crossed the deck. “We’ve been here that long and more, and we’re due to cast off in fifteen minutes, you know.”

Daggett explained that the delay was both unexpected and unavoidable. He repeated the words several times and threw in “murder case, you know” before adding gratitude for the trouble the captain had taken to assemble his crew in the mess.

“Well,” Captain Whitson sat down at the head of the table, “ask away, but I don’t think you will find any of us much help.”

Except for three pieces of information, the captain was correct. The first was that the unknown man turned out to be Burt Isaacs on his way home from a lumbering job near Eastport. The second was that Rob Feeney, who had the complete lists of passengers and crew, had also been on board. And the third was that Mr. Brown was “a gen-u-wine odd duck,” as the first mate put it. Brown had stood off by himself on the other side of the wharf from where passengers usually waited, and he had let no one touch his luggage, not on the wharf and not on the ship.

“He managed it all himself, he did,” the first mate shifted a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other, “when most gentlemen don’t like to do that, you know.”

“B
UTTONS LOOSE ON
all the left sleeves,” read the note on Daggett’s desk. It was signed, “Respectfully, Edith Lewis and Rebecca Jackson.”

Daggett sighed and sat down heavily. For a moment he remained motionless, then he pulled the two telegrams Captain Whitson had given him from his pocket, slit open their yellow envelopes, and spread them both on the blotter before him. Marvin Gates, Boston’s Finest Tailor, had died January third. No shop records remained. Five John T. Browns lived in Boston, eight in New York. None with a record. All present and accounted for. All in Boston. All in New York. Now, just how helpful was that, Daggett inquired of the large face staring back at him from the clock on his wall. Had he any more particulars, New York wanted to know. How would you like a red shirt, he said to the clock. Its black hands clicked forward.

Worst of all, Burt Isaacs, the unknown third passenger, probably wouldn’t be of any help either. Difficult as he could be at times, Rob Feeney was a better bet. Observant, intelligent, and generally friendly. How much he could help would depend on how busy he had been during the passage over. Isaacs, on the other hand, was a son of a gun. Surly, self-absorbed. A loner just right for the Maine woods. If lumbering was what he was doing there.

So many fellows ran liquor to the States these days, it was sometimes hard to tell who was doing what, both in the woods and on the water. But Canadians didn’t usually get involved below the border. Didn’t have to take that chance. Depending on the province, of course. Daggett eased his back deeper into the chair and reached for his pipe. He hadn’t thought much about it because New Brunswick was open to liquor again after a brief flirtation with prohibition.

Once his pipe was lit, Daggett placed his feet on the desk and crossed his ankles. The toe of his right boot was showing some wear. He would have to take time to polish them one of these days. Here it was mid afternoon and he had not even had his noon meal. Well, he would finish his pipe first. Elizabeth fussed about bits of tobacco and the smell on his clothes, but a pipe came in handy at times like this.

Daggett had no desire to give up tobacco, any more than Canadians in general were prepared to give up alcohol. Or the brewing of it, despite demands from the United States government. The war had been more effective with prohibition in Canada than threats or moral suasion. Daggett watched a smoke ring rise until it became too relaxed to hold its shape and rocked back and forth, its oval becoming increasingly lazy. Finally, it dissipated altogether. Canada had used its valuable grains during the war to produce bread, not liquor. But the war was over, well over now, and Canadians had given up their emergency measures. The United States, too, but at the same time Americans had also tightened their grip on prohibition. To no avail. People still drank, Daggett blew another smoke ring. But now they got arrested. And some of them got shot. The smoke ring took its lazy course upward. Shot by law enforcement agents. Daggett blew a stream through the puff’s widening hole. Law enforcement agents who were too often overly zealous.

