Friday Harbor, page 14
"I apologize."
*****
The switchboard office, which connected every single phone call between San Juan Island and anywhere else in the world, was in a small stand-alone building of red brick on the edge of downtown. Peering through the window of the front door, the men saw Eustace Hampton, the operator, asleep in a tall chair next to the switchboard. She wore an uncomfortable-looking headset with large black ear pads, and her mouth hung open so wide they could see that she was missing several of her molars. On the switchboard itself, several tiny yellow lights glowed above sockets linked to one another via a tangle of red, black, and gray cables. Miles gave the window a gentle tap. But it was still enough to make Eustace half jump out of her chair and knock over a cup of tea that stood on the console. She scowled, covered the tea with a cloth napkin, slipped her feet into a pair of bedroom slippers, and came to the door.
"Good day, Mrs. Hampton," Miles said.
"I don't appreciate being startled."
"I knocked as gently as I could."
"It's impolite, nonetheless. You could have come back later."
"I'm afraid time is of the essence, Mrs. Hampton. May we have a look at your logbook?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"I need to know who has been on the other end of calls to and from Akroyd's place this past week or two. And, for that matter, what they've been discussing."
She put her hands on her hips. "You wish to know who Mr. Akroyd has been talking to and what they've been talking about on Mr. Akroyd's private line?"
"Correct."
"And I assume you have a warrant or court order to show me."
Miles glanced at Floyd, who was already smiling at him.
"I don't. But this is an urgent matter, Mrs. Hampton."
"Why don't you ask Mr. Akroyd?"
"We tried to. He's nowhere to be found."
"Your request is most improper."
And you're welcome for chasing down your stinking sheep when they got loose last week, you old bat, Miles thought.
"You are aware, Mrs. Hampton, of the situation with the Lucky Lena," Miles said.
"Of course."
"Between you and me, Akroyd's telephone conversations may prove vital to our investigation."
"You need a court order, Miles."
Not sheriff. Not even acting sheriff. Just Miles. "The county judge won't be on San Juan Island until Monday. We're trying to bring the killers to justice, Mrs. Hampton. Trying to prevent another murder, even. There are exigent circumstances to consider."
"Rules are rules. If you want to pry into that poor, mad bird watcher Mr. Akroyd's private conversations, you'll have to get a court order."
*****
"Don't say it," Miles said as they all squeezed back into the truck, a thoroughly chilled Bill having elected to ride up front again.
"Don't say what?" Floyd said.
"That I should have had a warrant."
"Ha, ha. Well. That Eustace Hampton is a tough cookie, isn't she?"
"She's Lutheran. An entire denomination of humorless hard-asses, my view. Everything by the book. It grows tiresome."
*****
Back at the station a few minutes later, Miles was brewing a fresh batch of coffee while Bill held his cold pink hands close to the stove and Floyd looked through the logbook they'd taken from Akroyd's shack.
"This guy was meticulous," Floyd said. "He even has entries for big, blue water steam ships, like the SS Marglen, which I believe is a Canadian Pacific ocean liner. That couldn't possibly have any relevance to rum running."
"Maybe he was just obsessed with ships in general," Miles said.
"Old guy was a loon," Bill added.
"You speak as if he's dead," Miles said.
"Here's an interesting thing," Floyd said. "There are several days, each falling within the last three weeks for which we have log pages, on which Akroyd observed the Lucky Lena loitering near D'Arcy Island for more than an hour."
"Akroyd positively identified it?" Miles asked. "Then its registration number must not have been covered up with creosote yet. Does it say what they were doing? Maybe fishing? Diving? Going ashore for stashed crates of Glenfiddich whiskey?"
"It just says loitering. The thing is, on two of those occasions," Floyd continued, "there was another boat observed loitering in the same general area."
"Don't leave it as a cliffhanger, Floyd. What other boat?"
"Akroyd couldn't tell. The entry describes a Trafton-built workboat, registration obscured. Looks like the Trafton was there at the same time as the Lucky Lena on the last day for which there are any entries. Saturday before last."
