"I understand."
But her words were choked, clipped. Betsy moved toward the door, anxious to be out of there now, feeling embarrassed. What made her think she had a right to tell Zoe anything? She and Zoe weren't friends. They were just people from the same hometown, people who'd both loved an old woman now dead for a year.
"It's a beautiful afternoon for a walk," she said lamely.
"I'm glad you came." Zoe had to clear her throat to get the words out, but she sounded sincere despite her ashen look. "Tell Luke I said hello. I've seen Kyle already. He's awfully excited about the documentary he's doing on Aunt Olivia, isn't he?"
Betsy nodded, relieved that Zoe apparently wasn't going to hold what she'd said against her. "Obsessed is the word, I think. Luke will want to see you. Why don't you come out to the boat tomorrow night and have dinner with us? We'll be heading south soon. I'll get together some friends. It can be your welcome-home party."
"Thanks, Betsy, but you just warned me off."
"I know. I put it all so badly. Forgive me. I got carried away." She glanced into the front room past the dining table to the big window that looked across the porch to the Atlantic, quiet, shimmering in the afternoon light.
"I haven't been in here since the memorial service. It's brought back all my own fears. When Olivia said she knew—" Betsy swallowed, shifting her gaze back to Zoe. "It was bone-chilling."
"You handled the situation well, Betsy. She was a very old woman and didn't have long to live." Zoe folded her arms on her chest, and Betsy could see she was shaking, just a little. "Dinner would be lovely."
Betsy sagged in relief, as if her muscles couldn't hold the tension any longer. "Wonderful. Luke's into wines. I'll see to it he opens a good bottle for you. Bring—bring your FBI agent, if you want."
Zoe managed a small smile. "He's not my FBI agent, but I'll invite him. Thank you."
Betsy nodded and fled, nearly stumbling in the driveway, which would have been just perfect. She'd have to explain skinned knees to Luke. But she didn't fall, she reminded herself, and when she made it down to Ocean Drive, she slowed her pace and felt almost calm. Should she find Teddy Shelton next, tell him not to stir up trouble? To disappear and forget that Luke had hired him?
What were they up to, the two of them?
She shook her head, as if she were arguing with herself. Teddy was Luke's problem. She had an excuse to see Zoe, none at all to track down a creep like Teddy Shelton. She'd met him last summer and had heard rumors that he'd served time in prison. Luke was so naive about people—he'd have no idea. And Betsy knew she could do only so much to protect him.
Seventeen
J.B. walked into the kitchen after Betsy O'Keefe left and helped himself to a cider doughnut. He felt much better now that he'd done the kissing and then had a chance to kick himself and get over it.
Zoe didn't move from her position in the entry doorway. "Thinking about going after her and saying no to
dinner, after all?" "You eavesdropped?" He sat at the table. "Overheard." He bit into his
doughnut. "I see you changed out of your robe." "Don't go there." He smiled without remorse. "I don't have to, do I?
You're already there. And will be for a while, I suspect." "You know, McGrath, as houseguests go—" "You could do worse." He finished his doughnut in
two more bites and dusted the cinnamon sugar off his fingers. "There's something I should tell you before the Castellane kid figures it out. My ancestors settled here in the 1600s. I think George Sutherland was the first one. Sutherland Island's named after him."
He could see he had her attention. She eased out of the doorway but still was stiff, preoccupied. "How distant are these Sutherland ancestors?"
"Not very. My grandmother was a Sutherland."
She kept her reaction under control, but he could see her shock in her eyes. "Posey Sutherland? The woman Kyle just happened to mention this morning?"
"She was my grandmother. John Lester was my great-grandfather. An SOB as far as I can tell."
Zoe shot into the kitchen and grabbed the last doughnut, but didn't take a bite as she leaned back against the counter and shook her head. "Forget it. I don't believe a word you're saying. You made that up after you heard Kyle mention her name. You're just trying to distract me because Betsy read me the riot act. You're incorrigible." She bit into her doughnut. "I'm talking to Bruce. He and the guys really should toss you overboard."
