Whiskey Beach (38 page)

“You haven’t read it yet. Just one scene.”

“It doesn’t matter. You finished it. How many pages?”

“Right now? Five hundred and forty-three.”

“You wrote five hundred and forty-three pages, and you did that through a personal nightmare, you did that during a major transition in your life, through continuing conflict and stress and upheaval. If you’re not proud of yourself you’re either annoyingly modest or stupid. Which is it?”

She lifted him, he realized. She just lifted him.

“I guess I’d better say I’m proud of myself.”

“Much better.” She kissed him noisily, then wrapped her arms around his neck again. “By this time next year, your book will be published or on its way to publication. Your name’s going to be cleared, and you’ll have all the answers to all the questions hanging over you and Bluff House.”

“I like your optimism.”

“Not optimism alone. I did a tarot reading.”

“Oh, well then. Let’s spend my staggering advance on a trip to Belize.”

“I’ll take it.” She leaned back. “Optimism and a tarot reading equal a very powerful force, Mr. Mired in Reality, especially when you add effort and sweat. Why Belize?”

“No clue. It was the first thing to pop into my mind.”

“Often the first things are the best things. Anything interesting today?”

“Nothing that pertains to the dowry.”

“Well, we still have plenty to go through. I’ll start on another trunk.”

She worked alongside him, then decided to change gears, abandon the trunk and work her way through an old chest of drawers.

It was amazing what people kept, she thought. Old table runners, faded pieces of embroidery or needlepoint, children’s drawings on paper so dry she feared it would break and crumble in her hands. She found a collection of records she thought might be from the same era as the gorgeous coral dress. Amused, she uncovered a gramophone, wound it up, and set the record to play.

She grinned over at Eli as the scratchy, tinny music filled the room. She did some jazz hands, a quick shimmy, and had him grinning back.

“You ought to put the dress on.”

She winked at him. “Maybe later.”

She danced back to the chest of drawers, opened the next drawer.

She made piles. So much unused or partially used fabric, she noted, arranging them in neat piles. Someone had used the chest of drawers for sewing at one time, she thought, storing silks and brocades, fine wools and satins. Surely some lovely dresses had come from this, and others simply planned and never realized.

When she reached the bottom drawer, it stuck halfway open. After a couple of tugs, she lifted out scraps of fabric, and an envelope of pins, an old pincushion fashioned to resemble a ripe, red tomato, a tin box of various threads.

“Oh, patterns! From the thirties and forties.” Carefully, she lifted them out. “Shirtwaists and evening gowns. Oh God, just
look
at this sundress!”

“You go ahead.”

She barely spared him a glance. “They’re wonderful. This whole project has made me wonder why I never tried vintage clothing before. I wonder if I can make this sundress.”

“Make a dress?” He flicked her a glance. “I thought that’s what stores were for.”

“In that yellow silk with the little violets, maybe. I’ve never sewn a dress, but I’d love to try it.”

“Be my guest.”

“I could even try on that old sewing machine we found up here. Just to keep it all vintage.” Imagining it, she stacked the patterns, turned back to the empty drawer.

“It’s stuck,” she muttered. “Maybe something’s caught . . .”

Angling herself, she reached in, searched the bottom of the drawer above for a blockage, then the sides, then the back. “I guess it’s just jammed or warped or . . .”

Then her fingers trailed over what felt like a curve of metal.

“Something’s back here in the corner,” she told Eli. “In both corners,” she discovered.

“I’ll look in a minute.”

“I can’t see why it’s hanging up the drawer. It’s just—”

Impatient, she pushed at the corners, and the drawer slid out, nearly into her lap.

Eli glanced up again at her surprised “Oh!”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, just bumped my knees a little. It’s like a compartment, Eli. A secret compartment in the back of this drawer.”

“Yeah, I’ve found a few of those in desks, and one in an old buffet.”

“But did you find anything in them like this?”

She held up a wooden box, deeply carved with a stylized, looping
L
.

“Not so far.” Intrigued now, he stopped his inventory when she brought the box to the table. “It’s locked.”

“Maybe the key’s in the collection we’ve been compiling, more of which I found in the hidden drawer in the old buffet.”

