Elias could have reached out and touched him. Or stuck out a foot and sent Swinton sprawling. He did neither.
Instead, he followed his uninvited guest at a discreet distance. Swinton ran around to the front of the cottage and pounded down the narrow, tree-lined drive that led back to the main road.
His car was parked behind a stand of fir trees. He yanked open the door, leaped into the driver’s seat, and started the engine. He did not turn on his headlights until he was a hundred yards down the road.
Elias waited at the edge of the drive for a few minutes, curious to see whether Swinton would head back toward the Voyagers’ compound or into town. The headlights turned left when they reached the intersection. Toward Whispering Waters Cove.
Elias walked slowly back to the cottage. He went up the porch steps and opened the front door. He removed his shoes and went into the house.
Crazy Otis was muttering anxiously beneath his covered cage.
“It’s all right, Otis. I’m here.”
Otis calmed and then, true to form, turned a bit surly. “Hsss.”
“My sentiments, exactly.” Elias did not turn on the lights. He went to the window Swinton had used for his breaking and entering. “He either got lucky or he was watching the place all evening. When he saw me leave to take Charity home, he probably assumed I’d spend the night at her place.”
“Heh-heh-heh.”
“Yeah. Heh-heh-heh. Little did he know that I was using the evening as a Tal Kek Chara exercise in self-discipline and restraint.” Elias gazed out into the night. “Idiot.” He paused. “In case you’re wondering, Otis, I was referring to myself, not Swinton.”
“Heh-heh-heh.”
Elias walked through the small cottage. The bare decor left few potential hiding places. It would not have taken Swinton long to go through the limited possibilities.
“I don’t like guests who forget to remove their shoes, Otis.”
Elias was not surprised to see that the only thing that appeared to have been disturbed was the carved chest in the bedroom. One glance inside revealed that Swinton had pawed through the contents.
The one item in the chest that Elias cared about, Hayden Stone’s journal, was still safe at the bottom. He picked it up and turned it in his hands. He had not been able to bring himself to read it yet.
He replaced the journal and closed the lid of the chest slowly. It was possible that, having struck out at the house, Swinton had headed into town in order to break into Charms & Virtues. Elias hoped he wouldn’t make too much of a mess.
“Everyone here in Whispering Waters Cove seems to think I’m a man of mystery, Otis.” He went into the bathroom to turn on the shower. “Hope they’re not too disappointed when they find out I’m just an innocent, hardworking shopkeeper with no ulterior real estate motives.”
“Heh-heh-heh.”
Elias emerged from the shower a few minutes later. He rolled out the futon and settled down on it. He folded his arms behind his head and contemplated the shadowy ceiling.
“So, Otis, what was it like, sleeping in Charity’s bedroom?”
“Heh-heh-heh.”
6
Water is deepest beneath the place where it appears the most calm on the surface.
—“On the Way of Water,” from the journal of Hayden Stone
The sight of Phyllis Dartmoor striding briskly into Whispers on Saturday morning did not brighten Charity’s day. The mayor of Whispering Waters Cove looked even more determined and aggressive than usual. Charity wished she could duck out of the back door, but there wasn’t time.
That would have been the coward’s way out, anyway, she told herself. It was just unfortunate that she’d had very little sleep, having spent the long night instead lying awake, trying to analyze Elias.
It had not been a productive task. She had replayed the final scene at her front door a thousand times, and by dawn she had been forced to conclude that she’d had a narrow escape.
Sure, she had laughed at the time, even teased Elias. But in the cold, harsh light of day, it was clear that she had been in an unfamiliar, extraordinarily reckless mood last night. Make that the whole of the last week. Playing with fire, that’s what she was doing. Not like her at all. That kiss on the bluff a few days ago had done weird things to her.
Amazing what could happen to one’s normal sense of caution when one realized that one no longer suffered from panic attacks in a man’s embrace.
