Dark Passage

TWENTY-ONE

‘The end of all magic is to feed with mystery the human mind, which dearly loves mystery.’

Harry Kellar (1849-1922)

It was a short hike from the Athena bar to the Orpheus Theater located on the same deck in the bow of the enormous vessel.

Pia was backstage, as I had predicted. She sat on a straight-back chair, surrounded by Channing’s illusions, using a needle and thread to sew up the tear in the leg of her yellow harem pants. ‘Just now getting around to it,’ she said, drawing the thread to her mouth and cutting it with her teeth. She held the pants up for my inspection. ‘Do you think anybody will notice?’

‘Don’t you have costume people to do that?’ I asked.

‘Oh, sure, they’ll make me a whole new costume eventually, but I’m partial to this one.’ She stroked the fabric as if it were an old friend, folded it carefully, then placed it in a small bin that had her name on it: Fanucci.

‘Channing’s working on the new illusion,’ she told me. ‘Come see.’

Pia picked up her costume bin and tucked it under her arm. She held aside a curtain until I had passed through, then escorted me down a short, narrow corridor to a room full of oddly shaped items covered in plastic sheeting. In the corner stood a beach umbrella, a suit of armor and a life-sized giraffe.

Pia waved vaguely, taking in the whole room. ‘Props.’

‘Is Channing going to be introducing the new illusion at the magic show tonight?’ I asked as we circumnavigated a gaily painted wheelbarrow.

‘Sorry, no, it’s not quite ready. We should be rolling it out in a couple of weeks, on the next Baltimore-Bermuda trip.’ She gave me a lopsided smile. ‘I’m sorry you’ll miss it.’

I leaned close to her ear. ‘Maybe I’ll just have to stowaway, then!’

Channing was working on the far side of the room, hunched over his Plexiglas cylinders. From where I stood, I could see that the propeller had already been installed about midway inside the apparatus. It looked high-techedly wicked, like something SPECTRE would design to extract secrets out of James Bond.

When Tom noticed us, he straightened and grinned, wiping his hands clean on his jeans. ‘Hannah, good to see you. Did Pia tell you? We’ve decided to call it The Turbine of Terror.’

‘I can’t wait,’ I said. ‘How do you get the water to it? I presume there’s water.’

‘Yes, there’s water. There’s this little gizmo…’ He made a twisting motion, as if turning a doorknob. ‘Better yet, come back in a few days and I’ll show you.’

‘Alas, in a few days I’ll be back home, trying to get caught up with my email.’

Channing slapped his forehead. ‘Of course. When one’s on a ship for so long, you sometimes lose track of what day it is.’

‘Tom is exploring the possibility of debuting the illusion outside on the trampoline deck. I think that would be awesome, don’t you?’

I had to agree that it would.

‘Tom,’ I asked after a moment. ‘Can I ask you a question?’

He looked up from a screw he was tightening with his fingers. ‘Sure.’

‘When you were performing those card tricks for the kids in Breakers! the other day, did you notice anyone hanging around, acting suspicious?’

‘The afternoon your niece disappeared, you mean?’

I nodded.

‘Sorry, Hannah. Even though I’ve been doing it for years, sleight of hand requires intense concentration. I didn’t notice anything much beyond the deck of cards in front of me.’

‘Just thought I’d ask.’

‘And I don’t believe I’ve ever been introduced to your niece,’ he added. ‘I don’t even know what she looks like, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh, right.’ I felt pretty stupid. Julie had only been present in the crowd at one of his shows. How on earth would Tom recognize her, not to mention know if any lowlifes had been hanging around her?

Channing fished a screwdriver out of his back pocket and seemed eager to get back to work, so I said, ‘Can I borrow Pia for a few minutes? There’s something I’d like to talk to her about.’

‘Be my guest. We’re all set for tonight.’

Pia and I left the theater, walked through the casino and out on deck. A fierce wind lifted my hair and roared hotly across my ears. We strolled aft, with no particular destination in mind, while I told Pia what David and I had discovered about Jack Westfall. She listened carefully, not asking any questions, only asking for repeats when the wind tore my words away.

When we reached the cage-like barrier that led to a crew-only section of the ship, we reversed direction, stopping at one point to lean against the rail and stare out at the water.

‘Every time I stand here,’ Pia said, her voice breaking, ‘I think of Char, floundering all alone in the middle of the Caribbean.’ A tear rolled down her cheek, but was dried almost instantly by the wind. ‘You’ll think I’m a horrible person for saying this, but I have often prayed that she was dead before she went over.’

