Devlin's Light (30 page)

“That’s a rough-legged hawk. Actually, it’s a light morph. I haven’t seen one of those in years.”

“What’s a, er, morph?”

“It’s a variation of coloration that occurs regularly, though less commonly than others. Like more people having dark hair than red. Rough-legged hawks are more commonly dark-feathered. But there are some that are light, like that one.”

“It’s beautiful.” Zoey watched it soar back along the edge of the bay on its way toward the marsh and the woods beyond.

“They’re not frequent visitors here in the late fall. You
have good eyes. We should take you on our bird count this year.”

“I might be interested in going,” Zoey told her. “When is it?”

“Ry and I used to do it on Christmas Day. I don’t know when we’ll do it this year. Look, there’s Captain Pete’s.”

“Not a moment too soon.”

Zoey followed India into the dimly lit wooden structure that, in the summer months, served as bait shack and dockside cafe, as well as a place to rent small boats and crabbing nets. Now, in November, Pete sold newspapers, binoculars, duck decoys and hot drinks.

“Hey, Pete,” India called into the back room.

“Who’s that?”

“India Devlin.”

“Well, ‘bout time.” The old gent limped out, leaning on a thick wooden cane. He thumped India on the back with the palm of his hand. “Good to see you, girl. How’s Augustina?”

“She’s well. I’ll tell her you were asking for her.”

“Saw you on television a few months back.” He nodded as he walked to the counter. “Philadelphia station.”

“After the Thomas trial?”

“One of them.” Pete grunted and swung himself onto a stool. “Proud of you, we all were. Mighty proud.”

“Thank you, Pete.” India nodded appreciatively. “I was sorry to hear about your wife, Pete.”

“Appreciate it, India. Appreciate the card you sent.” Pete cleared his throat. “Well then. What brings you out to the docks on such a cold day?”

“I didn’t want my friend here to leave Devlin’s Light without having some of that remarkable hot chocolate of yours, Pete.” She grinned. “This is Zoey Enright, by the way.”

“Enright. You related to Nick?”

“He’s my brother.”

Another grunt from Pete as he rose to fill two tall Styrofoam cups with steaming dark brown liquid. On the top of each he smacked a dollop of whipped cream.

“Whoa, go easy on the whipped cream.” India laughed.

“You look like you could use a little extra there, girl. Both
of you could, for that matter.” He passed the cups across the counter one at a time. India patted her pockets, then realized she had no money.

“Oops.” Her face reddened. “I don’t have my wallet.”

“I do.” Zoey reached into the deep pocket of her jacket.

“No, no.” Pete waved her away. “My treat. Been a quiet day. Glad you girls stopped by. Miss seeing those boys around here, I don’t mind saying it.”

“What boys would that be, Pete?” India asked, grabbing a napkin from the metal container on the counter’s edge and passing a few to Zoey.

“Ry and Nick. They spent some good days out here with me, the two of them did. Broke my heart when Ry died, just like I told Augustina. But I’m glad Nick stayed around. Boy like that belongs on the bay. Got it in his blood, just like Ry did.”

“I’ll tell him you said so, Pete.” Zoey nodded, acknowledging the compliment to her brother.

Pete turned on his cane and walked toward the back of the cluttered shop. “Don’t seem right without a young Devlin in town. You think about that, India, hear?”

“Wow. What a character he is! Handsome, in a rough sort of way, but all he needs is an eyepatch and he’d fit every child’s idea of the perfect pirate.” Zoey giggled once they had gone back outside and closed the door. “Tell me a shark gave him that limp.”

India laughed. “I’d be lying if I did. He took a bad fall coming out of Roslyn’s—that’s the local tavern—a few years ago and hurt his back. The doctors said he needs surgery, but he doesn’t want to hear it. Personally, I think he likes the limp and the cane.”

“India, how many years have you done the bird thing on Christmas?” Zoey leaned back against one of the thick round pilings and opened the lid of her hot chocolate to allow it to cool.

“Since I was a child, why?”

“I don’t know. I was just wondering.” She shrugged. “Seems like a shame to stop something you’ve always done.”

“It was always sort of Ry’s thing.” India sat on an overturned boat that was huddled up against the building in
much the same manner as the gulls huddled together out on the jetty.

