Red Mask / Opening and Links / Sailing with Mystery Collection

 Red Mask

Isabella receives a disturbing letter—only for it to be stolen before she deciphers it.

The letter claims that a spy is aboard the Garipoola, but is that the only person hiding their true identity and purpose on the passenger ship?

Read on for the Story's Opening ~ 

1

Isabella stopped at a cloth covered with carved bowls. The vendor had placed the bowls rim-down, to display the carvings of monkeys, elephants, and swirls. Intrigued, she knelt for a closer look.

The bowls spanned a wide spectrum of wood tones, light to dark. She touched a light-colored bowl with monkeys in palm trees. “What is this wood?”

“Sagwan.” He repeated it. When she touched a rose-colored wood with little carving but lovely arches, he said, “Sheesham, sheesham.” He hovered his hand over a series of bowls. “Nilambur” was a mandala. “Nagpur” had columns like a palace collonade. Tigers slinking through reeds was “Mango.”

“And cedar” she named the rust-red bowl.

He plucked the bowl off the ground cloth and turned it upright. Warmed by the sun, the redolent cedar reminded her of clothes presses and chests. Elephants with lifted trunks paraded around the bowl balanced on his hand.

“May I?” She extended her hand.

He bobbed his head. Dark hair fell over his forehead. “You look. You look good.” Like any merchant from ages old, he knew touching the product would often sell it.

Closer inspection revealed that each elephant wore a headband and a cloth over its back, this one ornamented with beads, that one with cross-hatches, a third with swirls, and all parading before a different background. The elephant with flowers marched before a temple; the one with cross-hatches walked through a jungle. Eight elephants in all, which the missionary Miss Harlow had claimed was a fortunate number.

Isabella hadn’t found anything that called to her like these elephants. Within a few minutes, she owned the bowl, and the vendor grinned from ear to ear. She had likely paid too much, but she had no taste for haggling over a price. Mindful of Col. Werthy’s advice at the market in Bombay, before they’d parted ways, she had halved the man’s amount. He countered, she paid, and they were both happy with the transaction. The vendor even wrapped the bowl in a vivid green cloth.

When she stood, a passerby knocked into her. She stumbled.

A hand from nowhere steadied her. “Missy good?” her vendor asked.

“Yes, I’m fine. Thank you,” she directed at the man, but he was gone.

The vendor settled cross-legged at the back of his cloth. Isabella stepped into the flow of the market and let the current take her forward.

The artist in her loved the vivid colors of the canopies over the booths and open shop fronts. Saffron yellow, emerald green and spring green, poppy red and persimmon, tangerine and heavenly azure, and peacock blue, the colors rioted along both sides of the street. The myriad objects for sale, the varied faces of the vendors, male and female, all started a longing to capture the market with its energy. She would need oils. Watercolors would be too diluted. She yearned for a faster paint than oils or the ability to take color photographs. In black-and-white snapshots, the market would look a crowded mess.

A man in pristine white loose jacket and trousers bumped into her. When she edged over, he remained plastered to her shoulder. “Are you on the Garipoola?”

His British accent surprised her as much as his knowledge of her ship. Isabella gaped at him.

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

“You know Col. Werthy?”

He had sherry brown eyes, a long narrow face, heavy eyebrows, and swept-back black hair. A beard had started on his defined jawline.

“You know the colonel?” he persisted.

“Yes.”

“Good.” He thrust a folded paper at her.

“He left the ship in Bombay, with his friend Richard Owen.”

“This is for you. Take it,” he ordered when she remained reluctant. “You must return to the ship. Hire a rickshaw. Here, I call one for you.”

Isabella clutched the folded note. Do I trust this man?

When he turned away, she faded into the crowd. As a western woman, blonde and pale, she would be quickly spotted in this crowd of natives. She cast to the other side of the street and hastened back the way she’d come. The current took her until she spotted a landmark that would lead out of the market.

Outside of the bustling market, she would be even more noticeable, and she hurried along the shop fronts. When she happened upon a rickshaw discharging a passenger, she crossed to the rickshawallah. “Harbor? The ship Garipoola?”

“Yes, Missy.”

“How much?”

He looked offended. “Pay at end.”

The rain started as she settled onto the wooden seat. She leaned back to stay under the umbrella canopy. The man picked up the iron bars and began pulling.

As the rain fell, cooling the heated air, his speed increased. Bare feet splashed through the forming puddles, undeterred while others sought shelter from the sudden monsoon rain. Streams poured along the streets and became freshet floods as the deluge continued. Thunder rumbled, but the rickshawallah never paused.

Her skirt was soaked when they reached the harbor. The man ran all the way to the Garipoola’s mooring. He offered to carry her up the gangway but didn’t seem offended by her refusal. By the time Isabella paid him and reached the ship, she was soaked through. Then, in a twist almost anticipated, as she climbed the gangway the rain stopped, God closing the tap.

From the ship, she looked back at the wharf. Her rickshawhallah was running back to the city, his rickshaw bouncing behind him. A woman had emerged from the port office. A western woman. Then raindrops peppered down, and Isabella hurried to her cabin.

She didn’t slip the note from her purse until she changed from her wet clothes, hanging them in her lavatory to drip dry. Then she unwrapped her bowl and added the green cloth to the shower rod. The elephant bowl fit perfectly on the tiny table jutting from the wall by the head of her bed. She tucked her little alarm clock under the shade of the bed lamp. Only then did she unfold the note.

It didn’t make sense.

A bottle of whisky should cover the cost. Bring it with you. The red man won’t expect the change. Better to have the switch ready. Whiskers shouldn’t delay. A cold clime awaits him if we don’t succeed. Dead men have skeletons.

