Ghost Ship: A Port Chatham Mystery

by P. J. Alderman

“I guess.” Jordan was perplexed. “Isn’t the water awfully cold around here, though?”

  “Not if you don’t stay down long,” he replied cheerfully. Nodding politely, he stomped down the beach in his flippers, heading toward the peninsula.

  “Hey,” Darcy called out, looking irritated as she turned back. “Make more of an effort, will you?”

  “I was just …” Jordan’s gaze slid from the retreating figure of the diver to Darcy, who gave no indication that she’d seen him. “Never mind.” Jordan broke into a jog.

  “So how’s it going with the ghosts?” Darcy asked uncannily as Jordan caught up.

  “I don’t want to talk about them.” Or the fact that seeing them made her question her own sanity.

  So far, Jordan hadn’t discovered anyone else who could see and converse with both communities in Port Chatham—one human, the other spectral. And neither community seemed to be overly concerned that she possessed such “special powers.”

  “Are Hattie and Charlotte still giving you trouble?”

  “Assuming they exist, yes.”

  That earned her an assessing glance. “I thought we were beyond this. You’re regressing.”

  “I’m not regressing,” Jordan objected grimly. “I’ve just given myself permission to deny that they necessarily exist.”

  “Uh-huh.” Darcy shook her head. “You know I’d kill to be in your shoes. It’s damn hard to do my job well when I can’t see or communicate with half the town’s residents.”

  Jordan did a mental eye roll. Her corporeal friends, whose powers of perception only included a general sense of the ghosts’ presence, professed to be extremely envious of Jordan’s abilities, not understanding the unique challenge they presented. After all, outside of walking up and rudely poking the person in question to see whether he or she was solid, she had no surefire method of differentiating ghosts from humans.

  “It’s bad enough that I sleep in a bedroom where a century-old murder occurred,” she grumbled. “I didn’t sign up for having permanent roommates. I solved Hattie’s murder; therefore, it’s only reasonable to expect that they all politely vacate the premises.”

  “ ‘All’?” Darcy looked intrigued. “Have more shown up?”

  “Just Frank, so far,” Jordan replied, referring to the ghost of Frank Lewis, the man who had hanged for Hattie’s murder in 1890. “He and Hattie are attempting to requite their unrequited, century-old love.” Jordan picked her way around a gelatinous substance on the sand that looked like it might be the remains of a jellyfish. “I walk into a room, and they’re cooing at each other. I turn a corner, and they’re in a clinch.”

  Darcy shot her a wary glance. “You haven’t been reading romance novels, have you?”

  “Not that I couldn’t use the escapism right now, but no. ‘Clinch’ just seems appropriate when describing the mating habits of ghosts.”

  “So we’re talking spectral sex?” Darcy grinned. “Cool.”

  “Not cool,” Jordan insisted. “What about Charlotte? She’s too young and impressionable to be exposed to such things.”

  “We are talking about the ghost who was a prostitute before she died in the 1890s, right? I suspect Charlotte knows more about sex than you do.”

  “Well, it’s not the 1890s anymore. And I’ve got a home renovation to manage—I don’t have the time to chaperone an impressionable young ghost.”

  Darcy shook her head and picked up the pace again. “I heard Tom wants to talk to you about the work on the house.”

  Tom Greeley, one of Port Chatham’s amateur historians, specialized in custom paintwork for historic homes. He’d been gracious enough to volunteer to help Jordan come up with a restoration plan for Longren House. After days of crawling around the attic and the basement, he’d left a hastily scribbled note requesting a meeting with her. The note was still lying on the kitchen table, intimidating her.

  Okay, so her initial fantasy of slap-on-some-paint-and-new-wallpaper had died a quiet death around the time she’d discovered that the gorgeous wisteria vine on the wall of the library had grown straight through the siding and into the attic. But dammit, she loved Longren House. It represented the one truly impulsive decision she’d ever made. Well, maybe not the only impulsive decision—that was stretching the truth a bit. But she’d taken one look at the house and fallen head over heels, instantly envisioning the cozy home she’d never had. She’d be damned if she’d let a few repairs ruin that dream.

