“Here’s the thing,” Brodie told Cliff sternly. “The way you...left us, you had to have consumed nuts or a nut product not long before you...left us.”
“Died,” Cliff said sadly. “Though, if it weren’t for beauty of life and my dear Rosy, I wouldn’t mind this so badly. That little mouse of a girl you hired to watch over the museum—she’s coming into her own—because of me! And that dear girl Adia, at such a loss with her husband gone—I made her feel happy and easy, if for just one night out of her harried life.”
“Cliff,” Kody said, clutching tightly to her sheets, “we need your help finding your killer.”
He nodded again. “I keep thinking...replaying it. Your festival had just ended. Sunday night... Key West was winding down after the weekend bachelor parties, there was also a fishing competition, and while Sunday was far quieter than the weekend...there were so many people at the Drunken Pirate that night. Jojo was serving.” He shook his head. “Rosy came in with me, we sat and chatted with Bill Worth and Emory Clayton and Sonny Atherton for a bit before I set up. Oh, then Bev got there, and then her husband, Dan...a couple of fishing captains I know.”
“Your friends don’t all know that you dump your drinks?” Brodie asked him.
Cliff cast him a rueful grimace. “No. Kody knows. Oh, and Jojo knows. Maybe even Liam, because he asked me once how I was still standing. And he’s pretty harsh on people driving while drunk, as he should be. I told Liam he didn’t have to worry about me. One sip and drinks were discreetly gone.”
“You didn’t actually drink any of the drinks given to you that night?” Brodie asked.
“One nut could do it,” Kody said quietly.
“I had some cream thing that was tasty—I did drink most of it,” Cliff admitted.
Kody glanced over at Brodie.
“Almond milk instead of cow’s milk?”
“That’s what I’ve been thinking, but...”
“I think my viewing is going to be tonight,” Cliff said. “Lots of people will come. I’m so grateful for being so...”
“Beloved,” Kody said.
Cliff looked at Kody. “Well, I can find my way into your museum, Kody. I’m going to be the Wandering Minstrel Ghost! How about that? Haven’t figured out how to drag a guitar around as of yet, or even strum a chord, but I tell you—I will get there!”
“Wandering Minstrel Ghost?” Kody said. “Cliff Bullard, you’re going to go down as the Promiscuous Ghost!”
“Kind of like that, too,” Cliff said.
“Will Rosy like it?”
Cliff winced. “I just make young women with no confidence feel better. Hey, if I was being...more intimate, wouldn’t be so bad—I mean, in the logical sense. No chance of a ghostly pregnancy, and certainly, no STDs.”
“Cliff!” Kody said. Then she sighed. “Okay, you definitely made a change in Colleen—she does seem to be moving on.”
“Aha!” Cliff said.
“Aha, and all right,” Brodie said. “It’s late. Cliff—”
“I’m going, I’m going. Maybe I’ll hit a few bars.”
“And learn how to knock in the future,” Brodie told him.
“Hey, I came to find you. I didn’t know Kody would be here. I shouldn’t be surprised. I mean, she’s a beautiful person and a beautiful soul. And you’re not bad, Mr. McFadden. You seem to have some integrity and determination. If Kody is going to be with someone... She is young. I’ve been telling her that she needed to have some kind of life—she was turning into a spinster.”
“Cliff, I’m not even sure that’s a word that’s still used,” Kody said.
“I’ll get out of your hair,” Cliff said. He headed over to the door as if he would open it. He looked at it and shrugged. “That’s right—I just go through those things now. Anyway...” He paused and turned back to Kody. “I love you, girl,” he said softly.
“You, too, Cliff. I’m glad you’ve stuck around,” she replied.
“We’ll solve this,” Brodie told him. “But we will need your help.”
“Oh, I’ll help you!” Cliff said. “Any way that I can!”
Then he was gone. For a moment, Brodie and Kody were silent. Brodie turned to Kody. “Well, we found Cliff.”
“And he knows nothing,” Kody said.
“But he will. He knows something. We’re just going to have to figure out how to help him remember just what happened, exactly when and where,” Brodie said.
He walked back toward the bed. Kody looked up at him; she was hugging her pillow. Her hair somehow seemed to be both wild and elegant—her look was one of being a little bit shell-shocked.
“Cliff thought he’d find you,” she said.
