They both turned around to enjoy the show, which seemed to be winding down, compliments of local law enforcement. George Boatwright, Sheriff of Windfall Island, stood between two spitting, screeching women, and was eyeing a third who looked like she might jump into the fray.
“Aw,” Jessi said, “who had to ruin it by bringing in the cops?”
“Helen probably didn’t want the place destroyed.”
“Well, she’s no fun at all.”
Dex agreed, Maggie decided. He was still where they’d left him, facing the room, elbows lounging on the bar and a wide smile on his face. She was tempted to trip George and see what happened when the winner of the catfight claimed her prize.
“Not the outcome you expected, huh?”
“I don’t know what I expected.”
“But it makes you mad,” Jessi observed, grinning from ear to ear.
“Glad I can entertain you,” Maggie said, wiping the frown off her face. “I just wanted him to leave me alone.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“What is this, psychoanalyze Maggie Solomon night?” At Jessi’s puzzled look, she said shortly, “Keegan.”
“Oh, now we’re getting somewhere.”
Maggie spun on her heel, strode the rest of the way to the back corner booth. She slid into the side facing the room, lifting her butt automatically to avoid the duct-taped section of the old leather seat.
“You know you’re not getting off that easily.”
She sighed, gave in. Jessi would hound her to hell and back if she didn’t get all the details. But at least Jessi would keep them to herself.
“Keegan was there the other day, when my father and I played out that charming domestic scene in front of the whole island and a handful of imported news people.”
Jessi snorted softly. “Your old man was his usual oblivious, posturing self, you played nice, and Dex saw right through the pair of you. And now he knows too much about you, and you don’t like it.”
Maggie let her gaze wander his way. Dex claimed he had nothing to do with her father, and she was inclined to believe him. After her confrontation with Admiral Solomon, he would have called off any dogs he’d sent—out of pride if nothing else. That didn’t mean he’d give up.
“Dexter Keegan won’t be around here any longer than he has to, and Phillip…” Won’t be around here at all, she’d started to say. But she knew better.
She wanted to resent Jessi for bringing up the past, but ever since that newscast it had been there, on the edge of her mind, nagging at her. Her father was up for an appointment that would be the culmination of any military man’s career. He’d stop at nothing to get it, which meant she’d be hearing from him again. The only time he remembered he had a daughter was when he had a use for one.
“I can’t stop him from contacting me,” she said to Jessi, “But I’ll be damned if I waste a minute of my time worrying about it.” Not one minute of dread or regret or wishing things could be anything but stiff and unpleasant between them. Phillip Ashworth Solomon wouldn’t bend, not even a little, for her. And he’d taught her well.
What she’d learned on her own, Maggie thought, was to not look back.
“He’s not like the men you usually date. Dex Keegan, I mean.”
“I know who you’re talking about, and we’re not dating. Even if he was going to be here longer than five minutes.” She stopped, shook her head.
“What?”
“He’s no more interested in complications than I am.”
“So have meaningless sex with him.”
Maggie looked away.
“You can’t, can you? You’re afraid it won’t be meaningless.”
“He’s got some hidden agenda, Jess. Whatever it is, I won’t be used to further it.”
“Bawk.”
Maggie snorted out a laugh. “Did you just cluck at me?”
“Baaaawk.”
“Make all the barnyard noises you want. If I want meaningless sex, I’ll get it elsewhere.”
“Well, I vote for George. Except it wouldn’t be meaningless. And you’d have to forgive him.”
“I forgave George a long time ago,” she said, but what she felt this time was guilt, a tidal wave of it swamping her, drowning even the pinch it caused her to remember how much he’d hurt her.
“He doesn’t see it that way.”
“I trust him with my life.”
“But not your heart.”
“I don’t love him, Jess,” she said, “not like that.”
“That’s too bad because he still loves you.”
“He’ll get over it.”
“All indications to the contra—uh, hi, George.”
He smiled at Jessi, gave Maggie a long, even look that told her he knew they’d been talking about him. Not that it bothered him. Very little bothered George, as a matter of fact. He was one of the steadiest people, male or female, Maggie had ever known.
“Ladies,” he said.
“George,” Maggie returned in the same deadpan tone. “I’d ask you to join us, but you appear to be rescuing one of my favorite people from the vicious mob.”
Emmett Finley, ninety years old and arthritic enough to lean on George’s arm, wheezed out a laugh. “That’d be the day I let a bunch of women scare me off.”
“He was egging them on.” George’s tone was severe, but he was fighting back a smile.
“Just a bit of harmless fun,” Emmett said. “Not that I haven’t deserved to land in a cell on occasion, and when I were a lot younger’n you pretty ladies.”
Jessi patted the seat next to her. George helped Emmett slide in, then said, “I’ll go get us something to drink,” and took himself off in the direction of the bar.
“Make mine whiskey,” Emmett called after him, “and none of that cheapo stuff AJ passes off on the tourists.” He turned back, winked at Maggie. “Always go for the good stuff. Say, did I ever tell you about the time my old da took me bootlegging, and I bobbled a whole case of prime booze? Damn near dropped it.”
