If it wasn’t too late.
She watched while Beau dropped anchor and moored to the buoy a few hundred yards offshore. He lowered the dinghy into the water, then helped them in, along with the basket Luisa had fixed.
When they were settled, he handed her a long, rectangular package wrapped in black plastic but didn’t offer any explanation. He climbed in after them, showed Alex how to wield the second set of oars, then started rowing the hundred yards or so to shore, muscles rippling beneath the knit shirt he wore.
She tried fiercely not to gawk, focusing on the seagulls wheeling and diving overhead and on Alex manfully attempting to help propel the dinghy through the water with both hands clenched together on one oar.
She was tempted to help him, then remembered what she’d been thinking earlier. She needed to let him try for himself.
Still, she didn’t comment when Alex stopped rowing after a few moments, panting hard.
What’s in the bag? Alex signed.
She related the question to Beau, who shed his prickly hide long enough to give the boy a grin. “A secret. I’m not telling.”
Pirate treasure? Alex asked.
Beau smiled again when she related the question. “Something like that. Tell him if he wants to find out, he’ll have to row. I need his muscle—I’m too weak to get us there by myself.”
Those muscles of his would probably row them clear to Vancouver if he wanted, she thought, then cursed herself for staring again, and relayed the message to Alex.
CHAPTER 10
Elizabeth hadn’t been to Port Ludlow before but she quickly fell in love with the picturesque area, enchanted by its neat, orderly houses and unspoiled views.
When they landed the dinghy, Beau and his little shadow spread a blanket on the beach and they quickly ate the lunch Luisa had fixed. Alex ate everything Beau did—though in much smaller quantities. Beau obviously enjoyed Luisa’s cooking. He had two helpings of her crispy-fried chicken and a second slice of chocolate cake.
After they finished and packed what little food remained back in the basket, Beau retrieved the mysterious package he had handed her earlier.
“Are you ready to see what’s inside?”
She translated for him, and both of them smiled as Alex nodded so vigorously his hat flopped off.
Beau stuck it back on again and then made a big show of setting the package on the blanket and preparing to unwrap it.
She had to admit she was as curious as Alex. She leaned forward as he pulled down the last package, then laughed at Alex’s indrawn breath of excitement.
Kite! Kite. Alex signed.
“Show me that one again,” Beau said.
Alex demonstrated, making an ASL K with his fingers then wiggling them upward like a kite dancing on the wind.
Beau tried it, then grinned at Alex’s nod of approval. The two of them bent their heads back to the colorful nylon kite in the shape of a fish.
Elizabeth sat back, content to watch them. She wanted to treasure every last moment of this day in her memory, collect it like a beachcomber after water-smoothed driftwood.
She wanted to stay forever, even as part of her wanted to leave immediately so she didn’t have to endure any more of the sweet torture, watching Alex lap up Beau’s attention like Maddie at her water dish after a hard run.
Okay, Beau signed. Ready.
“Did I do that right?” he asked her.
She nodded. “Perfect.”
For the next half hour the two of them raced up and down the beach with the kite dancing in the cool October breeze. After a while Beau turned control of the kite over to Alex and flopped down beside her.
“It’s hard work chasing that kid up and down the beach,” he said after taking a long swig from his water bottle.
She was intensely conscious of his long length stretched out beside her, the hard muscles relaxed but ready, the lock of dark hair flipping across his forehead.
“He does have a lot of energy,” she agreed. “You’ve been wonderful with him, Beau. Thank you for being willing to play with him.”
“It hasn’t been a hardship. He’s a great kid.”
They drifted into a not-uncomfortable silence, accompanied by the gulls and the waves licking the sand and by Alex’s giggling efforts to hold the kite against the wind.
“Who’s Mari?” The question she’d been wondering all day slipped out of her subconscious before she had time to consider the wisdom of asking it.
To her chagrin, he froze and she saw raw pain flicker through his green eyes.
“I’m sorry, Beau,” she said quickly. “Forget I asked. It’s…none of my business.”
He was quiet for a long time, until she began to wish for a nice strong undertow to carry her out to sea. She was so stupid. Stupid and jealous over someone she had no right to even care about.
When he finally spoke, his voice was low. “Mari was short for Marisa. She was Grace’s daughter.”
Elizabeth gazed at him, stunned. “Grace Dugan?”
He nodded and she sat back, trying to process the information. Grace had another child. She had never once mentioned her. Although Elizabeth did remember seeing a picture of a dark-eyed girl hanging in the Dugan home, she had somehow always assumed she was a sister or niece of Grace’s. But a daughter?
“Was she…yours?” she couldn’t resist asking.
He stared at her. “No! Of course not!”
He sounded so astonished by the very idea that she had no doubt whatsoever he was telling the truth. “She wasn’t mine biologically, anyway,” he continued in a milder voice. “But she might as well have been. We were pretty close.”
A dozen questions raced through her mind, but she was afraid to ask any of them.