J.B. ignored her. "Posey eloped with my grandfather, Jesse Benjamin McGrath, and moved west with him. Her father—"
"John Lester," Zoe supplied, dubious but apparently willing to let him keep digging this hole for himself.
"Right. John Lester disowned her. She died when my father was seven. Jesse became a lawman in western Montana and was gunned down chasing bank robbers during the Depression."
"I see. What about your father?" "He became a guide in western Montana. He died in
February. He didn't marry until he was in his forties, and my mother died when I was a baby. So, it was just the two of us. Me and my old pop. He loved Montana. It was where he belonged. Do you ever wonder about that, Zoe? Where you belong?"
Zoe's expression softened, and she set her half-eaten doughnut on the counter and took a small breath. "You're telling the truth, aren't you?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Did you know your grandmother and Olivia were friends?"
He nodded.
"How, if she and your grandfather both died when your father was just a little boy—"
"I have letters," he said. "From your great-aunt to my grandmother."
She stared at him. "Letters? Letters Aunt Olivia wrote?"
"Letters a very young woman wrote to a friend who'd run off with a stranger and never came home. Olivia and Posey." His voice caught with unexpected emotion. "They were both just kids."
"My God. I had no idea."
"I didn't bring the letters with me. They're still in Montana." He leaned back in his chair, his eyes on Zoe as she steadied herself, one hand on the edge of the counter. "Olivia had no use for Posey's father or her husband."
"Hence, Mr. Lester McGrath."
"It was hers and Posey's secret."
Zoe shook her head in amazement. "I had no idea. Olivia was almost seventy when I was born—she'd already lived a big chunk of her life. And your grandmother had been dead for years. How did she die? What happened to her?"
"Some kind of fever. It wasn't an easy life for her in Montana."
"Do you think she was happy?"
"I only have Olivia's view of things. She had her doubts, but I gather my grandmother kept insisting she was happy. But I think she was also aware of what she'd given up to be with my grandfather, to follow his dreams."
"Do you have a sense of what kind of man he was?"
"Not an easy one. My father was just ten when he was killed. He wasn't a big talker. Sometimes when we were out hiking, he would tell me stories—he said his father was a hard man but basically good, and he never got over Posey's death."
"How sad," Zoe murmured. "Your grandfather wasn't from Goose Harbor?"
"Nova Scotia, as far as I know."
"It was such a long time ago. Yet just last year, Aunt Olivia was sitting right here at this table—" But Zoe stopped abruptly, some of her surprise wearing off, and frowned at J.B. "You could have told me this sooner, you know."
"Why?"
She had no good reason to give him. "It would have been polite."
"You broke into my room at mean old Lottie Mar-tin's inn and came at me with a drapery rod."
"I did not break into your room."
He raised an eyebrow.
She smiled. "I had a pass key."
Her smile pleased him more than it should have. It meant she was feeling better—and his reaction meant he was sliding in deeper with her. Any deeper and he might not be able to climb out again. And he'd have to. He knew it. Something was wrong in Goose Harbor, Maine, and she'd run from it a year ago. B
ut she wouldn't again.
He was supposed to be on vacation. His superiors back in Washington would skin him alive if they knew he was dipping a toe into the unsolved murder of a small-town Maine police chief.
Zoe's father.
He had his life away from here. He needed to go back to it.
"As for the drapery rod," she said, "you're lucky I didn't beat you over the head with it. That nook isn't for public consumption."
He pushed back his dark thoughts and stretched out his long legs, sexy, deliberately provocative. "Meaning it's blackmail material? I wonder what I could get in return for my silence."
The warmth spread through her—he could see it. It unsettled her, got her moving. But she didn't back down. She stood over him, leaned in toward him. "Eavesdropping on private conversations, trespassing, not hiking and boating and relaxing like you're supposed to—I wonder what I could get in return for my silence."
"Lots." He folded his hands on his stomach, just above his belt, unabashed by the stirring in his groin. She had to know by now what they were moving toward. "Just depends on what you want."
