The Whiskey Tide (58 page)

     
Arliss sent her a curious look. "He'll have some scars, I expect, but everything works."

     
The curtain behind Kate stirred. She stiffened as Uncle Finney looked in.

     
"Oh, er, I feel like a bull in a flowerbed amid all these dresses. I'm hunting Rosalie. I thought she'd want to know—"

     
"What would I want to know?" Rosalie edged past him. The workroom had shrunk with all of them in it. "Mama said you were looking for me."

     
"Yes, yes. Good news!" Their uncle gave his hands a hearty clap. "I put in a word here and there and the charges against you have been dismissed. They'll send Paul's office a refund of the bail money."

     
Kate sucked in her anger. If Uncle Finney had really helped, why hadn't he done so earlier? More likely he was just claiming credit. Meanwhile they'd risked a trip for nothing — and Rosalie's life was in shambles.

     
Wild, wavering laughter started to pour from Rosalie's lips. She hugged herself, head bending and then falling back. In unnerving counterpoint to her mirthless laugh, she was weeping.

     
"Why, how perfectly splendid, Uncle Finney! How perfectly, perfectly splendid! I don't know how I'll ever repay you!"

     
But suddenly Kate did.

     
All it would take was one trip north.

     
Without Joe.

***

     
Vogel appeared out of nowhere, stuck out a hand and flipped off the switch on the lathe.

     
"If you're not going to use that, isn't no sense wasting electric. State you're in, you're likely to cut your hand off." He eyed Joe's bandaged wrist. "Looks like you've pretty near managed already."

     
Joe didn't respond. Even Vogel's raillery sparked no interest.

     
"What's bothering you?" the junk dealer pressed. "You haven't been yourself for a week." He gave Joe space to answer, stubbed a thumb at the engine resting next to the lathe when he didn't. "Better not mess that up. You're not going to get many more like it."

     
"What are you talking about?"

     
"I thought you read the papers."

     
Since Kate's rebuff, Joe turned pages without remembering a line he'd read. He'd get over it. He knew that. He just didn't know when.

     
"Okay," he said, drawn reluctantly into Vogel's game. "I gather I missed something. What?"

     
"Odyssey Marine Engine Co. Up for sale."

     
Joe whistled.

     
"Saw it in yesterday's paper." Vogel went to his desk and sifted through a box alongside it. "Here." He folded a page and brought it to Joe.

     
It wasn't an article. It was a small ad. Joe studied it. Thought how odd it was, advertising a business. If Vogel wanted to sell his place, word would just spread. People would come to him. Same with Padilla's market or Finnegan's or any business Joe knew. Little businesses, he reflected.

     
"How much do you reckon something like that goes for?"

     
Vogel cackled. "I'd give you odds they'll just close up. Get whatever they can for stock on hand. If they're running an ad, all the likely buyers already have turned them down." He indicated the disassembled engine. "Too many of those go bad, it eats profit." He grinned slyly. "If you had some money to put up, could be we could get a bunch of those engines cheap."

     
Joe hunched over the ad. His shoulder hurt. His heart was pounding queerly in his chest. He wondered if he was taking leave of his senses. He didn't particularly care. Nothing mattered to him right now. It gave him a reckless freedom.

     
He went home and got into his suit. The address from the ad was an upstairs office in the heart of town.

     
"I'd like to see Mr. Morris," he told a bored young woman behind the desk revealed by a frosted door lettered L.T. Morris. "It's about his ad."

     
She looked at him with awakening interest, then disappeared. A moment later he was shown into a paneled office where a man in a pearl gray waistcoat and striped suit rose to greet him. The man was middle aged; smooth featured. The room smelled of cigars and hair oil and too little air.

     
"I'm Joseph Santayna," Joe said offering his hand.

     
The other man's hand was as soft as Joe's was hard. A flicker of his eyes showed he noted the difference.

     
"Santayna. Not a name I recognize. Did Lucille understand correctly that you entertain some interest in buying Odyssey Marine?"

     
"She did."

     
Morris hesitated. Ran his eyes over Joe. Indicated a chair.

     
"What's your current business, Mr. Santayna? If I may ask."

     
"Part owner of a shipping company. Not very large. I want to try something different." He couldn't think of much else to say. "So. What are you asking?"

     
Morris ran his fingers along the edge of his desk. Wondering whether I really have money enough to buy, but too desperate to toss me out on my ear, Joe thought. Vogel was smart all right.

     
"Twelve thousand dollars. That includes plant and equipment, plus an inventory of engines—"

     
"Which break down if you push them too hard," Joe said.

     
Above his starched collar, the owner of the Odyssey Marine Engine Co. reddened a shade.

