Pieces of Hate (A Wendover House Mystery Book 4) (4 page)

“Do you know what day it is?” I asked, my flesh going goose-bumpy
again.

“Um—I guess….” Ben was a writer and didn’t keep close track of the
days or even months. He knew it was Tuesday or Friday if he heard the ferry. It
was winter if there was snow.

“September tenth. What year did it sink?”

“Well … 1712. Wow. That is just uncanny.” I knew he was only thinking
about how good the coincidence would be for his book. He wasn’t appreciating
how sinister the timing was and I didn’t want to say what I was thinking out
loud.

“Have you got a camera?” Ben asked. “We need to take some pictures. I
wish I had done it before I pried the box open.”

The box had probably never been pretty, but its sojourn in the sea and
subsequent encrustation had not improved it.

“Don’t worry. I took pictures already.”

“Good. Get your camera. Let’s take some more. I want a record of
everything.”

My wife, her
maid, the outdoor lad and the cook have no knowledge of reckoning proper time.
I have set them on watches for the Dog, the First and the Mid. My wife insisted
that we do not ring the bell to avoid rousing those who sleep, but I wake in
time for every eight bell and walk the house to see for myself that all is
well.

—from the unbound journal of
Halfbeard

We took more
pictures of the chest, and I uploaded them to my computer and emailed copies to
Ben. Then, at his insistence, I called Harris and told him what I had found and
asked about insurance. As I had expected, Harris said we probably couldn’t take
out insurance until we knew what we had, but to mail him copies of the pictures
and that he would make enquiries. He assured me that until I sold the box—assuming
I did, which I knew Harrison would never approve of—I didn’t need to worry
about entering anything in the Doomsday Book.

Taxes were the
last thing on my mind.

I agreed to do
as Harris asked and hung up quietly. I was feeling uneasy.
Perhaps
because Harris was also uneasy, though he tried to hide it from me.
My
attorney is a creature of ritual and habit—and schedule. It would not surprise
me to learn that he walked in widdershins circles and bayed to the moon before
getting into bed. He is a traditionalist whose beliefs are repackaged
eighteenth-century superstitions. He probably believes in cursed treasure. And
he wouldn’t be alone in this if word got out. Strange boxes appearing on the
beach during unnatural storms is just part of the local microclimate of
weirdness that happens in the islands.

And because of
that, I didn’t really want word getting out about pirate treasure
—
cursed or otherwise. I knew Harris and
Ben would keep quiet. Harris didn’t want strangers on the island and Ben didn’t
want anyone scooping him on his story. But was the curator at the museum someone
who would be able to keep quiet in the face of a great discovery?
And what about my insurance agent?

Who the hell
was my agent? I was annoyed to find out that I didn’t know. He had likely been
Kelvin’s agent—my great-grandfather, not the cat. I just had to hope that he
was trustworthy too.

As promised, I
began searching for letters, journals, and diaries. I looked through the
history books as well, hoping that there would be something in them, some
mention of
Halfbeard
by an enterprising writer a
century back. It was slow going. I was careful not to touch any of the
taxidermy I had to work around. If I left them undisturbed, I wouldn’t have to
smell them.
As much.
My least favorite of the
preserved corpses was a ridiculously large varnished swordfish. I don’t care
for maritime decorations, especially dead ones that stink.

Barney
galloped by, stirring up dust. Almost instantly I began sneezing, violent
paroxysms that nearly caused whiplash and left my head aching.

“This place
needs cleaning. Maybe I should tie
dustcloths
to the
pair of you and let you chase mice.”

Kelvin looked
at me with scorn but Barney wagged his cobwebbed tail. He has a hopeful
disposition and thought maybe this would be a fun game.

The attic was
stuffy and unbearable past eleven, so after a superficial look inside the
latest filthy box which looked fairly promising, I grabbed it and another small
crate of papers and dragged it down to the library where I could work in the
cool and comfort.

The cool and
comfort weren’t enough to keep me on point. My ancestors may have had many
skills that I am unaware of, but I think I can safely say that there was not a
closet librarian among them, except perhaps my great-grandfather, Kelvin. And
he arranged his books by some system unknown to adherents of either Dewy
Decimal or alphabetizing. And no one had made any effort to straighten loose
papers which seemed to have been heaped in whatever chest or crate was
available and stuffed in the attic with no thought of tidiness or that someone
might actually wish to examine the writings someday. A few personal letters
were sometimes tied up with ribbon, but these were usually romantic missives
and a century off of the date I was searching for.

“Maybe there
was some emergency,” I said to Kelvin. “Like a flood and they just rushed to
get everything to higher ground before it was destroyed.”

This seemed
unlikely though. What might have happened was someone making a frantic search
for something and not having the time or inclination to clean up afterwards;
they had just stuffed things in boxes higgledy-piggledy and dumped them in the
attic.

“Doesn’t
matter how it happened, I suppose. It has to be sorted.” I sighed and Barney
sighed too. There would be no playing for a while.

Things started
going into piles by date—when I had one—and by name when I did not, though this
was hardly satisfactory given that almost all my male ancestors had been named
Kelvin. Eventually my body announced that my eyes would herniate if I read and
sorted any longer. The angel on my shoulder—the not so good one—suggested that
I had done my neighborly duty and that I needed some fresh air to resuscitate
the brain cells.

It would come
as a surprise to most people who know me, but once in a while my better sense
is overcome by the need for a seasonal craft project. Stepping out to look at
my small back garden, I decided that I would leave the largest of the garden
sunflowers to set seed for the birds in winter and that the smaller ones needed
to be cut and dried for an autumnal wreath.

