“That’s a bit too convenient for me.”
Kit pondered Lee’s comment as he watched his friend walk back to the helm. He’d thought he’d made the best deal for everyone concerned, but now Kit questioned his motives. Perhaps his decision had been all about sticking it to the Tabers. Maybe he had made a huge mistake.
5
“Aye, mate, ya got till dark on Sat’rday ta have the quid. I warned ya wot happens ta them wot don’t pay. The blokes gets thumselves burnt out. Ya pay an’ ya like m’partna. The Ducks, they protect ya like. I’m ah mon o’ my word, mate.”
The short, burly Aussie bared his riddled teeth into what might have passed for a bestial grin. Pulling his floppy-brimmed hat low over his pocked face, he turned, purposely running his filthy finger along the rich grain of Abner’s burl desk.
“Be a right shame ta have this foine piece a pile o’ ashes. G’day ta ya,” he added before he skulked from the funeral parlor.
Abner sagged back in his chair and willed his knotted fists to unclench. He hated this. Pushing his chair back, he rose and went to the window. Taking his handkerchief out of his pants pocket, he swiped the sweat from his forehead and then rubbed the damp haze from the windowpane. The burly man who’d just left was the current leader of the Sydney Ducks. Abner stood in silence, watching as he joined his fellow miscreants and they disappeared through the fog, leaving only the echo of their threatening laughter in their wake.
This was Wednesday. He had barely three days to come up with the money they demanded for ‘protection.’Protection against them and what they would do to him if he didn’t pay. He’d never been caught so short before.
When he caught the older Fredriksen girl in his tree, he thought he’d found the perfect way to get that last bit of money. Her father captained a whaler. It was a lucrative business, and the captain got the largest share. With her only parent at sea, he’d assumed he could weasel the money out of her. He had no idea that someone like that Howland fellow would get involved.
As Abner gazed about his richly appointed room, he tried to come up with a way to get that last five hundred dollars. The vases and sculptures alone were worth twice that amount, but San Francisco had no market for them. He couldn’t sell them, because the fools who could afford them didn’t have the class or refinement to know their true value. The only things that brought top dollar in this gold-mad town were chamois skins to bag the gold ore dust, food to feed the hordes, and whiskey and whores to feed another hunger. No one cared for the sustenance of art or beauty. Aesthetic value was unknown in a town that had been slapped together in a jumble of canvas and wood structures.
He’d made a foolish choice. When newfangled metal caskets suddenly became available, he had to have them, despite that huge number the manufacturer forced him to order and pay for in cash. It was that prepayment that put him in this predicament. The cost had all but emptied his bank account. The coffin company had so many orders they had the power to demand cash payment up front. He’d planned on getting the money back quickly, knowing he could charge twice as much for a metal burial casket, though the actual cost was only about a quarter more than the wooden ones.
He wouldn’t need a carpenter anymore, so he could get rid of Duncan. The man was an idiot, hardly ever spoke, though he did good work. But lately there’d been an insolence about Duncan that rubbed Abner wrong, and he’d just as soon rid himself of the huge oaf’s irritating presence. But he couldn’t now...not until that shipment arrived.
Abner ran his finger across the wood of the windowsill. It was rough, although the mortuary building was considered one of the city’s best. Like the rare fine buildings in San Francisco, his place had been prefabricated in France, shipped to the West Coast, and thrown up in a single day. Although he’d paid for the elaborate moldings, it still was not a suitable encasement for what was left of his heritage. The Lowestoft urns and fine Chinese porcelains had once graced any number of rooms in the Moffat-Brown mansion.
But he’d been allowed to keep so little in the settlement. His father had repeatedly challenged fate with his gambling, until he’d lost almost everything. Then he’d put a bullet through his cowardly head rather than face his only son. The only positive thing was that his mother had died two years earlier and hadn’t been alive to see all she loved and cherished sold off.
Suddenly Abner’s gut cut with the sharp, burning, recurrent pain that had begun in his belly from the first moment he’d found out what his father had done. He sniffled...then wiped his dripping nose with the crumpled cloth still clutched in his tense fist.
His nose was running again. What time was it?The clock told him only five hours had passed since his last laudanum dose. Lately, his runny nose served as a warning that the drug was wearing off, and the doses were lessening in effect. He’d increased his dosage repeatedly over the last half a year or so, but he wasn’t getting any better. The searing agony in his stomach came back along with excruciating headaches.
He walked outside, then up the narrow stairs to his room, each step now reverberating through his pounding skull like a hatchet on wood. As he sat on the edge of his bed, his belly-burning twisted into a gripping cramp. He reached for the large, rusty-brown bottle on the bedtable and began to count the drops as they plopped into a small, water-filled glass. His hand shook. The strong scent of cloves and cinnamon permeated the air, and with each drop the water deepened to ruby red.
By the time he reached the count of thirty, his usual dosage, the pain in his belly was so bad that he had rolled to his side and had drawn his knees to his chest, the glass in his hand. Recklessly, he counted ten more drops from his fetal position and poured the liquid past his cracked lips, draining the glass. He squeezed his watery eyes closed, feeling the moisture of his tear escape his lids as it trailed across his clammy skin to pool onto the already damp pillow. Then he cried for a long time, and as the sharp cramping grew even worse, he rolled from side to side, his pain not allowing him to lie still.
As he writhed atop the bed, his mind screamed for the laudanum numbness to set in, for it was then that life changes and he regained euphoria and strength...wrapped in the soothing, but addictive arms of his opiate.
Hallie stared at the ceilingand she played a mental game—the one where the burnished knots in the wooden ceiling took other forms. The cocoa-brown splotch right above her head looked exactly like a peanut, or a pear, or maybe, she turned her head to the side, a footprint.
Like the muddy imprint on your pink dress.
“Humph,” she said too loudly. She held her breath, listening for her sisters’ breathing, which stayed smooth and even. At least someone in this family could sleep. Of course they didn’t worry through the night like she did. The entire evening had been nothing but a joke, at least to Kit, who she desperately wished would take her seriously. Instead she played the court jester, fumbling, mumbling and tumbling, right in front of her prince.
Every time she looked at Kit, he had appeared to be fighting his laughter.
After Millie’d served the chowder, Hallie had waited, then took a look at the men. Kit ate but Captain Prescott sent her a kind smile. She understood he was trying to make her feel better, but knowing that he was aware of her embarrassment just made her feel more embarrassed.
Instead of gaining Kit’s respect, instead of impressing him, she had most likely sunk to the level of childishness. So much for changing her image. Captain Prescott must have felt sorry for her. Kit was no doubt laughing all the way to Sausalito—laughing, and relieved to be rid of Jan Fredriksen’s mad family.
“Hallie?”
“Duggie? What are you doing still awake?”
“I’m worried.”
“About what?”
“Da. Do you think he’ll be home soon?”
