The Girl Who Wrote in Silk (11 page)

Thinking of what Tom told her, she clicked the link for the 1890 census, but the message that came up informed her that nearly all the records for that year had been destroyed in 1921 in a fire at the Commerce Department building in Washington, DC.

“Dang it.” She typed in the info to bring up the 1880 records, just in case, but the search results said no records were available for that year. “Hey, Tom?”

The squeaking sound of nails being pried out of wood paused. “Yeah?”

“Know anything about census records?”

“My wife researched her genealogy last year. Why?”

“Why would there be no records available for this place in 1880?”

Tom came down the stairs holding his baseball cap in one hand while wiping sweat off his forehead. “Depends. Could mean the census takers didn’t make it to the island, or no one was living on the property at that time. Washington was just a territory, you know, not a state.”

Inara considered. When Duncan Campbell purchased the property, it had a small house and an old cabin already on it. Someone had lived here before her family. But who? And when? “What about records on the property and buildings? Like when they were built or added onto and who previous owners were. Where would I find something like that?”

“Oh, that’s easy. Check the San Juan County website, though you might just want to call over there. Not everything is online yet.” He reached into his toolbox and came up with a water bottle. “Start by tracing the transfer of deed for the property to see who owned it.” He took a long drink from his water, and when he finished, he looked at her and smiled. “Need help?”

He sat next to her at the table and guided her through the county website. “Bingo,” he said, leaning back with a self-satisfied expression.

Inara looked back at the screen. There, listed with Rothesay’s address, was the name of an owner she’d never heard before. “Joseph McElroy? When did he own the property?”

Tom studied the information. “It looks like he bought the land in 1880 and moved into the house he built in 1887 with his wife, Mei Lien.”

Inara drew in a breath so fast she choked on her own saliva. When she could talk again, she asked, “Mei Lien? That’s a Chinese name, right?”

Tom gave her a funny look. “Probably.”

“And she was his wife?” Inara thought about that for a moment. Mei Lien had to be the person who’d hidden the embroidery, and probably even created it. She had to be. Who else, in the entire life of the house, could have been responsible? No one. She had been the only resident with any real connection to Chinese culture, which the embroiderer obviously had because of the symbols Daniel found. “What else can you find about her?”

Tom shrugged and got to his feet. “Heck if I know. Call my wife. She loves this kind of stuff.” He paused, still holding his water bottle. “On second thought, call my friend Kira over in the county clerk’s office. She helps me out all the time when I need something for my building sites.”

He took his ever-present notepad and carpenter’s pencil out of his pocket and jotted down the number, which he handed to her. “She’ll be able to give you all the construction history of the house, if you’re interested.”

Inara felt like hugging him, but she held back. “What about things like tax records, marriage records, births, deaths? That kind of stuff.”

He just nodded and started up the stairs to where he’d left off on the carpet. “Kira will know.”

Not wanting to waste a second, Inara took her phone into the sitting room and dialed Kira, who answered on the third ring. Inara explained why she was calling and the information she was trying to find. “Can you help me?”

“No problem,” the friendly voice on the line answered. “It’s slow here today anyway. Give me all the info you know, as well as your number and email address. I’ll call you if I find anything.”

After hanging up, Inara hugged her phone to her chest. This was becoming a lot of work to track down what might turn out to be nothing important. She knew she should be focusing her time on fixing up the hotel, not on chasing after clues to a hundred-year-old mystery.

But these had been real people. Real people who built her house and lived their lives in the same rooms where she lived today. And amazingly, the first woman to live in her house had been the Chinese wife of one of the first island settlers. And he was, presumably, white since his name seemed Scottish or Irish. Then again, the name might not mean a thing, and he could have been black or Asian or of some other descent. Still, the possibility that they’d had an interracial marriage back when those arrangements were frowned upon opened up all kinds of questions. She had to tell Daniel.

When he didn’t answer this time either, she left another message. “Daniel, it’s Inara Erickson again. I tracked down the name of a Chinese woman who lived in my house. It was Mei Lien. I don’t know her maiden name, but she was married to Joseph McElroy. Call me.”

