Chapter 14
Though the blinds are open, the stucco and paneling of Mr. Sanders’s office close around me like fortress walls. Swirls in the mahogany furniture stare like eyes, judging my worthiness. Even his oyster hat on the hat rack suddenly resembles a watchful owl.
Mr. Cosmos and, to my surprise, Miss Jack are standing by a window.
The secretary looks sharp in black and white pinstripes, hair parted straight down the middle and tied back with her signature white bow.
Children used to whisper that she kept a snake locked up in her tresses, and if she didn’t wear the bow, it would slither out.
Didn’t I know how that kind of teasing felt?
Her brown eyes drift about me, never quite landing.
“Miss Lucy, I trust you are well?” asks the lawyer.
Except for this dress, which threatens to either trip me with its hem or choke me with its corset. “Yes, Mr. Cosmos. Miss Jack.”
“You may call me Alexy, and that is Eva.”
The mysterious secretary gives me a quick nod, her lips pressed flat.
Mr. Cosmos—I will have a difficult time calling him Alexy—folds his small hands and bows. His M-shaped hairline and shadowed eyes remind me of a raccoon, that clever cleaner of scraps. How much did Mr. Sanders tell him about me?
“Thank you.” I stop myself from rubbing my thumbs. “But I confess, I hardly know how or why Mr. Sanders has appointed me to this position.”
Mr. Cosmos follows my gaze to Mr. Sanders’s wide-armed desk chair. He shakes his head. “He did not share his intentions with me. Please, let us sit.” Mr. Cosmos ushers us to a group of gold damask chairs on the far side of the room closest to Eva’s office.
Eva folds gracefully into one of the armchairs, while Mr. Cosmos takes the settee against the wall. I take the second armchair, which must be where Mr. Sanders used to sit. Unlike Eva, I sit too far back and the chair threatens to swallow me.
My eyes catch on Mr. Sanders’s silver guillotine cigar-cutter now resting on the coffee table instead of the desk, a cheery reminder of how quickly heads can roll around here. Did he take a last smoke in this chair before his swim? A last pleasure before the unthinkable?
Mr. Cosmos tugs his cuffs. “Now, Lucy, I wanted to answer any questions before I leave tonight.”
The breath flies out of me. “You’re leaving so soon?” I hardly know the man, but he has been an ally, and I need all the help I can get.
“Yes. We have business in many ports, but I shall be back shortly. Eva will help you with the day-to-day of Mr. Sanders’s work. You’ll catch on in no time.”
I scoot to the edge of the chair and try to mimic Eva’s poise. “And what if I don’t? Catch on, that is.” I bite my cheek, wishing I didn’t sound so ignorant. How am I supposed to find my father’s murderer and run a business?
“You can hire someone else to step in, or even sell the business to another.”
Selling seems like a good idea, though what would happen to the employees?
Just days ago I was ready to leave them all behind.
Now it’s not so simple. Cookie has lived on Orcas Island half her life, after being plucked off Lummi Island and stuck in a Tacoma boarding school when she was fifteen.
Where would selling Nowhere leave her? The schoolmistress?
Father Pinnyhorne? At least Koa has somewhere to go.
I try to stop clenching my jaw before it locks.
“Good news is, the Zephyr and the four more to follow for Mr. Zephyr’s sons will keep us fed for another year at least. You’ll have plenty of time to learn the operations.”
The half-completed Specialty in the shipyard slides into my consciousness. Each Specialty takes a good three months to build. If the shipyard’s busy, the rest of the estate stays busy too. “But the Brain Trust made it clear they want me gone.”
Eva’s gaze remains firmly affixed to her lap. Perhaps she wants me gone too. It must be a shock, having to answer to someone so beneath her.
Mr. Cosmos cracks his wrist. “Sveyn and Boots are all shot and no powder. They can’t invalidate the will. Unless, of course, you had a hand in Mr. Sanders’s death, under the slayer statute.”
The term drags a rusty nail across my skin. “The, er, slayer statute?”
“Yes. If you kill someone, you can’t inherit. You didn’t kill Mr. Sanders, did you?” Mr. Cosmos’s eyes suddenly become hooks.
“Of course not.” I quickly push the words out, the purple sheen of Sveyn’s face clouding my thoughts.
“Well then, you need not worry,” Mr. Cosmos replies.
“Just out of curiosity, what would happen if I were… disqualified?”
“Then the will would be invalid, and the others would not receive their bequests.”
So Sveyn, Boots, Mr. Kagaoka, and Eva each need me cleared. Unless, of course, one of them is the real killer.
“The law would then follow the rules of intestate succession, starting with the closest blood relative,” Mr. Cosmos continues smoothly.
Nash. Of course. How different his life might have been were it not for me. How much does it rankle him that the girl who gutted the fish has inherited what should’ve gone to him?
Yates wheels in the tea service, pocketing the cigar-cutter before he lays down his tray.
As he pours from the Chinese teapot, I catch the edge of his frown.
The memory of his angry whispering in the lobby this morning tumbles into mind.
My stewardship still chafes him, clearly.
Or is there more to it than that? Does he resent me for my role in the sending away of his pinochle partner, Shimmelfen?
