* * *
Max picked up the phone on the first ring. “David?”
“Why am I surprised you’re up at six thirty in the morning?”
“So are you. Well?”
“You owe my friend a case of Glenlivet. It’s his favorite.”
“Order it and charge my account.”
“Already did.”
“Don’t keep me in suspense.”
She could hear David sip his coffee. He did it to annoy her, she was pretty certain.
“He wouldn’t put anything in writing—might come back to bite him in the ass, he said—but I trust his verbal timeline. You said Eve was born in January?”
“Yes. I’m working on getting the exact date, but sometime that month.”
“She would have been conceived between April and maybe July, if she was premature. During those months—in fact, from March fifteenth through September twentieth of that year—Truman was on the USS Essex doing maneuvers in the South Pacific. His only leave was three days in Japan and three days in Hawaii, the first in May and the second in early September. He then had a two-week vacation, signed out to home, and returned to base October fourth. He was deployed at sea for another six months on February twenty-fifth, docked August thirty-first in San Diego. Had a family medical leave for thirty days, but put in his papers September tenth. The kid would have been eight or nine months old by then.”
“So he wasn’t in the States at all the April Martha disappeared?”
“No.”
“And he wasn’t in the States when Eve was conceived.”
“No. Could Martha have gone to Japan? May would be within the window.”
“I don’t know. It seems … odd. She liked traveling to Europe and South America, she’d never seemed interested in Japan, but anything’s possible, I suppose.”
“That doesn’t sound like you.”
“What?”
“Confused.”
“I am confused.”
“I’m not.”
“What am I missing?”
“He’s not her father. Not her biological father, at any rate.”
“Now that makes no sense.”
“Look at the facts that we know. Martha had an infant with her in Miami before she left in early April. Her car was abandoned in Virginia sometime that month, found at the end of April and the police report indicated it had been there for two to three weeks. No sign of the infant, not even a hint that a child was in the car, but Gabriel leaves military service as soon as his tour is up, ostensibly to raise a motherless child. You are confident that Eve is your half sister, which means Martha is certainly her mother. Extrapolate from there.”
“Martha left the baby with Gabriel’s mother. Then … what? She was killed? Tried to disappear? Why? Because of these stolen paintings?”
“I’m only looking at the facts, you need to put them together with your theories. And Gabriel’s mother is also Jimmy’s mother. Does Gabriel strike you as a man who would be interested in your mother?”
He was asking the question seriously, so Max considered it. She wanted to say, “Every man is interested in my mother,” but she didn’t. Because that wasn’t true. She attracted men who enjoyed fun and adventure, who spent money and liked expensive things. A man like Gabriel—salt of the earth, more comfortable on sea than on land, devoted to his family, not living lavishly—no, she didn’t see it. But she didn’t really know Gabriel. And people could change. Maybe he had been wild in his youth. Or maybe he got drunk and Martha thought it would be fun to seduce Jimmy’s brother. He would have been more than ten years younger than her mother, but that wasn’t unheard of. Martha had been a very attractive woman.
“Not at this point in his life,” she said carefully. “But why would Gabriel raise a child not his own?”
“She was an innocent child who had no parents. You said that Gabriel and his brother didn’t get along.”
“True.”
“Maybe Gabriel tried to get Jimmy to do the right thing and either couldn’t find him, or Jimmy refused to take responsibility. Gabriel lived with his mother and Eve until his mother passed when Eve was five. He took Eve under his wing. She’s his niece, he loves her, and the fact that he raised her as his daughter tells me that he loves her like a daughter.”
“Yes, I can see that. Okay.”
“Tread carefully here, Max. You don’t know the whole story, and he’s on edge.”
Max was glad she hadn’t told David about Gabriel’s visit yesterday. He would be angry if he found out, but he would insist on coming up, and having him around now—when she was still trying to feel her way around this investigation—would stifle her.
“I’ll be good,” she said lightly.
