Ghost Ship: A Port Chatham Mystery

by P. J. Alderman

  “You found out something important?” Hattie asked.

  “Not now, my dear,” Seavey said.

  Charlotte hissed and flew over Bob’s head, missing by mere inches.

  Jase’s expression had turned more frantic. Tom was looking from Jordan to Darcy, waiting for some kind of signal.

  “No one cares about your lies, got it, Jordan?” Bob grunted. “Christ. If I didn’t need you to get me off this dock right now, I’d shoot you and dump you into the water. Normal people freeze in terror and behave. But no, you can’t quit mouthing off—”

  Jordan took as deep a breath as she dared, then closing her eyes and praying, she let her knees fall out from under her, throwing her weight to the side.

  Bob started swearing. Charlotte swooped down, knocking the gun partially out of his hand.

  A loud boom echoed right next to Jordan’s ear, and Darcy started to fall. Seavey closed in, grasping the gun and struggling with Bob, who started screaming, not understanding what was happening.

  Darcy fired as she went down. The bullet went through Seavey, hitting Bob, who fell on Jordan, pancaking her against the wooden timbers, his weight squashing the air out of her lungs. She wheezed, her vision blurring, her fingernails scrabbling for purchase on the wood as she struggled to crawl out from under him.

  Bob’s weight was suddenly gone and Jase was holding her tight, his arms banded in a vise around her. “Don’t you know any self-defense moves?” he growled into her hair.

  “No,” she said, holding onto him just as tightly, “but I’ll let you teach me some.”

  “A little warning would have been nice,” Darcy groused, holding her arm, blood flowing freely between her fingers.

  Tom dropped to the dock beside her. “How bad is it?” he asked urgently, pulling her fingers away from her arm. “Let me see.”

  “I don’t fucking believe it!” Darcy snarled, ignoring Tom and keeping the gun pointed at Bob, who was lying facedown on the dock, moaning and gurgling oddly. “You got me shot two times in one month?”

  “I think that was Charlotte,” Jordan sniffed, reluctant to leave Jase’s arms.

  Charlotte huffed. “I saved you!”

  “You certainly did,” Jordan agreed, giving her a weak smile over his shoulder.

  “Well done, Seavey,” Frank said grudgingly, having pulled Hattie to safety.

  Seavey made an elaborate show of dusting off his suit coat. “A life of crime can come in handy at times, can it not?”

  Jase pulled Jordan well away from Bob, then retrieved Darcy’s cuffs. He walked back over to Bob, kicking his gun into the water, then knelt to flip him over and cuff him. Tom was on the phone, calling 911.

  “You carry three guns?” Jordan asked, faintly incredulous.

  “Middle of my back,” Darcy replied, standing as two more patrol cars and an ambulance drove into the marina parking lot, sirens blaring. “Son of a bitch is still alive, more’s the pity. You complaining about me being armed to the teeth?”

  “No.” Jordan shuddered.

  “Don’t ever do this again,” Jase said fiercely, coming back to hold her. “My heart fucking stopped.”

  “But I didn’t do anything,” she protested, her voice muffled against his chest. She was fairly certain she didn’t want to quit holding onto him, either. Any time this millennium. “I had an appointment for a conference call. I had no idea.”

  “Fine. Just don’t ‘not do anything’ ever again. Got it?”

  “Shook us up real good, babe,” Tom said from beside Darcy. “When Jase got your call …” He paused and shrugged. “I’ve never seen such a laid-back guy move so fast.”

  “So I called you?” Jordan asked, finally easing back. “I thought I called Darcy.”

  “When you didn’t respond and I heard Bob’s voice in the background,” Jase explained, moving her out of the way of the medics who needed to get to Bob, “I borrowed Tom’s cell and called Darcy.”

  “How’d you find me?” Jordan asked. “GPS tracking of the cell signal?”

  Darcy rolled her eyes. “You’ve really got to quit watching crime shows. Small towns don’t have that kind of capability. I knew about your meeting with Bob this morning and put it together. My guys were at an accident out on Highway 20, so I told Jase and Tom to back me up.”

