“You seem to believe it anyway.”
“Whatever I believe, it’s just my own opinion—mine and Libby’s. She’s my wife.”
“Would you mind telling us why you believe it?”
He laughed lightly. “How much time you got? Never mind, I know when the boat leaves. It’s just not something I can answer in twenty minutes.”
“I’ll take what I can get.”
“Come on upstairs.”
We climbed a narrow staircase to the upper level of the battery. There, in the smallest imaginable living space—a bed, a bookcase, a microwave oven, a table, two chairs, a small dresser and a closet, all in one tiny room—we met his wife. She was dark-haired and pretty in a crisp uniform, with a ranger hat in her hand, as if she had been about to go out. Instinctively my eyes scanned their books and found all the Burton biographies on the top shelf.
“Libby, this is Ms. Bujak and Mr. Janeway. They’re interested in Burton.“
She brightened at once and we had to go through it all again: how we got their names, what we hoped to find. It turned out that Libby had been the instigator of their Burton research, and only later had her enthusiasm spread to her husband. She was like a pixie, warm and giving, immediately likable. She said, “Sit down, stay awhile,” and we all laughed. Outside, people were already moving back toward the dock. Our time was short.
They insisted that we take the chairs. Libby sat cross-legged on the floor and Luke leaned against the bookcase. “I’ve been interested in Burton all my life,” she said. “Even when I was a child I thought he was the world’s most romantic figure. It was only by accident that I heard he’d been here.”
“How’d you hear that?” Koko said.
“There’s a Burton club here.”
“You mean like a fan club for a dead man?”
“You could call it that. There are Burton clubs all over the world. That’s one of the first things I did when we got assigned here, I went to the Burton club and we got friendly with some of the people. You know how it is: there are always a few in any group who have offbeat ideas. Most of it’s folklore, theory, hot air. There was one old man in the Burton club named Rulon Whaley who was just like that. Very loud and opinionated, but there was so much energy in him that he made me listen. He’d been fascinated by the Burton myth for years. Rulon not only believed Burton had been here but that he spied on us for England. He was determined to prove it but he never did. He died this year.”
“Do you know where he got that idea?”
“Heard it from another old gent long ago, I think. Once he got something in his head, he was almost impossible to defeat.”
Most of the talk that followed was historical rehash, things we all knew. Koko and Libby talked, the ranger and I watched. I especially watched Libby. A certain tone had come into her voice. A look I had seen many times had come into her eyes. As a cop I called it the knows-more-than-she’s-telling look. Koko had missed it because she had spent her life answering questions and I had spent mine asking them.
I asked one now. “Did you ever learn who the other man was?”
Libby shook her head. “He died years ago, so it always seemed rather hopeless.”
“Maybe he left some papers, or some record.”
“No way of knowing now. If he did, I guess I dropped the football.”
Koko stood and said, “Well, thank you for talking to us.”
I glared at her and my look said, Keep still.
“This is awful,” Libby said. “There’s not even enough time to offer you a cup of coffee. I’d love to sit around with you and kick at it for a while.”
“Maybe we should do that,” I said.
“Like when?” Robinson said. “The boat’s going to leave them, Lib.”
“Maybe they could come back.”
“They’d have the same time problem. And none of us really knows anything.” He looked at me apologetically. “You’re certainly welcome to come back but I’m afraid it would just be a waste of your time.”
“You could come back anyway,” Libby said. “If you wanted to you could stay the night. We’d have plenty of time to talk then.”
“Is that allowed?”
“Oh, sure. You’d have to bring sleeping bags. We’re not exactly the Holiday Inn here.”
I had a hunch and so did Libby: I could feel it, like some energy field growing between us. “What do you think he was doing here?” she said.
“Well, we know he wanted to see the States.”
“Do you really believe he came only as a tourist?”
“No.”
She smiled quixotically and I felt Koko stiffen beside me. Koko had come here for information, not to talk too much, and I knew she wouldn’t like the way this was going. Stiffly, she said, “Of course that’s just conjecture. We don’t know any more than you do.”
But Libby was looking at me, not Koko. I said, “Maybe together we’ll all discover stuff we didn’t know we knew. Sometimes you’ve got to give a little to get a lot.”
“What stuff?” Libby said. “Do you actually know something?”
“He used to be a detective,” Koko said dismissively. “Thinks he still is.”
“Really?” Libby smiled at me as if she liked that idea.
“We think Burton came here with someone,” I said.
“Oh, don’t tell them that,” Koko said. “My God, there’s no proof of that at all.”
“Then it doesn’t hurt to tell them, does it? As an unproved theory.”
“Tell us what?” Libby said.
“We think he met a man in Washington and traveled with him. They came through here in May of 1860 and went to New Orleans together. They became close friends.”
Koko’s face was red with anger. She turned away and looked out over the fort.
Libby said, “Do you know what his friend looked like?”
Now there’s a strange question, I thought. I might have expected her to ask whether we knew his name, but who asks about the appearance of a man from a time when photography was so new that few had ever had their pictures taken?
“Do we know what he looked like, Koko?”
“Don’t ask me. How would I know?”
Again Libby made eye contact. I shrugged and Robinson said, “You’re going to miss your boat.” Mischievously, Libby said, “Then they wouldn’t have to worry about the time.”
“That’s her way of saying she wants you to come back,” Robinson said.
“When?”
“Can’t be tomorrow or the next day,” Libby said. “I’m going to school. I’m writing a paper and I’ve got to study for a wicked test. It all hits at once.”
“What about Tuesday?”
“Tuesday would work. Bring good sleeping gear. The ground here’s hard.”
They walked us down to the dock. At the pier we all shook hands. Again they apologized for the hectic schedule. At the very end Libby asked the question I had expected in the beginning. “Do you know the name of the man who came with Burton?”
Before I could answer, she answered it herself. “It wouldn’t be Charlie, would it?”
CHAPTER 31
On the boat, Koko said, “I wonder what she really knows.”
“She’s clever. She wants you to wonder that. She wants us to come back and she timed her bombshell so we wouldn’t have even a minute to get into it.”
“Right now I don’t need clever. I just wish people would say what they mean.” A moment later she said, “Anyway, you were right, I was wrong.”
“Coulda just as easy been the other way.”
“Thanks, but I don’t think so.”
We were sitting on the enclosed lower deck, out of a wind that had turned the harbor into a basin of choppy water. Koko sat near the glass, staring out at the whitecaps.
“I’ve been an old bear lately. Just want you to know I know that and I’m sorry.”
“You’ve had a lot to think about. I didn’t just lose my house.”