The Impersonator (13 page)

Ross stood not six feet away, his eyes blazing.

It seemed imprudent to stand between a cliff and someone who would inherit a fortune at my death. I stepped away from the edge.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded, stuffing clenched fists inside his trouser pockets as if they couldn’t be trusted with freedom. The wind tousled his curly hair, making him seem younger. I could see exactly what he had looked like as a little boy. It wasn’t reassuring.

“I’m taking a walk. Does that meet with your approval?” He couldn’t miss the sarcasm.

There was an awkward moment before he spoke again, gruffly this time, like a father to a wayward child. “Don’t get too close to the edge.”

“Why, thank you for those words of caution, cousin. I wouldn’t have realized the danger myself.” Ross shifted his glare from me to the ocean. “Never mind,” I continued, pretending he had apologized. “You nearly gave me a heart attack, sneaking up on me like that, but it wasn’t your fault. I couldn’t hear you coming with the wind in my ears, and of course King wouldn’t bark at you.”

“You shouldn’t be out here alone where no one can see you. It’s dangerous. The edge of the cliff is always crumbling away. Something could happen and no one would know you were here.”

I didn’t bother to point out that if I were to fall into the ocean in a rockslide, an onlooker could hardly save me. I guessed the dead woman had set him thinking about death. “You heard about the body on the side of the road?”

“Yes.” He looked thoughtful. “Mr. Beckett told me yesterday. No doubt we’ll be treated to the gory details in the newspaper.”

“Dexter has a daily?” I regretted the slip too late. But maybe Jessie had been too young to be interested in the newspaper, or perhaps Ross thought I was asking whether Dexter had a daily
now,
because he answered with no indication of having caught me out.

“Just the weekly. It isn’t much. Still just a few pages of school awards, Ladies’ League minutes, and some old prospector turning ninety and reminiscing about the gold rush. A murder will be front page. Things like that don’t happen in Dexter.”

In the short time I had been standing there, the fog had moved toward land, fingering a distant promontory that curved out into the water to the north of us where moments earlier sunlight had sparkled. It would reach us soon enough and the morning would be ruined for exploring.

“It’s a treacherous place,” he said finally. “Out there, I mean. As I well know. You remember how much we used to sail?”

If this was a trap, I thought I could handle it. Oliver had mentioned that the boys spent a lot of time on the water—in truth, sailing was a Carr family passion—so I could reply with confidence, “Yes, and I hated it because I got seasick so easily. But I thought you just sailed around the bay?”

“We were supposed to stay inside the bay, but we used to slip out and sail along the coast. We had some close calls.”

“That was unwise, especially considering what happened to my parents.”

“You’re right, of course. They don’t call this the Graveyard of the Pacific for nothing.”

“There were that many shipwrecks around here?”

“Untold numbers, all along the Oregon coast. This area”—he swept the air with one arm—“this part of the West Coast was first explored by Sir Francis Drake during his circumnavigation voyage in 1579. Did you know that?”

I wouldn’t admit my ignorance and so said nothing. He didn’t seem to notice. The lecture continued.

“The Europeans were certain that there was a water route to China through North America, the Northwest Passage, which, of course, there isn’t, but Drake thought he’d found it at the Juan de Fuca Straits. That’s the waterway between Vancouver Island and the United States.”

“I know where the straits are.”

“That’s right, I forget you’ve traveled a bit,” he said condescendingly.

“I’ve even read a book or two.”

He didn’t miss the testy tone of my voice. “Well, you can’t blame me for wondering. You haven’t had any education in the past seven years.”

“I didn’t need a classroom to learn. Besides, there are lots of important things schools can’t teach.”

Ross was not one to let my peevishness ruin a good lecture. He continued as if there had been no pause and, to be honest, what he said was interesting.

“There were probably no other Europeans hereabouts for two hundred years until Captain James Cook in the HMS
Resolution
mapped the whole coast from California to Alaska. When he left North America, he returned to Hawaii where he was murdered by the natives in 1779. You know what I like most about Captain Cook?”

“What?”

