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She sighed, serious now. “That’d be worth it.”
The state and local cops had to know all about Teddy Shelton. It was a stretch to think he had anything to do with Chief West’s death, but J.B. didn’t like spotting an ex-con three times in less than twenty-four hours. Not at all.
* * *
Zoe dipped her fork into the last of the real whipped cream atop her pie and pretended she didn’t notice J. B. McGrath down on the docks. Lunch with him had been more unsettling than she’d expected. At times he seemed to be so on edge, she thought he might jump through the window—other times, she thought it impossible to ruffle him about anything. He was intense, focused, not even close to relaxed after almost a week on vacation.
But now she had to deal with Stick Monroe. Her old friend sat across from her and eyed her over his mug of black coffee. “I thought I might find you here.”
Zoe ignored his knowing tone and smiled, glancing around the crowded, charming café. “It’s great, isn’t it? I used to think someone ought to bulldoze this place into the harbor. I didn’t see the potential Christina did. She works hard, but I think she loves it.”
Stick nodded in agreement. He had on his usual outfit of corduroy shorts and rugby shirt—he wouldn’t switch to long pants until it was bitter cold. He was seventy-two but looked at least ten years younger, a fit, healthy, white-haired retired federal district court judge. His family had summered in Goose Harbor for as long as Zoe could remember. He was the last of them—he’d never married, never had kids. Everyone was surprised when he gave up his lifetime appointment and retired. But he seemed content to take long walks along the water, work in his garden and read books. He’d never been much on boating. His friends included everyone from statesmen and corporate executives to lobstermen and cops. He was brilliant, but he wasn’t a snob.
“You came back because of the break-in?” he asked.
“It was the catalyst. I was ready. I’m unemployed.”
“So I hear.”
Zoe couldn’t detect any disappointment in his tone, but it had to be there. He’d been her mentor since she was a little girl, encouraging her, opening up a broader world to her. Despite her great-aunt’s fame, she was content to stay in Goose Harbor. So were her father and sister. But Zoe had the feeling Stick had hoped for more from her than going into the FBI—following in his footsteps, maybe. Law school, U.S. attorney, federal judge. He’d never made it to the appeals court—maybe he thought she would.
Now she was a fired cop. A Quantico no-show. Jobless.
“I’ve learned to knit,” she told him, then smiled. “Sort of.”
“Zoe—”
She could see the concern in his warm brown eyes. “I’m not here to make trouble, Stick.”
“What about the FBI agent, McGrath?”
“He’s on vacation. He helped Bruce put in a new door at the house.”
Stick leaned back in his chair, his coffee untouched. “I called in a few favors with contacts I still have in Washington and checked him out. He’s a powder keg, Zoe. This vacation wasn’t his idea.”
“Something happened?”
“An ultra-right-wing, antigovernment crackpot tried to slit his throat. Almost succeeded. McGrath killed him. The guy’s three kids were there.”
Zoe winced. “That’s awful.”
“He was working undercover. I’m not supposed to tell you any of this.” Stick drank some of his coffee. It must have been cold, because he took a huge gulp, swallowed it, then regarded her with obvious concern. “Those undercover types are all nuts. You know that.”
It was one of the most persistent stereotypes in law enforcement, but it didn’t come from nowhere. Zoe set down her fork. She wasn’t hungry anymore. “What else do you know about this undercover investigation?”
“It was out west. Violent extremists constructing and trading in illegal weapons and explosive devices and plotting the assassination of local, state and federal officials. McGrath infiltrated their network over several months, posing as a buyer. It turns out a local cop was involved and tipped off the bad guys. Hence, the nearly slit throat.”
“I’d need a vacation after that, too.” Just as well he’d seen her out in the driveway before she’d come at him with her drapery rod and sense of violation and humiliation. She didn’t want to surprise an FBI powder keg. “Well, I’ll give him wide berth. What’re you up to these days, Stick?”
He smiled. “Worrying about you.”
