The Inn at Ocean's Edge

by Colleen Coble

  A bellman rushed to intercept her path toward the elevator. “Ms. Dellamare, your parents are in their suite. May I accompany you to that location?”

  “My mother is here?”

  He nodded. “She arrived moments ago.” She would have preferred to have confronted her father alone.

  Since she didn’t have any idea where the suite was, she let him lead her down a hall painted with murals of singers from the sixties, then on to a private elevator and up to the fifth floor. The thought of telling her parents everything that had happened tonight made her cringe, but she put one foot in front of the other down the hall until the bellman rapped on a door tucked into the end of the hall.

  “Mr. Dellamare, I have your daughter with me.”

  The solid wood door opened, and her mother reached for Claire. Claire’s eyes burned as the familiar scent of her mother’s Hermès perfume slipped up her nose. Over her mother’s shoulder, she caught a glimpse of the room as her mother drew her inside. The suite was white on gray with bold splashes of color and more pictures of famous people from the sixties. A picture of the Fab Four showed The Beatles smiling at the camera with two large striped umbrellas over their heads.

  Something about the umbrellas . . .

  She slammed her eyes shut, and through a fog she heard her father thank the bellman before the heavy door shut behind her. A crazy swirl of panic rose in her again, and she fought it. She was safe here. There was nothing to fear. She took a few deep breaths, and the pressure eased.

  Her mother rushed toward her and drew her close. “I came as soon as I got your message that you were on your way here. You should have told me sooner.” Mom took her shoulders and drew her away to give her a tiny shake. “Really, Claire, you frightened me to death! It was almost like—”

  “Lisa, can’t you see she’s exhausted?” Claire’s father removed a pillow from an armchair. “Here, sit down, Claire. You look done in. What happened to you? You’ve been gone for hours.”

  Almost like . . .

  Almost like the other time she’d gotten lost? A time shrouded in mists of forgotten memories? She gripped her mother’s wrist. “You came as soon as you heard I was heading to join Dad here, you said. Was it because you were afraid I’d remember the last time I was here? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You remember?” She exchanged a long look with Claire’s father. The plea in her mother’s eyes made Dad take a step forward.

  “Not exactly. But I must remember something, and that’s why I had a panic attack.” Was that relief in his eyes?

  He licked his lips. “I’m not sure it was a panic attack, Claire. You used to have asthma when you were little. Maybe the sea air triggered another one.”

  “I’ve never had an asthma attack in my memory. And you’re avoiding my question. Why didn’t you tell me I’d been here?”

  Her father put his hand on her shoulder. “We travel widely, Claire. I couldn’t tell you every place you’ve ever been. And I wasn’t expecting you here anyway, remember? You just came of your own volition.”

  Her gut twisted, and she curled her hands into fists in the lap of her stained and torn dress. The cowardly part of her didn’t want to get into it tonight when she was exhausted and shocked, but she’d been drifting too long, asleep in a pleasant dream where nothing bad ever happened. Something terrible had happened here. She could feel it, could sense the way every cell in her body cringed at the sight of this place.

  She inhaled, then looked up at her parents. Both strikingly good-looking in their expensive clothing and carefully arranged hair. A perfect couple, everyone said. She’d never heard them fight either. Was her disappearance the reason her mother had always been so fragile?

  Her mother twisted the giant diamond on her finger. “You’re wearing a peculiar expression, Claire. And look at you. No shoes. You’re filthy, and your hair is a wreck. What happened to you this afternoon? Your father even called the sheriff. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, Mom. Some guy killed the woman at the counter when I checked in, Jenny Bennett. I called the sheriff, but the killer sneaked up on me and hit me over the head.” When her mother gasped, Claire shook her head. “I’m okay. The sheriff is looking for him.”

  “You were attacked? Does he know you saw him?” her father asked.

  “I’m sure he does and that’s why he hit me.” Claire fingered the lump on her head. She badly needed to wash the mud and debris out of her hair.

