On Fire

by Carla Neggers

  “Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked, obviously restraining herself.

  Riley shook her head. “I’m okay now. I should have called and told you. I didn’t mean for you to hear the news on the radio.”

  “I had it on while I was working. Oh, Riley.” She brushed back her hair with one hand and paced; she had on jeans and a plaid flannel tunic, her writing clothes. “Emile should have known better. And John Straker of all people…” She groaned in disbelief. “My God!”

  “He let me throw up in his toilet.”

  Her mother spun around at her. “He’s a lunatic! Living out on that island alone the past six months. What could Emile have been thinking when he let you go out there?”

  “He didn’t let me. I just went. Mom, for heaven’s sake, I’m not twelve.”

  “I still blame Emile.”

  Riley sank into the chair, spent. She smiled wanly at her mother. Her reaction was exactly what she’d expected, perhaps even needed. “I’m so glad to see you, Mom. Is Sig home?”

  “She’s out walking. She’ll be back any minute. Come, I’ll make tea. You’ll feel better in no time.” Mara exhaled. “Damn Emile.”

  She was having twins.

  Sig St. Joe slipped into the enclosed back porch of her mother’s house, which she’d fashioned into her first real studio in years. She had a worktable, 140-pound cold-pressed paper, tubes of watercolors, a dozen brushes, water jars, boards—everything she needed except inspiration.

  She flopped onto a studio bed she’d covered in old quilts and pillows, just like her girlhood bed in the loft at Emile’s cottage. She’d spotted Riley’s car. She couldn’t face either her sister or her mother right now.

  Twins.

  She was just over four months pregnant and had told no one, including her goddamned, miserable, self-absorbed husband.

  Sig sighed. That was another quarter for her mason jar. She was on a campaign to stop swearing. At the rate she was going, she’d be broke by the end of the week, or she’d have to dip into her Granger money. God forbid. She’d rather wash her mouth out with soap.

  She could feel the babies move. Just a flutter. Probably they were already jockeying for position. She wasn’t prepared to have one baby, never mind two. But maybe in the long run it would be easier, because she had no intention of getting pregnant again. After Matthew Granger, she was through with men.

  One day she’d have to explain to her babies what a flaming asshole their father was.

  Flaming jerk, she amended, mentally putting another quarter in the jar.

  He was rich, he was handsome and he was convinced her grandfather should be in jail for negligent homicide. “Emile’s criminally responsible for my father’s death. Admit it.” Sig didn’t want to admit anything. She wanted Matt to work through his anger and grief and accept that they just didn’t know what had happened aboard the Encounter. No one did. The boat was at the bottom of the North Atlantic. The official investigation was inconclusive.

  No, she thought, don’t go there. Thinking about the Encounter and her father-in-law’s tragic death—the tragic deaths of the four crew members—spun her around in circles. There was nothing she could do. There was nothing Matt could do, only he couldn’t accept that, at least not yet and maybe not ever.

  She just wanted to bury herself in a heap of quilts and stay out here all night, pretend she was ten again, sleeping out at Emile’s with her sister. She’d felt so safe at ten. Whatever her family’s oddities, she’d never felt anything but safe with them. Now here she was, thirty-four, pregnant, estranged from her rich husband, a failure as an artist and about to be a failure as a mother.

  Sig glanced over at her worktable, where another of her abandoned paintings was still taped to her large board. The porch didn’t go with the rest of the house. It had been added in one of the various renovations over the past century or so, and her mother wanted to get rid of it. She wanted a dooryard garden. Well, it made a lousy studio. The light was bad, and there was no heat. Sig knew she couldn’t work out here much longer. It was time. She had to figure out her life.

  What would she do with twins?

  They’d be Granger twins. She shuddered. It wasn’t as bad as bearing the Prince of Wales, but it was damned close. Maybe she just wouldn’t tell Matt about his babies. Spare him the torture of explaining to the rest of Beacon Hill that not only had he married Emile Labreque’s granddaughter, he was now providing the murderous madman with great-grandchildren.