She’d just hung up when someone knocked on her front door. Opening it, she found a man with a tool belt slung around his hips, squinting at her. “Can I help you?”

“Is, uh, Tom here? We have a problem with a delivery.”

She turned to call for Tom just as he appeared in the kitchen doorway. “What kind of problem?”

“Pink toilets.”

At first Inara had no idea what he was talking about. And then she remembered that the guest toilets, all sixteen of them, were scheduled to be delivered today. “What do you mean pink?”

“The toilets are pink,” the younger man explained as though she hadn’t heard him the first time.

Tom looked at her. “Is that what you wanted?”

“Of course not. They should be white.” Was this a sign that she needed to stay focused rather than worrying about a scrap from someone’s old robe?

Tom jerked his head toward the door. “Come on. I have a feeling I’m going to need you to sort this one out.”

When they stepped outside, Inara saw a huge delivery truck parked with the back of its trailer angled toward the manor’s front door and a metal ramp stretching from the trailer onto the porch. Sitting on the porch were four large, unopened boxes. In front of the wide entry doors sat a rose-pink toilet with the packing materials scattered around it.

“What’s going on, Josh?” Tom asked the man supervising the unloading.

“This guy”—Josh jerked his thumb toward the driver—“says his order calls for pink toilets, not white. He refuses to take them back unless his supervisor tells him to.”

Inara looked around. “Where’s his supervisor?”

The driver, a college kid wearing a ripped T-shirt and a blue Seahawks baseball cap, answered, “At the warehouse. In Renton.”

She pulled her phone from her pocket and handed it to him. “Call. I’ll talk to him.”

The kid did as she ordered and soon handed the phone back to her. “His name’s Carlos.”

Inara took the phone and held it to her ear, trying her best to keep her frustration out of her voice. “Hi, Carlos, this is Inara Erickson from Rothesay. I’m the person who ordered and paid for sixteen white toilets, not pink.”

“I apologize for the mix-up, Ms. Erickson. Let me pull up your order.” She could hear the sound of typing as she waited.

“Here it is,” Carlos finally said. “It looks like you did order sixteen of the white toilets on June 18, but it was changed first thing this morning to pink. You’re lucky you caught us before the truck was loaded at the warehouse.”

Inara looked at Tom. “Did you call the company this morning?” He shook his head.

“No one called to change the order, Carlos. Someone must have made a mistake.”

“No, ma’am, it’s not a mistake. It says here a Mr. Erickson called at eight changing the order to tulip pink.”

All of the commotion around her faded as his words sunk in. Mr. Erickson. She knew two Mr. Ericksons, and only one of them had the nerve to do this to her. “Regardless of what the order says,” she told Carlos, trying hard to keep anger out of her voice, “we will be returning this shipment to you and will expect the original order of sixteen white toilets delivered by next week. No, wait. By Monday. Understand?”

Tom stepped toward her upon hearing this. “That puts us behind schedule.”

She covered the mouthpiece of her phone. “Sorry. You got any ideas? We’re not installing pink toilets.”

He shook his head and turned back to the delivery driver.

“It will cost you,” Carlos said, bringing her attention back to the phone call.

“I realize that. I don’t have a choice.” After ending the call and confirming that everyone understood the toilets were returning to the supplier’s warehouse, Inara turned her back on the construction chaos and headed for the path through the woods that led past a crumbling old cabin to the beach. Despite the drizzle, she needed quiet with no interruptions for the phone call she planned to make next, and the beach was the perfect place for that.

Beaches like this one were scattered through the islands. Most of the islands’ edges were sharp rocks that jutted out of the dark water like walls. Where there were beaches, they were short, covered with driftwood and kelp, and often unreachable except from the water.

Her beach was long, curving almost the entire length of the little inlet they called Rothesay Bay, which nestled between two high bluffs on the east side of the sound. The beach itself was covered with black and gray stones and white shells and dotted here and there with sharper, larger black rocks. The bank behind the beach sloped gently into the shrubs and trees of the forest, the boundary marked by driftwood tossed ashore by storms. At high tide the beach was no more than ten feet deep, but at low tide it stretched a good thirty, revealing bigger, barnacle-crusted boulders.

