Vanished (12 page)

“Hmm…I wonder if there's anything else she's not telling him.”

“Rohan thinks she's in shock.”

“A murder would be shocking enough, let alone the victim being your lover. Not that I can call the relationship that.” Molly tucked her hand behind Michael's arm
and squeezed. “It's sad, though. Not one person in town has anything good to say for Willie.”

“Except for Michelle Crookshank, assuming she's not covering up for herself or her father.” Michael's free hand indicated Geoffrey Crookshank walking along behind several tourists, burdened with fishing gear and a picnic basket, his new gaff under his arm. Its point stuck out before him like a knight's lance—a lethal one. “When it comes to murder weapons, the police are spoiled for choice.”

“Agreed.” Stopping at the end of the pier, they gazed up at the
Black Sea Pearl,
draped with fairy lights. “The police, including the detective from Ripon.”

“Perhaps he means to come back here tomorrow.”

“Tim Jenkins says his name is Ross, that he interviewed him once.” Molly straightened from her comfortable lean against Michael's side. “The Ripon team went over the boat where Willie was murdered, but did they do the same with his flat?”

“The victim's home would be a normal part of an investigation.”

“You have to wonder what the police could find that Daisy doesn't already know.”

“And is talking about?” asked Michael. “The murder's almost driven the possible robbery out of our minds—and likely out of Paddington's, as well. Given the state of the place, I'm inclined to believe it was a robbery. The question is, did the person who turned over Willie's flat yesterday afternoon kill him this morning?”

Molly visualized Willie's desk. “There was a strip of dark blue cloth caught on the bracket of Willie's desk lamp, remember? Did you notice the pullover Naomi was wearing? It's dark blue. Was she wearing that when you found her on the boat this morning?”

“No, she wasn't. What of it? It's the same as finding sheets of her notebook paper on the desk—it's no mystery she was in Willie's flat. Perhaps it was her Dylan heard running away.”

“Yeah, she might have been there looking for the coins for herself.”

“Did she know about them? Willie only said his ‘ship had come in.' Even if she did, that wouldn't mean she killed Willie.”

“No,” Molly agreed. “No, it wouldn't.”

The sprightly music made her toe tap. When Michael's sober expression evaporated, she threw herself into his arms and they whirled away in a waltz.

Faces spun past. There was Randall Coffey dancing with Emily Crowder, both of them wearing vaguely piratical garments. Liam McKenna had added a plastic cutlass to his belt and an artificial parrot to his shoulder, while Holly in her gypsy costume could have been auditioning for the opera
Carmen.
Lydia Crowe had opted for a Cleopatra outfit.

Other people were dressed as Vikings, seafaring Celtic monks, Romans and red-coated marines of Nelson's era. Several wore generic vampire or mummy costumes, or, like Molly and Michael, were dressed in everyday garments. No matter what their clothing, everyone seemed to be having a good time. When the music stopped, Michael pulled out his iPhone and started taking photos. Molly smiled—she'd learned long since that anything could spark an idea for a game character or situation. Although she'd just as soon he wasn't inspired by Temperance Collins, who was posing in a harem slave outfit two sizes too small for her.

“Look there,” said Michael.

Aleister Crowe wove his way through the crowd,
nodding and smiling to the peasants. His Admiral Nelson-at-Trafalgar costume was correct right down to the last swag of gold braid, except Aleister very obviously had both arms. He was wearing a patch over one eye, and Molly noted it was transparent gauze. Far be it from Aleister to miss anything.

From the opposite direction came Trevor Hopewell, resplendent in the ruff, cloak, doublet and hose of an Elizabethan sea dog, expertly made and garnished with gold-threaded embroidery. “Sir Francis Drake,” Molly said to Michael. “What do you want to bet?”

“Naval commander, privateer, slave trader, explorer—Drake suits Hopewell's fantasies right down to the ground,” Michael replied.

So many people took photos that Hopewell literally glittered in the flashes. Aleister stepped forward, signature smile creasing his face. He swept off his hat and bowed deeply. Hopewell returned the bow, his hand on his dagger.

Michael focused on the long sheath and the long, tapering fingers wrapping around its top and clicked another photo.

The music started again. Martin Dunhill, still in white and blue, offered his hand to Charlotte Abercrombie, who gathered up her hoop skirts for a dance. Addison Headerly appeared at Lydia's side, holding his plumed helmet under his arm—he was probably posing as Julius Caesar or Mark Antony, Cleopatra's lovers. But Lydia turned to Hopewell, and Addison's face fell like Antony's must have at the battle of Actium as he watched his fleet sink.

