Amber Beach (20 page)

Jake wondered which of the Whidbey Island NAS boys had been pressed into service as a fishing guide for Uncle Sam’s entry into the amber treasure hunt. Whoever it was, he knew how to fish. The rods made a clean arc against the gray-blue water. Each rod tip moved in slow rhythms that told of a flasher turning beneath the surface of the sea, luring fish to come up, have a look, and stay for dinner.

The man with Ellen might have been a sport fisherman in his spare time, but he was working now. He didn’t even glance at the rods arching off to port and starboard of the stern. The man had a pair of binoculars against his eyes and he was memorizing everything about the
Tomorrow.

Jake gave him a casual, one-finger salute and lowered the glasses. Honor snatched them up, adjusted them for her own eyes, and looked at the first of the two boats.

“You sure that’s Snake Eyes?” she asked. “I can’t see much beneath that miserable cap he’s wearing.”

“I’m sure.”

She started to object that she wasn’t that good an artist – her sketch and a glance through binoculars at forty yards weren’t enough for certain identification. Then she looked again. What she could see of the man was unappetizing enough to go with her memory of Snake Eyes. Clothes that
were as cheap as they were ill fitting. A hat that should have been burned
as
a health hazard. Hands that were allergic to soap.

Not that she was a fashion queen herself in her black jeans, blue-green sweater, blue-green wind jacket, white deck shoes, and hair combed by the playful wind. But at least she was clean. Snake Eyes wasn’t.

“Yuck”, Honor summed up, and focused on the next boat.

“He’s a regular Prince Alarming”, Jake agreed. “Recognize anyone in the second boat?”

“Nope. The woman looks a bit overdressed for fishing. Nice jacket, though. Red that clear is hard to find.”

Jake preferred Honor’s sleek, sea-colored wind shell and sweater to Ellen’s expensive red jacket, but he didn’t say anything. He couldn’t help wondering if the rest of Ellen’s clothes would catch up with her before she ruined the ones she had. Obviously she had been yanked out of whatever office job she had been working on and shot into Anacortes to seduce one J. Jacob Mallory. No time to pack. No time to say good-bye. Just grab a cab and blast off to the next brushfire.

He had enjoyed that kind of life once. Now he didn’t miss it at all.

A glance over his shoulder told Jake that nothing was happening with the fishing rods. He wasn’t surprised. None of the other circling boats had dropped out of line to fight a fish. He glanced at the fish finder. Nothing was returning a sonar echo except the flat bottom of the bay.

“Nobody’s catching anything”, Honor said.

“Tide won’t change for half an hour.”

“So?”

“There’s a saying around here that ninety-five percent of fish are caught during the ten-minute bites at tide change.”

“Then what are all these people doing here now?”

“Praying for the other five percent.”

“I was right the first time. They’re crazy.”

“Relax. The best-kept secret about fishing is that it’s a grand excuse to do nothing.”

Honor didn’t look convinced. Or relaxed.

He switched the screen to the chart plotter and called up the Secret Harbor route Kyle had stored. For the moment he was assuming that the dashed route on the chart was simply a preferred trolling route and the cross marks along that route were places where Kyle had caught fish.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“A chart showing Secret Harbor. That’s Cypress Island. Across the channel is Guemes Island.”

She leaned into the narrow aisle to get a better look at the screen. “What’s the dotted line that loops around?”

“I’m assuming it’s the trolling route Kyle preferred. It’s real close to the contours of a little rise that shows on the
charts.”

“What are these marks?”

“Probably places where he caught fish.”

“But you’re not sure?”

“No. That’s why I’m retracing this route.”

“How will doing this help us find Kyle?”

Jake hesitated. Even his quick mind didn’t see a useful way of ducking the question. Besides, the sooner Honor accepted that her brother was a thief, the less she would feel betrayed by Jake when she found out that he was no more a fishing guide than she was a woman who was yearning to learn how to fish.

Jake didn’t want to be classed in the same lying category as Honor’s ruthless, treacherous, charming brother.

“I think you’ll agree that your brother and a fortune in amber disappeared at the same time?” Jake asked mildly.

Honor closed her eyes, then opened them and met his level glance. “Yes, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s a thief.”

Even more than a month’s growth of beard couldn’t hide
the impatience
and anger
that drew Jake’s mouth into a hard line. He switched the lower screen from chart to depth sounder and stared at the colorful red and blue screen. Flat bottom. Ninety feet down. No fish showing. Nothing had changed.

Including Honor’s stubborn belief in her brother.

“You’re a loyal sister but a lousy thinker”, Jake said. “You’ll get a lot closer to where your brother is if you take the most likely explanation for the facts as we know them and work from there.”

“You think Kyle stole the amber.”

Jake glanced up from the screen. “Can you think of a better explanation?”

She opened her mouth. Nothing came out. She swallowed. “I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it.”

He raised one dark eyebrow and waited.

“I… I just…” Her voice died into a painful silence.

“Never mind”, he said roughly. “Believe whatever you have to, but don’t expect the rest of the world to worship at the altar of Kyle Donovan.”

“The man driving the amber shipment was killed when it was stolen”, Honor said in a strained voice. “Could you believe that your brother was a thief and a murderer?”

“I’m not close enough to my stepbrothers or half brothers for it to get in the way of my judgment.”

Jake looked back at the fishing rods. Nothing new there, either. He turned back to Honor.

“Whatever the circumstances”, he said in a neutral tone, “I’m assuming that Kyle and the amber are together. Some other people in official positions seem to be assuming it, too. Can we agree on that much, at least?”

She nodded.

He let out a hidden breath and sorted quickly through the information he had gotten from the newspapers rather than firsthand in Kaliningrad or from Ellen and Conroy.

