Ghost Ship

by P. J. Alderman

  Jordan shook her head, then instantly regretted it. “He shoved me backward down the steps, then drove away in the car.” She frowned. “I must have hit my head when I fell.”

  “What did the car look like?”

  “Dark. A sedan. I don’t know what kind.”

  “Color? License plate number?” When she drew a blank, Darcy looked disgusted. “You mean you can’t tell me anything about it, other than it was dark?”

  “Well it’s not like I drove up thinking, ‘Hey, that looks like a villain’s car, so I’m going to write down the license number and commit its description to memory,’ ” she grumbled. “It was either blue or black, maybe midsized, and it might have had four doors.”

  Taking a careful step into the grass, she tried to bend over to pick up some of Seavey’s papers that had landed there, but her head wasn’t having any of it. She must have hit it fairly hard.

  Darcy made a rude noise and started picking up papers and handing them to her. “Unbelievable. Holt Stilwell was just murdered, and you thought it was safe to come waltzing out to his house all by yourself?”

  “I do not waltz. I told you, I figured his relatives might be here.” Jordan flipped pages this way and that, trying to arrange them into some semblance of order. “You know, packing up his stuff, figuring out what he had that would be part of his estate. I didn’t feel right hanging onto family papers, and I had no idea there weren’t any other Stilwells around. How could I?”

  “You still should have thought before coming out here alone,” Darcy retorted, holding out more crumpled pages. “What if the person you ran into was the murderer?”

  “It’s the middle of the day. And Holt was murdered miles from here,” Jordan reasoned.

  “You don’t know that for certain.”

  “Besides, what kind of murderer—or burglar—breaks into a house in broad daylight, leaving his car parked in plain sight in the driveway?”

  “Hmmph.”

  “Honestly, it never occurred to me that I would be in danger. I planned to drop off the papers, then head home. If someone had answered the door when I knocked, I wouldn’t have even tried to go inside.”

  “So you can’t describe the car or your assailant. What about general height and build? Clothing? Even a fleeting impression?”

  “If I go by how strong he was, since he pushed me hard enough to make me fly backward, whoever it was participates regularly in pro wrestling.”

  “Right.” Darcy said it sourly.

  Jordan stopped straightening pages and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to conjure up an image of who she’d seen. “A few inches taller than me, so maybe just under six feet? He was moving fast, and I didn’t have any contact with his body, just his hands, which seemed big but not overly so.”

  “He pushed you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We’ll get one of the techs to use UV light on you to see if they can raise the beginning of any bruises. You may have handprints on you.”

  “That sounds slightly kinky.”

  Darcy rolled her eyes. “Okay, what else? Clothes? Hair? Coloring?”

  “Jeans and a hoodie—black, I think. I couldn’t see either hair or coloring, though I remember a pale glimpse of his face.”

  “So we’ve got an assailant of unknown build and weight, average height, unknown coloring, and wearing a hoodie and jeans. Just great.” Darcy shook her head. “Real helpful.”

  Jordan had a thought. “Check Malachi—I heard him barking right after I fell; he might have gotten in a bite. And if he did, there might be bits of fabric, or even DNA, caught between his teeth, right?”

  Darcy yelled for a technician. It took him several minutes to convince Malachi to let a stranger look inside his mouth. Nothing.

  Jordan fed him a treat for the indignity he had to suffer, then cocked her head in the direction of the house. She could see the other crime-scene techs inside, processing the living room. “So do you think my attacker was burglarizing the place?”

  Darcy shrugged. “I don’t know if we’ll be able to tell. It was always a filthy mess; now, it’s just messier.”

  “Actually, I was here fairly recently—I might remember a few items.”

  “Are your prints in the system? Did Drake ever fingerprint you during the investigation down in California?” Darcy asked, referring to the LAPD detective who’d been convinced Jordan was guilty of her husband’s murder.

  “No, why?”

  “Because if I let you inside, I’ll need to take your prints for elimination purposes. I don’t necessarily have to put them in the system, but there’s always a chance they’d end up there. Are you okay with that?”