“Ah.” She smiled back at him. “Always good to know I’ve got a judge looking out for my best interests. I’m not out of control anymore, Stick. I don’t know what’s next for me in my life, but—”
“You want to know who killed your father.”
His blunt remark caught her off guard, and she felt herself going pale. “Of course I do.”
“It’s not that people around here don’t want to know, it’s just that they can live without it. They don’t want to have to relive the grief and horror of last fall. They tell themselves it was an out-of-town drug dealer, a random act because Patrick was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He set down his mug and got to his feet, adding softly, “But not you, Zoe. You want the truth, whatever it is.”
“Maybe it was an out-of-town drug dealer.”
His gaze settled on her. He was a tall man, his skin tanned and wrinkled but not sagging. “You think the break-in at the house is connected to your father’s murder.”
“I have no reason to think anything, Stick—except that I’ve had too many milk products for lunch. Chowder, then chocolate cream pie.”
He shook his head, patient, always the one who could see through her. “Keep in touch, okay?” He kissed the top of her head. “Welcome home.”
After he left, Zoe said goodbye to her sister, who was obviously enjoying herself as she put together orders. The lunchtime crowd hadn’t dwindled. The fall foliage was at its peak, the leaf-peepers out in droves—Zoe could hear a table of seniors as they pointed out brightly colored trees along the shoreline.
She headed outside. McGrath’s lobster boat was gone. He must have left while she was talking to Stick. She walked down to the docks and squinted, picking out Bruce’s old boat up toward Olivia’s, making its way along the shore to the nature preserve and the cluster of offshore islands.
That was something else she had to do—go back to the nature preserve, to the spot where she’d found her father’s body. Today was so much like the morning she’d found him. Cool, bright, beautiful.
Maybe it could wait until tomorrow.
She and McGrath had walked down from Olivia’s. She took her time crossing the parking lot and making her way to Ocean Drive, tried to ignore the flashbacks to the countless times she’d walked this route to visit her great-aunt. She’d see her father on the way. They’d always gotten along. They’d never had any big angst-filled battles. Neither had he and Christina. Zoe didn’t know if it was because they’d lost their mother so young and it’d squeezed out all of that need to rebel, or if it was just the way he was, the way they were as a family.
When she got back to the house, she decided she’d need groceries if she was going to stick around. She pushed back the wave of loneliness, the tug of grief at the emptiness of the house, and opened windows, feeling the cool, salt-tinged breeze and hearing the ocean. She started a list at the kitchen table—then stopped.
She had to know.
She ran up to the attic and made her way to her writing nook, banging her shin on a trunk. She picked up the yellow pad she’d caught McGrath holding and felt the heat rise up from her chest to her ears.
Just as she’d thought.
There was nothing wrong with her handwriting. That liar could read it just fine.
Seven (#ulink_df3b4ca2-7971-52a2-92b0-19209f6be4d8)
Teddy couldn’t help it—to him the ocean smelled like a bucket of barf, especially at low tide. He couldn’t get used to it. He stood at the water’s edge of the shallow cove in front of his wreck of a cottage and watched a lobster boat pull up to the lobster-pound dock, gulls swooping around everywhere. He’d once had a gull grab a ham sandwich right out of his hand.
Luke was on the phone, bitching him out. “You moron. Betsy saw you and that FBI agent arguing.”
“We weren’t arguing. He thought I was having a heart attack.”
Luke snorted. “And you believed him?”
“No, but so what?”
Teddy walked out onto a flat, gray rock, the water around it not two inches deep at low tide. It was more or less a puddle—a tide pool, he guessed it was called. It bled into a stretch of gray mud and small, water-smoothed rocks.
“Nothing happened,” he went on. “Relax. Anybody asks, I’m watching Zoe for you, making sure she doesn’t get in over her head like last year. Because you care about her. Because Patrick West was your friend and Olivia West had a soft spot for you and you figure you owe them.”
“I don’t want people to know you and I have any connection—”
“Relax, will you? You should have thought this through before you asked me to spy on an FBI agent—”
“I don’t have to listen to this,” Luke hissed.