Today it was breathtakingly obvious that she could easily have been swept up into a very dangerous liaison last night. And it would have been her own fault. She had spent the whole evening flirting outrageously. She had wanted Elias to lose control again, the way he had on the bluff. She had wanted to see the passion flare in his eyes, feel his strong, sexy hands on her, know that she could turn him on.
Thank heavens Elias had been into his Zenny-mode last night. In his effort to affirm his own prodigious powers of self-control, he had given her a chance to come to her senses.
Breathing space. That was what he had inadvertently given her last night. Breathing space. This morning she was resolved to take advantage of it.
She needed time. She needed to think things through. Before she made any major moves, she needed to know a hell of a lot more about Elias Winters. She must remember Davis’s advice. Watch your step with Winters. Rumor has it he’s not just a player, he’s a winner. Every time.
No two ways about it, she’d had a very close call.
Whatever was fated to happen between herself and Elias would definitely have to be postponed until they were better acquainted. Much better acquainted.
Blah, blah, blah.
She’d been giving herself the same lecture for hours. The words were a litany in her brain. She was beginning to sound like Crazy Otis.
“Good morning, Charity.” The heels of Phyllis’s Italian pumps clicked sharply on the shop floor.
“Hello, Phyllis.” Charity stationed herself squarely behind the counter. “Something tells me you didn’t come in to buy a book. Are you here on business or politics?”
“A little of both.” Phyllis came to a halt and favored Charity with a cool smile that was all width and no depth. It was a practiced, charming smile that showed a lot of white, capped teeth.
It would have been easy to dislike Phyllis, Charity thought. After all, the two of them had become fierce adversaries as they did battle over the fate of Crazy Otis Landing. Their confrontations at town council meetings had already become legendary in Whispering Waters Cove. But Charity had been cursed from Day One of their association with a deeply rooted sense of sympathy for her new nemesis.
She knew her empathy was ridiculous, and she took great pains to conceal it, but she was unable to shake it. Phyllis reminded her of the person she, herself, had once been. A classic overachiever. A driven workaholic, obsessively goal-oriented. She wondered if Phyllis had ever had a panic attack.
Phyllis had a law degree from the University of Washington. She ran her own law practice in Whispering Waters Cove. She fulfilled her duties as town mayor with tireless energy. In her free time she campaigned for all the right candidates in state elections and got herself invited to the right cocktail parties in Seattle and Olympia.
She was a tall, sleek woman in her mid-thirties. Her sophistication would have caused her to stand out in Seattle. In a small town like Whispering Waters Cove, she stood out so much she looked out of place.
Phyllis was the only woman in town who habitually wore a suit. Today’s version had been crisply tailored in summer-weight linen that was already properly crumpled even though it was only five minutes after ten. The jacket was equipped with impressive shoulder pads that gave her figure a strong forties’ silhouette.
Phyllis drove to Seattle every month to have her light brown hair cut in a dashing wedge. After Jennifer Pitt had given every woman in town a taste for sculpted nails, Phyllis had become a regular at Nails by Radiance. The special color Radiance had created for her wa
s called Dartmoor Mauve.
“Are you alone?” Phyllis glanced around the obviously empty bookshop.
“At the moment. My assistant went to get himself an iced latte at Bea’s place and it’s a little early for weekend tourists. What can I do for you?”
“I wanted to talk to you about the new owner of Crazy Otis Landing.”
“Why don’t you talk to him, instead?”
“I’ve already tried that.” Phyllis’s mouth tightened. “He was civil but completely uncooperative. Kept wanting to discuss water, of all things.”
“You went to see Elias?” Charity was horrified by the very unpleasant twinge that shot through her. She prayed it was not jealousy.
“Ran into him at the post office. He acted totally disinterested in what I had to say.”
Charity relaxed a little. “So? What do you expect me to do?”
Phyllis lowered her voice to a gratingly confidential tone. “I understand the two of you are seeing each other.”
“Every day.” Charity smiled blandly. “Can’t miss each other, what with both of us running shops right here on the same pier.”