“I’ve drafted a statement for you to inform our employees of your new role and assure them that leadership is intact,” says Eva with the neutral tone of one delivering the tide reports.
The words send a horrified shock through me. “Me? Assure them? All of them?” Hundreds of eyes watching me. Eyes that will plainly see that if leadership has been given to the person who used to make the meat pies, it is not intact.
“Yes.” She pulls from her dress a pocket watch that has been secured with ribbon and pin.
“I have taken the liberty of calling everyone to the great hall. Of course, it is your choice how to proceed.” Eva lifts her gaze to me, not meeting my eyes.
She is a soldier awaiting a command from a general she does not trust.
Mr. Cosmos stirs sugar into his cup and says lightly, “Mr. Sanders always said: Sometimes you have to tell people what they should think before they start doing it themselves.”
Mr. Sanders liked his privacy, but he also knew the value of a spectacle. The great hall has hosted an array of notable occasions, from the governor’s wedding to the launch of Boeing’s first seaplane, but never one quite so full of dread.
A showstopping whale jawbone hangs from the high ceiling, ready to swallow the whole room—tables carved from giant sequoias, wreaths of pine cones on the walls, support columns of stacked stones. Wood floors clatter under agitated feet, and a restless murmur rises like a tide.
From the podium, the Garden of Tranquility and the sound beyond look unreachable through towering glass doors.
I suddenly wish I could be out searching for Shadow and Scull.
Sure, they could send me to Neptune’s arms with one slash of their tails, but they are still less terrifying than five hundred pairs of eyes fixed on me: washerwomen, metalworkers, secretaries, gardeners, carpenters, spit-boys, fetch-boys, scullery maids, bricklayers, engineers, sailmakers, and so on, faces filled with surprise and suspicion.
Did one of them do Mr. Sanders in? Shimmelfen may not have been the only disgruntled employee.
Cookie’s round face under her mobcap is a beacon among waves of mostly black and gray uniforms. But Dora, next to her, looks as gloomy as a gathering tempest.
Eva checks her pocket watch, then hands me a brass speaking trumpet.
The instrument feels both cold and slick, and when I put my lips to the speaking hole, I inhale a metallic tang.
Eva gives me a reassuring nod, then stands to one side of the room next to Sveyn and Boots—who are no doubt here to enjoy the hanging.
The ink on my speech has begun to run. “Hello—ahem.” My voice squeaks.
The murmuring dies. A figure outlined in sunlight slips through the double doors. His cowboy hat is a dead giveaway: Koa. He signals another Rifle to circulate the room. Like herd dogs, the presence of the Rifles always calms nerves.
Cookie prods me with her gaze. Get cooking or get out of the kitchen.
I force breath into my lungs, feeling Lydia’s dress squeeze me across the chest. “Good people of Nowhere, as some of you might have heard, Mr. Sanders has seen fit to leave his estate in my hands.”
Shocked reactions roll across the audience, building to agitated chatter. The baskets of pine cones suddenly look like hand grenades ready for lobbing. Eva rolls her wrist at me. Keep talking.
I press the trumpet tighter to my lips. “I would like to assure you—”
A washerwoman with a doughy face grabs at her mobcap. “Why her? We’re doomed!”
“It’s that birthmark, I tell you—she cast a spell.”
Flames lick at my throat, though I should be used to those taunts by now.
Did my father endure the same? I keep my eyes on my page and read: “ ‘It is with a heavy heart…’ ” Curse my sweating fingers, which have left a smudge on the page.
Tongues begin clicking, so I skip over the smudge and push on.
“ ‘Our benefactor, who saw us through difficult times, like the drafting of our young men—’ ”
Restless chatter starts up again. At least my plight seems to have improved my nemesis Dora’s outlook, who clicks her nails together with glee.
“The Zephyr’s been cut!” announces another voice. “Buyer won’t take a ship without Mr. Sanders to christen it.”
A chorus of gasps that includes my own sucks out more of the available oxygen in the room.
When did that happen? Neither Sveyn, fidgeting with his retractable tape measure, nor Boots, hefting around his steamer-trunk expression, bothers to deny the charge.
They knew, and they didn’t tell me. The Zephyr and the four more to follow for Mr. Zephyr’s sons will keep us fed for another year at least, Mr. Cosmos reassured me.
Without the sale, how long will we last?
“What’s to become of our jobs?” shrills another.
A fellow with yellow hair like a flare jumps to his feet. “I got a baby on the way and I need a square paycheck, hear?” He might not have done in Mr. Sanders, but he certainly looks like he wants to kill me.
My head sinks, heavy as an anchor. I find not a single friendly spot on which to settle my gaze.
Even Koa is casting me a grumpy look. I can’t help remembering his offer this morning.
Koa is escape and safety. But running away now seems cowardly.
Plus, I cannot seek safety if I want to find answers.
Setting down the trumpet, I flex my back and make myself taller. “Mr. Sanders often said, ‘A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.’ Whatever the future holds, a Sanders ship is built to go the distance.”
No one cheers. Yet no one throws a pine cone, either.
It’s a poor standard by which to judge a performance, but it’ll have to do for now.