“Okay”, Jake said. “Do you know how much bulk we’re
talking about?”

“Six feet, two inches, about one-ninety”, Honor said in a
clipped voice.

“I meant the amber. How big a shipment are we talking
about?”

“I don’t know. Depends on the quality, I guess. The newspaper mentioned a million dollars. From the cost of the one shipment Kyle just sent me, a million dollars would buy a lot of ordinary amber.”

“Is that what Donovan International is claiming from its insurer – a million bucks?”

“We don’t have a claim. We never received the amber, so it wasn’t ours to lose.”

Bullshit,
Jake thought savagely, but he didn’t say anything aloud. Obviously the Donovan males were hiding a few things from their beloved little sister.

“How about the amber itself?” he asked. “Was it raw or
worked?”

She frowned. “I’m not sure, but I think both.”

Excitement threaded through Jake. Honor was the first person who had mentioned worked amber as opposed to material fresh from the mine. Unless he took Ellen’s talk about the Amber Room seriously. He really didn’t want to do that. He was still praying that Ellen was chasing a ghost.

The last thing he needed was the kind of trouble a stolen Amber Room would bring down on his head. Financing a handful of wannabe rebels was one thing. A dumb thing. Stealing a piece of a country’s cultural history was quite another.

Wars had been started for less.

“What kind of worked amber?” Jake asked casually.

“What do you mean?”

“Old or new stuff? Cups, sculptures, boxes, rosaries, tables, candlesticks, mosaics, jewelry? What was the worked amber like?”

“Really old. Neolithic. Kyle started collecting Stone Age pieces when he was handling the jade trade for Donovan International. Then he discovered the small Neolithic figurines or pendants carved of opaque amber. Bastard amber is what he called it.”

Jake knew the type of amber object Honor was describing. It was another of the things he and Kyle had found in common: Jake had a long-standing fascination with fossil resin shaped into art by people who had been dead thousands of years. The Amber Room’s history was a lot more recent. The eighteenth century rather than thousands of years b.c.

He let out another hidden breath. Let Ellen grab hold of the fairy dust. He had something more real to chase: a shipment of top-quality raw amber from Kaliningrad. He knew just what the shipment looked like to the last gram – he had packed it himself – but he didn’t know how much the Donovan family knew.

“Kyle used to send jade he had collected back with the other stuff Donovan International bought”, she said. “When he started collecting Neolithic amber carvings, I assumed he would transport them home the same way, with a commercial shipment.”

“So, any worked amber in the missing shipment was just old stuff for his own collection”, Jake said.

“As far as I know. But he was working with another collector, too.”

Jake tensed. “Who?”

“Kyle just called him Jay. He really liked him. Said he was the kind of man I should be dating instead of…” She broke off sharply.

Jake raised his eyebrows in silent question.

“My brothers think I should date men like them. Stubborn. Arrogant. Too big for my comfort. Hardheaded.” Then Honor sighed and admitted, “Intelligent. Enough integrity and backbone for a regiment. Loyal. Occasionally quite wonderful.”

“But only occasionally”, Jake said dryly.

“Hey, I’m a sister. That’s as good as it gets.”

“So you’ve been dating spineless, hesitant, stupid, weak
men.”

“They weren’t stupid!”

“Okay. Smart, spineless, and weak.”

“They weren’t weak. Not really.”

“Spineless and hesitant.”

“Polite.”

“Spineless.”

“Sold.” Then she laughed sadly. “But I’ll never admit it to my brothers.”

“Something tells me they already figured it out.”

“Yeah, well, Jay whatshisname can stay in Kaliningrad and collect Neolithic amber. I don’t want another big, overhearing man in my life.”

“I doubt if he’s all that bad”, Jake said blandly.

“I don’t. Anyone who can fight Kyle and win is no fragile little flower of chivalry.”

“They fought?” Jake asked, surprised. He didn’t think Kyle would have passed along the tale of the beer barrel, the barmaid, and the boy who bit off more than he could chew.

“Sure did. Kyle ended up on his butt in a puddle of beer. Jay put him there. But Kyle really respects him. Talks about him like he was a stepbrother to God or another Donovan. Same difference, I suppose.”

Jake didn’t know what to say. Apparently Kyle had conned his family as thoroughly as he had conned Jake; they believed Kyle liked and respected the very man he had betrayed.

It should have made Jake feel better that he wasn’t the only one who had been fooled by Kyle. It didn’t. He found himself hoping that Honor would never have to know how different Kyle was from what he seemed. The discovery had been painful enough for him; he could imagine how terrible it would be for Honor.

“Okay”, Jake said. “What else do you know about amber and your brother?”

“Not much. He called about six weeks ago and told me to start designing some fantastic stuff, the kind museums and very rich collectors buy. He had just heard about some bia pieces of clear raw amber, chunks of a size for tabletop sculptures rather than earrings or inlay.”

Jake hoped his surprise didn’t show. Kyle hadn’t said a word to him about that kind of treasure trove. But then, Kyle hadn’t said anything about a lot of things that were on his mind, as Jake had found out too late.

“Sounds expensive”, he said carefully.

“It would be. Big pieces like that are really rare. When Kyle first started working in Kaliningrad, I asked him to bring me a cantaloupe-sized chunk of clear red amber. He laughed so hard he nearly dropped the phone. How was I to know I might as well have asked for a ten-carat diamond?”

“Um”, was all Jake could think of to say.

He was trying hard not to laugh himself. He looked at the bright blue screen of the fish finder and hoped his face was as blank as the screen.

Not a fish showing. Not a bump on the bottom worth investigating. He cleared his throat and turned back to Honor. “Then we’ll assume we’re looking for something that is bigger than a man and smaller than, say, a room in Kyle’s cottage.”