Chapter Two
The Delta Marker
It was the splash that woke everyone up.
Now there are splashes to be heard up and down the Mississippi River. Tree branches and logs falling into the river. Boats launching. Gators maneuvering in for a kill.
But when a body breaks the muddy water – that kind of splash is altogether different. A hollow, ringing noise fills the air … especially when someone else is throwing the body into the river, trying not to make a sound.
It was that clamor that woke riverboat owner Jordan Cavanaugh from a sound sleep. Startled and fearing it might have been one of her own passengers, she sat up and grabbed her robe, throwing it on and heading for the narrow hallway at the same time. She hurried past the other staff quarters and down the narrow flight of stairs, rushing over to the side of her boat.
A crowd had already gathered on the docks. Guess the splash woke more than just me… she thought, trying to gauge where it came from and more particularly whose boat might be involved. "Garret…" she called to her boat pilot who had also come down to see what the commotion was about, "Do you have any idea what happened?"
"Not yet. But I will." Garret tugged on his captain's hat and disappeared into the crowd. Jordan leaned over the rail of the Delta Marker, desperately trying to see what was happening in the crowd.
Praying it didn't involve anyone from her boat. If her boat, its passengers, or her staff were involved in any way…things wouldn't go well for her. Most people were suspicious of a female riverboat owner to begin with. They anticipated trouble because simply because she was a woman. And women obviously didn't know anything about riverboats, or making money, or running a business.
They always seemed to avoid facing the fact that for the last three years the Delta Marker had shown a substantial profit as well as near perfect runs from Missouri to New Orleans. No…the only thing they know is that I have breasts and the ability to reproduce, she mused to herself, still waiting on Garret to come back. Like having a womb robs me of the ability to think.
And thinking…more specifically, the ability to think quickly… was a skill that Jordan had to learn early in life. Orphaned at a young age, the daughter of a gambler and bar owner, Jordan had to learn fast, hard lessons that a typical ten-year old girl shouldn't have to know until she is much older. Fortunately, at the time, one of her father's long-time gambling buddies had come forward and agreed to take the young, parentless girl and be her legal guardian.
Jim, or rather Gentleman Jim, as he was known in the gambling circuit, took Jordan in and raised her in a rather untraditional manner. Through a series of gambling debts Jordan was never able to untangle, Jim found himself in possession of a riverboat. Gambling markers, or debts, were seen as serious breeches of promise. Jim got into a two-day poker tournament with a riverboat owner. At the end of the two days, the riverboat owner was out of a job and Gentleman Jim now owned the Delta Belle.
So much of young Jordan's childhood was spent on a boat, traveling the Mississippi…a much better education than sitting in a hot, one-room schoolhouse studying the BlueBack Speller. "On the river, you can learn many things," Jim had told her. "You learn to study people and how they react, their moods, what makes them act the way they do. I don't have any children of my own, Jordan. So one day, this boat will be yours. Don't fritter it away by marrying some chuckle-headed weasel that won't allow you to think for yourself."
Jordan listened to Jim and learned at his knee. She already knew how to read and write, of course. But Jim taught her another skill: How to read cards. Jordan learned to seemingly innocently stand behind the player across from Jim and know if the other player had a winning or a losing hand. She and Jim had developed a series of elaborate, yet subtle, signals that would let her guardian know how his opponent's cards were stacked.
No one ever guessed that a young girl was tipping a poker game.
And it worked. Until one night when Jordan was about sixteen. Jim had sponsored an invitation-only, high stakes poker tournament aboard the Delta Belle. As usual, Jordan found her spot across the room behind the player. The game was going well, until for some reason, Jim's opponent figured out what Jordan was doing and became enraged.
Of course, Jim denied the cheating. Up, down, and sideways, he denied it. His opponent challenged him to prove his good faith. "Fine!" Jim had exclaimed. "I will win this next hand. And if I do, I get that matched set of horses that pulled your carriage to the dock."
"Good enough," his opponent had said. "But if I win, what do I get?"
Jim had looked around then. The boat had become his main source of livelihood. He couldn't wager the boat on a game he wasn't sure to win. "Jordan," he said suddenly. "If I lose, you get Jordan. For one night."
Jim lost.
And in so many ways, Jordan lost even more. Despite her begging and her pleas, the man had carried her off to his room on the boat and forced her into his bed. Jordan still shuddered when she remembered the pain and trauma of that night…a night that still haunted her in her dreams. It had been her first time with a man…and she had vowed it would be her last.
Even more than the physical trauma to her body, her ability to trust had also been shattered that day. She no longer trusted Jim or any of the crew, who did nothing to help her out of the situation. She didn't trust anyone.
So it mattered little to her in the following weeks that Jim contracted Yellow Fever and died. At least that's what the doctor had said. The crew said he poisoned himself with alcohol. Jim drank nearly nonstop since he had used Jordan as a gambling marker.
Jordan had a grimmer view of the subject. She sincerely hoped that Satan himself had made a wager with Jim for his soul and Satan won the game. When Jim was buried in the parish cemetery in New Orleans, Jordan didn't bat an eye or shed a tear.
Instead, she had gone back to the Delta Belle and claimed it as her own. True to his word, Jim had left it to her in his will. The first thing Jordan did was repaint the name of the boat, rechristening her to the Delta Marker. If Jordan had to be used to repay a gambling debt as a gambling marker, she wanted a constant reminder never to trust anyone again. Changing the name was her first order of business.