“Come on, guys,”
I said to Kelvin and Barney. “Let’s get some sun.”

It was
technically still summer, but the first pangs of autumn were in the air and my
sleeveless shirt was probably a little optimistic. You could feel the changing
season on the skin and smell it in the wind. It made Barney joyous and Kelvin
sleepy.

“I should cut
back the Virginia creeper.” Or have someone come and cut it back. The
transplant had proven a ferocious contender for most dominant plants and was
fighting a fierce battle with the English ivy for control of the back porch.
The curtain was thick enough to create a kind of twilight.

However, the
creeper looked like a big job that might need a ladder since it had grown up
onto the wall. I decided to save it for later and began clipping sunflowers,
trying to enjoy the breeze and the sun that warmed my back. Though the weather
was very pleasant, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something unpleasant was
looming large.
Larger than usual.
Closer.
I had a weird kind of faith that the islands would protect me from whatever
outside threat was approaching. But it still felt like it was my obligation to
be rid of the hostile invader if I could manage it since it might be a threat
to others. Also, unfinished business can trouble spirits that should be at
rest. Those swindled in life can be nasty in death, as I had cause to know.

There was
nothing new about this idea. I had been tying up my ancestors’ loose ends since
I arrived on the island.

In an attempt
to push back the mental shadows I began humming
Jesu
, Joy of Man’s
Desiring
,
sadly with more
enthusiasm than accuracy. Barney and Kelvin didn’t mind my version of Bach and
the composer was dead, so who cared if I flatted a note or two?

I hadn’t been
at work for more than a few minutes when Mary Cory arrived. I wondered what she
wanted. It seemed doubtful that one of her rare moments of friendliness was
visiting her since she had smiled at me only last week.

“That almost
sounded like Bach.”

I don’t
dislike anyone with sufficient fervor to spend a lot of valuable brain wattage
hating them by the hour, but Mary isn’t my favorite person and seeing her had
the potential to ruin the day.

“Delibes,” I
lied.

Neither of my
pets rushed over to see her. She isn’t an animal person and they know it.

Mary takes
care of an aging neighbor, Archibald Hicks, who owns one of the two other
houses on the island. Archibald is so very old that he has begun to blur around
the edges. Old age and illness have consumed his vitality and I always feel I
need to be ready to run over and resuscitate him. His muscles and memory sagged
long ago, skin and hair have faded to beige and he looks like a watercolor
portrait of himself that had been painted on cheap tissue paper which has begun
to disintegrate. Though no one has said it straightly, I believe that he lives
on the island because he thinks that it somehow prolongs his life, that the
island keeps death away. Though what he goes on living for I cannot guess. He
rarely has visitors and there is no other family that anyone knows about.

Mary doesn’t
wear a nurse’s uniform on the job, but even her summer sandals somehow manage
to look sober and orthopedic. They matched her nature, which has had the
slightly grim island culture ground into it like some kind of invisible tattoo that
can’t be seen by outsiders but whose irritating presence can be felt. I think
the muscles for laughter have atrophied and she looks rather like an old person
is living behind her younger face and always forcing it into a worried frown
even when there is no particular reason for concern.

The islands
are kind of inbred and everyone who has lived here through the centuries has
broad, overlapping interests and relationships. Sometimes deciding which role
to play could be confusing and involved splitting hairs so fine they could only
be seen with an electron microscope. My family, in particular, has had a long
and strange relationship with the other islanders. Thanks to our familial curse—or
blessing—I have an undeniable degree of local notoriety. Some people fear me
because of my lineage. Others love me for being their savior. I deserve neither
fear nor love from these people who are still virtual strangers, but that’s
just how it is.

Mary is an
exception. She neither fears nor loves me. We tolerate one another when we must
interact and ignore each other when we can. Apparently this wasn’t one of the
days when we could pretend the other didn’t exist.

I tucked my
flower into the bucket and then turned fully to face her.
Best
not to draw things out.
Goodwill can curdle quickly and I wanted to
answer her questions and send her on her way rejoicing.
Or
not.

The first
thing I noticed was that she had colored half her hair a strange shade of red
that looked like it had come from a spray can. In fact, as I looked closer I could
see flecks of red on her old sweatshirt. Knowing it was paint and not blood was
a relief though I had to wonder how she had gotten it in her hair.

Mary has an
unusual hobby. She makes
papier-mâché
figurines of people’s deceased pets. I find it a bit strange but certainly more
agreeable than the taxidermy that fills my attic. Still, she is about as witty
a conversationalist as one of Barney’s squeak toys and I avoid her lectures when
I can.

As usual, she
was scowling slightly and her mouth was pulled into a frown. I didn’t take it
personally. The only time she didn’t scowl was when she was with Everett Sands.
Everett and his brother, Bryson, are the local law. Bryson is charming. Everett
less so, and I think he is with Mary mostly because she will never punch him in
the brain with her intellect. Both of the brothers are smugglers who used to
use my great-grandfather’s hidden sea cave and secret staircase for smuggling
whisky from Canada—with his blessing, I should add. In the islands we all kind
of live outside the law, if that can be said of people who have probably never
been inside of it to begin with.

And, just to
complicate things, one of their ancestors was also responsible for hanging one
of mine. It was a love affair that ended in accusations of witchcraft, which
sometimes happened in New England back in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. I have been willing to forgive, but forgetting is harder for all of
us, especially when there are ghosts who refuse to rest.

Like I said,
it’s all kind of inbred and every time I saw Bryson I had to decide if he was
there as the law or a smuggler, to be hated for an ancient wrong done to an
innocent woman or considered as a potential romantic partner.