Safe Harbor

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  Holly gasped. "That's my grandmother's ring. Give me that!" she said, snatching it out of his hand.

  "What can I say."

  Sam said, "And meanwhile you're crawling all over the island because—why? You didn't believe that Eden had given away the money?"

  "Shit, I didn't know what to believe. First I hear she's missing, presumed dead. Then suddenly she's in touch, saying she'll try to get me the money back. Then she says it's already gone to the hospital. Then she says she'll pay it back in installments. Then, a day later, she ships me the ring as a sign of good faith. No addresses during any of this; she's on a boat, she says."

  Holly muttered, "How the heck does she keep track of her lies?"

  "Meanwhile, I'm doing some checking around," Hans said grimly, "and I find out there's a Vixen on the Vineyard, just like the newspaper says, only now it's getting fitted out for a long voyage. Uh-huh. Like she's gonna pay me from Tahiti."

  "Very perceptive. Eden's good at playing all ends toward the middle."

  Hans shrugged and said, "Makes no difference to me. I'll get my money if I have to go to Tahiti to do it."

  "Sam, we have to stop her!"

  "Don't worry," said Sam. "Your father won't be taking Eden to the south Pacific or anywhere else. He's finally figured her out."

  But that didn't mean that their problems were solved. "Do you have any rope around?" he asked Holly.

  Holly perked up. Something to do. "Of course!" she said, completely revived by now.

  He had to be careful not to grin like an idiot and to pay attention to the task at hand. When she brought him a sturdy line, he said, "You know how to use a gun?"

  "A gun, are you crazy? But I know how to use a rope."

  Sam moved in closer, keeping the semiauto aimed at the chest of the luckless collector. Holly had the man bagged and tied to the chair just as sirens began wailing in the distance.

  They walked outside to wait for the cops, but by now Sam was wild with impatience to track down Eden. He said, "Explain everything to the police when they arrive. I've got to go after Eden before she takes off with the money again."

  "What? And leave me here? I'm going with you."

  "No way."

  "Yes I am. Get used to it, Sam."

  Get used to it. Sam loved the idea of getting used to Holly Anderson, but then and there didn't seem like the time and place to say so. So he grunted something that might or might not have been permission, and when the police arrived they gave them a quick rundown and were told to go to the station to fill out a report. Hans was hauled away, and the paramedics cleaned Holly's wound. After trying unsuccessfully to get her to return with them to the hospital for follow-up care, they left with their wagon.

  By then Sam had moved Holly's pickup to the front of the barn.

  "Let's go," he said, as good as his word. "If I'm right about where the money's hidden, we might still be in time."

  "But you said that my father is done with her," said Holly, climbing up to the passenger's seat.

  "Yeah, well, I've been wrong before," Sam acknowledged.

  "Have you," she said with a sly sideways look, and he had his inkling of what was to come in their old age.

  It was a wonderful inkling. He got behind the wheel and was about to put the truck into drive when he thought, What the hell am I doing?

  He turned to her instead and said urgently, "First things first. I haven't said I love you. I love you, Holly. Madly. Truly. I love you." To the rumble of thunder he leaned over to kiss her—not a long kiss, not a kiss that was going to lead to anything like imminent sex; but a kiss that was meant to reestablish the connection between them. It was a little like plugging in an electric cord. Now he had the power to see.

  "I love you," he said again, "and I'm sorry."

  "I love you," she answered, her breath fanning warm against his lips, "and you're forgiven. Now let's go find your parents' money."

  "Technically, it's not their money," he felt bound to say as he took off, spinning shells in the pickup's wake. "The Durer's a fake, after all."

  "So what?" Holly answered, sounding outraged at his scruples. "You saw Hans. How do you think he made that money? Selling tie-dyed tee shirts on a Boston sidewalk? He's a criminal; he got the money exploiting people. I can't imagine a more just scenario than Hans in jail with a forgery hanging on his cell wall, and your parents having a little security in their old age. Don't you dare tell them it was a forgery."

  "Okay," Sam agreed, awed by her absolute conviction of right and wrong. "Have you ever considered becoming a federal magistrate?"

