And a tale it would be, Charlie thought.
“Let us begin,” the reverend said, “with Mr. Muller, the father of the youngest crewman, Lucas.”
As Muller, who ran a hardware supply store, stepped solemnly to the pulpit, Charlie tapped his fingers impatiently on his knees. He was still pondering his latest findings. Turns out, these Siberians had been followers of the mad monk, Rasputin, the one who had bewitched the last Tsar and Tsaritsa of Russia. The Romanovs. Some of this stuff had come back to him from school—you couldn’t grow up in Alaska and know nothing about the Russians who lived right across the strait—but what he hadn’t known about was the Romanov jewels. He hadn’t known that the Tsar and his family had owned one of the most astonishing collections of jewelry the world had ever seen.
And that a lot of it was still missing to this day.
“My boy never failed at anything he put his mind to,” Mr. Muller was saying. “He was smart as a whip and worked as hard as any man I ever knew.”
Charlie knew that the blame for the shipwreck had been attributed to Lucas’s piloting of the boat, and he guessed that this was the father’s way of redeeming his son’s reputation. He hoped that Harley wouldn’t decide to ad-lib and rub any salt in that wound.
As Muller yielded the pulpit to the Samoan sailor’s mother, Charlie went over the list in his mind again—the endless array of tiaras and necklaces, earrings and bracelets, gilded crosses and enameled eggs—eggs, made by some jeweler named Fabergé—that had comprised the royal collection. The Tsaritsa, infatuated with her holy man from the steppes, had given him lavish presents, and there were even rumors that she had become his mistress. But who would ever know, or give a damn, about that now? All that mattered to Charlie was the obvious value of the cross—and the fact that it had been found on the island. If the cross was there, the rest of the missing Romanov jewels might be there, too.
The Samoan’s mother had given way to Farrell’s sister, and then to an engineering buddy of Old Man Richter, and it was finally time for Harley, who slouched to the pulpit like a man about to be hanged. Charlie wanted to holler at him to straighten up, but he was relieved to see him take out the comments Charlie had written for him and start reading.
Rebekah nodded approvingly, and glanced over at Charlie with her beady, hard eyes. Bathsheba had put down whatever trashy book she’d brought and was actually paying some attention.
“Mankind is forever caught in the crosshairs of God’s grace,” Harley was saying—a line Charlie was particularly fond of. “Belief is the path that we all must take. That path will lead us through the trials and tribulations of life, and protect us from the many evils and the countless plagues that assail us. Even as I clung to the lid of that coffin, I trusted in God to deliver me to shore.”
Charlie knew that God was probably the last thing on Harley’s mind that night, but it sure sounded good. Harley then read Charlie’s account of all the other deeply religious revelations he’d had as he fought his way through the freezing sea—full of doubts and fears—before landing on the shore, where his faith had finally deposited him.
“I only wish that I had been able to save my fellow crew members who had shared in that awful voyage with me,” he concluded. “But I do know now that they are all resting, safe and dry, in God’s loving hands.”
When he wrapped up, Charlie wanted to applaud, or maybe even proclaim in some way that those were his words, but he just didn’t see how to do it gracefully. The mayor got up next—big surprise—and made some remarks that she probably thought would help get her elected again (as if anybody in his right mind would want the job, anyway) before the Reverend Wallach recited the Lord’s Prayer, and announced that hot drinks and refreshments were now being served in the annex.
“I do okay?” Harley shuffled over to ask his brother. He stuffed the paper into the back pocket of his jeans.
“You mumbled some of the lines, but yeah, it was fine.”
“You’re supposed to make eye contact,” Rebekah put in.
“I didn’t ask you.”
“Well, if you’d been smart, you would have.”
There was no love lost, Charlie knew, between his brother and Rebekah. Until the sisters had shown up, Harley had lived in the old family homestead, too, but once the women had taken over, Harley, and his pet snake, had been none too subtly eased out the door.
“I thought you did good,” Bathsheba said shyly.
“Where are the idiots?” Charlie asked, and Harley, knowing exactly who he was referring to, looked around the emptying church. “Over in the annex, I guess.”
“Get them and meet me out at the van.”