B000FC1MHI EBOK (31 page)

Julia had come ashore far earlier. She and Matthew had actually eaten their sandwiches while tied up at the dock, soon after which she was back on Hawks Hill, sitting at Noah’s computer and playing with the pictures she had shot. She cropped some and lightened others, sharpened a few and rendered others in unusual color tones.

In time, she sent those of Noah and Ian replacing vandalized buoys on to Alex Brier. She sent a few of the others to Monte, because she wanted him to know she was using—and loving—the camera. She even made prints of her favorites, playing with this program as well.

Then she drove to Zoe’s, fully expecting to find her in the barn, but when she walked in, she found only her father. He was cleaning out trays under cages, refilling hay racks, apparently content to putter around. But why shouldn’t he be? With the misters giving aromatic puffs every few minutes, the rabbits scrabbling and shifting, and fog muting the rest of the world, the barn was as peaceful as ever.

On closer look, she realized he wasn’t entirely content, but rather wore the same furrowed look he’d had at dinner the evening before.

Letting him be, Julia checked out the babies in the nest boxes. As always, though, she gravitated toward Gretchen. She didn’t even have to sit down now; she could easily hold the rabbit in the crook of her elbow, stroking her while swaying gently from side to side.

“So,” she said after a bit, “are you enjoying yourself?”

“Very much,” her father declared with a bit too much zeal. “It’s nice not to be programmed for a change.”

“Are you talking about your work, or Mom?”

“Both.”

“So. Tell me about your day. What’d you do?”

He gave a lopsided shrug. “Oh, walked around.”

“Where?”

“In town. On the dock. Wherever. I talked with people. You know.”

What Julia knew was that he sounded less than enthused. “Have you called her?” she asked.

“Not yet.”

She waited for him to say more, but he simply removed a depleted water bottle from the wall of a cage and replaced it with a full one. So she asked, “Do you plan to?”

“Eventually,” he said with renewed bravado. “I can’t stay here forever. I have a business to run. She isn’t the only important person in our house. Fortunately, the second quarter is over and estimateds are paid, so this is my quiet season.”

“Mom loves you, you know.”

“So you’ve said.”

“Come on, Dad,” Julia coaxed as she had so many other times. “She has to be autocratic at work; that’s how she succeeds. She just has trouble turning it off.” She watched him replace another water bottle. “You don’t really plan to divorce her, do you? That’d be a mistake. She’s a good person.”

“Is she?” her father asked. “After what she’s done to you?”

Julia bit her tongue. No, her mother hadn’t been there for her after the accident. Nor, though, had her father, so it was the pot calling the kettle black. Besides, Janet’s greatest sin in Julia’s opinion was what she had done to Zoe. Wasn’t George the source of
that
problem?

“Tell me something, Dad. You could have gone to visit Uncle Martin in Hilton Head or Charlie Payne on Mackinac Island. Why’d you come here?”

“Because you were here. You needed me.”

“What about Zoe? It’s clearly more hurtful to Mom, your coming here rather than going to one of those other places.”

Her father stared at her long enough to see that she knew what had happened between Zoe and him. To his credit, he didn’t deny it. Further to his credit, he finally sounded less spiteful and more adult. “We’re talking a one-time thing an awful lot of years ago, Julia. It’s time your mother got over it. We’ve avoided the issue for too long. Maybe facing it will help.” Reaching for two more freshly filled water bottles, he walked off to the cages at the end of the row.

Facing it by walking away? Facing it by refusing to call?

Oh, yes, Julia was guilty of those things herself. What to do? Agonizing over that thought, she continued to stroke Gretchen before returning her to her cage, at which point Ned began rubbing her leg. Squatting, she scratched his ears until he’d had enough and wandered off. Julia headed to the house. “Zoe?” she called out.

“In my bedroom!”

Passing the rooms Molly and her father were using, Julia went on to Zoe’s. It had been added several years before, and was larger and brighter than the others, for good reason. Zoe did much of her spinning here. There was a bed, a nightstand, a dresser, an armoire, and an easy chair with a hassock, but the skylights in the cathedral ceiling channeled light onto a beautiful walnut spinning wheel. Zoe sat there, her bare feet rhythmically working a pair of treadles while her hands were neatly lined up, one in front of the other, guiding newly plucked angora to the wheel.

