Читать книгу Dangerous Waters - Laurey Bright - Страница 9

Camille wasn’t sure what to wear to the funeral of a man she’d never known.

The one dress she’d packed—lightweight, creaseless, and simple enough for any time of day—had been fine for dinner with James Drummond. But even with a beige silk cardigan to cover her shoulders it looked a bit frivolous for a somber church service.

Entering the historic seamen’s chapel later, she was glad she’d settled for forest-green jean-style pants with a cream shirt and low-heeled braided-leather shoes.

Two men seated near the coffin wore impeccable dark suits, but other suits in evidence were of the ill-fitting, limp and unfashionable kind resurrected from some forgotten corner of a wardrobe, and the air was pervaded with a faint odor of naphthalene and mildew.

The service was simple and brief. When the minister paused, one of the men in the front pew went to the lectern, and only then Camille recognized her piratical stranger’s dinner companion of the previous evening.

Shocked, she turned her gaze to the second man.

He’d had a haircut, but the broad shoulders straining at the jacket of the suit, and the confident tilt of his head, were already familiar. She half expected him to turn and grin at her with the same bold insouciance he’d shown last night.

But of course he wouldn’t. This, she realized as his brother began to speak, was his father’s funeral.

Camille hardly heard the eulogy, dimly registering words like “adventurous” and “indomitable” and “determined.” She wondered if his sons had really known Barney Broderick. If they too had longed for a father who went to the office every day and came home for dinner every night and read the newspaper and watched TV before going off to bed. She swallowed, assailed by a familiar sensation—half sadness, half anger.

The man in the front pew dipped his head, momentarily out of her sight, but when he raised it again his big square shoulders were straighter than ever.

He didn’t take up the minister’s invitation for anyone to share their memories of the deceased, but a few gristly, weather-creased men spoke of a staunch friend, a fine sailor, a great bloke, and “one of nature’s gentlemen.” The last elderly raconteur told a couple of down-to-earth anecdotes about “old Barney” that had his cronies rocking with laughter and then wiping away tears.

His two sons as they helped lift and carry the coffin were tearless, seemingly emotionless. Outside, the coffin was slid into a hearse and the brothers stood shoulder to shoulder, fielding handshakes and condolences.

Camille waited for a gap and had almost decided to give up and return to the hotel when the pirate brother looked over the shoulder of a man who was shaking his hand, and she saw the quick flare of recognition in his eyes as they met hers.

He said something to the man and then he was pushing through the crowd, throwing a word here and there, moving inexorably toward Camille until he fetched up directly in front of her, so close she took a startled step backward.

Scowling down at her, he said, “Who are you?”

“Camille Hartley,” she told him. “I’m sorry about your father, Mr. Broderick.”

“Rogan,” he said. “Or Rogue, if you like. Did you know him?”

“Not really. I was supposed to meet him here yesterday, but when I arrived I was told he’d…died. I’m sorry,” she repeated.

“Why were you meeting him?”

“He asked me to. It concerned…my father.”

“Your father?”

“Thomas McIndoe.”

For a second he looked confused. Then he said, “Taff? Taff was your father?”

“Yes,” she admitted stiffly.

“So old Taff does have descendants.”

“One,” she confirmed reluctantly.

There was a stir in the crowd behind him, and his brother came to his side. “Ready to go to the crematorium?” he quietly asked Rogan. The notice in the newspaper had said the cremation would be private. “I told everyone we’ll see them later at the Imperial.”

He nodded curtly to Camille and made to turn away and take his brother with him.

But Rogan stood his ground. “Granger,” he said, “this is Taff’s daughter.”

Granger stared at his brother, then at Camille. He looked back at Rogan. “You’re kidding.”

“She’s his daughter. So she says.”

Slightly miffed at the addendum, Camille held out her hand to Granger. “Camille Hartley,” she said. “I’m sorry about your father.”

Granger took her hand and briefly clasped it in a firm, cool grip. “Hartley?” he queried. “You’re married?”

Camille shook her head. “It’s my mother’s name.”

The two brothers exchanged a fleeting glance that obscurely annoyed her with its hint of some secret joke.