  She turned to the medics, who were starting to work on Bob. “He’s got a sucking chest wound. You two would be doing the world a favor if you didn’t try all that hard to revive him.”

  “Tsk tsk.” One of the medics winked at her without pausing. “So bloodthirsty. I had no idea, and I don’t mind telling you, I find that pretty hot.”

  Jordan let her head fall against Jase’s shoulder and waved a limp hand. “I really do need to pee now.”

  Chapter 22

  JASE drove Jordan’s Prius home because she was shaking too badly to be trusted behind the wheel. At her insistence, he and Tom then left her in the care of the ghosts and went back to nailing siding onto the library wall. Amanda had hip-hop blaring on a boom box in the backyard while she weeded. Occasionally, Tom fired up what Jordan assumed from the deafening, grinding roar could only be the sawsall. The cacophony sounded eerily, blessedly normal.

  She sat in the kitchen with everyone around her—Hattie and Charlotte at the table, Frank in his usual place, leaning against the counter behind her, and Michael Seavey standing nearby. Malachi lay at her feet where she could reach down and rub his stomach while she sipped the chamomile tea Charlotte had made for her.

  Seavey brought out a cigar, preparing to light it. She glared at him, and to her surprise, he slid it back into his suit coat pocket.

  “Pray, explain to us once again the ludicrous reason this man tried to kill you,” he ordered.

  “He thought I was going to expose a part of his past—the fact that he was related to Sam Garrett,” she said. “He had a reputation to uphold as the president of the Wooden Boat Society, and he was desperately afraid unsavory details would come out that would cost him his position or harm the charitable contributions to the society. Evidently, the board of governors gets together once a year and determines his salary based on his fund-raising efforts.”

  “And Garrett refused to tell you who he had seen shoot this great-great-nephew of mine, because the man was a family member of his?” Seavey asked.

  “That’s my supposition, yes.” Jordan took a sip of tea, which felt wonderfully soothing on her sore throat. She’d have marks where Bob’s arm had pressed against her neck for days to come, a fact that had put a grim look in Jase’s eyes.

  “Charlotte, I need to ask you more questions about the night of the shipwreck, if you don’t mind.”

  “Are we back to that?” Frank asked, exasperated.

  “Yes,” Jordan replied, determined. “By doing some more reading, and from having another chat with Garrett, I’ve figured out that Garrett was the one who lured the Henrietta Dale onto the beach that night. Captain Williams then contacted him, I believe, on the seventh, and told him about the hidden compartments and the opium. The two of them returned to the ship to salvage as much as they could.”

  She turned to Seavey. “I was always bothered by Williams’s claim that he was so devastated by losing the Henrietta Dale that he retired from service. After all, he’d only sailed her for a few hours when she went down. I know now that it was a smoke screen. He didn’t want anyone figuring out what he and Garrett were up to, and he also didn’t want anyone suspicious about where he got the funds to retire.”

  Seavey scowled. “I hired Williams because I knew he had the … traits, shall we say, to do whatever I asked of him. Nevertheless, I am surprised he turned against me so quickly.”

  “I suspect he transferred any loyalties he had for you once he found out about your murder—he probably approached Garrett after Eleanor’s article appeared in the newspaper. What continued to puzzle me, though, was that Garrett swore that he didn’t murder you.” Jordan shifted in her chair, uneasy at the thought
that Garrett might still be lurking somewhere nearby. “In fact, he’s been threatening me to make certain I told you so.”

  Seavey scowled. “That’s unacceptable—I will look into it.”

  “No!” Jordan and Hattie said it at the same time.

  “I don’t think it’s necessary,” Jordan added. “He said he’d leave me alone as long as I did as he wished.”

  “And I don’t like you taking any chances, Michael,” Hattie said. “Unless, of course, there’s simply no other way to ensure Jordan’s safety.”

  “I don’t believe I’m in any danger at this point,” Jordan assured her.

  Charlotte spoke up. “I don’t understand. If Garrett didn’t kill Michael, who did?”

