Chapter 43
Eva appears on the sea path, jolting me out of my thoughts. “Miss, you are needed back at the house.”
“Thank you, Eva. Ladies, please excuse me.”
While Eva covers for my abrupt departure, my kid-leather boots strike solid taps across the question-mark path toward Nowhere Road.
I try not to remember my mad sprint along this same stretch just two weeks ago, or the horror that gutted me like a bowie knife across a boar’s belly.
The dark tunnel of the Slide shortcut beckons to me.
I could scurry into the brush. Hide away like some small rodent, forget about this gambit.
For a gambit it is. My last effort to uncover who killed my father is hastily planned, a jellyfish of an idea relying on a fickle current to push it in the right direction. Justice will not wait for a derby to finish.
In fact, is that justice marching down Nowhere Road toward me? My thoughts grind to a halt at the sight of two of the sheriff’s deputies, one bearded, the other clean-shaven with a rash of acne on his cheeks. They part enough to reveal the slope-shouldered figure of the sheriff trailing them.
The cigarette between his lips makes my heart seize. He has found his killer. If I hadn’t stopped to talk to Temperance and Prosper, I might have avoided this run-in.
Our paths meet in the driveway of the big house. The sheriff settles his government-issue brown hat more securely over his head, eyes rimmed with the red of late nights. “Miss Lucy. Your alibi, Jeddah Nacht, seems to have disappeared. I assume you have not found your letter?”
“No. But everything I told you was true,” I plead, hating the desperation in my voice. “If you could give me more time… I—I thought you were leaving at noon.”
“I’ve come to my decision, and now I must take you into custody.” He takes a long drag on the cigarette and blows the fumes to one side, avoiding my eyes as if I am no longer worthy of his interest.
“What will happen to me then?”
“You’ll be arraigned on San Juan Island, then held in a jail cell until your trial.”
I hardly know what “arraigned” means, but “jail” seems pretty clear.
My knees tremble. How will I survive in a dank cell full of criminals?
“But… I can’t go now.” Or ever. “Hundreds of people are here in Nowhere.” Everyone will see me being led away in chains.
I will die of humiliation. “Could we wait until the fishing derby concludes and the marina clears out?”
“I’ll admit the timing is not ideal.” The sheriff looks at his deputies.
I glance toward the big house, where an evergreen wreath has been placed over the doors. “That will give me time to play the organ one last time. The music will comfort me. You may post a guard if you wish. I will not run.”
“I am not in the habit of taking requests.” The sheriff gazes up at a rather guileless sky, clear with a few clouds drifting low as if trying to eavesdrop. An irritated sigh seems to knock him backward. “Noon, then, but you’ll stay inside.”
“Thank you, Sheriff.” Wasting no time, I hurry to the front door and knock.
Buddy answers right away. “Good to see you, miss.”
“You too.”
I am relieved to see that the reception room is empty of people. The second floor is dark, with all curtains drawn and lighting extinguished.
Mrs. Bonefat hurries over from the servants’ entrance on the left. Her tight bun looks pulled at, the jag of lightning more like a loose silver feather. “The house is empty, as you asked.”
“Thank you. Now quickly—places, everyone. They will be here soon.” I hand her my hat and hurry to the curtained platform with the organ and mount the stairs.
Dust kicks up as I duck behind the curtains, where Nash is fiddling with a pair of spotlights.
On the organ bench sits Mr. Sanders’s oyster hat with its distinctive lopsided shape.
Nash takes one look at me heaving shuddering breaths and clawing away the loose hairs falling into my face. “Darling, there’s still time to go to Canada. Take your Oh-Lolly to the north end, and I will meet you there in the Lady Vee.”
“It is too late for that,” I whisper hoarsely, and quickly tell him of my house arrest.
His face grows grim, and he pulls me to him. “I told you a lie.”
I regard him warily, not sure I can handle any more disappointments.
But his eyes are bright and fill me with warmth. “The Poggie motto isn’t ‘It’s just a fish.’ That’s a terrible motto. I said that because I didn’t want you to take unnecessary risks. The actual motto is ‘Catch that bastard.’ That is what we will do, and we will see you free.”
The sound of the front door opening halts further conversation.
“Mr. Tavernish, how nice to see you,” says Buddy from a distance. “Please come in.”
“Mr. Gotze has asked me to meet him here. Has he arrived?”
“No, but please make yourself comfortable. Would you like some of Mr. Sanders’s special rum? It’s sapphire blue, like the Caribbean Sea.”