Then Granger cast her a keen look. “You do know about Taff? I mean—”

“That he died, yes.”

“Then may we return your condolences?”

“Thank you, but I scarcely remember him.”

A woman touched Granger’s arm. Middle-aged, with brass-colored curls and red-rimmed eyes. “Sorry to interrupt, love. I just want to say, your dad might have been a bit of a rough diamond, but he had a good heart. I won’t go along to the pub, only I’d like to talk to you two boys sometime. You’ll be in town for a while?”

Rogan said, “A couple more days anyway.”

She moved off and Granger turned back to Camille. “Will we see you at the wake?”

“I wasn’t intending to be there.”

Rogan asked, “Are you staying at the Imperial?”

“Yes. But—”

“We have to talk to you,” he said, “don’t we, Granger?”

Granger said slowly, “I guess we do.” He glanced back at the hearse, where the driver was showing signs of impatience.

“You’re not leaving Mokohina yet, are you?” Rogan pressed her.

After a small hesitation she conceded, “Not yet.”

“Then we’ll see you later.”

Camille didn’t answer, and as he moved away with his brother he shot a glance over his shoulder as if willing her to stay.

The wake was just the sort of send-off Barney would have enjoyed. Drinks and stories flowed freely, and Rogan lost count of the number of beer-breathing, teary-eyed old salts who clapped him or his brother on the shoulder and urged them to join in yet another toast to their father.

One white-bearded, purple-cheeked character whispered hoarsely, “Did he tell you about his find then, boy?”

“What find?”

Rogan edged backward, but the beard only moved closer, and the man squinted up at him through watery, bloodshot eyes. “You don’t know?”

“Know what?” The old guy was probably talking through the bottom of his beer glass.

The man looked about them covertly and clutched at Rogan’s arm. “We gave Taff a send-off the night your dad got his, y’know. In absentia, so to speak. Poor old Taff.” He shook his head in sorrow. “Barney was saying Taff had missed out on a fortune.”

Barney would say that. He’d always hoped someday to uncover sunken treasure.

The beard leaned closer still. A whiff of tobacco breath mingled with the beer. “I reckon,” the man said portentously, “him and Taff found something.”

Rogan looked about for an escape route. “Then I guess he died happy.”

“And that’s another thing.” A broad, blunt finger poked his chest. “Heart attack, they said, right? But what brought that on, eh? Someone jumped him, didden they? Barney didn’t have an enemy in the world.”

“It wasn’t the first time he’d got in a…fight.” Rogan avoided the words drunken brawl. Apparently Barney was already in line for the sainthood conferred by death, but he’d had minor brushes with the law in several Pacific ports after becoming involved in some pub scrap.

“Not for years,” his friend averred. “He was getting a bit long in the tooth for that sort of caper, you know.”

He was probably right, but Barney had been mourning his sailing companion, a man he’d spent way more time with over the years than he ever had with his wife or his sons. And he’d been drinking heavily. “Maybe he felt like getting in a fight that night.”

The white-bearded chin protruded stubbornly. “Or maybe some bastard robbed him. Y’know, all night he kept feeling his breast pocket as if he had something in there he didn’t want to lose.”

“You think someone from Taff’s wake beat up my father?”

The man looked shocked. Then he scowled. “Well, the pub was full and we were in the public bar. It wasn’t a genteel private do like this.” He looked about at the crowd splashing beer on the tables and the floor as they poured it from brimming jugs and brandished their glasses in raucous toasts. One man snored in a corner while his companions rocked in their chairs with laughter at another who stood on the table, declaiming a long and exceedingly ribald poem. In competition, a group being kept upright only by their affinity for the solid bar counter struggled through an off-key and heavily adapted version of “Shenandoah.”

Rogan manfully kept a straight face. It was becoming obvious why the proprietor, after hosting Taff’s send-off, had preferred to corral this particular group of patrons in a separate bar.