“Well, I saw the captain. I’m glad he likes me. He seemed to approve—he was all right with you staying with me. He said you needed to spend more time with the living.”
“Great, the ghosts approve,” Kody said.
“Hey, my parents would love you. Nice to have the blessing of the dead?” he asked, half smiling.
“My mom is still alive. Oh, my God—” Kody said. “I have to call her. I’m a terrible daughter. I promised to call her...and I even said that Cliff could go in my dad’s family’s vault!”
“Call her.”
“But I’m here. Naked. In a stranger’s bed.”
“I’m a stranger—now?” he asked.
“I mean to my mom!”
“Kody, she can’t see through the phone.”
Kody nodded.
“Could you pass me my little handbag?”
He handed her the bag and she dug out her phone, glancing his way with a nervous smile. He thought that if they’d been together longer—had more than a few conversations and one night—and he actually knew her mother and she had known him, he might have crawled in and teased Kody as she tried to make her call, planting intimate kisses on her bare flesh.
But he didn’t touch her; he walked over to the desk and opened the computer again, determined to get some information off to Angela.
He couldn’t hear what her mom was saying, but through Kody’s words, he knew that someone else had already told her that the wake would be tomorrow night. And he knew that she kept assuring Kody that it was all right. And that Cliff Bullard was welcome to rest in her father’s family’s vault.
He thought that he was going to like Kody’s mother when he met her.
Finally, the conversation ended.
He had managed to get a few things done while listening, as well. Information sent to Angela. Through his brothers, he knew just how good she was at digging up leads.
He looked at Kody.
“Really, as a daughter, I fail.”
“You don’t. You’ve been busy, concerned as a friend.”
“He was my mom’s friend, too. Closer even, really. Cliff kept her sane when my dad died.”
“Kody, it’s all right. You can’t take the weight of the world, you know.”
She smiled at him. “You didn’t really know Cliff. And you didn’t know Arnold Ferrer at all—and still, you’re involved completely.”
He shrugged. “It’s what I do, for one. A vocation, I guess, more than anything. And this strange thing we have with the dead...somehow, it makes it all the more important. Anyway, we have help now. Real help. From the Krewe of Hunters.”
“Krewe of Hunters,” she repeated. “So... I guess tomorrow, you meet the one living parent we have between us. Well, wow, that was presumptive. No, I mean, you’d probably meet her anyway. I didn’t mean that you had to meet her.”
He stood up, walking over to her. “I will be honored to meet her,” he assured her.
“They’re driving back first thing in the morning. She remarried not long ago. He’s fantastic—a truly wonderful man. Frank—Frank Frampton. You’ll meet him tomorrow, too.”
“I will be pleased to meet him,” Brodie promised. He leaned toward her. “You will still stay with me?” he asked her.
She smiled. “Of course. I’m not really ready to face the captain yet.”
He stripped and joined her again. He took her tenderly in his arms. “Kody, I will find the truth. I promise.”
They fell asleep entwined.
* * *
“I have the documents that Arnold Ferrer meant to give to Kody,” Liam told Brodie. “They’re at the station. You’re welcome to come and study them.”
“Terrific, I’ll be there soon,” Brodie told him. He glanced over at Kody. She was dressed—and ready to head back to her house to shower and change.
“Anything new on Cliff Bullard?” he asked Liam.
“I think you know that he was released to the funeral home. And we’ve gotten the credit card receipts from the bar. I’ve spoken to the manager who swears that Cliff wasn’t even inside where they have the salad bar. And he swears, as well, that there is never anything that even resembles nuts in the fish tacos.” He was quiet a minute. “Brodie, I know that Kody isn’t accepting this well. It may be that he did just get a hold of the wrong thing somehow.”
“Don’t you think it’s strange?”
“Damned strange. But... I don’t know. We’ve questioned everyone several times. And you can’t pinpoint anyone—the credit card receipts aren’t helping a whole lot. They’re giving us a lot of what we already knew—half the place bought Cliff a drink that night. And, as we all know, Cliff probably dumped them.”
“All he’d need was a sip of the wrong drink.”
Brodie thought back to the night when he’d so briefly met the man while he’d still been alive. He’d had a drink at the table.
What had it been and who had bought it for him? Had he actually taken a sip from it? Or had he brought it back to his spot on the little dais and dumped it into the surrounding foliage, as he had been known to do?
Kody was watching him.
“I’ll be there shortly.”
