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Acknowledgments
When I decided to set this book on the Chesapeake Bay, I knew little of the area. I know much more thanks to Stacia Childers of the Eastern Shore Public Library, who freely answered my many questions. If I messed it up, that’s on me.
Writers are a generous group. Two in particular helped this time around: the fabulous Marti Robb (who writes as Mariah Stewart), who gave me a wealth of information about the location and industries; and the wonderful Robin Burcell, retired cop and all-around great person, who always steps up to help fellow writers.
When I reached out to the Sisters in Crime group for help with sailing questions, several people offered their assistance—or the assistance of their family members! A special shout-out to Ken Littlefield and Terry Shames for going above and beyond in answering my questions—both the basic and the complex. While I hope I got everything right, don’t hold any errors against them.
Wally Lind and his gang at the Crime Scene Writers group helped immensely by answering questions as broad as the condition of human remains after more than a decade; how the Coast Guard boards ships; and art theft. I don’t know what I would do without this great group of people to help me!
Another shout-out to Lee Lofland and the Writers Police Academy. Lee is a selfless retired cop, who never says no to writers who need his guidance. He wants us to get it right.
And, as always, my deepest appreciation to the usual suspects: my agent, Dan Conaway; my editor, Kelley Ragland; the Minotaur team, especially Joe Brosnan, Maggie Callan, and Sarah Melnyk; my mom, who is my biggest cheerleader; and my husband, Dan, who never blinks when I suddenly say, “So I need a tasteless poison to mix into a mimosa…” And especially thanks to my kids who let me do my thing and love me anyway.
Prologue
TWENTY-TWO YEARS AGO
Martha Revere couldn’t leave without saying good-bye to Maxine. She was her daughter, after all.
But she had to get out of the house before her mother returned from whatever charity event she’d decided to grace with her presence. Eleanor Sterling Revere was psychic, Martha was certain of it. How else could she always know what Martha was doing? What her plans were? Especially before Martha herself had even figured everything out? Not to mention the stern judgment from on high, as if Eleanor were perfect, as if she were a god.
Just that morning, not even forty-eight hours after Martha came home, Eleanor confronted her.
What are your plans, Martha?
Like she needed to plan out her life. Eleanor had never done anything spontaneous, she had never understood Martha’s need to go where her whims took her.
Maxine needs stability. A good school, to learn proper manners, to attend university. Maxine must understand the benefits and responsibilities of being a Revere. You live like a nomad, Martha. You’re raising a waif.
Eleanor had been watching her closely—too closely—ever since she came home Thanksgiving morning with her beautiful daughter in tow. And then the clincher. While her father was bringing the car around this afternoon, Eleanor stood in the foyer, dressed impeccably, her hair done just right, her makeup perfectly applied, her clothes both fashionable and appropriate for a wealthy woman of her age.
When you leave, Martha—and I know that is what you are planning, so don’t lie to me—leave Maxine with me. She deserves better than what you are doing for her.
How had she known that Martha never planned to stay? That leaving Maxine was always part of the plan?
For about two minutes, Martha decided to take Max with her, just to spite Eleanor. Serve her right. She never cared about Martha, yet seemed to care about the granddaughter she didn’t know? Taking Max after introducing her to Eleanor would upset her mother, and that pleased Martha.
The two-minute mental debate ended. Max would ruin everything. All Martha wanted was a few months to have fun, and Max was just like Eleanor. She simply didn’t know how to have fun.
Besides, as soon as Maxine acted up—and she would, because she didn’t know how to keep her mouth shut, which was almost as bad as not knowing how to have fun—Eleanor would rue the day she told Martha to leave her. When Martha came back, Eleanor would insist she take Max, and Max would beg to leave. Because no way could anyone sane live under Eleanor’s ridiculous rules and social mores.
Maxine was in the library. There were three “libraries” in the huge house—her father’s cozy study that always smelled like bay rum and pipe tobacco; her mother’s prim and stately sitting room where punishments were doled out; and here, the main library, with thousands of books no one ever read. And yet Maxine sat on the unblemished leather sofa, bare feet curled under her, reading a leather-bound book Martha doubted had been opened in a hundred years. She did a double take when she saw the title. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Wasn’t that a kid’s book? Leave it to her mother to find the stuffiest edition of a child’s book for her snooty library.
Max looked up from the book and stared at Martha with Eleanor’s too-smart, all-knowing, dark blue eyes. The “I know you’re going to leave” look. The look of disapproval. Disappointment. Judgment.
How on earth could a kid not yet ten have mastered the Eleanor Revere glare so quickly?
Martha straightened her spine. This was for the best. Ha! That sounded like something Eleanor would say.
This is the second time I’ve caught you sneaking back into the house this week. You’re grounded. Your father and I decided to take your car for a month. It is for the best. You need to learn responsibility and respect, Martha. To understand that you have a duty to family and community because you are a Revere.
