Birds of Prey : Previously Copub Sequel to the Hour of the Hunter (9780061739101) (40 page)

“What do you want a phone for?”

“To call the ship and talk to the captain.”

Margaret shook her head. “I don't know about that. It seems dangerous to me. What if the woman finds out I'm on board? What if she sees me and comes after me again?”

“She won't,” I said. “I'll talk to the captain. If he can't figure out a way to ensure your safety, we'll forget about the whole thing.”

“Maybe I could stay in your cabin,” Margaret suggested.

It was a good enough idea but one that wouldn't fly. “No,” I said. “That'll never do.”

That was all I said. There was no sense in telling Margaret Featherman that I was already taken and by Naomi Pepper herself. Finding that out would have made Margaret mad all over again, which would have been a shame. My admiration may have been grudgingly given, but I was just beginning to like her.

O
NCE DULCIE WADSWORTH'S PHONE
was in my hand, I rethought my initial intention. I spent my entire career at Seattle PD being accused of Lone Rangering it. And so, I decided to be a team player. I
tried
being a team player. Instead of calling Captain Giacometti first, I called the
Starfire Breeze
and asked for Kurt and Phyllis Nix's stateroom. No answer. Rachel Dulles wasn't in, and neither was Alex Freed. I didn't leave a message. Then, because I really was trying to do the right thing, I even tried asking for Todd Bowman. No deal there, either. When I asked to speak to Captain Giacometti, I was told he was unavailable. Since I had started at the top of the chain of command, that left me no choice but to go down.

“What about First Officer Vincente?” I asked.

“If you can tell me what this is about . . .” the operator began.

“I can tell you it's urgent,” I said. “A matter of life and death.” Which was technically true. The fact that Margaret Featherman wasn't dead had far more to do with pure luck than it did anything else. Or maybe, LITG was right, and God was the one who had put that fishing boat in the right place in Chatham Strait at just the right time.

I waited on the phone for a very long time. “First Officer Vincente,” he said. “May I help you?”

“I don't know if you remember me. My name is Beaumont, J. P. Beaumont.”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “I remember you quite well. You are the FBI agent who is not an FBI agent, correct? The one who was allowed improper access to our security tapes.”

This wasn't going the way I wanted. “That's correct,” I admitted.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Beaumont?”

“I need to ask you a favor.”

“I don't think so, Mr. Beaumont. You are in no position to ask a favor of anyone; now, if you please—”

“I've found Margaret Featherman,” I said.

He stopped dead. “You what?”

“Margaret Featherman, the woman who went overboard,” I said. “I've found her.”

“Is she alive or dead?”

“She's very much alive.”

“Thank God. That is wonderful! How did this happen? Who located her, the Coast Guard?”

“No, Mr. Vincente. I found her. And I must swear you to secrecy. No one can be allowed to know she is still alive.”

“But that is absurd, Mr. Beaumont. Out of the question. Surely we must tell her family, notify the FBI, let the Coast Guard know.”

“You are aware, of course, that there are two entirely separate FBI investigations being conducted on board the
Starfire Breeze
at this time, correct?”

Vincente paused. “Yes,” he agreed warily.

“And that one of them deals with a plot to kill one of the doctors on board.”

“Yes,” he said. “I am aware of such an investigation.”

“What you don't know and what the FBI doesn't know is they're protecting the wrong doctor. Leave It To God wasn't after Harrison Featherman at all. They were after his former wife.”

“But how do you know this?”

“Because of what the killer said to Margaret Featherman before she was shoved overboard. The perpetrator is still on board your ship, and we've got to catch her before she gets away and before her compatriots know she's been compromised.”

“Mr. Beaumont, I don't understand why you're telling me all this. Surely, the FBI investigators are the ones—”

“I've already tried calling them,” I said. “I don't know where they are. All I know is, they're not answering their phones, and time is of the essence. I want to bring Mrs. Featherman back on board. I want to smuggle her down into the security room and see if she can spot the woman who attacked her on any of Antonio Belvaducci's tapes.”

“The first thing is to notify the Coast Guard so they can call off the search.”

“No!” I insisted. “That's exactly what you mustn't do—not until we get our ducks in a row.”

“Our what?”

Idiomatic English strikes again. “We have to have everything in place,” I said. “That's all.” I could tell from the silence on the other end that I had his attention.

“What is it you wish me to do?” he asked.

“First let me ask you something. What happens if someone boards the ship without having swiped their key when they disembark?”

“An alarm sounds,” First Officer Vincente replied.

“That's what I was afraid of. Look, I'll come back to the ship in a little while. If you can, have an extra key card made for Mrs. Featherman and have it swiped as though she had left the ship in an ordinary fashion. Then I'll use that to bring her back on board. She can go straight to the security screening room and get started viewing tapes.”

First Officer Vincente considered my proposal for some time. “All right,” he agreed finally. “I suppose that will work. And if the FBI agents have returned by then?”

“We tell them what we have and turn the whole operation over to them.”

“Very well, then. Captain Giacometti is not on board this afternoon, so this is my decision. I suppose that will be all right. How soon will you be back at the dock?”

“Say half an hour?”

“All right then. I'll deliver a pre-swiped key card to the security officer in charge of loading passengers into the tenders. The card will be in an envelope with your name on it. Ask him for it when you get there.”