When he hung up, Kody raised her eyebrows at him in question.
“I’m going to the station.”
“I heard.”
“I’ll drop you off. I’m going to bring the car.”
“I’m just about four blocks from here.”
“Right. So I can drop you off.”
“If you insist,” she said, exasperated, but smiling. “Honestly, it’s no problem to walk.”
“I’ll just take you.”
They went down around the corner to the hotel’s lot. He opened the passenger’s side for her, and she smiled as she stepped in.
“Hey, it’s just the thing to do,” he said.
“And thank you,” she said.
She turned to him when he got in. “And at the station?” she asked.
“Ferrer’s documents are there—they searched the room, naturally, when they discovered his identity, and they have the documents he wanted to bring to Sea Life.”
“Ah. So whoever killed him wasn’t after the documents. Or at least they didn’t get them.”
“And what are you going to do?” he asked her.
“Shower, change, stop by the museum—and then I’ll go to the funeral parlor and just check on everything, and from there, make a call and speak with the management at the cemetery regarding the interment. I’m sure everything will be all set. There is going to be a service at the church, and then a few words at the cemetery.”
“What time is the wake?”
“Viewing hours are six to nine,” Kody told him.
“I’ll find you there,” he told her.
When they reached Kody’s house, she jumped out. “And now to face the captain,” she said. She grinned at him through the car window. “I’m a grown woman and I’m a little bit afraid of this ghost. Sad, huh?”
“No,” he told her. “Not sad at all. Kind of nice.”
She turned and headed up to the house; he waited until she was inside.
* * *
The captain wasn’t in the hallway, but as Kody entered, he appeared, looking around the doorway from the parlor.
The television was on. He was watching a show about politics. He loved to stay in the current “know.”
“Kody, you’re home.”
“Just to shower and change,” she said. “I want to stop by the museum—and I need to get to the funeral home.”
“I think I’ll be there tonight, too,” he said. He studied her for a moment. “Thank you,” he said.
“For?”
“For sending Mr. McFadden. That way, I didn’t worry about you.”
She smiled, leaning against the door frame. “He’s very courteous. He reminds me a lot of you.”
“Oh?” Captain Hunter raised his eyebrows.
“Simple decency—integrity. And almost as dashing.”
“Quite decent, I do say. Do you think he’ll stay?”
“Here...in the Keys?”
“Where else?”
“I doubt it. He has a life elsewhere.” She didn’t want to keep going down that route. “I’m going to run up and change.”
Zilla came and rubbed against her leg, meowing loudly.
“I’m going to feed the cat, and then run upstairs and change,” she said, correcting herself. Godzilla always had a bowl of dry food, but each morning he also received a bit of vet-approved canned food. He was evidently not pleased that he had not gotten it thus far.
She went to the kitchen and took a can from the cupboard. When she had dished the food into Zilla’s bowl, she looked up to see that the captain had followed her.
“I went out myself last night. Trolled the streets. The city is comparatively quiet right now. Some people were talking about the murdered man, warning each other to be careful. None of them seemed overly concerned—the general notion seems to be that Mr. Ferrer was killed because of something he knew about the Victoria Elizabeth.”
“I wish we knew.”
“Yes,” the captain said. “I’ve been watching the news about the ship,” he said. He shook his head. “The cruelty of that time, so many men and women, chained...left with no thought to their very basic and personal needs...”
“I know. If I hadn’t read my history, you would have told me,” Kody said, trying to be patient.
But she knew that this reminder of his past flaws had upset him—and the fact that it had upset him was a homage to his personality.
“‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,’” the captain quoted. “That was said by the great Irish statesman Edmund Burke—well before even my time. But his words have run true through the centuries. We were fighting for states’ rights, but in the South, slavery was a way of life. A wrong way of life—how can this be so clear to me now?”
“Because we all learn with time, Captain,” Kody said.
“I will help all that I can—in all things,” he assured her.
“I know that you will,” she said, stroking her cat.
Godzilla purred with pleasure.
She stood and looked at the captain. “I know that you will!” she repeated, and striding past him, she left the kitchen and walked down the hallway to the stairs and hurried up them.
In her room, she paused, and she didn’t know why.
She looked around. Nothing was different, nothing was missing.
Maybe she was different herself. Maybe...
She still couldn’t believe that she had all but jumped Brodie. Then again, she was still incredibly sad—she had truly loved Cliff. And she was seriously disturbed by the events that had occurred during the week. She’d needed some comfort.
