“Do I know you?” Jordan asked him, puzzled. The light dawned. “Weren’t you sitting at one of the tables in the pub last night?”
“Yeah.” The man straightened, and she realized uneasily just how imposing he was. He flashed her a humorless grin, exposing crooked teeth. “You want answers about the wreck of the Henrietta Dale and Seavey’s murder, and I want to set the record straight.”
She eyed him nervously. “And you would be?”
“Sam Garrett.”
JORDAN rounded on Kathleen. “You can see ghosts!”
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Kathleen grumbled.
“Denial,” Jordan said. “Believe me, I can empathize. But you can see him, right?”
“Of course she can see me,” Garrett answered for her. “Are you daft, woman? How do you think she knew to come find you?”
Kathleen pointed the long-bladed chef’s knife she was using to chop garlic at both of them. “Deal with him and then leave. I have work to do.”
Jordan folded her arms. “This discussion isn’t over, you know,” she told her.
“You want to ever eat my food again?”
Well, shit.
“I thought so.” Kathleen went back to chopping garlic.
“Ignore the fool woman!” Garrett interrupted, clearly impatient. “We have much to discuss.”
It finally dawned on Jordan that she was talking to a cold-blooded killer. If he decided to attack her, she really had no defense against him.
She edged toward the door, then was in the process of realizing she couldn’t leave Kathleen alone with a murderer when he made a tsking sound that halted her in her tracks. “I wouldn’t advise trying to run.”
Kathleen slammed an iron skillet onto the stove, glaring at her. “If you rabbit before handling him, I will bury my meat cleaver between your shoulder blades. He’s your problem.”
Jordan sent up a silent prayer that Jase would come back to the kitchen with dinner orders, but she wasn’t hopeful—even Malachi was sound asleep behind the bar, oblivious to the danger she was in. Surreptitiously, she glanced at the knife racks above Kathleen’s workstation.
“Those knives can’t hurt me,” Garrett said, amused.
Her fear must have then shown on her face, because he sighed. “I currently have no plan to kill you. I simply want to set the record straight.”
Jordan swallowed and waved a shaky hand. “By all means,” she told him, trying to sound courageous, “proceed.”
“You consider me a suspect in Michael Seavey’s murder, do you not?” he demanded.
Did she dare say yes? “In truth,” she allowed, “I hadn’t yet reached any conclusions.”
“Quit prevaricating!” he snapped, and she jumped a foot.
“Um, what I do know is that you and Michael Seavey were at odds, that you had committed several m-murders …” She swallowed. “And that people back then were generally afraid of you.” Versus now, when they have good reason to be flat-out terrified.
Her answer seemed to mollify him. “Precisely. However, I did not murder Seavey.”
“Were you responsible for the grounding of the Henrietta Dale?”
A smug look crossed his face. “Of course. It was ridiculously easy.”
“How did you do it? Set a lantern farther down the beach? After disabling the one in the lighthouse?”
“The manner in which I caused the grounding of the Henrietta Dale is neither here nor there.”
“Well, you had to have done something similar to what I describe. Otherwise, the captain wouldn’t have made such a grave error in his calculations,” she insisted.
He looked amused. “You may believe what you wish.”
Exasperated, she pushed him. “So your intention was to murder Michael Seavey?”
“On the contrary. My intention was to ruin the bastard by sinking his ship. The fact that he ended up dead because of … my actions …” Garrett seemed to stumble over the words, then shrugged. “Let’s just say that I wasn’t unduly concerned about the possibility. Although it would have been more gratifying to watch him experience the humiliation of a total loss of power and influence.”
“From what I’ve been told—”
“—You mean, from what you’ve seen?” he corrected her with a sly grin.
Jordan heard Kathleen snort. She pressed on. “I read about the shipwreck in the Port Chatham Weekly Gazette. The Henrietta Dale broke up in the surf that night, so I’d say you succeeded, if that was truly your goal. You also caused the deaths of dozens of people.”
“Their deaths couldn’t be helped,” Garrett replied, his tone hardening. “No one treats me the way Seavey did and gets away with it.”
Jordan shuddered. “So you returned to Port Chatham and finished the job, killing him there.”
He hissed angrily, and she backed up several steps. “You haven’t been listening. I came here to tell you that I had nothing to do with the man’s murder! Though I would like to take credit for it, certain … events, shall we say, immediately after the sinking of the Henrietta Dale made it impossible for me to return to Port Chatham.”
“Do you know who did murder him?”
“I couldn’t, could I? I wasn’t present. I only care that you understand I didn’t murder the man.”
“Okay, fine. Message received.”
“I didn’t send a message! I stood here and told you the truth of it!”
“Let me rephrase that,” she said hastily. “I meant I now understand that you didn’t murder Seavey.” She glanced in Kathleen’s direction, but the cook had something sizzling in her iron skillet and was pointedly ignoring them. “So you can go now?” she asked Garrett hopefully.
He sent her a chiding glance that had her contemplating whether she could reach the door into the back hallway before he could nab her, or whatever it was a ghost could do to her. Folding his arms across his massive chest, he said, “I have information that I am willing to barter in return for your promise that you will announce I had nothing to do with Seavey’s death.”
“But don’t most sociopaths like to have kills attributed to them that they didn’t do?” she asked curiously. Not that she had a clue, really. And what the hell was she doing, asking such questions? After all, reminding a murderer that he got off on the act of murder was sort of like poking a crazed bull with a sharp stick.
“ ‘Sociopaths’?” He thought that over, then nodded. “The term is pleasing. What I wish to impress upon you, however, is that an altercation with Michael Seavey at the moment would be enervating, and these days, I wish to expend my energies on other pursuits.”
Honest to God, she really didn’t want to know.
“Therefore, it’s imperative he understand that I wasn’t the one to murder him.” Garrett’s dark eyes were coldly assessing. “Do we have an arrangement?”
“Yes.” After all, it wasn’t as if she was going to say no and risk further pissing him off.
“Excellent.” Reaching into the pocket of his wool coat, he did something to cause a small, ornately decorated tin to fly out and float in the air between them. Jordan immediately recognized it from the day at the beach. “I believe this is what you have been seeking,” he said, zinging it at her.
She grabbed it out of the air, turning it over and examining it closely. It was actually quite beautiful, the lid etched in swirling scrolls of an Oriental design, their colors faded with time and exposure to the elements. “You’re the diver I saw on the beach that day,” she exclaimed.