Dex shoved a hand back through his hair. He wished she’d slugged him instead. A fist to the face wouldn’t have left him feeling so slimy. He couldn’t even defend himself; from the minute he’d met Maggie Solomon, he’d known her personality and her history made her the only person he’d be able to… enlist.
“What, not going to apologize?”
No, because he’d do it again to solve this case. “I wouldn’t mean it, and you wouldn’t accept it.”
“Finally, the truth.”
“I’m capable, when it suits me,” Dex said, and let her think the worst. They were going to have to work together, probably closely. Better for them both that she hang on to any resentment that helped her keep him at arm’s length.
“It better suit you from now on, Ace, or I will out you,” she said from a safe distance, physically and emotionally. “And you can take that to the bank, along with the fat fee you’ve left me no choice but to help you earn.”
Chapter Ten
The airport on Temptation Bay—her airport, Maggie thought as she walked from the hangar to the office—never failed to leave her awestruck. It wasn’t just about ownership, it was about pride, the kind an architect felt in looking at a high-rise come to life from a humble drawing, or a baker felt in putting the finishing touches on a wedding cake that would not only taste like heaven, but be the crowning touch on some lucky bride’s perfect day.
The runways were just concrete, the buildings just aluminum, brick, wood and glass, and there were weeds to be trimmed; she’d need to get Mort on that, she told herself, and made a mental note. The place could use some paint to brighten it up—she added another mental note—to not only give her passengers great service but provide surroundings that were nice to look at. To keep the wolves from her door.
It wasn’t all about paying the bills, though there’d been plenty of months she’d wondered if she’d sail over that hurdle or catch a toe and fall into a hole she’d never be able to climb out of. But even those memories made something swell inside her chest. It was like flying, flying at the best of times, when the ground dropped away, when there was no safety net but her skill with the controls, her way with engines, the sheer willpower and refusal to fail that had burned in her gut since the day she’d realized her father saw her as a failure. The day she’d decided she’d rather die than prove him right.
And sure, from the outside it might seem that part of her success could be laid at his feet, if only because his lack of faith had put that fire in her. But she chose to believe she’d have accomplished her dreams just the same; hell, even better, if he’d been a different kind of father. The kind, for instance, who’d held her up while she learned to swim, rather than throwing her into deep water and watching her head bob under the surface before panic and instinct put her into a wobbly, frantic doggie paddle. And even then, she recalled, she’d paddled away from him, though the distance to shore had been longer. She’d refused to take the easy route; it was one of the few times she’d earned his approval.
Maggie had never forgotten it.
And although she told herself she’d grown beyond needing his approval, she couldn’t lie to herself and claim she didn’t want it, sad as that was. Sadder still that she knew she’d never get it, not without a price tag.
She stepped inside and crossed the lobby, then made her way back to her tiny office behind the bigger open space, where the real running of Solomon Charters took place. Jessi was taking care of business in the village for the morning, leaving her to man the phones. It had been a quiet morning; under other circumstances she’d have been ecstatic, as the business side of her pet baby always left her feeling slightly queasy.
Just now she could have used a distraction or two.
With Dex Keegan around, she wasn’t likely to get one. If he wasn’t tweaking her nerve endings, he was pushing her buttons. One moment she wanted him nearby, wanted the thrill of the challenge he presented, both physical and mental. The next moment she wanted him gone, off her island, taking his case of the century with him so she never had to look at her friends and neighbors again and wonder.
She couldn’t have both. So she’d decided, during a long sleepless night, that matching wits and libidos with Dex Keegan wasn’t an option.
That left Eugenia Stanhope. Maggie sat back in her office chair and stared at the story of Eugenia’s kidnapping on her computer screen. She’d read every word a dozen times already, compared the written account with what Dex had told her, looking for clues to Windfall’s involvement. As if all the years and the hundreds of minds more suited than hers to solving mysteries hadn’t already proven the search futile.
The island was never mentioned, not in any of the articles or histories she’d found. Every source, almost without exception, concluded that Eugenia had perished in the explosion that had sent the Perdition to the bottom of the Atlantic. The kidnapping had been big news; if Eugenia had lived there was little possibility whoever had her would be ignorant as to her identity. Yet no request for ransom had been made, no one had come forward to claim the huge reward that had been offered.
There were emotions stronger than greed, though: fear, for starters, the kind of fear that would be felt by an insular, territorial, somewhat paranoid population, a population that routinely broke the laws of the time. That fear didn’t come without just cause, Maggie allowed.
If Eugenia Stanhope had been found on Windfall Island, Windfallers would have been arrested. No doubt about that. There’d been little in the way of individual protections before Miranda rights were established—she’d looked it up—and the FBI at the time had been given wide powers to deal with Prohibition violations. Add in the tremendous pressure to bring in Eugenia Stanhope’s abductors, and you created steamrollers. Guilt or innocence wouldn’t have mattered. The Feds would have simply flattened whoever they arrested in order to get confessions.