  "Sure, as soon as I finish med school. Oh—shoot; it's starting to rain. At least it held off for the crowds at the Camp Ground."

  After a spatter of raindrops, the skies opened and torrents of rain pounded them, washing over the pickup in blinding sheets and forcing them to slow to a crawl.

  "This'll slow Eden down, too, hopefully," Sam said, wiping the inside of the windshield with the palm of his hand.

  "Why are you so convinced she's trying to get aboard the boat if my father's on to her?" Holly asked again.

  "I dunno. I guess, because she's Eden. Nothing can stop her. She just keeps going and going and going."

  "How did my dad figure out her game?"

  "He, ah, overheard her proposition me." Among other things.

  "Yikes! In the middle of the Camp Ground?"

  He was relieved that Holly didn't press on with a third degree, wanting every little detail of the confrontation between Eden and him. It was a sign, the very first sign, that she was prepared to begin trusting him.

  "You know what?" he said, reaching over for her hand. "I love you."

  "And so does Eden, it sounds like," Holly said ruefully.

  "Nah. She needed me to explain to my parents why the money wouldn't be coming, that's all; she had to get me involved in whatever way she could. It was all part of her plan, along with convincing Eric that she had in fact paid my folks the money. She knew Eric would never have insulted her by verifying it. After that, I imagine she planned to squeeze him for some or all of the amount to pay back Hans."

  "You're right about my dad not wanting to check with your parents. But how could he not have missed the ring? He's not that blind."

  Sam said, "She could have told him she'd lost it overboard while they were sailing. He would have believed it. He wanted to believe."

  I know how it feels, Sam thought, amazed to realize that he didn't have to cross his fingers and hope for the best anymore.

  The squall passed on, leaving them rolling down the windows in search of a breeze. "My next truck will have air conditioning," promised Holly.

  "Our next truck," Sam said. It was as close to a proposal as he could come, encumbered as he was. But oh, that our tasted sweet on his lips.

  They drove through huge puddles, sending sheets of water flying in both directions, and turned off into the marina where the Vixen was berthed. The air temperature had dropped maybe five or ten degrees, but the rumble of thunder told them that the evening's fireworks weren't yet over.

  "If she's not here, then what?" Holly asked as they parked the car.

  "Let's first find out if she is or not."

  She wasn't—but then, neither was the Vixen.

  Chapter 30

  The Vixen's slip was empty, though that hadn't been the case a couple of hours earlier. Holly, for one, couldn't believe it.

  She stood in the spitting rain and said, "Unless my father was drugged or hypnotized, I don't see how Eden—even Eden—could have talked him into taking the boat out now."

  They had heard on the weather radio that a line of severe squalls was going to pound the island for the next couple of hours. Boaters had been advised to seek shelter immediately, and in fact a sailboat was headed—much too fast—directly for the Vixen's empty berth even as they stood on the float overlooking it. The man on the bow, wearing a foul-weather jacket and holding a coiled dock line in his hand, was shouting over
the wind to his wife on the helm; "Hard astern, hard astern!"

  But the boat kept coming forward, bouncing off a piling before heading toward the float where Sam and Holly were standing. They jumped out of the way as the boat slammed directly into it, its bow nudging over the edge like a friendly horse in search of an apple. Sam grabbed the bow rail to steady the vessel, while Holly caught a dockline from the owner and secured it with a half-hitch to the nearest bit.

  "Lash it to the bit!" shouted the owner, still issuing orders after the fact.

  He jumped down to the float and, with Sam and Holly's help, tied down the boat fore and aft in the darkness, doubling up on the spring lines against the wind, which was now driving walls of on-and-off rain before it.

  By the time they were done the squall had passed, leaving Sam and Holly soaked through. The owner of the boat thanked them, blaming his seamanship on his wife, who was below—probably packing a bag before she ran away.

  Sam said, "Did you pass any boats going out as you came in?"

  The owner laughed and said, "Yeah. A single nutcase, headed on a course for Woods Hole."

