Ransom at Sea Read online

  The brunette tsked noisily, then turned to the third girl. “What do you think?”

  “I love it! I just love it!” she replied with the intensity of youth that betrays a desperate desire to please.

  As they passed Emily, the first girl lowered her hand with her fingers splayed out and looked down at the glittering trinket. “Well, I like it,” she said with finality.

  Emily smiled to herself at their youthful innocence. She was an eminently practical woman, and wouldn’t have wanted to be young again for all the tea in China, if such a thing were possible. But the brief exchange reminded her of a time of life when problems were small and only seemed big.

  Emily watched as they continued down the street, then stopped and looked in the window of another store. After a hurried conversation, they went in. Emily was just about to turn away when she noticed something at the end of the block: a man was standing by the building at the corner. At that distance she couldn’t clearly make out his face, but from the color of his hair and the clothes he was wearing she took it to be Stuart Holmes. She became certain when he gestured in Holmes’s tentative manner. Whomever he was speaking with was out of sight, behind the building.

  She thought nothing of this at first, since she assumed that the three single men had stayed together and presumably it was one of them with whom he was in conversation. But then his companion stepped into view, and Emily was startled to realize that she’d never seen him before. He was wearing a pair of black pants and a white shirt over which he sported a red jacket. After two or three more minutes, they disappeared, either into the building or around the corner.

  Emily sat staring after them for a moment, then shook her head.

  Well, after all, she thought, we’re not that far from Chicago, and many people from there come here. He could easily have run into someone he knows. For that matter, he could’ve simply become involved in a conversation with one of the local people. But … there was something in their posture and the way they were gesturing that indicated familiarity.…

  “You have the funniest look on your face,” said Lynn, who had come out of the store without Emily noticing.

  Emily started and put a hand to her chest. “Oh! I didn’t hear you!”

  “I’m sorry. What were you thinking about so intently?”

  The old woman sighed. “I was just thinking that I must stop making a mystery out of everything.”

  “I knew this cruise was getting to be too peaceful,” Lynn replied with a wry smile as she helped Emily off the bench. “What have you seen in this sleepy little village that’s so mysterious?”

  “Nothing at all. That’s just the point.” As they started down the street, she added, “I see you’re empty-handed.”

  “Yes. I don’t really need anything for the kitchen at the moment, but … they do have some lemon curd I might pick up on the way back.”

  “What ho!” cried Bertram Driscoll as he emerged from the shop they were passing. “Hey, there, ladies. Nice little town, isn’t it?”

  “It’s generally very quiet,” Emily replied primly.

  Driscoll cleared his throat and lowered his voice somewhat. “I’ve been looking around. Haven’t found anything I want but they got a lot of nice stuff here.”

  “What has become of your companions?”

  He wrinkled his nose questioningly, then allowed it to relax. “My—Oh, yeah. Well, Dismal Jack—otherwise known as Stuart Holmes—the minute we reached River Street, he said he was going off on his own.”

  “How odd,” Emily said lightly. “Of course, some people do like to be on their own.” But he isn’t on his own.

  “He turned down the street before this one, I guess to get away from us. Truth to tell, I don’t think he wanted to be seen with us, more’s the pity for him!” This was said in Driscoll’s usual, jovial manner, but Emily sensed a degree of hurt behind the words: a lifelong hurt.

  “Not-So-Dismal Jack,” he continued, “otherwise known as Jackson Brock, is still in this little hidey-hole of a store. Sells scented soaps and things. The stink started to get to me. I had to come up for air.”

  It was at that moment that Brock emerged from the store carrying a small red shopping bag.

  “Sorry I took so long, Driscoll, but they had a very big selection,” he said in the wide-eyed manner that was peculiar to him. It seemed to Emily that Jackson Brock always looked as if he’d just heard something that had seriously thrown him for a loop.

  “Oh!” he exclaimed when he noticed the two women. “Hello. I didn’t mean to ignore you.”