Those same rocks were a hazard to private yachts—the largest vessels to venture up East Sound—but didn’t interfere with kayaks or small boats. Only a few feet farther out, the bottom dropped off steeply, leaving a deep-water inlet where even her father’s yacht could anchor. No boats were here now, though. The beach was secluded and peaceful, and the perfect place for being alone.

Even though the rain was more of a mist, she ducked under the branches of a tall fir that grew at the edge of the beach. She dropped her bag beside a dry boulder, then sat on it to make her call.

“Dad, it’s me,” she said the moment her father came on the line. “I know what you did with the toilets.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, surprising her.

“What do you mean, ‘you’re welcome’? You’ve cost me a week and a lot of money. They’re pink!”

His sigh echoed through the line. “Inara, pink is more historically accurate for when Rothesay was in its heyday. And they’re cheaper. I did you a favor.”

Inara shook her head in disgust even though her dad couldn’t see her. “I’m not going for historical accuracy, Dad. And you gave me control of the project, remember? That means you butt out.”

“My money is paying for it all.”

“Dad, I know, and I appreciate it. And I will pay you back.” She took a deep breath to calm down before she said something she’d regret. “I need to do this my way. Do you understand that? Can you trust me to do what’s right for this place?”

It took a moment but when he finally answered he sounded placating, and not at all convincing. “Sure, Nara-girl. I’ll butt out. Sorry about the toilets.” After a short pause, he surprised her by saying, “I’m glad you called. Good news. I forgot to tell you earlier that I ran into Aaron. You know, the HR manager at Starbucks. He agreed to hold your job open through September.”

Shock hit her like a physical blow. “My job? Starbucks? Dad, I turned it down. I meant it. You’re wasting their time if you told them to wait for me.”

“Inara, you’re making a mistake burning this bridge. Don’t walk away from this opportunity.”

She shook her head, even though he couldn’t see her, and tried not to let the hurt banging around in her chest consume her. “Dad, I’m sorry you don’t believe in me or my hotel, but it’s what I’m doing now. It makes me happy. I won’t be taking the Starbucks job. Ever.”

He made a noncommittal sound, then was silent for several moments. “Are you coming home this weekend?” he asked, changing the subject.

“What?” Was she missing something? “No. Dad, you know I’m busy with the hotel this summer. I can’t afford to take a day off.”

“You were here yesterday.”

“That’s because it was a federal holiday. My crews weren’t working.” Just then a beep sounded, telling her she had another incoming call. “I gotta go, Dad. I’ll call again soon.”

She said good-bye and then, relieved, clicked over. “Hello?”

“Inara, it’s Daniel.” The warmth of his voice soothed her, and she was able to draw a deep breath of the rain-cleansed forest air.

Then she remembered Mei Lien. Excitement flashed through her, propelling her to her feet. “You got my message? Can you believe I found her?”

His deep chuckle sent a surprising shiver of awareness along her limbs. “It was exactly the information we needed.”

She paced the beach along the water’s edge, mindless of the drizzle. “It is her, right? The woman who made the embroidery?”

“It’s got to be, especially with the information I dug up.”

She stopped walking to stare unseeing across the water. “What’d you find?”

“Because of the random stitch embroidery, I thought the sleeve was made sometime after 1920, but you’re saying Mei Lien lived in that house only until 1895 at the latest, right?”

“Right. When my great-great-great-grandfather bought the place.”

“Well, the Wing Luke has in its collection three embroidered Chinese purses confirmed as having been purchased from a store in Seattle’s original Chinatown sometime before the Great Fire of 1889.”

“Hold on, what’s the Wing Luke?”

“Officially it’s the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience. It’s a Smithsonian-affiliated museum in Seattle’s International District. I’m on the board of directors.”

“Okay. So what do three purses have to do with the sleeve?”

“The technique on the sleeve is so similar to the purses that I decided to compare them and asked Yong Su, an expert in the field of East Asian textile arts, to give me her opinion. She concurs. They were most likely created by the same hand.”