At the last sentence, a cold chill ran over her.

A flourishing W was the signature.

Is a page missing? But no, the writing didn’t cover the sheet.

The man had used Werthy’s name. Is W my Col. Werthy?

Werthy was a spy—along with Richard Owen and Sheridan Ingram. Yet they had disembarked, Ingram in Muscat, Werthy and Owen in Bombay.

Other spies could still be aboard the Garipoola, traveling together to their assignments in the Orient.

Dead men have skeletons.

With that line, the note acquired sinister and lethal meaning. Had the note been meant for a spy? Did that man mistake me for a spy? Isabella wanted to laugh, but danger prickled over her. He had mistaken her for someone. A woman on the Garipoola. A blonde?

Savina Fremont was blonde, but that young lady could not be the spy. The divorcée Edwina Bridgewater was a platinum blonde from the bottle, with dark lashes and penciled eyebrows to highlight her eyes. Good sense ruled against the flirtatious Mrs. Bridgewater as a cool-headed spy.

Or would that be the perfect cover for a spy? A little frittery, a lot man-crazy, her conversation revolving around fashion and society gossip. Isabella would never have given any suspicion of spying a second thought.

The other blondes aboard were married. Lady Saunders. Mrs. Malcolm, a greying blonde. Mrs. Reynolds, bound to Australia with her family. At least three other women along with the women in third-class. Were the husbands a decoy? She found herself second-guessing everything she knew about several passengers.

This note was obviously in code. Did it talk about four people or three? The red man. Whiskers. The him avoiding a cold climate—Siberia? She’d heard the Bolsheviks sentenced prisoners to the frigid north. The fourth would be the skeleton. The him and the potential skeleton might be the same person.

The recipient made the fifth person—or fourth. Obviously, the red man was a contact—with a lead to the him. And did Whiskers assist the recipient, or was he a threat to keep the note’s recipient from delaying?

Ship’s bell rang off the time. She counted the strikes even as she checked the time on her little alarm clock. Dinner would be in a half-hour. Her stomach growled in response.

She could puzzle out this note for her evening’s entertainment. Mr. Fullerton had already told her that he would not be available tonight for their usual game of bridge. Since Clive Rexton had abandoned them in Bombay, a worthy third and fourth for bridge were hard to find.

As Isabella re-folded the note, she remembered the poison pen letter stolen from her cabin—oh, ages ago, it seemed. A single line had warned her not to encourage Col. Werthy. She had ignored that warning, and Werthy had turned into a good friend. (Too good of a friend, her heart reminded, but she ignored that, too.)

Stealing a letter twice on one voyage—that wouldn’t happen. Besides, Savina Fremont had penned the earlier letter then stolen it back. The young woman had remained in hot pursuit of Werthy throughout the voyage, but he hadn’t looked back when he left the ship. Savina didn’t have anything to do with this note.

Perhaps, just perhaps, she might find a clue about the intended recipient, a blonde woman on the Garipoola.

The ship would cast off late tonight and start its journey up the Indian coast to Madras where Isabella’s husband, Madoc, waited for her. That was a better focus than a cryptic letter she would never decode.

She refolded the note and placed it in the elephant bowl, weighting it with a piece of jade that Werthy had given her when they parted. Then she dressed and dawdled her way to the Dining Room. She was successfully late.

Dinner found her eying the several blonde women aboard from a new perspective. She dismissed the married couples. Lady Bernhardt and the Saunders commanded the best table, but Isabella hadn’t joined them since Bombay, preferring the Australia-bound Reynolds, solid working-class and eager for the opportunities in a new land. She’d introduced fellow immigrant Robin Kennedy to them. They talked so much about the next ship they would board in Madras that they didn’t notice Isabella’s distraction.

When she returned to the cabin, only the jade piece was in the bowl. The note had vanished.

Links to Purchase

Amazon ​https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CCGJC68M​

Worldwide ​https://books2read.com/u/bWpVKq​

“Red Mask” completes the Sailing with Mystery collection.

The short stories were great fun to puzzle out and write, and they brought new ideas and new people into Isabella’s world. I’m currently writing three novelettes with one of those new characters. I previewed the first of the three novelettes at Christmas. Look for all three to be officially published this summer.

Here are the Links for the entire collection Sailing with Mystery, available in ebook and paperback:

Amazon ​https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CJL28Z5W​

Worldwide, like B&N, Kobo and libraries ​https://books2read.com/u/3R5QJR​

View the Trailer ​https://youtu.be/csAe72b5X2I

If you want to start the series at the beginning, the most economical is the three-book bundle Into Death. Ebook only, I'm afraid.

Amazon ​https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09MRBNCH7​

Worldwide ​https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09MRBNCH7

​

Silver Web / Opening and Links / Sailing with Mystery

 "Silver Web" ~ 4th Short Story in the Sailing with Mystery Collection

This Cover Image represents Isabella's Watercolor for the Duration of this Short Story

Opening 2 Sections

Lightning forked across the sky, piercing white and bright across the drenched skylight of the lounge. Thunder cracked overhead, drowning the faint shouts of sailors at their stations. Rain deluged the slick decks and flooded the windows. The Garipoola plunged down a billowing wave then canted over as another wave struck the ship broadside. Passengers screamed as they clung to the bolted-down settees and tables in the lounge.

Isabella cast a prayer heavenward and wished she were in her cabin with fewer objects to fly her way. The storm had struck the ship an hour before. The steward reassured them it was little more than a rain event. As the clock ticked through the hour, the storm intensified until the steward fled the lounge to seek refuge elsewhere.