“He died trying to stop a fight between his men and the native Hawaiians. Not many people try to put a stop to the ill-treatment of the natives. No one around here.”

An odd comment. Curious to hear more, I plopped myself down on the grass next to King who was stretched out at my feet, a move designed to encourage him to continue and continue he did.

“Not much happened around here until gold was discovered in 1849 and hundreds of thousands of get-rich-quick dreamers poured into California and Oregon from all over the world. The problem was that suddenly there were thousands of people—mostly men, lots of Chinese—and no law enforcement except a gun. The Indians got the worst of it.”

“The real Wild West.”

“There were dozens of tribes in Oregon before the white man came—the Killamook, the Tututni, the Coos, the Nestuccas, the Kalapuyan, the Umatilla, and so forth. They lived in villages along the rivers. Unfortunately, that’s also where the gold was. When they resisted being run off by greedy miners, they were slaughtered. Most white men subscribed to the belief that the only good Indian was a dead Indian.”

It began to make sense to me now, why Indians all over this country were treated so badly and lived in such miserable places nowadays. They had occupied all the best land and were driven off to the worst. I thought of the dead Indian girl. “Are there many Indians left in Oregon today?”

“Not a lot,” Ross said as he sat down beside me. “Those that weren’t murdered died of white man’s diseases, like smallpox or measles. In the 1850s, after the Rogue River Wars, local tribes were forced onto reservations for their own protection, or so said the authorities. But these reservations were located on land that would not support them, so they starved to death.”

He sent a furtive glance in my direction to make sure I was paying attention before he delivered the coup de grâce. “As a matter of fact, in the course of my research, I discovered that we are sitting on what was once part of the Grand Ronde reservation where local Yaquina and Alsea Indians were squashed in with a dozen inland tribes marched here at gunpoint. Originally Grand Ronde’s population was about four thousand Indians. By the turn of this century, there were fewer than five hundred left.”

“How did my father come to own reservation land?”

“In 1887, the federal government decided to allot individual Indians with specific acreage rather than have the land owned communally by the tribe. Once that happened, they were easily cheated out of most of their land. Then in 1901, the government declared the remaining reservation land surplus and sold it to the public. Over the years, the reservation shrank from seventy thousand acres to about four hundred.”

“So my father swindled the Indians?”

“Not directly. He bought this land from a speculator in 1910. The speculator swindled the Indians.”

I reminded myself that Lawrence Carr wasn’t really my father, but I still felt like a thief. I didn’t want to own land that had been stolen from its rightful owners. “This is the topic of your research, isn’t it?”

“Obviously.”

“And where are the Indians now? Nearby?”

He began tossing pebbles over the cliff and the motion focused my attention to his hands. I couldn’t help but notice an unusual band around his wrist, a thin bracelet made of leather and beads. White, yellow, and blue beads, like those the dead woman wore. A shiver ran down my spine. Had Ross known the girl? His fingers were long and slender, his nails short and neat. Strong hands, and capable. Capable of what?

“Grand Ronde reservation still exists, southeast of us. A few Indians live there. Others live at the edge of towns like Dexter where they work in packing plants shucking oysters or canning salmon. Some weave baskets. I talk to the ones with the longest memories about the old days.”

I did some quick subtraction in my head. “If the first prospectors came in the 1850s, someone seventy-five years or older might remember that.”

“Several do remember. And some can relate what their parents had to say about life before the white man came, before the wars and relocations to the reservations. I am incorporating those first- and secondhand accounts into my thesis, which is about the cultural changes of the local tribes in the initial years of contact. The Indians old enough to provide eyewitness accounts won’t be around much longer and their knowledge will be lost forever unless I record it now.”

“The dead woman had black braids and shell beads. I think she was an Indian.”

He eyed me with interest. “She was. That’s why no one is much bothered about her death. No one in town, that is. She has family on the Grand Ronde reservation.”

“Oh, dear. How—”

“I went into town and talked to some Indians I know. The girl had come to Dexter a few months ago to find work. She must have found something because she sent money home a couple times, but no one at the cannery knew her. She may have been headed home when she was killed.”