  Jordan shrugged. “Sure. I touched the handle and the front panel of the door, so you probably should take my prints anyway.”

  “Just be careful not to touch anything unnecessarily, okay?”

  Together, they climbed the front steps and walked into the living room. Furniture had been tossed, tables overturned. But a flat-panel television still hung on the wall over the fireplace, which was filled with empty beer cans and looked as if it hadn’t been used in decades.

  Jordan nodded in the direction of the television. “I’d say that’s a pretty good indication that the person’s motive wasn’t robbery. Aren’t those worth over a thousand?”

  “Yeah,” Darcy replied, studying the room. “Look around—was it this messy the last time you were here?”

  Jordan frowned. “No. There were a few pizza boxes piled up on the coffee table with some empty beer bottles, and of course there was dust everywhere, but this mess looks more … methodical. Like someone went through the room and flipped every cushion, moved every picture, opened every drawer. And it looks like he was in a real hurry, since nothing was properly replaced.”

  “Yeah, I agree.” Darcy was silent while she looked the room over a second time. “Or else, he didn’t care if he straightened up behind himself.”

  Jordan glanced around, hoping to spy the papers Holt had lifted from the hotel. She caught Darcy watching her with one eyebrow raised. Avoiding her gaze, Jordan headed for the bedroom and its adjacent bathroom.

  The bed was unmade, the sheets half pulled off. The closet doors stood ajar, hanging clothes shoved to one end of the rack. No papers on the nightstand, either.

  Toiletries sat haphazardly on the bathroom counter, along with substances Jordan didn’t want to examine too closely, and the medicine cabinet door hung open. The toilet seat was up and smelled of urine. Struck by a thought, she headed over to look inside the closet to confirm her suspicions. “It doesn’t look like a woman has been living here, right? No clothes in the closet except a man’s, no women’s shampoo, makeup, et cetera, in the bathroom.”

  “Maybe he always went to her house,” Darcy suggested. “Women typically like to spend the night at their place, not at a guy’s.”

  She was right. Jordan had gotten as far as thinking about the possibility of spending the night with Jase, but she’d always been stopped—at least, partially—by the lack of privacy at her home. And whenever she thought about going to his place instead, she hadn’t been ready to take a step that big. It seemed somehow like more of a commitment, and she was betting any woman who was picking up subliminally on Holt’s lack of respect would have instinctively felt the same way.

  “Well, whoever came through here, he was looking for something,” she concluded.

  “I wonder what?” Darcy mused, still studying the room.

  Jordan had an idea or two, but she figured it would be better to mention them after she’d poured a couple of glasses of wine down Darcy’s throat at the pub. “So if it wasn’t a burglar and it wasn’t an ex-girlfriend picking up her belongings, …”

  “It was probably the same person who murdered Holt,” Darcy confirmed bluntly, finishing Jordan’s thought.

  How pleasant—she’d probably just been assaulted by a killer. It was a good thing Malachi had been with her to scare him off. From now on, the dog c
ould have as much organic food as he wanted.

  * * *

  AFTER making a plan with Darcy to meet later at the pub, Jordan dropped by home to see if she could catch up with Charlotte. She needed to ask her some questions about her relationship with Jesse Canby. Now that Jordan had thought about it, she was fairly certain Charlotte had started to say something the night before about what Michael Seavey had been up to in 1893.

  Parking at the curb in front of Longren House, she let Malachi out of the back of the Prius and crossed the front lawn to climb the porch steps. Inside the door, a tall vase crammed with a jumble of long-stemmed, red roses sat on a small side table. Roses? She searched her brain. Jase, perhaps? It certainly didn’t seem like something he’d do out of the blue, but what girl didn’t go all instantly mushy at the sight of red roses? Feeling a thrill of pleasure at the unexpected gift, Jordan crossed the entry and leaned over to sniff them while she looked for the florist’s card. Petals dropped onto the table in a shower; evidently the flowers had been bruised during transport by a careless delivery person.

  “The roses are from Michael,” Hattie said from behind her. “Wasn’t it a nice gesture?”