The ship righted. Water sluiced over the glassed ceiling. The rain fell, a deluge that dimmed the day to twilight.

With Isabella on the bolted-down settee were the Australia-bound Reynolds family, the three children clustered at their parents’ feet. The youngest, the only daughter, crowded between her father’s long legs, clinging to his shins. The two boys crouched before their mother and Isabella. They had turned two chairs onto their sides as a barrier against other sliding chairs. On the floor beside her were Sheridan and Colfax Ingram, the father with an arm around his son’s shoulders. They braced against the wall and had hooked two chairs together as defense

The elder Ingram had never reached the lounge. He had remained in his cabin, examining accounts with his secretary Nedda Cortland. The Ingrams and their retinue, secretary and servants, would leave when the ship docked in Muscat. Already, Isabella mourned the loss of her friend Nedda.

Her other friend, Col. Werthy was also absent from the lounge. Like Isabella, he and his protégé Richard Owen were bound for India. They would debark in Bombay while she traveled on to Madras. She had no idea where Werthy had found sanctuary from the storm.

Tie askew and hair mussed, Clive Rexford sat beyond the Ingrams, and beyond him was the mutton-chopped Nelson Fullerton, also bound for India. The Fremonts, parents and daughter Savina, crowded on one side of the banquette fastened to the outer wall. Sharing the other side were the missionary Miss Harlow and a couple that Isabella barely knew, the Rathburns.

Another wave struck the Garipoola. Women screamed. Men cursed. Lightning flashed, a penetrating brilliance that illuminated the skylight and the windows along the lounge walls. Then the ship struggled up another surging wave. Unsecured chairs, broken fragments of china, books, and bags slid across the floor. Rain spattered the glass, pinging like hailstones.

A shadow passed along the windows, braving the wave-assaulted deck. A sailor, struggling to a different station as the ship fought the storm. He plastered against the windows, a distorted blur soaked by seawater, arms upraised as he clung to the window bracing, dark hair plastered to his head. His face looked very white against the glass.

A wave splashed the windows. When the water washed off the glass, the sailor had reached the end of the bank of windows, behind the Fremonts. The ship pitched starboard, throwing him against the glass again. Then he levered himself past the window and out of sight.

She couldn’t see the people clustered along the aft wall of the lounge. The Gallagher family had one of the corner banquettes on starboard while Phoebe Drake and Edwina Bridgewater clung to Richard Owen on the window-side of the banquette.

Padgett Michaels sat beside the door, making a feeble attempt to avoid the water puddling at the threshold. On the door’s other side were Edgar Lear and another young man, bound for India. The elderly Lady Bernhardt and the Saunders crowded onto the settee opposite hers. Then came more people that Isabella didn’t know, some who had joined them at Jeddah when they all transferred to the Garipoola. Mr. Collins seemed very much a London barrister. Robin Kennedy was bound for Australia, like the Reynolds. Allan Gregory would stop in India before heading on to China, like the Fremonts.

Sheltering in the final corner banquette were the Titus Malcolms, the Winston Tuchmans, a middle-aged manager returning to his rubber plantation, and Dr. Bauer, the ship’s doctor. The doctor on the Nomadic had kept to his miniature hospital with its full complement of medical staff for its thousand passengers. The Garipoola was much smaller and older than the queen of the British-Asia Oceanic line, and Dr. Bauer often mingled with them.

She wondered how the passengers fared who had retreated to their cabins at the first signs of the storm.

As the Garipoola bucked and plunged, Isabella wished she were back on the larger Nomadic. Capt. Locke had the weathered features of a man long at sea. She didn’t doubt his experience, but this storm would tax the greatest captain’s abilities. She dipped her head to her hands, clinging to the settee’s arm, and prayed God would calm this raging sea.

An eternity later, the lightning lost its brilliance. Waves no longer breached the ship decks. Thunder rumbled distantly. Rain pattered gently against the glass. The ship sliced easily through the waves. Twilight came, the light unchanged but the clock announcing day’s end.

The steward reappeared to announce dinner in a half-hour. “A freak storm,” he answered the clamoring questions and claimed the night sky of the Arabian Sea was an unmatched marvel.

When she went to dress for dinner, Isabella found little disturbed in her cabin, a single berth with a tiny alleyway between the bunk and the cabinet wall. She picked up a pen that rolled on the floor then slipped into a simple frock. The air in her little lavatory was humid, curling her hair around her face.

She encountered Nedda on the deck near the dining room’s entrance. The secretary had a single berth much like Isabella’s although nearer to the stateroom of her employer. “I see you survived the storm.”

Nedda rolled her eyes. “You look none the worse. Were you in your cabin?”

“No. The lounge. It was horrid.”

“Did you worry that the glass would break? Especially the ceiling.”

“I didn’t even think of that!”

“Lucky you. Mr. Ingram discovered seasickness.”

“You poor thing!” for she knew that Nedda would have had to deal with any of her employer’s problems. Hyatt Ingram never talked business around his valet.

“One benefit: he won’t join us tonight.”

Then they were in the dining room, slowly filling up even though the half-hour had passed. They plastered on their company smiles as they slid into their chairs at the Ingrams’ table. Colfax Ingram was also absent although Sheridan Ingram was there, serving as host in his father’s stead.

Emerson Werthy and Richard Owen had the other chairs. “And where did you ride out the storm?” Isabella asked. “Mr. Owen was in the lounge with us, keeping the Mesdames Drake and Bridgewater from sliding to the floor.”