She glanced over at the jar they were using to store keys found during the third-floor rummage. Then just pulled a pin out of her hair.

“Let’s try this first.”

He had to laugh. “Seriously? You’re going to pick the lock with a hairpin?”

“It’s the classic way, isn’t it? And how complicated can it be?” She bent the pin, slid it in, turned, wiggled, turned. Since she seemed determined to open the box, Eli started to get up for the jar. Then heard the quiet click.

“You’ve done this before?”

“Not since I was thirteen and lost the key to my diary. But some skills stay with you.”

She lifted the lid, found a cache of letters.

They’d come across letters before, most of them as long and winding as the distance between Whiskey Beach and Boston, or New York. Some from soldiers gone to war, she thought, or daughters married and settled far away.

She hoped for love letters as she’d yet to find any.

“The paper looks old,” she said as she carefully took them out. “Written with a quill, I think, and— Yes, here’s a date. June 5, 1821. Written to Edwin Landon.”

“That would have been Violeta’s brother.” Eli pushed his own work aside, shifted to look. “He’d have been in his sixties. He died in . . .” He scoured his mind for the family history he’d pored over. “I think 1830 something, early in that decade anyway. Who’s it from?”

“James J. Fitzgerald, of Cambridge.”

Eli noted it down. “Can you read it?”

“I think so. ‘Sir, I regret the unfortunate circumstances and tenor of our meeting last winter. It was not my intention to intrude upon your privacy or your goodwill. While you made your opinions and decision most . . . most abundantly clear at that time, I feel it imperative I write to you now on behalf’—no—‘behest of my mother and your sister, Violeta Landon Fitzgerald.’”

Abra stopped, eyes huge as they met Eli’s.

“Eli!”

“Keep reading.” He rose to go study the letter over her shoulder. “There’s no record in the family history of her marrying or having children. Keep reading,” he repeated.

“‘As I communicated to you in January, your sister is most grievously ill. Our situation continues to be difficult with the debts incurred at my father’s death two years past. My employment as a clerk for Andrew Grandon, Esquire, brings me an honest wage, and with it I have well supported my wife and family. I am now, of course, seeing to my mother’s needs in addition to attempting to reconcile the debts.

“‘I do not and would not presume to approach you for financial aid on my own behalf, but must again do so in your sister’s name. As her health continues grave, the doctors urge us to remove her from the city and to the shore, where they believe the sea air would be most beneficial. I fear she will not live to see another winter should the current situation continue.

“‘It is your sister’s most heartfelt wish to return to Whiskey Beach, to return to the home where she was born and which holds so many memories for her.

“‘I appeal to you, sir, not as an uncle. You have my word I will never ask for consideration for myself due to that familial connection. I appeal to you as a brother whose only sister’s wish is to come home.’”

Mindful of its fragility, Abra set the letter aside. “Oh, Eli.”

“She left. Wait, let me think.” He straightened, began to wander the room. “There’s no record of her marriage, any children, of her death—not in family records, anyway—and I’ve never heard of this Fitzgerald connection.”

“Her father had records destroyed, didn’t he?”

“That’s what’s been passed down, yeah. She ran off, and he not only cut her off, he basically eliminated all records.”

“He must have been a small, ugly man.”

“Tall, dark and handsome in his portraits,” Eli corrected, “but you mean inside. And you’re probably right. So Violeta left here, estranged from the family, and went to Boston or Cambridge and they disowned her. At some point she married, had children—at least this son. Was Fitzgerald the survivor of the
Calypso
? An Irish name, not a Spanish one.”

“He could’ve been impressed. Is that the term? Or just as likely she met and married him after she left home. Was there really never any attempt to reconcile, until this? Until she was dying?”

“I don’t know. Some of the stories speculate she ran away with a lover, most just speculate she ran off after her lover was killed by her brother. During this research, I’ve come across a couple of speculations she was shipped off because she was pregnant, and then disowned because she wouldn’t fall in line. Basically, they erased her, so there are no family records or mentions of her after the late 1770s. Now that we have this, we can do a search for James J. Fitzgerald, Cambridge, and work back from there.”

