Haunting Jordan (6 page)

She raised her chin. “You have the advantage, sir.”

“I usually do.” He bowed mockingly from the waist. “The name’s Seavey. Mike Seavey.”

Chapter 3

LATER that same evening, because Jordan felt like staying home by herself, she made it a goal to put on a bit of makeup and go socialize. With the press hounding her 24/7 in L.A., she’d become increasingly isolated. Even worse, she’d gotten used to the isolation. She was in danger of becoming a certified loner, and if her treatment of the day’s visitors was any indication, her social skills were rapidly deteriorating.

Not to mention the fact that she’d felt perfectly comfortable having several long, involved conversations with a dog.
That
had to stop.

“What about Duke?” she asked as they left the house and headed for the business district. “As in Duke Ellington?”

The dog gave her what she now recognized as The Look, comprising equal parts derision and personal affront.

“Okay, okay, I’ll keep working on it.”

The sky to the west had faded from fuchsia to purple,
creating deep shadows in the yards of the houses she passed. Down at the end of her block, at the bluff’s edge, the triangular-shaped silhouette of the old wooden bell tower she’d read about partially blocked her view of the buildings downtown. Lights glowed from the buildings’ windows, and she caught herself automatically thinking the illumination came from gaslight lamps.

She shivered. The evening had turned surprisingly chilly, and the cropped jean jacket she’d put on over her tank top was no protection against the damp and cold coming off the water. She paused not far from the grocery and looked back in the direction from which they’d come. Echoing her uneasiness, the dog growled low in his throat.

Throughout the day, she’d been unable to shake the feeling of being watched. She was beginning to believe her new neighborhood might harbor a sexual predator. Then again, perhaps the paparazzi had followed her north.

Except for a gray-haired woman dressed in a dark blue cashmere skirt and flowing cape, the street stood empty, its businesses closed for the evening. The woman glanced in Jordan’s direction, but when she smiled back in greeting, the woman didn’t appear to notice.

Still unsettled, Jordan placed a hand on the dog’s neck. “Come on, fella. Our imaginations are in overdrive.”

The pub sat midway through the first block off the main intersection of the arterial leading down to the waterfront. The building was flanked by a bakery, its wood-slatted shelves empty for the evening, and a small print
shop displaying colorful greeting cards in its front window. Despite the cool temperatures, the pub’s oak plank door stood open, releasing onto the sidewalk bluesy strains of piano overlaid with murmured conversation. All That Jazz glowed in neon in the window. The dog trotted inside, slipping through her fingers when she tried to grab him.

“Don’t worry, no one minds.” Darcy waved her over to a table next to a huge fireplace constructed of rugged slabs of gray granite. Flames burned cheerfully, crackling and spitting the occasional glowing ember at the wrought-iron screen.

Jordan slid into the captain’s chair Darcy shoved out with a foot, and the dog collapsed on the floor between them. She took a moment to shake off her moodiness from the walk over, then glanced around the room.

Massive beams, looking well over a century old, ran perpendicular to the fireplace chimney, supporting an arched brick ceiling. Dark green leather booths sat against distressed brick walls and mixed with varnished oak tables scattered in cozy seating arrangements. The works of local artists were prominently displayed. Jordan noticed she wasn’t the only one who’d brought a dog.

The pub was surprisingly full, its clientele mixed—some young enough to be college students, others closer to Jordan’s age, still dressed in their work clothes and clearly tradesmen. Even the personal styles were eclectic—everything from dreadlocks to old-fashioned, elaborate French twists paired with vintage clothing.

Patrons stood at a baroque-style mahogany bar that
ran the length of the room, chatting among themselves with the ease of longtime acquaintance. Others crowded around tables or jammed into booths, sharing pitchers of beer over some hotly debated topic.

“Hey, everybody!” Darcy yelled. “This is Jordan. She bought Longren House. Jordan, this is everyone.”

Jordan acknowledged several “hi’s” with a smile, noting the curious but polite scrutiny she was receiving.

A tall, thin man with a silver ponytail and a diamond stud in his left ear came over to the table. He introduced himself as Bill, the bartender, and took her order for white wine.

“Friendly place,” she noted to Darcy, relaxing into the captain’s chair.

