The Harbor

by Carla Neggers

  "You also shot at a former police officer."

  "'Former' is a key word, don't you think?" Teddy stared out at the marsh, pretty even with the gray light and clouds. "What about maintaining the status quo? I thought that was worth a bonus—"

  "Goodbye, Mr. Shelton. I'm sorry our association had to end this way. There will be no bonus."

  Click.

  Done. The ax had fallen.

  Teddy had the Goose Harbor police, the Maine State Police, the Maine Marine Patrol, an FBI agent, an ex-cop and who knew else all out looking for him. And Luke, that rich puke, was in the clear. But he must have figured out another way to exercise control over events and make sure Patrick West's murder stayed unsolved.

  Or maybe he wasn't worried about that anymore.

  It was nothing to Teddy. He'd never given a damn about the Castellanes. Didn't now. The bonuses would have been nice, but he had to remember he was in Goose Harbor for one reason and one reason only—that regal bastard, Judge Steven Stickney Monroe.

  * * *

  Betsy extricated herself from her conversation with the West sisters as quickly as she could, too upset and on edge to trust herself not to lash out at them because of her own volatile emotions. They didn't seem to notice. They merely asked if she'd seen Kyle since he'd left Olivia's house after he'd talked with the police.

  Betsy assured them she hadn't. She'd noticed the crude bandage on Zoe's wrist and shuddered at the thought of Teddy Shelton shooting at her—the thought of him possibly almost killing Kyle, of Luke being mixed up with a thug like that. Why didn't the two Castellane men understand how much she cared about them?

  Zoe said she and J. B. McGrath had been to see Luke. Betsy didn't mention their argument. She didn't know if he'd forgiven her, but she'd forgiven him. He was upset because of his ridiculous, irrational fear that his son was somehow involved in Patrick West's death.

  She promised Zoe and Christina if she saw Kyle, she'd tell him they were looking for him.

  As she walked back to the yacht, Betsy found herself feeling sympathy for Luke, wanting to reassure him. No one should have to endure such groundless fears and suspicions. Given his unyielding hypochondria, the anxiety behind it, she guessed that he must have seized on any inkling he had about Kyle and blew it all out of proportion, the way he did a sniffle or a spot that anyone else would dismiss.

  She was almost to the boat when Kyle approached her. She grimaced at his bruises and pale, grayish skin. He'd had enough shocks to last him for a long, long time. "I saw my dad. He says he's leaving tomorrow. Alone. Just him and his crew."

  "We had an argument," Betsy said.

  "Betsy—" Kyle shook his head, looking pained. "Never mind."

  She bit down on her lower lip. "You don't think he ever meant to take me with him, do you?"

  "He's an odd duck. You knew that going in."

  She smiled sadly. "And aren't you relieved you're not like him? Christina West adores you because of it. The romantic, creative artist misunderstood by his difficult, philistine father—"

  "All that's true, but he'd do anything for me." Kyle's voice was quiet, surprisingly mature, self-aware. "I know that."

  "Do you really?" Betsy continued toward Luke's yacht, feeling steadier on her feet now. "I suppose having your father out of Goose Harbor will make it easier for you to continue your work on your documentary. He won't hinder your access to the Wests." She paused, realized the air didn't feel as cold anymore as she looked at this young man she'd known since he was a baby. "That's why you're seeing Christina, isn't it? Because she's Olivia's niece?"

  "No, of course not."

  "She's a good girl, Kyle. She's got simple desires. Don't use her to fulfill your own ambitions. Think about her and what she wants."

  "I am. Don't worry, Betsy." He flashed her a smile, handsome and rakish even with his split lip and black eye. "You're a good soul, aren't you? Worrying I'm the rich bastard who's swept the naive small-town girl off her feet."

  Betsy couldn't help herself and smiled at him. "You're awfully full of yourself, Kyle Castellane, and you always have been. You used to stand out on the dock and pee in the harbor when your mum was trying to potty-train you. We all should have known then."

  He grinned at her. "That's where I have to give my old man credit. He didn't beat me for anything, not even peeing in the harbor."

