Heart vs. Humbug

by MJ Rodgers

  Her sophisticated air and sense of style also lent itself to the image of her descending a circular staircase in a stately English Tudor in the Queen Anne district.

  And with very little effort, he could also see that beautifully disciplined, yoga-taught body walking through a state-of-the-art exclusive retreat on Mercer Island, full of eccentric artistic angles and mysterious hidden rooms.

  With all of these divergent concepts in his mind, Brett was certain he had covered all the contingencies. Until she directed him to park at the edge of Lake Union, just north of Seattle, and gestured for him to follow her barefoot lead across the gangplank and into the structure she called home.

  Even he could hear the reverberating incredulity in his tone over the beat of the driving wind and rain. “You can’t live on a ferryboat.”

  She slipped a key from beneath an old-fashioned lantern lighting the entrance and turned to flash him a smile. “Come on, you’re getting wet.”

  He followed her inside, once again shaking his head to realize that no matter how hard he tried to anticipate her, she continued to surprise him.

  Once the door was closed on the storm outside, she switched on the lights and Brett found himself in one large room, supercharged with incredible color. Every inch of deck and wall panel had been splashed with a different, bold, luminous paint—orchid pink, cool mint, hot lemon, verdant turquoise, wet orange, ribald red, plush purple and a dozen more shades and hues too numerous to take in.

  The portholes were covered in striped silk venetian blinds. The deeply pillowed sofa, chairs and ottoman were vivid limes and puce and gorgeous green plaid. He had the distinct feeling he had just stepped into a rainbow.

  And completing the fanciful impression—there, in the middle of the deck rising to the ceiling—sat a fifteen-foot natural pine Christmas tree, completely decked out in gold.

  From the dozen wrapped presents beneath its thick branches, to its tinsel, shining ornaments, lights and glistening crown of a star at the top, the tree sparkled with the Midas touch—a fitting pot of Christmas gold at the center of this riotous rainbow.

  “Have you changed a leprechaun into a Christmas elf?” Brett asked.

  She laughed as she took his damp suit jacket and hung it next to hers on wrought-iron hooks affixed to the wall next to the door. She opened a small closet door and disappeared inside for a moment. When she reappeared, her blouse and slip had been exchanged for a red-and-white Christmas robe with reindeer prancing on it, and she had a pair of red velvet slippers on her feet. She flipped a switch and a group of happy voices began to sing “Deck the Halls” through hidden speakers.

  She surveyed the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree with a smile. “It’s impossible not to love this season, isn’t it?”

  “Is it?”

  “Come on into the galley, Mr. Humbug, and we’ll explore that lamentable attitude while I fix us something to eat.”

  The “galley” turned out to be a very modern maritime-green-colored kitchen, the counters of which were embedded with colorful sand and shells and gave the impression of the shallow bottom of a clear sea pool. Above the center island, between the fragrant wreaths of fresh pine and holly, hung copper pots so shiny, Brett could see his reflection in them.

  He sat on one of the burnt orange bar stools as he watched her take a bottle of chilled white wine out of the refrigerator door and a corkscrew out of the drawer. She set them in front of him along with a terra-cotta bowl full of fresh-smelling nuts.

  Brett popped a few of the nuts into his mouth and began to twist the corkscrew into the wine bottle.

  “Mr. Humbug, you can’t tell me that as a kid you didn’t sometimes hanker for the kind of Christmas all your friends were celebrating?”

  “Maybe, when I was very young, I might have wished that one Christmas morning I’d walk into the living room and find a decorated tree with a present underneath it for me.”

  “Aha! I knew it. What kind of a present did you want?”

  “Something different, special.”

  “Like that expensive diamond you now own?”

  “So, A.J. told you about Midnight Magic. Yes, I suppose it qualifies. But my parents were right, Octavia. Things don’t come by wishing. They come by working hard for them, as I worked hard to get that diamond.”

