Free Ghost Ship: A Port Chatham Mystery by P. J. Alderman Page A

week, your nightshirt said something that sounded like a local football team. Don’t you have a proper nightgown?”
    “They get too tangled—they’re a hassle,” Jordan replied, turning back the down comforter on her bed. “Didn’t you have any slogans back in the 1800s?”
    Hattie looked confused.
    “You know, like something the president might have said that became a common phrase people used to explain how they felt or how something worked in the world?”
    “Maybe,” she replied, but her expression said she doubted it.
    “Well, there you go.” Jordan glanced toward the hall. “Where’s Charlotte?”
    “Downstairs practicing her telekinesis powers, using them to straighten up the library.”
    The relevant word in this instance being “practice.” Jordan closed her eyes. She’d think about it tomorrow, she reminded herself.
    Hattie continued to hover just inside the door.
    Jordan sighed. “All right, I’ll take a trip out to the historical society tomorrow to see if there are any other newspaper articles about Seavey’s murder or survivors of the shipwreck. If there aren’t, that’s the end of it.”
    Hattie sagged with relief.
    Of course, the historical society was still closed for remodeling, which meant Jordan would have to ask Darcy to meet her there and let her in. Not a good plan, given how buried Darcy would be with Holt’s murder investigation. And hadn’t she mentioned something about going back out to the crime scene tomorrow?
    Alternatively, Jordan could break into the building. Again. Breaking the law was becoming habitual for her—during her last visit she’d stolen materials from the archives, then broken in to return them while Darcy was in the hospital.
    “In the meantime,” she told Hattie sternly, “I expect you to resolve this marriage issue. I’m not keen on having either man in this house.”
    Hattie made several reassuring noises that Jordan knew better than to believe signaled the end to that discussion, then faded away, leaving her in peace.
    Malachi slipped into the bedroom and jumped onto the bed, settling in. Jordan climbed in right after him, fighting for her half of the comforter. She was about to turn out the bedside lamp when she saw Michael Seavey’s personal papers, still stacked where she’d left them on her nightstand. She’d been procrastinating about returning them to Holt, not looking forward to having to fend off his inevitable advances. And didn’t that make her feel guilty, in light of today’s events? She and Hattie were certainly a pair. First thing tomorrow, she’d take the papers to the local mail shop and copy them, then drive them out to Holt’s house. His family would want to know that she returned them, since they would be part of Holt’s estate.
    She leaned against the headboard, still too worked up to fall asleep. Perhaps if she read Seavey’s papers she wouldn’t lie in the dark and think about the other thing she’d seen that afternoon. Or maybe she’d find information that would indicate the thing she’d seen wasn’t the Henrietta Dale , thus proving the gardener wrong.
    Surely, if Seavey had owned a clipper ship, he’d have written about it. And if so, he also would’ve detailed his plans for the ship. It seemed unlikely that he would’ve gone into any kind of shipping business, given his established shanghaing practices. And no one had mentioned to her that Seavey had taken over Longren Shipping after Hattie’s murder. Jordan couldn’t come up with any reason why he would’ve needed to expand his interests in that direction. So if he had purchased the clipper ship, why? And who might have tried to run it aground? And what, if anything, did the shipwreck have to do with his murder? Or Holt’s, for that matter?
    She grabbed a couple of pillows and punched them into submission, shoving them behind her, then leaned back. Reaching for the papers, she flipped through a stack of yellowed, handwritten notes until she came to