“What's this painkiller made of again?” she asked.
“Pineapple, orange, coconut and rum. Pusser's Rum. Don't ask me for the exact recipe because it's a family secret.”
Suddenly, Rod's eyes turned serious. “What's up, I wonder?”
She looked at what caught his attention. Spence was on the dock, standing erect beside two men in Coast Guard uniforms and a man who was dressed like a policeman.
A flock of gulls flew overhead sounding like crumpling paper. She said, “I hope nothing happened to our Minke.”
“I'd have gotten a call on the radio.”
Rod's tension crept into her as he silently piloted the boat to the dock. He threw the line to Spence. A Coastguardsman's grabbed another.
Rod hopped ashore and held a hand out for her.
Spence stared at her, his mouth open.
Once she was on the dock, Rod turned to Spence. “What's up?”
“You haven't heard?”
“What?”
“The museum was robbed last night.”
“Robbed?”
Poblo's face came to mind.
Spence said, “Poblo's in jail.”
Rod almost laughed. “Poblo robbed the museum?”
“Crazy, isn't it?” Spence said, glancing at her.
“What'd he take?” Rod asked, “As if I didn't know.”
“He was after those videotapes. He turned himself in.”
“Of all the crazy…” Rod turned and looked at her.
A surge of cold air hovered between them. She wanted to ask, “Now what did I do?”
In that instant, the glorious day turned inglorious.
Rod grabbed her arm, and pulled her away from the boat slip.
“Rod, what is it now?”
His face was white beneath the sea tan. “We're going to the museum.”
“The museum?”
His voice wasn't harsh – exactly. “Don't you want to?”
“I – I never thought – yes I want to, but am I welcome?”
“Would it bother you if you weren't?”
“That's a snotty thing to say.”
“I'm feeling snotty.”
“In case you didn't notice, it wasn't I who robbed the museum.”
“I noticed.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
--
The police waved them through the lobby. Rod led the way into the director's office. She'd seen photographs of him, but from the way he looked as he paced, the photos had been taken at least twenty years ago. The man was seventy, at least.
He halted when he realized they were standing in the doorway. Blinking at Rod, his eyes roamed to where she stood beside him. His worried gray eyes widened.
Rod made the introductions. “Henry, this is Ann Gavrion. Ann, Henry Lockridge.”
Ann took three steps to shake the director's hand. “Pleasure to meet you, Dr. Lockridge.”
“Uh – yes – uh – Miss Gavrion. A pleasure.”
He seemed unable to take his eyes from hers. But they weren't accusing – in fact the longer they held hers, the more they seemed amused.
He was a very tall man, probably six-six. He towered over Rod, who was nearly six feet. Lockridge was lean and cavernous in the chest, his shoulders narrow and slumping. His suit hung on him like a scarecrow's. Hair that had been thick and sandy was now white. It was the most abundant thing about the man, and it would always behave as it wished.
Lockridge resumed his pacing. “Rod – this – I don't know…” He spread out his hands. “What should we do?”
In that instance, she knew Lockridge wasn't a man of action.
Rod said, “Tell us what happened here?”
Rod motioned her toward a slim chair in front of the director's desk, and he sat in a swivel. Lockridge went to the leather chair behind his desk.
“Well,” the director began, “I came in this morning. Things seemed different. You know the…” He looked at Ann, “The controversy we've been embroiled in?”
“I do. We do.”
Lockridge's eyes switched from Ann to Rod a couple of times, as if he didn't know quite why he was sitting here with two people who were supposed to be at odds with one another and the museum.
Rod asked, “When did Poblo break in?”
“In the middle of the night, apparently. He took all the videotapes away, and then he returned to wait for me to come in this morning.”
“Just like that?”
Lockridge closed his eyes for the moment. “He told me to call the police, that he'd robbed the place, and stolen the tapes.”
“And so you did.”
“I tried to call you first.”
Rod breathed in heavily. “We had a beached whale.”
“Spence told me. Since you were at sea, and we couldn't raise you, I did what I thought was best.”
“You did right, Henry.”
“I hoped you'd see it that way.”
“So now Poblo has the tapes,” Rod said.
“Ah yes. He has a month's worth of videotapes, but he doesn't have the ones that he was seeking.”
For the first time since they'd heard the bad news, Rod smiled. “Wonder if Poblo knows that.”
“He does,” Lockridge said. “Before the police took him away, he said now that a crime had been committed on account of those particular tapes, we'd have to release them to the public.”
She darted her gazed between Lockridge and Rod, who looked too aggravated to speak. She asked Lockridge, “Is he correct?”
The director managed a wry smile. For all the trouble she'd caused him, he wasn't angry. “I don't know, Miss Gavrion. I'll have to consult our attorney.”
Rod said, “Where did you hide the tapes?”
“In a box with a collection of sea scraps that won't be itemized and numbered for at least a year.”
“They are still there?”
“Yes.”
“Wonder why Poblo didn't think to ransack the place when he saw that he didn't have the tapes he wanted.”
“He did some ransacking, and there are some scratches on the safe, but he seemed untroubled by not finding the ones he sought. He seemed sure that we'd have to turn those over – to make them public.”