But that, apparently, was all Zoe could stand. She bolted for the front room. "I can see why Aunt Olivia named her evil nemesis McGrath. If your grandfather provoked people the way you do—"
"She never killed him off," J.B. said. "I think she kind of liked him."
"I should sic Kyle on you. Do you know what he'd do for original letters from my aunt to her best friend? Letters no one else has ever seen?"
"Maybe she never intended for anyone else to see them. Maybe my grandmother didn't, either, and she only saved them because they reminded her of Goose Harbor."
Zoe turned suddenly, tears shining in her eyes. "It's a sad story, isn't it? Your grandmother must have been in her twenties when she died. That's so young. I feel almost selfish, missing Aunt Olivia as much as I do."
"She was a presence in your life for a long time."
"The letters—did you read them all?"
"One by one," he said. "I went back to Montana to bury my father. It was cathartic to go through his cabin. I found the letters in an old trunk—I don't know if he'd ever read them. He wasn't an introspective man."
"I'm sorry. You must miss him."
J.B. nodded. "I do. There's a line in one of the let-ters—your aunt's clearly responding to something my grandmother had written to her about her little boy."
"Your father," Zoe said.
"Your aunt wrote, ‘Perhaps your son was meant to be in Montana.'"
"Meaning it was all worth it?" She sounded skeptical.
"I don't know. I think it helped your aunt understand
why her friend left." "Posey hadn't just been swept off her feet by a rogue—she'd played out some cosmic destiny."
J.B. rose but felt weighted, as if the forces of gravity had suddenly decided to grab him by the feet and drag him to the center of the earth. He had to make himself take another step. "My father was meant to be in Montana, Zoe. Somehow a Maine writer who never moved out of the house she was born in, who never met him, knew it." He shrugged, and he even had trouble moving his arms. "That's all I can say."
"J.B., are you okay?"
He didn't answer. He pictured himself in the cabin on a snowy winter night as he dug into the trunk and found his father's old christening gown that Olivia West had sent from Maine, three first-edition copies of her first books, signed by her, a black-paper photo album of fading pictures—and the letters. He'd come to know his grandmother through the eyes of another woman.
Zoe smiled gently, and he noticed the slenderness of her fingers as she placed one hand on the doorjamb. "I wonder if Aunt Olivia knew, on some level, that Posey Sutherland and Jesse McGrath's lawman grandson would end up here, back in Goose Harbor. If that was meant to be, too."
* * *
Luke was still on his run when Betsy got back to the yacht after seeing Zoe West. She fixed herself a margarita and sat out on the afterdeck, only to experience a jolt of restlessness mixed with fear, the kind of powerful emotion she knew propelled people into acting on impulse, doing things they shouldn't.
She'd already set down her drink and was slipping through the plush, luxurious yacht, stealthily, her very manner giving her away. She knew she was taking a stupid risk, knew she was about to do something she had no business doing.
Prying, meddling, spying.
She was Luke's lover and his nurse, but he didn't share much about his finances with her. They weren't intimate in that way.
She came to his stateroom. It was his sanctuary. Determinedly masculine, richly appointed. She was not allowed in here unless it was with him, at his behest. He'd made that clear. He was odd, she thought, but not cruel.
The brass bell occupied its usual spot on his nightstand. She felt a rush of embarrassment and shame. How could she explain the bell to anyone? Who would understand? The bell was beyond odd. The bell veered toward cruelty.
Now that she'd come this far, she went ahead and knelt in front of a two-drawer filing cabinet, its deep, polished dark wood making it fit into the stateroom's decor. He kept it locked.
Betsy knew where to find the key. She'd learned to recognize what she might need to know if something happened to her patient, including things they might never think to tell her or want to contemplate—or hide. She considered knowing a part of what was expected of her as a caregiver.
Reaching up to the nightstand, surprised that she wasn't more nervous, she lifted the bell and tucked two fingers up inside it, where the key was taped. She'd noticed it because sometimes it affected the ring of the bell. She hoped she'd have enough time to retape it when she was finished. If not, she'd do it later, even if she had to empty a sleeping pill into Luke's herbal tea and knock him out.
