B000FC1MHI EBOK (41 page)

“To bed, as soon as you leave.”

“Well, now, that may be a while,” Charlie said in an easygoing way. “Like I said, we need to talk. How ’bout inviting us in?”

“How ’bout getting a search warrant?” Welk snapped back.

Haber made a small
stay calm
gesture with his hand.

Still leisurely, because that was clearly annoying the two, Charlie said, “I’m not searching anything. Just wanting to talk. We can either do it here or back in the office.”

“In the morning,” Welk said anxiously. “Okay, man?”

“Actually,” Charlie mused, “it’s not okay. I got folks here who have a gripe, and they’ve come all the way over to see you. My friend Mr. Roman and his friend Mr. Prine think you sabotaged Mr. Prine’s boat. He’s prepared to bring charges. I want to hear your side.”

Welk checked his watch and, with a calm that said he wasn’t calm at all, lowered the wrist.

Haber said, “Our side is he shot at our hull.”

Noah was about to deny it when Charlie advised, “I wouldn’t make that charge, if I was you. I looked into it when you first filed the complaint. I got witnesses saw you do that yourself.”

“They lie.”

Charlie shrugged. “You wouldn’t be the first. Others have done even worse to justify a gear war.” He looked to be enjoying himself, which gave Noah an idea of how much of an annoyance Haber and Welk had been on West Rock, too. In the same exasperatingly slow way, the police chief went on. “I’m just telling you what my witnesses say. They say you go out in the boat at night, and I’m asking myself why you do that. Are you pulling traps in the pitch black? Or spray-painting buoys? Or sliding up to the dock at Big Sawyer and fouling the fuel tank of its most respected citizen?”

“They also cut the radio wires,” Ian charged, making his presence known, which was precisely why Noah hadn’t wanted him along. Knowing of his existence gave Haber and Welk another weapon to use against Noah.

Noah drew their attention to him with an anger that was just rearin’ to go. “Fouled the tank and robbed me of my radio right when a storm’s about to hit—which resulted in our being out on the ocean in a disabled craft through the whole of that storm. Bottom line? That’s attempted murder.”

“Why’re you looking at us?” Haber asked. “We’re just lobstering for the summer. So you guys don’t like outsiders. That’s your problem, not ours.”

“Wrong,” Noah said. “You trespassed on
my
property when you disabled my boat. Willful destruction of property is a state crime.”

Haber produced a snide smile. “What about the traps we lost when someone cut our lines?”

Noah was about to call him on the painted buoys, when Charlie stopped him with a hand. Calmly, he told Haber and Welk, “Pot warp is cut all the time. You won’t find any witnesses to that.”

Haber still wore his smile. It seemed plastered on his face, despite the fact that he was putting a hand in his pocket, taking it out, shifting his weight from one hip to the other. “I want a lawyer.”

Charlie smiled right back at him. “Maybe in the morning.”

“Okay,” Welk said quickly. “Morning’s fine. Come on, Curt.” He seemed eager to close the door.

“You sure you guys aren’t heading out?” Charlie asked curiously.

“At twelve-twenty?” Haber countered. “It’s late, man. If you’re gonna charge us, do it. If not, get the hell off my doorstep.”

“I might remind you,” Charlie mused conversationally, “that this isn’t really your doorstep. This house belongs to an old friend of mine who hasn’t lived here in six years because his wife isn’t well, and she wants to be close to her family in Indiana. So he rents it out. Too bad, but it’s vacant most of the time. Not many people come to West Rock. So it was a boon when you two showed an interest in renting, and you didn’t even dicker with the amount of the rent. Pretty steep, if you ask me, but my friend can use the money. I don’t think he’ll be happy to hear that you’ve broken the local laws.”

Haber shot an urgent look at Welk, and Welk looked so like a man trying to ignore a snake crawling down the back of his shirt—both of them seeming on the edge of panic—that Noah had a thought. He was about to nudge John, when John said, “Okay, Charlie, I think we’ve imposed on these gentlemen enough. Let’s let them get their sleep. We’ll all be fresher in the morning.”