“You mean she got into trouble and was running back to the reservation for safety?”

“Possibly. Some Indians trust me enough to talk to me, but this stuff is touchy, and when all’s said and done, I’m still white.”

So that’s how he knew. He’d been playing detective, poking into places the local constabulary should have been investigating. Did he have more than a scholar’s interest in the Indians?

“Did you know the dead girl?”

He gave me a queer look. “Why do you ask?”

“Just wondering.”

“No.”

I had the feeling he wasn’t telling the truth, but the lecture had come to an end. We sat a while without speaking, the air around us alive with nature’s own voice. Cormorants soaring effortlessly on updrafts called to their mates nesting in the cliffs below, crickets warned of the oncoming fog, and the endless rhythm of the surf washing the shore provided the backdrop for our thoughts. Life could be unfair in vaudeville too, but overall, it was better than in the civilian world where hotels didn’t rent rooms to Negro or Asian or Indian performers and many eateries and speakeasies refused to serve them. I’d been turned away from places myself when my group included someone the owners found objectionable.

“Are there any books about this Indian history?”

“None written in words of one syllable.”

I stood and brushed the grass off my skirt. “Have it your way, Ross. I’m through trying to be nice.”

“Acting nice isn’t going to convince us you’re Jessie.”

“Has it occurred to you that I don’t have to convince you? My grandmother and uncle are convinced, and the trustees will give their final approval as soon as their investigation is finished. That’s all that matters, although I admit to being pleased that the twins and your mother believe me.”

“You’ve misjudged my mother if you think that polite façade reflects her true feelings.”

Only then did I notice how close the fog had come, its first wisps blowing across the cliff edge toward us. Getting caught inside that thick white cloud with Ross would be the height of folly. “I’m heading back,” I said, turning toward the house.

Ross stood and surveyed the distance. “Good idea. Fog is disorienting. You could easily become confused and walk over the edge of the cliff.” I could hear him phrasing it just that way: “She must’ve become confused in the fog and walked over the edge of the cliff.” As Grandmother would say,
Time to watch your back.
Cave exploration could wait for another day.

At the thicket, I paused to let Ross go first. I was more comfortable walking behind him, and I had long ago learned to obey my instincts where men are concerned. We pushed through the thorny tangle of berry vines, single file, until we came to the tiny stream. Suddenly—so suddenly I bumped into him—he halted.

“Oh! Excuse me!” I said.

He crouched down and pointed to a flower. “Look. A cobra lily.”

It wasn’t much like the lilies I’d seen at funerals. I peered over his shoulder at a stem that bent like a shepherd’s crook with a bulbous center and a reddish protruding forked leaf.

“And another one!” Excited, he began searching the ground intently like a woman looking for a lost earring. In a moment he found what he was hunting for. A bug.

“It’s carnivorous. Watch.” He upended the flower and dropped the doomed insect inside. It struggled against the hairs and slippery sides of the interior until it slid out of sight into the guts of the flower. “Its name comes from the shape of the plant. Doesn’t it look just like a deadly cobra ready to strike its prey? And this leaf part looks like the serpent’s forked tongue, doesn’t it? The flower doesn’t strike its prey like a cobra; it lures insects inside with its scent and its colorful leaf.”

Mother once told me about a religion in India whose followers thought all life was sacred so they walked with their heads down watching the ground to avoid killing even a single ant. That’s not me. I’ve slapped my share of mosquitoes, squashed plenty of spiders, and stepped on more cockroaches than I care to remember, but Ross’s undisguised glee in sending the hapless insect to its certain death made me queasy. He knew it too, looking up at me with a sly innocence and saying, “There’s a lot of death around here, isn’t there?”

19

The little bug did not die in vain. I returned to the house disturbed enough by Ross’s behavior to know I wouldn’t rest until I had taken care of an important chore.

Grandmother and Aunt Victoria were in the garden, Oliver had retired to the library, Henry was out on his yacht, and the twins were playing tennis. Glancing around to make sure none of the servants was watching, I skulked up the stairs and into Grandmother’s bedroom.