Miles turned around. "Angus Cooper!"
"What?" Floyd asked.
"Remember, at the cannery, Clyde Crieff said Angus Cooper hadn't turned up with a shipment of tin can blanks Crieff had prepaid him for?"
"Yes."
"Cooper's boat's a Trafton. The Daisy. I'm certain of it." He picked up the phone. "Hello again, Mrs. Hampton. No—excuse me, no, Mrs. Hampton. I'm not calling about Mr. Akroyd's private phone conversations. Heaven forbid. No, I need to place a call to Clyde Crieff at the cannery, please. Yes, I'll stand by."
After an inordinately long wait, causing Miles to suspect that Mrs. Hampton was taking her sweet time to spite him, he was connected with Clyde Crieff. Miles asked him about the tin delivery.
"Well?" Floyd asked as Miles rang off.
"Angus Cooper still hasn't shown up."
TWENTY-FOUR
Miles and Floyd spent the next hour searching for Angus Cooper, captain-owner of the Trafton-built workboat, the Daisy. There was no sign of the man at his small, simple house out on Bailer Hill Road, so, despite Floyd's usual protest about not having a warrant, Miles kicked the door in. It was a poor man's house, everything cheap and threadbare. A pantry stocked with poor man's food—lard instead of butter, grits instead of oats, potatoes instead of meat.
It looked as if someone had left in a hurry. Men's and young girl's clothes were scattered about the creaking wood floors of the two bedrooms. Drawers were left open, including one in a dusty China cabinet that held a silverware divider but no silverware.
"As you may recall Crieff telling us, Cooper's a widower," Miles said as they looked around. "I believe his wife died at least five years ago."
"That would explain the lack of décor."
"And he has a young daughter, Milly, maybe seven or eight, who should probably be in a lunatic asylum. She's helplessly mad. Of course, Cooper can't afford to get her the care she needs. So he keeps her here, locked up, while he's at work."
"Then I hope you'll pay for the repair to his front door."
"I will."
"So, what's your theory here?" Floyd asked. "Desperate for money to get proper care for his daughter, he hijacked the Lucky Lena, murdered the crew, panicked, took the family silver, and ran for it?"
"I don't know. Hijacking and murder? He doesn't seem the type."
"Is there a type?"
"If there is, Cooper isn't it."
"Desperation can do strange things to people."
*****
They found one of Cooper's immediate neighbors at home—an old woman who said she would sometimes help keep an eye on Milly when Cooper was in a pinch. According to her, Cooper said that he was taking Milly down to Seattle to visit a cousin this week, and that he'd be back this coming Saturday. Cooper had asked her to keep an eye on the place.
*****
By the time they got back to the station, Bill had returned from asking the men on the docks if anyone had seen Cooper or the Daisy since the morning the Lucky Lena was spotted adrift. None had. Both man and vessel had been gone for days. But two different fishermen told Bill that Cooper had been seen with Rupert Hawkins a fair bit the week before Cooper disappeared, and that Cooper had maybe even hired Hawkins on as a temporary deckhand.
"The same Rupert Hawkins who Reverend McCaskill once horsewhipped?" Floyd asked.
Miles nodded. "And the same Hawkins who was seen picking up two well-dressed Chinese from the steamship pier on Tuesday."
"Hawkins a worthless drunk," Bill said.
"Well, drunk or sober, I think we need to have a word with him sooner rather than later," Miles said.
TWENTY-FIVE
Taking a first stab at finding Rupert Hawkins, Miles and Floyd returned to the waterfront and began walking the docks.
"Look at that," Floyd said in a tone of boyish wonder as he stopped and pointed at a floating dock below one of the piers. There were two sea lion pups with big brown eyes that reminded Floyd of his first dog, Birdie—a kindhearted Labrador. The chubby pups were clumped together for warmth, butting noses and squawking at each other. "That's unbelievably precious."
