by Celia Ashley
Paige stepped out for a better look, pulling the door shut to block the light from inside. Yes, someone was there, moving at the surf’s edge. The lantern cast a golden glow over a man’s left side as he strode in a straight line toward the far side of the beach. Nearer, she could hear Liam as he made his way homeward, his thunderous voice subdued in one-sided conversation with Shadow. Didn’t he see the man? But he continued speaking to the cat, unperturbed. A neighbor, she supposed. Not an outsider, like her.
* * * *
Paige headed back to town in the morning armed with her list of residents. Maybe, with the earlier hour, she would find some of them at home. And if these didn’t pan out, she’d go to where people hung out and ask general questions there. Somewhere she’d find a lead. If not, she would speak to Liam.
First, though, she needed a blasted cup of coffee.
Yesterday she’d spotted a place called the Caffeine Café and headed there. Standing in line at the coffee shop, Paige eavesdropped on the conversations around her in blatant curiosity. For thirteen years, this town had been her home. She might very well have been acquainted with certain patrons, but doubted she would recognize them now. People changed in time’s passage, teenage boys even more than girls. Still, something in the dialogue around her could strike a chord of memory.
At the register, she ordered a large coffee and paid, taking a welcome swig as soon as the kid behind the counter handed the cup to her. She held the spiral tablet in her other hand and flipped it open while turning around. Someone jostled her elbow. The notebook fluttered to the floor.
“Here, let me get that.”
Paige caught a glimpse of a police uniform and close-cropped sandy hair as the man who had spoken stooped to pick up the notebook. It had fallen open to the list, and she could see him browsing over the names as he stood. She held out her hand, palm up to hasten the notebook’s return. “Thank you.”
The man—badge pinned to a shirt strained by the bulletproof vest beneath—hesitated before dropping the pad across her fingers. Despite her annoyance at the officer’s inquisitiveness, she realized an opportunity had fallen into her lap.
“Are you on duty?” she asked. “I need some information and I—Dan? Dan…Stauffer?”
He frowned. “Yes. Do I know you?”
Probably not, she thought, but plunged on. “I’m Paige Waters. You were a couple of years ahead of me in school. I was a freshman when you were a senior.”
Her last year spent at Alcina Cove High, she hadn’t finished the semester out, ending up in a place midyear where she knew no one. If she remembered correctly, Dan had always considered himself a charmer. She’d been too young and unexceptional to catch his eye, but with recognition she also recalled the stories of his reputation as a ladies’ man.
“Paige Waters? Oh, right, you and your mother left town rather abruptly. Don’t remember the reason why, though. Something personal, I heard.”
Stunned he had recalled her that quickly, Paige eased past the congestion at the counter. With a gesture that Dan should join her, she headed for a table and took a seat. Stauffer followed. He sat across from her and leaned his forearms on the tabletop.
“You said you needed some information. What’s up?”
Now that she’d come to it, Paige wasn’t sure where to begin. She could sense him sizing her up and she wondered if his womanizing behavior had persisted all these years later. Paige spun the coffee cup between her palms in a slow circle on the table, feeling the liquid’s heat through the thick paper.
“My mom passed away almost three years ago. And then I received a letter from an attorney in January of this year notifying me my dad had passed away, too. I think it took a while for the attorney to locate me. My dad had no property, nothing to pass on. He’d had a house—our house—but I found out he’d sold it. The notification just said he died at sea. I don’t know the exact circumstances. I tried researching online but, oddly enough, couldn’t find anything. I came back to find out what I can about his life, and my mom’s, too. Perhaps you might be able to give me some assistance?”
Dan shifted in his seat, his vest creaking, handcuffs on his belt clanking against the metal tubing of the chair. “I don’t get it. What do you hope to accomplish, digging around like this?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to dissuade you. I’m just trying to understand what you want me to look into. Do you think they were involved in something the police would know about?”