  Everyone in Goose Harbor knew Luke'd had terrible parents, and yet he acted as if he'd had a loving and privileged childhood, pretended the abuse he'd endured wasn't just his private hell but something that had never happened at all.

  However good his intentions, Betsy doubted Kyle's relationship with Christina would last after he finished his documentary. She was part of that obsession now. In time he'd move on to a new one and forget what it was that had attracted him to her in the first place. It wasn't that he wasn't sincere—Betsy didn't doubt he loved Christina. But after his documentary, he'd move on to a new obsession, a new love, as impossible as that would seem to him now if she mentioned it.

  He didn't join her on his father's boat but retreated back toward the café and his apartment.

  Luke was out on the afterdeck, a surprise given the damp weather. "Mind if I come aboard?" Betsy asked softly.

  "You still have to get your things."

  She pushed back the hurt and joined him. He got up suddenly. "Come with me."

  He took her below to the smallest of the staterooms, where he had his gun cabinet. He unlocked it silently, punching in the code to the alarm. He'd shown Betsy his modest but very expensive firearms collection once before, but she didn't care anything about guns. Luke could have guns or not have guns. It didn't matter to her. She'd never owned one, had never touched one. Since he was so meticulous about everything else, she assumed he had the proper permits. She'd never known him to shoot any of his weapons, on a firing range or in self-defense.

  "The police haven't released any information they have—or don't have—on the weapon that killed Patrick West." He spoke calmly, swinging the glass-and-wood door open. "I don't know what ballistics evidence they have. The bullet could have hit bone and shattered, or it could have been dug out of him relatively intact, in which case it could tell them a great deal."

  Betsy could feel her pulse throbbing in her temple. "The police would want to keep that kind of information under close wraps, wouldn't they? They wouldn't want the killer to know what they had on him. That's the way it's done, isn't it?"

  Luke nodded. "To be honest, I don't know that much about ballistics or investigative procedures." He spoke calmly, clinically, but she had no idea why he was telling her these things, why he'd taken her down here. "I assume if they can get hold of the actual murder weapon, they can match it to the bullet. If they have one, of course. Short of that—well, I don't know."

  "Luke. What's going on?"

  He gestured at his collection. "I own two hunting rifles and six handguns, including two antiques. I sold a handgun to Teddy Shelton last September, not one of my six."

  "That's legal, isn't it?"

  "In this case, no. Teddy's a convicted felon. I didn't know at the time. Stick Monroe mentioned it. He doesn't know about the sale. There were other prob-lems—paperwork—"

  "Is Teddy—" Betsy's lips were so dry. "Is Teddy blackmailing you?"

  "No. He's a true gun nut, the kind who gives responsible gun owners—well, I don't know if I can say I'm responsible anymore. Look at what I've done. But Teddy's only interested in the weapons themselves." Luke sighed, his color off. "That's not why I brought you here. Count the handguns, Betsy."

  "Luke—"

  His eyes leveled on her. "Count them. Please. I want you to understand."

  She did as he asked. "Five, Luke." She could hear her own breathlessness. "There are only five handguns here. You said you had six."

  "I'm a health nut. I exercise and watch what I eat. I'm a control freak in a thousand different ways. I know that about myself." His tone was quiet and intense, but stil
l unruffled, as if he were discussing a weather report. "What I am not is paranoid about other people, especially my friends and family. I don't know why—I probably should be, given my upbringing. But I have faith in them. I believe in them."

  He'd never once, in their months together, referred to his childhood negatively, or to other people so positively. Betsy found she couldn't speak. Who was this man? She knew now she didn't have a clue.

  Luke swallowed, looking vulnerable, ashen. "After Patrick's death last year, I discovered the missing gun. It's a Colt Python .357 revolver. It's a fine weapon."

  "How long after Chief West was killed?"

  "The next day. After I heard Olivia had died. I don't even remember why I checked."

  "Did you report it?"

  He shook his head. "No."

  Betsy was silent. Her stomach ached.

  "Now it's too late," he said.

  She nodded. "I—I understand."

