Chapter 37
Tomorrow. The word, once bright with promise, now slithers menacingly through my head. Twenty-four hours before judgment falls. One last rotation of the Earth that might find my life turned upside down once again.
The house holds its breath around me as I descend the stairs. Servants vanish into the walls and shadows. Do they know that I’m a suspect? Even the sight of my cheerful new color scheme weighs on me. All those dollars spent.
Before my trek to the neighborhood, where Gilly and Jeddah live, I detour to the kitchen, hoping Cookie is done being mad at me. I find her rinsing the stewpot, already scrubbed clean. The stewpot is never cleaned until week’s end, and certainly not by Cookie herself.
She lifts a thick eyebrow. “I hear you talk to sea wolves now. I hope they give you wisdom. Wisdom to leave well enough alone.”
I help her carry the pot back to the hearth. “Actually, I’ve decided to hold the fishing derby tomorrow.”
She coughs in exasperation. “But there are no salmon to fish.”
“Then everyone has an equal shot.”
I expect another protest. Instead her eyes comb my face and land at my feet. “Okay, boss.”
“I’m sorry, Cookie. I’m trying my best.”
“I know,” she says in a voice that doesn’t absolve me.
I move stiffly back to the reception room. My limbs ache from my skirmish with the boar. Knives jab at my neck each time I move the wrong way, probably from falling off the Lady Vee. All the hurts are amplified by Cookie’s annoyance with me.
Buddy sweeps the entry with vigor, though there is not a speck of dust anywhere. Spotting me, he sets the broom and dustpan to one side. “Miss Lucy. Would you like me to air out your office? Perhaps sanitize the couch cushions? Or anything else the sheriff touched?”
I stifle a smile. “That won’t be necessary.”
As he stands at attention in front of me, the air between us thickens.
A memory of Mr. Sanders in his terry-cloth robe defending his decision to fire Shimmelfen saunters into my head.
Leadership means listening to yourself, not sparing feelings.
Did Mr. Sanders pull me into that conflict with the valet to prepare me to one day lead?
Buddy is an honorable man and not one to rat out a friend.
“Buddy, I am hoping for some advice on a delicate matter. You see, I saw Yates pocket Mr. Sanders’s cigar-cutter, and now it has mysteriously reappeared on the desk. Regardless, I cannot have the staff borrowing things whenever they want. What do you recommend?”
His shoulders droop and his skin pinkens. “I am afraid I am partly to blame for this. You see, I knew he had taken it and, well, a few other things. The first time I tried to return them, I didn’t expect you to be in the office so late at night.”
I remember the scare I had on the night I learned about China blue.
“I am sorry to have startled you. In Yates’s defense, Shimmelfen kept overbidding during our pinochle games and owed Yates quite a sum. After his brother died, Yates was desperate to be repaid. He hoped you wouldn’t miss the items he took.”
Yates’s nieces had been left fatherless. “So Shimmelfen stole from Mr. Sanders to repay Yates?”
He swallows, and his slender neck bunches. “Yes. Five hundred dollars.”
“How did Yates get his money?”
“Well, I gave it to him.”
“You.” Five hundred dollars is a kitchen maid’s annual salary. “You are a good friend.”
“I don’t have a family.”
“I’d disagree with that.”
He gives me a tight smile, then shakes his head, breaking his perfect white-blond coif.
“I should’ve given him the money sooner.
I didn’t think Shimmelfen would steal for it, or that Mr. Sanders would discharge him like that.
” A pained expression falls over his face.
Guilt is a fast-moving vine, whose tendrils find even the smallest handholds.
“You couldn’t have known. I regret many things as well.
” My head bows under the memories. I was so angry at Mr. Sanders the last time I saw him, when all he’d done was try to protect me.
“One last thing, Buddy. Mr. Tavernish mentioned you used to work for him as a… chopper.” I’ve never liked that term for a lumberjack, though it’s common enough.
He straightens. “Yes, that’s true.”
“It doesn’t seem like the kind of work you’d enjoy.”
“You’re right.” His forehead tightens as if his mind is filling with dark memories. “After the Can Man incident, Mr. Tavernish had a run of bad luck. He was desperate to hire anyone. I only lasted a few months.”
“What kind of bad luck?”
“His lead chop, Simon Says, was shot in the leg—an accident of some sort, but Mr. Tavernish had to let him go—and then his elder daughter died.”