  “Eleanor Canby,” Jordan said.

  Charlotte and Hattie both gasped, but Seavey nodded thoughtfully. “Of course. Because of Jesse’s death on board the Henrietta Dale.”

  “The only other possibility would have been the Customs inspector, Yardley. But unless he found the bodies of his men, he wouldn’t have had any real proof. Whereas Eleanor had the reality of her son’s death,” Jordan explained.

  “I read portions of her memoir this morning, and she clearly held Michael personally responsible for Jesse’s death.” Jordan looked at Charlotte. “Didn’t you tell me that her reporters were milling around during the rescue that night?” At Charlotte’s nod, she continued, “Do you remember who was transporting the stretchers of the three wounded men to Willoughby’s clinic? And I’m assuming they were sent to Willoughby’s?”

  Charlotte frowned. “Now that you say that, I believe only two stretchers were loaded onto the wagon and sent to Dr. Willoughby’s. Eleanor was directing that effort, because of her close connection to the doctor.”

  “And it would have been easy to simply have Seavey’s stretcher carried farther down the waterfront, to a location where someone wouldn’t pay it any heed.”

  “Dear God, yes.” Charlotte sent Seavey a chagrined look. “I was so upset, I simply wasn’t paying any attention.”

  “No one would have expected you to,” Seavey replied gently.

  “On that part of the waterfront during those years, all kinds of crimes were commonplace,” Jordan pointed out. “If, under the cover of darkness, Eleanor had paid someone to put a bullet in you and dump you under the wharf, no one would have intervened or come forward to talk to the authorities about what they saw. You were just another unsolved murder on the waterfront.

  “Eleanor would’ve felt she needed to report on your murder, because to not do so would have raised suspicion. But there were no follow-up newspaper articles, because there was no investigation. The police had nothing to go on. Your body was discovered the next morning, when one of her reporters wrote and submitted the story, which Eleanor probably reviewed and edited, just to make certain it said what she needed it to say.”

  “I had no idea that Eleanor was capable of such violence,” Hattie said quietly.

  “She probably wasn’t until Jesse’s death pushed her over the edge,” Jordan told her. “Charlotte, you said Eleanor was hysterical on the docks when she discovered that Jesse wasn’t among the survivors, correct?”

  “Yes, she was inconsolable,” Charlotte said, her expression distant as she remembered. “Two of her reporters had to drag her aside at one point, because she was screaming at Captain Williams, demanding to know why he hadn’t done more to save his passengers.”

  “I suspect she slipped into a sort of fugue state at that point, then ordered that one of her reporters get rid of Seavey,” Jordan surmised. “My bet is that if you asked her a week later about it, she would have no memory of the incident. I could try to hunt down personal papers or memoirs by her staff, to try to verify my speculations—”

  “There’s no need,” Seavey interrupted. “Indeed, I find it perfectly plausible that Eleanor murdered me.”

  “All of this—both present and past—is a result of the actions you took back then,” Frank told him.

  “Frank!” Hattie gasped. “That’s not fair!”

  He shrugged. “Perhaps not. But Seavey was engaged in illegal activities that drew Port Chatham’s less desirable elements. His decision to hire Garrett as his partner, in particular, was fateful.”

  Michael frowned pensively, then sighed. “I’m afraid I can’t argue with that reasoning.”

  Jordan studied his demeanor, growing concerned. “I think we all make decisions during our lives that lead to unintended consequences,” she pointed out. “I doubt you had any reason to believe that Garrett would be so callous. He was part of a fire crew aboard a steamer when you met him, right?” When he reluctantly nodded, she continued. “Therefore, you would have had no reason to believe that he was a cold-blooded murderer.”

  Seavey’s expression remained troubled. “Still, my judgment was faulty.”

  Jordan shivered. “Believe me, there seems to be a lot of that going around.”

  Chapter 23

  LATE that afternoon, Jordan sat on her porch swing, drinking a glass of wine and reading escapist fiction. For the moment, she’d had all the memoirs, diaries, murder, and mayhem she could take. The guys had left for the day, a peaceful silence descending in their wake. She was debating whether she could handle going to the pub, given that everyone would want a full explanation of the day’s events. For now, she was enjoying her solitude.