     
"I'd need to see the books," Joe said. "Before we talked about it."

     
The manicured fingers repeated their path on the desk. The impulse toward condescension warred with the possibility of a sale. Morris rose and went to the door and spoke to the secretary. A moment later she appeared with a ledger.

     
"It's a rock-solid business," Morris said, his heartiness forced. He handed Joe the thick brown ledger. "The last year doesn't give the right picture. I've been too busy with other ventures to give it attention. That's why I'm selling."

     
Joe scanned the last month's figures doing sums in his head. Then he flipped to the entries for a year previous and worked his way forward. Morris paced. He sat down. He pretended to look at some letters. Joe had disliked accounting, but its rudiments had been part of his high school training. It served him well now. Odyssey Marine had run in the red, or near to it, the past twelve months. It owed creditors more than two thousand dollars.

     
He closed the ledger. "I'll buy you out for four thousand dollars. Cash."

     
Morris pressed the edge of his desk as if he might snap it off. "That's an insulting offer."

     
"It's the best you're likely to get with debts like that."

     
After paying off the company's bills, Joe would have enough left for wages and emergencies, and if he lost it all he'd be no worse off than he'd been a year ago. He knew Morris might reject the low offer — but he might accept, too. The mere thought of owning a business like this was so far-fetched that Joe could take either outcome. Wouldn't it be something, though, he allowed himself to think.

     
Morris flipped open the silver humidor on his desk and removed a cigar. He didn't offer one to Joe.

     
"When could you have the money?" he asked curtly.

Forty-two

     
"I don't know... I hate to think of Uncle Finney going to jail," said Rosalie hesitantly.

     
"He had no qualms about you being in jail," Aggie reminded. "Or if he did, he wouldn't have if Kate had been the one arrested the way he'd planned."

     
It was the morning after the shop opening. Mid-morning, actually, the first time Aggie had slept late in weeks. Her feet were swollen from standing so long, but the opening had been a smashing success. Kate had brought her coffee and toast when she woke her, apologetically, for this hastily called meeting. Aggie was feeling quite spoiled lolling back on her pillows.

     
"The vile old windbag deserves worse that jail. For lord's sake, he nearly ruined your life, Rosalie! Would have, if Arthur hadn't swept in like a knight in armor last night."

     
Rosalie blushed to the roots of her hair. On receipt of her letter, Arthur had driven straight from Boston, appearing on their doorstep and demanding to see her. No one knew exactly what passed between them, but Rosalie had returned starry eyed some time later. Arthur had declared he would clean out stables rather than give her up, she told them. The pinkness around her lips suggested more than a few kisses had been exchanged.

     
"If Uncle Finney's cronies keep landing liquor on our beach, and happen to get caught, people are going to think Mama's involved too," Kate said in a low voice.

     
"He's probably bribing the cops, which is awfully underhanded," Aggie added. "And don't forget how he was causing poor Woody to starve himself!"

     
"You're right, of course," agreed Rosalie. "I'm feeling charitable toward the whole world this morning. At this time yesterday I'd have been glad to see him flogged in public." Her forehead wrinkled. "It is a bit iffy, though."

     
"Everything we've done this past year has been iffy," Kate said. "If this stops him, I'll take the chance."

     
Rosalie's sweet smile appeared. "Well, then. I'll do whatever I can to further the scheme. I know who's been paying him to use the beach, by the way. The husband of that Mrs. Kelly I spoke to yesterday."

     
"How on earth did you learn something like that?"

     
"Drank lots of cups of tea with people at the fringes of Aunt Helène's circle, and then with people
they
knew. My scrape with the law gave me a certain... appeal to people entertained by notoriety. I worked in chat about 'oh, perhaps you know my aunt and uncle'. Mrs. Kelly doesn't know Aunt Helène, but she was quite keen to impress me that Uncle Finney had been to their house. Something to do with boats and shipping, she said. I expect she chatters more than she ought."

     
Eager to be downstairs when Arthur arrived, she floated out.

     
"Kate, it is a bit risky," Aggie said.

     
Kate nodded, her mind elsewhere. She was always quiet, but she'd been unusually so of late, Aggie realized. When she looked up, unhappiness lurked in the depths of Kate's eyes.

     
"Kate, what's wrong?"

     
"Nothing. I just—. I'm at loose ends."

     
Aggie circled her knees with her arms. Her sister was lying. Every since the last rum trip she'd scarcely eaten. She left the house in the wee hours of morning to sit on the beach. Aggie had been too caught up in plans for the shop and involvement with Theo to notice till now.

     
"Was it seeing Felix killed?" She felt the rub of guilt.