Perfect Romance

by Duncan, Alice

  Irate that the captain should consider her legitimate concerns blabbing, Loretta perceived no way to alter his opinion without confirming it. In spite of herself, she obeyed him, shutting her mouth with a clack of teeth and wishing for the first time in her life that she carried a gun. Even a small one would result in satisfying pain to the overbearing captain. She said through her teeth, “Tell me.”

  “I’m in partnership with William Frederick Tillinghurst.” One black eyebrow lifted over a devilishly dark eye. “You’ve heard of him, I suppose?”

  “I know him. He’s a business associate of my father’s,” Loretta conceded, wondering as she spoke if she was unconsciously attempting to impress the captain with her social status, damn her ego to perdition.

  If her ego had been seeking to undermine her egalitarian principles with snob appeal, the attempt failed. The captain said, “Tillinghurst is my partner in the treasure hunt. He provided the funding, along with Stanford University and the Museum of Natural History, and I provided the ship, the crew, and the expertise. We found the galleon, and my divers raised most of it. It was an incredible find, and of tremendous historical and monetary value.”

  “You,” Loretta said in a scathing tone, “are primarily interested in the historical properties of the find, no doubt.” She gave him a sneer of her own. Not having had much practice, she feared her effort paled in comparison to any one of his sneers.

  She was right, as she noticed immediately when he sneered back at her. “As surprising as I’m sure you find it, yes, that is my primary interest. I don’t need the money.”

  How fascinating! Again borrowing from him, she said, “Huh.”

  He went on, “The ship docked in San Francisco a week and a half ago. I’m surprised you haven’t read about it in the newspapers, because there was a lot of publicity. Tillinghurst likes that sort of thing.”

  He frowned, leaving Loretta to deduce that Tillinghurst’s partner was not, unlike Tillinghurst himself, a publicity hound. She almost wished he was, because it would give her one more good reason, not that she needed another one, to hate him.

  “About three days ago, some of the treasure disappeared, along with two of my crewmen, including Peavey.” He gestured at the closed kitchen door. “I don’t want it to get out that we’ve had any trouble of this nature, because it will reflect badly on my operation.”

  Loretta sniffed. “Perhaps it will reflect the truth,” she said, taking venomous glee from the fact that her words made the captain wince.

  “I’ve worked with Peavey and Jones for years. They’re both good men. I can’t believe they had anything to do with the missing artifacts.”

  “There were those coins on the floor,” Loretta reminded the captain.

  He didn’t appreciate the reminder. “Yes. I saw them.”

  “Yet you still exonerate Mr. Peavey?”

  A pause followed her question. Loretta thought at first that he didn’t intend to answer it, and she began to swell up again.

  She deflated when he said suddenly, “Peavey’s not smart enough to plan a successful theft and disappearance. Jones is smart enough, but I can’t feature him doing it. He’s a good man, and an honest one, and he has a lot to lose if he were to be caught perpetrating a felony. Besides, if Peavey’s a crook, why was he sandbagged?”

  “I have no idea. Why don’t you ask him?”

  The captain’s alarming eyebrows dipped ominously over his eyes. “I intend to as soon as your friend the doctor is through with him.”

  “Hmm.” In the silence following the captain’s remark, Loretta pondered Peavey’s case which, she hated to admit, held a good deal of interest. After thinking hard for a moment, she said, “I suspect Mr. Tillinghurst.”

  “You suspect him of what?”

  “Of stealing the treasure and kidnapping your crewmen.”

  The captain’s eyes opened wide and he stared at Loretta as if she were some species of pernicious and hitherto-unknown-to-him beetle or worm. “Don’t be any more of a fool than you can help, Miss Linden, please. And I beg that you won’t spread that absurd lie around.”

  “I do not spread lies,” Loretta stated in a measured voice in which even she could detect the outrage. “And I am not a fool.” She also disliked Mr. Tillinghurst a good deal.

  The captain waved a hand in a gesture of dismissal. “Anyhow, I told you the story. Now I’m going to go back to Peavey. Stay out of the way, will you?” He turned around and would have left her there if she hadn’t hurried after him.