  Jordan stopped hunting for the card, noting Hattie’s blush. Okay, so not from Jase, but from a ghost. That explained the slight damage and messy arrangement. She straightened some of the stems, allowing herself a moment to swallow her disappointment.

  “You don’t happen to know which florist he ripped off, do you?” she asked, trying not to sound cranky. “So that I can go by and pay them for the flowers?”

  “Ripped off?”

  Jordan rephrased. “Which florist he stole the roses from.”

  “It’s the thought that counts,” Hattie said loyally.

  “For the shop owner trying to run a profitable business, not so much.” Jordan paused, making a connection from her reading earlier. “Do you have a middle name?”

  “Why, yes,” Hattie replied, looking perplexed by the question. “Dale.”

  “Flowers!” Charlotte floated down the hallway from the kitchen. “Oh, Hattie!”

  Frank appeared in the library doorway. “The man has hidden motives.” His expression was grim.

  “Oh, I don’t think this one is very hidden,” Jordan replied before Hattie could protest.

  “Certainly not!” Charlotte agreed. “He really loves Hattie!”

  Frank folded his arms. “I have no doubt Seavey wants more from Hattie than her affections. He must suspect she still has assets he can get hold of, or that perhaps she can provide him a certain social legitimacy with others in our community.” He shrugged. “Sending flowers is a brazen attempt to manipulate her affections.”

  Wishing to avoid another ghostly squabble, Jordan headed down the hall to the kitchen. “You might want to rethink that strategy,” she hinted at him as she passed. “Women love flowers.”

  Frank merely snorted.

  She heard simultaneous gasps from behind her and turned back. Hattie and Charlotte were clutching each other, their mouths agape, their expressions full of fear. “What?” she asked them.

  “Your clothing is torn, and smeared with dirt and debris,” Hattie said faintly.

  “And your hair has blood in it!” Charlotte cried. She circled the stairwell twice at ceiling height, then vanished in a puff of particles.

  Hattie sighed. “She faints at the sight of gore.” Her expression remained troubled. “What happened to you?”

  “Nothing much.” Jordan continued down the hall to the kitchen, dropping into the chair at the table. After a minute or two, she’d get those aspirin tablets she badly needed, she promised herself. “Someone shoved me down some cement steps and I hit my head.”

  “What did you do to provoke him?” Frank leaned a shoulder against the kitchen door.

  Jordan narrowed her gaze. “Nothing. Someone was inside Holt Stilwell’s house when I arrived. Obviously, they didn’t want to be caught in there, or they wouldn’t have attacked me.” She reached up to touch the lump on the back of her head. It hadn’t gotten any smaller.

  “Hmm.” Frank’s expression remained skeptical.

  In her peripheral vision, the teakettle landed askew on a stove burner, which turned on by itself. A coffee mug fell from the cupboard above onto the counter beside the stove, herbs pouring into it. Within seconds—much faster than normal, which had Jordan wondering about the damage to her fuse box—the teakettle whistled, then floated over to the cup, pouring steaming water into it. The cup then landed in front of Jordan, almost tipping over. She leaned back warily as hot water splattered across the table.

  Charlotte’s image rematerialized beside her. “The tea will ease your headache,” she said, her eyes brimming with tears. “I can’t believe someone attacked you! How horrible. You must have been terrified!”

  Jordan was touched by her concern. “Not so much terrified as pissed off,” she admitted, then added in a soothing tone, “I’m fine, really, Charlotte. I wasn’t hurt.”

  “You could have been killed!”

  Frank rolled his eyes. Which didn’t come off quite like when a human did it—his eyes sort of rolled around in the sockets like marbles. It was not an attractive sight.

  Hattie wafted down into one of the chairs across from Jordan. “It’s all right, Charlotte. As you can see, she’s unharmed.”

  Jordan took a sip of the hot tea and hurriedly spit it back into the cup. “Gah! Unharmed until now! What the hell did you put in this?”