The two men at the door visibly relaxed.

“I was just getting started,” Charlie protested.

But John gestured him back to the car. As soon as they were all four inside, John said, “Go round the corner, Charlie, just like you’re meaning to leave, then park and put out the lights. I want to see what they do.” Pulling a small notebook from his pocket, he flipped through it in the cast-off light of the dashboard.

“Are you thinking what I am?” Noah asked.

“That there’s reason one checked his watch and the other knew the exact time? I’ll bet I am.” He found the page he wanted. Flipping open his cell phone, he punched in a number.

Charlie pulled around the corner, out of sight of the house, parked, and killed his lights.

“What?” Ian asked Noah.

Noah remembered the meeting of the trap group on the day of Hutch’s funeral, when Mike Kling had suggested that they would be killing two birds with one stone if they could prove that the fruit guys, already in trouble for intruding on Big Sawyer turf, had also shot Artie. That wasn’t the case; Kim had shot Artie. But there might be another stone…

“What if Haber and Welk are heading off to do business?”

“In the middle of the night?” Ian asked skeptically.

“That’s when smuggling is done,” Noah replied. He could hear John on his phone in the front, using words consistent with INS talk.

“But if they were involved in smuggling,” Ian persisted, “why would they do all the rest?”

Noah snorted. “Stupidity?”

“Seriously. Wouldn’t they want to be
invisible
here?”

“They may have thought being lobstermen would do that. Artie let people think he and Kimmie were having an affair as a cover. Haber and Welk might have used lobstering as theirs. They got their license, rented a place, did the things they thought they had to do. They didn’t check out local law, because it’s not written down. So they unwittingly set traps in our space. When we called them on it by knotting their lines, they lashed back. Didn’t have the good sense just to move their traps. Had to try to best us.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re no good. Violence is all they know.”

“There’s the Porsche,” Charlie said as a black car sped past.

John ended his call. “Follow it, Charlie. We’re witnesses on this end. The INS has already boarded the big boat. They have the crew in custody. Now they want the driver of the smaller boat—or drivers, as the case is here.”

Ian leaned forward. “They’re smuggling illegals in a
lobster boat
?”

Noah confirmed the possibility. “Their boat’s a forty-five-footer. They could easily pack thirty or forty people in on one night. If they make a trip on each of three nights, all told they land over a hundred people and God knows how many kilos of smack.”

“Smack,” Ian echoed. “Wow.”

Noah asked John, “Do we think they were the ones who bombed Kimmie’s car?”

“They know how,” John remarked. “They haven’t spent the last ten years in a church choir. My guess is we’ll find evidence of explosives when Charlie goes back to that house with a warrant. Right, Charlie?”

Once they saw Haber and Welk park at the pier, board their boat and head to sea without running lights, and once that information had been duly reported to John’s INS contact, there was no point in hanging around West Rock. John guided his own boat in the other direction, and just in time. Exhaustion had suddenly hit Ian, who dozed off even during the brief ride to Big Sawyer, and Noah wasn’t in much better shape. They had been up for nearly twenty-two hours, much of that under severe stress.

He still had one thing to do, though. When he arrived back at his parents’ house, he found that one thing to do sound asleep on the sofa. Her body was covered by the mint green and lilac afghan his mother had crocheted years before; her feet were covered by Lucas, who was now dry and fluffy and sound asleep as well.

“She’s been cooking,” Ian whispered, sniffing the air. No garlic smell here. This smell was of warm chocolate, shortbread, coffee cake—made from flour, sugar, butter, chocolate bars, maybe cinnamon or vanilla extract, or aged remnants of them, which was likely all she had found in the house.

“Go take a look,” Noah whispered.

Momentarily revived, Ian left for the kitchen.