But did she have a right to decide for the whole island now? If Eugenia’s fate was linked to Windfall Island, there’d be a rise in tourism, no doubt about it. Others would see that as a good thing, and even if there was no statute of limitations on murder, who remained alive to be punished? And the inheritance? Who was she to measure the price of it—and there would be a price; that kind of money changed people, and not always for the better.
What she did know was that just the possibility of it would rip the community apart, and while she didn’t have the right to deny anyone their own history, she could at least try to contain the damage—especially if that damage might be to someone she loved like a sister.
Maggie had to admit she wasn’t only worried about Jessi and Benji, though. Her life was on the line, too, not in a six-foot-under way, but everything she’d built, everything she’d made herself could be taken from her. Because, while she hadn’t been born on Windfall, her mother had.
And sure, she hadn’t told Dex that. Life with Daddy had made her cautious with her personal business, especially with strangers, and Dex’s secrecy hadn’t exactly inspired her trust. Worse yet, he’d been manipulating her—still was. It made her vision go red at the edges—because of her own history, she allowed, but it didn’t make the feelings any less valid. Even if she had no right to feel… anything.
And there, she admitted, was the thing that had forced her to walk away from Jessi’s house without revealing a word of her conversation with Dex. It was the burn that had kept her up all night and prevented her from concentrating on the mile-long list of chores that always needed doing at the airport.
Betrayal.
Dex Keegan was nothing to her. She didn’t trust him; hell, she didn’t even like him. Problem was, she shouldn’t be feeling so raw and hurt that he hadn’t confided in her sooner. Especially since she’d already examined the case from every angle and been forced to admire his approach. That made her magnanimous, even if she had to say so herself. Being an emotional mess over Dex Keegan made her a fool.
Still, she couldn’t deny that he stirred her up on every le
vel—physical, mental, and yeah, he pissed her off. He was glib, overconfident and confusing, but that grin of his was so damn appealing she found herself smiling over it. And just to make it impossible to forget him, he had a sharp mind and a hell of a body. Total package. If only he didn’t feel a need to keep secrets and tell lies.
The phone rang and, still stewing, she picked it up without checking caller ID. And that, she decided when she heard the voice that greeted her, was another transgression she could lay at Dex’s feet.
“Margaret.” It was her father.
She hung up. The phone rang again and she ignored it. For a half hour. She had to give the man credit for being persistent.
Jessi rushed in and grabbed the receiver off her ancient desk phone. “Solomon Charters,” she said, then promptly hung up.
She dropped her purse in her bottom desk drawer, plopped her ass in her chair, and pulled over a stack of paperwork. She didn’t say hello, she didn’t look in Maggie’s directions, and she was slapping the papers, just hard enough as she sorted them into piles, to get her attitude across loud and clear. Hurt feelings with a side of sulkiness.
Maggie knew all about it. The difference being, after a decade of history, Jessi was entitled to be upset.
But after a decade of history, Maggie knew how to get around her. She strolled out and perched on the edge of Jessi’s desk.
Jessi stared pointedly at her butt until Maggie lifted her cheek, pulled the papers out from under it, and handed them over. Jessi took them with two fingers and continued her sorting.
Maggie managed not to smile. “Not talking to me yet?”
“Don’t you have that backward?”
“Still don’t trust me?”
Jessi huffed out a breath. “We went over this last night. You don’t trust me.”
“You’re my family, Jess; do you think I’d keep something from you if I didn’t think it was the right thing to do?”
Jessi shot to her feet, her pixie face like a thundercloud. “It’s not your decision to make, Maggie.”
“You’re right about that. It’s Dex’s, and I gave him my word.”
“To hell with your word.”
“Without it, we’d all be in the dark.”
Jessi crossed her arms, but her expression toned down from outrage to sullen. “I hate it when you force me to be logical.”
“I promise I’ll tell you what I can when I can, Jess. But just now, you have to trust me to do what’s best for us. And for Windfall.”
“I don’t have much choice, do I?” Jessi sighed, sinking back down onto her chair. “All I can do is sit back and let you handle it. I hate being helpless.”
“There is one thing you can do. Forgive me?”
“Oh, Maggie.”
“Anyone gets a whiff you and I disagree on something, they’ll know it’s big.”
“Well, we wouldn’t argue about something stupid.”
“Exactly. People will be on you like foam on the ocean trying to find out what’s going on. And you know somebody will find a way to get around you.”
“Now who’s lacking in faith?”
“It has nothing to do with faith. It’s your soft heart that worries me.”
“How about Mort?”
“Mort?”
“It’s pretty obvious Dex has taken an interest in you, and I’m not the only one who might have witnessed that conversation you had on the tarmac. Mort was here, too, remember?”
Remember? She could still feel Dex behind her, that big, solid body warm against her back, his breath—
“Mags?”
She took a deep breath, then another, biting the inside of her lip so she could concentrate on the pain instead of the need fluttering low in her belly. “Mort barely talks to you and me, Jess.”
“True. And if he does happen to mention it, no one will think it was more than Dex trying to get in your pants. What? It’s not like he hasn’t tried before, in plain view of half the island.” Jessi put a hand on her knee, looked up at her. “Maybe you should let him.”