Rod stared at Lockridge. “What do we do now?”
“Now?”
“Can we not press charges?” Rod asked.
“I don't see – why wouldn't we?”
“No charges, no crime.”
Lockridge sat back as if overcome. “That being the case, I shouldn't have reported the crime – er, the incident – to the police.”
“You had to. He trespassed on museum property. But how valuable was what he took?”
“Ten dollars worth of videotapes. We recycle until the quality is indistinct.”
“Did he take anything else?”
“No – but then there's breaking and entering.”
“When you canned him, did he return his key?”
“I don't believe he did.”
“Maybe he came back to get the rest of his things.”
Lockridge looked at the ceiling. “I know what you're trying to do, Rod, and I'm with you if we can make this …” He glanced at Ann. “If we can make this go away.”
Ann had had enough. She said, “Look, let's lay this matter on the table. Let's talk about the reason Poblo stole the tapes.”
Lockridge's hands trembled. Rod turned in the swivel chair. He looked at her like this wasn't working out in her favor, and then addressed the director. “I brought Ann here because, as you know, Henry, you and I do not agree on the truth of – what Miss Gavrion says happened to her when she went for a walk on the beach.”
A walk on the beach. Touristy stuff. That's what it was to Rod.
Lockridge sat back and contemplated Ann. His demeanor underwent a change. Instead of a befuddled nincompoop, he looked if not magisterial, then at least learned.
“Indeed,” he said to Ann. “I do not agree with Rod over the matte
r.”
Without glancing at Rod, she asked, “What are you telling me?”
The director looked at Rod. Rod said, “You can speak freely.”
Lockridge was a man who chose his words carefully. “Well, he told me at first that he thought you were here to write a sensational account of the Carroll A. Deering, putting yourself in the action. Something similar has happened before with our mystery ships.”
She felt Rod's eyes on her, but didn't look at him. “You said, at first. Did Rod change his mind.”
“It seems so. Later on he said that you had a delusion due to some overwrought work schedule, perhaps fueled by loneliness and wishful thinking – that you imagined a trip – a voyage as it were – with his grandfather. Of course …”
“If I suffered delusions, Dr. Lockridge, why did I choose a particular person, his great-grandfather, to have this delusional voyage with?”
“That is unanswerable by me. I would say that you read about the voyage, the fantastic story of the Carroll A. Deering, before you appeared on our beach – and it had captured your imagination. It does that, you know. It is quite a compelling story. I myself have wondered what happened to the crew – what happened to that beautiful ship that appeared one January morning under full sail on our shores. Given the opportunity, I would have gone back in time to find out what happened.”
Astonished, she said, “You believe me.”
“Of course,” he smiled. “It's quite plausible. Everything under the sun is.”
Glimpsing sideways at Rod, who sat back in his chair, his arms folded across his chest, his lips pressed, she said to Lockridge, “Are you putting me on?”
“Indeed not.”
The room was quiet. “How is it that you find my voyage plausible?”
“Two things are very compelling. First, in your personality and your work, both of which center around the creative process.” She started to protest, but he held up a hand. “No, I'm not saying that you have made up a story in your conscious mind. I do not believe that is what happened. But it is true, is it not, that you are creative, imaginative?”
“In a way. But I'm not a novelist. I've never written fiction.”
“But you've read plenty of it, I dare say.”
“Yes.”
“What kind?”
She thought for a moment. “The genre isn't important so much as characters and plot.”
“Action?”
“All stories must have action, even a sedentary cozy mystery in a country house. If you mean action adventure on the high seas, usually I don't read those kinds of novels. But I have enjoyed Herman Melville and Mutiny on the Bounty. Very long ago, I might say.
“Ah yes,” he said thoughtfully. “Then we have the abstract nature of time.”
“By that, you mean what?”
“Time goes by swiftly when you're having fun.” He smiled. “If you're not, it's endless.”
She thought about that truism, which was spoken by Lawrence. She said, “My voyage took two minutes in my time. In past time, it was four months long. Explain that.”
He rose, stepped to a shelf, picked out a book, and turned to the page which he had marked. “We'll start with a literary quote. Mark Twain gave us an insight into mental time travel. This was in 1896. Let me read: ‘There is in life only one moment, and in eternity only one. It is so brief that it is represented by the fleeting of a luminous mote through the thin ray of sunlight - and it is visible but a fraction of a second. The moments that preceded it have been lived, are forgotten and are without value; the moments that have not been lived have no existence and will have no value except in the moment that each shall be lived. While you are asleep you are dead; and whether you stay dead an hour or a billion years the time to you is the same.’”
Nodding, she said, “I believe I understand.”
Lockridge went on, “Such is a learned layman's meaning of time. But leaping into the scientific universe, into one of Einstein's theories of relativity, we can analyze the idea of time travel. If it is possible, then the past, present and future of everyone's moments must exist simultaneously in multiverses.”
She said, “My brain doesn't operate on the same plane as Einstein's.”