“Well, if you decide to go this year, count me in.”

“Oh, then you’ll be here for Christmas?”

“That would be my guess. We always spend the holidays together. Mother insists on it. She doesn’t care who or how many guests we bring, but we have to be together. Usually we are at Mother’s, but this year I have the feeling that Nicky is planning on staying in Devlin’s Light.” Her dark blue eyes danced.

“Oh?” India sipped at her chocolate and ignored the fact that it was still just slightly too hot.

A sharp, clean wind blew in off the bay, and Zoey openly shivered.

“Want to walk to my car? It’s only a block or two that way.” Zoey pointed toward town.

“That sounds very good.” India eased herself from her seat on the boat’s bottom. “I think I’ve had all the fresh air I can take for one day.”

“India, it may be none of my business, but …” Zoey appeared to be debating with herself momentarily. “Well, Nicky is very special. Not just because he’s my brother, but because he’s, well, he’s just
Nicky.
I like you a lot, India. You’re smart and fun and great company… everything that Nicky said you were.”

“Nick said those things about me?” India’s head shot up. “That I was smart and fun and good company?”

“Along with a list too long to repeat.” Zoey sighed and rolled her eyes. “The thing is, if you hurt him, I will track you down.” It appeared that perhaps Zoey was only half kidding.

“I wouldn’t hurt Nick. And he is special. More special than any man I’ve ever known,” India admitted.

“He misses your brother so much. Ry was one of the two best friends Nicky ever had. And he lost them both.” They had reached Zoey’s car. She stood in the street and searched in her pockets for the keys.

“What happened to the other one?”

“We don’t know where he is. He disappeared from our lives a long time ago.” Zoey opened both doors and the two freezing women slid gratefully into the car.

“Who was he?”

“Ben Pierce. His mother worked for our mother. Maureen was Mom’s right hand. She was in charge of Mom’s life, and so of ours.” Zoey turned the key and started the engine. A blast of cold air blew out the heating vents, and she turned off the heater. “After our dad left, Mother worked in a doctor’s office during the day and started writing at night. She did very well in a relatively very short period of time. She had started out writing a detective series—”

“Harve Shellcroft.” India smiled.

“Yes! You’ve read the Harves?”

“Every one of them.”

“I personally like the Penny Jackson series better, but Harve is a classic.” Zoey turned the heater back on to see if the temperature had warmed up.

“Anyway, old Harve was such an instant hit, her publisher wanted more, the sooner the better. Now, Mother was smart enough to know that if two Harves were good, four Harves were better, but there were only so many hours in the day. So as soon as she started to make serious money, she hired someone—Maureen—to do all those things that kept her from writing. Drive us kids around. Food shop. Cook. Take us shopping. And Mother just stayed home and wrote.”

“You make it sound as if you never saw her.”

“Oh, no, it wasn’t like that. Maureen did the things that would have taken up Mother’s time when she wasn’t writing, so that she could spend time with us.” Zoey leaned back against the seat. “She was great, Maureen was. Younger than Mom and sassy as the day is long. Supposedly she was the only child of very wealthy parents. She had incurred their wrath by insisting upon marrying someone they felt was totally unsuitable. She thought they’d come around, in time, to accept her husband, who apparently proved to be every bit as much of a gold digger as her parents said he was. He left her, and she and Ben never heard from him again.”

“So what happened? She tried to go home but her parents wouldn’t take her back?”

“No. Mother thought that Maureen felt so guilty that her mother had died while she was out trailing around with this
reprobate she’d married that she couldn’t face her father. Anyway, she came to work for Mother. Her son, Ben, was Nicky’s age. They were inseparable.”

Zoey’s eyes took on a faraway glow, a fact that was not lost on India.

“I had a terrible crush on Ben, from the day he came to stay until the day he left. And then some, maybe.” She tried to shrug it off, but the wistful look lingered on her face. “All the time I was growing up, when I was in high school and I was so gangly and odd looking, I always dreamed that Ben would come back and take me to the prom and slay my dragons. Too much, huh?”

“I can’t imagine you not being gorgeous, Zoey.”