“Thanks,” I said, putting down the phone. Having sold the program to First Officer Vincente, I might have danced with glee, but right then the door at the top of the staircase opened and Dulcie Wadsworth waddled into the room, followed by Lars Jenssen—an irate Lars Jenssen. He glared from me to Margaret Featherman and back again.

“What's going on?” he demanded.

Dulcie went straight to Margaret. “Is everything all right?” Dulcie asked.

Margaret nodded. “I think so. Mr. Beaumont here has made arrangements for me to go back on board the ship. He wants me to look at the ship's security tapes to see if I can identify the person who attacked me.”

Lars' jaw dropped. “This is the woman who fell off the ship?”

I nodded. Dulcie turned to me. “Are you sure that's such a good idea—taking her back on board the ship, that is? Won't it be dangerous?”

“If the killer finds out she's still alive, it might turn dangerous,” I agreed. “If the attacker realizes Margaret could possibly identify her, she may try coming around and taking another crack at it. That's why time is so important. Once Margaret is on board the ship, I've made arrangements for her to be taken directly to the security monitoring room. As long as she's there, looking at tapes, she'll be safe enough. The problem is getting her from here to there without anyone recognizing her.”

Frowning, Dulcie Wadsworth looked Margaret Featherman up and down. “What size are you again?”

“Eight or ten,” Margaret replied. “Depends on the cut.”

“Wait here,” Dulcie ordered. “Let me see what I can do.”

While Dulcie made her way back down the stairs, I turned to Lars. “This is Margaret Featherman, Lars. Margaret, this is Lars Jenssen, my grandmother's husband.”

He held out his hand. “Glad to meet you,” he said. “My wife has a shiner, too, at the moment. Had an accident on a treadmill. Not nearly as colorful as yours, though,” he added.

Having exhausted his effort at small talk, Lars turned to me. “I didn't even know you were gone,” he grumbled. “I thought you were sitting right there the whole time enjoying the show along with the rest of us. Then, when the lights came back up, you were nowhere to be found. Dulcie said not to worry. She said she knew where you were, but I've got to tell you, it gave me a scare. I didn't know what to think.”

That's what he said, but I had a pretty good idea what he was thinking. He thought I had left the show early for only one purpose. He thought Margaret and I had been involved in the same kind of activity he and Dulcie had been up to for years. I was sure he'd be only too happy to report my assumed transgression to Beverly without making mention of any of his own.

“Yoo-hoo,” Dulcie called from downstairs. “Margaret, come down here for a minute. I think I've found something that will work nicely.”

While Margaret hurried to answer her summons, Lars continued his dressing-down. “You had no business yust going off like that without saying a word about it.”

The irony wasn't lost on me. I may have been the one person in the country right then with a chance at putting Leave It To God out of business, but here I was being chewed out by Lars as though I were some errant schoolboy. We were long-term friends, but I had reached my limit.

“Right,” I bristled right back at him. “You can show up at a whorehouse in your old stomping grounds where the local madam-with-a-heart-of-gold treats you like some kind of visiting dignitary, but if I disappear for half an hour in the same establishment where you're evidently a regular customer, you go ballistic and call out the National Guard.”

“It isn't,” he said.

“It isn't what?”

“It isn't a damned whorehouse,” Lars declared.

“Really? I say, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck and walks like a duck . . .”

“It is not a whorehouse,” Lars said again, his voice rising.

“Have it your way,” I told him. “But I'm not a kid, Lars. I don't need watching every minute, and I don't expect to have to ask your permission to leave a room for five minutes. That's not the way things work.”

At that, Lars marched off across the room. There he stood, brooding and silent, staring out the second-story window, and I made no effort to follow him or talk him out of it. A few minutes later, Dulcie came huffing back up the stairs.

“I think we've about got it handled,” she said. “You'll be surprised.”

“Good,” I said. “Thanks.”

Lars said nothing.

Dulcie cast a concerned look in his direction. “Is something the matter, Lars?” she asked.

“Damned-fool kid. He's got the idea in his head that this place is some kind of whorehouse.”

“Isn't it?” I asked.

Dulcie Wadsworth's eyes narrowed, and her cheeks flushed with anger. “Whatever makes you think that, Mr. Beaumont?”

“Well,” I said lamely. “There are the girls—”

“They're dancers,” she said, cutting me off. “That's what they do—dance. And the ones who come to the Quixote Club thinking they're here to do anything more than dance lose that idea in a hurry or they get sent packing. When I came to town years ago, Sitka was a wide-open after-hours kind of place. I happen to know from personal experience that there were plenty of men who were ready to take advantage of naive young women—the ones dumb enough to fall for their sad stories.

“But that's not what the Quixote Club is all about. I don't operate that kind of establishment, Mr. Beaumont. My girls sign contracts. The contract lays out in black and white all the dos and don'ts. If the girls stick to the rules, they can make more money dancing here for three months than they could working a year at most jobs back home. And when they do go home, it's with the understanding that they're to return to school and complete their education. Four years is all they can work for me—four years and that's it. If they want to go after a graduate degree, they have to find some other way to pay for it because by then it's time for them to step aside and give other girls—other younger girls—the same kind of chance they've had.”

I remember how, in one or another of those old fairy tales, someone talked about having their ears boxed. By the time Dulcie Wadsworth finished her tirade, that's exactly how I felt—as though I'd had my ears boxed. I felt them turning beet-red. It didn't help that during her speech Dulcie Wadsworth had walked up so close to me that her ponderous breasts thumped against my chest for emphasis as she went along. And I have no doubt Dulcie could have taken me in a fair fight.