Julia watched for a while from the door. The motion of the wheel was steady and smooth, the rapid little tick-tick-tick of the turning bobbin hypnotic. Even the treadles seemed to whisper with each depression. The peacefulness here was much like that in the barn. Zoe’s world was a resonant one, indeed.

Quietly, Julia approached the wheel. “Whose fur are you spinning?”

“My lilac. See the color?” She stopped the wheel and pointed with her thumb. “It’s a subtle lilac, really a mauve. The color is deeper at the end of the fur. When I spin it, it comes out striped.” Julia had just enough time to look close and see the stripe before Zoe got the wheel spinning again. “When someone knits this, it’ll work up as a heather.”

“This is for knitting then, not weaving?”

“Oh, it could be used for weaving, but not rug making. It’s one-ply and way too fine. I’m doing this on special order for a woman who owns a yarn store in Boston. She stocks some of the most beautiful and unusual yarns. If she likes this, she’ll order more. It would be a good market for me.”

Her hands were deft, holding the fur between forefingers and thumbs, moving in a little, out a little, while the wheel whirred, the treadles whispered, and the bobbin made that soft tick-tick-tick as it turned.

Julia took a deep breath and smiled. “I could watch this forever. It’s as calming as working with the rabbits. Dad is keeping busy out there, by the way. How’s it going with you and him?”

Zoe continued to spin. “The awkwardness is starting to fade.”

“Are you still drawn to him?”

“No. He has aged, and so have I. There have been other men in my life. You know that. Each one lasted longer and meant more to me than George did. I’m not belittling your father. He’s a wonderful man. But I’ve grown into someone different from the woman I was back then.” She paused. “Haven’t you?”

Julia had. Definitely. “But you loved him once. Are you saying love doesn’t last?”

“I’m saying that, in my case, what I thought was love wasn’t. Your case is different,” Zoe went on, correctly tracking Julia’s thoughts. “What’s happening with Monte and you may be a factor of growth. Sometimes you grow in the same direction as the person you’re with, sometimes you don’t. It happens over a period of time, not overnight.”

“I’ve felt different about so many things since the accident.”

“My guess is you felt different before the accident but refused to see it.”

The bobbin continued its tick-tick-tick, the treadles their soft little puffs.

“I saw it,” Julia said at last. She simply hadn’t been ready to act.

“So, what if you were to tell this to Monte?”

Julia had asked herself that dozens of times. “He would go on and on about how understandable this is after a traumatic experience, but that it’ll pass, because I do have a good life and, yes, he and I may have some differences, but every couple does. He’ll say how can I possibly think there are other women. He’ll say I’m the first and the last. And he’ll convince me, Zoe. He’s the ultimate salesman. He has an answer for everything.”

Zoe stopped pedaling. The wheel slowed, the tick of the bobbin came to a stop. “Counseling?”

“Been there. If might have helped if Monte had come, but he didn’t think he needed counseling. As far as he was concerned, it was all about my insecurity.”

“What if you were to say you want a divorce?”

Julia had considered this, too. “He’d say I had no grounds.”

“Adultery isn’t grounds?”

“He’d say it never happened and that I just jumped to conclusions. He’d say I was upset. He’d say that I don’t have a clue what divorce means. He’d say that if I ever knew how badly I could end up, I wouldn’t even
mention
the word.”

“Is that a threat?”

“Vaguely.”

“It certainly isn’t the voice of a loving husband.”

That was the hardest part for Julia. Nothing Monte did showed real love. He never went out of his way for her, never made a sacrifice for her sake. Everything was programmed:
She is your wife, therefore you buy lingerie for her birthday, flowers for our anniversary, jewelry for Christmas.

A loving husband? “No,” she said with an inner loneliness that physically hurt. “Just a stubborn one.”