“Webby, you old piker!” Another enthusiastic mourner clapped the bearded man on the back. This one was taller and younger, with gingery whiskers peppering a long, creased face under a thistle-head of reddish hair. “Fill up, then!” He poured a stream of beer into Webby’s glass, then waved the jug invitingly at Rogan. “What about yourself, Rogue?”

Rogan shook his head. Already he was feeling slightly unattached from his surroundings, the beer fumes and smoke and noisy revelry receding in an alcohol-induced haze.

Webby dug the newcomer in the ribs. “Hey, you remember old Barney at Taff’s wake, don’t you, Doll? Don’t you reckon he was all fired up about something?”

Doll? Rogan blinked as the taller man pondered. “He was fired up about a lot of things—doctors, Taff dying on him, the government, customs regulations…”

Webby poked him again. “Wasn’t he talking about getting rich at last?”

“Barney was always talking about getting rich.”

“Yeah, but that night…”

Rogan edged away, leaving the two of them arguing. Granger, a slightly hunted look about him, caught his eye and came over. “Do you think anyone would notice if I left? This lot might keep going all day.”

“And all night,” Rogan speculated. “I’ve had enough, anyway. I don’t suppose they’ll miss us if we slip away.”

Granger’s look held veiled surprise. Then he grinned slightly. “Not much of a female presence here, is there?”

Rogan tried to look offended, suspecting he only looked sheepish. Sure, he liked female company when it was available. Came of being without it for so much of his working life. Even on shore, in some places where he’d worked just looking at a woman could get him thrown into jail or worse. Not to mention the even greater danger to any poor girl who might be tempted to return the compliment.

So in a free country where what a man and a woman did was a matter of mutual consent and no one else’s business, he made the most of the sometimes brief periods he had to enjoy being with them.

He liked women. He liked their bodies, softly rounded or slender and supple, and their silky smooth skin, and their hair—how they kept it shiny and sweet-smelling, sometimes curled and plaited and decorated. He liked the way they moved, the subtle roll and sway of their hips and behinds as they walked. And how if they liked a man back, they touched their hair and tilted their heads and peeked at him with shy, flirty eyes. Or boldly looked at him and smiled, inviting him closer.

He specially liked their laughter, and their voices—light and pretty, or low and sexy. And how they listened, really listened when he talked. He liked the way they cared, about all sorts of things—children, the environment, their girlfriends’ problems.

And he was awed by how capable they were. His mother had needed to be, but other women too seemed to just know things that men blundered through without a clue.

He liked being with them. For a while.

Sometimes a leisurely drink or two with a woman in a warm bar was as pleasurable in its own way as a wild romp in bed. Not that he wasn’t open to offers…

He wondered if Ocean-eyes was around.

Camille, he remembered. Her name was Camille. Nice. Yeah, and it suited her. Although she didn’t look consumptive like The Lady of the Camellias.

It wasn’t easy escaping, and it was another hour before the brothers slipped through a side door and Rogan gulped in a lungful of fresh air.

“Let’s walk,” Granger said.

Putting some distance between them and the revelry inside, they strolled randomly along the nearest street, then uphill, where for a while they silently observed the view, and finally by a roundabout route made their way back into the heart of the town.

Rogan told Granger about his conversation with Webby. “Do you think it’s possible Dad had stumbled on something valuable?”

Granger snorted. “The old man chased after so many wild geese he could have started an egg farm.”

That was certainly true. Except that he’d never actually caught one.

Granger’s step faltered, then picked up, and Rogan said, “What?”

“Nothing.” His brother looked grim. “That’s the street where he…”

Died. Rogan stopped, looking back. The alley would be a shortcut from the hotel to the Sea-Rogue, a more direct diagonal route behind the buildings that meandered along the dog-leg line of the shore. “Show me.”

Granger halted too. “There’s nothing to see.”

“Do you know exactly where?”

Granger studied the set of Rogan’s jaw, and said tersely, “Come on, then.”

It was a service alley between the unwindowed back walls of several business premises. Bags and boxes of rubbish sat against some, and a heavy smell of fish wafted from a rattling air-conditioner, mingling with the aroma of decaying fruit and vegetables spilling from an overfilled bin a little farther along where fat black flies droned lazily about.