  Her mother put her hand to her mouth. “What if he comes back? You need to leave here. Get to our house where we have security.” She looked at Dad. “Harry, you need to hire a bodyguard. If he knows Claire saw him, he might try to harm her again.”

  Claire leaned forward in the chair. “I’m not going anywhere without some answers. It’s time I was told the truth.”

  Her parents exchanged glances again. Her father turned away to pour himself a drink from the bar. “The truth about what?”

  Claire bolted to her feet. “I know, Dad, okay? I know I was lost out there for a year. A year! How could you keep something like that from me? And where was I? Surely with all your money you managed to find out who had cared for me all that time. I didn’t live with the bears, for heaven’s sake!” Her voice shook, and she took a deep breath to calm herself down. She had to stay in control, stay focused.

  “How do you know all this if you still can’t remember?” Her father turned to face her, his tone cautious.

  “Someone heard my name and recognized it.”

  Her mother kept twisting her ring, around and around. “Who recognized you?”

  “Luke Rocco.”

  Her father snorted. “Rocco. He—” He clamped his mouth shut and took a gulp of his bourbon.

  “I want to know everything you know about what happened.” She pointed to the chairs on the other side of the fireplace. “I think you’d better sit down. It’s going to be a long night.”

  Smoke choked the air above the charred field. A single white stick protruded out of ground at an awkward angle. Luke stared at what he now knew was a boneyard. LED floodlights threw out as much light as the noonday sun, but they didn’t give off enough heat to warm the cold night air. He stood with Beau Callahan, a sheriff’s deputy. The scent of fresh, unturned soil mingled with the smell of burned vegetation. The site swarmed with state forensic people combing for clues, though from the state of the skeleton, he doubted they’d find much. The person had been dead a long time, and the elements covered what might have been discovered.

  Could it be his mother’s body at last? Luke glanced at Beau. When Beau had told him what had happened to Claire after she left him and Megan, Luke wished he’d walked her back to the hotel. “Any word on Jenny?”

  Beau shook his head. “We checked the house, and Jenny is nowhere to be found. I think Ms. Dellamare really saw her murdered. If the tide carried the body out to sea, it may never be found.”

  “Too bad Claire couldn’t identify the attacker.” He pressed his lips together. “Um, have you looked at Deputy Waters?”

  Beau’s brow lifted. “You know something?”

  “You and I both know he’s a bully, Beau. It wouldn’t take much for me to believe Jenny looked at him wrong once too often.”

  Beau pinched the bridge of his nose. “The sheriff depends on him. I’ll poke around, but I have a hard time seeing Danny seriously consider him as a suspect.”

  “That’s all I ask.”

  “Claire is going to try to paint who she saw so we’ll see if it leads anywhere. The sheriff isn’t sure she saw anything.”

  Sheriff Colton turned and waved at the crew. “Over here. We found something.”

  The search crew scurried to the new find as if it were buried treasure instead of someone’s family. Luke craned his neck but saw nothing except the backs of the officials as they bent over their discovery.

  Beau took off his hat and ran his hand through his dark hair. “It will be awhile before we know more. You might as well
go home, Luke. I can call you if I hear anything.”

  “I’ll hang around awhile longer.”

  Beau squeezed Luke’s shoulder. “You think it’s your mom, don’t you, buddy?”

  Luke swallowed hard. “We’d just like answers. That’s all we’ve ever wanted.”

  “I know.” Beau put his hat back on. “You know what folks say around here.”

  “That she ran off with someone. But none of us ever believed it. Mom wouldn’t do that.”

  But did he believe that? He’d only been seven when she disappeared. He remembered warm hugs and a sunny personality. Now that he’d gotten older, he realized she’d been a beauty, too, with the kind of personality that would have attracted anyone. On the other hand, his dad had always been taciturn, almost remote. Maybe a woman like his mother had gotten tired of living with a man who thought laughter was a waste of good work time.

  “It happens, Luke.”