  "Sailboat, or power?"

  "Sail, but moving under power and not getting very far in those choppy seas."

  "Size?"

  "I don't know—forty, forty-some feet. Why?"

  "You didn't see the name on the transom, by any chance?" asked Holly. "Or whether the dodger was a dark color? Or how many people were aboard?"

  "At the time, I wasn't paying much attention," the sailor said dryly. "I passed it near the gong off West Chop."

  Holly turned to Sam. "Now what? We don't even know if my dad's on board."

  In thirty more seconds, they had their answer to that one, at least: Eric Anderson appeared on the dock, just as drenched as they were.

  "Dad!" cried Holly as he approached. "Then Eden really is on the boat alone?"

  "She must be—crazy fool," said her father. "She can't handle the Vixen alone on a night like this!" His voice held more agony than outrage, although Holly couldn't tell whether that was for the boat's sake or for Eden's.

  Another wave of heavy rain, simultaneous with a roar of wind, drove down on them, making it almost impossible to hear. The owner scrambled back aboard to the comfort of his boat, heedless of the fact that he was a poacher.

  With her back to the driving rain, Holly shouted to her father, "Where were you when she was stealing your boat, for God's sake?"

  He echoed Holly's posture, presenting his back to the onslaught of weather. "She asked to meet me at the Bouchards," he said, raising his voice over the howl of the wind. "Said she wanted to give me my ring back. I was confused ... she'd told me she'd lost it ... But I went out there anyway ... they hadn't seen her. When I got back here, the boat was gone. I've just got off the radio with the Coast Guard ... they won't go after it until the weather clears," he said as he staggered off balance under a gust of wind.

  "We think she's headed for Woods Hole," said Sam, bowing his head to avert the stinging rain.

  "She'll never be able to take that boat through Woods Hole herself, not against the current; she doesn't know the channel!"

  "We need a fast boat," Sam decided, looking around him through squinty eyes. He looked as if he was about to steal the first one he saw.

  Holly had a more legal idea. "Dad—do you still have keys to Robby's Robalo?"

  Holding his forearm above his eyes as a visor against the pounding rain, her father nodded and said, "That's where I called the Coast Guard from just now."

  "Sam," she said, turning to him. "What do you think?"

  "We can find her if she's running with nav lights on."

  "What if she's not?"

  "We come back and let the big boys go out later on."

  Holly turned back to her father. "Dad! We can do it!"

  "Nothing doing," he said flatly. "You're not risking your neck for a boat." Even as he said it, the rain began letting up.

  "The Robalo's fast and can handle this weather," Holly argued. "Look—the squall's passed over already! And we'll be in open water; I promise we won't chase her into Woods Hole. Dad, please! Let me have the Robalo," she pleaded. "We'll be right back with it."

  She sounded as if she were begging for the keys to the van to dash off for ice cream. It was the perfect note to strike, and it helped that it was no longer raining.

  "The Petersons are aboard the Saracen," father said. "I'll be there, monitoring channel sixty-eight. Make sure you stay in touch. I mean it, Holly. Just because you grew up on boats—"

  "Keys, keys!" she said, trying not to jump up and down with impatience.

  He fished them out for her and repeated, "I mean it, Holly. You will stay in touch."

  "Yes, yes, come on, Sam, let's go."

  She was on fire for the chase and she had no idea why. Because of Eden, Sam, her father, her mother? Because she already loved the Steadmans and wanted them to live long and happy lives?

  Yes to all of it, but especially because of Eden.

  I want to catch her. I don't want to see her get away with this.

  It was an unfair world; Holly knew that. But if she could do anything to tweak the scales of justice to weigh a little more evenly, then by God ...

  "You should see the expression on your face," Sam said as they passed the breakwater and she opened the throttle. "You look like Charles Bronson."

  "I do not," said Holly, embarrassed. She altered course for the number four nun. "I was just concentrating, that's all. I think Robby keeps some spare jackets in a locker somewhere," she added. "You want to take the helm while I look?"

  "I thought you'd never ask," Sam said, grinning. Holly knew the buoys like the back of her hand—but Sam knew how to ride a fast boat.