But...she was a changed woman now.
And she’d had the audacity to think that Colleen was the one who needed to perk up and have faith in herself and head out and have a life.
She’d had a sort of life. She’d been incredibly busy with the museum and the festival.
She refused to think into the future; there was far too much to get through now.
She hurried into the shower. Even there, she thought about Brodie. It had just clicked. Being with him. She’d found him attractive; she had even felt drawn to him. But she hadn’t admitted, even to herself, just how attracted she had been until she had basically jumped the man.
She pushed away thoughts of the night before—certain that such a night would come again—and rushed to dress.
It was only when she had donned an appropriate deep blue skirt-suit that she realized what was actually different.
Her laptop had moved.
She wasn’t exactly compulsive or obsessive, but she kept the little desk in her room in a very certain order. The computer always sat squarely in the center.
It was at an angle.
She stared at it a long moment, ready to call the captain and find out if he’d been in her room.
He was never in her room.
Nor had he been there the night before—he had gone out. And he had no reason to move her laptop around.
Had someone been in her house?
It was just her computer. Maybe she hadn’t noticed the way that she’d left it. And maybe she was just ridiculously paranoid all the way around.
She righted the computer, studying it.
There was nothing to see—it was just her computer. There was nothing stuck to it, no smudges or marks...nothing.
She turned and sped down the stairs. The captain was watching the news again.
The current story was about the fact that divers were working down deep, exploring and studying the Victoria Elizabeth.
“Bye, Captain,” she said.
He turned and waved to her gravely. “I’ll join you at the wake,” he reminded her.
“See you there.”
She managed to leave her house and head for the museum.
* * *
Arnold Ferrer’s documents were incredibly well preserved.
Brodie didn’t know anything about caring for historical documents—he was all for it, he’d just never owned any.
The officer who led him to Liam’s office explained that they had been preserved in a very special kind of protection, not covered with glass, but rather a layer of sheeting that shielded them from mold and any other harm that might come to them.
Brodie nodded his interest—except that he was far more concerned with what was in the documents—anything that might have brought about Ferrer’s murder.
“Take a look,” Liam told him, rising from behind his desk as Brodie was shown in. “So far, all I’ve been able to fathom was that the man was a jerk. They’re all right there. Knock yourself out.”
The documents were spread out across the desktop. One was a financial sheet, Ferrer’s investment in the ship itself and in the ship’s cargo.
Human life had been—compared to the man’s investment in the ship—quite cheap.
The first correspondence was to the man’s wife. Brodie looked at the documents and then glanced up at Liam.
The pages were in Portuguese.
“The translations are next to them. I asked Officer Michel Gomez—who is Brazilian—to confirm if the translations were good. He said they were,” Liam told him.
“Okay, thanks.”
He picked up the new, typewritten translation of the first letter and read.
Dearest Isabella,
The Victoria Elizabeth might have been built in the shipyards at Liverpool, but she has been outfitted quite gloriously for the cargo we’ve intended. We can carry hundreds of the healthy men and women, purchased from the tribe who enslaved them at a song. We were informed that only the finest workers were taken for this venture; no elderly will be part of the cargo. The sick have been weeded out. I am anxious to see their value once we reach the islands and the colonies. I believe it will exceed our wildest speculations. We can fit so many! Just the men and women and their chains.
With all love, your husband, Mauricio
He looked at Liam again.
“Doesn’t seem human, does it? First, in Africa—one tribe makes slaves of another. And then they are sold to the Europeans, who transport them with less care than they might horses!”
“The law forbidding the importation of slaves to the American Colonies was enacted in 1808,” Brodie said. “How was the Victoria Elizabeth allowed to sail here?”
“That’s very specific knowledge you have.”
“I grew up in Virginia with a passionate teacher. There’s not much about the Civil War I don’t know.”
“I thought maybe Kody had been bending your ear.”
“I was a good student. I imagine Kody was, too.”
“Better than me, I bet. But Florida didn’t become a territory until 1822. The ship sailed before that, and, possibly, she really wanted to reach Cuba or one of the other islands. Though I haven’t found information as to that being the case,” Liam said. “Go ahead and read. I’m still going through credit card receipts and food and drink orders.”
“At the Drunken Parrot?”
Liam nodded. “It was a busy night.”