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, faced into the wind with her head tipped back. ‘I just love the sea. How can such an evil thing happen in such a beautiful place?’

I scooted over, until our forearms were touching where they rested on the rail. ‘It’s sad, really. David is convinced that because of the passage of time and the lack of evidence, he’ll never get justice for his daughter.’

‘I like the guy,’ Pia said, ‘but what a sad case.’

‘My sisters and I feel pretty certain that the F.B.I. can nail Westfall for Julie’s abduction.’ I counted them off on my fingers. ‘There’s whatever physical evidence Officer Martin was able to collect when Julie was examined, Julie’s positive identification, as well as the testimony that Kira will be able to provide.’ I told Pia that we hoped the F.B.I. would meet the ship in the morning, armed with a proper search warrant in order to give Jack Westfall’s cabin a thorough going-over. ‘Julie’s father should be talking to the F.B.I. now, in fact, along with my husband and Julie’s other uncle.’

Keeping her head bowed, Pia turned it to study me sideways. ‘A formidable team.’

‘Yes.’

‘But David has a team, too,’ she said.

‘He does?’

‘You and me.’

Amazingly, Pia had given me an opening, and I stepped right through it. ‘What do you suggest?’

‘This morning,’ Pia said, ‘all I wanted to do was take the guy down a few pegs, scare the crap out of him. I saw him in the Firebird café, strutting around and glad-handing everyone like he’s running for president or something. Now? He doesn’t deserve to be walking the streets. He should be cooling his heels in a federal prison.’

Pia turned around, leaned her back against the rail. ‘So, Hannah, how are we going to fit that SOB up with an orange jumpsuit?’

‘I saw David earlier, and he has a plan,’ I confessed, ‘but I’m not sure I like it.’

‘Try me,’ she said.

‘You worked on the Voyager and the Islander, you were there when both attacks occurred, you were Charlotte’s roommate.’ I tilted my head so I could look directly into her eyes. ‘How would you feel about a little blackmail? You know, I saw what you did, but I’ll keep my mouth shut as long as you…’ I let the sentence die.

Pia was silent for so long that I thought I’d lost her. ‘Pia?’

She raised a hand. ‘I’m thinking, I’m thinking.’

After a bit she said more quietly, ‘This could be dangerous to my health. Look what he did to Char.’

‘You’d have to have an insurance policy. You’d have to convince Westfall that as long as he plays along, everything will be cool. If he doesn’t, you have a letter on file with your attorney that lays it all out.’

‘Sounds like a bad movie.’

‘That’s what I thought when David first suggested it.’

‘But it could work.’

‘Maybe, particularly if you don’t hit him up for a lot of money.’

‘How about a lump sum payment? I’m just so tired of the cruise ship routine, I’ll say, and all I need is the down payment for a modest home in Arizona and I’ll go away and leave him alone?’

As serious as the discussion was, I had to laugh. ‘You remind me a bit of myself. My husband calls me Nancy Drew, girl sleuth, and he’s not always being funny.’

Pia grinned. ‘When I was growing up, Nancy was a little too homogenized for my taste. I cut my teeth on Harriet the Spy. Know who my heroine is now? Flavia de Luce.’

I, too, had enjoyed Alan Bradley’s stories about the irrepressible eleven-year-old in fifties England with a passion for chemistry and murder. Flavia’s volatile relationship with her two older sisters had struck some familiar chords, too.

As I thought about it, though, my passion for righting wrongs had gotten me into some very hot water. A sailboat had sunk out from under me, my car had been run off the road into a pond, I’d been kidnapped and locked in a wine cellar, and I was once arrested for murder. And that was all before breakfast on Monday, as my father had been known to say. As much as Pia might want to help bring Westfall to justice, I couldn’t let her do it, not this way.

‘It’s fun to fantasize about being Nancy or Flavia,’ I said after a moment. ‘But that’s fiction and this is real life. It was crazy of David to come up with this blackmail idea, and crazy of me to suggest it to you. You know and I know that Westfall is far too dangerous.’

Pia folded her arms, stared out to sea. ‘Yeah, but it sure would be great to watch the worm squirm, up close and personal.’

I tugged on her arm, forced her to look at me. ‘Pia, promise me you won’t do anything foolish.’

‘I promise,’ she said. But I had seen that determined look before. In my daughter’s eyes when she told me that she wanted to waste the entire year following her college graduation by following the rock band, Phish. In my own eyes in the mirror.

‘I mean it,’ I said. ‘There must be a better way.’

‘Like what?’ she asked.

I didn’t have the slightest idea, but I squeezed her hand and said, ‘Don’t worry. Leave this to David, and to me.’