  The worst of the weather seemed to have passed; visibility was distinctly improved, and the seas were dying down. Holly saw a star or two peep through the scudding clouds overhead. It was exhilarating, being on a boat with Sam at night on the Sound. If he'd ask her to sail to the ends of the earth with him just then, she'd say yes without thinking twice. How unlike her mother she was that way.

  I don't care. I'll go with him around the world or around the corner, as long as I can go with him.

  "Nice boat," said Sam with a boyish grin. "We'll have to get one of these. You like fishing?"

  Or, I'll go fishing. As long as I can go with him.

  "Sam, you still haven't told me where she hid the money on the Vixen," Holly said after she'd found rain jackets for each, of them. "Where could she hide it where my dad wouldn't see it?"

  Sam steered with his knees as he zipped up his jacket. "It's just a theory, of course, but the fact that she had to take the whole damn boat away from the marina makes me feel more confident about it. You remember how she stuck to the boat in Portsmouth? I went up there and found the boatyard that did the repairs. The yard hands all remember her—"

  "Gee, I wonder why."

  "Not only for the usual reasons. They said she was fascinated by the fiberglass repairs they were doing to the engine bed. That amazed them; it's a messy, smelly job with very little glamour to it. I'm reckoning that before Eric returned to Portsmouth from his trip to Providence, she fiberglassed the money—protected, of course—to the inside of the hull."

  "You're right, you're right! It's obvious to me now. But—she'll need to chisel or ax it out."

  "And if you're trying not to be noticed, the best place to do that—assuming you have a careful hand—is at sea."

  "Oh, my God; could she actually sink the Vixen trying?"

  Sam said grimly, "Let's hope not."

  The mood became more somber then; Holly couldn't quite recapture the illusion that they were on a starlight cruise. In the open runabout, she could feel that the air had turned damp and chill again. Definitely, the wind was picking up; the seas were getting choppier. She zipped up her jacket, then pulled up the hood, then tightened the drawstring around her bottom, all in an escalating effort to keep warm.
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  The binoculars were good ones. Even in the dark, she was able to identify a variety of marine traffic, nearly all of it commercial, plying its way across the Sound: the last ferry of the night, headed for the Vineyard from Wood's Hole; a tug, towing a barge; a fishing boat with booms extended; a luxury yacht steaming for Nantucket. As for smaller craft, they seemed to have heeded the marine warning and run for cover; there were none around.

  "Either that, or Eden is running without lights."

  "Wait, I see—no; it's just a little cabin cruiser," said Holly, disappointed. She let the binoculars hang around her neck as she rubbed her eyes, then scanned the sky overhead. No stars, and lowering visibility. Damn it. She'd been overconfident about the weather. Flashes of lightning to the north and west told her what she didn't want to know: that the squalls, like a gang of marauding bikers, weren't done with them yet.

  "Maybe we should think about heading back," she ventured as she returned to scanning the near-empty waters with the glasses.

  Sam glanced at her, and she knew he was disappointed. But he said, "No problem. Raise your father on the radio and let-him know. He'll feel better."

  "Ohmigosh, my father. I forgot all about him." She was touched that Sam had not.

  She was about to put down the binoculars when she spied a dim red light close to the water, bobbing up and down. She snapped into a state of high alertness. "Sam," she said.

  "Where?"

  "Head fifteen degrees more west."

  He altered direction. She said, "There. A sailboat, dead in the water. Sam, I think it's the Vixen. Hold this course," she said, barely able to contain her excitement. "What time is it?"

  He punched the light button on his watch. "Eight after eleven."

  She made a mental note of it and said, "Let's kill the nav lights; we'll be okay for a little while."

  He did, and they began closing in on the stolen vessel. A few minutes later, Sam slowed down the Robalo, minimizing the noise of its engines as well.

  "The dinghy is tied alongside, ready to go," said Holly. Her arms were aching from holding the binoculars so long. "She must be planning to abandon the Vixen and head for the nearest shore in the tender after she retrieves the money."