“But why?” Zoe cried. “What’s in it for him? If he has affairs, if he doesn’t feel love, why does he want the marriage to last?”

Julia laughed bitterly. “He knows he has a good thing in me. Lots has happened in the world since we got married. Another woman would be younger and more demanding. She wouldn’t put up with his playing around. Nor would she be alone in the kitchen at ten-thirty at night cleaning up after a dinner for six, while Monte sits with his feet up on the hassock and watches the late news.”

“Oh, Julia.”

She smiled. “Not a nice situation.”

“And Noah? You like him, don’t you.”

She nodded.

Zoe’s eyes held compassion. “Danger, Julia. Danger.”

T
he police station on Big Sawyer was little more than a storefront office. It sat on Main Street, beside the post office and across from Brady’s Tackle & Gear. There was no jail cell, as such; a lockable back room served for those who needed sobering up or cooling off for a night.

When Noah walked in, John Roman had his ankles crossed atop a weathered wood desk and his eyes on the computer screen. Dropping his feet, he sat forward. “Just the man I wanted to see. Had some fun today, did you?”

“You bet,” Noah said without remorse. Contrary to what Ian might think, he didn’t believe in the willful destruction of property, except when it came to violators of local law. Those violators stole the livelihood of far more needy fishermen than Noah.

“Take a look at this,” John said, pointing at the computer screen.

Putting thoughts of Kim on hold, Noah rounded the desk. He didn’t recognize the face on the screen—hadn’t been at the Grill at the right time—but the text beside the picture was clear. “Kevin Welk,” he read and perused a short but impressive criminal record. He had no sooner finished when John brought up another page, this one devoted to Curt Haber. Between the two, they had convictions spanning the last dozen or so years for bank theft, breaking and entering, and assault.

“Their names kept cropping up,” John explained, “so I decided to check them out. Not your usual lobstermen.”

No. They weren’t even the usual poachers. The usual poacher was either a newbie who didn’t know any better, or a fisherman from another island who simply wanted to muscle his way into more fertile grounds. “Do they have licenses to lobster here?”

“Sure do. I checked that out first. Everything with the state was filed in good order. This other…” John raised his brows, scratched the back of his neck, shook his head. “So, I’m asking myself what they’re doing here, and my mind keeps going places it probably shouldn’t be going.”

Noah knew those places. He often returned there himself. “What’s the latest theory on Artie’s death?”

“For lack of anything better, they’re saying he shot himself. The INS has gone back to the smuggling part. They’re focusing on a guy in Florida who’s supposed to be the mastermind. Someone, or a group of someones, has been shuttling illegals from large boats outside the two-hundred-mile limit to private docks on the mainland. They don’t see Artie as doing the actual transfer, just arranging for it.”

No mention of Kim. Relieved, Noah said, “Haber and Welk are from Florida.”

“Yup. So I ask myself why they’re here and whether there’s a reason behind their making public nuisances of themselves. Hell, the guys are loud. Makes you wonder if lobstering’s just a cover.”

Noah agreed. Most poachers were subtle. Most responded to the first warning. It was almost as if Haber and Welk were going out of their way to let everyone know that they wanted to haul traps. Only wanted to haul traps. Only wanted to catch lobster.

“Still,” he pointed out, “there’s no way they could have shot Artie in that fog.”

“Unless one of them was on the boat with him.”

“If so, he would have died, too,” Noah tried off-handedly.

“Not necessarily,” said the chief of police, watching him closely now. “Who’s to say someone couldn’t have been thrown off
The Beast
like you were thrown off the
Amelia Celeste
? Who’s to say it wasn’t Haber or Welk, or maybe even a third person?”

John knew, Noah realized—and if he didn’t
know,
then he suspected— and that, without knowledge of the bankbook.

“So here’s the story,” John went on. His voice was quieter, holding an element of resignation. “They know Artie was connected to Kim. They just don’t know how. Could be it was sexual, could be it was something else. There’s only one person who knows, and that’s Kim. Now, don’t look at me like that, Noah. The Colellas are cousins on my wife’s side, so I’m protective of her, too. Even if sex was all it was, she might know something that can help us. She was around Artie. She was at his house, and she was on his boat. I keep telling her there’s nothing to worry about because I’ll protect her, but she still won’t say a word.”

