Chapter 21
The men retire to the smoking room, and Eva sets off for her corner room in the servants’ wing. As one of the business employees, she is entitled to her own cottage on Chapel Hill, but she prefers the big house.
Rather than suffer the smoke and watery eyes, I summon Buddy and Mrs. Bonefat to the reception room.
Out of habit, I avoid stepping on the compass rose mosaic, which uncannily throws every sound back at the speaker.
The pair, who together oversee the workings of the entire big house, stand at attention, as straight as the pipes on the Aeolian organ.
You could tie a plumb bob to Buddy’s chin and use him to measure drapes.
It is the end of the day, and so Mrs. Bonefat’s face looks alert and pinched, but Buddy’s hair is still neatly combed and his somber tailcoat brushed of lint.
Could Buddy be the target of Mrs. Bonefat’s affections? I doubt it. The two work together closely, but I get the feeling Buddy does not care for women in a romantic sense.
“I have been informed that staff morale is low.”
Mrs. Bonefat’s face pinches even deeper. “Yes, the nurse has been prescribing Ladies’ Helper for nerves, but laudanum is hardly the answer. Good hard work, on the other hand…”
“Agreed. And on that note, I would like some, er, improvements to be made to the house. We need to win back a key client and must put our best foot forward.” I take a deep breath, anticipating resistance.
But I have always hated the endless crushing weight of the décor, which makes me feel like I have been swallowed by some giant beast. The Gatheround may be an opportunity to lift some of the gloom shrouding this house.
“Very good, Miss.” Buddy bows slightly. “What sort of improvements?”
“Changing the carpets and the drapes.” I frown at the offending rugs. “Scarlet and gray are… outdated.” I refrain from comparisons to veins or arteries.
I swear I see a second silver jag began to streak through Mrs. Bonefat’s black hair. “The carpets are built to last several generations—custom cut, too,” she sniffs.
Buddy fiddles with his tie. “Er, what colors would you suggest?”
“I would like something more, well, optimistic. Let the press write about a house poised for the future, not one mired in tragedy.” I’m not sure where those words come from. Perhaps a little business sense has rubbed off on me.
Mrs. Bonefat coils like a spring. She might’ve gone along with my stewardship initially, but I can feel her backtracking. “Changing carpets will hardly help calm nerves.” Even the cat on her cameo looks ready to pounce.
I doubt she ever showed Mr. Sanders such testiness, but I don’t really blame her. “No, but perhaps changing the outlook will. What colors do you think Mrs. Sanders would’ve chosen?” Mrs. Bonefat had a fondness for Lydia.
“Lydia?” Mrs. Bonefat blinks, clearly taken aback. “I—well, I will have to think about that.”
“I am confident you and your staff can get the carpets and drapes replaced by the Gatheround. Upholstery can wait.”
“In five days?” Mrs. Bonefat nearly screeches.
Buddy inches away from Mrs. Bonefat, who has taken on the look of a cobra reared up to strike. “We will do our best,” he says calmly.
Mrs. Bonefat glares at him. “It will be expensive to rush an order. The staff will have to work overtime.”
“Let me worry about the expense,” I say. If changing the scenery can bring about peace of mind, it will be money well spent. “Think of it like Christmas. December is our busiest time, with all the tree lighting and the wreathing. But morale is never low during December.”
“Very true, Miss,” says Buddy.
“Christmas,” Mrs. Bonefat spits out the word like a seed. “Nonsense.”
I bid them good night, certain that I have made another enemy.
Koa will probably be waiting by the Peace Rock the way he does most nights, but I will not be showing up.
He has been looking for an excuse to fall his fists upon Nash’s face for a long time.
But couldn’t he put aside his personal grievances for one moment?
He knows the quandary I am in. I feel sick, thinking about how everything could’ve gone sideways.
Still simmering, I steer my feet toward one of the hidden reception room doors leading to the kitchen. I haven’t had a moment to speak with Cookie yet.
The kitchen is at rest, pots hung back on the center rack, the long table scrubbed and set with bowls. Cookie looks up from her dough, her mobcap quivering with each knead. Flour dusts her forearms like pale gloves. I tie on an apron and wash my hands.
“You are higher than the kitchen, at least in this house.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“Doesn’t matter what I think.”
“Yes, it does.”
Her shoulders loosen and she nods at a chair. Joining her, I sink my fingers into the dough, liking the feel of its pillowy softness in my hot hands. “Why is Dora not here helping you?”
“I sent her up. Without you and Flossie, she has lost her community.”
“She can’t stand me.”
Cookie doesn’t bother explaining. My fair-faced nemesis cares as much for me as an axe thrower cares for a sturdy target. But I suppose even axe throwers can get lonely. I squeeze the dough too hard, and it oozes through my fingers.
Cookie shakes her head. “It’s not just her. People don’t feel like working much these days. Busy feeling scared. Mr. Sanders wouldn’t like it. He always said, ‘Good hard work is the answer to all your troubles.’ ”
I nod. Good hard work was how he got past Daniel’s death, and maybe my father’s, too.
“You were one of his first employees. Did he ever tell you how he came by all his wealth?”
She keeps her eyes fixed to her dough, silent.
We knead in unison, the rhythm filling the space where words should be.
I think she is finished talking for the day when she heaves a sigh.
“August of 1900. Heard a man needed a cook on Orcas Island. No one wanted to come after the Salmon Calamity, and then the Can Man murder right after. Didn’t expect looking after a newborn would be part of the job. ”
Her eyebrows become two pointed arrows. She means me.