  The door from the kitchen opened, and Riley said in an unusually small voice, “Sig? Mom thought she heard you.”

  “I’m here wallowing in self-pity. Come on out. Mom send tea?”

  “And raisin toast.”

  “Good. I’m starving.” Eating for three. She eyed her younger sister, who looked so damned tiny and smart—and something else. “Jesus, what happened to you?”

  “It’s a long story. I’m okay.”

  Riley set a tray on an old gateleg table their mother had found at a yard sale and painted creamy white. Sig had messed it up with watercolor spills. Splatters of cobalt and lemon, dots of purple, one big splash of crimson. She loved spills.

  “You don’t look okay,” Sig said.

  Riley ignored her comment and sat on the other end of the studio bed. Sig was tall and leggy, like the St. Joes. When they were kids, Emile had called his granddaughters Big Dog and Little Dog until Mara told him to stop it, he’d give them a complex. Emile didn’t understand things like complexes.

  Sig blinked back sudden tears. She hadn’t seen her grandfather in a year. Not since the Encounter. “You’ve been to see Emile, haven’t you?”

  Riley poured tea and placed a triangle of toast on the side of each saucer. Mara had gotten out the good china. Definitely something was up. Sig shifted uncomfortably, her voluminous dress drawing across her swelling abdomen. She realized her mistake, but too late.

  Riley gasped, nearly dropping the teapot. “Sig—you’re pregnant!”

  Sig managed a wry smile. “The trained scientist speaks.”

  “When—how—” Riley blushed furiously, bringing much needed color to her cheeks; for a woman consumed with the doings of sea beasts of all kinds, Sig was amazed at how downright prudish her sister could be. “I mean, how far along are you?”

  “A little over four months. I can feel them move.”

  “Them?”

  “I found out on Friday I’m having twins. I’ve been trying to absorb it ever since.” Saying it out loud didn’t make her feel any more in control of her situation. “I haven’t told a soul.”

  “Mom—”

  “She doesn’t even know I’m pregnant, never mind having twins. Neither does Matt. I haven’t seen him in…well, ages.”

  Riley handed her tea and toast. “Looks as if you saw him within the last five months or so. He’s on Mount Desert Island. I ran into him. He made a brief appearance at one of Caroline’s dinners. He managed not to mention his vendetta against Emile.” Riley picked up her tea again. “He was staying on his boat. I would think he’s still there.”

  “It doesn’t matter. He’s so eaten up with anger and grief over what happened to his father….” Sig waved a hand, dismissing Matthew, all the upheavals of the past year. “I just don’t care anymore.”

  The color had drained back out of Riley’s face. Sig silently chastised herself. There was no point in bringing up past horrors when obviously some new one had her sister in its grip. Bennett Granger was dead. He was one of the finest men Sig had ever known, and he and Emile had been friends and partners for fifty years. That his death had led to more tragedy and pain only compounded her sorrow.

  “Where’s Mom?” she asked.

  “She’s slipped off to the market. She insisted I stay for dinner. She’s cooking lobster.” But Riley didn’t seize the opportunity to proceed with her own problems. “She knows, Sig. You know she does. She’s just waiting for you to say something. You can talk to her—”

  “She ne
ver wanted me to marry a Granger.”

  “That’s because she was afraid you’d end up living in his shadow and indulging his whims. When she realized Matt’s a regular guy, she came around.”

  “He’s not a regular guy. He’s a goddamned blueblood with too much money and not enough common sense.”

  “You sound as if you hate him.”

  “I wish I did. My life would be so much easier.” Sig quickly sipped her tea and bit into the raisin toast; her mother had slathered on the butter. “I said ‘goddamn,’ didn’t I? That’s another quarter for the mason jar.”

  “You’ve quit swearing again?”

  “I was doing pretty well until I found out I’m having twins.” She inhaled, unable to concentrate on anyone’s problems but her own. “I want these babies, Riley. I want to be a good mother.”

  “You will be. You just won’t be conventional. You haven’t started smoking again, have you?”

  “Not a chance. And how’re your vices?”