Eleanor never understood that Martha wasn’t like them. She needed to be free, not living in the stuffy confines of norms and responsibility and expectations.
Why the hell should she have any duty to anyone but herself?
“Are you coming back?” Maxine asked in her quiet, too-regal voice.
“Of course, silly,” Martha said. “I always do.”
This time, however, she wasn’t certain she would return. Or when. Maxine had been turning into her mother, even though Martha had done everything in her power to make sure Maxine didn’t end up a Revere. Maybe genetics had more to do with personality than anyone thought.
“When?”
“I don’t know. Why do I need to give you a schedule? Look at this place. It’s huge. It wasn’t all bad growing up here. And there are books. You love books. You’ve been nagging me about school. Now you can go. See? Win-win.”
Why Maxine wanted to go to school, Martha would never understand. She hated school, from day one when Sierra Noble pushed her off the swing and said that there were rules to the playground and Sierra made the rules. And the first rule was that she always got to swing first at recess.
Martha hated rules before Sierra, and she hated them twice as much after that little bitch.
Of course, Martha had g
otten back at the whiny, self-absorbed bully. And it never came back on her. Because she was that good.
She almost smiled at the memory of Sierra crying her big brown eyes out. She’d waited years for her revenge, but it was so worth it.
“But I didn’t cheat!”
“We have solid evidence, Sierra. School policy dictates a zero on the final plus a three-day suspension. I’m sorry, Sierra, we certainly expected better of you.”
Martha had always been good at school—at least good enough to get by, manipulate the teachers, and make her parents happy. At least with grades. But that didn’t mean that she enjoyed it, or found it at all necessary.
“Look, Maxie, I’ll try to be back by your birthday, okay? That’s only a few weeks away.”
“Five weeks.”
“Jeez, semantics! I have things I want to do, okay? And you can’t come with me. You’ll fit in perfectly here, you’re exactly like my mother.”
She hadn’t meant to say that, or use that tone. Was the kid going to cry? God, she hated when Maxie cried, almost as much as she hated the look of disappointment on her face. Fortunately, she rarely cried.
“Why can’t you let me live with my father? I’ve never even met him. It’s not fair.”
Fair? What about life was fair? “I told you, he’s married and it’s complicated. He doesn’t want you. I wanted you, I kept you, I didn’t get rid of you like everyone said I should have.” She shouldn’t have said that, either, but Maxine was making her feel guilty. The only other person who had ever made her feel guilty was her mother. She didn’t like it, not one bit, so she pushed the guilt aside. It had become quite easy to do over the years.
“I don’t want to fight, Maxie,” Martha said. “You don’t like Jimmy anyway.”
“So you’re leaving me here with people I don’t know because you and Jimmy don’t want me around to cramp your style.”
“No.” God, how did she do that? She was nine years old. How did she figure this stuff out?
And it was clear she didn’t believe Martha anyway, so why even try?
“Life is meant to be fun,” Martha said. “Life has plans, baby. Never forget that. I guarantee when I come back, you’ll be begging me to take you away from this place and all the stupid rules. You will never want to be a Revere when you see what it really means. The formals. The charities. The smiling and being polite when all you want to do is go off with your friends but you can’t because you have responsibilities. Then you’ll finally understand and not judge me all the damn time. I really have to go now. Jimmy’s waiting for me.”
She hugged Maxine and pretended her daughter hugged her back. She didn’t have time for this, she didn’t want a confrontation with her mother. The only thing she kind of regretted was that she’d promised her dad that she’d go into the city with him and Maxine tomorrow afternoon like they used to do when she was a little girl. He would take her on the trolley car and they’d walk along the wharf and have fresh clam chowder soup in bread bowls at restaurants that Eleanor wouldn’t walk by, let alone eat at.
Those were the best memories of her childhood.
But the guilt was fleeting. Guilt was a useless emotion, Martha told herself on the rare occasions it crept in. She’d send her dad a postcard, explain that she couldn’t live with her mother, that she had things to do and he would understand.
At least, she convinced herself that her dad would understand.
“Good-bye for now!” Martha said with a bright smile. She walked right out the front door. No one else was in the house to stop her—it was the Saturday after Thanksgiving and Eleanor had given her staff the weekend off. No one else lived in the house. Martha didn’t have to answer to anyone, not anymore. Not even her daughter.
A white Mercedes coupe had pulled in to the driveway and Brooks got out. She glared at him.
“Where are you going?” he demanded.
“None of your business.”
“Where’s your kid?”
“Reading.”
“You have a lot to answer for, Martha.”
She hated her brother. Hated him more than anyone else. He had made her life miserable growing up, and why her mother actually seemed to like him more, Martha would never understand. “Good-bye.” She started to walk past him.
Brooks grabbed her arm and spun her around. “Don’t you dare leave that bastard girl here.”
