Monterey Bay(18)

“John Steinbeck,” he said.

“Margot Fiske.”

“I know. You couldn’t look more like your father if you tried,” he answered morosely, squinting at the scar on her forehead. “Plus, I can see the telltale damage. The sign of the beast.”

She met his gaze evenly. “That’s not the proper usage of the phrase.”

“Margot,” her father cautioned.

Steinbeck turned away without a word. Anders and Margot followed him inside. She scanned the front room anxiously. It was quiet and bright. The contents were much the same as before—the cluttered desk, the overburdened bookcases, the ancient phonograph, the Coast Guard buoy with a fern planted inside of it, the file cabinet in which there sat a half-empty bag of flour, the same wooden beer crate that had served as Ricketts’s bedside chair. The only change was an odd and obvious one: a ring of unlit tallow candles in the middle of the floor.

“Take my eye off him for one second . . .” Steinbeck grumbled, kicking a candle onto its side.

“We can wait.” Anders tapped a foot in impatience.

“Please do.”

Steinbeck trudged out the rear door. Her father deposited his valise and hat onto the desk and surveyed the room, his upper lip wrinkled in distaste.

“Good Lord,” he said. “He’s worse at housekeeping than we are.”

And then a voice from behind.

“The Fiske family. A delightful surprise!”

She paused before turning to face him, taking care to keep her expression neutral. He was wearing an ankle-length oilskin apron, a stained undershirt, and the sort of green visor favored by gamblers. Arthur was at his side again, as was a woman—below average height, above average looks—who seemed familiar, but in a way she couldn’t quite place.

Ricketts walked briskly up to her father and extended a hand.

“It wasn’t meant to be a surprise,” her father said, completing the handshake, taking a small step back, and reexamining the candles’ broken circle. “I sent word we’d be here at ten past, but—”

“You did? To whom did you speak?”

“I think he called himself . . . Bucky.”

“Ah yes! Bucky. Lives across the way in one of those big storage cylinders. Answers my phone sometimes, but he’s usually too drunk to write anything down. If I had known you were coming, I would have made things a bit more presentable. Or at least cleared away some of the evidence.”

Her father lifted an eyebrow.

“In case you’re interested,” Ricketts continued, “tallow beats beeswax. Almost always.”

“For what purpose?” her father asked warily.

“For the purpose of the séance. I think we might have actually broken through for once, although I’m not sure it was worth the trouble. I always get so nervous in the presence of the supernatural.”

At this, he looked directly at her for the first time since entering the room, his examination prolonged yet buoyant, as if the two of them were in on a joke the others were too slow to understand. She looked at his hands. They were nimble and callused and held a bucket each, just as they had that morning in the tide pools, and at the sight there was a surge of interest strong enough to make her stumble. Whose ghost had he summoned last night? And why?

“Can I offer any of you a beer?” Ricketts asked. “Or a steak?”

She tried to answer but couldn’t.

“She’s shy.” The woman smiled.

“I can assure you she’s anything but,” her father replied.

“Wormy, Arthur.” Ricketts handed the buckets to his companions. “If you please.”

“Doc, perhaps she’d like to—”

“Arthur. Downstairs.”

“They’re just Styela. I don’t have to—”

“Arthur!”

Arthur scowled and followed Wormy through a small door at the far end of the room. Ricketts turned back to Margot and her father.

“Oh, Styela.” He grinned. “Don’t know why I even bother anymore, to be honest with you. Can’t get the boys to bring me much else, so why should I be out there getting them myself?”

In reply, Anders studied Ricketts and then helped himself to the seat behind Ricketts’s desk. Ricketts settled himself contentedly on the beer crate. Margot remained standing and watched as her father began eyeing the papers on the desktop. To anyone else, it might have looked like an idle perusal, but she could see its underlying intensity, assimilative and scathing.

“Any new orders since last we spoke?”

“A few,” Ricketts replied, stretching his legs out in front of him. His pants were rolled up to his knees and his shins were hairier than she remembered. The green visor made him look a little seasick. “But most of the universities ordered their supplies for the spring term in the fall. Which means I have more than a couple dogfish out back just begging for someone to buy them and slice them in two.”

When he turned to smile at her, he looked like a clown, but not the funny kind.

“A challenging business model, isn’t it?” Her father found a document that interested him and inspected it carefully, blinking as if his eyelids were camera shutters. “Flush one minute, broke the next. I don’t know how you manage.”