P.J. Alderman - Ghost Ship

“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.

“Okay, I believe you,” she said.

“I’m greatly relieved.” His tone was wry. “However, I must insist that you make a point of notifying Seavey at once, and informing him of what you have learned. I grow weary from the inconvenience of avoiding him on the waterfront.”

She suspected it was more than that, but she didn’t want to push him any more than she had. “All right. You have my word that I will inform him sometime later today.”

Garrett shook his head. “Unfortunately, I don’t believe your word is sufficient. You see, I’ve always found that when threatened, people will do or say whatever they need to, to remain alive.” He stood, then placed his hands on the table, leaning over her. “You have twenty-four hours to do as I bid, or I will return to eliminate those you consider your friends, including this mutt. Do you understand?”

She swallowed. “Yes, I understand.”

He straightened, nodding. “Good. If you do as I request, this will be the last you see of me.”

“Thank God for that,” she muttered as he turned to fade away. With shaking hands, she picked up her bill and pulled out money to cover it.

“You’re as white as a sheet!” Marietta exclaimed as she came over to remove the plates. “Are you all right? My food didn’t give you indigestion, did it?”

“No.” Jordan mustered a thin smile. “Your food was delicious as always. It was just something I read—it made me lose my appetite.”

But as she walked back to Longren House, stopping frequently to kneel and hug Malachi, she suddenly realized her distress was partially caused by something she had read. Something that was even more shocking and horrifying than what she’d just endured.

She had a strong hunch she knew who had killed Michael Seavey after all.

Chapter 20

AFTER leaving Malachi in the care of Jase and Tom, she got into the Prius and headed for the marina. She needed to find Charlotte and ask her some pointed questions, but they would have to wait—she was running late for her appointment with Bob.

On the drive down, she was so distracted by her thoughts that she failed to take in any of the scenery. She did manage to avoid plowing through a couple of coach-and-fours, but otherwise, her mind was still focused on what she’d read and learned from Garrett over breakfast.

Michael Seavey had, in all likelihood, been the unconscious man the crew had taken off the Henrietta Dale in the first moments after the ship’s grounding. So it stood to reason that he’d been transported back to Port Chatham for medical treatment, and that he wouldn’t have remembered the trip. It also followed that if he had suffered from any sort of concussion, he could have remained unconscious for days. But she didn’t believe he’d survived that long.

Before leaving the house, she’d double-checked the date of the newspaper article in the library that Hattie had shown her that first night, the one recounting Seavey’s murder. The article had been dated just two days after the shipwreck, which in reality worked out to be little more than thirty-six hours after Seavey would have been brought back to town.

The Henrietta Dale had run aground late on the night of August 5, 1893, which meant that by the time Seavey reached Port Chatham for treatment, it had to have been the morning of the sixth. Which, in turn, meant that the murderer could have killed Seavey and dumped his body amid the chaos. It wasn’t a stretch to believe that his body wouldn’t have been noticed until the morning of August 7. The timeline worked.