The paper cup jerked in Paige’s grip.
Keep your mouth shut, Paige.
But Mom...
“Of course not. I thought you might have some way to uncover more details about my father’s death. I don’t even know where his ship went down.”
Considering her a moment, Dan finally nodded. “Makes sense. What was his name again?”
“Waters, same as mine. First name Edwin.”
“Okay. I’ll see what I can do.” Wheels turned visibly in his expression. She guessed he’d already begun formulating ideas as to why she wanted to know. During her final days, Debra Waters, in her delirium, had hinted all had not been as she’d let on since their flight from Alcina Cove. There had to be a reason Paige’s father had written her from his life. Maybe he plain hadn’t cared enough to do otherwise once he’d driven his wife away. Or possibly some of Debra Waters’ ramblings hadn’t solely been the result of opioids and cancer.
“Where are you staying while you’re here?”
She hedged, hesitant to share the information. Wouldn’t he think it suspicious she’d rented a place next door to her old home? “Do you have a card?” she asked. “I’ll write my cell number down.”
He pulled a business card and a pen from his pocket. Paige scrawled the number across the back. She asked him for another card and tucked it into her purse. Clutching her coffee, she pushed back her chair and stood. Stauffer followed suit.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Not a problem. What about that list of names? What’s that for?”
“People I think might be able to answer some questions.”
“Be careful. People in this town don’t like being approached by—”
“Outsiders,” she said. “I know. I’ve been told. Thing is, I’m not. An outsider, I mean. I’ve been away. That’s all.”
“A long time away.”
Right. She needed no reminders.
* * * *
He watched her exit the coffee shop, a damned cop on her heels. They were cordial in parting. Not like total strangers. Not like some chance meeting. What the fuck did that mean?
Stepping behind a tree, he kept an eye on her as she crossed the street to her car. She had a nice step, long and sort of uneven. Yup, the Plain Jane daughter had turned into a fine-looking woman after all. Just like Deb.
But first, before he placed any wagers on whether she had the personality, too, he’d better figure out why the hell she’d come back.
Chapter 4
“Oh, goodness, yes, come in, come in!” The face of the elderly woman who opened the door folded into a thousand smiles. Her snow-white head bobbed in greeting. Paige was taken aback by the exuberant welcome and wavered on the threshold in uncertainty.
“Do you really know who I am?”
“You’re the image of your mother, dear. I know that much. Come in and sit down. Tell me how your mother’s doing.”
Chest tightening, Paige followed Beatrice Hunt—the only person on her list who’d been willing to talk to her—into the living room. Taking the seat the woman indicated, she perched at the edge of the cushion, folding her hands between her knees, purse dangling from her wrist. “Mrs. Hunt—”
“Bea. Call me Bea.”
“Bea—”
“Would you like some tea, Paige?”
Paige settled her bag on the couch arm. “No, thank you. I have sad news. Mom passed away nearly three years bac
k after a long battle with cancer.”
“Oh,” the woman said in a hushed voice. “I didn’t know.”
“I’m so sorry. I thought I had notified everyone.”
“Is your father aware?”
Paige hesitated. The woman was speaking in the present tense. Apparently, Bea Hunt didn’t know he had died, either.
Paige hadn’t told him about her mother. Flowers had appeared at the funeral home in his name nevertheless, leading her to assume someone she’d notified had let him know, or he had seen the small notice she had placed in the local paper. She’d spent several days agonizing over whether she should write to her father, but in the end figured her mother would rather she didn’t. The day of the service she’d considered removing the small bouquet from the room, but ultimately took the flowers home with her, together with the other arrangements that hadn’t ended up at the gravesite. The bouquet had withered, and for some reason that defied her understanding, she’d scooped up the fallen petals and put them in an envelope. The yellowed envelope still sat on the kitchen counter at home.
“He knew,” she said. “He sent flowers.”
“Surprising, all things considered.”
Paige remained mum.