Maggie smiled encouragingly. She’d heard all of Emmett’s stories, even though they came in bits and pieces now, one cobbled with another. The rumrunner called Perdition was one of his favorites, although she couldn’t recall in all her years on Windfall Island ever hearing him finish the story before his mind wandered off on one tangent or another. But what, she thought as she settled in to listen to Emmett talk about his youth, did it cost her to listen, except time?
All the time in the world wasn’t nearly enough repayment for the incredible gift the people of Windfall had given her. The gift of home.
Chapter Seven
Dex watched the Sheriff of Windfall Island make his way from the corner where Maggie sat to the bar. So did everyone else except, possibly, Maggie, listening intently to the old man George Boatwright had deposited in her booth. By the time George stopped by his stool, the noise level in the room had dropped enough for Dex to hear the faint buzz of the hockey game playing low on the TV over the bar.
“Does this happen a lot?” Dex asked George.
“You mean the silence?” George smiled. “It’s not what you’d call a natural state on Windfall, but eavesdropping is the best way to find out what’s really going on.”
“Or you could just ask questions.”
“You could, but the answers aren’t always truthful.”
The exact point he’d made to Maggie, Dex thought. His eyes strayed to her, the corners of his mouth turning up a little when he remembered how she’d thrown it back in his face.
“She the reason you’re here?”
Dex brought his gaze back to his beer, took a long drink to cool his throat and give himself a few seconds to bite back on the instant denial that sprang to his lips. It would be true; he wasn’t there because of Maggie, but firing back would give the opposite impression. “Is that an official question?” he said instead.
George took up a cop stance, feet spread, one hand on his cop tool belt, a stern, j
ust-the-facts-ma’am cop expression on his face. “Should it be?”
“The only thing on my agenda was dinner.”
“I don’t think you came all the way to Maine for AJ’s meatloaf. No offense,” he said to AJ, who stood behind the bar polishing glasses and listening unabashedly.
“None taken. And that’s mostly because I want to hear the answer to that question.”
The question Dex had known was coming, even though neither AJ nor the sheriff had actually asked it.
“I hear you’re a lawyer,” George said.
“Then you know I can’t talk about why I’m here.”
“You must be pretty smart, seeing as you went to law school and passed the bar exam and everything, so I figure you know all about what you can and can’t do.”
“But you’re going to warn me anyway.”
George gave him a humorless smile. “Windfall is a close-knit community. Everybody knows everybody else. There might be personality clashes and petty arguments between folks around here, but they’ll band together when circumstance calls for it.”
“And they’re armed, I hear.”
“To the teeth. Mostly legal.”
“Mostly?”
George smiled. The humor reached his eyes this time, and once he lost the flat cop tone, New England crept in to slow down and draw out his words. “Every now and then somebody comes up with a weapon that’s not strictly on the books. Confiscated a blunderbuss from Pascal Higgins a few years back. ’Course, time I knew the thing existed it was too late for the fellow on the business end of it. Soiled himself good, suffered some real humiliation, which might’ve been a lot worse had the fool thing not misfired. Pas was lucky, too. No telling what might explode when a gun hasn’t been fired in a few decades, but he only ended up with a powder burn on his neck.” His eyes sharpened on Dex’s face. “Every day’s an adventure around here.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“A smart man would, and like I said, I figure you for a smart man. You’ll send a round to Maggie’s table,” he said to AJ and, having done his duty by the island and provided refreshment for his friends, he headed off without a word of farewell or a backward glance.
George slid in beside Maggie, bumped her shoulder with his in a way that bespoke long friendship. When he stayed pressed up against her, when she looked up into his face and laughed at something he said, no walls, no holding back, just a lot of affection, Dex had to roll his shoulders to work off… something.
“Careful there, son,” AJ Appelman said.
“Always,” Dex returned, taking another swig from his longneck and feeling like he’d dodged a bullet since neither Maggie nor the sheriff had noticed him staring. George Boatwright seemed inclined to take his cover story at face value. Dex got the impression that would change if he paid too much attention to Maggie Solomon. So he’d keep his distance, mentally and physically.
Apparently his mouth didn’t get the message from his brain. “Quite a surprise to find out Admiral Solomon is Maggie’s father.”
AJ gave him a bland look.
“I should have known she was a military brat. She acts like she’s walking a post,” Dex explained into the silence. “All she’s missing is the gun.”
AJ took up a towel and a glass from the drainer next to the little bar sink, and set to polishing. “This is her home. No surprise she feels protective.”
“It’s more than that.”
“Observant fellow, aren’t you?” AJ put the polished glass on the clean rack and took another, meeting Dex’s gaze. “I ’spect a lawyer’d have to be, and that’s what you are, right? A lawyer?”
“A good one,” Dex said without batting an eye.
AJ continued polishing, keeping his opinion on that to himself. Dex should have grinned over the ploy, but it was working. He wanted to know what was going through AJ’s mind. Worse, he realized he’d underestimated the man; he’d underestimated every man, woman, and child who called Windfall home.
