Chapter 27
The six o’clock bell is ringing when I find Father Pinnyhorne trimming his snowball rosebushes in his garden.
My feet drag as I work out how best to approach him about his thirty-minute conversation with Mr. Tavernish.
He would never betray a confidence or engage in idle gossip, and so I must hope the subject falls somewhere between the two.
When the priest sees me, he claps his gloves of dirt, then drapes them over his wheelbarrow.
Moments later, he joins me at the courtyard fountain, both of us perched on the lip.
The zip of a saw scratches the air as, a hundred feet away, workers fell a rare seaside juniper with its telltale upswept branches.
“It’s growing too close to the chapel,” he says. “Better safe than sorry.”
I murmur assent, though the sight unsettles me. Mr. Sanders prized the old-timer trees, even when they were inconvenient. He would not have been pleased to see that one cut down.
“Still feeling like a prisoner?”
I feel my color rise. My prior confession seems petulant when viewed now.
A wealthy heiress can go anywhere she wants and is a prisoner of no one.
“I didn’t expect or want any of this.” I take in the expansive view of the sound with its unpredictable blue-gray layers, then the garden, where workers labor to maintain its already meticulous appearance. A kingdom of chaos and order.
“I do the same, but God wants us to prosper. I know from personal experience.”
“What do you mean?”
He scratches his beard, as if caught off guard.
“Well, I once loved a young woman—a beauty who floated when she moved, like an angel come to Earth.” He pulls his rosary beads from his collar and rolls them between his fingers.
“Covetousness was the root sin that tripped me. When I could not have her, I began to covet other things—money, drink. I was like a fire, consuming everything in my path.” His voice rises to pulpit pitch, then softens again into contrition.
“I’m afraid I became a degenerate, something you’d find rolling in the gutter.
” He makes a disgusted noise at the back of his throat.
I stifle a snort, hard-pressed to imagine the good priest rolling around in a gutter. Still, if he had not been tested through the fires of affliction, he would not be here doing his good work at Nowhere.
“Anyway, I woke up in a church one day and saw the light. When I got the opportunity to come to Nowhere, I knew the Lord was rewarding me for walking the straight path.” His voice rises to Sunday fervor and his saturno hat stretches skyward.
“I’ve been given an appreciative flock… almost as rich a prize as the buried treasure Mr. Sanders once found. ”
A shiver edges over me at the word “treasure.” I glance at him in surprise. No one knew where Mr. Sanders had gotten the money to build his empire, but all wondered, even the godly. “Did Mr. Sanders ever tell you how he came by this… treasure?”
His mouth twists, as if weighing how much to share. “No, but he gave me a riddle about it.” Fixing his gaze on a clot of clouds, he intones:
View the place from Consternation
At the highest elevation
Home to buried golden treasure
Rotting to its perfect measure.
“I never grasped what he meant. I am just a simple priest, not one for riddles. Perhaps you might do better?” He studies my face.
Buried golden treasure viewed from Mount Consternation? Rotting? Mr. Sanders never shared that riddle with me, though why would he have? The riddle must refer to the same “fortune” he and my father found on Parish Isle. The isle certainly can be viewed from the summit of Mount Consternation.
Feeling his gaze lingering on mine, I force a laugh. “I’m still trying to figure out the riddle of how I got here.”
He smiles. “Then I suppose we’ll have to wait until heaven to find out the answer.
A pair of washerwomen—the Quebedeaux sisters—appear at the top of the zigzag path, with their thick brown hair braided in buns.
“Good evening, ladies,” I say.
“Miss.” They keep their eyes down. The laundry is once again puffing healthy clouds of steam, with only an occasional offensive whiff. I can’t help thinking that laundry odor has become a bellwether for my approval here, and as of late I don’t stink.
The priest waves. “I will be with you shortly.”
The women disappear into the chapel, and Father Pinnyhorne turns a quizzical gaze on me.
Time to stop peering through the window and just open it. “I don’t wish to take up too much of your time, but I was hoping you could shed light on something. Eva and I were discussing Mr. Tavernish’s last visit with Mr. Sanders.”
A flicker of color rises to the priest’s ears, and his mouth tightens. Perhaps the reminder of his failed peacemaking still chafes. “What about it?” He stretches out his long legs. He is as big as Sveyn, but more compact, his gardening no doubt keeping him fit.
“I heard you spent some time talking to Mr. Tavernish after you returned his cane and hat. If you don’t mind me asking, what did you discuss?”
He pulls his head back, perhaps surprised by my question, then studies the overcast sky. At least he hasn’t refused me outright. “I had the chance to properly introduce myself and invite him to our church. There is room for all, even Anglicans. He declined.”
It hardly seems the kind of interaction that would have the priest forgetting to lid his lime barrel.
“Thank you.” I work up a smile, despite the dead end. “One last thing. The Diocese of Seattle called with an urgent message for Mr. Sanders on the day he died. I thought you might know what it concerned.”
His gaze falls to one side. “Ah, I put in a request for a curate to help me with all the additional work caused by those seal heads.” He rubs his hands in gleeful anticipation. “Let’s hope they’ve said yes. I will call them. Thank you, Lucy.”
The priest heads for the church while I set off toward the Rifle House for my meeting with Koa, though Mr. Sanders’s riddle continues to tease me.
If the “place” is Parish Isle, how can it still be home to the treasure if Mr. Sanders and my father already took it? Unless the treasure is something growing there. Rotting… Or maybe the poem shouldn’t be taken literally or even seriously at all.
Like all the buildings on Nowhere, the Rifle House boasts an unfussy, solid construction, with handcrafted touches like a hammered-metal doorknob and stained-glass windows. I climb a wide porch and knock on the door.