“I guess I don’t have to tell you,” Bea added. “And it’s all right. We won’t talk about that.”
“Thank you,” said Paige. “You do know Dad’s gone now, too, don’t you?”
“Oh, well, yes, I’d heard that. I forgot for a moment. I never saw him. Your mother and I fell out of touch years back. She was always very independent, your mother. Ideas about everything. I found I couldn’t keep up.”
Paige twisted her fingers together in her lap. “What kind of ideas?”
“The wild kind. She once told me she wanted to be a famous singer. Now, she could sing, as you well know, but she had no control over the famous part. I told her that, but she didn’t want to hear it.”
Shifting on the cushion, Paige shook her head. An ambition to be a singer didn’t strike her as all that wild. However, she hadn’t known about her mother’s desires, despite Bea’s assumptions. Although she’d heard her mother sing in church and recognized the beauty of her voice, Paige had never been aware of any aspirations in that regard. Perhaps her mother had chosen Nashville to run to for that reason. “How long ago did she want to be a singer?”
Bea considered a minute. “Oh, I’m guessing it was before you were born.”
“Did she change her mind because I came along?”
Bea thought a little longer, distress creeping into the set of her mouth. She looked at Paige and then away. “She had a lot of dreams. I guess the next one took precedence.”
“She’d always been steadfast and level-headed.”
Bea shrugged. Paige plunged on. “Do you know exactly what happened between Mom and Dad?”
“Not happy with her lot in life, I guess.”
Paige reeled back. “Would you be happy with a husband who blackened your eye and split your lip and nearly broke your arm?”
Bea blinked, her expression suddenly bland. “I don’t know anything about that, Paige.”
No force existed behind Bea Hunt’s statement, and no truth either. Hadn’t the woman commented two minutes ago about how surprising she found it that Edwin Waters sent flowers for his wife’s funeral? Paige had seen her father’s handiwork for herself the night her mother woke her out of a sound sleep by shoving an open suitcase at her and telling her to fit only what she needed in the little space left inside. She didn’t need confirmation from Bea Hunt and began to wonder if she’d misinterpreted the tiny star next to Bea’s name. “What was your relationship to Mom?”
Clearing her throat, Bea appeared grateful for the change of subject. “I was her teacher in grade school. Later, when she was grown, we became friends. We were on the church committee together.”
“I didn’t know any of this,” Paige said. “Mom never told me.”
“She is—was—your parent, Paige. We often don’t know enough about our parents’ lives, nor do they know enough about their children’s lives. It’s natural. Is this why you’re back in Alcina Cove? To find out?”
“There are a lot of holes in my life. Things I’d like to learn about my parents’ relationship, about our lives together as a family, when we were one. About my dad, what he made of his life…after. I guess to start, I’d like to know how he died. The circumstances. Do you know?”
Bea’s lips thinned, nearly disappearing. “Edwin was a tough one. Tough to know. Tough to love, too, I think.”
Paige swallowed, giving a ring on her finger a nervous spin.
“He found himself in business with some objectionable people.”
“Like who? What kind of business?” She wasn’t surprised by Bea’s statement, but oh, how she wanted to be.
“I don’t know, really. One hears rumors. And he wasn’t inclined to listen. To anybody. Incautious, too. Determined to pick the wrong path, stick with decisions out of pride, even if they were plainly foolish. And this last time? Well, I could have told him he’d come to a tragic end. You have to respect the demands of the sea. He never did.”
“The demands of the sea?” Paige’s fingers stilled. “What are they, exactly?”
“He had another business in recent years. Did you know that? A legitimate one. At least that’s how he made it out. Taking sports fishermen out in that sailboat of his.”
What did Bea mean, a legitimate business? What had her father been up to prior to that?
“Sometimes he took them places where they shouldn’t have been,” Bea continued.
“Like where?”
