Marcia Talley - Dark Passage

I, too, had enjoyed Alan Bradley’s stories about the irrepressible eleven-year-old in fifties England with a passion for chemistry and murder. Flavia’s volatile relationship with her two older sisters had struck some familiar chords, too.

As I thought about it, though, my passion for righting wrongs had gotten me into some very hot water. A sailboat had sunk out from under me, my car had been run off the road into a pond, I’d been kidnapped and locked in a wine cellar, and I was once arrested for murder. And that was all before breakfast on Monday, as my father had been known to say. As much as Pia might want to help bring Westfall to justice, I couldn’t let her do it, not this way.

‘It’s fun to fantasize about being Nancy or Flavia,’ I said after a moment. ‘But that’s fiction and this is real life. It was crazy of David to come up with this blackmail idea, and crazy of me to suggest it to you. You know and I know that Westfall is far too dangerous.’

Pia folded her arms, stared out to sea. ‘Yeah, but it sure would be great to watch the worm squirm, up close and personal.’

I tugged on her arm, forced her to look at me. ‘Pia, promise me you won’t do anything foolish.’

‘I promise,’ she said. But I had seen that determined look before. In my daughter’s eyes when she told me that she wanted to waste the entire year following her college graduation by following the rock band, Phish. In my own eyes in the mirror.

‘I mean it,’ I said. ‘There must be a better way.’

‘Like what?’ she asked.

I didn’t have the slightest idea, but I squeezed her hand and said, ‘Don’t worry. Leave this to David, and to me.’

‘In the queer mess of human destiny the determining factor is luck. For every important place in life there are many men of fairly equal capacities. Among them luck decides who shall accomplish the great work, who shall be crowned with laurel, and who shall fall back into silence and obscurity.’

William E. Woodward (1874-1950)

David was not in his room when I called, nor in the Firebird café. I was thinking about having him paged when I found him exactly where I had left him, in the Athena, sitting on a bar stool nursing a martini.

‘Fancy meeting you here,’ I said, sliding onto the bar stool next to him.

He blinked twice, as if trying to focus. ‘Hannah. How did you get on with Pia, then?’

‘Club soda with lime,’ I told the bartender.

David sipped his drink appreciatively, one eyebrow raised.

‘It’s far too dangerous,’ I told him. ‘There has to be another way.’

David’s head bobbed, his lips never leaving the rim of the glass.

I touched his hand lightly. ‘I’m sorry.’

David set his glass on the coaster, rocking it this way and that until the base was precisely centered in the middle of the Phoenix Cruise Lines logo. ‘Don’t worry,’ he muttered. ‘It’s not that I didn’t expect it.’

The bartender had delivered my drink. I took a sip and set it aside. ‘Westfall’s going to be put away, David. The F.B.I. is going to see to that.’

Head still bowed, he considered me with a single, watery eye. ‘Just let nature take its course, then, is that your recommendation?’

‘Not nature, exactly, but the long arm of the law.’

David drained his glass and raised it in the air, signaling for another. ‘I want to thank you, Hannah. You’ve been more than kind. I appreciate that.’

We sat side by side, drinking quietly. There seemed nothing more to say.

I finished my club soda, brushed his cheek with a kiss, and bid him goodbye. I left him sitting alone at the bar, long-faced, looking as if he had lost his last friend which, in a way, he had.

‘I have to pack,’ Georgina said, ‘and I won’t let her go up there alone.’

‘Go where,’ I asked, ‘and where’s Ruth?’

‘I’m hungry,’ Julie whined. ‘I was going to the Firebird to score some nachos. Mom’s being a pain.’

Georgina folded a hoodie and placed it carefully in her suitcase. ‘Ruth’s at guest services, arguing with them about something on her bill. She may be there for a while. The line was humongous.’

‘I’ll take Julie up,’ I said. ‘You get on with your packing.’

Julie tore out her earbuds, hopped off her bunk and presented herself to me, beaming. She wore flip-flops, a pair of skinny denim jeans and a white T-shirt that had ‘Friend Me’ on it, printed in glitter.

‘Come on, you,’ I told her. ‘Let’s go get those nachos.’

The Firebird was crowded so it took us a while to find an empty table. ‘Go get your nachos,’ I told my niece, ‘while I save the table. And bring me a Coke!’

Julie bounced off to the buffet tables while I looked around. Diners passed me with trays heaped high, as if pigging your way from one end of the All-You-Can-Eat buffet tables to the other was a lifetime goal.

I was thinking about snagging some of the chicken tikka kabobs we’d passed on our way in when Julie came streaking back, empty-handed. She grabbed my arm and pulled me down, her mouth nearly touching the tabletop. ‘I need to get out of here, Aunt Hannah. I saw him! He’s here! And he saw me !’

‘Jack Westfall is here?’ I asked, my head bowed, too, on a level with hers.

Julie buried her face in her arms and began to weep. ‘I think I might have made a terrible mistake.’

I laid a hand gently on her arm. A horrible sinking feeling came over me. ‘What do you mean, sweetie?’

‘I was positive that the man who attacked me was that guy, Jack, from the art gallery, but now I’m not so sure. I just saw… oooh! I’m really not sure, now, Aunt Hannah, and it’s freaking me out!’ She began to sob.

‘Let me get this straight. You just saw a guy you think could be your attacker, and that guy is not Jack Westfall?’

Without raising her head, Julie nodded miserably.

‘Who is it, then. Who did you see, Julie?’

‘I don’t knoooow!’ she wailed. ‘I was going to the nachos, and this guy was coming from the other way, and I didn’t see him, and I practically ran into him, like, and when I looked up to say sorry, he gave me this creepy look, and I went eeeek , and I wanted to barf and I saw in his eyes that he knew that I knew, so what am I going to do now?’

‘Breathe slowly, Julie,’ I suggested, gently stroking her back. ‘In. Out. In. Out.’

I was kicking myself for allowing Julie to go off to the buffet alone, but that ship had already sailed.

‘What did the man look like, sweetheart?’

‘He’s wearing a black shirt with a squiggly logo, and a black hat!’

I raised my head, stretching a bit so I could see over the decorative etched glass panel that divided our section of the café from the others. A man in a yellow T-shirt waiting for a burger; a guy in a festive Hawaiian number loading his brownie with whipped topping; uniformed wait staff bustling about, but nobody in a black polo shirt.

I swiveled in my chair to check out the other side of the café, but my view was blocked by a broad expanse of black cotton knit with ‘Waterway Marine’ embroidered on the pocket. Then, next to me, a familiar voice said, ‘I came over to apologize.’

Buck Carney.

I gasped and pressed a hand to my chest. ‘Mr Carney! You startled me.’

‘I think I startled this young lady here, too. Zigged when I should have zagged,’ he explained. ‘Ran right into her.’

‘Julie,’ I said, trying to breathe normally and give nothing away. ‘This is Mr Buck Carney, a photographer who’s doing a book for the cruise lines. He took some photographs of your mother the other day.’