Here came Paddington in a Victorian policeman's uniform—more navy blue cloth, noted Molly. She wondered if he was familiar with the old Keystone Kop movies. He stopped beside Randall Coffey, asking, “Have you seen
Daisy? She left me a message, wanted a word, but she never turned up at the station.”

Randall looked around. “Margaret says she left the shop some time ago.”

Fred Purnell jockeyed for position. Tim Jenkins and his cohorts fanned out for maximum coverage. Fotherby strutted around the periphery of the crowd, breaking up groups of onlookers, while Krebs stood beneath a street-light, arms folded, watching him.

Then a woman's scream cut through the music, and a man's voice shouted, “Help, police!”

M
ICHAEL THRUST HIS
phone back into his pocket as the crowd surged toward the pier. He whirled in that direction, then, when Molly whirled with him, grabbed her arm and stopped her. “Wait. Let's see what's happened.”

Molly pressed herself into the protective circle of his arm. “Not another murder. Please, not another murder.”

Despite their best efforts, the crowd carried them forward. Paddington used his torch as a truncheon to clear a path for himself and for Fotherby and Krebs. Lights outlined the weathered eaves of Grandage's Bait and Tackle like spotlights at a Hollywood premiere. But this was no film, Michael told himself. This was no game.

James and Barbara Norton stood clasped together next to a stack of barrels draped with drying fishing nets. In the ripple of light and shadow beyond lay a body curled on its side. A pool of crimson glistened in the darkness and the same crimson smeared the wide gray planks of the pier. The crowd grew so quiet Michael could hear the gurgle and lap of water against the concrete seawall below.

The beam from Paddington's torch threw the body into sharp relief. Athletic training shoes. Polyester trousers. A white shopkeeper's apron stained deep red. A hand splayed on the pier, a smear of red trailing from the forefinger. Gray pincurls around a slack gray face.

“Daisy Coffey,” said James. His face was as white as
the cap, belt and spats of his Royal Navy uniform. “We were walking along the pier, enjoying the sunset, and I stepped back here to look over the grommets on the nets—we sell grommets at the hardware shop…”

“There she was. She's been there a good time. She's cold.” Barbara's tiara glittered as she trembled.

Out of the corner of his eye Michael saw Trevor Hopewell standing to one side, unnoticed by the crowd. Even as Michael and Molly looked at him, he slipped off toward the
Pearl,
Martin Dunhill a shadow at his side.

Paddington started barking orders. Fotherby pushed people away from the scene.

Molly and Michael didn't have to be urged to leave. “That answers my question,” he said as they plodded away. “D.I. Ross will be back in Blackpool tonight.”

“Maybe this time—well, we don't know whether he found the knife used on Willie, whether this one is different…” Her voice trailing away, Molly eyed Tim Jenkins, who was chattering into his microphone, and Fred Purnell, who was darting to and fro with his notebook and camera.

Michael didn't need a camera—the scene behind the Bait and Tackle Shop was seared in his memory.

Molly asked, “Did you see that smear of—of blood right next to her index finger? A curved line ending in a straight one? It looked like she'd written the number two on the plank.”

“I thought so as well, love, but that's likely our imagination. Our minds tend to create patterns.”

“Better than giving in to chaos,” Molly replied.

Aleister, his admiral's hat tucked beneath his arm, escorted the gaunt shape of Alice Coffey toward the crime scene, Margaret and Randall Coffey not far behind her. Geoffrey and Michelle Crookshank sat close together
next to the ice cream van. Rebecca Hislop stood outside her stall, her hands clasped, her eyes wide. Liam and Holly McKenna lingered beside the bandstand, talking to Temperance Collins. Really, Molly thought, the McKennas played the part of gypsies to the hilt, appropriately enough… Something Iris had said tickled the back of her mind, but she couldn't quite grasp it.

“Any one of these people could have stabbed her,” said Michael.

“Not Rebecca.”

“Now the question isn't whether the person who ransacked the flat killed Willie…”

“The question is whether that same person killed again. This time to eliminate a witness, what do you want to bet? A very talkative witness.”

Feeling sick, Michael drew Molly even closer against his side. Slowly, they walked past the weatherbeaten sheet metal of Coffey's Garage, to the boarded-up train station where the Land Rover was parked.

