The Ghost from the Sea

by Anna J. McIntyre

  “I’m a little curious, Jolene. The historical society was organized, what, five, six years ago? After you left town.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “No point, I guess. Just that technically speaking you’re a relatively new member of the group and Danielle’s probably been a member longer than you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Jolene snapped. “I’m a Frederickport pioneer, and she’s nothing more than a Californian interloper.”

  With a shrug he said, “Either way, this issue you have with her is really a matter to address with the historical society, not with me.”

  “I’m not here to discuss the historical society. As I stated a moment ago, I’m here to discuss the jewelry your men discovered onboard that boat. I’m here to reclaim my property.”

  “Your property?”

  “Of course. My great-uncle and his wife were onboard the Eva Aphrodite. They were among those who were slaughtered by Walt Marlow’s henchmen—”

  “We really have nothing to prove he was responsible for the murders.”

  “I know about the diary written by my great-aunt’s dear friend. After all, I’m on the board of the historical society. Anything that belonged to my great-aunt rightfully belongs to me.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because in my great-uncle’s will he left everything to his brother—my grandfather. Which would include his wife’s jewelry. And since I’m my grandfather’s sole heir, it belongs to me.”

  “We’re not even sure where that jewelry came from. Some might argue since the boat belonged to Walt Marlow, then his heir, which would indirectly be Danielle Boatman, would be the rightful owner of whatever was on the boat.”

  Jolene laughed. “You know very well treasure trove laws don’t work that way in Oregon.”

  “Always the attorney’s wife,” Edward said with a smile.

  “However, treasure trove laws would not apply in this case, since I’m the rightful owner of my great-aunt’s jewelry,” she reminded.

  “Perhaps you need to read this morning’s newspaper, because you obviously don’t have all the information. The jewelry we found onboard wasn’t left there when the boat went down.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve already spoken to Aaron, seen the photographs.”

  “Aaron?” the chief frowned.

  “Aaron Michaels, he’s the jeweler you had look at the pieces you found, isn’t he?”

  “I thought you didn’t read this morning’s newspaper.”

  “Aaron is an old family friend. I happened to have dinner with him and his wife last night, and he showed me the pictures he took of the jewelry recovered off the Eva Aphrodite. I recognized several of the pieces. They match pictures I have of my great-aunt wearing them.”

  “That may be true, but we’re still investigating how they got onboard.”

  Jolene stood up. “This is ridiculous. For whatever reason, that jewelry was overlooked by whoever murdered those poor people, and it was left onboard.”

  “No Jolene. The box we found onboard—the one with the jewelry in it—it wasn’t left on the Eva Aphrodite when the boat went down over 90 years ago. The box was purchased at Walmart; it still had a price tag on the bottom. I’m fairly certain, Walmart wasn’t around back then.”

  With a frown, Jolene sat back down. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  The chief shrugged. “None of this does.”

  Jolene sat quietly for a moment; her elbows resting on the chair’s arms, her hands folded together, as her knuckles lightly rapped the point of her chin. After a moment, she froze and looked up to the chief. “Danielle Boatman, she put that box on the boat.”

  “That’s impossible. We had security down there; no one but authorized personnel had access to the boat.”

  “It could have been placed there before you posted security down at the beach. Perhaps even before the boat was brought up on shore.”

  Curiously eyeing Jolene, the chief leaned back in his chair. “What are you suggesting?”Abruptly, Jolene stood. “This all makes sense! It’s been nothing more than a publicity stunt. Why did Brianna Boatman have to leave her estate to that woman? She has brought nothing but trouble to Frederickport!”

  “Jolene, if you’re suggesting Danielle is in someway responsible for bringing the wreckage of the Eva Aphrodite to our shore, that’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it? There wasn’t a storm that night. Someone had to have hauled that monstrosity here. Everyone says the boat looks like it’s been under water. Chances are, she knew where it went down. For all we know, she found Walt Marlow’s diary when she found the Missing Thorndike.”

  “I never heard about Walt Marlow having a diary.”

  “Don’t be obtuse, Edward. There was someway she knew where the Eva Aphrodite went down, and the only explanation is Walt Marlow’s diary, since he was obviously the one responsible for murdering those people and sinking his own yacht. The jewelry you found onboard was probably hidden all these years with the Missing Thorndike. Her big mistake was not being more careful in selecting a box to store the stolen pieces in when placing them back onboard, obviously for you to find.”

  “And how exactly did Danielle manage to bring up a sunken ship and haul it here?”

  “She has the financial resources. And obviously, she managed to do it. The proof is sitting on that beach, down the street from Marlow House!”

  The chief stood. “That’s an imaginative tale you’ve cooked up, Jolene. But seriously, something like that would cost a fortune to pull off and I don’t see how she’d ever recoup her expenses from the bed and breakfast. How many rooms would she have to rent out to even cover something like that?”