“In the pilothouse with the captain.” Throughout dinner, he regaled them with Capt. Locke’s stoicism and the pilot’s jittery nerves.

Tonight’s quick soup revealed the chef’s own worries during the storm. Rice curry with chicken followed, a simple dish that hid its quick preparation with spices. The usual third course was nonexistent. Irish coffee and hot cocoa were offered.

The older passengers retired early, but the storm had left many restless and edgy. Usually after dinner, Isabella improved her bridge game with Mr. Rexford, Mr. Fullerton, and whoever would make the fourth. Mr. Fullerton cried off.

“There’s dancing.” Mr. Rexford surprised her with the offer and steered her to the long room known as the saloon at night and the lounge during the day.

. ~ . ~ . ~ .

 Tinny dance music swelled onto the decks through opened windows. The saloon lights looked bright, with a kaleidoscope of shifting colors. When the music wound down, the colors stopped and became dancers waiting for the next song. Voices replaced the music until the gramophone started up and the carousel of colors resumed.

Isabella on his arm, Mr. Rexford paused on the threshold. The room sorted into dancing couples, men standing or sitting along the walls, to which the tables and chairs were removed. A bar had opened at the far end, and a steward maneuvered a tray among the spectators.

The saloon looked nothing like the daytime lounge.

“You know this song?” Mr. Rexford swung her into a foxtrot that matched the jazzy music.

His agility surprised her. She knew he was a fixture in London society, but she’d never associated him with dancing. Ever precise, he didn’t talk as they danced but looked around. That inattention gave Isabella permission to look as well.

She spotted Phoebe Drake and Savina Fremont and Edwina Bridgewater, the Gallaghers and the Reynolds, the Tuchmans and the Malcolms.

When the music ended, Mr. Rexford stepped back . . . and Padgett Michaels appeared. “You permit?” Aware that the next song had started, she managed to nod. Partnered couples were changing, men leaving the floor as other men replaced them.

Mr. Michaels started with a basic foxtrot.

The saloon had a strange energy. It reminded her of a coiled rattlesnake, shaking its rattle and ready to strike.

Mr. Michaels kept her successfully diverted. “Good of you to join us. Mrs. Tarrant. You’ll be in high demand.”

“You need more women,” for the ship had a serious dearth of women passengers. “Is the saloon always this crowded?”

“Not usually. The storm, you know. Can you spin?” and he surprised her with one.

By the third spin, she added a sashay to her whirl that brought a smile to his dour face.

The dance gave her a new view of Padgett Michaels. She’d considered him stodgy, conversing only about the exotic jewelry and antiquities he found in the Middle East. She never expected a dancer who enjoyed spins and dips.

Her next partner, Lionel Wexford, provided a reason for the saloon’s vibrating energy that looked for a victim. “You heard? We’ve a thief among us.” He sniffed. “Bad form. The thief must be extremely clever to take his pick of the jewels aboard.”

“A thief? Whatever do you mean?”

“The thief broke into Lady Bernhardt’s cabin during the storm. That silver necklace she wears every evening, he stole it.”

“That beautiful necklace? It was stolen?”

“An expensive piece.” His arm tightened on her waist which was his signal for a series of sliding moves for his version of a one-step dance. “Even broken up by the fence, the diamonds will bring a pretty price.”

“How horrible. That’s the reason Lady Bernhardt didn’t come to dinner.”

“I assume our good captain was with her, promising to find the thief, I’m certain. He will have to work fast. We dock tomorrow night. Our thief will escape then.”

“I cannot believe it. Stolen! Who could the thief be?”

He shrugged and turned her. “Apparently, all the stewards are accounted for during the storm, so one of the passengers must be the culprit.”

“She loved that necklace.” Isabella mourned for Lady Bernhardt.

The elegant necklace, all diamonds and white-gold, started as a single braided strand around the neck before dividing into three separate strands over the upper bodice. Two caret-sized diamonds framed the front design, a display of loops upon loops, each loop attached to the white-gold chains with smaller diamonds. The showpiece was a teardrop diamond pendant surrounded with glittering emeralds.

Isabella’s first glimpse of the necklace was the evening they left Jeddah. It had taken her breath away, and every sighting since had confirmed the glory of the necklace.

She danced fourth with Mr. Reynolds, who kept to a simple box-step. He talked of the theft for a bit. Then he started a running commentary about his family’s immigration to Australia. “My uncle runs sheep, you know.”

Edgar Lear elbowed in for the next dance. She considered refusing him, but Sheridan Ingram didn’t look upset to have lost his chance to dance.

Mr. Lear didn’t want to talk about the theft. He mumbled that the necklace was probably insured then talked about the ferocity of the storm. He missed a few steps, hurting her toes, and kept looking around the room.

The gramophone wound down before the song ended. Isabella escaped with “I must sit. You’ve exhausted me.”

“This is the last but next song,” he complained.

“I simply must sit. I’m not as athletic as you are, Mr. Lear.”

His brow furrowed. A muscle twitched in his jaw, but he led her to some chairs and demanded a man give up his seat to her.

She didn’t know anyone clustered around the chairs. Mr. Lear abandoned her before the re-wound song came to an end. The men asked her to dance. Isabella let the clamor wash over her while she tried to think of a polite refusal. Then the starting music became a tango. The clamor died.

A firm hand cupped her elbow, urging her from the chair. “You know the tango?”

Isabella looked into Emerson Werthy’s cool-ice eyes. “I do.”

Within minutes, she knew she had volunteered for trouble. Werthy was the ideal partner, assured and masterful, and the tango was a dance for lovers. Her husband Madoc had taught her to dance in close embrace, and Werthy had the same style. She kept flashing to Madoc as she followed Werthy’s lead.