A loud bang caused both men to flinch and crouch for cover. One of the pups let out an ear-piercing cry that was followed by two more loud bangs. From his crouch, Floyd scanned the area until he saw the mechanic, Sean Brennan, standing on the aft deck of a moored 50-foot fishing boat, pointing a smoking pistol at the pups. One of the pups lay bloody and dead on the dock. Though shot, the other managed to drag itself to the edge and drop into the water just as Brennan was jumping up onto the dock and aiming his pistol to finish it off. It swam, erratically, down into the dark depths, blood trailing behind it. Brennan kicked the dead one in after it, then hopped back into the stern end of the fishing boat as if nothing had happened.
"Mary and Joseph!" Floyd shouted when the shooting and crying abated.
"Easy, Floyd," Miles said, placing a hand on Floyd's shoulder. "All is well."
"All is well? Damnation!" Floyd said, his eyes wide.
"What I mean is that was normal."
"Hell's bells! I'll tell you what—you people are really hard on animals up here. You know that?"
"Adult sea lions decimate the salmon population."
"Those were pups."
"For now, they're pups. Before you know it, they'll be fully grown, each of them eating 20 pounds of salmon a day. It's them or us," Miles said, walking toward the aft end of the boat Brennan had boarded. There they found him carrying on as if nothing had happened, wearing frayed but clean coveralls, and filing one end of an unrecognizable, greasy metal engine part on a worktable set up on the deck.
"Hey there, Brennan," Miles said.
Brennan set his filing tool down and looked up as he wiped his hands with a dirty rag. "Afternoon, Sheriff."
"What kind of engine part are you're working on there?"
"That's a valve actuating rocker off this old girl's Liberty L-12 gasoline engine."
"Are you a mechanic?" Floyd asked.
"No, I'm a ballet dancer," he said, bursting into what struck Miles as the forced laughter of someone who isn't sure they're actually funny.
"Detective Floyd is a city boy," Miles said.
"No kidding?"
"How's your mother?" Miles asked. "That was quite a spill she took up on Spring Street the other day. She doing okay?"
Brennan went somber. "She's alright. A little scratched up is all."
"Glad to hear it. Is she here for a visit? I heard she was living in Bellingham now." At an old senile folks' home, he barely stopped himself from saying.
"She was. But she belongs here with me."
"I see. Well, we're trying to find Angus Cooper. Seen him around, by chance?"
"No, sir. Haven't seen him or his boat. But the guy owes me a good sum of money, so I'd be grateful if you'd let me know when you find him. Or at least let him know that we can work something out and that he doesn't have to hide from me. It isn't like him to be late paying his invoice. But he is late. Very late, in fact."
"You did some work for him?"
"Early last week, and also the week before that. He got a new L-12 too. Needed help installing it."
"He got an L-12 for the Daisy? That's a lot of engine for a boat of that size."
"It is. But everybody seems to want the L-12s these days."
"I guess everybody's in a big hurry," Miles said.
"A sign of these modern times, I suppose," Brennan said. "Needless to say, I don't ask too many questions."
"I should think not. Where are folks getting all of them?"
"The L-12s? They're stripping them off surplus airplanes back from the war, down at Boeing's airfield in Seattle."
"Clever. And then they bring them to you, our local Liberty engine authority."
"I wouldn't presume to call myself an authority. But I've installed a few. And I'm the only fella north of Everett who knows how to do it right."
"How about Rupert Hawkins? Heard he maybe did some work for Cooper recently too."
"That he did. Angus hired him to come along a couple of times when we were trying out the L-12 in the Daisy earlier this week, just to have an extra set of eyes and hands if Angus and I had to both be below working on the engine while underway. But Angus only used him for two days."
"Only two?"
"Rupert was drunk by the end of the second day. Man can't keep off the hooch. He must have been sneaking sips from a flask while Angus and I were below working on the engine. By the time we got back to Friday Harbor, he could barely stand up straight to rope a deck cleat."
"What day was that?"
"Let's see—Monday, I believe."
"What about Tuesday?"
"No. Angus sailed without him on Tuesday."
"You're sure?"