“That’s not what I meant, and I think you know it.” A steely expression appeared in Phyllis’s eyes. “The rumor is that you’ve started seeing him socially.”
Charity was amazed. She had made no effort to keep last night’s date a secret, but she certainly hadn’t broadcast the news, either. Elias must have mentioned their dinner to someone, who had, in turn, spread it immediately all over the cove.
“Nothing like a small town for gossip, is there?” Charity muttered.
“Look, I’ll be blunt. It’s common knowledge that Winters is not just the new proprietor of that ridiculous curio shop at the other end of the pier. He’s the new owner of this entire landing.” Phyllis leaned closer. “And, he’s also the head of a very high-stakes consulting company called Far Seas, Inc.”
“So?”
“So he’s a player. The question is, what game is he playing?”
Charity smiled grimly. “Whatever it is, I can guarantee that he’s writing his own rules.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.” Phyllis tapped one long, Dartmoor Mauve nail on the counter. “Winters is up to something. There’s a lot of speculation going on, but the bottom line is that no one really knows what he intends to do with the Landing. That’s why we need your help.”
“We?”
“Those of us who care about the future of this town. You’re the only one who’s established any sort of relationship with him.”
“Phyllis, I don’t know what the rumors were like by the time they reached you, but I can assure you that it was just dinner, not an engagement party.”
“Look, this isn’t a joke. No one else around here can get a straight answer out of Winters.”
“He doesn’t exactly specialize in straight answers,” Charity admitted.
“You know as well as I do that the town council has had its eye on Crazy Otis Landing for some time now. Hayden Stone was impossible. As long as he owned the pier, there was no hope of upgrading the shops. But now that he’s gone, we want to convince Winters that it’s in his own best interests to cooperate with the council’s plans.”
“There’s that word ‘we’ again. It makes me nervous.”
“The members of the council and I want you to join our team, Charity. It’s time we stopped arguing about the future of this pier and worked together to make it the centerpiece of the new Whispering Waters Cove.”
“I like it the way it is.”
“Where’s your sense of vision?” Phyllis demanded. “You were once a successful businesswoman. With the obvious exception of Elias Winters, you’re the only one on this pier with a head for business. The rest of these misfits couldn’t make a profit running a hotdog stand at a Fourth of July Parade.”
Charity felt her temper stir. Sooner or later it always came down to this with Phyllis. “The shopkeepers of Crazy Otis Landing are not misfits. They’ve single-handedly kept this pier alive for the town for the past twenty years. Everyone else considered it an eyesore until recently.”
“Alive?” Phyllis waved one beautifully manicured hand in an exasperated gesture. “You call this alive? You’ve got three shops standing empty. They’ve been empty for years.”
“We’ll get them rented sooner or later.”
“No smart businessperson is going to open a store on this pier until there’s some guarantee that the image of the landing will be improved.”
“You don’t have to evict all of the present tenants in order to improve the landing,” Charity snapped. “We’re doing a good job of building business all by ourselves. Foot traffic here on the pier has tripled this summer. Bea’s pulling in tourists with her espresso machine. Radiance has brought in local people with her nail parlor. Yappy’s booked several birthday parties down at the carousel. Ted’s T-shirt sales have skyrocketed. And I’m doing just fine with my bookstore, thank you very much.”
“You can’t stand in the way of progress, for God’s sake.”
“I can stand anywhere I like.”
Phyllis drew an audible breath. “I didn’t come here to argue with you.”
“Really? I would never have guessed.”
“Be reasonable, Charity. I came to enlist you on the side of the future. We need your help. You stand to benefit from a revitalized pier as much as anyone does. This bookshop of yours would work beautifully in an upscale version of Crazy Otis Landing. Help us convince Winters to cooperate.”
Charity leaned both elbows on the counter and clasped her hands. She eyed Phyllis with a mixture of caution and growing fascination. “Let us say, for the sake of argument, that I was willing to help you accomplish your plans. How, exactly, do you expect me to convince Elias to cooperate with the council?”