  Luke shrugged. “I know. And to be honest, I’ve done some online searching for her over the years, just in case that’s what happened. But if she left Pop, she changed her name and disappeared completely. Who can do that? Not a woman who got married right out of high school and never even set foot in a state other than Maine.”

  “So what do you think happened to her?”

  Luke watched the bustle of activity as a middle-aged man transferred bones, gleaming white in the light, to a box. “She went for a walk every night without fail. Maybe she fell into an old mine. Maybe she ran into a drifter who killed her and buried her. Maybe she drowned in the old gravel pit we use to water the cranberries. Lots of things could have happened.”

  “True enough.”

  Luke shuffled and waved away a swarm of small insects. His boots crunched on the blackened vegetation under his feet. This area hadn’t been farmed or tended to in any way for more than forty years, and Pop had bought it last year before the drought. The brush had been too thick to walk through, and this ditch where the body had been buried would still be covered with vegetation if Jimmy hadn’t burned it off.

  A vehicle rattled to a stop behind him, and he turned to see his sister emerge from her Jeep. She’d changed from her wet shorts to a pair of faded jeans and a black Celtics sweatshirt. He waved to her, and she hurried toward him. A frown crouched between her eyes, and she’d wound her dark curls up in a careless knot.

  She grasped Luke’s arm. “What’d you find out? I had to tell Pop. It was all I could do to keep him away. He’s sure it’s Mom.”

  Beau shoved his hands in his pockets. “No news yet, Meggie. Definitely human bones, though.”

  “Pop was upset?”

  She nodded. “You know how he gets. If he’d been able to get out of the wheelchair and into the car by himself, I couldn’t have stopped him. The only way I calmed him was to promise to find out what was happening and report back.”

  The sheriff, Danny Colton, walked briskly toward them. In his fifties, he shaved what little hair he had left, though his handlebar mustache still retained its fiery color. At six foot seven, he towered over most everyone in town. For one brief year, Folly Shoals residents had watched breathlessly when he’d played for the Celtics until an injury swept him off the court. But the brief stint of stardom had won him the hearts of everyone in the county, and he’d been the sheriff for over twenty years.

  He tipped his hat at Megan. “Sorry to keep you all out here in the cold.” His hazel eyes were shadowed, but he held Luke’s gaze. “Got something to show you two. This might be hard. Come with me, please.”

  Luke exchanged a glance with his sister, and they followed Danny to the back of the forensics van. His pulse throbbed in his neck, and he glanced around the area. Several boxes held soil and rocks, but a bright splash of color in the third box caught his eye. He stepped closer and bent down, catching a pungent whiff of soil. “Meg, look here.”

  Something red peeked out through the soil. His fire truck lay partly uncovered in the box. He curled his fingers into his palms.

  “I take it you recognize this item?” Danny’s voice was soft.

  “It’s my fire truck.” His tongue felt thick. “It disappeared the night Mom did.”

  “Thank you. I thought it might be.”

  “So it’s probably Mom?” Meg’s voice was barely above a whisper.

  “We won’t know for sure until we get the bones identified. But it might be.”

  FIVE

  Claire threw open the balcony windows and inhaled the scent of the sea. From her vantage point, she could see the waves expending themselves on the rocky crags before foaming back with the ebb of the ocean’s tide. She felt just as battered as those rocks out there. She’d barely slept, and at the first rays of the sunrise, she’d slipped out of the sweet-smelling linens on her king-size bed.

  She turned at the tap on her door and a call of “room service.” Tightening her robe’s sash, she unlocked the door and opened it to allow the woman to wheel in the cart with breakfast. The server wore a perky smile that extended to the lines around her eyes. Her short salt-and-pepper hair curled around her face. She looked familiar in some way. Maybe it was the turquoise suit worn by all the hotel staff.

  Claire glanced at her name tag as she tipped her. The food and beverage manager was delivering food? “Um, Priscilla, have you worked here long?”