“Here.” Granger stopped at big double doors with peeling paint. On the wall, a faded sign above identified the premises as Tench and Whiteburn, Sailmakers Since 1899. A heap of sodden and stained canvas, rotted rope and collapsed cardboard boxes gave off a moldy fetor, and a couple of stubborn tufts of grass that had fought their way through uneven cracks in the tar-seal lent the only sign of life except for the flies.

“I told you,” Granger said. “There’s nothing to see.”

A van roared into the alley, slowing as it lumbered by with barely enough room to pass them.

Rogan turned away, his throat tight. “Let’s go,” he said in an almost normal voice, leading the way and heading blindly toward the hotel. “I want to get out of this bloody suit.” He stripped off the jacket that was stifling him and threw it over his shoulder, pulling irritably at the dark tie about his throat and stuffing it into a trouser pocket.

“It’s my second-best suit,” Granger told him. “And I’ll thank you to treat it with respect.”

Rogan snorted. “I don’t know how you stand wearing them all the time.”

“I guess your shoulders are wider than mine.” Granger gripped one of them. “All that muscle-bound machismo stuff you do for a living,” he mocked gruffly.

Rogan’s reply was even less polite than before. Scowling, he shrugged off his brother’s hand. He needed a stiff drink. Never mind that he’d already had more than enough beer. A whiskey was what he was after. Harsh, strong whiskey. Neat. Undiluted alcohol.

They reached the hotel, warily peering into the deserted lobby before entering.

Rogan headed for the doorway labeled Bottle Store, ignoring his brother’s lifted eyebrow. “See you in fifteen minutes,” he muttered.

He did too, feeling considerably better as he rapped on Granger’s door exactly one minute early, having broached a bottle of Black Watch in his room.

“Here,” he said, thrusting the borrowed clothes at his brother. “Thanks.”

Granger took the suit and tie and motioned him in, going to the wardrobe.

“She’s still here,” Rogan said.

“Who? Oh—Whatsername McIndoe. You’ve seen her?”

“No, but I checked at the desk.” He’d half expected her to have bolted. At the chapel she’d seemed uncertain, ambivalent. “Shouldn’t we talk to her before we do anything else? And she’s Camille Hartley, remember.”

“Oh, yeah, Taff’s illegitimate daughter.”

“She can’t help that.”

“I wasn’t being snide, Rogue.” Granger finished hanging the suit and closed the wardrobe. “Facts are facts.”

“Does that mean she doesn’t inherit half the Sea-Rogue?”

“Extramarital children do have some rights. It’s not my field, but she might have a case, if only morally. Did you get her room number?”

Rogan shook his head. “They wouldn’t give it to me. Even wearing your suit.”

“You weren’t, any more,” Granger pointed out, picking up the bedroom phone. “You’d already hauled half of it off.” He’d taken off his own jacket but still wore shirt and tie.

He spoke into the receiver, asking to be put through to Miss Hartley’s room.

After a brief conversation he reported, “She’ll meet us down in the Garden Lounge in five minutes.”

Somehow that made Rogan feel considerably lighter than he had all day.

The Garden Lounge looked seldom used. Its small, multipaned windows were curtained with loops of white lace, and when the men entered, Camille was in a cane armchair by a low table, watching them cross the carpet toward her. Her legs, neatly tucked to one side, were encased in dark green trousers. What a waste, Rogan thought regretfully, remembering those legs emerging from her dress last night.

Her gaze flicked across Granger and lit on Rogan. For some reason she looked apprehensive, and as the men drew closer her eyes grew larger, darker.

He was no Adonis, but surely he wasn’t that intimidating? Suddenly he felt taller and bigger, as if he’d somehow expanded under her eyes, and he wondered if he should have put on something a bit more reputable than thin-kneed camouflage trousers and a khaki shirt with the sleeves ripped out.

Army surplus clothes were cheap and hard-wearing. And comfortable, for gosh sakes.

Heck, now he was even censoring his thoughts. As if she’d know what he was thinking.

He remembered her flushing last night as he watched her. She’d known what he was thinking then, all right. The gist of it anyhow.

