Hot and Steamy (6 page)

Sinclair and Jameson arrived at the green-shuttered law office of Rabe and Perlman.

“This is the place. Professor, I have a bit of business to attend to this morning, it shouldn't take long. Would you meet me at the end of Canal Road? At the edge of town there's a warehouse I'm interested in leasing for my new millinery business. Once my meeting is over I'll meet you there at say . . . one thirty? My lawyer has a key and will show us through the place, and I'd like to get your expert opinion.”

“But . . . I'm no expert on ladies' hats.”

“Ah, but you are an expert, Professor.”

He felt the heat of a blush spread over his face. “I–I need a few provisions for my trip anyway, so of course I'll meet you at the warehouse . . . at one thirty . . . and maybe we can dine afterward at the Blue Oyster. It's the best restaurant in Ephraim.” He watched Sinclair disappear through the front door of a red brick building. As he reluctantly turned to leave, he noticed a shabbily dressed man watching him from across the street.

“Sinclair,” he said to himself, realizing the fellow must have been watching her. Jameson wondered if everyone noticed her great beauty and stared. “Now . . . for those provisions.”

He hadn't needed anything, but went shopping anyway. With a new coat and shirt wrapped in brown paper under his arm, he wandered the streets looking into the shop windows. Shortly after one o'clock he sped toward Canal Road.

Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw someone step over the curb behind him. He had a strange feeling that he was being followed as he rushed down the sidewalk, but then dismissed the notion as silly. “Ah, there it is.” Nearly a half mile away towered a dilapidated warehouse. He arrived out of breath.

“Sinclair?” He didn't see her.

Jameson wiped a spot on the grimy window to see if Sinclair and her lawyer were inside. At the same time he noticed the acrid smell of something burning and heard a faint hiss. He spun, fully intending to leap out of the way of a snake, when out of nowhere a man tackled him and pushed him face down in the dirt. Before he could react, he felt the ground shake. An explosion rocked the earth and glass shards and splinters of wood pelted them from every direction. He felt his assailant roll off him and heard him coughing, but he couldn't see through the thick smoke.

The stranger groped his way toward Jameson, both men still choking on the smell of gunpowder in the thick air. “I got my orders from Cap'n Keel to get you back to the boat right away.”

Jameson made a connection; it was the shabbily dressed man, who was now even filthier than before. He managed to hoist Jameson under his arm and hustle the archaeologist back onboard the
Evangeline.

“Sinclair . . .” Jameson wheezed.

“She's all right. Wasn't near the explosion. I'll go find her,” the man answered. “Just see to yourself.”

Jameson had no intention of abandoning the comely woman, but he would change his jacket before returning to shore. He'd just reached his cabin, stripped off his shredded tweed, and decided to have a swallow of absinthe to steady his nerves before searching for Sinclair. As he prepared the drink, his door flew open with such force he was surprised it remained on the hinges.

Captain Keel's large frame filled the doorway.

“Dammit, Watts. What's it gonna take for you to get serious that someone's out to kill you?” His eyes blazed as he blew an exasperated puff of air that fluttered his wide walrus mustache. Gold buttons threatened to explode from the vest stretched tightly over his large belly, and his face blazed a disturbing shade of red.

Momentarily, thoughts of Sinclair fled and Jameson stared, dazed. He poked a finger in his ear, opened and shut his mouth, but he was still unable to hear much after Keel's outburst.

The captain stomped over the threshold in the dimly lit cabin just as the archaeologist raised a shaking glass of chartreuse liquid to his lips. Captain Keel reached his ham-sized hand across the desk and knocked the glass of absinthe across the room.

“Watts, are you listening to me?”

Jameson watched slack-jawed as the spilled green liquor smoked for a moment before it burst into flames, igniting a crumpled newspaper that lay on the floor.

