Black Moonlight (20 page)

Sergeant Jackson stormed through
the doors of the Hamilton Police Station. “This had better be good,” he threatened. “Mrs. Jackson made a leg of lamb and spotted dick for supper.”

“Sounds a right treat,” Creighton remarked, hungrily. “Anniversary?”

“It was awful,” Jackson responded. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was trying to kill me. But she tries so hard.”

“To kill you?” Creighton teased.

“To cook something I’ll like,” Jackson said angrily. “Now then, which one of you monkeys had the bright idea to telephone me?”

Edward and Creighton both turned to look at the young constable.

“It—it was me, sir,” the youth raised his hand. “The Ashcrofts here were trying to get back to Black Island.”

“So, let them,” Jackson replied breezily. “They won’t get far on a night like tonight.”

“You’re right,” Edward confessed. “We didn’t. We can’t cross the harbor without a police escort.”

“Which is why we came back here,” Creighton added. “And why we had the Constable call you. We need to get across, now. Tonight.”

“You’re a prisoner,” Jackson scoffed. “You’re not going anywhere, except back to your cell.”

“I have the bail money,” Edward stated.

“Well, isn’t that lovely? You can bring it by the courthouse tomorrow morning.”

“It can’t wait until tomorrow morning,” Creighton argued. “My wife may be in danger.”

“From what? Boredom?”

“Herman Miller,” Creighton stated. “We have reason to believe he’s a German agent.”

“What? Oh, Mr. Ashcroft,” Jackson laughed. “Surely, you can come up with something better than that.”

“Wait, Sergeant,” the constable pleaded. “Just hear them out.”

“They’ve got you, too, have they, Constable?” Jackson chuckled as he pulled over a chair from a nearby desk and sat in it. “All right, go ahead. Convince me.”

“As you know, our family’s business specializes in aircraft parts and design,” Creighton explained. “At the time of his murder, my father was in the midst of designing a new fighter plane. A fighter plane capable of reaching unprecedented speeds but still retaining maneuverability.”

“Obviously, an airplane of that caliber would appeal to a great many people. So, although the idea was to keep the design top secret, it wasn’t long before news of my father’s work leaked,” Edward continued. “He began receiving letters and visits from various foreign dignitaries, all seeking to purchase the plans. But two of these, shall we say, ‘special interest groups,’ were especially tenacious.”

“The Germans,” Jackson guessed.

“Hmm, and the Russians,” Edward added. “They were willing to pay any price to gain possession of my father’s plans.”

“And he didn’t take them up on the offer?”

“Our father may have been many things, Sergeant, but a traitor wasn’t one of them. As a resident of the United States, he pitched the plane to America first; when they turned him down, he took them to the British who, in turn, paid him handsomely to continue development.”

“I don’t see how this relates to Miller or the murders,” Jackson stated.

“Both the Germans and the Russians were relentless. Until, that is, a few months ago. Since then, nothing,” Edward related.

“They didn’t go away, they simply tried a different approach,” Creighton explained. “One Herman Miller, or more correctly, Müller, a German nationalist who grew up in the States but holds a grudge against the Allies for their treatment of his motherland. The Germans trained him to be a secretary; they even provided him with exemplary references.”

“The only problem,” Edward chimed in, “is that, as a secretary, Miller only has access to the office and the more public areas of the family home. Father, however, never kept important documents in his office or even in the safe. He always kept them close at hand so he could watch them.”

“That’s why Miller made the phony appointment,” Jackson concluded. “So he’d be living under the same roof a with Ashcroft and the plans.”

“And the Regatta gave him a chance to meet with his German contacts without suspicion,” Creighton elaborated.

“But if he knew the appointment was a fake, why did he send a telegram confirming it?” Jackson questioned.

“He didn’t,” Creighton replied. “Cassandra did.”

“Cassandra? Why?”

“She wanted both my father and Miller out of the house at the same time. I believe it was so that she could search for the drawings herself.”

“The spiritual guide business wasn’t lucrative enough for her?”

“Umm, about that,” Creighton added. “Detective Jameson couldn’t find anything about her having cheated a woman out of her inheritance. Which means that either she was highly successful at keeping a low profile or the story was inaccurate.”