“Nurse Betsy say anything to you? She likes to have blueberry pie on the sly, you know. Probably figures you’ll think your arteries will clog just from watching her chow down.”
“Where are you now?”
“Cooling my heels. If McGrath spotted me skulking around your ex-cop sweetie, she could have, too. I’ll go on back to town in a few minutes.”
“Be discreet,” Luke snapped, condescending, irritable.
“Why’d you agree to hire me if you’re getting cold feet this fast? Jesus—”
“Don’t get the wrong idea, Shelton. I’m not afraid of either one of them. I just don’t want them meddling in her father’s murder investigation. It’ll just make matters worse and won’t lead to his killer. McGrath has no right to stir up trouble.” Luke breathed heavily, as if he might hyperventilate. “The West sisters have suffered enough.”
Right. Like he’d hired Teddy because he was worried about Zoe and Christina West’s feelings. Teddy watched the lobster boat ease on back around the point, toward the small, protected harbor. The temperature was going down, nightfall coming earlier and earlier. He could feel the bite of winter in the air. Luke’d be heading south soon. Teddy didn’t have any firm plans, but he had no intention of spending another winter in Maine.
“I think your instincts about our Special Agent McGrath are on target,” Teddy said. “The guy’s trouble. I don’t care if the old cemeteries around here are full of his ancestors, he’s here because there’s an unsolved murder.”
“It’s been bad enough having the state investigators snooping—” Luke sighed. “I should have thrown you off my boat that night you showed up here.”
Teddy knew he wasn’t referring to the night a week ago when Luke had asked Teddy to keep an eye on McGrath, and Zoe if she came back, but to a night more than a year ago. “But you didn’t, did you?” Teddy walked backward off his rock. “You sold me a gun you weren’t supposed to sell me.”
“What’s your game, Shelton?” Luke’s voice was low, not so arrogant now. A touch of fear in it. “Because if you’re playing me—”
“Relax. Go hump Nurse Betsy. I’ll stay in touch.”
Teddy clicked off. He felt almost smug—that’d teach the bastard to try to get the upper hand with him. He went back up to the cottage, a one-bedroom with cracked linoleum and cheap furnishings, and got his truck keys and headed out. He almost ran into Bruce’s truck on its way out from the lobster pound. Teddy waved. The guy was amazing. His first instinct was to like people. He was totally undiscriminating. It’d never occur to him his buddy Teddy had an illegal arsenal in the jump seat. Grenades, semiautomatic assault weapons, so-called large capacity feeding devices.
Nah, not Bruce. He was oblivious.
Bruce slowed to a crawl and stuck his head out his window. “You play darts? Come by Perry’s later. Maybe you can beat the FBI agent.”
Teddy didn’t know what to say. “Okay. Yeah, I’ll see you later.”
* * *
Zoe drove out to a market south of town and bought staples, like bread, juice, milk and cereal, then stopped at a farm store for local produce—Cortland apples, butternut squash, potatoes, carrots, fall spinach. She bought a jug of apple cider and a half-dozen cider doughnuts, eating one on the way back through the village.
She stopped at her childhood home, now her sister’s home, and let the engine idle while she gripped the wheel with both hands and thought about the break-in. Her father had insisted on locks on the doors. He was chief of police. He wasn’t going to make it easy for anyone to just walk in. He’d once stopped by Olivia’s with a lock for her porch door, but she distracted him with some other project—locks made her feel like she was in prison. One was enough. The logic of having locks on both her doors defeated her.
“Oh, Christ...”
The tears came out of nowhere. Zoe breathed in through her nose, trying to get control of herself. It’d been a year, and she still missed them both, her father, her great-aunt. They’d always been there. The rocks of her life. Her anchors. Everything they’d ever wanted in life was right here. She could talk Washington, D.C., and world events and federal law enforcement with Stick Monroe—with her dad and Aunt Olivia, it had always been about Goose Harbor.