She heard Rod shift in his seat. Lockridge grinned, and then said seriously, “But when you look closely at the general theory of relativity – the best theory of time and space that we have – there is nothing in physics that would keep one from going forward or backward in time. Einstein held that time runs slowly for moving objects. So one could be taken on a slow voyage, and then coming hurtling back from a different multiverse in seconds.”
“My head is hurling now,” she said.
“Einstein called his theory 'a spooky action at a distance'.”
“And I was able to jump from my own moment to someone else's moment, in someone else's multiverse?”
“Yes, that would be Lawrence's moment in his universe.”
“Was Lawrence a ghost?”
“Yes and no. Relate your meeting with Lawrence Curator.”
She cleared her throat to keep the tremble from it. “A hurricane had swept sand from a shipwreck. I went to it. Lawrence was there.”
“He would have been a ghost in your time,” Lockridge said. “He’d been dead for decades.”
Rod interjected, “This is utter nonsense. I stood by Ann at the wreck.”
She looked at Rod, her mouth gaping. “You? No, Rod, I saw you back on the dune, never near me.”
“I came and stood next to you to apologize, as I've said before.”
“Wait,” Lockridge said. “I think I can explain it.”
“You can't rationally,” Rod said.
Lockridge looked at her. “Lawrence's ghost seized the moment and overcame Rod at the shipwreck. His will must have been very powerful.”
Rod waved his arms. “This is too much for me, Henry.”
He started to rise, but Ann said, “Sit, Rod. At last, someone might be able to explain my experience.” Rod eased back into the chair and she asked Lockridge, “What about the lighthouse, the people on the dunes, the surfman.
“By that time, Lawrence had drawn you to a time when he was alive. So they were all real, including Lawrence.”
“Was I a ghost in his time?”
“Not a ghost exactly, but unreal certainly since you were not of that time. Believers in spirits might have seen you, but unbelievers wouldn't have.”
“That's true, some people saw me. Lawrence warned me against calling attention to myself.”
Rod made an impatient sound and Lockridge went on, “The nature of ghosts has always been of interest to me. Being irreligious, I don't put much faith in human spirits coming back to haunt, or help, a living human. I believe that when you see a ghost in a haunted house, or walking on the shore, you have managed to glimpse his moment of time. You are seeing a real human being acting out that moment in his time.”
“Explain this to me,” she said. “There were a few times Lawrence did seem ghostly. I was afraid once that he'd stranded me on the ship.”
She sensed Rod squirm, and, despite his scowl, smiled to encourage him to stay with the conversation.
“Your two universes were close. Reality went back and forth in your universes.”
“What separates universes?”
“Good question. Quantum mechanics would suggest electrons separated parallel universes.”
Rod sat forward and asked her, “Would you care to take a stab at what Dr. Lockridge's doctorate is in?”
“Not maritime studies?” she asked, smiling and raising her eyebrows.
“Physics,” Rod said. “Henry, give her the spiel on the grandfather paradox.” Rod turned to her. “Henry has been drilling me with this since he learned of your adventure.”
Lockridge said, “It's very simple, and the one thing that made me realize that you'd probably had a real experience in time travel.”
“Really?” she said, happy at last to be believed.<
br />
“Rod said that you told him his ancestor, Lawrence, couldn't interfere in the fates of the captain and the crew who were slaughtered, nor with the ship's ultimate wreck on Diamond Shoal. Neither you nor Lawrence were killed in the shipwreck because in his life moment, Lawrence was alive after the Deering disaster and investigated it on a Navy ship. It went down later. And you didn't belong in that universe in the first place.”
She took a deep breath.
He smiled and went on, “The grandfather paradox is a theory that dashes the idea of traveling back in time. Were you to travel back in time from your own universe, you might do something that prevents your grandfather from siring your mother or father. That would mean you are zapped out of existence – in essence losing your moment in time because you were never conceived. And what does that say for your children, and those whom you influence?”
“That seems to mean that you don't believe in traveling back in time.”
“No – just that you can't affect time, nor mess with someone's moment. Lawrence knew that.”
She looked at Rod, and then Lockridge. “I've gone over the trip so many times since it happened that I came to believe Lawrence was a ghost that I somehow made real.”
Lockridge said, “No, he was real. A very special thing happened to you.”
“But why?”
“In your universe, you went down to the beach where a shipwreck had been uncovered by the recent hurricane. In Lawrence's universe, he happened to be on that beach before his own ship went down, most likely investigating the Carroll A. Deering shipwreck on Diamond Shoal.” Lockridge sat back and steepled his fingers. “Lawrence was destined by the strength of his will to investigate that wreck for eternity or until he solved the mystery. Your moments in time came together, maybe brought on by his descendant, you Rod, being there.”
Rod grumbled something.
Lockridge said, “Lawrence glimpsed past the electron barrier of your parallel universes and saw you. He approached you, and you spoke.”
Rod said, “Who was in whose universe?”
“An interesting theory presents itself,” Lockridge said. “The idea of a quantum leap comes to mind. I believe they passed back and forth into each other's universes until the moment the surfman ran up with the news of the shipwreck. Then Miss Gavrion was firmly in Lawrence's universe.”
THE GHOST SHIP Page 27
