Liar's Key

by Carla Neggers

  If it was her weird reaction to the dark ocean that had prompted her to turn around, then she supposed she ought to be grateful, because as she’d started back up to her family’s longtime summer home, she’d spotted Gordy Wheelock crossing Ocean Avenue from the Sharpe house. She’d waited, unmoving in the shadows, trying to control her rapid, shallow breathing, trying to ignore wave after wave surging below her, until Gordy finally disappeared up a side street next to the restaurant.

  Back home, she’d sat on the porch and thought of her mother’s love for Heron’s Cove until she calmed down enough not to attract the attention of her father, her brother and Isabel. Finally under control, she’d congratulated herself. She’d avoided Gordy and she’d avoided embarrassing herself with whichever Sharpes were at the Sharpe house—now just the Sharpe offices.

  Today was another day, with fresh urges and temptations, a fact of life for her whenever she was in Heron’s Cove. She hadn’t realized it until she’d met Gordy here, but it had happened before, from the time she was a small child. She remembered wandering down to the rocks on her own, without telling anyone, terrifying her parents. Usually good, always responsible, she’d broken free here in ways she hadn’t anywhere else.

  Her mother hadn’t seen it. You were only four, Claudia. That’s what four-year-olds do.

  It was always like that, the understanding, the minimizing, but her mother hadn’t been around for her only daughter’s encounter with Gordy Wheelock in the sunroom.

  Claudia shoved her hands in her pockets, imagining Heron’s Cove when Horace Norwood, her great-grandfather, had built his summer house more than a century ago. She didn’t remember Wendell’s parents when they worked at keeping the place up in every way—maintenance, housekeeping, mowing, pruning, planting. They’d overseen household projects and looked after the property during the off-season. She remembered her mother talking about them. She’d loved them like family, she’d said. No one had ever had a qualm about leaving valuables at the house or letting the Sharpes have a key.

  A different time, Claudia thought as she glanced out at the water, not at all frightening now under the late afternoon sun. She could hear her mother’s laughter as the two of them had searched for tide pools among the rocks. I love a sand beach, Claudia, but there’s truly nothing like the rugged, rocky coast.

  It wasn’t a specific memory of a specific time but one of many memories of many times. Before her father won the battle and they’d stopped coming to Maine on a regular basis, Claudia had gone on countless excursions searching for tide pools with her mother, and her mother would always say the same thing about rocks versus sand.

  But the memory of her mother’s laughter faded, and Claudia realized Lucas Sharpe was down on the rocks. “Lucas!” she called brightly, waving to him as she left the sidewalk.

  He looked up, and if he grimaced or cursed under his breath, she couldn’t tell.

  She took a dirt path toward the water, until it disappeared among the boulders that formed this stretch of coastline. She stopped on a flat-topped hunk of granite just above Lucas. “Are you relaxing or catching dinner?” she asked.

  “Getting air.” He was standing on a barnacle-covered boulder, the low tide inches from his feet. It wouldn’t be long before the boulder again would be submerged in salt water. “Hello, Claudia.”

  Hearing his voice, seeing those green eyes and that fit, lanky body, reminded her why she’d become so obsessed with seeing him again here in Heron’s Cove. She’d had a chance with Lucas Sharpe, and she’d blown it. She could blame Gordy for using her the way he had, but it was her own actions that had driven this good-looking, intelligent, decent man from her.

  “It’s great to see you, Lucas,” she said, managing to keep her voice from sounding too strangled, too desperate. “I just got in from London via Boston. Heron’s Cove never really changes, does it? Not on the surface, anyway. Are you traveling as much as ever?”

  “A fair amount. It comes with the job.”

  He didn’t sound desperate at all, only cool, in control. Claudia crossed her arms on her chest. “It’s colder down here close to the water. Funny how I forget. I heard you’ve been in London a few times this past year on business and to see your parents. Next time you’re in town give me a ring. I’d love to take you for a drink. Just two old friends from Heron’s Cove.”