  Wagging her right index finger at the chief, Jolene ranted, “Danielle Boatman isn’t doing this for the money. She already has all the money she needs. She’s doing it for the attention. That woman is nothing but trouble! She destroyed poor Clarence. He was a good man. I don’t believe for a moment he meant to hurt anyone, but Danielle drove him to it with all her publicity shenanigans, beginning with conspiring with her cousin to run off with the Missing Thorndike. If it wasn’t for her, he wouldn’t have been sent to prison, and he wouldn’t have been murdered. She’s the one to blame!”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “Why didn’t your guests take their suitcases with them?” Walt asked Danielle when he appeared in the parlor, Jack by his side.

  Danielle, who sat at the small desk jotting a quick note in her ledger, looked up. Setting her pen atop the open page, she said, “Because they aren’t checking out until noon. They went to do some more sightseeing.”

  “We expected to see you before now,” Walt said as he took a seat on the sofa. Jack remained standing, his attention on the flat screen television on the wall. It was turned on, but there was no sound.

  “I’m afraid Stella Sterling is a little demanding. I swear, every time I headed for the attic, she seemed to appear out of nowhere and needed something. I was going to go up to the attic when I finished here, but since you’re both here now…” Danielle closed the ledger and looked from Walt to Jack, and back to Walt.

  “Jack and I had a long talk, and while he can’t remember how he was killed, we know he didn’t steal from our business. I was wrong all these years.”

  No longer studying the television, Jack wandered over toward Walt, taking a seat on the chair facing him. “I understand how it must have looked to you.”

  “I saw Emma Jackson last night,” Danielle blurted out.

  “She was here?” Walt asked.

  “Who’s Emma Jackson?” Jack asked.

  “In a matter of speaking.” Crossing her arms over her chest, Danielle leaned back in her chair. She looked at Walt. “It was a dream hop. She took me to see something—like you did when you took me to the speakeasy.”

  “Who’s Emma Jackson?” Jack repeated his question.

  “She’s a woman who recently passed away, just shy of her 107th birthday. Ba
ck when you were alive, she worked at the Bluebell Diner.” Danielle explained.

  Jack frowned. “I don’t remember an Emma who worked there.”

  “She was a colored girl,” Walt explained.

  “We don’t say colored anymore,” Danielle reminded.

  Walt shrugged. “Sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “I know.” Danielle sighed. “It’s just that, well, I hate to bring all this up now, since you two seem to have resolved some issues. And considering all this happened almost 90 years ago, does it really matter anymore?”

  “Does what matter anymore?” Walt asked.

  “Emma showed me an encounter Jack had at the Bluebell Diner, just a week before the Eva Aphrodite went missing.”

  “What are you talking about?” Jack asked.

  “Jack, maybe you didn’t take that money, but it looks like you helped—well, for a lack of better word—pirates board the Eva Aphrodite.”

  “Pirates? What are you talking about, pirates?” Jack said angrily.

  “What did you see, Danielle?” Walt asked.

  Danielle let out another sigh and then proceeded to tell Jack and Walt about her dream hop the night before.

  When she was done, Jack shook his head in denial. “No Danielle. I didn’t help those men board the Eva Aphrodite. For one thing, the next day I paid them off and told them to stay away from the yacht. She was off limits. I told them they were crazy if they thought I’d sit by and let them steal from our passengers. I’d repaid my debt, so they had to keep their hands off.”

  “Who did you owe money to?” Walt demanded.

  “I don’t want to talk about it. It doesn’t matter now.”

  “Gambling. Right? You were gambling again?” Walt accused.

  “I said, I don’t want to talk about it. And I paid them off.”

  “Where did you get the money?” Danielle asked.

  “I sold my car,” Jack explained.

  “Who did you sell it to?” Walt asked.

  “Some guy in Portland.”

  “So that’s where your car went. When you disappeared, and we couldn’t find your car, it was because it had been sold?” Walt asked.

  “It that’s true, then why were you onboard the Eva Aphrodite? Why were you killed?” Danielle asked.

  “I told you Danielle, I don’t remember,” Jack snapped. “My last memory is walking to the motel. Walking, because I no longer had a car. The guy I’d sold it to had just picked it up. My next memory was onboard the Eva Aphrodite. But I was dead by then.”

  “I thought you said you’d paid off the debt the day after they approached you in the Bluebell. But now you say you sold your car a week later, before you disappeared,” she asked.

  Jack shook his head. “No. The guy I sold it to, he couldn’t pick the car up until the following week, but I told him I had to have the money right away. I was giving him a good deal, so he paid me upfront.”

  Bill Jones strolled into Adam Nichols’ office, clipboard in hand. He didn’t knock on the door or wait for an invitation to enter. Instead, the handyman walked straight to Adam, tossing the clipboard onto the desk before plopping down on a chair.

  Stretching out in a yawn, Bill crossed his work boots at the ankle before nodding to the clipboard on the desk. “Finished. There’s the invoices.”

  Snatching the clipboard off the desk, Adam flipped through its pages. “Did you have lunch already?”

  “Yeah, I grabbed something at the drive through. I wanted to finish listening to Paul’s radio show.”

  “Anything interesting today?”

  “You didn’t listen?” Bill asked.

  Adam shook his head. “No, what was it about?”