“I’m almost done here,” David said. “I’m following up on another lead, based on the information Agent Maguire told you about the three recovered paintings.”
“What lead?”
“I don’t know yet,” David said in a sign of frustration. Why, because she was asking questions or because he had a gut feeling?
“Your instincts are getting sharp,” she said with a smile.
“I took Rogan’s list of possible false identities and am running them against an area in Miami where your fed from Norfolk found the storage locker, and Martha had her storage locker.”
“You’re thinking there’s a third.”
“If there is, it probably got shut down. But if I can confirm another fake identity we might be able to trace it. If the contents were auctioned off, there may be a record of who they were sold to.”
“Good thinking.”
“Don’t keep me in the dark, Max—if things heat up, I can be in Virginia fast.”
* * *
Max drove out to the Hendersons’ house Saturday morning. At first, no one appeared to be there, then she saw Beth and her daughter walking back from the barn, each carrying a large basket. Beth waved to Max when she saw her.
“Nothing better than fresh eggs,” Beth said as she approached. She handed her basket to Molly and said, “Wash and store them, please. Put a dozen together for the Scholtens.”
“Sure, Mom.” Molly took the two overloaded baskets to the house. There had to be at least four, five dozen eggs there. “I’ll take the eggs to the Scholtens, then I need to go to the boating club and take pictures for the newspaper.”
“The race is tomorrow, why do you have to … oh.”
“Mom.” Was Molly blushing? Max didn’t have the blush gene, she was pretty certain.
Beth laughed. “Go ahead, and invite Jason over to dinner if you’d like. I’m sure Wyatt would love to see him.”
“You mean interrogate him. Just what I need, Wyatt and Dad and Grandpop all giving Jason the third degree.”
“You forget that I used to babysit Jason’s mother. We go way back.”
“Stop, you’re killing me!” Molly ran into the house.
Beth was still grinning. “She and Jason are just friends, she says, but they’ve been just friends a lot more this year than ever before. Do you mind coming with me to the garden shed? I have herbs growing in there, I need to trim a few and collect some for dinner tonight. Usually Sunday is our big family dinner, but it’s Wyatt’s birthday tonight. He and his best friend drove down from college last night, and he needs to turn around and go back tomorrow.”
“Where’s he going to college?”
“Virginia Tech. He’s the smartest of my brood. Of course, I wouldn’t say that to him—might go to his head. But he’s sharp. Full-ride academic scholarship.”
“That’s terrific.”
She was beaming as she sorted through herbs so lush that it made Max think she’d like to grow her own herbs. The only problem was that she was often gone for weeks at a time.
“Can I help you?”
“Grab that basket over there, on the top shelf. I envy your height.” She nodded toward a step stool. “I need one of those in every room.”
Max reached up and took down
the basket.
“Now, you must have come out here because you have some more questions.”
“Your father-in-law said he would talk to the Scholtens and Abel Parsons, the caretaker of the big house on the peninsula, about the time my mother’s car was found, to see if they heard or saw anything.”
“Well, I know he talked to Edith and Andre Scholten. Spent quite some time over there Thursday night, in fact. But they didn’t see anything apparently, and their property line doesn’t go down that far. It’s a small farm, they run it themselves with only a few part-time hands. And honestly, they wouldn’t remember this long, unless it was something really odd.”
“I appreciate him trying.”
“He hasn’t talked to Abel. Abel keeps to himself. Dad and Gary went over there yesterday afternoon, but they didn’t say anything about it. I don’t think he was home, but I didn’t ask—Wyatt had just come in, and I haven’t seen him in a month, since spring break.”
“I spoke to Abel briefly yesterday.”
“Did you learn anthing?”
“No, just asked him to pass my contact information on to his employer.”
“Abel is reclusive.”
Max wondered if she should ask about Gabriel and Eve. Max usually went for the bull in the china shop approach. She would annoy someone until they finally talked to her. If she confronted them with the truth, they usually admitted it.