Granger said, “Thank you for coming,” and she actually smiled at him—not a wide smile, but a smile of sorts, and now she wasn’t looking at Rogan at all.

The men sat down and a waiter brought coffee for three. Rogan would have liked a beer but his head was already floating inches above its normal position. And he figured, when Granger cast him a firm look before he ordered for them both, that as usual his big brother was right. He’d had enough to drink. At least for the next few hours.

“Why did you want to see me?” Camille asked.

She kept her attention on Granger while he explained the terms of Barney’s will.

He reached the bit about Taff’s descendants, and for a moment her delicious, tempting mouth fell softly open, making Rogan’s blood stir as he wondered how it would feel to close it with his own.

“You may be able to make a claim,” Granger was telling her, “if you have proof of your relationship.”

She blinked at him.

“For instance, is his name on your birth certificate? Even though your parents weren’t married—”

Her chin tilted. “My parents were married.”

Rogan interjected. “Taff was married?”

She glanced at him with a hint of scorn. “He seems to have forgotten it, but he was once.”

Granger said, “I’m sorry, I misunderstood.” He fished in his pocket. “In that case you’d inherit half the boat and its contents—plus half of any profit still outstanding from voyages Taff made with our father. As executor I need your address and phone number.” He handed her a card. “This is my office address. You’ll need to produce your birth certificate to prove your right to your inheritance, and—”

“I don’t want it.” The rose-pink lips went tight.

“Why not?” Rogan demanded, making her look at him.

But not for long. Her gaze skittered away again to Granger. “Can’t I just waive any rights I have?”

Granger looked at her curiously. “It would be simpler to let things take their course. Then you can dispose of your portion as you like. The boat might be worth quite a lot.”

She opened her mouth again, then closed it, her eyes glazing in thought. “How much?”

“The market for classic wooden craft is apparently pretty lively. There are huge variations depending on a number of factors, but some fetch prices in six figures.”

“Have you seen her?” Rogan asked Camille.

“I looked there for your father yesterday, but no one was on board. Someone from a fishing boat came over and told me what had happened.”

Barney had been found by a delivery driver on Monday morning, and it was Tuesday before the police had identified him and tracked down Granger.

“Why did he want to see you?” Rogan asked.

Her face went stiff, expressionless. “He wanted to give me some things he thought I should have. I suppose he meant my father’s…effects. He said he had to talk to me but he couldn’t leave his boat for long. I was due for annual leave and it quite suited me to come north.”

“Would you recognize your father’s belongings?”

Camille shook her head. Dryly she said, “I’d have been hard put to recognize my father.”

Granger asked, “Have the police talked to you?”

“No, why? I can’t tell them anything.”

“You should check in with them all the same. If you were supposed to be meeting Dad they’ll want to see you.” Granger pulled out a notebook. “Your contact details?”

She recited them stonily, and stood up. “Thank you for explaining the situation.”

“We’ll be in touch,” Granger promised, rising too.

By the time Rogan had put down his coffee cup and started getting up she’d already left them. He sank back, watching her walk away, until he realized Granger was watching him with amused tolerance.

“Get your eyes back in your head, little bro’,” Granger told him, “and your butt out of that chair, unless you plan to stay here.” Eyeing him critically, he added, “Mind you, a second cup of coffee wouldn’t do you any harm.”

Rogan glared at him, hoisting himself from the chair. All the time they’d been talking Camille had scarcely glanced his way, her eyes pretty much fixed on his brother throughout. And Granger hadn’t even seemed to notice. Did the man have ice water instead of good red Broderick blood in his veins?

Not fair, of course. Last night he’d shown a cursory appreciation, at least, of Camille’s spectacular beauty. On the surface she was very similar to the women who occasionally, briefly, graced Granger’s life—classy, polished, composed. Like him. Only better-looking.

Inexplicably, when he followed his brother into the lobby Rogan’s heart settled somewhere near his midriff, as if he’d swallowed one of his lead diving weights.

His father had just died. It was natural to feel depressed. He ought to be feeling this way.

None of Granger’s beloved laws said he had to like it.