Koa answers, his handsome face animated, like he was just laughing. I stifle the urge to cradle his cheeks and keep his smile in place. Instead I ask, “What do you get when you cross a Rifle with a skunk?”
“We don’t have skunks on Orcas,” he says without skipping a beat.
“Wrong. You get law and odor. Get it?” I poke him on the chest, nearly injuring my finger.
“No.” His humor vanishes. He snatches his hat from the wall hook, hands me a leather knapsack, then hooks his arm through a folding chair on the porch. “Come on, I need to show you a few things while it’s still light.”
He leads the way toward the training field, all business.
Though it’s anyone’s guess what he disapproves of more—my “reckless” decision-making or Nash’s continued involvement in Nowhere—it’s clear he loathes having me for a boss.
He probably regrets not taking that job in Seattle.
I can’t help longing for the easier times, when arguments would be settled by flinch contests, usually won by me from sheer stubbornness.
Now I’m the one who sucks the joy out of his work. There is no easy fix for that.
Jogging to keep up, I fill him in about the sheriff’s call.
“Good. We’ll give him a list of suspects and let him handle it. You focus on keeping us in business.”
“I’m not giving up on my father.”
He sighs. “No, I didn’t think you would. Gotze ever reply?”
“No.”
He stops suddenly and sets down the chair facing the sound a hundred yards away. His eyes are clear, but the dark slashes of his eyebrows knit in worry. “Tomorrow’s a big day. Could be that seal killer will strike, and it may not just be a seal this time. This party’s a bad idea.”
He waits for me to agree with him, but I don’t.
“Sit down,” he grumbles, nodding at the chair and chucking his hat on the ground. Then he sets off toward a series of stumps twenty feet away. Drawing from a washtub full of old cans, he sets up targets.
The knapsack contains a velvet box. Inside lies a hand-sized pistol with a pearl grip, a polite purveyor of death.
Koa returns and plucks the gun out of the box. “Double Derringer, just in case. You fired my Colt lots of times. This should be easy. Even Bonefat can do it.”
“Mrs. Bonefat?”
“Yep. She asked me for one a few weeks ago, after we found the first seal.” Koa rummages in the bag for two cartridges, which he puts between his teeth.
After unlocking the firearm, he swings up the nose and loads the cartridges, then locks it again.
“Loaded it herself and shot the neck off a bottle.”
Somehow it doesn’t surprise me that the housekeeper would take such precautions, or that she’s a good shot. She can kill a mouse with one jab of a broom.
Koa hands me the gun. “Not to pile on the pressure, though.” One corner of his mouth twitches.
The handle is already warm and feels slippery, like a fish. “I’m not sure about this.”
“What aren’t you sure about? Killing someone before they get you? You better get sure soon. This shit-bag isn’t playing around.”
I get to my feet. The Rifles are prepared to kill, and I am their employer, so morally, if they kill someone, I will be just as culpable.
Standing behind me, Koa steadies my gun-wielding hand and directs the nose at the closest can. “The range is poor, seven yards tops. Aim low. If you miss, you have a backup shot.”
His closeness is distracting, same as the tickle of his voice near my ear.
When did it get so awkward to be close to him?
We gave each other piggyback rides as kids.
I shoo those thoughts away and return my focus to the gun.
One click to end a life. “Don’t you worry that killing someone will damn your soul to hell for all of eternity? ”
“Do we have to think about that right now?”
“I’m serious.” I lower the gun and look back at him, close enough to straighten his collar.
He sighs. “Sure I do. Then I think, this son of a bitch is going to put me out of business for an eternity. And then I don’t have a problem anymore.” He takes the gun from me and—bang, bang—two cans annihilated.
Kneeling again, he reloads, then hands me the gun.
I lift. The cans seem to stick out their lids at me like tongues. I fire and miss, though a pine needle drops off a tree. “I was aiming for that needle, you know.” I straighten and look at Koa. “So what happens if my backup shot misses?”
“Then you take the Double Dee and hit that bastard in his teeth.”
I shiver, imagining myself in one-on-one combat with a murderer who wants to cut off my head. “Sure, I’ll just do that.”
After a few more rounds, I manage to hit two cans. The sky has turned a becoming shade of violet orange, and the chorus frogs are singing their two-note croak.
“That’s enough. Sit down.” He plunks down beside my chair and pulls a black device consisting of leather straps from his pocket.
Before I know it, he’s tugged up my split skirt. The brush of his rough hand against my bare thigh makes me gasp and jerk away. “Koa!” My cheeks warm, and fireflies begin sparking in my stomach.
“Stay still. This goes on like so.”
My shock at his boldness wars with the giddy feelings he has set in motion. I force myself to remain calm and collected. The device is a holster. He buckles the thing snugly and gazes up at me. “Stand up. It’s not too tight, right?”
I somehow manage to work my legs. He rechecks the fit, each touch sending electric charges through me. “Ask the tailor to make a false pocket to allow you to grab the gun.”
“What if I blow my foot off?”
“You won’t.” He fits the gun in the holster and covers it with my skirt. “For tomorrow, I’m posting one Rifle on the sea path south of the marina and one in the neighborhood.”
I nod, trying to steer my thoughts toward the residential cottages Mr. Sanders built on the cliffs overlooking the sound. But all I can think of is how my leg still feels warm from his touch.
“You’ll have five Rifles at the party—three outside, two inside. Red and I will be floaters, wherever we’re needed. Number ten mans the Rifle House as a point of contact. Got it?”
“Yes,” I say weakly, hearing none of it. Rigging me up for personal defense was purely practical.
So why has it left me so flustered?