  “Why that diamond? What makes it so special?”

  “Its blue sparkle is dazzling. It’s truly a rare beauty. Tell me how you came to live on a ferryboat.”

  She pulled some eggs and cream out of the refrigerator and lifted a large sherbet-colored mixing bowl off a shelf before returning to the counter.

  “I was looking for a place on the lake when I drove by this sign that read For Sale—My Broken Heart. I simply had to take a look.”

  “Yes, I can imagine you would. Heart is the name of this ship, I take it?”

  She whisked the eggs as she answered.

  “Actually, it was christened Full of Heart when it served as a foot ferry between some of the small islands in the Sound several decades ago. It was given that name because no matter what the weather, this little ship carried its commuters faithfully back and forth. I fell in love with it at first sight, although the sign had told the truth. It was quite broken, from stem to stern. Still, the best rewards come from tackling the greatest challenges, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, and that should worry me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m finding myself agreeing with you lately on things, and that has to be a bad sign.”

  She laughed again. He really liked hearing that deep, robust, full-of-life laugh.

  He popped the cork on the wine bottle and got up to get a couple of glasses that sat atop one of her cabinets. It felt good to be here with her on this rocking, rainbow ferry. Entirely too good.

  “What is your home like?” she asked as she reached for a fresh orange sitting in a bowl and began to grate off some rind.

  “It sits on the top of a hill in Bellevue, with windows everywhere and a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree view.”

  “Mountain climbing and a home on a hill. You obviously like being on top of things. I bet this house of yours is all no-nonsense slate floors and stainless-steel cabinets and sinks.”

  “Was that an astute guess or have you sneaked over there and taken a look?”

  “With you having me watched every second? Now, you know the answer to that one.”

  He smiled as he poured them both some wine. He set her glass next to her as she added Grand Marnier, cream, sugar, vanilla and some grated orange rind to the whisked eggs.

  He raised his wineglass for a toast. “To humbugs everywhere.”

  She chuckled as she clicked her glass to his before taking a sip. Then she set the wineglass aside and resumed mixing the ingredients she had placed into the bowl.

  Brett appreciated the refreshing, delicate wine, a light pinot chardonnay.

  “I’ve been thinking about who attacked Scroogen,” she said, surprising him with her sudden return to business.

  “The more I learn about John and Constance and Douglas, the more I like them,” she continued. “Imagining any one of them could do this thing is very difficult.”

  “But you do imagine one of them doing it?”

  “Douglas.”

  “Why Douglas? Of the three, I would have thought him the least likely.”

  “On the contrary. He’s obviously the most likely.”

  Brett helped himself to a few more nuts and took another sip of wine. “How do you figure that?”

  “Because Douglas strikes me as the kind of man who would not back down from a fight.”

  “All right. I admit I see that in him. So?”

  “So think about what happened. Douglas was the one who raced out of the flooding community center to find out what was going on. He was the one who rushed up to us later with the news that Scroogen’s sewer line had been opened and that the firemen had declared it to be deliberate sabotage.”

&
nbsp; “So?”

  “So then Scroogen comes barging into the midst of the seniors and spouts off about fining them for something he did.”

  “Careful, Octavia. We still don’t have any evidence that Scroogen was the one who opened that sewer line.”

  “Still, you have to agree he was the mostly likely suspect in the minds of the seniors there that night. So here in their midst is suddenly the man they believe to have caused this terrible blight on their beautiful center. And the only one who strikes a blow back is Mab.”

  “Probably only because I got Scroogen out of there fast.”

  Octavia began to dip both sides of some sliced French bread into the liquid she had mixed in her bowl and was transferring the soaked pieces to a dish. She wiped her hands on a paper towel before turning back to Brett.

  “You may have saved Scroogen more smacks. But the point is, Mab’s the only one who retaliated. Now, how do you think that makes a big hulking man like Douglas Twitch feel?”

  “Like maybe he should have been the one to do it.”