More than trouble, for her awareness of him as an attractive man entwined with her perception of him as a close friend.

The repetitive pulse of the music took over the beat of her heart. He kept his hand high on her back, embracing her closely when the music became dramatic. In the rueda, he turned her so her heart crossed into his. She broke apart for the swing out, and he drew her back with a snap that brought her in close contact with his lean body.

Isabella stumbled once, as they stepped in and around each other, the tangle of steps of the ocho that symbolically entwined them. He kept her close, her cheek against his chin, his breath wafting the curls around her face, the heat of his body like a furnace against her. He swung her to the right then pivoted her twice. As the music ended, he rocked her back then forward, into him, tangled with him.

The music didn’t resume. Chatter started up and swelled in volume. Someone shoved a wine glass into her hand. Werthy, she realized. “Drink,” he muttered, “you look too pale.” He glanced away to speak to Sheridan Ingram.

She sipped the wine, a fruity white that was too sweet. He knows, and color burned her cheeks. She veered her gaze away from his broad shoulders to the golden-curled beauty gazing up at him. Savina Fremont. Her bright red lipstick looked a garish slash across her face.

Then Isabella’s eyes narrowed and fastened on the pearl eardrop missing from her left ear. “Savina, you’ve lost an earring.”

“What?” Her hand flew to her ears. “Oh no! It’s gone!” The topaz at the top of the right eardrop twinkled.

“It must have fallen off,” a man said. Clive Rexford, appearing suddenly, for she’d not seen him for almost an hour.

“It wouldn’t just fall off,” Isabella countered. “It’s a screwback. Isn’t it, Savina?”

“It would have had to fall off,” Robin Kennedy said. He’d escorted Savina to their little group and hadn’t left. All she knew of him was that he’d played rugby at university before the war and now was Australia-bound.

“No. Screwbacks don’t just fall off.”

“I cannot wear only one earring.” Savina began removing the eardrop.

“Pearls aren’t that expensive,” Phoebe Drake said.

Surprised at the woman’s appearance, Isabella looked around. Only then did she realize that the saloon had emptied. A couple of young men still stood at the bar, but besides their cluster, the people had left. “Savina, is that an Imperial topaz?”

“Of course, it’s an Imperial. I don’t wear cheap stones.”

“It looks to be a whole caret,” Ingram judged. As the son of a wealthy financier, he could afford to know the size and value of jewels.

“It is,” the young woman snapped.

Lionel Wexford’s conversation about Lady Bernhardt’s necklace also applied to this eardrop. “Then the earring is valuable and easily broken apart for sale. The pearl, the reddish topaz, and the gold setting.”

“The thief,” Werthy said heavily.

“Exactly,” Mrs. Drake said, and Isabella recognized their brief short-hand as a clue that Emerson Werthy and Phoebe Drake knew each other better than she’d realized.

“A thief?” Savina clapped a hand over her mouth. “Like the one that stole Lady Bernhardt’s necklace?”

“And my tie pin,” Clive Rexford added quietly.

She knew that tie pin, a bezel-cut ruby of thumbnail size, surrounded with pavé diamonds. It had glittered at her over the bridge table on many a night. “I didn’t know we’d had thefts until Mr. Wexford told me as we danced.”

“Your head is usually in your sketchbook,” Phoebe Drake said. “No offense intended.”

“None taken. It’s true. When did these thefts start?”

Werthy turned and took away her wine glass, setting it on a side table. “When we boarded in Jeddah.”

“The thief boarded then? We’ve only been aboard five days.”

“A fast worker. That glorious diamond necklace would be treasure enough.”

Purchase Links for the Short Story, available only in Ebook

https://books2read.com/u/4NgJk8

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C9VSRPB1

Purchase Links for the Collection, available in Ebook and Paperback

Zon https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CJL28Z5W Ebook and Paperback, use the Same Link

Worldwide https://books2read.com/u/3R5QJR  Ebook and Paperback use the Same Link

View the Trailer for the Collection https://youtu.be/csAe72b5X2I

Black Heart / Opening and Links

Herewith The Opening ~~ Section 1 and the first paragraph of Section 2 ~~ for the Short Story "Black Heart", third in the collection Sailing with Mystery, featuring artist Isabella Newcombe Tarrant.

1

“Come to Cairo. See the pyramids,” her friend Nedda had urged. “I will run mad if I have no one reasonable to talk with.”

Isabella agreed with excitement. Nine days in a hotel in Port Said with nothing to do didn’t appeal.

She never expected to stand on the desert road for an hour, waiting for the following truck to arrive and rescue them.

Everything around was dry desert, peaked dunes to one side of the half-burned road and ridges of mixed sienna and umber rising as a buttress against the drifting sand. Deep shadows in the ridges looked like the eyepits of a skull. The shadow-black rocks crumbled from heat and time. To her, the whole landscape looked alien, stark and intriguing.

The Egyptian desert looked nothing like Crete, where she had met her husband Madoc. The darker sandy rocks reminded her of the American southwest, where Aunt Letitia and Uncle Roger had lived, all red rock canyons or endless stretches of barren plains. Yet the desert southwest had scrubby pines, knotted junipers, and creosote bushes. Wildlife abounded: pinyon jays and wrens and thrashers, jackrabbits and coyote and deer.

Here, she only saw a distant falcon soaring on the updrafts. Nothing appeared to move in the landscape. Isabella had wanted to sketch a long-eared fennec or the precious-looking gerbil or a sleek gazelle. She’d only heard the zit-zit-dweedle of the scrub warbler once, as their truck jounced through the outskirts of Cairo.