The second one was to fire the crew she couldn't trust and start all over.
She hired riverboat pilot Garret Macy away from the Delta Swan. He was an older man, but quiet and solid as a rock. In the years he had served her, Garret had become her friend and confidant, almost the father-figure she so desperately missed in her life. Rumor had it that lately Garret was having a battle with the whiskey bottle. Jordan had discreetly inquired about it, but no liquor had turned up missing on the boat. If Garret was drinking, he was keeping it hidden and quiet.
But until she could be sure, she had covered her bases by hiring another man as assistant pilot. A man from a foreign port with a foreign name: Maheesh ….something or another. As quiet as Garret was, Maheesh worked hard to keep himself unnoticed. Most folks up and down the river assumed that he was an American Indian. He was Indian, all right, but not from a tribe. From India. Jordan had liked him from the start. Especially when he told everyone not to call him Maheesh…Bug would do just fine. It was a nickname he had picked up during his time in the Indian army, stemming from his distain of the tiny bedbugs that would infiltrate the sleeping quarters of the soldiers. The other men had learned to deal with them.
Bug would set his bedding on fire and request new blankets and sheets.
Bug, Garret, and then there was Lily. Jordan had met Lily in New Orleans, at the same church where Jim had been buried. The young woman had sung such a moving rendition of Ava Maria for Jim's funeral that even Jordan found tears welling up in her eyes. Two years later, back in the same port in New Orleans, Jordan ran into Lily at the market. The two struck up a conversation and Jordan had jokingly offered Lily a job as a singer on her boat. Jordan assumed Lily would laugh it off. Instead, in a very serious tone of voice, the red head told Jordan that she would give the idea some thought.
By the time Jordan had gotten back to the Delta Marker, Lily was already waiting for her there, sitting on her trunk. Lily had been a part of the crew ever since. And resplendent in ostrich feathers and a black satin dress, one would think Lily had been an entertainer on a riverboat all her life instead of an innocent choir girl in New Orleans' Ninth parish.
That was her tiny, trustworthy crew…but there was someone else Jordan trusted even beyond these three individuals and that man was now heading up the gang plank to her. "Evening, love," the tall, lanky man said, his British accent still pronounced even after living in the States for nearly seventeen years. "Or should I say morning?" he continued, pulling his pocket watch out of his gold brocade vest, flipping it open, and checking the time. "It's a little late for an early bird like yourself to be up…what's all the ruckus?"
"There was this loud splash Nigel. It sounded like a body being dropped in the water…" Jordan said, pulling her robe around her a little tighter and extending her hand to him.
Nigel Townsend. The only man in Jordan's life she felt she could trust with anything and everything. It had been Nigel that found her that night after Jim's gambling partner had gotten through with her and kicked Jordan out of his room. Nigel had found her in a back hallway, crying, her fist covering her mouth, trying to stifle the sobs.
Nigel had pulled her to her feet, assuring her that he would do nothing to harm her…took her back to his room and gave Jordan her first strong drink of brandy to calm her nerves and warm her wounded soul.
And Nigel had been still doing both ever since …calming her and warming her. On the surface, Nigel was everything Jordan despised. He was a gambler…a sharp to be exact… the worst kind of gambler. The kind of gambler that preys on the inexperienced and the rich. The vulnerable. But for Nigel, it was simply a way to make a living. And he did it well.
Just as well as he took care of her that night so long ago and now. He took her hand in his and covered her cold fingers. "You need to get back inside, love. Warm up. You'll catch your death out here…"
"I will," Jordan replied, allowing him to pull her into a tight hug. "Just as soon as we find out what's going on. I need to know…the boat…"
"You worry entirely too much. I'll talk to Garret and then I'll come tell you."
Jordan shook her head. "No… besides….there's Garret now."
They both turned and watched as Garret walked up the boat's ramp to them. "Well…what was it, Gar?" Jordan whispered, alarmed at the pilot's grim expression.
"Young girl from the Mississippi Princess. Bound, gagged, and thrown overboard."
Jordan's face paled. "The Mississippi Princess…why she's docked right next to us."
"I know," Garret replied, glancing at Nigel. There was a world of meaning behind the captain's eyes and Nigel read them well.
"Do they have any idea how? Or why…." Jordan asked her voice trailing off.
"No. She was with her parents, seemingly well chaperoned. They're not sure….there will be an investigation. The parents and the boat's captain are calling in a Pinkerton detective tomorrow."
Nigel nodded. It looked as if a full-scale investigation was underway. After giving Jordan another hug, he tilted her face up to his. "Go upstairs….wait in my room and warm yourself. I'll be up in a minute…." He nudged her towards the stairs and then turned his attention back to Garret. "Pinkerton? Why Pinkerton?"
Garret shrugged, seemingly nonchalant, but Nigel sensed the tenseness between the man's shoulders. "Seems like local law enforcement isn't trusted in these parts."
Nigel nodded. "Well….this could get interesting…"
"Very. Just mind yourself and stay out of trouble. Jordan needs you," Garret concluded, walking towards the stern of the boat to see just how much the crowd had dispersed.
"I know…" Nigel replied softly. "And I need her."