But asking Gabriel flat-out if Eve was Jimmy’s daughter—David was right, she had to tread carefully. But not for the reason David thought.
Max wanted a relationship with Eve. Eve was her sister—no matter who her father was. If she pushed Gabriel so hard that he vilified her to Eve, she’d never have the kind of relationship she wanted.
She chose her words carefully. “I reached out to Gabriel Truman, hoping that he had information about my mother and her relationship with his brother. He’s … extremely private.”
“Well, his brother is not a nice person. I imagine he doesn’t want to bring him back into his life. And for a while, the FBI was around here asking people questions.”
“The FBI talked to you?”
“No, but as you can probably tell, we’re a small, tight-knit community. One person gets talked to, it gets around. But the FBI talked to several people. Gabriel, of course. The Coopers—Brian and his wife are partners with Gabriel. All the staff at the resort, neighbors, you name it. Seems Jimmy was wanted for theft. That’s what we were able to put together, but what the FBI was doing investigating a theft, I don’t know. Must have been big. We were thinking bank robbery, but then why not go and say bank robbery?”
Beth had separated the herbs in the basket and put her scissors and a small shovel on a rack with the other hand tools. “Shall we?” she asked. Max opened the door and they walked back to the house.
When they were inside, Max heard raucous laughter from the kitchen. “Wyatt and John are up.”
“I won’t keep you.”
“You’re not. Do you need anything else?”
“I was just curious about Eve’s mother.”
Silence. Dammit, she’d overstepped. The question must have sounded like it was coming from nowhere.
“It’s not something Gabriel will talk about, so I wouldn’t ask him,” Beth said.
“What happened?”
“No one really knows, to be honest. One day Emily had a baby. I don’t really remember when—it was in the spring. She said Eve was her granddaughter, and the mother couldn’t take care of her. For a while—well, we all thought she was one of Emily’s young relatives, a teenage pregnancy and Emily was helping. It was something Emily would do—she was always the nurturer in her family, and a wonderful teacher. She should have had a houseful of kids like me. But we don’t always get what we plan, do we?”
“True,” Max said, willing Beth to get back on track. “And no one asked her?”
“That would be rude. But we were all open to her talking, and she said Eve was her granddaughter. So we’re thinking, why isn’t her dad there? Could Jimmy have had a child? Gabriel? When Gabriel left the navy to raise Eve, we put two and two together. That baby, and Gabriel, gave Emily life—and I mean that literally. She had breast cancer and it was invasive. Gabriel convinced her to have surgery and chemo, and she ended up extending her life another five years. Most of them very good years. Without them? She would never have gotten the treatment. Emily never wanted to bother anyone with her problems, but always helped anyone who needed it.”
So everyone simply assumed that Gabriel was Eve’s father … and he de facto became her father because he never said different.
Beth walked back to the house with Max. “We’re having a feast tonight, it’ll be a full house, and I would love for you to join us.”
“I don’t want to intrude on your family.”
“Intrude?” Beth laughed. “No one intrudes at our house. A lot of Wyatt’s friends are stopping by to catch up, so we’re doing it buffet-style and the kids can go do their thing after. Gary is roasting a whole pig—we have a pit we use. Started it at ten last night, it’ll be going until three or four this afternoon. We have clam chowder, homemade applesauce I can every year. I picked up snow peas that a neighbor grows in her greenhouse, and they are simply amazing. And, of course, my pies. We eat at six.”
“I would love that, and I’ll try to make it. Thank you.”
* * *
Eve Truman had finished checking her sails and was helping Jason untangle a nasty mess on his line.
“How’d you know the block was my problem?” he asked her.
“Just the way the mast was moving. You need to spend more time stowing the lines properly so you don’t have to spend so much time preparing before a race.”
“I know, I just don’t have the patience that you do. You must get it from your dad.”