“Maybe she can’t,” Noah said, because it occurred to him that if Kim had been more than a mistress, and something had gone awry, leading to Artie’s death, she might be in danger herself.

“I’ve been out at the house every day for a week now,” John went right on. “Most days she isn’t there. When she is, she just sits on that sofa and looks at her hands. How long’ll that go on, before someone higher ’n me decides it’s time she tells them what she knows, and brings her in?”

Noah caved in about the computer, but only because he wanted Ian to have something to do while he and Julia talked to Kim—or so he told himself. Deep down, he probably wanted to impress Ian. The hill house wasn’t the typical Big Sawyer home, any more than the electronics inside were the toys of a hick.

So he called it quits on the water Wednesday at three, which was just as well, with the dense fog and rough seas. He got them both home to shower, and was at the hill house by four. Expecting them, Julia had left the front door ajar, and Lucas raced right on through. By the time they joined him, she was bent over rubbing his ears, laughing between wet doggie kisses. Laughter lingered on her face when she straightened, beautiful in plain old jeans and a blouse, with her blonde hair brushing her shoulders and her features alive. She had just taken scones from the oven; some were moist with chocolate chunks, others crunchy with Heath Bar bits, still others dotted with wild blueberries. She had clearly gone food shopping on her own. He wanted to think she had done it for him. If not that, he wanted to think she had done it for Ian.

He was actually more touched by thought of the second option. She understood what he was trying to do with the boy and seemed to want to do her part to help. Given the appetite that Ian had developed in the last day, she couldn’t have picked a better way.

“Scones usually go with tea this hour of the day,” she told Ian affably, “but I figured you wouldn’t be the tea type. So I bought Coke and a Frappuccino.”

Ian’s hand hovered over a Heath Bar scone. “Cool enough to eat?” he asked.

“Should be,” Julia said, handing him a napkin and offering one to Noah, who reached for a chocolate scone.

Seeing unsureness in her seconds before he took a bite, Noah’s heart melted right along with the chocolate—but the scone was delicious. He indicated as much with a low moan of pleasure. After a heartfelt “Thank you,” he led Ian to the loft.

At the top of the stairs, Ian’s eyes lit. “Oh, wow. This is really yours?”

“Yes. Julia’s just staying here until a room opens at her aunt’s.” He turned on the computer, but that was all he had to do. By the time the programs were loaded and the desktop displayed, Ian was on his way to the Internet.

Noah became irrelevant then. For a minute or two he watched, fascinated by the ease with which his son worked the web. He wasn’t even sure Ian heard him when he said, “I’ll be back,” and headed downstairs.

He helped himself to another scone on his way out the door with Julia, but when he told Lucas to stay with Ian, the dog wasn’t having any part of it. Pushing his way into the backseat of the truck, he sat behind Julia and looked defiantly at Noah.

So Noah caved in on this, too, and the dog came along. “Bluff or beach?” he asked Julia.

“Bluff,” Julia said. “I just talked with Nancy.”

Sure enough, the small blue Honda was there by the stone keeper’s house. Both were shrouded in the mist. Even harder to see was Kim, sitting on the rocks beyond it, looking warily back at the truck.

Pulling on a sweatshirt, Julia climbed out. When her hair began to blow, she held it back. “Hi,” she called over the pounding of the surf as she started over the rocks carrying a small bag of scones.

Noah got out and held the door open for Lucas, but between the hammering surf and the wind, Lucas looked dubious. Nervous eyes trailed Julia, but the rest of his body wasn’t moving. He finally curled up and put his chin on his paws.

Noah closed the door and started toward the rocks. This was the first time he had seen Kim since the accident. She was bundled in a jacket, red hair tucked away; her face was thinner than he recalled. He guessed she had lost weight that she couldn’t afford to lose, and understood why Julia had wanted to bring food.