  “You’re from Philadelphia and you live in London. You didn’t grow up here.”

  If he regretted his barbed comment, or even realized it stung, she saw no sign of it. She jumped onto another boulder, avoiding ones with barnacles. She was dressed for boulder-hopping in her slim pants and hoodie, but she was sure the barnacles would shred the bottoms of her walking flats. She’d packed light for the trip and they needed to do double duty. Any clothes she might have left at the house were at least a decade old. There were stores in Heron’s Cove, but she didn’t want to go shopping. It would be another unbearable reminder of happy days with her mother.

  “You must be looking forward to the open house tomorrow,” she said. “It was decent of you to invite us. I’m afraid I won’t be able to make it. I’m not going to be here long, and I have a lot I need to do to get the house ready.”

  “Whatever works for you, Claudia.”

  She didn’t know what to say. Lucas seemed unwilling to acknowledge there’d been anything between them—as she had been yesterday with Gordy, despite their having slept together. Of course, she and Lucas hadn’t slept together. But there’d been something there. Common interests, common history and a deep physical attraction. She felt it now. She knew he’d felt it last year.

  He took a long step off the barnacle-covered rock to one to her right. “Agent Wheelock will be there tomorrow,” he added.

  “I saw him in London.”

  “So I heard.”

  Claudia would have preferred Lucas deny ever having entertained the thought of a romantic relationship with her than remind of her brief affair with an FBI legend. She’d never been sure how much Lucas knew, but it didn’t matter. He suspected. He had a business to protect. Any hint she’d had an inappropriate relationship with a federal agent would send him running.

  She decided not to mention she’d been the one to call Gordy last week.

  “He seems to be enjoying retirement,” she said. “He’s expecting another grandchild soon. I let him tag along to a party on Sunday. Your parents were there. I’m sure they told you. I also saw your grandfather last week at Alessandro Pearson’s funeral.”

  “I know you and Alessandro were friends. I’m sorry.”

  “Yes, his death was a shock. He was elderly, but it’s still hard to believe...” She stopped herself, narrowing her gaze on Lucas. “Am I missing something, Lucas?”

  “I doubt it.”

  Just the barest undertone of contempt. She swallowed. “You and your grandfather don’t believe there’s any issue with Alessandro’s death, do you?”

  “We don’t do death investigations,” he said.

  His coldness took her aback, but she kept her footing on the boulder. “I know you aren’t happy to see me here, but please don’t worry. My focus is on getting the house ready to sell. My father and brother and Isabel don’t know anything about our past. I intend to keep it that way.”

  “We had dinner together a couple of times when I was in London and we went to a show. Your attentions were elsewhere at the time. There’s no going back, Claudia. I’m not here to judge you or mess up your life.”

  “But you don’t trust me.” When he didn’t respond, she glanced up at the steep bank to the Norwood house. Her house. “My mother gave up coming here because my father prefers the Outer Banks. He never developed a fondness for cool, foggy Maine evenings. I love them—snuggling up under a cozy wrap while everyone else is sweating to death or condemned to air-conditioning on a hot summer night. My father, on the ot
her hand, would prefer to sit on a sandy beach in a pair of shorts, with a cold beer. Adrian’s like that, too. What do you like, Lucas?”

  “I haven’t had much time for relaxing lately.”

  Obviously she hadn’t caught him in the greatest mood. She attempted a smile. “I’m not complaining about the Outer Banks, mind you. It’s gorgeous there. I suppose I’m nostalgic because of my mother.”

  “I’m sorry, Claudia,” Lucas said. “I know you must miss her.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Stop by tomorrow if you’d like,” he added. “It’s fine with me either way.”

  “Because I don’t matter to you.”

  But as she spoke, a swell broke over the boulder he’d vacated and almost reached the one where he was now standing. Claudia wasn’t sure if he’d heard her. He hopped onto another boulder, gave her a quick wave and started back up to the sidewalk.

