The Night Mark(49)

Dolly, sensing her presence, stopped her sewing and turned around.

Faye picked up Dolly’s chalkboard and wrote, “This room is beautiful.”

Dolly smiled at the words and wrote back, “Thank you.”

Thank you? Faye erased the board and wrote a new question. “Did you decorate this room?”

To which Dolly replied, “Chief said I could.”

The answer was wary, defensive. Did Dolly think Faye disapproved? And Chief? Was that what everyone called Carrick? She’d seen the writing on the back of his photograph last night—Senior Chief Petty Officer. Well, Chief it is, then.

“Did you sew the quilt?” Faye wrote. Dolly nodded in the affirmative.

“The curtains?” Faye wrote. Dolly nodded.

“Paint the walls?” Dolly nodded.

“Make the rug?” Dolly nodded.

This girl needed to own and operate her own interior design firm.

“Find the shells?” Faye asked.

Dolly gave her a strange look. “You did,” she wrote on the chalkboard. Shit. Another gaffe.

“I forgot,” Faye replied on the board. “You should decorate my room.”

Dolly’s grin was like a sunburst across her face.

“I will!” she wrote.

Faye laughed at the girl’s eagerness for what amounted to doing extra work. Although she loved the look of beautiful homes, Faye never had the knack for interior decorating. Her apartment with Will had been functional and decorated mostly with his collection of baseball memorabilia and her favorite photographs in black square frames. Hagen had hired a professional for their house in Columbia, so Faye had been spared the task that Dolly seemed to relish so much. But really, what else was there for a teenage girl to do with her spare time in 1921? Not like she could play “World of Warcraft” or start a Pinterest account.

“Today?” Dolly wrote on her board.

“Maybe tomorrow,” Faye wrote back. “We’re busy today. What is that?”

Dolly unfolded the bundle of pink-and-white cloth. It was a dress, tiny and pretty with a white ruffle at the bottom.

“For you?” Faye wrote on the board, and Dolly laughed hard when she read it. She shook her head and the expression on her face seemed to say “Crazy lady.”

“Baby sis,” Dolly wrote on the board. “Church.”

“Beautiful. I want one for me,” Faye replied. A joke, but Dolly immediately pulled a tape measure out of her skirt pocket. Faye shook her head. “Not today,” she mouthed.

Dolly sat down again. She wrote on her slate, “Do you need me, miss?”

Faye took the board back and wrote, “Call me Faith, not miss, please. Tell me what you don’t like about that man who came today.” She had to use both sides of the board. Perhaps they could order Dolly a conversation-size chalkboard from the Sears catalog.

Dolly shook her head as she read the question, not in refusal but in obvious disgust. She drew a picture on the board, a man with his leg sticking up and his foot in a giant boot. Faye narrowed her eyes at the drawing, parsing it out.

“Bootlegger,” Faye said. She wrote back on the board, “How do you know that?”

Dolly looked at her with the most teenaged expression of “duh” and wrote two words in reply.

“Everybody knows.”

Faye smiled. All right, that was Hartwell’s game. Faye had forgotten Prohibition was in effect in this decade. Did people in 1921 call it Prohibition? Or did they refer to it as the Eighteenth Amendment or the Volstead Act? Was that why Mr. Hartwell seemed so disingenuous during his visit? Was he there scoping out the island for some reason? If Faye were going to be a booze smuggler, this wouldn’t be a bad base of operations. The island was owned by a bourbon distiller and from here one could take a boat all the way up the coast. And with no permanent residents on the island but her and Carrick, a bootlegger wouldn’t have to worry too much about getting caught in the act. If bootlegging was Hartwell’s only game, she’d let him play it as long as he left Dolly and her alone.

Dolly wiped the board clean again and wrote, “You need help?”

Their teenage housekeeper was eager to please, that was for sure.

Faye wrote, “Yes. I want to do chores. What should I do?”

Dolly went wide-eyed at the words. Apparently telling the boss’s daughter what to do wasn’t in Dolly’s job description. Faye added an addendum to her question.

“He said I should help you more.”

Carrick hadn’t said that, but it seemed like a good explanation for Faith’s sudden change in behavior.

Dolly wrote, “Chief wants you to help me?”

“Yes,” Faye wrote. “What do you do around the house?”

Dolly heaved a sigh so loud it blew a spool of white thread across the table. Faye caught it just before it went over the side. With a shake of her head, Dolly pulled out a used envelope from a drawer and started writing along the back of it.

She wrote.

And she wrote.

And she wrote some more.

Faye took the envelope from Dolly and read the list of chores.





Clean house lamps





Weed garden

Fill lamps, trim wicks





Clean stove