“Yes, of course I would,” says the Englishman with irritation. “Why is there a deputy outside?”
“Keeping the peace, of course. One can never be too safe.” Shuffling sounds precede the groan of furniture—presumably Mr. Tavernish settling in. Glass clinks, and then something heavy is set down on a table.
I start worrying again about all the variables in this equation. Mr. Tavernish is a heavy man, a head shorter than Mr. Gotze but probably the same weight. How long does it take for rum tincture of China blue to work its magic? I wish I’d had time to experiment.
I hope Mr. Gotze arrives soon. Timing is everything. I imagine Flossie passing the message: Sakura. Reception. Whenever they hear the secret word, they must meet right away.
Nash puts his finger to his lips. Donning Mr. Sanders’s oyster hat, he seats himself on the organ bench. I shake off my paralysis and take a place beside the spotlights.
The front door opens again. “Milton, is that you there?” Mr. Gotze’s sharp voice easily cuts the air even behind our double curtain. I imagine the cannery man’s flat, fishlike eyes sweeping the room.
“Yes,” says Tavernish. “Right here.”
Buddy settles Gotze in, and more clinking sounds are heard.
“Exotic,” Mr. Gotze says with a measure of scorn. “Dakon always hid the good stuff from us.”
Buddy makes polite conversation, delaying his exit as much as possible so the men have a chance to drink up before our charade begins.
“Oh! This rum’s tickling my head already. Top me off, then leave us,” Mr. Tavernish orders, once again acting like he is the proprietor here.
“Of course, sir.” Buddy’s shoes tap to the front door, where he will make sure no one enters.
The electric lights flicker, the signal that Mrs. Bonefat has sealed off the servants’ door—though I know she is listening through some secret vent, or however she does it.
“I mean, right here, right now?” hisses Mr. Gotze. “Hmm, tasty.”
“Say, now, you are the one who called me here.” More clinking is heard as glasses are filled again.
“No. This is the message I got,” Mr. Gotze insists, presumably pulling out Flossie’s note.
“That’s not my penmanship!”
“What’s going on here?”
A trickle of sweat runs down my back. I certainly hope the China blue will work its magic soon. I nod at Nash, who has poised his fingers above the keyboard. Like a pair of ambushing spiders, his hands drop, playing a dissonant chord.
“Ach!” cries a surprised Gotze, and I imagine him spilling his drink on himself. “Who’s playing that?”
“How the dickens should I know?”
The electric lights suddenly switch off. I am ready with the spotlights. The first illuminates the back wall. Nash adds a second chord, the two sounds clashing like swords.
“Who’s there?” asks Mr. Tavernish.
“What’s there?”
Nash nods at me. I switch on the second light, which illuminates him from behind.
Using the pull cords, I slowly open the velvet curtain, leaving the inner white curtain in place.
When the spotlights are arranged this way, only a silhouette of the player can be seen from below.
Nash bests his uncle by several inches, but height is hard to judge when one is sitting.
“I have called you here.” Nash takes on the animated, half-annoyed voice of his uncle, amplified through a mounted speaking trumpet. “Do you not recognize me, boys?”
“Is that… Dakon?” Gotze’s voice has lost its edge.
“Looks just like him,” says Tavernish. “And the… voice.”
“Surprised to see me back from the dead already? I made a special trip to see you two, you goddamned donkey sacks.”
“The devil—” Gotze begins to speak, but Nash strikes a new chord.
“Silence! I know about your secret word. ‘Sakura.’ What is the meaning of it? And don’t lie to me.”
“It is simply a ch-cherry blossom,” Gotze gets out.
“A lie! You lie. Every time you prevaricate, I shall loose the demon to flood your minds with visions unspeakable—headless seals thrashing, their torn necks pumping gore in hideous jets, strings of flesh dangling like burst sausages left too long on the fire, rubbery hides sloughing off in gray, putrid sheets—so that you shall behold in their gruesomeness the unholy specter of your own withered souls.”
Despite the vehemence of Nash’s words, I feel a surge of affection. An urge to touch him. I squeeze myself closer to his bench, safely hidden behind the organ.
A tickle starts in my nose. I tighten my face, but the dust has already gotten in. Don’t think, don’t think…
Achoo!
With a grimace, Nash quickly switches chords.
“Did you hear that?” Gotze exclaims. “What’s going on? Dakon never sneezed.”