  “Right. And I think he did do it the next day. It would have taken a big man to push Scroogen to the ground.”

  “Not necessarily. If Dole were walking and someone pushed him even lightly, it could have been enough to cause him to lose his balance and fall. Besides, you said Douglas is strong and you’re right. If he had knocked Scroogen to the ground, he would have struck a much harder blow to his shoulder.”

  “Unless he had known it was only necessary to scrape the skin to get the monkshood poisoning into Scroogen’s system.”

  “Deliberate premeditation with something as unlikely as monkshood?”

  Octavia paused as she set the counter with lemon linen napkins and real silverware.

  “Why do you say ‘as unlikely’?” she asked.

  “Well, can you really see Douglas in some field, carefully collecting the poisonous leaves and roots of some monkshood and spreading its aconitine and aconine on your grandmother’s gardening tool so he can slash Scroogen’s shoulder with it?”

  “Granted, he does seem more the type to punch someone in the jaw than to poison them. So, you still think it was Constance?”

  “Yes. But I agree with what you said earlier. It’s hard to suspect any one of these people, particularly now that I’ve had a chance to talk with them. Maybe part of the problem is because all our suspects are over seventy, so we’re working with a bias.”

  Octavia’s lips pursed in thought as she leaned down to get some Canadian bacon out of the refrigerator. She placed it into a skillet to heat and put a container of maple syrup on the side of the stove to warm before turning back to Brett.

  “I think my biggest problem is believing one of them intended to frame Mab for the crime.”

  “Yes, Zane’s background checks on all the seniors, Mab included, show they’ve been good friends for many years. The only slightly shady part of any of their pasts is that thing with John and his wife. I’m sure A.J. told you the police had their suspicions that he performed a mercy killing.”

  “Even if it were true, that hardly seems to have relevance here. If one is harboring resentment toward Mab for some reason, that reason has been well hidden. So why the frame?”

  “If we had the answer to that, Octavia, maybe we’d have the answer to everything.”

  “Well, if the guilty party won’t come forward, we’re just going to have to find out who it is and expose him or her.”

  “Any ideas on how to do that?”

  “Something will occur to me. It always does.”

  He chuckled at the assurance in her tone. “Always?”

  “Why, yes. Don’t you find that as long as you believe in something hard enough, it’s bound to come true?”

  “On the contrary. I know if I work hard enough for something, I can make it happen.”

  “Same philosophy.”

  “Is it?”

  “Certainly. You believe your hard work will pay off so it does. I believe my intuition will give me a trail to follow to our killer and so it will. Hard work is the phraseology you use. Belief is what I use. They both define our expectations that, in turn, determine what we will both receive.”

  “That sounds a little like the philosophy I heard Mab expound upon when she did that radio program on sex for seniors.”

  “Well, she was the one who taught me that our attitude and expectations are what have the capacity to make our lives either magnificent or mundane.”

  She placed the soaked bread into a skillet she had heated. In minutes she had cooked them to a golden brown. She slipped them onto two plates, dusted them with confectioners’ sugar and garnished each with a fresh slice of orange. Then she served the Grand Marnier French toast right there on the kitchen counter with the cooked Canadian bacon and warm maple syrup.

  Brett had never tasted a better meal. And she seemed to have prepared it so effortlessly. Like she seemed to do most everything. As he was finishing his wine, she slipped the dishes into the dishwasher and wiped the counters clean.

  “Would you like a tour of the rest of my Heart?”

  He smiled at the phraseology of her invitation, set his wineglass down and slipped off his bar stool.

  He followed her up a spiral staircase off the kitchen to the top deck and another room, one end of which was curved into a series of bow-shaped windows.

  Brett recognized this room had once been the observation deck and probably offered a view of water and land during the day. Now night lay like a black curtain behind the windows, turning the icy rain beating down on the panes into flickering crystal lights as the ferry rocked gently in the wind.