  “Well?” she said, irate. “Why don’t you suspect Mr. Tillinghurst? If you know him, you must know he’s a money-grubbing, conscienceless, self-servicing oppressor of the masses.”

  The captain stopped walking so abruptly, Loretta bumped into his back and bounced off. She was prevented from falling on an indelicate part of her anatomy by one of the captain’s huge hands when it whipped out and stopped her fall by means of grabbing on to the front of his own cloak. Roughly, he drew her upright, stood her on her two feet, and released her. With a couple of quick dance steps, Loretta managed to remain upright.

  “Oppressor of the masses?” Quarles said, his voice ripe with sardonic amusement. “Are you a communist, Miss Linden?”

  “No, I am not! And Mr. Tillinghurst is an awful man. He treats his employees like dirt.”

  “Huh. That may or may not be so, but I doubt that he’d risk his reputation as a sound businessman—” He gave the two words a good deal of emphasis. “—by stealing his own treasure.”

  “Aha,” said Loretta triumphantly, choosing to ignore their difference of opinion on the oppression issue. “But is he? Is the treasure his? Or yours? Aren’t there regulations governing the disposal of sunken treasure—after it’s been . . . unsunk? Retrieved? Especially if the expedition was carried out in conjunction with a museum or an educational institution? You said it was, with Stanford.”

  “Recovered,” the captain said sourly. “And I know the regulations. So does Tillinghurst. Neither he nor I were responsible for the lost treasure. And I won’t believe Peavey or Jones is guilty, either, unless it’s established to me beyond doubt.”

  “Hmm.” Deciding she’d better shut up now, since they’d entered the kitchen, she saw that Mr. Peavey now sat in a chair. She rushed over to Jason, who was just shutting his black bag. “Then he doesn’t have a concussion?”

  “Doesn’t seem to,” Jason said, smiling at her. She valued him greatly in that instant, since he was a man who cared about her unconditionally and who, moreover, with very few lapses, recognized her as the intelligent, capable, and upstanding woman she was. “He was primarily only stunned, although there was quite a cut on his forehead. Head wounds tend to bleed copiously.” Lowering his voice, he told Loretta, “I don’t think Mr. Peavey is playing with a full deck.”

  Recalling Mr. Peavey’s earlier remarks about Moors and what the captain had called Peavey’s “tangents,” she said, “I think you’re right.”

  “How are you feeling now, Peavey?”

  Loretta was astonished that the captain’s voice could carry such regard and genuine concern. It also didn’t rumble as it did when he spoke to her. Although she hated to give him credit for anything, she wondered if he might actually care about the men under his command. She decided to withhold judgment on the issue.

  Peavey was a ghastly sight. Dr. Abernathy had cleaned his wound, stitched it, and the poor man’s head was now wrapped round with a white bandage. Blood had trickled down his neck and onto his shirt, and his trousers were dirty and ripped. He pressed a hand to his bandaged head and said with a moan, “Head hurts.”

  “I can imagine.” Grinning, Captain Quarles added, “Although that’s probably the best place they could have hit you if they wanted to spare your life.”

  Loretta huffed in sympathetic indignation.

  Peavey grinned at his captain, “You’re right there, Cap’n Quarles.”

  Loretta decided to save her indignation for someone who deserv
ed it.

  Quarles sat himself on a chair and drew it close to his injured crewman. Putting a large brown hand on Peavey’s shoulder, he said gently, “Can you remember what happened?”

  The captain lifted his head and frowned at Loretta, who had drawn closer. She frowned back and didn’t budge. This was her soup kitchen, after all. Or . . . well . . . if it wasn’t hers exactly, she probably gave more to it by way of financial and physical support than any other charitable lady in San Francisco. Therefore, she didn’t move when the policeman frowned at her, either. He could jolly well stand there and take notes and ignore her. She wasn’t going anywhere.

  Peavey had been thinking about the captain’s question, an activity that seemed to cause him a good deal of pain. “Uh-uh. I can’t remember nothing. There was this dungeon, and there was these gold coins. Moorish coins, Cap’n Quarles. I remember that much. But I don’t remember nothing more.”

  “A dungeon?” Loretta repeated.

  The captain scowled at her.

  Peavey, glancing up at her, said, “Yeah. A dungeon. In a castle or something.”