  “Thought I’d find you hiding out here.” Darcy’s voice pulled her out of a particularly racy sex scene that had her remembering what it had felt like to be held by Jase.

  Darcy’s right arm was bandaged and in a sling. Jordan had called the hospital earlier to check on her and had been told she’d suffered a flesh wound and would be released after treatment. Looking more than a little worn around the edges, Darcy climbed onto the porch and sat down next to her.

  Jordan handed Darcy her wineglass, which she accepted gratefully, draining half of it in one gulp before handing it back. “You doing okay?” she asked.

  Jordan nodded. “Feels a little unreal, if you want to know the truth. Like it happened to someone else. But then I get pulled into the story I’m reading, and I relax, and a flash of what it felt like to have the gun held to my head takes me by surprise.”

  Darcy stretched out her legs. “Flashbacks. You’re going to have those for a while.” She let out a huge yawn. “Bob’s out of surgery. He’ll be transported to a prison hospital as soon as he can be moved. I got him to admit he offered to take Holt out to the spit, then murdered him. My guys are executing search warrants on Bob’s house and boat. And as I predicted, Clive is out on bail, awaiting trial on the attempted robbery charge.” She gave Jordan an apologetic look. “Unless you decide to file assault charges for him shoving you down the steps at Holt’s place, he’s probably going to get probation.”

  Jordan frowned. “Michael Seavey won’t be happy about that—he thought he was rid of him.”

  Darcy grinned again, then sobered. “You came damn close today.”

  “I’m choosing to be in denial over that for a while longer. I don’t think I’m ready to face it quite yet.” Jordan turned, bracing herself in the corner of the swing so she could face Darcy. “Get this: The jerk thought I was making up all the stuff abut the ghosts. That I was telling stories and using historical documents to embellish them, in a bid to gain attention, and to convince Jase to take me to bed. Unbelievable!”

  Darcy grinned. “So since some asshole murderer accuses you of dreaming up the ghosts, you’re finally willing to admit to yourself that they are real? I like it—it’s just twisted enough thinking to really appeal. We cops are rather fond of dark humor.”

  “Oh, shut up,” Jordan grumbled.

  “The whole bit about Jase, though—that’s just crazy,” Darcy continued. “All you have to do is go knock on his door, and he’ll be glad to drag you off to bed. He would’ve done that weeks ago, if you’d been ready.”

  Jordan gave her an exasperated look.

  “He to
ok tonight off,” Darcy offered. “So he’ll be home.”

  Jordan glared.

  “Go over there and jump his bones,” her friend ordered. “Don’t force me to deliver you to his doorstep at gunpoint.”

  Jordan sighed. “He is pretty damn wonderful, isn’t he?”

  “You even have to ask?”

  * * *

  IT took her an hour to shower and dry her hair, then convince Hattie and Charlotte that she could dress for the occasion on her own. Charlotte was adamant, of course, that she had no clue how to present herself to a beau. Jordan pointed out that if she did anything out of the ordinary, Jase would see right through it—that he expected her to simply be who she was.

  Which was an outfit of stylish jeans, light makeup, and a comfortable pale blue cotton sweater that was reasonably flattering to her figure. Still, as she stood on his porch, staring at the doorbell, she realized she was nervous.

  Rubbing damp palms against her jeans, she ignored the bell and raised a fist to pound on the solid wood door. And dropped her fist back to her side. Then raised it again.

  The door swung open, and Jase stood in front of her, backlit by the chandelier in his front hall. He wore a faded blue Henley, jeans so old they were white at the pressure points, and his feet were bare. His eyes, for the first time since she’d met him, held shadows.

  In that instant, she knew she was making the right decision. She smiled, feeling the trembling of her lips.

  He studied her face silently for a long moment, and then a look of utter peace came into his eyes that she’d never seen up until now.

  Opening the door wide, he held out his hand.

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Contents

  A False Light

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3