“Would I steer you wrong?” Off-duty, Darcy looked only slightly less intimidating, dressed in boot-cut jeans that emphasized her long legs and a soft, sea green sweater that turned her hazel eyes the color of old moss. “Wait’ll you try the food.” She forked up a bit of fresh mozzarella, tomato, and basil vinaigrette from her plate for Jordan to taste.

The flavors exploded on Jordan’s tongue.
“Oh.”
She closed her eyes to savor the moment.

“Kathleen makes the mozzarella from scratch each day, and she grows the basil out back. Jase has threatened to commit suicide if she ever leaves to open her own restaurant.”

Jordan couldn’t stop herself from looking around for him. She found him seated behind a shiny black grand piano on a small stage in the back corner. Glancing up
from the keyboard, he gave her a slow smile and launched into a mellow tune she recognized.

Not only did he own the pub, he played jazz piano. She did
not
need to discover that fact. “FPP,” she muttered under her breath.

“What’s that?” Darcy asked.

“You have hearing like a bat’s,” Jordan complained, then sighed. “Four-Point Plan. It’s my way of dealing with everything that’s happened in the past year, starting with a grief stage.”

Darcy snorted. “You’re grieving for a jerk who lost his license to practice by bedding his patients?” Catching Jordan’s wary look, she held up both hands. “Hey, don’t look at me like that. One of the guys Googled you.”

“Terrific.”

“Hell, most folks in here figure if you killed your ex, you were entitled.”

Jordan choked on her wine, and Darcy leaned over to pound on her back, nearly slamming her face-first into the table.

“So much for living a quiet life of anonymity,” Jordan rasped when she could finally talk.

“If you wanted anonymity, you should’ve moved to another city. Everyone knows everyone else’s business in a small town, and you’re the most exciting thing to happen around here in years.”

And to think she’d taken those politely curious looks at face value.

“Cheer up,” Darcy said. “Half the men in here believe that if they get involved with you, they might end up
dead. The rest are turned on by the possibilities.” She took a drink from her beer mug. “Of course, the fact that you bought Longren House has them a bit twitchy, but adopting the dog helped.”

It was on the tip of Jordan’s tongue to ask which group Jase fell into. She drank down half her wine in one gulp instead.

“I don’t suppose you have any theories as to who
did
kill your hubby?” Darcy asked.

“The list of possible suspects is long,” Jordan replied wryly.

“And you being the spouse—”

“Soon-to-be ex,” Jordan corrected her, “which diluted my motive.”

Darcy shrugged. “Depends on whether you were getting screwed in the settlement.” She waited, her expression expectant, and when Jordan didn’t confirm or deny, she asked bluntly, “Were you?”

Jordan continued to hesitate. No matter how friendly Darcy seemed, Jordan couldn’t trust that anything she confided would be kept confidential. “No,” she said finally, keeping it simple.

Darcy drank more beer, her gaze still assessing. “Whatever you aren’t telling me, you can bet the cops in L.A. picked up on as well.”

Jordan remained silent, striving to look unconcerned, and Darcy shook her head.

Jase ended his song with a glissando that ran the length of the keyboard, drifting away to enthusiastic applause, then rose from the piano. A group of men at a
nearby table caught his nod, rising to carry their drinks and instruments up onstage, unpacking a bass fiddle, a sax, and two horns. Apparently, they were to be treated to live jazz. Jordan decided she could easily become addicted to evenings spent here, even if it meant putting up with a few questions from the resident cop.

“So what have the welcoming committees brought so far?” Darcy asked.

“Chocolate cake, sugar cookies, and a salmon loaf,” Jordan answered, relieved by the change of subject.

“Salmon loaf is classier than a tuna casserole. Let me guess—Betty from down the block?”

“I think so—I had trouble keeping track.” Jordan remembered a question she wanted to ask. “What’s a colorist? She—Betty—mentioned one when we were standing outside this afternoon.”

Darcy scooted around in her chair. “Yo, Tom?” A bearded, red-haired mountain of a man at the bar raised his eyebrows. “Jordan wants to know about colorists.” He nodded and headed toward their table, beer mug in hand.

“Tom’s the great-grandson of one of Port Chatham’s most famous police chiefs,” Darcy said by way of introduction.

“Really?” Jordan shook his hand. “What time frame?”