Zoey laughed. “For most of my life, I looked like a puzzle whose pieces had been put together just slightly off. I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror without cringing until I was eighteen or nineteen years old.” Zoey’s face softened, remembering. “Nothing like Georgia, who is so perfectly pink and golden and always has been. Or like Mother, who is, well, you saw what my mother is like. Even when we were poor as church mice, those first two years after Dad left, my mother always had that air of elegance around her.”

She sighed. “And now you know probably more than you’d ever want to know about the Enrights.”

“What happened to Ben?” India asked.

“Maureen got sick, very sick. The doctors told her she was dying. She wanted to go home to die. Her father came and took her and Ben back to Massachusetts.”

“And you never saw him again?”

“Once. After his mother died, he ran away from his grandfather and came to my mother. Who, of course, had to call his grandfather and let him know where Ben was. His grandfather came and took him back. We never heard from him again.” Zoey leaned against the steering wheel and stared out the front window as if looking back through time. “Ben was so different. He was so angry. Even his eyes were angry. I cried for days.”

“Maybe someday your paths will cross again.”

“I’ve never stopped hoping that they will.” Zoey forced a
wistful smile as she pulled away from the curb. “Do you believe in fairy tales, India?”

“I guess a little.” India smiled.

“Well, I don’t know whether Ben grew up to be a prince or a toad, but I’ve never stopped wishing that he’d come back.”

“Zoey, I do believe that if anyone could
will
something to happen, it would be you.”

Zoey flashed the Enright mega-watt smile, and India laughed.

Wherever he was, Ben Pierce didn’t know what he was missing.

Chapter 18

“Where have you been, dear?” August called from the dining room when she heard the soft fall of India’s stockinged feet in the hallway.

“I ran into Zoey Enright out on the beach. We went to Pete’s for some hot chocolate,” India told her. “Pete sends you his regards.”

“Hmm.” August shrugged off Pete’s sentiments as casually as she might shrug off an idle remark.

In another life, Pete had been among the many young men in Devlin’s Light whose heads were turned by a saucy Augustina Devlin. In those days of youthful arrogance, she had been a woman who liked a man to dance to her tune. Pete, however, preferred a tune of his own and so had sought out a woman more willing to dance along with him. No one knew for certain whether or not August had ever regretted having turned her back on Captain Pete Moreland, but there were those in town who had their suspicions.

“Coincidentally, India, while you were gone, Nick called. They have two extra tickets to see the
Nutcracker
in Baltimore and asked if the two of us might be available to join them.”

“I would love to go, but I can’t.” India shook her head. “You and Corri should definitely go, though.”

“India, what do you mean you can’t go?” Aunt August wore her stern face, her fists resting on her hips.

“I have to be back in Paloma early on Sunday. I have a lot of work to catch up on, and I need some time to make some phone calls within the department on Monday to follow up on the information I got from Lucien.” India sat upon the bottom step. “As much as I would love to go to Baltimore, Aunt August, it’s time I simply don’t have to spare this weekend.”

“Well, perhaps if you …” August frowned, and India recognized her aunt’s where-there’s-a-will-there’s-a-way face.

“Aunt August, I want to take a leave of absence. I cannot ask my boss to grant that while I have so much work pending. It wouldn’t be fair. Plus I need to start looking into this land deal that dear Maris pulled off right before she died.”

“It does seem coincidental, doesn’t it? Maris gets mixed up with this … this
bamboozler
Shuman, together they bamboozle Byers, then she drowns.” August’s eyes narrowed. “Shuman, Maris, and the money all disappear at the same time.” She shook her head as if shaking off a chill. “And to think that my boy
married
such a woman.”

August blustered into the kitchen. India sighed and followed her.

“Let’s call Nick back and tell him that you and Corri will go. It’ll be a real treat for Corri as well as for you. You haven’t been to the ballet in almost a year, and I know you dearly want to go. And you’ll have a wonderful time, August. Just think of how much fun it will be on Tuesday night, telling your card club about going to Baltimore with Delia Enright.”

“You know me entirely too well, India.” August laughed. “And you’re right, I do want to go.”

“Go where, Aunt August?” Corri sailed into the kitchen on her roller skates.

“Uh-uh,” India pointed to the skates. “Not in the house.”

“Where is Aunt August going?” Corri sat down and without argument began to remove her skates.