Chapter 22: The Fire on Pier Four

"Please sit, Sheriff," I said. "You're about to learn what you came to arrest."

The sheriff glanced at Clem.

Clem smiled at him, calm and sweet.

"Roz is upset," she said. "She lost her father this week."

"I did," I said. "And I'll thank you not to say his name."

Behind the deputies, the warehouse doors stood wide.

Over a hundred dockers had gathered in the cold, silent, shoulder to shoulder.

The foreman had sent a boy to fetch them the minute Clem's car came down the pier.

"This is an eviction," Clem said. "I have a signed note. Four hundred thousand dollars, due at midnight."

"The note is from a shell company in Delaware," I said. "Owned by you."

"With my own money."

"Whose?"

She did not answer.

I nodded at my second, and he opened the side door.

Two men came in out of the dark, one on a crutch.

The first was the clerk from the east pier, thin and gray, with his hat in his hands.

The second was the cook from the Dunleavy kitchen, his arm in a sling and a bruise yellowing along his jaw.

"This man signed the manifest for forty crates of rifles," I said. "Tell the sheriff who paid him."

The clerk swallowed.

"Miss Clementine came to my window twice," he said.

"She gave me an envelope and told me what name to write."

"Which name?"

"Rainey. For the tags."

"He's lying," Clem said.

"I kept the envelope," the clerk said. "It has her thumb on the flap. She licks them shut."

The sheriff took a step back from her.

"And this man?" he asked.

"He cooked for the Dunleavys eleven years," I said. "Ask him what was in my coffee."

The cook looked at Clem, and his jaw worked.

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