  "No, you don't. You think I'm covering up for my son. I'm not. Betsy, I don't believe Kyle killed Patrick West. I never believed it."

  "But you were worried the police would."

  "I was worried Zoe would find out and kill him."

  "Luke!"

  He closed up the cabinet and locked it. "She wouldn't have. I see that now, but at the time, I was as caught up in the drama as everyone else."

  She thought of the payments to Stick Monroe. "What about Stick?"

  "He knows about the stolen gun. He knows I didn't report the theft to police. I should have, especially when I knew it could have been the weapon used in Patrick's murder. I paid Stick for his silence. Cash. He wouldn't take it—he says he's retired and has no intention of ratting out a friend. But I insisted. I don't know what he does with it. Tosses it in the ocean for all I know."

  "He's not—you don't consider that blackmail, do you?"

  Luke shook his head sadly, his disappointment palpable, as if he'd hoped she'd have figured it out by now, understood him after all. "No, Betsy. I consider it an act of friendship."

  To pay a man for his silence? Betsy didn't get that. But she supposed that was Luke's whole point. That she didn't get it, didn't get him.

  "Once I realized the Python was gone," Luke went on, "I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat. I was terrified that a gun I owned, legally, for the most innocuous of reasons, would end up being the murder weapon, not only in Patrick's death—"

  "But someone else's," Betsy said. "You hired Teddy because you were afraid the murderer was getting ready to strike again."

  Luke shut the gun cabinet and reset the alarm. "I still am."

  Twenty-Seven

  Zoe slipped up to the attic and sat on her thick chenille rug among her pillows and scribblings. She picked up one of her yellow pads and sighed at how awful her writing was. She didn't have Olivia's zest for adventure, her accessible style, her insight into Jen Periwinkle.

  At least it didn't seem so at that moment.

  Last year, sitting up here with her feet propped up on pillows and the window cracked so that she could feel the breeze and smell the ocean, she'd thought she was brilliant. The words flowed, the scenes developed one after another in her head, and she couldn't stop writing.

  She hadn't written a word since she'd left Goose Harbor, not even after she was fired and living with Charlie and Bea Jericho, canning vegetables and milking goats and learning to knit. She'd meant to pretend that she'd never written at all.

  Probably still a good idea. She could burn this mess and go find a job.

  "Zoe?"

  It was J.B. She'd left him in the kitchen to scrounge up dinner now that their evening on the Castellane yacht was off. She figured he'd drag her to Perry's for fried shrimp, beer and a game of darts.

  "I'm here," she said. "Come on up. You've read this garbage, so it's not like it's a secret."

  He seemed even taller as he made his way toward her under the slanted ceilings. "I told you—"

  "Yeah, right, you can't read my handwriting. I don't need to polygraph you on that one—I know it's not true."

  He smiled. "I take it I'm not disturbing you?"

  She shook her head. "No, it's not like I'm writing." She sighed at a curling yellow page. She'd thought about writing with a fountain pen, the way her aunt had started in her early twenties, but decided on pencil. "This was just a catharsis or something."

  J.B. stepped over her discarded drapery rod from what seemed like a thousand years ago. "Do you believe Kyle's story that he didn't get all the way up here?"

  "That part. He wouldn't have been able to resist if he knew I'd played around with Jen Periwinkle. It seems like an invasion into Aunt Olivia's imagination, don't you think? Jen and Mr. Lester McGrath were her creations, not mine."

  "Then make them yours. She left you the rights to her Periwinkle novels for a reason. Maybe that was it. So they could live through you—"

  "Trust me, I was a better cop than I ever will be a writer."

  He stood in front of the bureau at her feet. "Except for that little incident with the gun and the Texas Ranger."

  "Did the governor's murder get solved or did it not? And without too much damage to the good guys." She leaned back against a fat pillow, eyeing him. "You'd have fired me, too, wouldn't you?"

  "I'd have fired you the first time I caught you without a weapon while you were on duty." His presence made her writing space seem even smaller, more intimate. "You disengaged from the work, didn't you?"

  "Over time. It didn't happen all at once."