Fanning herself with her wide-brimmed straw hat, she turned to watch the men standing at the road, a few yards behind the truck that had caused their halt a half-hour ago. Arms emphasizing his points, the Egyptian driver talked with Col. Werthy, Richard Owen, and Neal Gallagher. The four men had changed the first punctured tyre. It lay beside them, useless, for a tyre on the other side had also gone flat.

No one had apparently considered a second tyre blown, yet here they all stood, driver and the fifteen passengers who had crowded into the truck’s cargo box. And they all watched the shimmering distance towards Cairo, hoping the second truck would arrive soon.

Nedda dropped the hand shading her eyes and turned to Isabella. She looked cool and crisp in her khaki traveling suit. Isabella, in blue cotton, felt a wrinkled lump melting in the rising heat. The ends of the green scarf tied about her dark hair fluttered in the breeze. “I’m going back into the truck before I’m burned to a crisp.”

A tarp for shade was fixed above the truck box. While driving, the wind blew under the tarp and cooled them. Without movement, the dark canvas would trap the heat.

“The canopy will block the breeze,” she warned.

“I can tolerate heat. I cannot stand being fried. I think my nose is burned.” Nedda touched the tip gingerly.

“You should have crowded into the motorcar with the Ingrams.”

Nedda rolled her eyes at the suggestion and headed for the truck.

The motorcar had paused when the truck ground to a halt. The second truck to Giza, with luggage and supplies, was supposed to be close behind, yet after a quarter-hour, it still hadn’t arrived. Mr. Ingram, Nedda’s employer, had given the signal to drive on. His chauffeur had consulted their truck’s driver before he obeyed the order. Nedda had declined the offer to squeeze between Sheridan Ingram and the teenaged Colfax. None of the Ingrams had looked back as the Vauxhall touring car drove away.

Mrs. Gallagher and her daughter Shirley had clambered back into the truck after it was lowered from the jack. The Fremonts had joined them, complaining loudly about their discomfort. They would still be blaming the driver if Col. Werthy hadn’t warned them to stop. Their daughter Savina lurked near the four men, no doubt waiting for the colonel to abandon the conversation so she could hang upon his arm.

Isabella sighed. Catching a whiff of cigarette smoke, carried from behind her, she turned to see Mrs. Phoebe Drake standing alone. Still out of the truck were four men and one woman, clustered in its shade. Only the precise Clive Rexford was unrumpled by the morning’s drive. He had ridden in the cab with the driver rather than on the benches attached around the cargo box. Older than the others, he didn’t slouch against the truck, unlike the two young men whose names Isabella couldn’t remember.

They had pushed back their straw boaters, revealing one blond head and one ginger. Hands shoved in their jacket pockets, they scowled at the empty road.

Padgett Michaels talked with the woman he was trying to impress. Chloe Ladwick, with her soft brown curls and China blue eyes, had curves that rivaled Savina Fremont. The young men usually danced attendance on her, and Mr. Michaels appeared to have fallen into the same snare. No ingenue, she viewed her fellow passengers with jaded boredom that she didn’t try to hide.

“Have you recovered from those wooden benches?” Mrs. Drake asked, coming the last few steps to stand beside Isabella. She waved her cigarette holder, lacquered red, a bit of modern chic at odds with the barren desert. “I admit to gratitude for the punctured tyres.”

She smiled, sharing the sentiment. “And our hand-luggage knocking into our knees while we rattle along.”

“What do you think of our fellow travelers in distress?” Although her cerulean linen dress had wrinkled, Phoebe Drake still kept her svelte poise, her dark hair in a sleek chignon and her pale skin unflushed. The widow wasn’t a great beauty, but her dramatic appearance rivaled Savina and Chloe.

She judged the ten feet to the others. They chatted loudly. As she looked, Padgett Michaels passed a cigarette to the bored young woman. Lowering her voice, she said, “I wish they would not complain so loudly. We’re driving across a desert. We shouldn’t expect the paved roads of London.”

The woman chuckled. “Is that not the behavior of the tourist abroad? To expect English roads and a green landscape, comfortable accommodations and bland food, the rain and chill of our summers? I will say that accommodations in Cairo and Port Said surprised me. Our hotel in Port Said is lovely.”

“It reminds me of a house on Crete, with balcony rooms overlooking an inner garden and a fountain.”

“The classic Mediterranean structure.” Her bright green eyes scanned the landscape while she drew on her cigarette. The lacquered cigarette holder matched the shade of her lipstick. “I could wish our hotel in Cairo had a lovely garden.”

“I believe we stay in tents at Giza. That is what Mr. Ingram told Nedda.” Isabella fanned her hat.

“Tents?” Painted eyebrows lifted. Those red lips compressed, a break in her elegant mask. “We are living rough.”

The conversation dried, arid as the desert. Phoebe smoked while Isabella watched the falcon soaring through the updrafts from the endless sands. The intense sunlight hurt her eyes. The heat sucked moisture from the air, refusing to let her melt.

The conversation by the road continued. Clive Rexford abandoned his group and strolled to them. The sand, shifting underfoot, prevented his usual determined stride.

At the truck, the two young men had found a point of contention. They had straightened away from the truck as they argued. One gestured, his hand cutting down. The dispute didn’t yet equal the day’s heat, but the Fremonts and the Gallaghers looked over the side of the truck.

Cigarette hanging from his mouth, Padget Michaels described something with minute gestures, shaping it with his hands then pointing to imaginary parts in his palm. Miss Ladwick nodded, but her gaze remained on the two men a couple of yards away.