“It can’t be inaccurate,” Jackson stated. “It came from your father.”

“The announcement might have come from my father, but the information didn’t. My father wouldn’t have done that research himself—he saved his very limited patience for drawings and things of that nature—he had Miller do the legwork. And Miller used that opportunity to try to get Cassandra out of the way.”

“But if Cassandra wasn’t a grifter, who was—” Jackson started to ask, and then remembered the necklace found near the body. “Cassandra was a Russian agent,” he concluded. “And Miller knew it. That’s why he murdered her.”

“How do you—?” Creighton started.

“I’ll explain in the boat,” Jackson dismissed curtly. “Right now we’re heading to Black Island.”

The three men rushed to the door, only to be greeted by Inspector Nettles, who was on his way inside. “Say, I had that brandy decanter examined by a doctor friend of mine and Marjorie’s right. It does contain Seconal.”

“We know,” Jackson pushed Nettles aside both literally and figurative.

“How do you know?”

“We’ll explain on the way there.”

“The way where?”

“Black Island. We’re going to catch ourselves a killer.”

Marjorie awoke to the
hum of a motor and the sensation of movement. She opened her eyes to find herself slumped into the passenger seat of the speedster, her upper torso draped over the side of the boat and her head hovering a few inches above the water.

Ignoring the searing pain in her skull, Marjorie turned her head slightly to the left and watched as the speedster pulled away from Black Island. In the flickering light cast by the fireworks overhead, she could see the figure of a young man descend the cliff-side staircase, pause by Smith’s body, and then run across the beach.

It was George.

Don’t do it
, she thought as she watched him wade into the cove.
George, don’t do it!
Marjorie lifted her head to scream, but quickly realized that doing so would seal the boy’s fate.

As if he could hear her pleas, George ran back to the shore and scrambled up the cliff-side steps.

Thank goodness
, Marjorie sighed in relief.

“Welcome back, Mrs. Ashcroft,” Miller said over the sound of the motor. “And thank you for the drawings.”

Marjorie sat up, tentatively, and felt beneath the left strap of her brassiere. As expected, the drawings were gone. She shuddered, partly because she had come too far on this journey to let Miller take possession of the plans, and partly because Miller had searched her person in order to find them.

“You’re tougher than you look,” he went on, “I thought for certain you wouldn’t come to until we were in Hamilton.”

“Why …” she started, but the sound of her own voice caused excruciating pain.

“Why are you still alive?” Miller ventured.

She nodded slowly.

“Insurance. I’m boarding a boat out of Hamilton tonight and I don’t want anyone to stop me.”

Marjorie drew a deep breath. Here, in the cove, surrounded by the walls of Black Island, she and Miller were cut off from civilization, but ahead, in Hamilton Harbor, there would be other boats: fishing boats, harbor master patrol boats, boats that dropped anchor to watch the fireworks. All she would need to do is get the attention of those boats and …

Her heart sunk with the realization that the flare gun that might have been used to signal the attention of other boats had been left ashore, flares exhausted, by Creighton and Edward during their efforts to signal the attention of the police.

The lights of Hamilton’s Front Street shimmered and danced upon the water, outshined only by the occasional rocket flare, and so close as to seem almost tangible. Marjorie closed her eyes to shield herself from their taunts and tried to plan her next move.

Should she swim? Should she scream? Should she try to push Miller overboard? They were all viable options, but the success of any of them depended upon one inextricable truth: she needed to get to the harbor. And here, in the shallows surrounding the island, progress was slow at best.

“So I’m a hostage?” Marjorie finally asked.

“I prefer to call it a prisoner of war.”

“We’re not at war,” she pointed out.

“Not yet, but we will be,” Miller said confidently. “In the next war, Deutschland will take its proper place in the world and those who betrayed her will be vanquished.”

“The day of reckoning,” Marjorie muttered.

“Mr. Ashcroft showed you that note, did he? Sloppy of me to have dropped it in the office, but I was in a hurry.”

“Of course! You wrote it to let your cronies know that you arrived at Black Island according to plan. When you murdered Ashcroft, you removed it from his pocket, just in case the police could lift the fingerprints. And the key …”

“Go on,” Miller urged. “Let’s see if you can figure it out.”