  She stayed and watched more swells rise and roll in over the rocks, giving Lucas a chance to get back to the Sharpe Fine Art Recovery offices. She’d driven past his antique house in the village that morning and noticed a black cat in the window. The cat seemed to be staring at her, as if it knew all her secrets. She’d wondered if Lucas had a romantic life, or if he were consumed by work—if he might decide he wanted to rekindle a relationship with her, after all.

  Lucas...why don’t you move your offices to New York or Boston?

  Heron’s Cove is where Sharpe Fine Art Recovery started. It’s like its soul is there. It also works well. We’re removed but not too removed.

  You can be objective.

  Exactly. With technology, it’s even easier to manage a more out-of-the-way location than it was when my grandfather started the company sixty years ago. He’s been in Dublin for the past fifteen years. That’s helped, too.

  My mother always has had such respect for you and your family and the work you do.

  Lucas had spoken to her with such ease and friendliness over that first dinner in London, before her mother’s cancer diagnosis. Claudia wanted it to be like that between them again, but now she despaired of that ever happening. It wasn’t that he hadn’t put the past behind him, she realized. He’d put her behind him.

  * * *

  A slip into an ankle-deep tide pool finally drove Claudia inside. She went upstairs to her bedroom, its turquoise-and-white décor unchanged from when she was ten, and changed her pants, shoes and socks. The sun had leaked out of the sky, and the afternoon, what was left of it, had turned cool. She gazed out at the sea and fought tears. A week ago, she’d been in Ireland, touring Bracken Distillers, feeling like a stalker as she’d traced some of Lucas’s steps there and tried to understand what he and his family had been doing this past year, since she’d laid her mother to rest.

  Mary Bracken had been charming and knowledgeable—and open. Claudia remembered being open with people, before Gordy Wheelock had inserted himself into her life, before her mother’s death, but she’d never possessed Mary’s natural innocence. Her openness had been more a conscious way of acting and being. She was a Norwood, after all. She’d taken her cue from her mother’s ease and graciousness with people. Mary Bracken was more vivacious, a bundle of energy and amusing one-liners as she’d led the tour.

  She must be in Maine by now for her visit with her brother. She’d said she didn’t know the Sharpes as well as he did as the parish priest in a small fishing village near Heron’s Cove.

  Claudia opened a window. She could hear the ocean crashing on the rocks, sounding so close it was almost as if the waves and water could overtake her. She found herself wondering what it would be like to let herself go out to sea with the tide. Would anyone miss her?

  Frightened by her train of thought, she pulled herself away from the window. As she turned, three framed black-and-white photographs of various Norwoods greeted her on the wall by the door. In the center was her mother at seven or eight, standing on the front lawn with the ocean in the background. Could she ever have imagined the twists and turns her life would take—that it would end too soon, at the age of sixty-six?

  Of course not, Claudia thought, annoyed with herself. Little girls didn’t think of such things.

  She went downstairs and found her father and brother in the kitchen, arguing about afternoon drinks. “Claudia,” Adrian said cheerfully, “you decide. Martinis or gin and tonic, inside or outside?”

  She relaxed at the mundane conversation. Nothing about FBI agents, failed romance, the Sharpes or the Norwood antiquities. “It’s not hot enough for gin and tonic,” she said. “But it’s not too cold for drinks outside. How’s that?”

  “Martinis it is,” Adrian said then winked at their father. “I won’t gloat.”

  Claudia watched as her father got out three martini glasses. “I’ll take the high road and not sulk,” he said. “Can’t go wrong with either. You’ll join us, Claudia?”

  “I’d love to.”

  “It’s your house,” Adrian said. “Lucky you. I found a mouse hole in the laundry room today. It’s perfectly formed. I half expected a cartoon mouse and cat to burst out. Isabel says she’s worried about bats.”

