Chapter 22
Nowhere is abuzz. The noise starts soon after Tuesday’s morning bell has rung—the banging of the jackhammers, the shriek of Mr. Sanders’s prized compressed-air drill, the clatter of equipment being moved.
The Gatheround will start at four p.m. on Saturday.
Only four and a half days to turn our somber fortress of grief and dread into the party house of the year.
From the round balcony, I watch people move about the reception room, scrubbing walls and measuring the carpets, while Eva reads me her report.
Elegantly draped in a silk blouse and a charcoal skirt with a scalloped hem, she is a sharp contrast to me, once again dressed in Daniel’s comfortable clothes.
With the unpredictable flaring of my mark, I have taken to wearing my kerchief loosely and wish I could give it up altogether.
“The couriers have been sent to Mr. Tavernish, his daughter Temperance and her family, and Mr. Gotze with our invitations,” says Eva. “I’ve also left a message for Miss Paul. Apparently, she is on an expedition and will not be back for weeks.”
“Weeks!” My shoulders sag. I had high hopes for the young botany student, who might at least know of my father.
But nothing can be done about that. I have my own expedition to worry about.
If I leave soon, I can catch the cannery workers at their midday meal.
“I hope to be back from the Chinese camp by two.”
“You should not go by yourself.”
“I know how to drive.” All children growing up in Nowhere are given lessons on boating and water safety. “And I cannot risk anyone else finding out.”
“What about Koa?”
“He’s training the new recruits.” Not to mention, I’m not over being angry at him.
“Flossie?”
“Today she is ‘helping’ the washerwomen.”
“Ah.” She gives me a knowing nod. Though the laundry is on the verge of growing legs and walking off, Flossie’s true mission is tending the gossip mill.
“Why don’t you join me?”
Her expression grows stony and her voice cools. “I’m sorry, that will not be possible.”
Have I offended her? Perhaps she considers the task beneath her station.
The polished shells of her fingernails pale as she grips the thick banister.
I should not have been so quick to assume she’d be game for my admittedly bold excursion, even if she is helping me investigate a murder.
“Just as well—you have many things on your plate already,” I begin, but to my surprise, she is briskly walking away.
Before going to Viridian House to ask Nash for use of the Lady Vee, I detour to a clearing beyond the Rifle House, where the guards train.
A line of stumps has been placed with bottles for shooting, and the soft ground is covered by fir needles.
Koa is running the new recruits through hand-to-hand combat.
Shirt off, his stomach is as tight as a tiled roof, gleaming under a sheen of sweat.
The two rangy Skansie brothers seem to be jumping onto stumps in their grass-stained overalls and heavy work boots, which will need to be swapped out for the more nimble costumes of the Rifles.
Koa squares off with the third recruit, the brash Horlick, whose dark blond hair tufts give him bull horns.
Already ruddy in the face, Horlick throws a punch, but Koa leans to one side, easily unbalancing him.
Horlick swings again, and this time Koa catches his wrist, using Horlick’s own weight to topple him.
Horlick erupts in curses, but Koa pulls him to his feet and slaps him on the back. Then Koa notices me by the fence post, and his face hardens. As if he has any right to be angry. He grabs his shirt from a stump, then jogs toward me, his gold nugget like a glowing coal against his smooth chest.
“Do you know any Chinese words?” I demand before he can scold. His father spoke quite a few of them, growing up in the Hawaiian Islands.
“Which ones are you looking for?”
“ ‘Father’?”
“ ‘Ba,’ ” he says easily.
“ ‘Friend’?”
His eyes float to a dirty pile of clouds. “ ‘Pang yau,’ I think.”
“ ‘Salmon Calamity’?”
Amusement flits across his face. He eyes my outfit, over which I’ve added a thick sweater. “What are you up to?”
Keeping my voice all business, I relay to him Cookie’s story about Gotze’s ruined fish traps. “I’d like to pay the Chinese camp a visit.”
“One terrible idea deserves another.”
My temper flares, and I’m of a mind to give him an earful in front of the recruits. “I didn’t ask for your opinion.”
“No, but you’re getting it because that’s what you pay me for. How are you getting there?”
“A boat, obviously.”
“You know, this thing between us only works if you’re honest with me.” He moves two fingers between us.