They might be a small, isolated community, living on a quaint, historical island, but it didn’t mean they were backward or easily fooled. Just the opposite. Their predecessors had had little but their wits to help them navigate through a cold, often cruel world. Those ancestors had dealt with tragedy and death on a regular basis, had seen and done the unspeakable, had walked head-on into danger to support their families, and to help others, even if rescue had been merely the means to their own survival. And only the strong, the smart, had survived.
They’d passed those qualities down to their children, and their children’s children. Today’s Windfallers might not put their lives on the line for strangers and profit, but they were smart, and cautious, and probably ruthless when the occasion called for it. They tolerated tourists because tourism provided, but they didn’t like outsiders, no matter how friendly.
Dex wouldn’t forget it again. “This place have a museum?” he asked, knowing full well there wasn’t one, but hoping to angle the conversation around to Meeker and his journals.
“This place is a museum.” AJ set another beer Dex hadn’t ordered beside the one he hadn’t finished. “Windfall is pretty much the way it was two hundred years ago, except for central heat, electricity, and indoor plumbing—and you won’t even find that everywhere.”
Dex picked up his first beer, tapped it lightly against the second. “I’m just grateful you have it here.”
“Amen, son. You curious about anything in particular?”
“Maybe it would be faster if you give me a list of subjects you’re willing to talk about.”
AJ threw back his head and laughed. “I like this boy, Maggie,” he shouted out. “He’s got a quick mind, and a hell of a delivery. Next time you’re over t’the mainland, maybe you could pick up a couple more just like him so we don’t wear this poor fellow out entertaining us.”
Maggie stuck her head around the end of the booth. “I barely got this one back. Who knew ego weighed so damn much?”
The whole place erupted at that, laughter and catcalls, and disparaging comments about his career choice and his origins. Apparently, taking on Windfall was like pledging a fraternity, minus the physical torture, and if he hadn’t had such a thick skin, some of the commentary would have had him throwing a punch or two.
“Don’t look dyspeptic, son. They wouldn’t be razzing you if they didn’t like you.”
Dex kept the frown on his face, but inside he was pumping a fist in the air. Not an islander yet, not by a long shot, but not exactly an enemy, either.
“The antique store,” AJ said when the ruckus died down. “Meeker, Josiah Meeker, owns the place. He has some artifacts on display—that’s if you can find them in that maze of flea market rejects he calls antiques.” His lip curled, making his opinion of Meeker absolutely clear, even if his sense of fairness got the better of his dislike. “In all honestly, some of the furniture and knick-knacks are genuine, and he has some books that are first editions. And then there’s his pride and joy.”
Dex lifted his eyebrows, inviting elaboration.
“Meeker collects Island journals.” AJ picked up a perfectly spot-free glass and took to polishing it. If he understood the significance of what he was saying, it didn’t show.
But it was everything Dex could do to keep his expression noncommittal. Though he already knew the journals existed, he felt like he’d been buzzed by a cattle prod. He didn’t dare think about what those probably innocuous-looking little books, full of the seemingly inconsequential events of someone’s everyday life, could mean to his future. Or that they might give the Stanhope family the answers they’d been praying for. He still had to find a way to get his hands on them.
Without letting on how important they were.
“I’m not much into history,” he said to AJ.
“Just as well. Meeker isn’t what you’d call accommodating, even to paying customers. Maggie seems to be the only person on the island who can talk him into anything.”
Ma
ggie. Shit. His eyes strayed to that back corner again, and although his excitement faded somewhat, he had to smile a little. All roads, he mused. He tried to stay away from Maggie Solomon, but fate kept pushing them together. And who was he to argue with fate?
“Gift store has some souvenirs,” AJ was saying, “A few books on local interest for the tourists, history of salvagers, that sort of thing. Maisie Cutshaw owns and operates. You want to watch out there. Woman can talk the ears off a cornfield and not say two words of sense the whole time. But you’d know that, seeing as she parked herself at your table for a time tonight.”
With a view toward moving into his life. He’d played hell fending her off without pissing her off. “So, what do you do around here for entertainment? Besides pick on outsiders.”
“Or hit on them?” AJ boomed out a laugh. “Might not be a bad idea to keep yourself busy, at that.
“Well, son, if you’re thinking to keep to your room at night, there’s always the television or a good book. Maggie flies in a selection from the Portland library in the fall, kind of like one of them bookmobiles. Mostly it’s for the kids, but I bet there are some mysteries in there. Or maybe you’re more interested in romance?”
Dex dragged his gaze off Maggie. Again. “No man is interested in romance. It’s practically hard-coded into our DNA.”
“Some of us are smart enough to pretend to be interested.”
“Some of us are dumb enough to get married.”
AJ grinned. “Marry the right woman, it’s not a bad deal.”
As a private investigator who’d started off, like many did, shadowing cheating spouses, Dex had begun to think there was no such thing as the right woman. Or the right man, for that matter. Having parents who’d loved each other without reservation had kept him from getting jaded—and given him an example of what he wanted in his own life. Years off, when he settled down. Somewhere far away from Windfall, he added, keeping his eyes firmly forward.
“Books are at the school if you’re interested—and if Mrs. Higgins will lend you one.”
“Mrs. Higgins? She married to the guy with the antique weapon fixation?”
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