Keel's large foot stomped out the fire, then he quickly whisked the decanter of green liquid off the desk. Jameson followed the captain, hanging his head like a scolded dog. Absentmindedly, he pinched the bridge of his nose and rubbed it while a thousand random thoughts threaded through his head as his heart thundered in his chest.

“Why would someone try to kill me?” he whispered. “And Sinclair . . . Miss Upchurch . . . I need to know she's all right.”

“She's fine,” Keel blustered. “She's finishing some business in town and will be onboard the ship before we sail.”

Jameson spent the rest of the afternoon under Captain Keel's watchful dark eyes, and he was “allowed” back to his cabin to change for supper, one of the captain's men keeping watch outside the door.

He changed his shirt and tie, buttoned his vest, and paged through a portfolio of pen and ink sketches and pencil drawings he'd made of ruins and artifacts that were cataloged on his last expedition to Egypt, hoping these would interest Sinclair. By messenger, he sent her an invitation to join him for the evening meal. “Please,” he'd ended the message.

The dining salon was full of passengers, not an empty table anywhere. Under other circumstances this would have made Jameson happy that his steamboat was doing such a brisk trade, but he was more consumed with thoughts of her. Her absence tore at his heart. The chandelier cast its glow over the crisp white table linen, the exquisite hand-painted china, and shimmering crystal goblets. He sipped on some whiskey and checked his watch. The captain had tossed out all of the absinthe. Lost in thought, and trying to keep his mind off Sinclair, he scribbled into a notebook. He didn't hear the slight creaking from the enormous chandelier that hovered above his head.

Every few moments he nervously checked to see if Sinclair had arrived. He'd confirmed that she'd returned to the ship, but she hadn't returned his message.

The bodyguard who was ordered to stay nearby was lighting his pipe when Jameson dipped under the table to fetch his fallen pen. In that instant the brass chandelier crashed onto the table. Glass flew and the thick maple table split neatly in two.

Jameson moaned from under the wreckage.

Diners rushed to dig him out just as Sinclair stepped into the room, shrieked at the sight, and promptly fainted.

 

Battered and bruised and suitably bandaged, the archaeologist limped to answer his cabin door the following morning. His broken arm was trussed in a sling. A lovely shade of purple bloomed around his left eye below a lump large enough to cast a shadow.

Sinclair flinched when she saw his face in the dim light. “Oh, dear,” was all she said.

Jameson felt his temperature rise. She was lovely, an angel come to ground.

She held out her hand and offered him a small package. “I'm so sorry to see you hurt,” she said in a concerned voice. “I brought you a small token. It's nothing, really. Don't try to talk.” She touched his swollen lip with her finger. “Oh, this is my fault. If I hadn't asked you to come to shore with me . . .”

He shook off her words and held her fingers in his good hand, trying to draw her close, but the motion was awkward with his bandages and he practically stumbled into her.

“Maybe we could meet later, Professor? Say this evening, after you've had the day to rest. I'll be leaving as soon as we dock in the morning, and I'd hate to go without a proper farewell . . . a long, proper farewell.”

His blood pounded in his ears. “Leaving?” the word came out as a croak.

“Unfortunately, yes. Business, you understand. But that doesn't mean we can't . . . you know . . . if you feel up to it.”

A smile crept to his swollen lips.

“It's settled then. I'll be on deck . . . say . . . around ten. We'll watch the stars on the water and then . . . retire . . . for the rest of the night.”

Jameson watched her sway away and closed the cabin door behind her. He swallowed a powerful pain remedy with some bourbon sent by Captain Keel and woke not knowing if he'd slept an hour or an entire day. As he swung his stiff legs over the side of the bed and gathered the strength to stand, his blood tingled with the thought of seeing the willowy redhead for perhaps the final time.

He scratched his whiskers, remembering the scent of her exotic perfume, and thought,
Maybe she'd come with me to Egypt. Maybe this won't be the last time. Maybe it will be forever.