I hardly have time to muse on the odd name of the lead chop when Buddy’s last words register. “His daughter died? When?”
“August of 1900. She was only twenty-two. Mr. Tavernish forbade us from speaking about her. He’d fly into a rage if anyone mentioned her name.”
“Which was?”
He leans in, as if still restrained by that prohibition. “Truth. Truth Tavernish.”
The wood ceiling suddenly seems too low, and the smell of new paint too sharp. The universe is speaking in words too loud for me to understand.
Truth-fully, I will give you the sea.
Did the words carved into my cradle hide a double meaning, a promise and a woman’s name at once?
If so, the Englishman Mr. Milton Tavernish, of Tavernish Lime, is my grandfather.
A ringing as loud as church bells starts up in my head. The floor tilts under me, and I sway as if the house itself has set adrift.
At last, I glimpse the ground that bore me—Tang and Tavernish, East and West, heathen and gentry. Roots twisting against each other, feeding what I have become. But what kind of crooked light grows from such tangled soil?
If Mr. Tavernish had found out that Harry Tang was his daughter’s lover, he certainly would’ve had a motive for killing my father.
The islanders tolerate the heathens for the months they come to work.
They certainly don’t marry them. If a pregnancy arose, such a family might hide a disgraced daughter away in a remote location, like Rooster Cove, to live out her secret shame until the child could be quietly disposed of.
“How did she die?” I manage to ask.
“It’s a mystery. They say she was sick, but her shoe washed up on the beach.” His face grows alarmed. “Miss Lucy, you don’t look well. May I fetch you some tonic?”
“No, thank you. Koa will be expecting me.”
I stumble out the door, unbalanced by these revelations.
My poor mother. If she passed in August 1900, did she die in childbirth?
If so, who put me in the boat only hours after I was born?
And if not, had she truly been sick? Or did the tragedy of my father’s murder do her in?
Perhaps she wasted away. Or, worse, ended things herself.
A pain clutches my chest. Could she have been murdered?
Bleak scenarios march through my mind. I rub my eyes, trying to scrub her ghost away. The best I can do for her is find my father’s killer, who set into motion one tragedy after another.
Weblike clouds spread over a late afternoon sky, and I realize the day has grown cold. I steady myself against one of the brass hitching posts, boots digging into the paving stones.
If Mr. Tavernish killed my father, perhaps Mr. Sanders had discovered proof and confronted him.
But how would a man now so infirm have killed Mr. Sanders?
Perhaps he hired one of his choppers to do it.
The marina is always full of men loading and unloading supply ships.
It would’ve been a simple matter for one of them to slip into the estate unnoticed.
The weeping cedars in the driveway, freshly trimmed for the party, are already beginning to crook and droop.
How do you train a wild thing to follow the rules?
You can try, but inside every civilized thing on which we impose our logic, there beats an unruly heart.
It is the dark side of the mirror, the side always yearning to follow its own messy, complicated path.
The side willing to kill when it perceives threats to its family.
Koa appears, looking crisp and controlled in his cavalry uniform, riding Goliath bareback.
Without the jingling tack, I hardly noticed him riding up.
If he is disappointed in my answer in the infirmary, it does not show.
There’s also no sign of my piebald, which means we are riding double.
I suppose I cannot drive Oh-Lolly without the use of my right hand.
Koa slides off Goliath, jacket pulling back to reveal a holster with his Colt pistol. “Swing up?” he asks.
I nod. He picks me up by the hips and swings me topside.
Grabbing Goliath’s mane, I collect my bearings. Goliath has a wider berth than Oh-Lolly, and it takes me a second to get my trousers comfortable using only my left hand.
Koa hikes himself up onto Goliath’s back behind me. It puts an ache in my belly to remember the easier times when we rode double as kids. When the distance between our bodies and the placement of every finger didn’t seem so measured.
“We didn’t find a single thing in those holes up on Mount Consternation,” he says, keeping his manner professional. “Also, I doubt you’ll get anything out of Gilly. Mr. Sanders would’ve tossed him out last night.”
I’m not so sure about that. The shipbuilder was a man who demanded answers. He wouldn’t have dismissed Gilly without understanding why he’d beheaded four seals.
With a click of Koa’s tongue, we head off toward the marina.
The sound looks smooth, as if recently shaved by the razor-like clouds above it.
There have been no reports today of Scull or Shadow, or any other sea wolf, though my mark feels warm, as it frequently does now.