“There’s danger out on the sea. That’s what they paid him for, to show it to them, those places no one else would take them in pursuit of big fish. But that ship of his? It was destined for destruction.”
“How? Was there something faulty in the way it was made? If so, someone should look into the manufacturer.” Someone? As his daughter, that someone should be her.
Bea shook her head with emphatic jerks, setting her well-sprayed hair to jiggling. “There wasn’t a blessed thing wrong with that ship. It was Edwin’s disregard for the will of the sea.”
Bea’s turn of conversation began to worry Paige. The woman had acted lucid enough, but now…
“Every man who sets foot on a boat knows better. But your father was determined to flaunt his disregard. He started out dressing himself and whatever crew member he roped into helping him in red shirts with the company’s name on them.”
“What’s wrong with that? I’d say that’s a savvy business move, having your logo on a shirt.”
“Red. They were red. No sailor with any conscious respect for the power of—”
“How do you know this?’ Paige interrupted. “You said you hadn’t any contact with him before he died.”
“One hears things. And it wasn’t just that. His last, his deadly mistake, was an improper rechristening of that ship of his. Bad luck to change the name of a ship without proper observance. He was warned but took none of it seriously.”
Paige rose, uncertain how to respond to such tripe. This woman was seriously going to blame a man’s demise on the fact he wore a red shirt onboard a seagoing vessel? And what did he rename his sailboat that was so very ominous? Titanic?
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Hunt, but—”
“Don’t dismiss what I say, Paige. The gods of the sea are demanding. My own husband made a fatal error on his last run fifty years ago and never came home to me.”
After gathering her purse from the sofa arm, Paige paused to address the woman. “That’s very sad, Mrs. Hunt, and I can understand why you would want to place the blame on something in a realm other than our own, but the sea is a dangerous place, as you said. Ships go down all the time. But it’s nature or mechanics or pilot error or—”
“No, Paige—”
“Can you at least tell me where the ship went down? Was
it a storm? What?”
Bea Hunt’s eyes glittered. Paige couldn’t tell if the gleam came from unshed tears or anger. Choosing the former, Paige touched the woman’s shoulder in sympathy. She spoke in a gentler tone. “Do you know where the ship went down? Can you tell me?”
Bea made a negative gesture with her hand. “A storm, yes. North. North of here somewhere is all I know. Are you leaving?”
Paige took a step in the direction of the foyer and then stopped. “I have other folks I need to speak with, but I’ll come back. We’ll have tea then, all right?”
Bea didn’t believe her. A stab of guilt shot through Paige’s chest. For her mother’s sake, she would come back. There’d be no talk about the sea, only about the flowers growing in Bea Hunt’s garden out front and maybe her mother’s days in school.
“I will. I’ll be back.” Paige moved to the door, waving Bea back in her seat when she made to rise. “Do you want me to lock up on my way out?”
“There’s no need. Who’s going to bother with an old lady?”
Paige’s gut churned with seven kinds of shame despite her aggravation at Bea Hunt’s nonsense. She headed straight for her car and climbed behind the wheel, where she glanced through her list again. Other than Bea, the folks who’d answered their doors today did so in wary friendliness and had avoided inviting Paige in by stepping outside to speak with her. None of them had offered any information worth a damn.
Spotting Bea peering through the parted lace curtains at her, Paige waved and pulled away from the curb. At the stop sign, she leaned the notepad against the steering wheel, studying the names the woman with the outrageous hair had crossed off, supposedly in the interest of keeping her from trouble with the townsfolk. What was it the woman had said? One way or another, these people were gone. Why on earth had Paige taken the word of someone who hadn’t been inclined to help her?
She’d start with Alva Mabry. After the brief and unfortunate interview with Bea, Paige knew she’d probably regret seeking Alva out, but she turned right at the stop sign. Although Paige never heard her mother say anything about an Alva, the woman’s name and address had been in the shabby address book with an asterisk beside the entry in bold, purple ink. Paige was determined to find out the significance.