  And frankly, it was easier to hold on to the dream if she didn’t know the full extent of the necessary repairs. In fact, she was considering submitting an article to a prestigious psychology journal, describing the underrated benefits of a well-orchestrated strategy of personal denial. Life really was wonderful if one simply refused to acknowledge the impending train wrecks.

  “Earth to Jordan? Hello?”

  She realized Darcy was still waiting for her response. “Tom probably just wants to talk to me about bidding out the work,” she said, hoping for reassurance.

  “I doubt it. We can refer you to the right people.”

  “But—”

  “This isn’t L.A., it’s a small town. For most jobs, there will only be one or two people who do that type of work. We know who you can trust, and who you can’t.” Darcy stopped abruptly, causing Jordan to plow into her. “Okay. See?” She pointed to a tiny white speck in the distance. “That’s New Dungeness Lighthouse.”

  Jordan righted herself and squinted at the landscape beyond the end of Darcy’s finger. “Clear down there? We still have that far to go?”

  “It’s only another mile or so. Piece of cake.”

  Jordan groaned. “We could turn around right now, head back to the pub, and place our order for a truly sublime Shiraz.” Served up by an equally sublime pub owner, although she was in denial about him as well. “I don’t care whether we tour the lighthouse—we could come back another day.”

  She could’ve sworn Darcy looked apologetic. “There’s a rumor the lighthouse is haunted,” Darcy admitted, “and several of us thought you might be able to confirm whether it is.”

  Jordan narrowed her gaze. “You’re using me as some sort of ghost detector?”

  “Well, yeah. We started talking about it last night after you and Malachi left the pub, and one thing led to another. We’ve got a pool going on whether you’ll see the wife of the original lighthouse keeper, who is rumored to haunt the grounds. The wife, not the lighthouse keeper,” Darcy clarified. “After all, you’re in a unique position to confirm the veracity of all those ghost stories we’ve heard over the years—”

  “Oh. My. God.” Jordan stared past Darcy’s shoulder.

  “Look,” Darcy said, sounding uncomfortable. “If it bothers you that much—”

  “No, no!” Jordan tugged on her sleeve to turn her toward the surf. “That’s not what I think it is, is it? Is it?”

  Darcy peered in the direction Jordan pointed. “Son of a bitch!” Jogging over, she knelt next to a black, rubber-encased body floating facedown in the shallows.

  When Jordan started to follow, Darcy put up a hand. “Stay back.” She felt for a pulse, then turned over the body, pulling back the hood of the dry suit.

  Jordan pressed fingers against her mouth. She would have recognized that bleached-blond buzz cut anywhere. “That’s …”

  “Yeah.”

  Holt Stillwell. Port Chatham’s most notorious womanizer, descended from a long line of infamous criminals, not the least of whom was the Pacific Northwest’s most ruthless shanghaier of the late nineteenth century, Michael Seavey.

  Holt’s eyes were closed, and his skin had a weirdly translucent pallor.

  He also had a bullet hole in the center of his forehead.

  Chapter 2

  JORDAN didn’t have any experience with dead people, other than from the night she’d had to identify her husband’s remains. Her former patients, no matter how damaged when they came to her, had always been alive and kicking.

&nb
sp; She couldn’t seem to quit looking at Holt’s face. Swallowing rapidly, she concentrated hard on not losing her lunch.

  “You’re not planning to hurl all over the crime scene, are you?” Darcy asked absently as she studied the area around Holt’s body.

  “Of course not.”

  Darcy pulled out her cellphone, flipping it open and sweeping it in an arc. “Dammit! No signal.” Leaning down, she braced her hands on her knees and stared at the sand. “Okay, it looks like the tide has washed away any footprints, so I guess it doesn’t really matter. Get over here and help me.”

  “What’re we doing, exactly?” Jordan asked warily.

  “We’re moving him above the tide line. I can’t stand in forty-degree water, holding a corpse in place until the crime-scene techs get here.”

  That made sense. Rubbing her palms on her jeans, Jordan edged forward.