Martha jerked her arm away from him. “Wait until you really get to know Maxine,” she said with a sneer. “She’ll hate you as much as I do.”
“I will send her to boarding school.”
Martha laughed. “Good luck with that. If Eleanor didn’t send me, she’s not going to send Max. Suck it up, Brooks. Your perfect life just got shaken and stirred.”
“You’d better come back for her, Martha.”
“Or what? You forget, I know every one of your secrets, and Mother may not like me, but she’ll believe me. She’ll believe everything.”
Brooks reddened. He should be scared.
She walked away before her brother could get under her skin. She wished there was another way. Brooks might eat Max alive—he hated Martha enough to make the kid’s life miserable.
But Max was a smart kid—really, for a not quite ten-year-old, she was smarter than most adults. Brooks might have met his match because he would underestimate her, and then wham! Martha almost wished she could be around to watch.
Unfortunately, it was clear from the minute they hooked up with Jimmy last month that Jimmy and Max were oil and water. Martha had given her daughter a decade of her time and attention—and truly, it was becoming more difficult. Max nearly blew their last gig, and that’s when Jimmy convinced Martha that maybe it was time to let someone else in the family step up and watch her. He’d wanted to ship her off to her father, but Jimmy didn’t know who Max’s father was, and that was a secret Martha would take to the grave.
But there was more to family than a mother and father. The Reveres could take over raising Max, at least until Martha decided to come back for her. A month? Two? Six? Some day she’d come back. And Maxie would beg to leave.
Take that, Mother.
Jimmy was waiting for her at the end of the driveway in the BMW he’d rented. She climbed into the passenger seat and gave him a big, sloppy kiss. “I’m free!”
“Good.” He sped much too fast out of the neighborhood, but Martha didn’t care. She was free. Free, free, free! She should have done this a long time ago. She’d thought having a kid would be a lot more fun than it actually was. It wasn’t like she’d planned to get pregnant, it just happened. Maybe it was just that kid. Maybe another wouldn’t be so bad, a kid with Jimmy. And they could raise her—or him—to have fun.
Maxine was a kid and Martha gave her all the freedom she’d never had growing up. They traveled everywhere, all over the world! Maxine didn’t even have to go to school. Martha had wanted to see the world when she was young enough to appreciate it, and she’d taken Maxine along for the ride. They’d been to every major museum in Europe and the States; they’d stayed in the nicest hotels and once spent the entire summer at a villa in France.
And all the little brat could do was make Martha feel inadequate.
“Where are we going?” she asked Jimmy.
“We have three days before we can go to the bank, but we have enough to get by until then. It’s dreary here. Let’s drive south. We have a lot of plans to make. A lot of plans. We’re going to have fun, Martha. A Hawaiian adventure.”
She laughed and rubbed Jimmy’s thigh. Finally, she had her life back. The life she’d been searching for ever since she walked out of the house after her high school graduation, when she finally had partial control over her trust fund and an increase in her monthly allowance. And there was nothing that her parents could do about it because the trust was iron-clad.
Any residual guilt Martha had over leaving her daughter disappeared at the Atherton town limits. After all, she deserved a life, too.
C
hapter One
PRESENT DAY
Maxine Revere had been an investigative reporter, in one capacity or another, for more than a decade. In the beginning, she had been the sole collector of information. She’d spent thousands of hours in libraries, interviewed hundreds of people, and traveled across the country to collect key pieces of intelligence to solve cold cases.
Now that she had a monthly cable crime show, had written four true crime books, and recently published her seventy-sixth article in a major trade magazine, she enjoyed the benefits of her success: a staff that was as good at research—and sometimes better—than she was; an assistant both smart and disciplined; and a real career that had garnered her both respect and animosity, praise and criticism.
She liked her job and she made a difference. Max solved cold cases that seemed unsolvable because of the limited resources of law enforcement. That, and her driving need to uncover the truth wherever it led.
Now, for the first time, she had a real chance of learning the truth about what had happened to her mother sixteen years ago. She might even find out why her mother left her in the first place to be raised by grandparents she had never known before that fateful Thanksgiving, only weeks before her tenth birthday.
The disappearance of her mother was personal, and she wasn’t going to film a segment for “Maximum Exposure.” She had no plans to write a book, an article, or even a blog about Martha Revere’s life and presumed death. Max had the resources—namely, money—to investigate this case on her own, and could take the time to do it, even if it cost Max her career.
Some things were worth sacrificing everything. The truth—especially the truth about her life—was one of them.
Two months ago, she’d learned from a private investigator, Sean Rogan, that her mother had bought a car in Miami under a false identity, and that car had turned up abandoned in Northampton County, Virginia, three months later. Max hired the PI to dig deeper into the identity and the timeline of Martha Revere’s whereabouts from when she left Max at her grandparents’ house that Thanksgiving weekend, until she stopped sending Max postcards shortly after Max’s sixteenth birthday.
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