  “So you’ve found something already?” Emily said with a glance at his bag.

  He spread the handles wide and showed the contents to her. “Yes. Soap. They have many flavors—er, aromas—of them in there.”

  “And a bottle of lavender,” she said, peering into the bag.

  Brock closed it, his cheeks flushing a deep crimson. “Yes. I’ve been having trouble sleeping, and … of course now, in a strange bed. I thought it might help. It’s supposed to be very good for that … spraying it on the pillow.”

  “Yes, it is,” Emily said kindly. “And it does work.”

  “I have a friend who is an aromatherapist,” Lynn interjected. “She recommends it to everyone who’s having trouble sleeping. She says the scent is very relaxing, and you find yourself dropping right off.”

  Brock’s cheeks had returned to their natural color. “I’m glad to hear that.”

  “Well, that’s all interesting,” Driscoll said. “Now, how about the two of you coming on with us?”

  “I’m afraid we can’t,” said Emily. “We have quite a bit of shopping to do, and some of it is for—” She lowered her voice. “Personal items.”

  Driscoll recoiled slightly, and he silently worked his jaw as if bracing for the unwelcome eventuality of a further explanation.

  “So you will excuse us?”

  “Oh, yes, yes!” he blustered, stepping to the side so they could easily pass. “Enjoy yourselves!”

  “We’ll see you back at the boat,” Brock added.

  The two pairs headed in different directions. When there was some distance between them, Lynn chuckled. “Personal items?”

  “Well … anything we’d be buying for ourselves could be considered personal items, couldn’t they?”

  “I’ve always said, you’re a very sly woman!”

  “Tell me something, Lynn. Do you really know an aromatherapist?”

  She laughed. “I know a lot of people. There must be one among them somewhere.”

  When they reached the corner where Emily had seen Stuart Holmes, she stopped and looked up the side street. The corner building was an old-fashioned drugstore with a row of apartments on the second floor. The entrance to the shop opened onto Main, while the door to the apartments was on the side of the building. Behind the building was a parking lot, after which the street ran into the residential district, where homes were surrounded by trees and shrubs.

  “Emily? What are you looking for?” Lynn asked.

  “Hm? Oh! Nothing. I was just wondering what was in this direction.”

  “Well, there doesn’t appear to be any shops that way. There are some in down that way.” Lynn gave a nod in the opposite direction of the side street, which led down to the harbor. “Why don’t we go that way?”

  Emily agreed, and they crossed Main and headed down the side street. They went past a store selling party supplies, and another whose theme neither of them could make out, since its window displayed a variety of hand-knitted afghans and homemade fudge. They found a place called the Corner Kitchen: a clean, glass-framed sandwich shop, where they decided to stop for a cup of tea. The shop was on the corner of River Street, which had followed the natural curve of the river and at that point was separated from the water by a brief expanse of park.

  “Look, there’re the Millers,” said Lynn as she raised the cup to her lips.

  Emily had to twist in her seat to see them. Martin and L
aura Miller were at the far end of the park, pressing a passerby into the role of photographer while they posed against the background of the water.

  “Oh, dear,” she said lightly.

  “What?”

  “I have a feeling that the Millers are the type of people who make nuisances of themselves wherever they go.”

  “The Millers? I’d plump for Muriel Langstrom, or Marcella Hemsley.”

  “Marcella, I think, can’t help herself,” Emily said, still watching the Millers. “And Muriel is the type of person who one instinctively tunes out. But you’ll observe that the Millers are the type of people who draw others in.”

  They fell silent and watched the distant couple, each with an arm around the other’s waist. Laura laughed as Martin waved at the cameraman to take more pictures.

  When Emily turned back to Lynn she was met by a pair of very amused eyes.

  “What is it?” she asked with an upraised brow.

  Lynn lowered her cup onto its saucer. “Nothing. I was just wondering where you’d like to go next?”

  Emily elevated her shoulders a fraction of an inch. “I suppose we should go back to Main and finish our tour of the shops.”