Phyllis pounced on the small opening. “We need you to talk to him. Find out what he plans to do with the pier. We want to work with him.”
“Work with him?”
“We’re all interested in upgrading Crazy Otis Landing. If he’s brokering a deal for off-shore investors, which is what Leighton Pitt implies, we need to know that.”
Charity stared at her in growing amazement. “You want me to spy for you.”
Phyllis scowled, then turned red beneath her makeup. “You’re overdramatizing this, Charity. We’re just asking you to do your civic duty.”
“Hmm. Did you ever see an old Hitchcock film called Notorious? Forties’ spy thriller with Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman? Ingrid has to seduce and marry the bad guy in order to keep tabs on him. Everyone tells her it’s her duty.”
Phyllis’s eyes narrowed. “I fail to see the relevance.”
“I guess you’re right. I really don’t look much like Ingrid Bergman, do I?” She broke off when she realized that Newlin was standing in the doorway behind Phyllis.
Newlin hesitated, latte cup in hand. “Want me to wait outside, Charity?”
“It’s okay, Newlin.” Charity smiled at him. “The mayor and I have finished our little chat.”
Phyllis frowned at Newlin. Then she turned back to Charity. “Think about what I said. This is important to all of us. The future of this town may very well depend on what you decide to do.”
“Just this town? Gee, I dunno, Phyllis. Anything less than the fate of the free world seems like a waste of my talents.”
“You’re being extremely shortsighted.” Phyllis whirled and strode out of the shop without another word.
Newlin wandered back behind the counter. “Somethin’ wrong?”
“Nothing more than usual. The mayor is concerned about the pier.”
“She ought to spend more time worryin’ about having Hank Tybern arrest Gwendolyn Pitt.”
“Gwendolyn Pitt isn’t doing anything illegal,” Charity pointed out gently.
“Well, it oughta be illegal.” Newlin gulped down half of the iced latte. “The mayor sure worked hard enough to get rid of those Voyagers when they firs
t moved into town. Remember how at the beginning of July she was always sendin’ Tybern out to hassle ’em about health and safety violations?”
“I remember.”
“Then she just backed off for some reason.”
“Very wise of her. Phyllis came to the obvious conclusion that there wasn’t much she could do except wait it out. With any luck, the Voyagers will disband after the spaceships fail to show.”
“Maybe.” Newlin’s jaw tensed. “Maybe not. Folks can be real weird about stuff like that. Gwendolyn Pitt has a lot to answer for, if you ask me. Someone oughta do something about her. It ain’t right. It just ain’t right.”
Shortly before four o’clock, Elias hung up the new feather duster Charity had given him and looked at Crazy Otis.
“I’ve had it with the housecleaning. I still say Charity’s wrong. A little dust makes the place more interesting.”
Otis mumbled a response.
“There isn’t a customer in sight. I think we’ve had our rush for the day.” Elias moved closer to the perch. “Want to go see how Yappy’s doing on those repairs to the carousel?”
Otis bobbed his head and stepped onto Elias’s shoulder with regal dignity.
Elias strolled out of the shop, turned right, and headed toward the far end of the pier. He was feeling good today. The ebullient sense of anticipation that had descended on him last night still held in spite of the fact that he had been right about Rick Swinton.
Swinton had, indeed, paid a visit to the small back office of Charms & Virtues after making his late-night visit to the cottage. But other than scattering the contents of the trash can, which Swinton had apparently tripped over at some point, no damage had been done. Elias wondered what his midnight visitor had made of the mundane collection of invoices, catalogs, order forms, and sales receipts that filled the small file cabinet.
Elias made a note to call Craig Thorgood and have him look into Swinton’s background, as well as Gwendolyn Pitt’s.
The pier had been busy earlier in the day, but things had tapered off after four. Elias saw Newlin working at the counter of Whispers when he went past the shop. Newlin looked grim, as usual. There was no sign of Charity.
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