"I saw him moping around here Tuesday afternoon, when I'm positive Angus was out on the water. I'd been aboard the Daisy while Angus warmed up the engine, keeping an eye on her oil temperature. Then I cast off the Daisy's lines and watched him motor away."
"By himself?"
"Yes, sir."
"Seen Rupert today?"
"He was walking the docks about an hour ago. Looking for work. Nobody will hire the poor bastard because he's so unreliable. But you might try the, uh . . ."
"The what?"
"Well, you know." He shrugged. "The Smokehouse."
"The Smokehouse?" Floyd asked.
Brennan smiled. "I'm sure they have much fancier names for them in the big city."
"The Smokehouse is a speakeasy up at Roche Harbor," Miles explained. "Worst kept secret on the island."
"And I'm afraid that it's well into Rupert's drinking day by now," Brennan said. "You'd be better off waiting until morning before trying to talk to him. It'll be a lot easier then."
*****
It started to rain as Miles and Floyd left the harbor and began making their way back up toward the station. It was a cold, hard rain that fell from a low, cast-iron sky. They were both soaked to the skin in moments, both cursing themselves for not wearing their raincoats to the docks.
"So what about that guy?" Floyd said, wiping raindrops from his face and gesturing back down toward the docks.
"Sean Brennan? What about him?"
"Do we consider him a suspect? He was working on the Daisy, after all. Working with Angus Cooper."
"No. He's straight, if a bit awkward."
"Awkward? I'd call him impertinent, smarting off to a police officer he's never met before."
"You were in plain clothes. How could he have known you're police? Anyway, don't take it personally. He tries to be funny. It doesn't always come off quite right."
Floyd shook his head. "He has a cold heart."
"Because he shot those pups? Floyd, I told you. That's normal up here. It doesn't mean he suffers from psych, uh, psycho . . ."
"Psychopathy. Moral insanity."
"Anyway, you have to give Sean a little bit of a break if his social skills are off," Miles said. "His father was a mean old drunk who disappeared off the inter-island steamer when Sean was a teenager. Probably had one too many whiskeys and fell overboard. And before she went senile, his mother was a genuine recluse. Point being, he didn't have much in the way of social role models."
"A background of family instability?" Floyd asked. "A childhood characterized by emotional neglect and abuse?"
"You should have seen how compassionate and gentle he was with his mother when she took a spill up on Spring Street the other day."
"I'm sure Jesse James loved his mother too. Didn't make him any less morally insane."
Miles snorted. "Personally, I respect him for adapting to challenging times up here—what with the downturn in fishing jobs and all—making himself the go-to guy for Liberty engine installations," he said as they walked through the door of the station.
"You talking about Sean Brennan?" Bill said, handing them each a hot mug of coffee as they shucked their wet shoes and dragged chairs over to the warmth of the wood stove.
"Yes, Brennan," Miles said. "Sounds like he's setting himself up as the main L-12 installer in the northern half of Puget Sound."
"Well, he meant to, anyway," Bill said.
"You mean it isn't working out? I'd think there's plenty of demand for his services."
"There is. But he got ripped off. Took out a big loan at Dexter Horton Bank, putting his shop up for collateral. Then some shady broker in Seattle took Brennan's down payment for ten Liberty engines, but turned around and sold them to some other guy in Tacoma who agreed to pay more. The guy pocketed Brennan's down payment and disappeared."
"How do you know so much about his private business?" Miles asked.
"We play cards now and then."
"Did Brennan report the theft to Seattle PD?" Floyd asked.
"He says it wouldn't matter. Says the broker's long gone to the Alaska Territory. Nobody will ever find him. Anyway, now he's broke. Had to bring his mother home from the Bellingham senile home because he couldn't pay the fee anymore. Bank will probably take his shop."
"You'd have never known he was in such dire straits the way he carries himself," Floyd said. "All jocular and cracking wise." He took a big sip of the coffee Bill had given him. "Holy cow, you gents brew some strong coffee up here. If I drink much more of it, I'll never sleep again."