“The key was never in his pocket,” Marjorie deduced. “We only had your word that it was ever there in the first place.”

“Clever girl. Keep going.”

“When you couldn’t find the drawings, you wondered if Ashcroft had, indeed, brought them along. Not wanting to take any chances, you sent the key to your cronies so that they could safely investigate Ashcroft’s office while he and his family were out of town.” Marjorie’s eyes grew wide. “That’s what you were stuffing into the envelope that night. It wasn’t your resume; it was the key and a set of instructions.”

“Excellent,” Miller proclaimed loudly. “It’s a shame you aren’t on our side.”

“I still haven’t figured out why
you
aren’t on
ours
,” she countered.

Miller flashed a wry smile. “Why am I not on the side of a people who gave me regular beatings during the war? Why am I not on the side of a people who fired my father from his job at the mill? Why am I not on the side of a people who posted signs prohibiting us from certain parts of town, while welcoming only ‘loyal Americans’? Loyal Americans who didn’t like the sound of our last name.

“We could have taken the easy way out. Could have changed our name. But my father,” Miller continued, “wouldn’t think of it, not while there was breath in his body. He was proud to be German, and he didn’t want us to forget that we were German too. After the war, he considered going back to Deutschland, but it was too late. The reparations that you and your Allies demanded had forced my homeland into economic ruin. My aunts and uncles were poverty-stricken and inflation was such that my parents’ life savings would have been just enough to support them for a week.”

They were entering the narrow part of the cove. Once through, they would be in Hamilton Harbor.

Marjorie watched as Miller rose in his seat in order to gauge the boat’s clearance. As she did so she could have sworn she saw something behind Miller slip from the shore into the water.
I’m seeing things
, Marjorie determined.
It’s that blow to the head.

What was real, however, was the pistol resting, directly beside Miller, on the driver’s seat.
If only she could distract him
…

“You changed your name, though,” she stated. “To disguise who you really were.”

“I disguise who I am,” Miller asserted as they left Black Island behind, “not because I’m ashamed, but because I wish to deliver justice. I wish to—”

In an instant, George emerged from the water and put Miller in a strangle hold. As the two men struggled, Marjorie sprung from her seat and seized the pistol from the driver’s side of the cockpit, but not before Miller could deliver a swift kick to her chin.

The force of the blow sent the gun flying onto the rear deck of the boat and launched Marjorie overboard.

Marjorie felt herself sink beneath the inky depths of Hamilton Harbor. Clawing, kicking, and grasping at her watery surroundings, she endeavored to fight her way to the surface, but the wake created by the motor of the speedster kept pulling her under.

Please, God
, she prayed.
Please God, don’t let me drown.

As if by way of a miracle, the surrounding waters began to glow with a brilliant white light. Marjorie wondered if she might be dying until she saw a pair of arms break through the surface of the water and reach toward her.

With a kick of her legs, she propelled herself closer to the outstretched arms and held on tightly while they pulled her out of the harbor and dragged her into a dilapidated fishing boat. Marjorie gasped and coughed as Creighton held her in his arms and Edward wrapped her in a blanket.

“Thank God you’re all right,” Creighton said, tears welling in his eyes.

Marjorie nodded. “But George,” she rasped.

“We know.”

Marjorie looked up to see the bright lights of the fishing boat focused on the idling speedster and the two figures upon its rear deck.

Jackson moved to the bow of the fishing boat and announced through a large megaphone, “Stop! Police!”

George lay upon his back, hands in the air, while Miller, brandishing the gun, stood over him.

“Put the gun down and let the boy go,” Jackson demanded

Miller replied by cocking the pistol and aiming it at George’s head.

“What’s that going to get you?” Jackson challenged. “Are you going to shoot all of us as well? Are you going to shoot your way through town? That’s what it will take for you to get out of this.”

“I will not dishonor my family name or my country by turning myself in,” Miller shouted in reply. “I will not be called a failure.”

The two boats were close enough for Marjorie to see the deathly pallor and pained expression of the German agent’s face.

He looked at Marjorie and said, “In the next war, only the strong will survive. It appears, Frau Ashcroft, that you will be there and I will not.”

With that, Miller put the barrel of the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.