“She was the funniest little kid,” Beau finally continued. “She was curious about everything and had this little brain that I swear went a million miles an hour. She loved the water, and the three of us used to take my old cruiser out just about every weekend to explore the islands around here. Mari always appointed herself first mate.”
Any other person might have missed the low undercurrent of grief in his voice. But she was used to watching for shades and nuances of speech, for body language that often conveyed more meaning than the words people said. Beau’s tone of voice was casual enough but his shoulders had tightened and his face had a distant look to it.
Her throat swelled with empathy, and she wanted to tell him to stop, that he didn’t need to go on. She started to open her mouth to say just that, then she closed it again, sensing perhaps he needed to talk about Grace Dugan’s child whom he had loved enough to name his boat after.
They sat in silence for several moments while the waves licked at the shore and the afternoon sunlight glistened on the water, creating a vast blue blanket of diamonds.
Finally she drew up her courage and asked, although her heart was already breaking for both him and for Grace at what she knew his answer would be. “What…what happened?”
He gazed at Whidbey Island in the distance, his features stony and his voice flat, emotionless. “She was killed three years ago when she was only eleven. Drive-by shooting.”
She had expected something grim but not that horrible. She wanted to rub her hand across the twinge in her chest, but she knew it wouldn’t take away the heartache.
Grace had never told her. She imagined it wasn’t one of those things that was easy to bring up in their casual conversation, but she wished she had known.
And Beau. As a cop, how he must have suffered to lose someone he loved in one of the very acts of violence he fought against.
As usual, she couldn’t find any words of comfort—were there any?—so she did the only thing she could think of. She reached across the space of blanket between them and covered his fingers with hers.
A look of surprise flickered across his strong features, then a tiny smile lifted the corners of his mouth. He turned his hand over and clasped hers and they sat that way for a long tim
e, their fingers entwined while the gulls cried out overhead and the rainbow-colored fish kite dipped and swayed in the wind.
* * *
Funny thing about some women. They were like barnacles—once one of them managed to wrap her sneaky way around a man’s softer side, he had a devil of a time shaking her off.
Elizabeth probably wouldn’t appreciate being compared to a barnacle, but Beau had a feeling when this case was over he’d have to dry dock his heart for a while just to pry her loose.
He did his best to restore a nice safe emotional distance between him and Elizabeth through the rest of their little outing. He made jokes and practiced sign language with Alex and taught her more about piloting a large motorcraft.
Through it all, he fought like hell to pretend he didn’t notice the low thrum of desire pulsing through him.
He did his best to ignore it. But every once in a while an errant sea breeze would pick up the scent of peaches and carry it over to tease and tantalize him, and his mouth would begin to water.
He could handle even that, but this new emotional tug between them was far more insidious. He should never have told her about Mari. The soft sympathy in those blue eyes had just about undone him. When she had reached out to do something as mundane as simply holding his hand, he’d been stunned into speechlessness.
Thick emotion flowed through him like warm, sticky syrup, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so touched.
They sat there for a while, hands entwined, until Alex tripped over a rock and let go of the kite and Beau had to jump up to retrieve the string.
They stayed on the beach flying the kite for an hour or so until Alex grew bored. He should have loaded them back onto the Mari and headed back to Seattle but he had to admit he was loath for the day to end. He suggested a hike, and Elizabeth was so enthusiastic about the idea he wondered if she might also want to stretch out their time together.
He took them up one of the twisting paths through thick evergreen forests. While they walked, with Alex racing a few yards ahead of their more sedate pace, he figured he ought to at least bring up the reason he’d invited her along.
“Do you want to talk about the party tomorrow and the questions you plan to ask Andrew?”
She grimaced. “Not really. But I suppose we’d better.”
“The way I see it, all we’re looking to do is verify he wrote the letter and gauge his reaction to being confronted with it. If he was involved in killing her, he’s obviously not going to come right out and admit anything. But he might reveal something that could be helpful.”
He plucked a pinecone from an overhanging branch and twirled it with his fingers while he talked. “Remember to let him do the talking. Just pause a lot, let him fill in the silence. It all comes down to listening to him. You’re good at that.”
He didn’t understand the sidelong look she sent him or the glint of humor in her eyes.
“I’ll do my best,” she promised.
“You’ll be fine. If nothing comes of it, we can go at him another way after the prosecutors get a conviction on the Benelli case.”
“Is it a big case?”
He thought of little Laura Benelli and how her photograph still haunted his dreams. “Big enough. A little girl was tortured and murdered. By her sick bastard of a father, no less.”
She took a quick indrawn breath, and he regretted telling her that. Ugly things certainly happened in her world of upscale shops and black-tie parties. The difference—one he knew entirely too well—was that money could make even the ugliest of secrets disappear.
He crushed the scales on the pinecone. “Our case is weak by evidentiary standards but I know he did it. I can’t take the risk of screwing the trial up until he’s convicted.”
“Beau, I understand. You don’t have to explain.”