  Her sister grinned, and some of the usual spark came back into her dark eyes. “I have no vices.”

  “Ha. You’re like Emile and Dad. The seven seas are your vice.”

  “My passion,” Riley amended.

  “Same difference. Now, are you going to tell me why you look like absolute shit?” When Riley didn’t answer, Sig winced. “I’ve really fallen off the wagon this time. I’ve been swearing like a sailor.”

  But Riley had shut her eyes, and she squeezed back tears.

  “Riley…”

  “I found a dead body and almost threw up on John Straker.”

  “Holy shit,” Sig said. “No wonder Mom’s making you lobster.”

  Three

  Straker didn’t settle quickly back into his routines. He heated his stew and took a steaming bowl of it onto his porch. It was early for lunch, but he didn’t care. The police had packed up late yesterday and left, at least for now. The island was quiet again, the waves, wind, gulls and familiar putter of lobster boats the only sounds. The return to solitude didn’t have the impact he’d expected. A few days ago, the quiet had soothed his soul. Now, twenty-four hours after Riley St. Joe and a dead body had violated his tranquility, it was getting on his nerves.

  He spotted Lou Dorrman’s boat making its way across the bay toward the island and went down to the rickety dock. The sheriff tied up, jumped out and greeted him with a curt nod. It was as if Straker’s old life had reached into his new life to remind him there was no escape. “What’s up, Sheriff?”

  “We just got word from the medical examiner. He won’t have final results for a while, but his preliminary exam suggests our John Doe took a blow to the head.”

  Straker went still. “Accident?”

  “CID’s treating it as a suspicious death. We need to know what role the head injury played in his death, did he take the hit before he was in the water, after—maybe when he washed in on the rocks.”

  “I don’t know how he could have washed ashore, with the tide and the currents out here. Doesn’t make sense.”

  Dorrman frowned. He’d gone to school with Straker’s father, had once dated Straker’s mother. “You have any visitors out here the past few days? Besides Riley.”

  “Christ, Lou, if I offed someone, I wouldn’t dump his body on the rocks for Riley St. Joe to find.”

  “Answer the question.”

  “No. No visitors. And if our John Doe had spent any time on the island, I’d have known about it.”

  “He wouldn’t have anything to do with one of your FBI cases?”

  “If he did,” Straker said pointedly, “I wouldn’t be sitting on my porch eating a bowl of stew.”

  Dorrman didn’t back down. “I wish you’d picked somewhere else to sit around for six months. You’re a burr on my butt, Straker. See to it we can find you if we have more questions.”

  Straker eyed him, took in the red face, the unusual level of aggravation, even for Lou Dorrman. “What else?”

  “What do you mean, what else?”

  “Something else is eating at you.”

  The sheriff huffed and gazed out at the water a moment. “I can’t find Emile.”

  “Hell.”

  “I checked his cottage, I checked the preserve. His boat’s gone, his car’s gone.” Dorrman shifted his back to Straker. “I don’t like it. A dead body turns up on Labreque Island one day, Emile disappears the next.”

  “Did you check inside his cottage?”

  “I can’t do that without a warrant.”

  Straker could. “Give me a lift?”

  Twenty minutes later, they put in at Emile’s dock. Straker didn’t wait for Dorrman. He headed up to the old man’s cottage, mounted the steps and tried the door. Locked. He held the doorknob, leaned his shoulder against the door and, putting his weight into it, pushed hard.

  The door came on the second push. Piece of cake.

  “Christ,” Dorrman said from the bottom of the stairs, “I don’t believe you.”

  “I’m his friend. This is what he’d expect. I’ll be out in two minutes.”

  Emile’s cottage was more cheap old man than world-famous oceanographer. He’d left most of his old life behind. The only remnants were copies of his books and documentaries on a shelf in the main room and a few pictures of his family aboard the Encounter. He’d taken out the trash, left a mug in the dish drainer, unplugged the coffeepot. Straker checked the downstairs bedroom. A tidy sailor to the last, Emile had made his bed, too.