Noah hunkered down beside the sofa and just looked at Julia. He guessed he could do that for hours any day, but all the more so now, sluggish as he was with exhaustion. He could watch her sleep. He could look at every one of her features, could trace every curve, but it wouldn’t be the physical that held him here. The beauty he saw went beyond that. She was peaceful. She was together, and reasonable, and compassionate. She was a giver, which was both a gift and a challenge. She was generous to a fault.

And she was smiling.

He smiled back. “Hi,” he whispered, not knowing what else to say.

She mouthed the word in reply. A hand came from under the afghan and touched the stubble of his beard, then his mouth. She left her thumb on his lower lip. “Did you get them?”

He nodded. “We got ’em good.”

“No one hurt?”

“No one hurt.”

She let out a pleased sigh. “I’m sorry I fell asleep.”

“Don’t be. You were exhausted. Driving all day, cooking all night.” He sobered enough to say, “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I know. But I wanted to. I like cooking.”

Ian appeared. His mouth was full, and his hands held more. He worked at chewing and swallowing, then said to Noah, “Wait’ll you see what’s in the kitchen.” To Julia, he said, “It’s all
so
good.”

“All?” Noah asked. “You didn’t eat it
all,
did you?”

“Nuh-uh. This is for you.” He passed a napkin filled with brownies, cookies, and chunks of some kind of cake. As soon as the hand-off was done, he went down the hall to his room.

Noah sat back on his heels. Suddenly ravenous, he put a cookie in his mouth whole and grinned while he chewed. When he was done, he ate a brownie, then the cake. In no time the napkin was empty. He wiped his mouth, crumbled the napkin, and bobbed a little on his heels. When that felt good, he bobbed a little more. “I could be spoiled,” he finally said.

“Everyone needs spoiling from time to time.”

“Even you?”

She nodded. “My mother made me coffee this morning. Sounds like nothing, but it was a treat. I felt pampered.”

Noah’s smiled faded. “He never made you feel that way?”

“No.”

He took her hand. “I would.”

“I know.”

“But you want to take it slow.”

“I have to. I’m at the bare beginnings of a legal process, and there’s a home to dismantle. I want to make things as easy as possible for Molly.”

“But you came back here.” He clung to that thought.

She squeezed his hand tight. “How could I not?”

“Could you live here?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“I’ll tell you why not. Summer’s fun, but winters are bad.” Sandi had come back with him for Christmas one year, and had refused to do it ever again. “The island is bleak and cold and isolating then.”

Julia smiled. “If you’re trying to scare me off, it won’t work. I can think of lots of things I can do when summer’s done.”

“Like what?”

“Go lobstering.”

“I don’t do that in winter.”

“What do you do?”

“Go skiing.”

“Not here,” she said sweetly.

“No. In Vail, Aspen, wherever.”

“I can do that.”

“You can. But not lobstering.” He stood firm on that. “What else?”

“I can take pictures of you lobstering.”

“If you think that’ll get you in the door for the real thing, think again.”

Her smile grew smug. “We’ll see. I can also work with Zoe’s rabbits. That’s so calming. And I’d like to learn how to weave. I used to knit and crochet, but I’ve never weaved. Zoe’s friends have looms. They’d teach me.”

“They would,” he said, loving the image of Julia creating. She had an artistic eye. Her photographs told him that. “What else?”

“Whatever comes up,” she said, growing serious. “I don’t want to be programmed. I understand that the past had to be. I went to school, I got married, I raised a child, I kept Monte’s house.”

“You were his doormat.”

“At times. But it’s like the accident held up a hand and signaled a time-out. Now I need to breathe. I need to regroup. I need to leave myself open to things that have meaning for me.
Personal
meaning. Does that sound totally selfish?”

He was as serious as she now, because it was his future, too. “Not selfish. What you want is important. You need to be happy, Julia. You need to be satisfied and fulfilled. I would never want to stand in your way.”