He turned to his work. Brodie found the second letter.
It appeared to be a potential buyer.
Senhor Gonzales,
I am delighted to assure you that all my expectations have been fulfilled; the cargo of men—between the years of sixteen and forty—is exceptional. All extremely healthy, and promising hours of work in the hottest sun. The women we have taken are all of childbearing age, and will do nicely as house slaves, or in the field. It will be extremely exciting to see them in your hands, if you so wish. On the auction block, the bidding would be fierce.
Brodie felt sickened by the words; it was difficult to imagine that people had ever felt this way. That any man could think so little of human lives.
There was an answer. It was from Mr. Gonzales.
My dear Senhor Ferrer,
I look forward to our transactions; I will arrange purchase in a manner of good faith. I will accept the healthiest men and women, to the number of fifty. I will expect nothing less than what you have promised for the price agreed. I trust that you have spoken in honesty; the sun here is brutal and they will be expected to work from dawn to dusk, without falter. Their native land, you say, bears that same humid heat; that will stand them well, as a dead slave is a worthless slave, as I am sure that you are aware. I will expect a guarantee for a nominal lifetime—a minimum of a decade’s work.
And then what? It didn’t matter if they dropped in the fields?
In the next letter, however, it seemed that Ferrer became something that resembled human.
Dearest Isabella,
I began this adventure with such excitement and belief. I am sorry to say that, while it continues, I am disheartened. At first, it seemed fine that so many could be transported; now, I hear their cries, and their lamentations. They are left in their own feces and urine; I argued with the captain and he said they might be washed down upon reaching shore. I spoke of the moaning, and the sickness aboard; he told me that there is an acceptable loss.
I saw their faces.
They are men and women; they are human. They hurt, they cry, they love, as we do. They are sunk in misery. May God forgive me.
Your loving husband, Mauricio
Brodie sat back. He felt as if he’d been punched in the gut.
Little seemed as horrible as reading Ferrer’s letters—even when Ferrer himself became sickened by what he was doing.
But the Ferrer descendant was turning these letters over to Sea Life—he wanted them exposed. He had wanted people to know about the misery and suffering, so that history could be remembered, and never repeated. People needed to see the ugly parts of the past.
“What do you think?” Liam asked him.
Brodie shook his head. “Horrible.”
“To the best of our knowledge, a few of the crew survived, but the ‘cargo’ died in the hold—chained together. At least, that’s what Ewan believes. I spoke with him this morning. They’ve been exploring again.”
Brodie nodded again, staring at the rest of the documents. They had to do with descriptions of the men and women—with their assets as far as work was concerned. Height, weight, age.
Maria, fine appearance, excellent for a house slave, 20.
Jose, strong, 17...field hand.
Gianna, fine teeth, wide hips, may produce excellent offspring, 15.
Brodie set the document down.
They had all perished. It was rather amazing that the island wasn’t running rampant with ghosts. Then again, the Spanish moniker for Key West had been Bone Island; the bleached-out bones of a slaughtered indigenous tribe had been found on the beaches.
Natives had murdered natives.
African tribes had conquered, massacred, enslaved and sold other African tribes.
The world did not seem a very nice place when looked at through this lens.
“Anything?” Liam asked him.
Brodie shook his head. “Those who were so cruelly treated by his ancestor didn’t kill Arnold Ferrer—they are long, long dead. And he was the one bringing the documents to be seen by the world. If they had belonged to someone other than the direct descendant, I could see there being some motive... Putting a man down in the wreck of a slave ship is hardly a random act of violence.”
“Hardly,” Liam agreed. “Any inkling, any sign—any anything—on how these two deaths could possibly be related? That is...if Cliff was murdered.”
“Come on—he didn’t just grab a handful of nuts.”
“We’ll have the chemical analysis soon enough—when we get the results on the stomach contents. Anyway, there are more documents—some relating to the ship, and the ship’s captain, Angelo Montblanc, and more. Those are translation copies for you, if you want to take them.”
Brodie didn’t even want to pick up the papers; he’d had his fill of the horrors of the past. But he’d read them. They could lead the way to the truth. How, as yet, he didn’t know.
But there were answers somewhere.
And he’d see to it that Angela got everything that he had by the end of the day.
Rising, he thanked Liam.
“Thank you,” Liam said, a half grin on his lips. “Hey, you found the body. I guess I’m kind of counting on you to find the killer.”