Zoe wiped her cheeks with her fingertips and ate another cider doughnut.
Maybe if she stayed in town, she could make her peace with not knowing who’d killed her father, or why, or if Olivia’s death was in any way related.
I know who killed him.
“Ah, Aunt Olivia. Where’s Jen Periwinkle when we need her?”
Jen used her wits to distinguish good clues from bad clues—and there were always clues. The police had Patrick West’s body and the two bullets that had killed him. That was all.
Zoe pushed back her thoughts, her overwhelming sense of grief, and instead of driving back through town and fighting the leaf-peepers, she took the tangle of back streets, passing inns and summer houses, smaller homes owned by year-round locals, until she came out on Ocean Drive just above the nature preserve named for her great-aunt.
She turned onto a gravel road and drove a hundred yards to a parking area and visitors’ center amid a pine grove. This time she got out of her car. The air was cooler here, a slight breeze stirring. She looked up at the pine needles etched against the cloudless blue of the sky, heard birds in the distance—it was migrating season for hawks.
The preserve’s self-guided trails were open from dawn until dusk. Zoe found herself on the wide, three-mile gravel loop trail. She’d come out here to run ever since she was a teenager. After she’d resigned from the state police, she’d run the loop trail every day to train for the FBI Academy. She remembered how excited she was about her future, how her life had seemed to stretch before her. Now she didn’t know what would come next. It was enough to plan dinner. She sometimes wondered if that was why she’d responded to the rhythms of the Jericho farm, milking and feeding the goats, harvesting the garden. Even with knitting, she had to stay focused on the present.
She passed interpretive signs describing the wildlife and plant life, the geology of southern Maine’s curving coastline and broad stretches of beaches, the cluster of three small offshore islands with their tricky currents and narrow passages. There were benches for birdwatching and scenic views, but she didn’t stop for anything.
The bright yellow leaves of a dozen thin birch trees told her she was close to Stewart’s Cove. She slowed her pace, her throat tightening with tension, anticipation. It was late in the afternoon, and most of the tourists had left. She was aware that she was alone, possibly no one even within shouting distance.
Except for J. B. McGrath.
He was standing on a flat, wet rock that would be covered soon as the tide rose. It was about three yards from where she’d found her father.
“It’s a beautiful spot,” he said.
She nodded tightly, fighting the images of a year ago. Her father sprawled on his stomach. His blood had seeped into the wet sand and shallow water of the rising tide.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I saw your car and followed you. I came around the other way—I didn’t expect to beat you here.” His smile was surprisingly gentle. “No need for a sharp stick.”
She edged closer to the water. The wind caught her in the face, and she wished she’d worn a jacket. She crossed her arms over her chest and tried to focus on the cresting waves out beyond the mouth of the small cove. J.B. didn’t move from his rock. She let her gaze settle on him, realized he was a good-looking man, rugged, sexy, undoubtedly an independent type if he’d survived as an FBI undercover agent for any length of time.
“First time you’ve been back here?” he asked quietly.
She nodded. “It’s a beautiful spot. So peaceful. My father was trying to lower his blood pressure and cholesterol, so he’d taken up walking before work. But he was in uniform. CID’s inclined to think he was meeting someone, either here in the preserve or shortly after his walk. He stopped at Aunt Olivia’s that morning. She was always up early.”
“Did you have a chance to ask her what they discussed?”
“Her revised obituary. Dad thought she was morbid.”
J.B. smiled and moved off his rock, his shoes sinking into the wet sand. He joined her on the packed, dry sand of the short stretch of beach. “I understand the police don’t believe his body was moved. He was shot here.”
“The shooter could have come in by boat or by land—it wouldn’t be hard to stay concealed. At that hour, lobster boats would be out or heading out, but they’re in deep water this time of year.” She sighed, bile rising in her throat, and she wished she hadn’t eaten so much, could feel the pie and doughnuts churning in her stomach. “It’s not for me to investigate my father’s death. That was made clear to me last fall.”
“You run roughshod over everyone?”