That said, she didn’t look sick. Pale, perhaps, and frightened. But sick enough to be unable to speak?

Kim raised anxious eyes to Julia. They moved to Noah, then returned.

“You know him, he’s a friend,” Julia said with gentle insistence. Settling herself close to Kim, she opened the bag and handed her a scone. Kim took it and began to eat, but she remained guarded, her body not quite relaxed, her eyes never far from Noah.

He sat on a nearby rock and looked out into the fog, while he tried to decide how to begin. He didn’t envy John Roman his job. Pressuring people—interrogating them—wasn’t a fun thing to do. Or maybe it was just that Noah was a lousy communicator. Sandi was probably right in that. If he couldn’t communicate with his own son, what was he supposed to say in a sensitive situation like this?

He waited until most of Kim’s scone was gone. As carefully as he could then, he explained why he had come. “The Chief is doing everything he can to keep investigators away. He doesn’t want them bothering you. He wants to give you time to heal. The problem is that the investigation is going nowhere. John is afraid that he won’t be able to keep them away much longer.” He sat forward. “Because you and Artie were involved, they figure you know something. They don’t care if you were having an affair with Artie. They want to know other things you might have seen, like who called Artie, who visited him, what names he used to mention.”

Kim swallowed hard, but said nothing.

Noah looked out at the gray again. This kind of fog was more typical of August than July. Global warming? If it wasn’t that, it had to be something else. They were predicting a week of storms. Going lobstering, he could live with fog. He could even live with a moderate chop. Increase the chop and add rain, and he had to sit home, and that was frustrating.

So was this. He wanted to help Kim—
really
wanted to help her. It was suddenly very important, part of the responsibility he felt in the aftermath of the accident. Ian was important. And now Kim.

“Why can’t you speak?” he blurted out with less finesse than he might have, but he didn’t know how else to get through. “Is it a physical thing? Emotional? Because here’s the problem. Silence can sometimes be taken as a sign of guilt. If they ask you questions and you refuse to answer, they’re going to think you’re guilty. They don’t know you like we do. They won’t give you the benefit of the doubt. Talk to us, Kim. Tell us what you know.”

Julia touched his arm.

“I can only hold John off so long,” he told her more quietly. “He can only hold the
others
off so long.”

Leaving her hand on his arm, Julia asked Kim, “Could you write the answers to questions we asked?”

Kim closed her eyes. Turning away, she put her head on her knees.

“Okay,” Noah tried. “Here’s another thought. They know that Artie was involved in bad stuff, and they know he was doing it with bad people. Those people are dangerous. You may think you’re safe as long as you don’t talk. But if those bad people get nervous enough, they may want insurance that your silence will last. John can protect you, but only if he knows what you know.”

The hand on his arm tightened, but he didn’t need the warning. He knew the danger of pushing Kim too far. Julia wasn’t the only one who could imagine the girl throwing herself over the cliff. What Julia didn’t know, though, was that he had a weapon to fight that.

Crossing to where Kim sat, he hunkered down in front of her. Very quietly, he said, “I know who he is, Kim.”

Her eyes grew wider.

“There are times when you thought it was me,” he went on, “but I was never with your mother. Talk to us—give us information—help us, and I’ll help you.” Nancy might not want the man identified, but Kim was over twenty-one, and perhaps this was part of Noah’s responsibility. “He never knew, you know. He was here and then gone.”

Kim was hanging on his every word. She pressed her lips together, then opened her mouth, and for a minute he thought she was going to speak, but the only sound that came out was a short bit of breath, immediately lost in the headland wind.

Having offered the carrot, Noah said, “Artie was working with a man from Florida. Do you know who he is?”

Kim gave a frightened head shake.

“Did he ever mention the names Curt Haber and Kevin Welk?”

Another frightened head shake.

“Did he tell you anything about his work?”

A third frightened head shake.

“Were you having an affair with Artie?”

This head shake was firmer.

“Were you on
The Beast
with Artie that day?”

This time there was no head shake at all. Kim straightened and was looking at him as if to say,
I’m not stupid. You’re trying to trip me up.