  With her grappling Holt’s bare ankles and Darcy at his shoulders, they managed to drag him out of the shallow surf and up the beach. They stood over the body, catching their breath. Jordan’s running shoes were now filled with sand and salt water, and her blisters were stinging big-time.

  “The medical examiner is going to kill me for messing with the position of the body,” Darcy muttered, as if talking to herself, “but it couldn’t be helped.”

  Holt’s torso was propped against a giant log, his head lolling to one side. There was no way Jordan was sitting down on that log to empty out her shoes. And she really didn’t want to stand there, staring at the nasty little hole in his forehead.

  “What do you suppose he was doing way out here?” she asked, to distract herself.

  “Good question. As far as I know, Holt wasn’t a dive enthusiast. And even if he was, there are far more interesting dives closer to town or off the west side of Vancouver Island.”

  Jordan raised a brow.

  “Old shipwrecks and the like,” Darcy elaborated.

  “Shouldn’t he have been with a dive buddy? Don’t divers usually swim in pairs, for safety reasons?”

  Darcy shrugged. “It’s not like Holt ever played by the rules.”

  “True, but …” Jordan thought about the man she’d seen earlier. Had he been real after all? “Maybe the dive buddy is the murderer.” Maybe she’d just exchanged pleasantries with a cold-blooded killer. “Holt could’ve pissed him off, just like he did everyone else, and the guy lost it.”

  “And shot him with the handgun he just happened to have in a watertight Baggie stowed inside his dive suit.”

  “Okay, point taken.” Not to mention that if it had been the person Jordan had seen, his suit had lacked such conveniences as pockets. Did some people make their own dive gear? She didn’t know; she’d never been interested in the sport. “So what do we do now? Look for the murder weapon?”

  “You’ve been watching way too many CSI shows. If you’d just shot a guy and dumped him in the water, what would you do with the gun?”

  “Well, assuming I have homicidal tendencies and I’ve thought the crime through before committing it, I guess I would’ve tossed it as far out into the ocean as I could … No, wait.” Jordan reconsidered. “Unless I’m familiar with the local currents, I’d be worried the tide would wash the gun back onto the beach. And there’s no good place to hide it on this spit; you could bury a gun in the sand, but a good metal detector would find it in a heartbeat. I suppose you could toss it into the reeds on the protected side, but to be safe, I’d probably carry it back with me, intending to dispose of it somewhere else.”

  “Exactly,” Darcy confirmed. “We’ll get teams out here to comb the driftwood and beach grasses, but I doubt we’ll find anything. The gun could be anywhere.”

  Jordan glanced around. “Where’s Holt’s gear? You know—oxygen tanks, flippers? You don’t suppose someone robbed him, do you?”

  “I doubt they killed him for his dive equipment,” Darcy replied drily, “though a friend of mine regularly complains about the cost. But you’re right—it’s odd that he doesn’t have any.”

  “Maybe he was killed somewhere else and then dumped here. Maybe the killer was hoping the tide would carry him out to sea before someone noticed him. After all, normally he could’ve counted on a fair amount of time elapsing before someone would come along and notice. It’s not like anyone in their right mind takes this hike willingly.”

  Darcy gave her an exasperated look. “I shouldn’t even be discussing this with you.”

  “Hey.” Hadn’t she just solved a murder? A hundred-year-old murder, no less?

  Darcy checked for a signal again, then swore. “See if you have cellphone coverage; your carrier is different from mine.”

  Jordan did as she asked, with the same result, then gazed in both directions. No one in sight, not even the other diver, who seemed to have disappeared. She spread her hands and gave Darcy a shrug.

  “Okay.” Darcy drew a breath, sounding businesslike, “I need to stay with the body, to protect the integrity of the crime scene as much as possible. So I need you to continue on to the lighthouse.”

  Of course she did.

  “You should be able to pick up coverage there,” she added. “Call 911 to report the crime.”

  Jordan hesitated. With the exception of Darcy, she still didn’t feel completely comfortable around cops, given her recent experiences with the LAPD. And she’d be calling to report a murder, which might lead to all kinds of speculation. After all, it had only been in the last week or so that the speculation over her husband’s murder had finally died down.