“ ‘Us’?” I demand. “We are hardly an ‘us.’ ”
“I meant you, my boss, and me, your guard,” he forces through his straight teeth. “What ‘us’ did you mean?”
My skin erupts in flames. Good thing the field is clear of trees or tinder. “You shouldn’t have punched Nash. I specifically asked you to keep a lid on it.”
“He had it coming. You let him take too many liberties, and I don’t know why you trust him.”
“I don’t trust him,” I say, folding my arms tight. “But I knew what I was doing and I didn’t need your help. He could’ve said no, and then what? Do you have a plan for running this estate?”
A muscle in his cheek twitches. The recruits are openly staring. His eyes become nails, driven straight through me. He briskly rolls down his sleeves. “Your new Rifles should be up to speed by this Saturday’s party. Don’t go boating without an escort.” He is already walking away.
I stomp back the way I came. He thinks I let Nash take too many liberties?
I dig my nails into my sleeve cuffs. Without my willingness to take risks, those men wouldn’t be installing new benches around the entrance, would they?
The grain house wouldn’t be back milling the flour, and the electricians wouldn’t be installing twinkling lights around the trees.
Somehow, the boy I used to race hermit crabs with has become a man I wish to throttle.
I knock at Viridian House. The door creaks open to reveal Nash in a robe and not much else, looking like he’s just rolled out of a portrait of a dissolute duke. The bruise at his eye has ripened to a dramatic plum.
“May I borrow the Lady Vee?”
He grins. “Where do you want to go?”
“Far West Bay. I need a small and quick craft that will not arouse notice.” The Specialties are large, attention-grabbing beauties with loud diesel engines. I could go by horse, but that would take all day, even if I drove the Ford automobile to Eastsound, where the paved road ends.
“As long as we are back in time for the afternoon ferry. The Lady Vee never sails alone. She requires her devoted captain and a picnic basket.”
“I do not need your company,” I reply, still bristling from Koa’s disapproval.
He presses a hand to his chest, staggering back half a step. “Cruel heiress! You wound me, even in my ruined and fragile state.”
“You look fine,” I mutter.
His grin widens. “Ah, then you were looking. I’ll fetch my trousers.”
A cedar root basket with geometric designs bounces against my hip as I stomp down the sea path.
This covert expedition is beginning to feel like a courtship outing.
As I pass the laundry house, the chum-chum of the spinners sounds like funeral drums. At least they are moving again.
Through the hedges I can see women pegging laundry with the stiff reluctance of marionettes.
Before they feel me staring, I hurry by.
A short drop below the sea path, the marina slips stretch toward the open sea at the far end of the sound, a league away.
At the slip closest to the infirmary, Nash climbs into the driver’s seat of the Lady Vee with ease.
She is not as powerful as the boats the Rifles use to patrol our coast, nor as daunting as the hundred-foot yacht Endeavor parked beside her, but she is a looker.
An inboard engine, open roof, and splash guards tapering elegantly to the sides give her a sleek elegance that promises speed.
She reminds me of Nash.
My boots make solid thuds on the planks.
“Afternoon,” I greet the dockmaster, who abruptly ceases conversation and nods, an unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth.
Doc tops off the gas tank of our mahogany skimmer, then holds the gunwale steady with his boot, eyes averted as he hands me in.
I get the feeling that, like many here, he does not like answering to a “chit.”
Nash, in loose trousers and a pullover sweater, gives me a lazy smile.
I fit Cookie’s picnic basket between us, even though there is space on the bench behind.
Clear boundaries must be set. Then I settle stiffly into the passenger bucket seat, reminding myself that if anything should happen to me, I am in full view of dockworkers who can testify that I was last seen in the displaced heir’s company.
Nash opens a built-in cupboard and lets out a laugh of surprise. “I can hardly believe my eyes.” He pulls out a pair of matching tan fishing hats, one of which he tosses me. Each sports an embroidered salmon, along with “Poggie #1” on his and “Poggie #2” on mine.
I recall that Daniel and he always wore these matching caps on the water. “What is a poggie?” I check the hat for sand fleas.
“A puny bottom-dwelling fish, or someone you don’t think will amount to much. Dad’s nickname for me.”
“Doesn’t seem like a very nice nickname.”
“He isn’t very nice.” He shrugs, adjusting the hat on his head. “Danny said we should embrace it.”