But Americans these days were making angry noises about law and law enforcement, so much so that no one was doing any real police work. No one had time. Daggett had been aware of the fierce growling and snarling when prohibition first began in the United States almost ten years earlier with the passage of the Volstead Act. He had never been happier to be posted in this quiet, out-of-the-way island. Just as he expected, things got noisier and messier on both sides of the border, until finally the United States Treasury boys joined the fray. Now it was an all-out fight, with the big Treasury tom cats strutting and yowling right in broad daylight, their volume turned high. Daggett wouldn’t be surprised to learn that no one in Boston or New York had made an honest effort to find out about Mr. John T. Brown. Those fellows were too busy doing their own pissing and preening.

All anyone on both sides of the border had heard about for the last month or more was how United States federal agents had taken to shooting innocent victims. They were out of control, cried reporters, as violent as the criminals they sought. Canadian newspapers were full of the stories and, Daggett was willing to bet, newspapers in Boston and New York were too. One man out for a Sunday drive with his family in Minnesota took twenty-six slugs from a border patrolman’s shotgun. What a customs officer was doing with a riot gun in the countryside defied Daggett’s understanding. And then federal agents had opened fire on a motorboat full of people near Detroit. Guilty or not, armed or not, that seemed like a lot of cowboy gunslinging to Daggett.

He had never been able to grasp the American penchant for violence or how Americans chose their heroes. It apparently mattered not at all on what side of the law a man stood as long as his aim was quick and deadly. He could even be on both sides of the law. Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickock, Daggett had heard plenty about both of them. And now gangsters like Capone, free to come and go as they pleased. And famous. They got writeups in American newspapers as if they were aviators or kings.

Daggett shook his head. Odd set of values those Americans had. But that’s what sold newspapers, he supposed, and paid the salaries of Treasury agents. Well, Daggett would like to know what those agents would do with Mr. Brown, a man from nowhere and a murder that, except for a single witness, looked like an accident. A murder where the one lead he had, the red shirt with its lost button, was unraveling in his hands.

“B
ASIL
, borage, calendula, chives, fennel, marjoram, parsley.”

“Parsley, yes, lots of parsley.”

“Sage, savory, tarragon, thyme,” Edith checked off herbs on the sheet Sabra Jane had given her.

“And coriander,” Willa prompted again from behind Edith’s shoulder. “Be sure to add coriander. And rosemary. And what about rue?”

“Do you think all of these herbs will grow here behind the cottage? This spot may not get enough sun,” Edith turned to Sabra Jane, brilliant today in various shades of green and blue.

“We’ll just have to see. It’s a little late in the season for some things, but I can bring sets or cuttings of just about everything on the list. Those needing sun, we’ll plant toward the top.”

“And horehound? We could grow horehound? What about peppermint? You forgot peppermint,” Willa, still reading over Edith’s shoulder, reached for the list.

“I’ll bring something of everything,” Sabra Jane laughed, “How about that for a plan?”

“Exactly right,” Willa handed the list to Sabra Jane and pulled on her gloves.

Sabra Jane had arrived bearing vinca and several varieties of sedum, along with a small American flag to celebrate the Fourth of July. There were enough rocks to occupy the three of them for the rest of the afternoon with the promise of more the next day. Young James was due back on Sam Jackson’s boat sometime that evening, and Sabra Jane had extracted Roy Sharkey’s word that once James was back, they would deliver another wagon load as soon as possible.

“You seem none the worse for village gossip,” Edith opened the conversation she had been waiting to have.

“Old biddies. Little John and Eva. The both of them,” Sabra Jane plunged her trowel in the earth. “I don’t like gossip,” the trowel scraped against rock, “and I don’t like gossipers.”

Rock Wall with Herbs

“Invasion of privacy,” Willa pulled at a root.

“I’ll bet you have trouble with that,” Sabra Jane rocked back on her heels. “Not just autograph seekers, but people who feel free to make you into whomever they please.”

“We guard against that as well as we can,” Edith handed her several sprigs of sedum with well-developed rootstock.

“Next thing you know you’ll be pilloried and they’ll be piling firewood around a stake erected just for you,” Willa reached for more vinca.

“I hate it most when women spread rumors,” Sabra Jane’s hands held still. “The violation seems deeper somehow.”