  “You make it sound as if that’s what’s expected of us!”

  On the short stretch back to the town’s main street, they passed a large Victorian-style house with a broad, inviting front porch on which there was a pair of unoccupied wicker rockers. In the center of the lawn that fronted the house was a sign announcing the Evergreen Bed-and-Breakfast. Next to this was a small recessed building, once a bungalow, that had been converted into a shop selling ceramic masks.

  On Main they continued to wander to the end of the business district. They stopped in at a store that sold homemade candies where Emily bought a box of peppermint-striped saltwater taffy, and Lynn succumbed to the allure of some hand-dipped strawberries.

  Farther down the block they went into the Southwest Trading Company. The air inside was tinged with a hypnotic, salty incense, and from unexposed speakers a gentle, soothing Indian melody played on wooden flutes.

  The two women spent nearly an hour in the store, examining the jewelry and other wares. Emily at last purchased a hand-woven blanket with brown, white, and muted pink stripes.

  “I want to bring something back for Jeremy, you see,” she said when they finally left the shop.

  “Do you think when he picks us up at the dock he’s going to say ‘Did you bring me anything?’” Lynn said, obviously amused at the mental image.

  The touch of red that flowed into Emily’s cheeks was accompanied by a somewhat coy smile. “It’s only proper that I should bring my host a gift.”

  They spent the remainder of the afternoon making their way in and out of the shops on the opposite side of Main Street, stopping twice to rest on one of the benches and enjoy some of the proceeds from their visit to the candy store.

  “You’re right,” Lynn said out of the blue as she finished off her second strawberry. “It is very nice here. Very peaceful.”

  “Yes,” Emily agreed, pleased to find that Lynn had lost the anxiousness that had been evident earlier.

  “This might be a nice place to—” Lynn had begun this wistfully, then broke off. After a moment, she continued. “It would be a nice place to come with someone for a weekend.”

  “I quite agree.”

  By the time they’d reached the end of Main Street, it was nearly six o’clock, so they headed down River Street and into the paved alley that served as the entrance for the Red Lion Pub.

  After passing through the heavy, dark wooden door they found themselves in a well-lit room with a small fireplace at its center. The entire wall directly across from the front door was the bar, shaped like an inverted J. In front of it was a row of stools with wooden seats and backs, each of which was occupied.

  The wall behind the bar was lined with glass shelves that ran almost all the way up to the ceiling. These held an array of bottles in all shapes and sizes. A small slate at a break in the center of the shelves boasted in blue chalk a selection of one hundred brands of imported beer.

  A fresh-faced young woman was working behind the bar. She had a ready smile and sparkling eyes, and dark, wavy neck-length hair. She was wearing a crisp white shirt and leather vest. Emily wondered with an inward smile if the woman’s name might be Colleen.

  “Hello, Lynn,” Rebecca said.

  Lynn and Emily had been so taken by the environs and the general noise and bustle that they hadn’t noticed the long, high-backed bench just to the right of the door. Rebecca and her aunt were seated there. Rebecca stood up as she greeted them.

  “Hi,” Lynn replied. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you.”

  “It’s a beautiful place, isn’t it?”

  “It looks like a proper British pub, only in the wrong country.”

  “Good evening, Ms. Charters,” Rebecca said.

  “Good evening. And please, call me Emily.”

  “When are we going to eat?” Marcella asked peremptorily.

  “In just a few minutes,” Rebecca replied. She turned back to Emily and Lynn. “When we got here I told the host we’d need a table for four. He said it would be about twenty minutes. That was ten minutes ago.”

  “Ah,” said Emily.

  “Why don’t we sit down?” Lynn suggested as she guided Emily over to a place on the bench next to Marcella. Rebecca and Lynn sat beside their respective charges.

  “I’m hungry!” Marcella said.

  “It will only be a few more minutes,” Emily said soothingly as she gave a gentle pat to Marcella’s hand.