  Darcy correctly interpreted her expression. “Relax. I can verify what you tell them—they aren’t going to jump to any conclusions about your being out here. And put in a call to Jase—have him come pick you up. He can borrow a power boat and bring it to the landing area on the south side of the lighthouse.”

  The aforementioned sublime pub owner. Damn. Jordan was finding it hard to remain in denial when her hormones rioted every time he came within twenty feet of her.

  The implication of what Darcy had said sank in. “You mean we could have taken a boat out here?”

  “Sure. But then we wouldn’t have found Holt, would we?”

  Jordan risked another glance and suddenly found herself with a lump in her throat. “I was going to ask him to bid a portion of the paint job,” she admitted. “You know, to be fair.”

  Darcy nodded, and they were silent for a long moment.

  “Will you be all right here by yourself?” Jordan asked, noting the lines of strain on the other woman’s face.

  “I’m tired but fine.” She grimaced. “I’d just hoped to leave this type of crime behind when I moved from Minneapolis.”

  “I could come back and wait with you,” Jordan offered.

  “Not necessary.”

  “How about I call one of your deputies to come out, then?”

  Darcy shook her head. “The local police will respond to the 911, and I’ll have to wrestle them for jurisdiction before I can involve anyone from my force in the investigation.”

  “You want the case?” Jordan was surprised.

  “Damn right I do. Whoever killed Holt may live in Port Chatham.”

  Jordan didn’t like the sound of that—she preferred any local murders remain in a different century. “Who do you think might have done it?”

  “No clue yet. But a good place to start would be any of the women Holt bedded within the last several years. They all walked away mad enough to kill.”

  * * *

  SINCE Jordan was eager to put as much distance as possible between herself and the crime scene, the last mile of the hike went by quickly, wet, sore feet notwithstanding. And Darcy had been right—the minute Jordan reached the edge of the lighthouse grounds, bars popped up on her cellphone. She placed calls, then sat down at a picnic table in the sun, trying not to think about Darcy’s wait in much less pleasant circumstances.

  The grounds at the end of the spit were landscaped simply—just grass and a two-rail, painted
wooden fence that separated the buildings from the surrounding tide flats. The lightstation—a single-story, rectangular building with a pitched roof—stood to one side, its lamp perched atop a circular white brick tower with a conical red metal roof. Across the grass on the other side of the fenced area was the keeper’s quarters, a Cape Cod–style bungalow with a covered porch, square, divided-light windows, and shutters. The buildings were painted white to match, with green trim and red metal roofs. Despite their century and a half of exposure to harsh elements, they were well kept. Darcy had explained that a nonprofit association used volunteer lightkeepers to maintain the site, now that the Coast Guard had been forced to slash its budget for lighthouse personnel.

  An osprey flew overhead, hunting for its next meal in the tide pools beyond the fence. Other waterfowl Jordan didn’t recognize perched on driftwood or floated in the water just offshore. A few people—smart enough to have traveled by boat, she surmised, since she hadn’t seen them before now—wandered in and out of the lightstation. If the cameras they held were any indication, they were tourists, not ghosts. A slender woman wearing a loose cotton smock, wooden gardening clogs, and a floppy straw hat was planting daisies and snapdragons along the foundation in front of the keeper’s quarters. The scene was quaint and peaceful … as long as Jordan didn’t factor in Holt’s body lying on the beach less than a mile away.

  She raised her face to the warm rays and willed herself to think about something—anything—else. With so many recent stressful events in her life, she found herself savoring those short stretches of time when she could close her eyes and feel at peace.

  Until a year ago, her days had been … well, predictable. She’d had a thriving therapy practice in L.A., based on the tenets of Rational Therapy. Her husband—she’d believed—had been in love with her. But that life had disintegrated into a media frenzy surrounding her very public divorce and Ryland’s murder. Though she hadn’t admitted as much to Darcy, her reluctance to take on big challenges or set goals was really an attempt to remain calm and centered while she struggled to adjust to her new life.