But she couldn't think about that now, let it panic her.
She unlocked the cabinet and slid open the top drawer. Given his obsessive-compulsive tendencies, Luke maintained the files himself and had every one of them neatly labeled. Betsy flipped through them, expecting she'd know which one she wanted when she saw it.
She did. It was a slender folder stuck between two fatter folders, labeled Miscellaneous.
There were two sheets of green ledger paper inside the manila folder. Luke didn't trust computers. The writing on the pages, in black ink, was clearly his. At the top of the first page, he'd written in capitals, T.S., as if that would fool anyone, and recorded three payments. The earliest was last fall, before Patrick West's death.
That almost stopped Betsy's heart. But the payment wasn't for that much, surely not enough for a man to commit murder.
The second two payments were made in the past week, for considerably more.
The second sheet surprised her. At the top, again in all caps, Luke had written, S.S.M.
Who?
Her heart jumped, and she almost yelled out in surprise. Steven Stickney Monroe.
"What on earth?" she whispered, shocked. Her vision blurred for a few seconds as she stared at the list of numbers, unable to make them out.
They were payments to Stick, not from him.
Why would Luke need to pay Stick Monroe? They both liked a poker game now and then, but Luke was too much of a control freak to get in over his head. She didn't know about Stick.
Well, they both were honest men. It was a lot of money by her standards—she added up thirty thousand dollars—but undoubtedly not by Luke's or even Stick's, although he wasn't nearly as wealthy.
A small loan between friends. It was in the same folder as the record of payments to Teddy Shelton because they both were informal, if not illegal.
Teddy worried her. She couldn't help it. He worried Judge Monroe, too.
Instead of resolving her questions, the file only added new ones. Warning herself not to jump to conclusions, Betsy quickly returned the folder to the filing cabinet, shut the drawer, locked up and returned the key to its spot inside the bell. The tape still stuck. She didn't have to replace it.
The ice had melted in her margarita when she returned to the afterdeck. She added two more cubes from the ice bucket, took a huge gulp and sat down.
Luke was out on the dock doing his post-run stretches. He was drenched in sweat, and she thought he looked nasty, hated the idea that he had secrets from her. Possibly explosive secrets. What had he paid Teddy Shelton for last September?
But Betsy had secrets of her own—she'd never breathed a word to him about Olivia's certainty that she knew the identity of her nephew's killer.
When he climbed onto the afterdeck and kissed her lightly, a drop of his sweat landing on her shirt, she didn't mind. Whatever he and Shelton and maybe even Stick were up to, Luke meant well, and he was very rich.
Eighteen
When Zoe decided to walk to dinner alone, J.B. didn't argue with her, not because he liked the idea but because he might kiss her again, and she could get spooked and throw him out. Then he'd have to camp out on the rocks, in the cold to keep an eye on her. He could anchor his boat off the bluff, but that made a quick reaction to any goings-on impossible.
And he'd probably have to get wet.
Either way he'd be cold.
The larger point was he didn't like what was going on in Goose Harbor. He had a bad feeling about Teddy Shelton. Betsy O'Keefe's visit. Kyle Castellane's documentary on Olivia West. None of it felt right, so not right that he'd dug out his 9 mm pistol from its locked compartment in his Jeep and clipped on his belt holster. Time to go around Goose Harbor armed.
Since he was driving, he gave Zoe a head start before finding his way along the maze of narrow streets behind the library to the yellow clapboard house she'd grown up in.
The two sisters were out back talking gardening with Stick Monroe. Christina, in jeans and a sweatshirt as a change from her café clothes, offered J.B. a glass of Chianti from a colorful pitcher on the patio table. He declined. He'd put on a jacket to cover his pistol, but if Zoe or her sister or her friend the retired judge noticed he was carrying a firearm, they didn't say anything. Which meant Zoe, at least, hadn't noticed.
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