  “Bats in the attic and mice everywhere,” Claudia said with a laugh. “Definitely time to sell the place. In the meantime, make my martini dry and strong, Dad.”

  Her father and his son by his first marriage were both impressive men, she thought, fair and handsome, successful in business, decent at golf and tennis and with no axes to grind against her or her mother’s family. Born to a Main Line Philadelphia family, Henry Deverell had married his college sweetheart— Adrian’s mother—but they divorced when Adrian, their only child together, was four. Eighteen months later, Henry was married to Victoria Norwood, a young antiquities enthusiast from an even wealthier family. Claudia was born the next year. Although Adrian was raised by his mother, he and Claudia had spent alternate holidays and such together growing up, and he seemed to bear no ill will toward their father. After a short-lived marriage in his twenties, Adrian had told Claudia last night he was seeing someone and expected to ask her to marry him when he returned to Atlanta. He’d asked about her love life but she’d dodged the question.

  They made martinis, added the appropriate olives and headed out to the front porch. “You were obsessing on your walk, weren’t you, Claudia?” Adrian asked knowingly. “Go to the open house. I don’t know what went on between you and the Sharpes but they’re too civilized to kick you out. No one else knows you had a falling-out or will care if they do know.”

  “We didn’t have a falling-out,” Claudia mumbled, sitting on a wicker rocker. Its cushion needed replacing and its frame needed painting, but it was sturdy and comfortable.

  Her father frowned. He sat on her mother’s favorite settee across from Claudia. “Who don’t you want to see at the open house?”

  “No one,” she said, clearing her throat and forcing herself to stop mumbling. She didn’t want her father and brother to suspect she had anything to hide. “Adrian’s talking through his hat. I have no problem with the Sharpes, and as far as I know, they have no problem with me. I just have a lot to do here and a short time in which to do it.”

  “So it’s a time-management issue,” Adrian said, clearly skeptical. He sat on a chair that wasn’t in great shape; it creaked under him. “Whoa. Almost spilled my martini. That would have been a catastrophe.”

  Claudia sighed at him. “It’s good you worry about the important things, Adrian.”

  He grinned. “Isn’t it?” He sipped his martini. “Excellent as always, Dad.”

  Their father had his gaze narrowed on Claudia. “You didn’t cross Wendell Sharpe, did you, Claudia?”

  She shook her head. “Of course not.”

  “Did your mother, before she died?”

  “No, Dad.”

  “There’s history between the
Norwoods and the Sharpes.”

  Adrian set his martini on a small table. “Maybe that means you’ll find a few interesting skeletons in the closet when you go through this place. That could be fun.”

  “You visited me in London before you came here,” Claudia said. “You’ve seen for yourself how dull my day-to-day life is.”

  Her brother gave a mock shudder. “Incredibly dull.”

  Her father crossed one leg over the other. “What a night,” he said. “It’s colder than I’d like but it’s beautiful here. That never was my problem with this place.”

  “What was your problem?” Claudia asked, keeping her tone mild.

  He shrugged. “It’s in Maine.”

  She took another couple of sips of her martini and then got up, glancing out at the ocean at dusk before she went inside, leaving the two men to their drinks.

  Isabel was curled up in a cozy chair by the unlit fireplace in the front room. She put aside a book she was reading and smiled. “Did you see any creepy-crawly things in a tide pool while you were out on your walk?”

  Claudia felt her mood lightening. “I didn’t see a tide pool, but I wasn’t thinking about creepy-crawly things.”

  “I always think about them when I’m near the sea. I’m not your ocean type, I’m afraid, but what a beautiful day it’s been. I don’t blame you for wanting a good walk. Of course, you’re used to this place. Starfish, periwinkles, seaweed and whatnot wouldn’t faze you.”

  “This is true.” Claudia pointed toward the entry and its main stairs. “Would you like to join me? I’m going upstairs to the room where my mother stored bits and pieces of the family collection. A bit of an eccentric move on her part, but I’m finally going to start sorting through them.”