  The walls behind the riotous-colored casual furniture were filled with books. Brett read the jackets of a few.

  “These are mostly romances and mysteries.”

  “Naturally. The law books are at work where they belong.”

  Brett smiled as he turned away from the shelves. A double set of doors led toward the stern. He pointed toward them.

  “And behind there?”

  She preceded him to the door, one of those special smiles drawing back her lips. “Come see.”

  He expected another room of riotous color. Of course, since that was what he expected, it wasn’t what he got.

  Suddenly he was stepping into a room of pure white. From the plush carpet at his feet, to the delicate wallpaper, to the dresser in the corner, to the sheer curtains on either side of the portholes, to the strings of twinkling lights shaped like a Christmas tree that draped from the ceiling over the swinging bed—everything was pure white.

  Brett headed directly toward that swinging bed within the streamers of twinkling lights. He studied the chains holding it in place as a climber would, to see how well they were embedded in the ceiling. He gave one a tug to test its tensile strength. He ran his fingers over the pure white comforter that was obviously synthetic and yet felt as soft as a snow rabbit’s fur. He pressed fingers into the mattress and knew it had to be filled with down to be so light.

  She had moved beside him. He could feel her. Smell her. Sense her in every excited cell of his being. Tantalizing. Tempting. Tormenting.

  He knew he should leave now. He knew he would not.

  “Why a suspended bed?” he asked.

  “A suspended bed is the only practical kind on a small ship. Particularly on a night like this when the wind is up.”

  She circled around him, stepped through the strings of twinkling lights, sat on the bed, slipped off her slippers and tucked her legs beneath her. The bed swung ever so slightly as the ship tipped back and forth. Her smooth, liquid-rich voice vibrated against his eardrums like a siren’s song.

  “A suspended bed acts like a pendulum, seeking balance and keeping you level. A fixed bed couldn’t adjust to the movement of the water beneath you, and you might find yourself rolling onto the floor if the vessel lists too far to one side.”

  He was listening to her explanation. But mostly he was just enjoying the v
ision of her lying on this soft bed of white, surrounded by the twinkling lights, her flame-red hair afire around her face, her eyes a sparkling promise of a different kind of blue midnight magic beneath the stars.

  Brett had always thought nothing could match the sparkle of his blue-white diamond. But looking into this woman’s eyes tonight, he knew he’d been wrong.

  She was so damn stunning she took his breath away. His heart beats had begun to accelerate like piston strokes gathering speed. He wanted her so much his muscles had tightened into iron cords throughout his body. His words sounded raw and husky through his throat.

  “So this bed that swings from the ceiling is practical?”

  “Try it out,” she taunted in that damn liquid brandy voice of hers, her eyes staring boldly, beautifully, straight into his.

  This time Brett had no battle to wage—only need that vibrated through his veins, hot and heady. If she believed herself to be safe from him now, she was wrong.

  He shed his shirt, tie and shoes in less than a second. Then he lowered himself to her. He heard the sharp intake of her breath as their bodies touched and blended. Hers was as soft and giving as the bed. His was as hard and ungiving as the chains that held it in place.

  He stared deeply into her eyes and let her clearly read the intent in his. Then he took her lips as he took his mountains, as a conqueror must.

  * * *

  HIS KISS THIS TIME was the taste of wine and warm maple syrup. The hard possessive pressure of his lips sent shivers right down to the soles of Octavia’s feet.

  She knew instantly that this wasn’t going to be like anything she had experienced before.

  There was a dangerous demand in this man’s eyes that was echoed in his kiss and in the firm, strong hands that now very deliberately and competently were untying her robe.

  What was it? What was making his touch feel so different? What was it that was igniting her senses and making her nerve endings sizzle?

  The answer quivered through her in a wave of want so strong it left her dizzy. Brett Merlin wasn’t just about to make love to her. He was about to possess her.

  She should have understood immediately what that gleam in those silver-black eyes had represented.