  There were booths along the wall to the left of the door, and about twenty tables arranged around the room in a way that looked very haphazard, but given the dexterity with which the staff was navigating the room, Emily thought there might be a design at work that simply escaped her. All of the tables and booths were occupied by parties of various numbers, boisterously drinking and dining.

  After Emily had surveyed the room for some time, something caught her attention.

  “Now, there’s something that surprises me,” she said to Lynn, keeping her voice rather low.

  “I don’t believe anything surprises you,” said Lynn. “What are you looking at?”

  “At the table for two, all the way at the back of the room by the kitchen.”

  Lynn looked toward the back and emitted a “hmm.” At the table, facing front, was Claudia Trenton, eating with mechanical intensity and occasionally stopping to say a word or two to her companion. The surprise was that her companion, whose back was toward the women, wore the unmistakable clothing of Bertram Driscoll.

  “I would say that was a very unlikely couple,” said Emily.

  “I’ve always heard that shipboard romances could be very odd,” said Lynn with a grin.

  “It doesn’t quite look like a romance.”

  Lynn observed them for a moment. “No, it doesn’t.”

  The corners of Claudia’s mouth were turned down in something nearing a scowl, and at the rare moments that she spoke to Driscoll, she seldom actually looked at him. After a few minutes, apparently sensing that she was being watched, Claudia raised her eyes directly at Lynn and Emily. The two women nodded greetings toward her. Claudia pursed her lips, inclined her head slightly, and looked back down at her plate.

  Several more people arrived, and their names were added to the waiting list by a young man wearing the uniform of the Red Lion: a pair of casual, light tan pants, a spotlessly clean white shirt, opened at the neck, and leather vest. Before going back to the kitchen, he spoke to Rebecca.

  “I’m sorry, I know it’s been a little longer than twenty minutes, but we do have a party that’s almost done, so it’ll only be a little longer.”

  “That’s all right. Thank you,” Rebecca replied, though she was getting anxious on her aunt’s behalf. It really hadn’t been that long a wait, but Marcella could be quite irritable if her needs, real or imagined, were not
met.

  The waiter hurried away, and true to his word it was only a few minutes before a group of four rose from their table and left. Another waiter set about clearing it as the departing patrons filed past the hungry people waiting by the door.

  It was during this bit of confusion that Claudia Trenton got up from her table. With little more than a glance at her dinner partner, who remained seated, she headed for the door.

  “Ladies,” she said stiffly when she passed the bench on which her four fellow passengers were seated. She didn’t wait for any sort of reply before exiting the pub.

  “Never could stand that Trenton woman,” said Marcella loudly. “She was always an uppity bitch!”

  Rebecca cast an apologetic glance toward Emily and Lynn. The latter smiled in return.

  “She doesn’t have any reason to think she’s better than anyone else,” Marcella continued. She turned to Emily, “You ever hear about her grandson?”

  “No.” Emily replied with a quizzical tilt of her head.

  “Everybody around the church knows about it! You know how gossip goes around.”

  Emily wore an unreadable smile. “Yes, I do.”

  “He’s been arrested … more than once!”

  “What was his crime?”

  As Emily expected, once faced with a direct question, she faltered, leaving Emily to wonder if the matter was another of Marcella’s fancies. Her expression became distraught as the specifics failed her. “It was … it was…” Frustrated, she sliced the air with her palm. “It doesn’t matter! He’s been in jail, and she raised him! She has no call to think she’s better than anyone else.”

  “Every family has its black sheep,” Emily said lightly. “Entirely too much emphasis is placed on blaming the ones who raised them. There are so many outside influences these days.”

  “It’s not like you to excuse something like that,” said Lynn.

  “Oh, I’m not excusing it, my dear. But families have become more splintered for any number of reasons, and I just don’t think it’s quite fair to blame the parents … or grandparents … anymore. I mean, of course, when one hears of a young person committing a crime, one naturally thinks ‘Where were the parents?’ But there is only so much any parent can do against all of the influences in the world.”