“A pendant or a brooch?” Phoebe asked.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Our antiquities hunter. He has to be describing jewelry. Only gemstones or gold would hold Miss Ladwick’s attention.”

Mr. Rexford reached them. “Ladies.”

“You abandoned your group just in time.” Phoebe pointed with the thin red holder.

He didn’t look around. “The argument would have brewed whether I stoked it or not.”

Nedda had joined the watchers peering from the truck box. Her green scarf was bright against the dark tarp. Mr. Fremont called down, trying to silence the rising argument. Mr. Michaels left off his description and drew Miss Ladwick toward the rear of the truck.

Isabella looked for Werthy and Owen. They still talked to the driver although the raised voices had caught Mr. Gallagher’s attention. “What is the dispute, Mr. Rexford?”

“Who knows? The heat. The dryness of the day. A wink from Miss Ladwick. Who will escort her to dinner. I have more interesting things to consider.”

“Such as?” Phoebe prompted.

He scowled at the cigarette smoke wafting his way and turned to Isabella. “I find it interesting, don’t you, that two tyres gave out simultaneously? Slow punctures, that’s what Mr. Gallagher said. Not holes, not tears or ruptures.” His precise tone clipped the words. “As if an icepick were thrust into the tyres. And here we are, stranded in the middle of the desert.”

“Not quite the middle of the desert,” Phoebe drawled.

“Not quite stranded,” Isabella added. “The other truck will be here soon.”

“Yet it is considerably delayed. I thought our driver said that we were traveling together. A curious circumstance, is it not?”

Isabella didn’t want to talk about the tyres. She had avoided it with Nedda, and she didn’t intend to have that conversation now. When she had a cool drink with refreshing mint, maybe then. Talking about it now only borrowed trouble.

A shout from the road drew their attention.

The driver pointed toward Cairo. Werthy and Owen shaded their eyes to peer along the road. Isabella tried to see, but the shimmering desert defeated her.

“Ah, the other truck,” Rexford said.

Phoebe tossed the cigarette from the holder. “Do you see it?”

“Not yet, but what else would give our driver such joy?”

A second set of shouts came from the stopped truck. A woman screamed, brief, sharper than a raptor.

“I expected this.” Rexford sounded pleased.

Beside the truck the two young men faced off, fists raised in classic boxing stance. They circled each other. They had taken the time to shed their jackets which Miss Ladwick held. She watched avidly, too avidly in Isabella’s mind. Is she the thirty that I think she is? And still acting the silly girl, impressed by boys fighting over her?

Mr. Michaels climbed into the truck, avoiding Shirley Gallagher’s escape onto the sand. Her mother’s demand that she “come back this minute” added to the noise.

Col. Werthy and Richard Owen pounded past, Mr. Gallagher steps behind them. Before they arrived, a flurry of punches were thrown. Fists smacked flesh. Both men staggered back. Then they lunged forward to grapple together. One man’s nose bled red onto their white shirts.

“Oh, a fight.” Savina Fremont stopped beside them. “Chloe must be so pleased.”

Owen grabbed one man’s punching arm and forced it back.

Werthy seized the other man and flung him back. He thudded into the driver’s door. Bouncing back, he met a solid punch to his jaw. That cast him back into the truck. He must have hit his head, for he slid down to the running board and slumped.

Owen held the other young man at arm’s length against the side of the truck.

The shouts died. Shirley peeked around the back corner of the truck then minced over to Chloe Ladwick. The movement caught her father’s attention. He rounded on her. Whatever he said, low and vehement, caused both women to exchange glances then sidle toward Isabella’s group.

“He’s amazing,” Savina gushed. No one asked who she meant. Her attraction to the colonel was well known.

Isabella started for the truck.

Werthy whipped around. His glass-grey eyes flashed with inner fire. “Stay back. All of you. Stand over there with Rexford. The other truck is coming, and we’ll have to jack this one again to change the other tyre. You two,” he turned on the young men. His orders were low and curt.

They straightened and headed for the back of the truck to help the women down, one of them wiping at his bloody nose with a handkerchief.

Nedda offered him another handkerchief after he steadied her climb down. He cast the soaked one into the sand then turned to help the buxom Mrs. Fremont.

2

“Well,” Nedda said when she joined Isabella, “that relieved the tedium.”

The chugging diesel of the other truck heralded its steady approach. Their driver waved his arms and jumped up and down.

Dabbing at his nose, the young man stopped beside them. Except for the blood on his shirt and a cut on his cheek, he looked like any other young man, athletic and sun-touched, attractive with health. His cheerful smile seemed at odds with the fight only minutes before. Freckles dotted his face, and the wind lifted his ginger hair. He thrust the reddened handkerchief at Nedda.

“Keep it, please. I have others.”

“My apologies, ladies. I shouldn’t have—well.” He gestured. “That will not happen again.”

“See that it doesn’t,” Nedda said crisply, for all the world like a maiden aunt decades older rather than a few years. “We’ll speak no more of it. Should you assist with the other tyre?”

“The colonel has it in hand.”

The other truck rumbled and rattled in, stopping behind their truck. The driver stepped down and surveyed the problem while their driver explained. Then they two with Werthy, Owen, and Mr. Gallagher set to work. The second truck’s spare replaced the second punctured tyre. The drivers rolled the discarded tyres to stow in the back of the second truck with the supplies and luggage.