  He sat on the chenille rug and stretched his legs out straight, crossing his ankles an inch from her hip. "I can understand how Stick Monroe and Luke Castellane could see themselves as your protector—Luke because of his loyalty to Olivia, Stick because of his loyalty to you."

  "Luke's protecting himself. Anyway, I can take care of myself."

  "That's not the question. It's not about you. It's about them and their relationship to you, to your father, to your aunt. It's a tough position to be in. For all of you." He watched her a moment, then the corners of his mouth quirked. "Especially for them. You're noncompliant."

  "Not me." She smiled. "I'm good at taking orders."

  But he'd gone serious on her. "You're more out of control than I am."

  Her throat caught at the quiet truth of his words, and she looked away, staring out at the harbor. It was dusk, the water still, glasslike, reflecting the moored boats and the bright leaves of trees on the shoreline.

  "If Teddy Shelton knows anything about who killed my father, why—"

  "Let the state and local police figure it out. If they choose to, they can bring in the bureau. Zoe, you have to stand down. You have to let people do their jobs, let them help you. You ran last year because you knew you couldn't keep it up, you had to back off."

  She shook her head. "I ran because I knew the answers to my father's murder are here in town, not outside. That's what people want to believe. That's why they're all so nervous around me." She shut her eyes and inhaled, then exhaled slowly. "I just want to know why he was killed, J.B. Who did it."

  "I know."

  "And then I want a normal life." She tried to concentrate on her breathing and not to relive the image of Kyle Castellane flying toward her, Teddy Shelton shooting at her. She'd had no idea he was armed, hadn't even considered it. Law Enforcement 101. "All this past year I told myself coming home was a normal thing to do and nothing would happen. I could make my peace with Dad's death and figure out what comes next in my life. I could live here. I could eat blueberry pancakes every morning."

  "Everything you've just said makes sense."

  She managed a halfhearted smile. "Not the blueberry pancakes."

  "Zoe—"

  "I knew it wasn't true. I knew I couldn't just come back here and it'd all be normal again."

  She looked down at her bandaged wrist. He'd helped her put on a fresh bandage, but since she wasn't hurting as much when he did it, she'd responded to even his slightest touch. Another re
ason she'd bolted up to the attic. That was what it was, she thought. A place to hide. Her writing, too, was a place to hide.

  "Well," she said, "I guess I anticipated dodging bullets and having my car stolen, but I sure as hell never expected to go kayaking with an undercover FBI agent."

  J.B. moved his legs closer to her. "It's not the kay

  aking that's got you off balance."

  "You're not going to give me an inch?"

  "Honey, I'm not giving you a millimeter. And no more undercover work for me. They won't put me back in. I've done my bit. Nearly didn't make it back this last time."

  "Won't you go stir-crazy at a desk?"

  "I'll learn yoga. Get exercise." He smiled. "Have a

  proper sex life." Zoe tried not to let him get to her. Stick was right.

  J. B. McGrath was a powder keg. "What about emotional commitment to others?" she asked lightly. "That was something you could avoid undercover. If you're just a regular FBI agent—"

  "I'll never be that." "Do you talk to your superiors that way?" "I've got a place in Washington, and there's talk of

  having me put together a UCA training course." "UCA means undercover agent. The FBI and its acronyms." "You'd have been an NT. New Trainee."

  "I'd have made it through the academy, you know. I didn't drop out because I was afraid of failure. I dropped out because—"

  "Because you had Jen Periwinkle in your head."

  Maybe he had a point. Maybe she'd gone into a tailspin not just because of her father and Aunt Olivia, but because she wasn't meant to stay on the course she was on.

  He stared out the attic window, and she wondered what he saw when he looked at the harbor, the docks, the boats. He wouldn't see her father lumbering along the waterfront, her aunt with her cane as she set out on a bright morning to borrow books from the library. It'd be like if she were in Montana. She'd see an unfamiliar landscape, beautiful, but one that didn't conjure up images and memories. He'd never known his grandmother. Posey Sutherland wasn't real to him the way the best friend she'd left behind in Goose Harbor was real to Zoe.