“Late 1800s,” Tom rumbled, his soft voice at odds with his bulk. He pulled out the chair next to Darcy, settling in. “My great-granddaddy was smitten with Hattie Longren’s sister, Charlotte, for a while, according to the diaries he left behind. At least, until Charlotte turned to prostitution, which cooled his ardor a bit.”

“I read about her this afternoon.” The doll the dog had found evidently belonged to Charlotte, not a daughter. “She became a prostitute at the Green Light after Hattie was killed, correct?”

He nodded. “Bad luck ran in that family, that’s for sure. Charles Longren perished at sea, leaving Hattie in charge of his shipping empire, but then Hattie was murdered not too long after. Once Hattie was gone, Charlotte was too young to run the business and had no way to survive. She ended up dead on the waterfront not too many years later.”

“Tom’s a history buff, like many of the descendants of the original families here in town,” Darcy explained. She eyed Jordan curiously. “You’ve already started researching?”

“A couple of ladies brought me a stack of papers they thought I’d want to read. Newspaper accounts of the murder and so on.” Jordan shook her head. “From what I was able to glean, the man who hanged for Hattie’s murder was someone with whom she had a close relationship. Pretty sad.”

Tom leaned back, balancing his mug on the arm of his chair. “That jibes with my great-granddaddy’s account.”

“The man was a union representative, correct?”

“I think so. Frank Lewis enjoyed a certain amount of fame—or notoriety, depending on your perspective—for writing about the sailors’ plight in the union magazine of the time, the
Seacoast Journal
. The union and the shanghaiers were always at odds—both vying for the same
berths with the shipping lines. And, of course, the shanghaiers had a lot to lose if the union got a toehold in the business.”

“The opinion of the ladies who brought me the articles was that Frank Lewis might’ve been falsely accused,” Jordan said.

Tom frowned, stroking his neatly trimmed beard. “I seem to remember some speculation that he’d been framed as a way to neutralize him because of his influence on the waterfront. The shanghaiers continually looked for a way to get rid of him, that’s for sure. He was highly educated—his columns in the
Seacoast
regularly documented the brutality and illegal practices of both the shipping masters and the shanghaiers. But as for whether he was ultimately wrongly convicted, I wouldn’t know about that.”

Belatedly, Jordan realized she had suggested that his relative, the police chief, might’ve bungled the investigation. “I didn’t mean any disrespect.”

Tom shrugged. “None taken. People around here love to speculate about past events. Though it certainly seems like that old murder affected the lives of a lot of people, and not in a good way. My great-granddaddy never really got over losing Charlotte, and not too long after the trial, he was killed in the line of duty. I’ve always wondered whether his grief had made him careless.” He sat in pensive silence for a moment, then took a long drink of his beer. “You asked about colorists.”

“Yes.”

“We’ve only got two in town who specialize in color schemes for the Painted Ladies.”

Jordan looked at him blankly, then the light dawned. “The Victorians?”

“Yeah. Colorists consult with you to design historically accurate colors by customizing modern paint. I’m one, and the other is Holt Stilwell, who’s standing over there at the end of the bar.”

She craned her neck to get a glimpse of a broad-shouldered man with a bleached buzz cut who was chatting up two young women. Aviator sunglasses hung from the neck of his muscle shirt, which exposed arms indicating that he bench-pressed somewhere around a gazillion pounds. Jordan had never been attracted to big, beefy types—her taste ran more to the lean, angular builds of men like … well, Jase. Dammit.

“Best to stick with Tom,” Darcy muttered. “Stilwell is one of the main reasons I contribute heavily each year to the National Organization for Women.”

Tom grinned behind his beer mug. “He’s a talented colorist, but he does have a certain reputation with the ladies.”

“And it’s all bad.” Darcy scowled. “I’d love to run that son of a bitch in for being a misogynist and a womanizer, but unfortunately there’s no law against treating women like shit. And he’s too clever to get caught physically abusing anyone he lures back to his rat-infested dump.”

“So tell us what you really think.” Jase had walked up while she was talking, and he rubbed her shoulder affectionately, smiling at her.

At some point during the day, he’d exchanged the cable-knit sweater for a midnight-blue Henley T-shirt that emphasized his shoulders and lean build. Pulling out the chair next to Jordan, he was careful not to hit the dog, who was sound asleep.