“Look who’s here,” Eve said with a grin as Molly Henderson walked the dock taking photos of the club members as they worked on their boats.
“Stop it.”
She laughed. It was so obvious that Molly and Jason were in love and had been since they hit puberty. Eve used to have a huge crush on Molly’s brother Wyatt, but he was a senior when she was a freshman, and her dad would have flipped. If only she was a year or two older.… “Molly!” she called out.
“Hey, Eve. Jason.” She walked over, all casual. “Do you mind if I take pictures? Alan pays ten dollars for every picture he uses of mine in the paper.”
“Sure, we’re just doing grunt work now,” Jason said. “Tomorrow you should get some great shots. It’s going to be amazing. Steady winds, might even get a little choppy, but no rain.”
Eve was a little more concerned than Jason about the weather. She’d been tracking the wind patterns and thought the middle of the bay was going to be more unpredictable than Jason. Fortunately, Steve listened to her, and he would impart any safety concerns to everyone.
Eve was excited because she loved sailing when it was unpredictable, it was far more exciting and challenging. But she worried that some in the club raced more as a hobby rather than taking it seriously. Jason was dedicated, but he had also been preoccupied lately.
Molly shot a bunch of pictures as Eve and Jason finished untangling the lines and then repacking the sails so they would be ready for tomorrow. “Why don’t you both come over for dinner tonight,” Molly said. “My brother and his roommate are here—it’s Wyatt’s birthday—and Mom has enough food to feed an army.” She was looking at Eve—did she know that Eve had a crush on Wyatt? She’d never said anything.
“Really? That would be fun. Eve, don’t you think?” Jason asked.
What, did he want Eve to chaperone?
“Maybe,” Eve said.
“My mom invited the New York reporter to come—she is so totally cool.”
“What New York reporter?” Jason asked.
“Everyone’s talking about her—she’s staying at Havenly, Eve. Apparently, her mother disappeared here years ago and she
’s trying to find out what happened to her.”
“Here? In Cape Haven?” Eve asked. “Nothing happens here.”
“It was a long time ago, and my grandfather found her car, that’s why she’s been over to the house a couple times. It was abandoned, she like disappeared into thin air. No one has seen her since.”
Eve shivered.
“You’re not a scaredy-cat,” Jason said and hit her in the arm. “And it’s probably not true.”
“It is,” Molly said. “I went to her website to check her out, and it’s all there. Her mother left her with family in California when she was nine and never came back.” Molly put her hand to her mouth. “Oh my god, I’m sorry, Eve, that was so insensitive of me.”
She waved it off. “I never knew my mother, it’s okay. Seriously.” But she felt an odd connection to this woman whose mother had also abandoned her. “Maybe I will come to dinner, so I can meet her. Can I let you know later?”
“Sure, text me.”
“I can drive you out there,” Jason said. “If you want.”
Eve had turned sixteen in January, but she didn’t have her license yet. She was taking the class at school one day a week and should be able to get her permit in June, and her license by the end of the year. She couldn’t wait, because she hated relying on everyone else for rides.
“Thanks, I just need to make sure my dad doesn’t have plans. And it can’t be late—we have to be back out here at six tomorrow morning.”
Jason groaned. “Don’t remind me.”
“I’ll call my mom and make sure Ms. Revere is going to be there, but even if she’s not, I want you to come. It’ll be fun.” Molly pulled out her phone.
Eve stared at Molly. That name was familiar … but Eve had to be wrong. Remembered wrong.
“Eve? Earth to Eve?” Jason said.
“Um … I gotta run home for something. We’re done here, right?”
“Yeah, thanks for your help, do you want a ride?”
“Nope, nope, I’m good. I’ll call you about tonight. Bye.”
Eve walked briskly down the pier, then started jogging. Revere was a common name, wasn’t it? And she could have remembered wrong. It had been a long time since she’d seen her birth certificate.
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