“Eli, the next letter, it’s written in September of the same year. Another plea. She’s worse, and the debts are mounting up. He says his mother’s too weak to hold a pen and write herself. He writes her words for her. Oh, it breaks my heart. ‘Brother, let there be forgiveness. I do not wish to meet God with this enmity between us. I beseech you, with the love we once shared so joyfully, to allow me to come home to die. To allow my son to know my brother, the brother I cherished, and who cherished me before that horrible day. I have asked God to forgive me for my sins and for yours. Can you not forgive me, Edwin, as I forgive you? Forgive me and bring me home.’”

She wiped tears from her cheeks. “But he didn’t, did he? The third letter, the last. It’s dated January sixth. ‘Violeta Landon Fitzgerald departed this world on this day at the hour of six. She suffered greatly in the last months of her time on this earth. This suffering, sir, is on your hands. May God forgive you for I shall not.

“‘On her deathbed, she related to me all that occurred in those last days of August in the year 1774. She confessed her sins to me, the sins of a young girl, and yours, sir. She suffered and died wishing for the home of her birth and her blood, and for the embrace of family refused her. I will not forget nor will any of my blood. You have your riches and hold them dearer than her life. You will not see her again, nor meet with her in Heaven. For your actions you are damned, as are all the Landons who spring from you.’”

She set the last letter with the others. “I agree with him.”

“By all accounts Edwin Landon and his father were hard men, uncompromising.”

“I’d say these letters bear that out.”

“And more. We don’t know if Edwin responded, or what he wrote if he did, but it’s clear both he and Violeta ‘sinned’ in August of 1774. Five months after the
Calypso
wrecked on Whiskey Beach. We need to search for information on James Fitzgerald. We need a date of birth.”

“You think she was pregnant when she left, or was disowned.”

“I think that’s the kind of sin men like Roger and Edwin Landon would condemn. And I think, given the times, their rise in society, in status, in business, a daughter pregnant with the child of someone less, someone outside the law? Untenable.”

He walked back to her, studied the letter again, the signature. “James would have been a common name, a popular one. Sons are often named for fathers.”

“You think her lover, the seaman from the
Calypso
, was James Fitzgerald?”

“No. I think her lover was Nathanial James Broome, and he survived the wreck of his ship, along with Esmeralda’s Dowry.”

“Broome’s middle name was James?”

“Yeah. Whoever Fitzgerald was, I’m betting she was pregnant when she married him.”

“Broome might have run off with her, changed his name.”

Eli ran a hand down her hair absently, remembering how she’d given the doomed schoolteacher and long-ago Landon a happy ending.

“I don’t think so. The man was a pirate, fairly notorious. I don’t see him settling down quietly in Cambridge, raising a son who becomes a clerk. And he’d never have let the Landons have the dowry. Edwin killed him, that’s how I see it. Killed him, took the dowry, tossed his sister out.”

“For money? At the bottom of it, they cast her out,
erased
her, for money?”

“She took for a lover a known brigand. A killer, a thief, a man who would certainly have been hanged if caught. The Landons are accumulating wealth, social prestige and some political power. Now their daughter, whom they’d have married to the son of another wealthy family, is ruined. They may be ruined as well if it becomes known that they harbored or had knowledge of a wanted man being harbored. She, the situation, her condition needed to be dealt with.”

“Dealt with?
Dealt
with?”

“I’m not agreeing with what was done, I’m outlining their position and probable actions.”

“Lawyer Landon. No, he wouldn’t be one of my favorite people.”

“Lawyer Landon’s just stating their case, the case of men of that era, that mind-set. Daughters were property, Abra. It wasn’t right, but it’s history. Now instead of being an asset, she was a liability.”

“I don’t think I can listen to this.”

“Get a grip on yourself,” he suggested when she pushed to her feet. “I’m talking about the late eighteenth century.”

“You sound like you’re okay with it.”

“It’s history, and the only way I can try to get a clear picture is to think logically and not emotionally.”

“I like emotion better.”

“You’re good at it.” So, they’d use that, too, he decided. Both emotion and logic. “Okay, what does your emotion tell you happened?”