  “It’s willow bark tea, which will ease your aches and pains from the fall,” Charlotte replied. Her expression stern, she pointed at the cup. “Now don’t be such a child—drink every drop. It’s good for you.”

  Jordan stood and walked over to the sink, dumping out the tea despite Charlotte’s outraged shriek. Pulling an aspirin bottle out of the cupboard, she showed it to Charlotte. “This is the same thing—they now make it in tablets, so you can swallow them without having to actually taste it. Trust me, it’s a vast improvement.” She filled a glass with water and downed the tablets, then refilled the kettle to put it back on the burner and make herself a more palatable cup of Earl Grey.

  “I do appreciate that you tried to help,” she added gently, turning back to lean against the edge of the counter while the water heated. “Charlotte, you started to mention something about Michael Seavey last night, but I interrupted you. Did you know him back then?”

  Charlotte fidgeted, her hands gripping the skirts of her pale blue silk gown tightly enough to cause wrinkles. “The Green Light was right around the corner from his hotel. Therefore, I frequently ran into him. And some of my ‘clients’ would tell me about Michael, of course. He was quite famous along the waterfront.” She sent an apologetic glance to Hattie. “Michael was a good man in many ways. He always treated me kindly.”

  Hattie’s eyes grew round. “Do you mean to tell me that he … visited you at the Green Light?”

  “Oh, goodness no!” Charlotte assured her hastily. “I just meant that I would run into him from time to time out walking, and he always treated me with great respect.” Her expression darkened. “Unlike that business partner of his.”

  The teakettle shrieked, and Jordan removed it from the stove, rummaging for a tea bag. “Did Sam Garrett ever hurt you?” she asked Charlotte carefully.

  Charlotte’s face immediately closed up. “Not so much,” she replied vaguely, twisting a blond ringlet of hair with her fingers. “I just didn’t like having him as a customer.”

  “Did you know Michael Seavey was smuggling opium?” Jordan asked.

  Charlotte became agitated, circling the room, the swishing of her skirts audible. “I won’t talk ill of Michael!” she cried.

  She swooped down on the stack of papers Tom had left behind, scooting them across the table toward Jordan. “And what’s the meaning of this?” she asked angrily. “Surely you won’t let those people who have been hanging about make this many alterations to Longren House!”

  “I h
aven’t decided yet,” Jordan prevaricated, not objecting to the change of subject, “but I promise that when I do, I’ll consult with you and Hattie first.”

  Charlotte looked mollified.

  “Though we might want to revisit your attempts to doctor the home inspection report,” Jordan added mildly. “Did you really think to keep the full extent of the necessary repairs from me? How do you expect me to come up with the money for everything that needs to be done to preserve your home?”

  “You could go back to work,” Charlotte replied. “Many respectable women of our time, such as Eleanor Canby’s niece Celeste, were in the trades.” Charlotte’s expression turned dreamy. “Celeste ran the most wonderful millinery shop …”

  “I doubt Jordan would make very much money, since she doesn’t seem to be very good at her prior trade and has few skills,” Frank pointed out. While they’d been talking, he’d come into the room to study Tom’s list. “And repairs such as these will be quite expensive.”

  “I made very good money in L.A., I’ll have you know,” Jordan retorted. “I helped numerous people improve their lives.”

  “You could use the money in the wall safe to pay for the repairs,” Hattie suggested.

  Jordan’s head swiveled around. “What? What money?”

  “Ah.” Frank looked smug. “So that’s what Seavey is after. I thought as much.”

  “Nonsense,” Hattie protested. “Michael had no way of knowing about it.”

  “You don’t know that for certain,” Frank replied. “And if Seavey had any inkling that it was there, I’d wager he’s been trying to get hold of it ever since.”

  “What are you talking about?” Jordan was bewildered. “What wall safe? I haven’t found anything of the sort in this house.”

  “That’s because it’s been concealed behind a bookcase since I came back as a ghost,” Hattie replied. “I didn’t want any of those questionable owners in past decades to get hold of the money. They would have used it to tear down walls and build on rooms of dubious architectural integrity. Why, they would have used it to destroy Longren House!”