  Bill sat up straighter. “Paul was interviewing Ben Smith from the museum. It was about that guy they found in a trunk on the Eva Aphrodite.”

  “I read about that in the newspaper this morning. Looks like it was Walt Marlow’s business partner. Jack something. Grandma told me everyone assumed the guy had taken off with Marlow’s money. Although I guess it belonged to both of them, they were business partners.”

  “Did you know that money he supposedly ran off with would be worth millions today?”

  Adam tossed the clipboard back down on the desk. “Yeah, Grandma told me that. It’s because it was mostly gold coins.”

  Bill leaned forward. “And it was never recovered.”

  “Just because we don’t know what the guy did with the money, doesn’t mean it’s still out there.”

  “Ben was talking about the missing money on Paul’s radio show. He speculated Marlow’s business partner probably had it with him when he went onboard the boat, and whoever killed him and the others took the money.”

  Adam shrugged. “Likely scenario.”

  Bill grinned. “But what if he didn’t?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Why would he take all that money with him on the boat? According to Ben, back then it was estimated to be a couple thousand dollars. According to the stories, he kept the money stashed somewhere.”

  “I know. Grandma’s father told her the reason Marlow knew his partner had ripped him off was because both the partner and the money went missing at the same time.”

  “Or had it?” Ben grinned.

  Adam frowned. “What are you getting at?”

  “Ben mentioned the dead guy was reportedly renting a room from your great-grandfather at the time he went missing.”

  “So?”

  “So, if he didn’t have the money with him, then it means he left it somewhere. If he was living with your great-grandfather, then maybe that money is stashed somewhere in your grandmother’s house!”

  Adam chuckled and shook his head. “Nahh, there’s no way. Like I said, Marlow already checked the place where his partner usually kept the money. And yes, it was at the house across the street from Marlow House. But it wasn’t there then, so I don’t see why it would be now.”

  Bill stood up. “Come on, Adam. This isn’t like you. Just because Marlow didn’t find it in the place his partner normally stashed the loot, doesn’t mean it wasn’t somewhere else in that house.”

  Adam shook his head. “No, I’ve been through that house.”

  “Bull. You haven’t looked under all the floorboards and in walls.”

  “So what do you suggest, I give Ian the required 24-hour notice that we need to get into the house, and then start ripping out walls?”

  “It sure beats breaking into the place like we did at Marlow House. Hell, the house is yours. You have every right to go through it. Who can stop you?”

  Adam stood up. “I know it’s not there. Trust me, Bill, if there was any chance the money was there, I’d be personally knocking down walls.”

  When Bill finally left the office fifteen minutes later, Adam stood by the window and watched his old high school buddy and handyman drive off in the truck.

  A slow smile played on Adam’s face. “No Bill old pal, this time I’m going on my own. If that money’s still there, it’s mine.”

  Kurt Jefferson pulled his vehicle over to the side of the road and parked his car. A moment later, he held his cellphone by his ear, waiting for his party to answer.

  Instead of a friendly greeting, she said, “I thought I told you not to call me anymore.”

  “Did you listen to the radio show this morning?” he asked. “They were talking about the dead guy they found in the trunk?”

  “Yeah, so what?”

  “You have that gold, don’t you?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Come on, I also read the article in this morning’s newspaper. If you got that jewelry off the boat, then it means you got the gold too.”

  “You know I was never on the Eva Aphrodite. I don’t know how to dive.”

  “Okay, so whoever you hired before me. Or did they keep it for themselves?”

  “You were the only one I ever hired. I don’t know anything about any gold,”
she insisted.

  “That means you had what was in that box all the time. According to the article, those pieces match what some of the passengers were wearing. The big mystery they’re trying to figure out is, why they were found in a box that hadn’t existed back when the boat went down. But we know the answer to that, don’t we?”

  “What do you want?” she snapped.

  “I’ve been doing a little research on you. I think I know how you happened to have what was in that box. I think I might also know why you had me put the box back on the boat. And I’m pretty sure you have the missing gold coins.”

  “I don’t care what you think you know. I don’t have any gold coins.”

  “I hope for your sake you do.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I told you, I’ve been doing my own research. Amazing what one can uncover by asking the right questions, looking under the right rocks.”

  “You don’t make any sense. I’m done now.”

  “Don’t hang up, you’ll regret it. Not unless you want everyone to know your secret.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “You still there?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I’m not going to be greedy. I want to see it first, and then we’ll divide it up. Don’t worry, I’ll leave you plenty. Considering you were willing to dump those jewels on the bottom of the ocean, I don’t see why you’ll care.”

  “I told you, I don’t have any gold coins!”

  “Why should I believe you?” he asked.

  “Because if I had them, I would have had you put a second box on that boat.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Ben from the museum called Danielle just minutes after Stella and Rowland Strickland checked out that Monday afternoon. He told her the display case for the emerald had been installed earlier than they had expected, and she was welcome to come down and have a look.

  “Should I bring the emerald with me?” she asked.

  “That would be wonderful, if you’d be willing to do that. I have to admit I can’t wait to see how it’s going to look. Of course, Friday’s the official opening of the display.”