Shadows filled the landscape beyond the lights of the town, but the sky to the west still glowed a deep peacock-blue even as stars pricked the sky to the east. The lights of their own home soon shone like a lighthouse before them, and Iris greeted them at the door. “There you are! The town's buzzing like a hive of bees, is it?”

“Have you already heard?” Michael asked.

“Daisy didn't have the only wagging tongue in town,” replied Iris.

“But she's the one who lived next to Willie Myners.” Molly walked into the house and Michael shut the door against the night. “What's that I smell?”

“A curry,” Iris said. “I thought you'd need a good meal after your day. I've just brought the dishes over from my kitchen.”

“Thank you,” Molly said. “You're a friend indeed.”

They sat down with Iris and ate spicy chicken tikka masala over basmati rice with yogurt-and-cucumber raita. But, delicious as the food was, it was the cool pint of beer that Michael appreciated most. The slightly astringent taste seemed to clear the cobwebs from his mind.

Across from him, Molly drank deeply of her iced tea, something Iris would never have prepared if she hadn't grown familiar with it in the United States. “Sit, sit,” the housekeeper commanded when Molly started gathering the empty dishes. Efficiently, she cleared them away herself.

The front door opened, admitting Irwin and his stony expression. “Some to-do in town,” was all he said as he pulled out the fourth chair at the table.

Iris returned from the kitchen, carrying four servings of thick, milky rice pudding, then passed around cups of tea. “All right then. Tell us about it.”

Molly, with the occasional comment from Michael, led Iris and Irwin through their day, from the original murder scene to its terrible repetition, and from various shops and assorted conversations. At last she concluded, “Gold, there's a motive for murder. Willie's coins, and everyone thinking there were bags full of them.”

“Thanks partially to Daisy, God rest her soul,” said Iris.

“But Paddington assumes Dylan killed Willie out of jealousy,” Molly reminded them. “Or maybe Geoffrey killed him for revenge. We've got to think outside the box. Or the treasure chest.”

“I'll do my best.” Michael scooted back from the table.

Molly, too, rose from her chair. “Let's get the dishes washed, Iris. Then I'm going to make some notes,
hopefully work out a schedule of who was where when. I'm guessing Daisy was killed about seven, while we were dancing and everyone was milling around the square. Just about the whole town was there except Dylan and Naomi. And Robbie.”

“There's Trevor Hopewell—Daisy said she'd seen the yacht and him, and we know he lied.”

“Do you think he did it?” Molly asked.

“I don't know what to think, love.” Michael started for the door, then turned back. “Do you need help in the kitchen?”

“Get on with you,” Irwin urged. “You, as well, Molly. I'll help Iris.”

“Cheers.” Molly headed to her office just off the ballroom and Michael went upstairs. Within moments he was deep in the branching paths of the World Wide Web.

Now that he searched for specific information about Trevor Hopewell, he discovered that the man had quite a media footprint. But then, the media loved a treasure hunter, especially one who'd more than once skirted the law to obtain the artifacts he desired. Fitting out his yacht as a pirate ship revealed more about Hopewell than he intended.

Michael downloaded the photos he'd taken earlier that evening. There was Headerly with his plastic breastplate, and Lydia in her sequin-bedecked collar and headdress, and… What was that?

Michael enlarged his last photo of Hopewell, then cut out one portion of it and enlarged it. Even in the increasingly pixilated image, he could see that Hopewell's hand at the top of the ornate sheath wasn't holding a hilt at all, but what looked like a stick.

There was no knife in the sheath.

Michael skimmed through the photos he'd taken of the
weapons collection on the
Pearl,
both the ones he'd made this afternoon and those from his tour the day before. The reason he didn't remember seeing an Elizabethan dagger in the display case was because there hadn't been one. There hadn't even been a space for it. Assuming Hopewell had ever had a dagger. But having gone to the trouble of obtaining a sheath of the proper era to complete his costume, why wouldn't he have the blade to fit in it—especially when money was no barrier.

Michael went back to this evening's shots of Hopewell. There, in the very first picture, taken just as he entered the scene, his face was turned toward Martin Dunhill.

Dunhill.
With a few keystrokes, Michael changed the direction of his search.

His breath slowly escaped his pursed lips. Numerous members of the Dunhill family had criminal records, Martin alone having gone to prison for robbery as well as for assault.