Her honesty stings me. Though she was an authority figure in my life, Cookie always left me to my own devices, like I was a puzzle she didn’t want to figure out.
I figured she was just too busy running the kitchen.
But she never asked to be the stand-in mother for a mysterious orphan.
Seeing me deflate, she adds, “It’s not your fault.
I’m just being plain. Back then, Mr. Sanders only had five acres.
Said it was enough. Swore he’d never take more than he could use.
A tree only needs so much rain, or its heartwood will start to rot.
” Her mouth knots tight. I have never heard Cookie speak a word against Mr. Sanders before this.
Of course, as one of his longest employees she is entitled to some bitterness over his death.
“Now here we are, one thousand acres later.” She shakes her head.
“What was this Salmon Calamity?” Knead, push, knead, push.
“Some of the sea wolves busted through Gotze’s fish traps. Cost him a fortune. Not sure how he stayed in business.”
My hands still. The sea wolves could splinter the wood pilings and netting like matchsticks. “Why would the sea wolves do that?”
“Depends on who you ask.” She flicks dough from her finger. “Some say the evil spirit didn’t like those fish traps. Sent the sea wolves to destroy them.”
“What do you think?”
She punches her knuckles into her mass. “I think if I were a sea wolf and I saw a giant net of free fish, I’d help myself, too. Mr. Gotze took more than his share. I bet he doesn’t even offer the bones back.”
Cookie always takes the salmon bones back to the sea herself, so the spirit of the fish can rejoin their kin and one day use the bones to return.
“He’s started using traps again,” I say. “Why isn’t he afraid the sea wolves will destroy those, too?”
“They say he’s hired guards to shoot them if they come close.”
My breath hisses out. The memory of a sea wolf with a dorsal fin hanging like a broken sail, its pain sharp as iron, surges up. Perhaps the shootings are why Gilly’s nets come back empty—the sea wolves have found easier prey here.
We both take our annoyance out on the dough. My thoughts spin back to the the Salmon Calamity and my father’s death soon after. A fortune was won by him and Mr. Sanders. Another was lost by Mr. Gotze. But who was the real winner?
Perhaps someone at the Chinese camp will know.
A bubble of dread rises in me. From the ferry rides around the island we used to take as children, I remember the No Trespassing signs staked at the edges of the grounds where Gotze confines his Chinese workers.
One doesn’t just wander past those signs, easy as duck soup, and start asking questions. They might not even speak English.
On my way out, I pass the butler’s pantry.
The door is half open, the light burning—a sight as unsettling as Buddy leaving a fork crooked on a table.
He is always meticulous about locking his pantry when he is not around.
Mr. Sanders quips in my head: See, boys, success is the sum of details. Don’t overlook them.
I step into the room, feeling like an intruder. They are all your rooms, rings Mrs. Bonefat’s high-minded voice. Locked wall cabinets gleam with the silver collection. A shelf houses a small collection of Mr. Sanders’s favorite wines, brought up from the cellar.
The butler’s desk is spotless. I’m about to leave when I notice that one of the desk drawers is not quite pushed flush.
I hardly need more of an invitation. Sliding it open, I find a pack of pinochle cards and—my heart jerks—the miniature black raven figurine from the library, a marbled pen that was one of Mr. Sanders’s favorites, and the guillotine cigar-cutter.
What are these doing here? The cigar-cutter last sat in Yates’s pocket just yesterday, and I’d assumed he was clearing the table. Perhaps Buddy intends to polish them, but why not leave them in plain sight?
Or perhaps I must be more vigilant over who is serving the food. If Shimmelfen is the killer, perhaps he did have an accomplice… or two—his pinochle partners. The valet and Buddy were Mr. Sanders’s closest servants and knew the details of his schedule and personal habits.
I close the drawer and hurry out.
Sleep doesn’t come easily, hindered not only by my long nap earlier but also by thoughts of duplicitous servants.
Good hard work is the answer to all your troubles, Mr. Sanders would say.
Perhaps sketching will put my mind at ease.
Still in my nightgown, I remove the wedge from my main door—Flossie insists on it now—then fetch my picture of Shadow and Scull, forgotten in my satchel.
Moving like a piece of the darkness with only the light of the hallway to guide me, I descend to Mr. Sanders’s office.
Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, the moon hangs like a steel cuff, waiting to lock me up. In the black void of the ocean, Shadow and Scull sleep more soundly than me. When someone cares for you, you have a place. You belong, no matter where you find yourself standing.
The creak of a floorboard sends a jolt through my heart. Dropping my picture, I quickly find the switch, and the glass-bottom boat lamp floods the room with light. “Who’s there?” I call.
Silence. The office is empty. But the hallway? Grabbing a heavy glass ashtray, I cautiously approach the dark passage, my pulse racing, and snap on the lights.
Mahogany walls and scarlet carpet runners stretch in either direction.
It must have been my rampant imagination.
Still, with my every nerve jumping, there will be no sleep now.
I retrieve the prototype for Wilds of Orcas Island from a bookshelf.
The pages send up smells of glue and ink as I flip through them: over a hundred entries, written in Mr. Sanders’s voice as an amateur scientist. I find the page Mr. Sanders reserved for the sea wolves and insert my drawing.
When I reach the last numbered sheet—250—I’m about to close the book, when two scribbled words catch my eye: China blue. They weren’t there when I confronted Mr. Sanders. That page was blank.
Is it a plant? An animal? A fungus? It might’ve been the last thing he wrote before he died.
China blue, will you point the way to the killer?