The woman reached down and picked up the small book, studying it for a moment. “Heavy stuff,” she commented.
Jordan couldn’t argue with her assessment. “I’m reading it to see if I can find more information about the 1893 wreck of the Henrietta Dale,” she explained.
“Oh, that’s right! I heard a rumor yesterday that you had seen the ghost ship.” The woman cocked her head. “That must be quite the experience.”
“Understatement of the year,” Jordan muttered.
“Well, I’m sure you’ll put your new, expanded powers to good use for our community.”
After she left, Jordan gave Malachi a slice of toast, took a moment to moan in appreciation over a forkful of potatoes, then picked up Eleanor’s memoir once more. She supposed she should be worried about getting food stains on it, but really, the world would be a better place if no one else ever had to read Eleanor’s drivel again.
Rather than continuing to slog through the paragraphs about the waterfront opium dens, she flipped through pages, looking for something that would tie Eleanor to the rescue effort on August 5. She found what she was looking for in a chapter toward the end of the volume:
Events of recent days, which have taken a terrible toll on my family and others in our beloved Port Chatham, have now brought to light the horrifying truth of plans that could have wrecked the entire social fabric of our town.
My only son, Jesse, was lost to me long before the night he was crushed by a falling mast when the ship he was a passenger on, the Henrietta Dale, ran aground on Dungeness Spit. Though I tried in vain to rid Jesse of his addiction to the pestilent drug, opium, he continued to seek out the company of those who suffered from the same addiction.
Many died the night that the Henrietta Dale ran aground, but I can only say, in retrospect, that someone was looking over us all. For if the notorious Michael Seavey had been able to put in place his plans to use the ship to import opium and provide a floating opium den for his customers, more of our citizens would have fallen prey to his greed.
I hold Michael Seavey directly responsible for the death of my beloved son, but I can only be relieved by Seavey’s violent death just days later. Port Chatham remains an enviable place to live, based on that blessed turn of events.
May Michael Seavey rot in hell for all eternity.
Malachi whined, and without looking up from the page, Jordan held out another slice of toast. When he failed to take it from her hand, she dragged her attention back to the present.
Sam Garrett pulled out the chair across from her and sat down.
She dropped the toast and stumbled to her feet.
“Sit down,” he said mildly, “before you draw attention to yourself.”
She did as he ordered, taking a moment to glance around the small patio. No one seemed to notice her distress. Which, dammit, pissed her off. Garrett was interrupting what could have been a wonderfully peaceful, Zen-like breakfast. Well, aside from the garbage she was reading. But really, she was getting damn tired of being threatened, harassed …
He leaned over to sniff her plate. “ ’Tis a pity ghosts can’t eat real food—I really miss it.” He sighed. “At least if I try hard enough, I can manage a faint whiff of the intoxicating aromas.”
“What do you want?” she asked coldly.
He raised an eyebrow. “I don’t believe you will find it wise to take such a tone with me. I can reduce your mutt to a lifeless pile of fur in mere moments, should I become sufficiently displeased.”
Jordan felt the blood drain from her face. “No!” she said quickly. Malachi growled, and she shushed him, placing a protective arm around his neck and keeping it there. “Please don’t hurt him—he’s just a dog.”
Malachi gave her The Look, and she sent him a silent apology.
“That’s better,” Garrett said, leaning back with a humorless smile. “Now, pray tell, why haven’t you told Seavey that I didn’t murder him?”
“Things have been a little chaotic lately, and I just haven’t found the time—”
“I’m not interested in hearing your excuses. I want it done. Today.”
“Sure. Fine.” She nodded emphatically. “But …” she hesitated, then plunged ahead, hoping she didn’t increase his ire. “The thing is, I don’t actually know who killed Seavey. And until I do—”
Garrett waved a hand. “That is neither here nor there. The only fact that is of import is that I didn’t murder him. Take all the time you want to discover the identity of the real killer—I have no interest in what you do with respect to your little investigation. But I want it immediately communicated to Seavey that I had no part in his death.”
“So you’ll swear to me that you weren’t even in Port Chatham at the time Seavey was murdered?” she asked, not without some trepidation, tightening her hold on Malachi.
“For what it’s worth, certainly. I was otherwise engaged.”
“Doing what?”
He shrugged. “I don’t see that it can hurt to divulge that part of my past life. The good Captain Williams and I were busy salvaging the opium from inside the hull of the Henrietta Dale.”
Jordan gaped at him. “So the captain was in on it all along?”
“Of course not. Think, woman! How could I have lured the ship onto the beach if Williams had known of my intentions? He approached me two days after the grounding and told me the story of how he’d discovered that Seavey had had secret compartments built into the hull for the transport of opium. He said that if I were to agree to assist him in retrieving the contraband, we could sell it and split the profits.”
Jordan suddenly realized that this was what had been bugging her—the captain’s original account of the shipwreck that night, followed so closely by his retirement. He simply couldn’t have been that broken up over the loss of a ship he’d sailed for just a few hours. So the only explanation that made sense was the one Garrett had just given her, that Williams immediately realized that no one would be the wiser if he came back a few days later to retrieve the Henrietta Dale’s valuable cargo. Such a cargo would have also given him the funds he needed to retire.
“Ah,” Garrett said now, accurately reading her expression. “I see that you realized the import of Williams’s behavior immediately following the shipwreck and, indeed, during the investigation of the cause of the grounding. By the time of the hearings into the grounding, Williams had carefully concealed enough money to retire comfortably, based on our salvage efforts. All he had to do was act broken up over the loss of his ship, making it look as if he were too grief-stricken to take the helm of another vessel any time in the near future.” Garrett smiled, his expression reminiscent. “I must say, the chap was a consummate actor.”
“But I don’t understand,” Jordan said. “If you retrieved the opium within days of when the ship went down, what was Holt diving for?”
“Unfortunately, Williams didn’t have knowledge of all the secret compartments. And a portion of the hull had sunk in deeper waters, making the effort to dive and break open the compartments far more difficult.”
That made sense. After all, divers then wouldn’t have had the modern gear available today. She remembered now that the dive suit she’d seen Garrett wear that day on the spit had been odd looking. It probably represented what he knew of the dive suits from his own time on earth.