Maybe you should mind your own business. Though the words flew to her lips, Maggie bit them back. She might have said them any other time, in jest or otherwise, without Jessi taking the least offense. Just now, though, she and Jessi were searching for calm waters again; she didn’t want to shove them back onto the rocks. “We’re talking about you, Jess. At some point, you’re going to have to lie. Look a friend straight in the eyes and lie.”
“Maggie—” she held up a hand. “I know, close my eyes and think of England.”
This time Maggie did smile. “Well, that’s not the island I had in mind, but you’ve got the right idea.”
“And what are you going to be doing while I’m practicing how to mislead my friends and neighbors?”
Something even worse, Maggie thought, losing every shred of good humor. “Errands.”
Okay, it was a cop out, going to Ma Appelman’s before she faced off with Meeker. Still, nobody had to know about it but her, Maggie figured. She always felt better after she’d spent time with Ma. She always felt stronger. Ma wouldn’t accept anything less.
She pulled up in front of the saltbox Ma called home, a three-story, white clapboard rectangle situated at the extreme landward point of the island. The widow’s walk circling its roof had not been employed to watch for sailors and their ships making safely into port, but to keep an eye out for anyone arriving from the mainland unannounced. Unannounced went hand in hand with untrustworthy, and untrustworthy meant enemy.
The days when that widow’s walk had been routinely manned were over, but the mind-set lived on.
Ma opened the door at Maggie’s knock, to all appearances a frail, white-haired old woman with nothing more pressing on her mind than greeting a friend, considering the wide smile that lit her seamed face and brightened her blackbird eyes. Behind those eyes, Maggie knew, was a mind as keen as a blade, and behind her smile a tongue sharp enough to leave wounds.
For Maggie, she reined it in. Somewhat. “About damn time you showed up,” she snapped, stepping back enough for Maggie to slip by her.
“I didn’t know I was late.”
Ma hooted with laughter as she shut the door and clumped her way across the room, the thumping of her cane more a commentary than a walking aid. She eased herself down in an ancient armchair that sat in front of an even older television, equipped with rabbit ears studded with wads of tin foil. None of that newfangled cable for Ma.
“What are you doing here, girl?”
“I wish you wouldn’t call me that.” It was what her father had called her, always with the sting of dissatisfaction in his voice.
“Your father was a shortsighted fool. Thank the good Lord the rest of the military has more sense, else we’d be eating with chopsticks.”
“Makes me wonder why you’d behave like him.”
Ma’s eyes went hard. “Watch your mouth. Girl.”
Maggie met those obsidian eyes, tried not to grin. “I have to keep reminding you that you can’t steamroll over me.”
“Doesn’t stop me from trying.”
“You have everyone else on this island cowed; you ought to be satisfied with that.”
“No satisfaction in wiping your feet on a doormat.”
Maggie bumped up a shoulder. “Keeps the floor clean.”
Ma hooted again. “You know what I’m talking about.”
“Yes, I do.” Maggie leaned over and kissed her cheek.
“Hmph.” Ma blinked hard, folding her face into a frown. “You haven’t answered my question. What brings you to my end of Windfall?”
Love, Maggie thought, but neither of them would be comfortable with that answer. “I had some extra supplies. You’ll be doing me a favor if you take them off my hands, so I don’t have to find a place to store them.”
“Anything I can do to help you out, child.”
Maggie just smiled. It was a dance they’d done countless times. She never showed up empty-handed. Ma ne
ver took offense. “Besides,” she said, “I haven’t seen you in a while. I thought I’d better make sure the cats weren’t having you for dinner because you dropped dead and everyone else was too scared to check on you.”
“Probably give them indigestion.”
“You’d probably kill them.”
“Serve them right,” Ma said with a chuckle.
Maggie picked up a dog-eared copy of Poor Richard’s Almanack, riffling the pages.
“We’re in for a hard winter,” Ma said, “If it’s half as bad as the signs portend.”
“That’s a first, you giving up before the first snow.”
Ma made a dismissive sound, but she was rubbing her hands, and Maggie saw the slight palsy. “You young people don’t know what hardship means. Why, when I was a girl—”
“You had to walk barefoot to school through waist-high drifts, uphill both ways.”
“Just so you know I can handle a little bluster and blow.”
“Maybe a century ago.”
Ma swatted at her half-heartedly.
“When were you born, exactly?” Maggie asked. She’d tried for offhand and failed miserably, considering the way Ma was studying her face. “It’s important.”
Ma thought about that for a minute, then she pointed across the room to an alcove where a thick, leather-bound book lay on a carved bookstand. “Fetch me the Bible.”
Maggie did as she was told, carefully. The binding was cracked, the pages buckled from the perpetual damp of the island, but it was obviously a cherished family heirloom.
“Meeker’s been trying to get his hands on this for years,” Ma said when she took the book from Maggie. “Offered me a thousand dollars a few months back.”
Maggie hummed in the back of her throat.
“He’s cheap, all right. This book is priceless, and I’ll be dead and in my grave a month of Sundays before that sour-faced jackass lays a hand on it.”
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