Did Horlick’s bullet hit its mark? And if so, was it enough to kill or only maim? My stomach burns to think about it.
Koa’s gloved hand pulling me securely, and I wiggle to find room. Perhaps this is how things will always lie between us. Koa reining me in, me trying to find space. It doesn’t seem an easy way to live.
Sitting tall, I share what I learned about Truth Tavernish. By the time I am done, I am hunched over Goliath’s neck.
Koa exhales, his voice low but steady. “That son of a bitch doesn’t define you.
You do. Blood’s one thing, but it don’t make the person.
You’ve proved that a hundred times over.
” Something warm loosens inside me, hearing the voice of the friend I grew up with.
“Tavernish will get what’s coming to him.
Men like him always do. But you—don’t you dare carry his weight on your shoulders. ”
“There’s more. I’ve been accused of being violent and reckless,” I say glumly, grateful he does not take the opportunity to gloat. I tell him of my conversation with the sheriff.
“They don’t have proof you actually did anything. Show the sheriff the letter. Should’ve told him about it earlier, like I said.”
“It’s gone. Someone stole it.”
Koa’s disbelieving breath makes a harsh sound by my ear, and his warm hand against my belly becomes a fist. “I thought you put it in a safe place.”
“It wasn’t so safe. Flossie doesn’t know how it happened.”
“Flossie. How much do you know about her?”
“She is honest and forthright.”
“The facts, not the opinions,” he says.
“She has eight brothers back in Ireland and a drunk of a father. One of her brothers has polio, I think. She was upset this morning. I’m guessing she already knew about the letter but didn’t tell me. But she wouldn’t rat me out. She loves her job.”
“Some things are more important than the job.” His tone is light, but the words are weighted. He never wanted me to take this job.
Beyond the marina, the road splits at the shipyard.
The right continues along the shoreline, and the left ascends half a mile toward the neighborhood, a collection of cottages cut into a hillside thick with eastern red cedars.
Goliath’s back bunches and extends, the gravel crunching as we climb.
The path is empty of people—most still at their jobs, even if not much work is getting done.
“So who else knew?” Koa presses.
“Eva.” She can’t have taken the letter, not after everything we’ve been through.
Even thinking it makes my heart wilt a little.
What would be the gain? She would lose her bequest, which is conditioned upon working for me for a year.
Or… could she have had something to do with Mr. Sanders’s death?
A memory of her holding my bandaged hand springs forcefully to mind.
Now that I am rich, I will buy the Stark School and shut it down.
Eva had a motive, assuming she knew about the bequest. And there seems to be little Eva didn’t know about Mr. Sanders’s affairs.
Better me the murderer than her.
Theory A: Mr. Sanders’s killer has nothing to do with your father. Her voice mocks me.
Sweat prickles my hairline. I wish I hadn’t been so quick to believe that a mushroom network could apply to people. Mushrooms don’t betray. Mushrooms don’t scheme. I trusted Flossie and Eva as if we were sisters almost from the start.
“I don’t have a read on Eva or why she’d want you gone. Did you tell anyone else about the letter?” Koa asks in a sharper tone.
“Who would I tell?”
“You tell me.” His annoyance heats the air behind me. The only one who back-combs his fur like that is… Nash.
An image of Nash peering at me from under the folds of his Poggie hat flashes through my mind. I told him about the letter after our trip to Far West Bay, even told him where I’d hidden it.
“Remind me, what does that slayer statute say again?” Koa’s voice leaks sarcasm, and I am glad I am facing away from him.
“Those who murder cannot inherit from those they murder.”
“And who would inherit the estate if you don’t?” he asks with exaggerated patience.
The blood in my veins slows. My posture crumples. The law would then follow the rules of intestate succession, starting with the closest blood relative, says Mr. Cosmos’s intelligent voice.
Nash.
His father gambled away the family fortune. Did he steal the letter as the start of an attempt to get what was rightfully his? Bribe someone to search for it?
Dora. A memory of Nash chatting up a blushing fair maiden in a dress of coral throws an axe into my heart.
“That sneaky-assed teat sucker.” Koa’s hot cursing puts a bloom on my cheek. “You don’t think Flossie and Eva are in league with him?”
“No! Eva said she had suspicions about him.”
“I can’t imagine why,” he growls.
I wind my fingers into Goliath’s soft mane, glad again that Koa can’t see the hurt on my face.
Koa told me not to trust Nash. Why didn’t I listen?