P.J. Alderman - Ghost Ship

Jordan risked another glance and suddenly found herself with a lump in her throat. “I was going to ask him to bid a portion of the paint job,” she admitted. “You know, to be fair.”

Darcy nodded, and they were silent for a long moment.

“Will you be all right here by yourself?” Jordan asked, noting the lines of strain on the other woman’s face.

“I’m tired but fine.” She grimaced. “I’d just hoped to leave this type of crime behind when I moved from Minneapolis.”

“I could come back and wait with you,” Jordan offered.

“Not necessary.”

“How about I call one of your deputies to come out, then?”

Darcy shook her head. “The local police will respond to the 911, and I’ll have to wrestle them for jurisdiction before I can involve anyone from my force in the investigation.”

“ You want the case?” Jordan was surprised.

“Damn right I do. Whoever killed Holt may live in Port Chatham.”

Jordan didn’t like the sound of that —she preferred any local murders remain in a different century. “Who do you think might have done it?”

“No clue yet. But a good place to start would be any of the women Holt bedded within the last several years. They all walked away mad enough to kill.”

SINCE Jordan was eager to put as much distance as possible between herself and the crime scene, the last mile of the hike went by quickly, wet, sore feet notwithstanding. And Darcy had been right—the minute Jordan reached the edge of the lighthouse grounds, bars popped up on her cellphone. She placed calls, then sat down at a picnic table in the sun, trying not to think about Darcy’s wait in much less pleasant circumstances.

The grounds at the end of the spit were landscaped simply—just grass and a two-rail, painted wooden fence that separated the buildings from the surrounding tide flats. The lightstation—a single-story, rectangular building with a pitched roof—stood to one side, its lamp perched atop a circular white brick tower with a conical red metal roof. Across the grass on the other side of the fenced area was the keeper’s quarters, a Cape Cod–style bungalow with a covered porch, square, divided-light windows, and shutters. The buildings were painted white to match, with green trim and red metal roofs. Despite their century and a half of exposure to harsh elements, they were well kept. Darcy had explained that a nonprofit association used volunteer lightkeepers to maintain the site, now that the Coast Guard had been forced to slash its budget for lighthouse personnel.

An osprey flew overhead, hunting for its next meal in the tide pools beyond the fence. Other waterfowl Jordan didn’t recognize perched on driftwood or floated in the water just offshore. A few people—smart enough to have traveled by boat, she surmised, since she hadn’t seen them before now—wandered in and out of the lightstation. If the cameras they held were any indication, they were tourists, not ghosts. A slender woman wearing a loose cotton smock, wooden gardening clogs, and a floppy straw hat was planting daisies and snapdragons along the foundation in front of the keeper’s quarters. The scene was quaint and peaceful … as long as Jordan didn’t factor in Holt’s body lying on the beach less than a mile away.

She raised her face to the warm rays and willed herself to think about something—anything—else. With so many recent stressful events in her life, she found herself savoring those short stretches of time when she could close her eyes and feel at peace.

Until a year ago, her days had been … well, predictable. She’d had a thriving therapy practice in L.A., based on the tenets of Rational Therapy. Her husband—she’d believed—had been in love with her. But that life had disintegrated into a media frenzy surrounding her very public divorce and Ryland’s murder. Though she hadn’t admitted as much to Darcy, her reluctance to take on big challenges or set goals was really an attempt to remain calm and centered while she struggled to adjust to her new life.

From a psychological standpoint, figuring out what made a person reach the point of committing murder was fascinating, in a somewhat morbid way. She knew people killed for all kinds of reasons. Her own stalker, for instance, had killed on the spur of the moment, out of an irrational need to eliminate his perceived competition. What had Holt done to cause his assailant to reach such a breaking point? Or had the person simply been mentally unbalanced, and Holt had done nothing to incite the violence?

She hadn’t known Holt all that well, except by reputation as a womanizer. Her only real contact with him had been to ask him for access to his family papers, which had included the personal diaries of Michael Seavey, the 1890s shanghaier, who had been at the top of her list of suspects when she’d investigated Hattie’s murder.

Though Holt had professed indifference to what she’d discovered about his ancestor, she’d always thought he’d secretly cared a great deal. She suspected a good portion of his “bad boy” reputation had been based on an attempt to live down to the low expectations of the locals, who considered Stilwells to be at best societal misfits, at worst hardened criminals.

Jordan had heard that in recent weeks, Holt had been working on a job at the historic Cosmopolitan Hotel in downtown Port Chatham, which had at one time been owned by Michael Seavey. Rumor had it that the basement of the hotel still had a door leading to the underground tunnels used by the shanghaiers back in the day to hold recalcitrant sailors. Had Holt bid on the job partially because of some sense of connection to his past?

He hadn’t been around the pub much lately, which she’d simply chalked up to long work hours. However, she now had to wonder whether he’d been taking trips out here for dives. And if so, why? She found it difficult to believe that he was diving for historic artifacts on sunken wrecks. Even less credible was the idea that he was diving because he enjoyed watching the fish. As far as she knew, the only hobby Holt enjoyed was bedding women—a different one every night.

Jordan squinted at the distant horizon, holding a hand up to shade her eyes. A black speck had appeared, slowly growing in size. Some kind of commercial fishing trawler, by the looks of it. But as she watched, the speck gradually became separate sticks—masts, she realized. A beautiful old sailing ship rose up, coming toward her, almost as if it had emerged from the sea. Logically, she knew it only looked that way because of the curvature of the earth, but still, it was a wonderfully romantic sight.

The ship had three masts, each supporting rows of squared-off sails that appeared to be completely unfurled. It was running before the wind, moving silently through the water, small white waves curling back from its cutwater. The closer the ship came to shore, the more stunning it appeared to be, its bowsprit rising and falling with the swells. Jordan could just make out the carving of a woman whose dress flowed back in soft folds, molding to her feminine figure.

“Gorgeous, isn’t she?”

“Hmm?” Jordan turned her head toward the voice.

The gardener stood beside the picnic table. She lifted a hand to point at the ship.

“Oh! Yes.” Jordan smiled. “I hear there’s quite an active wooden boat society in this area, dedicated to refurbishing old ships.”

The woman hesitated. “I suppose that’s true, yes.” When Jordan gave her a questioning glance, she shrugged. “I don’t get to town much.”

“That’s understandable. If I lived out here, I wouldn’t want to leave, either. It’s an arduous hike.”

“Oh, I’d take a boat,” the gardener replied matter-of-factly. “Nevertheless, I find it difficult to leave.”