  Straker took the steep, ladderlike stairs up to the loft and came across a red bra, size 34B, under a creaky twin bed. It provided no clues as to Emile and his whereabouts. It did, however, provide fresh insight into Riley. She’d never been neat, but Straker wouldn’t have expected her to favor red underwear.

  Best to keep his mind on the task at hand.

  He joined Dorrman back outside. “He cleared out.”

  “Kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

  “Not my job to wonder. I’m going to take a drive down to Boston.” A sudden wind gusted off the bay; he was thinking up his plan as he went along, knowing already he’d regret it. He should go back to Labreque Island and reheat his stew. “I’ll let you know if I run into him.”

  “You do that. Keep in touch.”

  “You want to bug my car, make sure I don’t take off to Alaska?”

  Dorrman sucked in a breath, controlling his irritation. “If it were up to me, Straker, you’d be hauling in lobsters with your old man. You’re not fit to be an officer of the law. Never have been.”

  “Does that mean if I’d been killed instead of wounded six months ago you wouldn’t have marched in my funeral parade?”

  Dorrman’s mouth stretched into a thin, mean grin. “There’d have been a fucking brawl over who got to lead that parade.”

  Straker took no offense. Louis Dorrman didn’t like him. A lot of people didn’t like him. But Straker had friends, and he had people he trusted—and he did his job. He’d never been the most popular guy around. It didn’t worry him. What worried him were the dead body Riley St. Joe had found on his island and where Emile had taken himself off to.

  The sheriff grudgingly gave him a ride back to the island and waited while Straker packed up, grabbed his car keys and rinsed out his stew bowl. He didn’t need to come back to find the place overrun with ants.

  He climbed back into Dorrman’s boat. “My car’s at my folks’ place.”

  “I know,” the sheriff said, as if to remind Straker he knew everything that went on in his town. He was the one who’d stayed, who hadn’t gone off and joined the FBI. Dorrman gunned the engine and sped across the bay.

  Riley picked up eggplant parmesan from her favorite Porter Square deli on her way home from work, where, mercifully, no one had heard about what had happened yesterday on Schoodic Peninsula. She kept the news to herself. When she’d left Mount Desert Island, she’d said only that she was taking a long weekend. She hadn’t mentioned going to visit Emile.
/>   With any luck, there’d be a message from the police on her answering machine telling her the man she’d found had been identified, he’d died in a tragic accident, end of story.

  She had a one-bedroom apartment on the third floor of a triple decker just off Porter Square in Cambridge. There was no message from the police on her machine. There was one from her mother, asking her if she was all right. Nothing from Richard St. Joe. Her father was in Bath, checking on the Encounter II, the state-of-the-art, ecologically friendly research vessel the center was having built. He would be back tomorrow.

  She heated her eggplant parmesan in the microwave and whisked a bit of balsamic vinegar and olive oil together for her salad. It felt good to reacquaint herself with her routines. After dinner, she’d put in a load of laundry and clean out her fridge.

  Her telephone rang, and she grabbed the portable out from under a newspaper on her kitchen table.

  “What would you do if I told you I was on the curb outside your apartment?”

  Straker. Her stomach knotted. “You have a sick sense of humor, Straker. You’re not on my curb. You live on a deserted island. You hate people. You wouldn’t traipse all the way to Boston just to aggravate me.”

  “You wouldn’t invite me in?”

  She tightened her grip on the phone. He sounded close. She remembered he didn’t have a phone on the island. She took her portable into the front room, knelt on her futon couch, leaned over and pulled back the blinds so she could peer down at the street.

  It was dark, but she could make out a beat-up, rusting gray Subaru station wagon with Maine plates.

  “Damn it, Straker, you are on my curb!”

  “So, do I get to come in?”

  She hit the off button and tossed her phone onto the couch. What did he think he was doing? Six months alone on an island—and now Boston? He’d kill someone. Someone would kill him. He was not fit for the civilized world.

  It was the body. Something must have happened.

  She was hyperventilating. She clamped her mouth shut and held her breath, forcing herself to count to five. If she didn’t let Straker in, what would he do?