“Of course Dakon sneezed!” Nash flips a switch, and the Aeolian organ swings into multilayered, rapid-fire action. Few people can play the Aeolian organ, and Mr. Sanders was widely known to be a master. Nash continues moving his arms as if he is pounding demons emerging from cracks in the earth.
“Good God!” cries Tavernish. “It is Dakon. Only he can torture that metal beast! Stop, I say, stop!”
Nash pauses the recording. “Now tell me again, what does ‘sakura’ mean?”
“Shh, don’t say,” says Gotze in a near whisper. Is he buying the illusion?
“Tell me!” Nash demands.
“It’s the other cannery what wanted to move in.” Tavernish’s accent seems to have warped; he sounds more like a cornered alley cat. “Gotty said we should protect our own. We put a seal head on their beach and hoped it would scare them off. And it worked.”
“Have you miserable swine done others? Don’t lie!”
“Why, there was San Juan Lime, Pacific Lime…” Tavernish wails. “I think that’s it.”
“B-but only when n-necessary!” Gotze stammers.
My breath peters out of me. All these years, have they waged a war of terror, using the fear of the Orkus for their own selfish reasons?
“Necessary,” Nash spits out the word. “Necessary for your bank accounts. Meanwhile you play God—”
“B-but you s-started it!” Gotze wails, in the voice of a scolded child.
“What do you mean, I started it, you maggot?” Nash keeps up his act, teeth clenching, neck straining.
“Wh-when I saw you standing over Harry’s head on Rooster Cove. You didn’t do it, you said. Paid me for my silence. Where’d you get all that money, eh? But I kept my end. Haven’t told a single soul.”
The words bury into me like a thousand hatchets.
Mr. Sanders killed my father? Greed is a root sin, one of the oldest. Gotze said they’d been “swimming in cash.” Why split it when you could hoard it all?
The Salmon Calamity nearly bankrupted Gotze.
Cookie’s voice replays in my head: Not sure how he stayed in business.
Now I see—Mr. Sanders bankrolled him. Paid me for my silence, in Mr. Gotze’s own words.
I cover my face with my hands, crumbling. Everything is too loud and suffocating. But why would Mr. Sanders ask me to find my father’s killer if he was the killer? Yes, he had a twisted sense of humor, hiding doors, moving the clocks ahead, faking his organ playing.
But as much as I want to blame Mr. Sanders, he wasn’t a spiteful man. He never wasted time, and I don’t think he would have wasted mine, especially when his beloved estate was at stake. Not to mention, wasn’t I the first to come upon Mr. Sanders’s remains? That doesn’t mean I killed him.
So why had Mr. Sanders been in that secluded cove to begin with?
Harry was about to introduce me to someone he was besotted with—your mother.
Before the introduction could happen, my father turned up dead.
“What exactly were you doing there, Gotty?” sneers Nash, somehow keeping his head.
“L-looking for Harry. I was in the Dry House, drowning my sorrows, when I saw his green boat heading to Rooster Cove. And that’s the truth!”
“Seems to me there’s more Truth to be spilled yet, isn’t there, Milton?”
“No, no, don’t say her name,” wails Tavernish, “or she will… bloody hell.” He gasps, and a chair scrapes against the floor. “Truth, darling! Please don’t look at me that way.”
Is he in the throes of a hallucination?
“I didn’t want to put you in that cove, but your mother insisted. Just until the bastard child was born, of course. It would never have worked out with that heathen, but Simon would’ve had you. Don’t know why you shot him in the leg.”
I let out an audible gasp and clap my hand over my mouth. My mother shot Simon Says, the lead chop?
He was quite handsome, Temperance gushed. I cried when I had to leave the island for school, even though it was Truth who he always brought roses for.
So Tavernish had wanted his lead chop to marry his pregnant daughter? Is that why my mother shot the man? And what did any of this have to do with my father’s death?
The crash of a body falling, a chair overturning, abruptly stops the conversation. And then there is only the buzzing noise of snoring.
Nash stops the music.
Wiping my face, I manage to pull the outer curtain closed and switch off the lights. I peek out from under the curtain.
In the gray light, I make out Gotze splayed in his chair, mouth open and snoring. Tavernish collapsed in an awkward heap, rump in the air, a crumpled hankie of a man. Only a finger of blue liquid remains in the bottle of rum.
I feel as empty as that bottle. We will be getting no more from these men now.
Who killed my father? Who killed Mr. Sanders? The questions scream as loud as two jarring notes in my ear.