  “Was Jones with you?” the captain asked.

  “Jones. Jones.” Peavey strained to think some more. “I don’t rightly recollect. I recollect Jones.” He smiled, as if proud of this feat of intelligence.

  “You recollect Jones being with you in the dungeon with the treasure?”

  The captain’s attempt at clarification met with a blank stare from Peavey. The captain sighed. Loretta decided to take a more active role in this interrogation. Kneeling before Mr. Peavey, whose eyes grew big and who shrank away from her as if from a goblin, she took his hand and held it in a comforting manner. “I’m so sorry you were hurt, Mr. Peavey.” She pitched her voice to a musical purr. To the devil with the captain and his black scowl. And that of the Sergeant Bowes, too. Jason, she saw out of the corner of her eye, was grinning like a sly cat. “Do you remember me? I was the one who served you soup this noontime.”

  Peavey’s expression held a shade less terror. “Uh . . . yeah. I guess. Good soup.”

  “Yes, it is good soup,” Loretta agreed tenderly. “And we serve good sandwiches.”

  With more animation, Peavey said, “Yeah. With meat and cheese.”

  “With meat and cheese. Do you remember where you were before you came to the soup kitchen, Mr. Peavey? The policemen would like to know that. It might help them in finding out who hurt you.”

  Peavey’s brow furrowed in his effort to concentrate. “It wasn’t the Moors,” he said at last. With a glance at his captain, he added, “Must’ve been them Spaniards.” He nodded. “Must’ve been. They wanted their treasure back. But I didn’t take it. It were in the dungeon. I only took a couple coins to show the cap’n, so’s he could get it back again.”

  “Do you remember where the dungeon was, Mr. Peavey?” Loretta, who feared the men on the case would discount this poor man’s words as mere rambling, hoped Peavey could give her a clue. She’d love to be able to solve Mr. Peavey’s case, especially if the police and Captain Quarles were baffled.

  Peavey thought some more. He sighed heartily. “It were in town. I think. Or right out of town. A castle in town—or beyond the town limits. Full of treasure, it were, too. In Toledo?” He glanced a question at Loretta and then his captain. “Were it in Toledo?”

  “Perhaps,” Loretta said, standing because her knees were aching. She offered the captain a cold glance. “I tell you, Captain Quarles, it’s Tillinghurst.”

  Peavey nodded. “Toledo.”

  To Loretta, Quarles said, “Don’t be an ass.”

  # # #

  Loretta was still seething when she parked her Runabout in front of her massive marble porch later that evening. Captain Quarles—and what a splendid name for him—had not only called her an ass to her face, but had scoffed at her suggestion that Mr. Peavey be brought to her house so that she could nurse him.

  “I’d sooner leave him to the tender mercies of a school of piranha fishes,” were his exact words. “He’s coming back with me to the hotel.”

  “What hotel?” she’d demanded, aiming to overrule him if he mentioned some dive on the Barbary Coast.

  “The Fairfield,” he said, putting her arguments to an end before she’d presented them. The Fairfield was the most exclusive hotel in San Francisco. Perhaps the entire United States.

  Jason pulled his automobile up behind hers. He quickly got out of it and hurried to escort her to the party going on inside her mansion. “I get the feeling you and the captain didn’t exactly hit it off.” As usual, he was amused. He was always amused by the human condition.

  Loretta didn’t know how he maintained his sense of humor in the most trying of situations. She’d certainly lost hers, and she didn’t expect it to come back soon. “No,” she said crisply. “We did not. The man is an unmitigated bully and a beast.”

  “My, my.”

  The front door opened, and Marjorie MacTavish, standing in a pool of light and looking very pretty, which was moderately surprising, said, “Thank goodness you’ve come. Poor Eunice has been very worried about you.” She gave Jason a frigid look. “Dr. Abernathy didn’t explain what had happened.”

  “I told you somebody’d been coshed,” said Jason, grinning like an imp.

  Loretta squinted at her two friends, but decided not to intervene. They were always at daggers drawn with each other. The important thing now was that Eunice needed her. Shaking off Jason’s hand, Loretta trotted up the porch steps.