Jacket over his shoulder, Werthy came to them, rolling down the sleeves of his shirt. His eyes had lost their lightning ferocity. The wind ruffled his dark hair, grown longer in the three weeks that Isabella had known him. Behind him, Owen herded the other passengers to the first truck. “I want you two riding in the cab with me. Owen will drive the other truck.”

“What?” Nedda protested, but Isabella merely nodded. “First truck or second?”

“Second. Owen will drive the first one. He’ll take Caveley in the cab with him. Hetteridge can ride in cargo with both drivers, in with the luggage. I think it wise that we keep them separated for the rest of the drive.”

“Why were they fighting?”

He shrugged into his jacket. “Caveley said that Hetteridge hit him for no reason.”

“They were arguing,” Nedda pointed out. “They had a reason.”

“You were there. What did you hear?”

“Nothing that made sense.”

“Then we’ll find out at camp, when we’ve all had time to cool down.”

“Are we far from camp?” Isabella asked, wishing this day and its fraught events laid to rest. The sun rode high in the sky. Hours would have to pass before her wish came true.

“Another half-hour, Khalil says. Over the next rise we should see the pyramids. You’ll have time for photographs with the great Sphinx and to walk around. Try a few sketches,” he added, knowing Isabella had her sketchbook. He searched out his cigarette case and matches.

“And take yet more dictation from Mr. Ingram.” Nedda sighed heavily.

Lighting his cigarillo, Werthy paused long enough to give a broad grin. When the thin cigar was going, he nodded to the second truck. “I’m driving. Get your things and put them in the cab.”

Even enclosed and cramped with three on the seat, the truck cab was more comfortable than the wooden benches in the cargo box. The wind gusted through the open windows and swirled around. The pyramids soon appeared in the cracked windshield, dominant but hazy in the midday heat. The nine pyramids filled the sandy plain, called the Giza Necropolis. The tallest loomed over the others. They didn’t look like any other structure Isabella had seen. They were alien as the arid desert, intriguing in their difference.

Dust streamed away from the wheels of the truck ahead. The canopy flopped, admitting flashes of light into the cargo box. The others jounced on the wooden benches, fixed around the two sides and against the cab’s back. With Werthy’s rearrangement, they were less crowded. Talkative Shirley Gallagher squeezed between her parents. Savina and Chloe chatted. Mr. Fremont had his arms folded, not talking to his wife, who dabbed her brow and neck with a white handkerchief. Rexford and Michaels sat across from each other, also not talking.

Nedda drew the green scarf from her dark head. “Tell us, colonel, the reason you wanted a private conversation before we reached camp.”

He glanced over then directed his gaze to the sand-sifted road. “It’s what the other driver told us while we changed the tyre.”

“About this delay?”

“He had to change trucks. The first one refused to run. He drove it with no trouble this morning, all the way from the garage to the hotel, but the motor sputtered then quit before he managed fifty feet from the hotel. Sand in the petro tank.”

“Sand? How does—?” Isabella stopped.

“Sabotage,” he answered. “While this truck had two punctured tyres. Owen thought an icepick.”

“Mr. Rexford told us that. Mr. Gallagher told him.”

“Sabotage,” Nedda mused. “With an icepick from the hotel? And sand from the streets. Easy enough, I suppose. It’s simply another prank. Like the latches that broke on Miss Harlow’s suitcase. Every dock worker had a view of her unmentionables.”

“She was mortified.” Isabella remembered the older woman’s profuse apologies and tears. “We think she was targeted because she was a missionary.”

“Harmless pranks,” Nedda added. “Like the fountain pen exploding all over that girl’s dimity dress in the Reading Salon.”

“And salt switched for sugar when the hotel served breakfast before we left Cairo.”

“The deck chairs that came unscrewed. Colfax told his grandfather about that. It’s the one time that young man exhibited any interest in what happened aboard ship.”

“I saw him around the trucks this morning,” Isabella quietly inserted, “while we gathered.”

Werthy ground his teeth. “That’s not good. Sherry assured me the boy wouldn’t be a problem.”

“For your secret mission?”

He leaned forward to glare around Isabella at Nedda. “Just what do you know, Miss Cortland?”

“Isabella shared an interesting bit of information about you and Richard Owen and Sheridan Ingram.”

“Nedda! You had already guessed!” she protested.

“How much do you know, Miss Cortland?”

“A better question would ask what I don’t know,” she drawled, “but we shan’t speak of that. Better to talk about all of those shipboard pranks.” Her dark eyes opened wide as she looked at Isabella. She nudged with her elbow. “Like gluing the discs to the shuffleboard deck.”

“And the marbles that escaped from the basket of dinner rolls and rolled around the dining room. That poor steward’s face.”

“The pranks aren’t so harmless,” he retorted. “Milton Tavistock broke a leg falling down the stairs yesterday morning. His wife nearly fell as well, hurrying to reach him. A wire was stretched across the stair.”

“Poor Mr. Tavistock. I wondered the reason he and his wife didn’t come on this excursion. I thought they had changed to go to Alexandria. I didn’t hear about his fall.”

“Nor I,” Nedda said. “Nor did I know about the salt and sugar.”

Isabella patted her friend’s knee. “Not all the salt cellars and sugar bowls were switched. You left early, remember? Mr. Ingram had a telegram to send.”

“But the switched salt and sugar and the tyres means the prankster came on this excursion. He didn’t stay on the Nomadic or in Port Said. He’s with us.”

“Or she,” Werthy inserted.

The camp came into view through the cracked windshield. The Giza Necropolis was an active archaeological site. The diggings were a busy hive, with tarps placed near the excavations, reminding Isabella of the dig on Crete. Cold dread worked down her spine and prickled the hair on her arms.

The story continues ....

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