I carefully pull on Poggie #2. The younger Nash was a rascal, but to think of him being belittled by his father in this way kneads at even my tough heart. Some fathers squander chances others will never receive. I’d like to think mine wouldn’t have been cruel.
Nash beams. “It’s like the ghost of Danny has reappeared. A little shorter.”
Doc unties ropes from the cleats, his thick brown hair held back by a suede string.
“You got a southwest wind, five to ten knots, waves two feet high at most,” he reports, only addressing his remarks to Nash.
“Fair sailing. But heck to breakfast—you want my opinion, I’d take a bigger boat.
” His red-and-black tattoos flash as he gestures to the half dozen yachts, mostly Specialties, lining the marina.
The Lady Vee is twice as long as a canoe and wider, but at twenty-five feet she is still a small craft.
Doc does not say, but I know he is worried about the sea wolves, which have been on everyone’s minds.
My mark has begun to thrum with warmth, which means sea wolves are definitely about.
But a bigger boat would draw too much notice, and docking in Mr. Gotze’s marina would be like walking into his parlor uninvited.
Let my first meeting with the man be on surer footing as the welcoming hostess of a festive party, not as a would-be trespasser.
We can beach the skimmer well short of his property, leaving me free to slip into the Chinese camp unnoticed, ask my questions, and leave the way I came.
“We’ll keep to the shallows,” I say.
Doc clamps his mouth over the unlit cigarette.
Nash gives him a shrug and a grin.
Still ignoring me, Doc casts us off. Nash fires the engine, and I button a jacket against the spray.
Soon the breeze is whipping my braid against my back while the salt air and the tang of gasoline scour away my annoyance with Doc.
At five knots, then ten, the Lady Vee purrs like a contented cat—nothing like the Specialties and their diesel roar.
I can even hear the whistling of oystercatchers.
There is no sign of Shadow and Scull. I have noticed that birds abruptly disappear when the sea wolves are present.
“The life of an heiress suits you,” Nash says, nimbly angling us toward the opposite bank, which is shallower than our side.
There’s a precise destination to his movements: checking a dial, tapping a stuck compass.
He catches me watching him and grins. “A secret pleasure cruise in the middle of the morning, with such an important party to plan, too. But why Far West Bay? You know my uncle was not on speaking terms with Mr. Gotze.”
“Yes, I know he wouldn’t stop using traps unless your uncle canceled the gentleman’s agreement. But we’re not seeing him. I just wanted a change of scenery.”
A few supply boats are headed toward the marina, too early to be carpet samples.
The Hure comes into view. Gilly stands as motionless as a shaggy hemlock at the stern of his iron fishing scow, watching us pass.
I have not spoken to the fisherman or his son, Jeddah, since the day I found Mr. Sanders’s remains, but he still takes his job seriously, despite our salmon problem.
“Keep our distance from other craft, especially as we get closer to Far West Bay. I would like to keep a low profile, if you don’t mind.”
“As you wish.” Nash tosses me a sideways glance. “So Uncle D. knew your father. How did they meet again?”
“I didn’t say.” I raise my nose.
“Don’t you owe me an answer after all I am doing for you?”
“If you wanted an answer, you should’ve put it in the bargain.”
“You realize I can turn around.”
“You wouldn’t be a gentleman if you did that.”
“You overestimate my gentlemanly nature.” His fingers stay locked on the wheel, nose pointed ahead.
My stomach turns a loop—whether because he could leave me stranded or because the memory of his stolen kiss fills my head, I do not know.
But the sight of Parish Isle, steeply rising behind a veil of fog a mile to our left, steals all thoughts away.
A chill presses in on me, and I pull my sleeves over my hands.
The isle sits like a pearl pinched between the two fingers of the sound, forever out of grasp.
Whatever fortune Mr. Sanders and my father discovered there, Mr. Sanders never returned to the island, to my knowledge.
With a hiss, Nash slams back the throttle.
The boat lurches, and I nearly bite my tongue.
Not five hundred feet in front of us, sea wolves are chopping up the ocean as easily as knives shredding through gelatin.
I count at least a dozen, and that’s just on the surface.
The warmth of my mark has shot up by several degrees.
Touching it beneath my kerchief, I am filled with an excited buzzing, like the contagious anticipation of a crowd at a Smokeout. Or a hanging.
Then the Lady Vee sputters and stalls. The sea wolves close in, dark fins slicing circles around us.