The pain had somewhat subsided, he felt hungry, and the lump on his head no longer stung. Maybe she could see past his infirmaries and idiosyncrasies . . . and the ugliness of his mottled black eye.

It was nearly ten when he made his way along the deck awash in silvery moonlight. He slowly limped toward the stern where the water splashed off the paddle-wheel with a whooshing rhythm. Between the posts of the railing something familiar glistened—Sinclair's cameo. As he tried to grab it, a gunshot ripped through the peaceful night, followed by a thud. He turned around to see Sinclair face down—dark blood slowly staining the back of her gown. The blade of a Bowie knife gleamed in the moonlight, the handle clutched in her leather-gloved fist.

He didn't need to look closer; he knew she was dead.

Behind her Captain Keel held a smoking pistol. The sharp scent of gunpowder hung like a cloud around the captain as he looked sadly at the archaeologist.

“Come on, Watts,” Keel said. “Let's have a drink.”

In the wheelhouse the archaeologist stared straight ahead in shock. Tears stained his bruised face.

The captain threw back a large bourbon. “She was about to run you through with that Bowie knife when I showed up.”

Jameson lifted his bloodshot eyes.

“Her real name was Stella Rechow, a black widow for hire—so to speak, sent to kill you. A pack of Texas oilmen put her on their payroll. Word must've got out about your trip to Washington and your energy metal, and it seems they weren't going to let your discovery put them out of business. I contacted the authorities and had them do a check on every passenger onboard. The information about our ‘Miss Upchurch' had just come over my communicator, so I went to her cabin to confront her—but she'd gone. Found this on her bed.” The captain held out a green antiquities book. “It's yours—she must have taken the book from your cabin.”

Taken it, as she had taken his heart. Jameson sniffed as he opened the green cover and saw
J. Watts
scribbled in the corner.

“The police'll be waitin' for us at Exeter in the morning. Seems they've been chasing her for a while. She's got a list of aliases, murders, and felonies long as your arm. My best guess is she was gonna stab you and throw you overboard. I reckon she left that cameo for you to find right where you'd reach over the rail. She'd have been long gone before your body washed ashore.”

Jameson regarded him numbly and finished his bourbon.

“You better get some sleep now, Watts.” The captain grabbed Jameson by the shoulder and steered the shaken man toward his cabin.

Dawn was seeping over the horizon when the archaeologist finally fell asleep.

 

Several months later, after his meeting with the president, Jameson traveled back to Egypt. He visited the final resting place of the ancient scientist he'd discovered decades ago, stood at the sarcophagus, and gazed steadily while his eyes adjusted to the flickering torchlight.

The hieroglyphs on the walls spelled out the necessary incantations for the mummy seeking the afterlife. The Ankh and Shen symbols meant life eternal, and beneath it the deity Ma'at wore the feather of truth next to Heh, the god of millions of years. The colorful spells that adorned the dusty walls had barely faded through eons of time.

Jameson pried open the sarcophagus. He carefully placed the canopic jar and all but one of the artifacts he'd found there decades ago back inside. He idly wondered if the mummy had been murdered for the energy discovery.

He rubbed the scarab beetle dangling around his neck for luck.

Before he crawled out of the tomb for the last time, the archaeologist reverently said a prayer that the ancient man had found eternal life.

T
he Tejas Express was a monstrosity of gleaming metal, though in its own way beautiful to behold. Large and cumbersome, with steam curling around it like caressing tendrils, the carriage rumbled along on an intricate system of toothed tracks. It moved with a great thrumming sound, much like a racing heart attempting to be restrained. Winston Jefferson jostled about in the car, one eye on the group of soldiers milling as if they were not on duty. Part of him resented the scarlet bleed of their red soldier uniforms. The antithesis of camouflage by design, it let the enemy know who was coming for them in the name of Her Majesty Queen Diana.

His other eye rested on his charge, who the soldiers amiably chatted up. Winston's hand tightened its grip on his cane handle as she sauntered toward him.