If Andrew Sheffield had been a construction worker or a bus driver instead of a wealthy, well-respected justice, he probably would have been down at the station house answering questions right now. The thought didn’t sit well with his democratic principles.
“I’ve got a friend who’s a private investigator. He’s got all kinds of cool little gadgets. I’ll see if he can set me up with a hidden microphone and a receiver so I can listen in on your chat with Andrew.”
“Do you really think that’s…necessary?”
“Maybe not. But in this case four ears might be better than two. I might pick out something in the conversation you missed.”
“That shouldn’t be too difficult,” she muttered.
“Why not?”
But she had already hurried away from him to keep Alex from wandering too far ahead on his own.
They hiked for an hour, until they were all hot and tired. But soon he knew he couldn’t delay their return any longer if he wanted to get them home at a decent time. These were dangerous waters to navigate in the dark, with plenty of floating logs and other debris that could wreak havoc with an unsuspecting watercraft.
It was late afternoon by the time they hiked back down to the beach. This time he used the outboard motor on the dinghy and they boarded the Mari quickly.
Once on the cruiser again, Alex had at first been full of chatter, signing like crazy for the first hour about everything they’d done that day. As Beau cut back up Admiralty Inlet, he noticed Alex’s eyelids gradually starting to droop. A few moments later the kid was down for the count, curled up on one of the deck cushions in the pilothouse.
“I think he’d probably be more comfortable down on one of the beds. Why don’t you take over at the helm for a minute, and I’ll carry him down to one of the staterooms?”
When he returned, Elizabeth seemed more quiet than usual. Beau gazed out at the dying light of the sun painting the water a pale lavender and wished he could figure out what was running around that brain of hers as she watched the Mari cut through the water.
He had always considered himself fairly good at reading people. In his line of work it was a useful skill to cultivate, just as important as working a crime scene or practicing at the firing range.
But somehow Elizabeth managed to slip under his radar and confound all his best efforts to figure her out. One minute she was soft and compassionate, sweetly shy. The next she retreated into that cool politeness he found so damn frustrating.
He wanted to pierce that chilly reserve of hers into a thousand icy pieces. Somehow he managed to ignore the impulse until they passed Port Madison and headed south toward Harbor View.
“Why didn’t your father take you out on the water with him?”
She blinked at the blunt question that had been teasing at him all day. She loved being out on the water—any idiot could see that. She glowed out here from more than just a sunburned nose. So what the hell kind of father deprived his only child of that kind of joy?
Still, he was sorry he asked when her features froze into tight lines.
“My father and I weren’t very close. He was a very…exacting man.” She paused for several moments then she gave a smile that didn’t quite make it to her eyes. “I didn’t…measure up in many ways, I suppose you could say. I was a grave disappointment to him because I wasn’t a son and because of…because of other things.”
“And your mother?”
“I never knew her. She had a difficult delivery with me. There were problems and she died a few weeks after I was born from an infection she contracted.” She was silent, her gaze on the city lights of Bainbridge on one side and Seattle on the other.
“I used to imagine perhaps that was the reason for the…distance between my father and me. Maybe he was so heartbroken at my mother’s death that he couldn’t bear the reminder of her.”
Her laugh sounded raw. “That was a young girl’s foolishness, of course. The truth was far less romantic, I’m afraid. My father simply had little time for a daughter he…he didn’t understand and didn’t like very much.”
So they had that much in common, at least. Throughout most of his life, his only
family had been a coldhearted woman obsessed with false dignity and maintaining her precarious social position.
For one crazy moment he was tempted to tell her about Marie but he yanked in the impulse before it could get out of control. “I’m sorry. Old family scars never quite heal, do they?”
They were both silent for a moment, with only the growling engines.
“My turn to ask you a question,” she asked. “What brought you to the Northwest?”
He raised an eyebrow. “How do you know I’m not a born-and-bred Seattle-ite?”
She smiled a little and he was relieved to see her expression lose some of that haunting sadness. “Your accent gives you away. Georgia, right?”
“Nobody figures that out! How did you know?”
“It’s hardly noticeable. I just…listen closely when people speak.”
“I’m from a town about a hundred miles from Atlanta.” Big Piney was large in nothing but its name. Everything else—from the downtown business district to the collective mind of its snobby society—had been decidedly small.
“That’s a long way from Seattle.”
“I was stationed here in the Navy for a couple years and fell in love with the area. The water and the trees and the mountains. I loved all of it. So when my tour ended, I just stayed.”
“Do you miss Georgia?”
“Not really. Every once in a while I get a hankering for a good pecan pie but that’s about it.”
He had no family to go back to. Any chance he might have had to mend fences with his grandmother—if he had ever had any desire to do so—had ended with her death five years earlier.
“And you’ve been with the police department ever since you left the Navy?”
“Yep.”
“You’re a good cop, from what Grace tells me.”
“Grace is a little biased. We’ve known each other since the Academy. When we worked together on the job, she used to finish my sentences for me half the time. Drove me nuts at the time but I kind of miss it now.”
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