A soft knock on the door frame heralded Molly's entrance. “Have you found anything?”

“Indeed.” Michael showed her the photos and the search results. “So here's Hopewell with a personal assistant who's known to the police.”

“Oh, boy,” she said. “And there was Martin Dunhill telling Willie he didn't want any drugs on the
Pearl.
Did the two men meet in prison? Trevor hiring Dunhill to work security on the yacht is like hiring the fox to guard the henhouse. Maybe we should warn him.”

“I should think even a pretty boy like Trevor Hopewell would have done a background check on his employees. Maybe Dunhill's gone straight. Or maybe Hopewell knows exactly what he's got, and Dunhill's in on his schemes. Just because Hopewell's got a film-star face and bags of money doesn't mean he's not a killer.”

“No, it doesn't.” Molly grimaced. “But the missing dagger could point to Dunhill as much as Trevor. Maybe more—look at Trevor's expression.” Her fingernail tapped the screen. “His mouth is open, like you caught him in midsentence. His chin is stuck out and his eyebrows are tight. He's angry. Maybe Trevor was dressing Dunhill down for, say, losing a sixteenth-century dagger?”

Michael looked again. She was right. Dunhill's expression, far from being respectful, as befit his status as second banana, was resentful.

“Just one problem. Dunhill was at the festival at the time of Willie's murder.”

“Yes,” Molly conceded. “We saw him there ourselves. And I'd just as soon we had only one murderer, thank you.”

Michael knew better than to gloat over winning the point. Putting on his most congenial expression, he asked, “Did you make your schedule?”

“Oh. Yeah. I played around with it, made columns with names and so forth, but there are still too many blank spots. However, when I was going through my e-mail I remembered something. Do you remember Iris saying yesterday that even though the McKennas are from Cumbria, they should get their Yorkshire history straight? Well, it turns out they're from Appleby.”

“Appleby?”

“I worked with Appleby Council to get a grant for facilities for their big horse fair every year. Horses, gypsies, fortune-tellers. That Appleby.”

Michael felt his eyebrows rise to his hairline. “You mean Liam and Holly might really be gypsies? That there's something to that story of a Romany blood oath to reclaim Charles Crowe's gold?”

“Maybe Daisy overheard Liam telling Willie he had no choice but to show them where he found the coins.”

“If that's what they wanted, though, why kill him?”

“Maybe all he found was the four coins, not the Crowe mother lode, so they—or someone else—killed him in frustration.” Molly slumped. “Yeah. Frustration. That's about it.”

“Enough is enough for one evening, love. We'll have a word with Paddington tomorrow, see if this angle has occurred to him.” Michael tried to think of other possibilities, but his brain lost traction and he surprised himself with a yawn. He shut down his computer.

Molly's yawn almost unhinged her jaw—he could count every pearly tooth. “I'm off to bed,” she said.

“Are you all that sleepy, then?” he asked with a smile.

She leaned against his chest and turned her lips up to his. “I don't know. Let's go see.”

 

A
CLIPPER SHIP, SAILS
taut with a following wind, breaking the waves of a sea filled with golden icebergs—Michael's dream shattered and he jolted awake. Molly's voice in the darkness, slurred with sleep, groaned, “What was that?”

“What was what?” But even as he spoke, he heard the blare of the house security alarm that had thrust him back into consciousness.

His phone on the nightstand erupted with the 007 theme music just as Molly's on the other struck up “Thriller,” making a discordant duet. Michael didn't have to glance at the screen to know who it was.

“Mr. Graham, this is Holdover Security,” said the polite, professional voice. “We just recorded a break-in
at your house and want to make sure you and your family are all right.”

“We'll let you know.” Swiftly Michael used his phone to connect with the security system controls and switched off the alarm. He launched himself out of the bed and into his slippers, Molly doing the same on the other side. They raced down the stairs into the front hall.

Lights were blazing around the house, triggered by motion sensors. From the parking area came Irwin's bellow. “Here! You! Stop just there!”

Michael threw open the front door. Beside him, Molly called, “What's going on?”

Irwin Jaeger waved a cricket bat into the darkness, shouting, “And good riddance to you!” A chill breeze made his striped pajamas flutter on his wiry limbs and raised gooseflesh on Michael's arms.

Iris ran from her cottage into the glare, her short, white hair forming a halo around her face. “What's all this?”