  The woman accepted the tip. “Thank you. Yes, I’ve worked here thirty-five years.” Her broad Maine accent didn’t hit the Rs in her words. “I started out in the kitchen and worked my way up.” She touched her name tag. “We were shorthanded today, so I’m pitching in. I don’t mind. I don’t often get a chance to mingle with the guests anymore.” The light in her eyes dimmed a bit. “I hope you’re feeling better, Ms. Dellamare. We prayed for you in the staff meeting.”

  Claire finally placed her as the woman standing by the pillars when she’d had her meltdown yesterday afternoon. “Much better, thank you.” Thirty-five years. It was worth asking. “I don’t suppose you remember me, do you?”

  Priscilla’s expression sharpened, and she tucked a salt-and-pepper curl behind her ear. “From yesterday, you mean?”

  Claire shook her head. “My parents were here when I was a child, and we had a birthday in the garden. I was four.”

  The woman took a step toward the door. “I was here then, yes. I really should be getting back to work. As I mentioned, we’re shorthanded.”

  Claire reached a hand toward her. “Please, just a few questions. I didn’t know I’d ever been here before until I had that panic attack yesterday.”

  Priscilla took another step toward the door. “Well, no wonder you were fearful. It was a terrible thing.”

  “Can you tell me what happened? I don’t remember it at all, and some details might help.”

  Priscilla sighed. “It was a long time ago, Ms. Dellamare. Maybe it’s best if you don’t remember. It had to have been traumatic. We searched for days for you.”

  We? “Did you search too?”

  “Oh yes, nearly all the employees and guests took part.” She clucked her tongue. “A thing like that—a child lost in the woods—is every parent’s nightmare. The entire region was in an uproar over it.”

  Just thinking about it made Claire’s gut clench, and she didn’t even have children. “How did it happen?”

  “Your parents had invited the children from Folly Shoals to your birthday party as well as close friends, and the garden was overrun with children. There had to have been over a hundred youngsters playing and shrieking, frightening the ducks and the gulls. Your mom was running around trying to keep everyone happy and fed. I brought out your cake, and she called for you to blow out the candles, but you didn’t answer. No one had seen you, and the entire scene turned to bedlam when you were nowhere to be found.”

  Not a shred of memory tried to surface. And Priscilla’s description of Mom trying to care for everyone wasn’t like the woman Claire had grown up with. “No one saw me leave?”

  Priscilla shook her
head. “There were lots of theories. Some kids said you’d left with the boogeyman, and a few others said a witch had snatched you away, but we had no credible leads. The children were hysterical as it became clear something had happened to you. Some of the local youngsters had nightmares for weeks.”

  “And how was I found?”

  “To be honest, it was another puzzle. I found you crying under the hedge in the back.”

  “You found me?” Maybe that was the real reason Claire had felt so comfortable in the woman’s presence.

  “I had stepped outside for a smoke.” She wrinkled her nose. “Back in the days when I smoked. I recognized you instantly. Those big blue eyes, you know. They’re pretty remarkable. Your hair was a little darker and you were taller, of course. But I knew it was you even before I read the note pinned to your top that gave your name. I took you inside and called the sheriff.” Her green eyes misted. “When your father arrived to get you, he just sobbed. I would have too.”

  Claire could almost feel her father’s fierce hug. The memory was nearly there. Why couldn’t she retrieve it? “Where was I all that time?”

  “No one knew. You kept asking for your mother, but when your father came, you hid your face and cried.” Priscilla wrinkled her forehead. “But it had been a year, after all.”

  Claire felt the need to pace, to throw something, any kind of action that would relieve the ache she felt inside. “How had I found my way to the hotel by myself?”

  “Another enigma. The entire situation has so many unanswered questions.” Priscilla edged toward the door again. “I’m so sorry, Ms. Dellamare, but I really have to go. If I remember anything else, I’ll let you know. I hope you come to grips with all of it. I’ll pray for you.”

  “Thank you, Priscilla. I appreciate your help and especially the prayers. It’s been very challenging.” She shut and latched the door behind the woman before going back to the balcony.

  The dark woods looming over the sea drew her gaze and she shuddered.