  This was more like it. Loretta needed to feel useful, and now she could be of cheer to her friends. Casting aside her fury at the men of the world, she bustled past Marjorie and hurried to the dining room, where the guests were in the middle of Eunice’s birthday dinner.

  Bursting into the room, she cried out, “Happy birthday, Eunice! I have such a tale to tell you!”

  Chapter Four

  “Take it easy, Peavey. Let me hold your arm.” Captain Malachai Quarles did more than take Peavey’s arm. With one arm encircling his back and the other gripping his arm, he supported the man’s entire weight. That was all right. Peavey didn’t weigh much, and the captain was as strong as an ox.

  “Pretty lady,” Peavey mumbled as he allowed the captain to help him into the elevator. “That were a pretty lady. Cooks good, too.”

  Malachai Quarles glowered at the uniformed elevator operator, who had glanced askance at Mr. Peavey and his blood and dirt. As it did with everyone—except Miss Loretta Linden, damn the woman—the captain’s glower snapped the operator to silent attention. He even trembled slightly.

  “Sixth floor,” Malachai growled.

  “Yes, sir!” The operator pulled the lever, and the elevator started to rise.

  “I don’t think she cooks the food herself,” Malachai said under his breath, pushing the words through seriously gritted teeth.

  The woman was a meddling busybody and a shrew. A shapely meddling busybody and shrew. Rather a toothsome bundle, in fact, if it weren’t for her mouth. It was perfectly kissable when she wasn’t blabbing, but she was a blabber and no mistake. He didn’t offer these opinions to Peavey, who seemed to have taken a shine to the Linden female, which might be considered one more indication of Peavey’s weak wits, if another one were needed.

  “She don’t cook it? But she serves it up.” Peavey sounded disappointed.

  “Don’t worry about Miss Linden, Peavey,” the captain advised. “You need to think about what happened to you so we can find the man who hit you.”

  “Oh.”

  “Sixth floor,” the elevator operator said.

  “Huh.” Malachai felt the operator’s gaze on himself and Peavey as they left the elevator and walked down the hallway, Malachai again bearing Peavey’s entire weight. “Got your key, Peavey?”

  Because he was a kindly superior to his men, whatever Miss Busybody Linden thought or him, he had arranged for Peavey to have a room to himself, right next to the captain’s own room. Now he wondered
if that hadn’t been a mistake, and that he oughtn’t to have given Peavey a roommate.

  None of the evening’s disasters would have happened if Percival Jones had roomed with Peavey, but Percival Jones was a black man, and the Fairfield didn’t cotton to Negroes rooming with white men within their hallowed walls. Malachai would have gone to a different hotel, had not Mr. Tillinghurst talked him out of it.

  “Can’t have my people staying in dumps, Quarles,” Tillinghurst had said. “It’s either the Fairfield or you and your men stay on my estate. I’m not going to have the press telling the world I’m a damned miser.”

  Although Malachai thought his partner’s argument ridiculous—Malachai had never given a rap what the world thought of him—he bowed to Tillinghurst’s wishes. And look what had happened because of it. Peavey and Jones both—what? Kidnapped? Mutinied?

  No. Malachai wouldn’t allow that anyone on his crew would do such a thing. He hired only the best men, and they’d all been with him for years. He’d hand selected the crew who’d gone on his most recent adventure aboard Moor’s Revenge.

  Then what had happened? Where was Jones? Where were the missing artifacts?

  Recalling Loretta’s suggestion that Tillinghurst was behind the loss of both man and treasure, he snorted.

  “You okay, Cap’n?” Peavey sounded worried.

  “I’m fine,” Malachai said with a heartiness he didn’t feel. “It’s you we’re worried about. You and Jones.” He balanced Peavey on his feet, holding him with the arm around his waist, and fished in his pocket for his room key. He’d go through Peavey’s pockets himself to see if he could discover Peavey’s own room key. Tonight, however, Malachai aimed to keep Peavey with him. He didn’t altogether trust Peavey’s addled brains not to take him wandering off again.

  “Jones? What’s the matter with Jones?”

  Turning the key in the lock and pushing the door open, Malachai said, “He disappeared the same time you did.”

  “Did I disappear?” Peavey’s tone was one of mild inquiry.