Chapter 16 #2
To one side of my sandstone bench, a crop of honey mushrooms, with their smooth and floppy caps, invites me to touch them.
Mr. Sanders was a fan of fungi, once telling me that though man might rule the world, it is the fungi that have the power of transformation, decomposing so that life can begin anew.
World-builders, he called them. I wish I could talk to him again.
Only four days have passed since his death, but it feels like four lifetimes.
But the thought of visiting his head on Chapel Hill churns poison in my gut.
“How long’s he staying?” Koa slips into the seat next to me, making my heart fumble. He tosses his hat onto the bench and stretches his back. The flaps of his cavalry jacket hang open, crumpled, and his shirt pulls tight over his muscled chest.
“Who?” I say, momentarily flustered.
“City Rat, of course.”
“He rescheduled his departure for tomorrow’s five o’clock ferry. But he can come and go as he pleases. Viridian House still belongs to him. It is only right.”
“And who will be called when he breaks a window?”
The summer before Daniel died, Nash and visiting socialites threw a party that got out of hand when someone threw an ice bucket through the window. Koa was called to restore order, and Nash called him a killjoy in front of everyone.
“A murderer is on the loose and you’re thinking about windows.”
He blows out a breath and begins to fiddle with his gold pendant.
Mr. Kāne was given the gold nugget by a man he’d saved from a charging stallion.
After his father died, Koa hung it on the string to wear close to his heart.
“I don’t trust him. His father runs an illegal gambling ring.
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. ”
It is well known that Mr. Theodore Byre is involved in many a seedy enterprise.
Could that be why Mr. Sanders didn’t leave Nash the estate?
Easy money leads to nothing but hardship, he said after dismissing Shimmelfen.
Gambling had broken his sister Viridian’s heart.
Perhaps in his own way, he hoped to spare his nephew hardship.
It’s a strange way to show love, but Mr. Sanders never favored the traditional path.
“I don’t trust him either,” I say. “But maybe he takes more after his mother.” Viridian Sanders-Byre may not have been the magnate that her brother was, but she was an intelligent woman who’d had to swim upstream through a tide of male competitors before a massive stroke stopped her cold.
“Anyway, Nash didn’t have to do me the favor. He could’ve just left.”
“Whatever you say.” Koa suddenly stands, taking away his warmth. He plants a boot on a boulder and crosses his arms, looking toward the sound.
“What’s wrong?”
Koa glances back at me, worry darkening his brow. “We found a third seal head, this time on Jawbone Beach.”
An anchor seems to plummet into my gut. Jawbone Beach isn’t a gathering spot for seals. “So the killer brought the head to Jawbone Beach,” I murmur. “But why?”
“Maybe he’s connecting the dots for us. He killed Sanders and wants us to know it.”
If that is true, the killer is still here—watching, gloating. But what is his endgame? Or, more specifically, who?
Koa lowers himself back next to me. “Between the seals and the boars, we need to train more men. It’s just a matter of time before someone gets hurt.”
“You don’t think that boar killed Mr. Sanders?”
“I wouldn’t rule it out. Something’s putting the devil in those pigs.”
“Something unnatural?”
“I don’t know. You’re the biologist.”
“Right,” I say shakily. The boars have certainly been acting erratic, but if I believed something unnatural was inciting them to violence, wouldn’t I also have to believe the same could be true of the sea wolves?
Then again, something unnatural has occurred with the sea wolves—I sensed their emotions, and I think they sensed mine. A queasy feeling plucks at my insides.
Koa glances at me wilting beside him. “Good news is, some of the staff have been wanting to be Rifles for years, and they’re extra weight right now. Also, best keep word of this latest seal quiet for now. People are already jumpy as hell. Red’s the only one who knows, and he won’t tell.”
I nod. The beloved Rifle stepped down due to an old leg injury but still labors as hard as any man. If people knew the killer might still be here, it would set Nowhere into a mad panic. “Does this mean you’re not taking the job in Seattle?”
“Got another place to be at the moment.” He cloaks his feelings under a mask of indifference.
“Why do you want to go and ride airplanes? Hurtling through space with nothing to catch you? Might as well strap on the kitchen stove and jump off a cliff.”
His gaze combs over me. “I would think someone who loves danger would understand.”
I stiffen. Before I can fire off a reply, he adds, “Gets you closer to the stars, I guess.” A smile whispers across his face, and for a moment I glimpse that boyish part of him that crept along cattail marshes beside me, hoping for a glimpse of a muskrat.
Then his shield goes back up.
“I’d feel better if someone were watching you at all times. Doesn’t have to be me. In fact, I’d prefer if it weren’t.” One corner of his mouth twitches. “You’re hard on the nerves.”
I elbow him, but not with true annoyance. “A full-time bodyguard is ridiculous, but if it makes you feel better, you can set up a night watch on the big house.” Mr. Sanders did that for the week the governor was visiting.
He slips his hat back on his head and rises. “I already have.”
After locking both doors to my room, I toss and turn in Lydia’s vast bed, missing the snugness of Cookie’s and my room, the way she’d sing old Lummi songs from her childhood to help me sleep.
Should I let the sheriff know my suspicion that the murderer may still walk among us?
The murder weapon did belong to Shimmelfen, plus he had a strong motive.
If I’m wrong, I would be pulling the sheriff off the trail of a vicious murderer for nothing.
I have kept you in the dark about your parents, Mr. Sanders wrote in his letter. I apologize for that, but it was necessary to protect you.
I burrow farther down in the bed, feeling as exposed as a dead seal on a beach.