He took a few bites of his dinner as he continued to watch the pair talk about who-knew-what. Finally, it looked like they’d finished and a waiter brought their bill. As the man reached for it with one hand his phone must have buzzed, because he brought both his phone and his wallet out of his pocket. Carly started to protest, which made Drew think maybe it wasn’t a date, but the man just grinned and answered his phone, using it as an excuse not to engage in a debate about who would pay.
Carly sat back and waited while her dinner date answered his call. As she looked around the restaurant, her eyes landed on Drew’s. He considered looking away, but then a sick little part of him wondered how long it would be before she did. Not five seconds had passed when her eyes left his.
The waiter returned with their check and her companion signed it, even as he made to leave, juggling the call he still hadn’t ended. Frowning, Drew thought that if the two were on a date, it wasn’t ending well, at least not for Carly.
Saying something to Carly, who waved him on, the man rushed out of the restaurant, jacket in hand, phone to his ear. She rose at a more sedate pace and slipped on a beige wool peacoat. He didn’t have to wonder long whether or not she would acknowledge him on her way out, as she was suddenly beside him, leaning against the bar.
“Drew,” she said.
“That was a rather abrupt end to your evening,” he responded with gesture of his hand toward the door.
She lifted a shoulder.
“I hope it wasn’t a date,” he added shamelessly. “Bad form and all.”
Carly didn’t respond. Instead, she looked at his nearly finished meal then, after a moment, back at him. “Now that the marshals are taking over, are you headed out?” She sounded rather more hopeful than he would have liked.
Buying himself some time, he bit into one of his fries then took a sip of beer and shrugged. “Maybe, we’ll see. Call me curious, but I saw the way you reacted to the body and I’d still like to know what you aren’t telling the rest of us.”
To her credit, she managed to keep her face free from any conscious reaction. Unfortunately, for her, she hadn’t yet mastered her more unconscious responses. He saw her spine stiffen and watched her pulse, visible in her neck, quicken. And when he saw her nostrils flare, he knew that, in an attempt to slow her now rapid heartbeat, she was struggling not to suck in a breath.
A good fifteen seconds passed before she spoke. “What I may or may not know is irrelevant now. The marshals are taking over and the rest of us can get back to business as usual. Now,” she said, pulling her purse strap over her shoulder, “if you’ll excuse me, it’s late and I want to get home.”
She didn’t bother to wait for his reply, so he watched her over his shoulder as she walked away. She’d just confirmed what he’d suspected from the beginning. She knew something, something she hadn’t told anyone. He didn’t like secrets. And he found that he particularly didn’t like her keeping secrets from him.
Chapter Six
Not thirty minutes later, Drew sat in his car down the street from Carly’s house, trying to convince himself that he wasn’t behaving like a stalker. He didn’t plan to loiter about and take pictures of her or anything like that, but he was sitting in his car in front of her house—well, just down the road from it—debating about whether or not to go in and talk to her.
It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility to think that the two women’s lives could have crossed paths professionally, but the reaction he’d seen from Carly when Marguerite’s body had been rolled over had seemed more personal. And as he sat in the dark of his car dissecting what he remembered, one thought settled into his head. Yes, she had been shocked, but the fear he’d seen—the fear she hadn’t admitted to—had been real too.
That, more than anything, gave him the excuse he wanted, needed, to go talk to her. He didn’t like the idea of her being afraid, and he didn’t like the idea of what her fear might drive her to do. With a sigh, he started his engine and drove the remaining two hundred yards to her driveway.
Her new home, a renovated carriage house set back from a large restored Victorian, had been easy enough to find using the little bits of information Carly had dropped into the conversation she’d had with Dani when she’d come by to pick up Kit’s SUV. And as he exited his car, he was gratified to see the porch light on, taking it as a sign she was not just home, but awake too. However when he knocked, no one answered. Much to his chagrin, this caused a small explosion of panic to burst through him and he knocked harder. He even called her name. Finally, the door cracked open.
“Drew?” she said, confusion clear in her voice.
Great, he’d interrupted her shower. Her hair, still wet, hung to her shoulders and she wore nothing but a robe. “We need to talk,” he said.
“It’s past ten o’clock. Can we talk tomorrow?”
“No.”
She drew back at his terse reply, then responded. “There isn’t anything we need to talk about. The investigation is closed, as far as we’re concerned. You can go back to New York, or DC, or wherever it is you call home these days.”
“Carly.” Her name. That was all he said, because he knew part of her reluctance to be with him stemmed not from the investigation but from other, more personal reasons.
Several seconds passed. Finally, she sighed and stepped back, opening the door and gesturing him in without a word.
He stepped over the threshold.
“Let me go change. I’ll be right back down.”
Both a curse and a blessing—he would have liked to appreciate her in that robe for a bit longer, but he was wise enough to understand that they would both be more comfortable if she got dressed.
As she headed upstairs to change, he took the opportunity to examine her new home. The front door opened directly onto a small foyer and a staircase that divided the building into halves. Looking to the right from the front door, a tastefully decorated living room ran front to back. To his left, he saw an eat-in kitchen, with its cabinets and appliances anchored against the back half in an “L” shape. Walking through the kitchen, he noted another entrance to the living room behind the staircase. There was also a door with a small shaker-style window pane that appeared to lead out onto a small porch.
He was standing in front of a large fireplace in the living room, admiring the renovation, when he heard her come back down the stairs.
“Drew?”
“In here.”
She paused when she saw him standing in the middle of her living room. Then she cocked her head, “Why don’t we have a seat in the kitchen?” She’d changed into yoga pants, a Boston College sweatshirt, and a pair of thick wool socks. They’d only just hit the middle of October, but fall did bring chilly nights.
He thought the couch looked cozier, but he also thought he was treading on thin ice already, so he followed her to the table and took a seat. When she sat down across from him, she gave him an expectant look.
“What did you want to talk about?”
He took a deep breath and thought about all the things he should say to her—instead, he said, “You knew Marguerite Silva, didn’t you?”
To her credit, she didn’t even blink. She did, however, let out what he’d call a long, suffering sigh. “None of this matters anymore. The case is no longer in our jurisdiction. The evidence has been sent to DC, as has the body. It’s not our concern,” she reiterated.
“That may be the case, but when you recognized her yesterday, you looked afraid, worried about something. I know I said the same thing last night, but I didn’t say it well. I don’t like loose ends, and I don’t like that finding her body here in Windsor might mean something to you that you don’t feel like you can share.”
For the first time that night, she met his gaze and held it for a good long while. Unfortunately, he didn’t see that as a good sign. She looked to be contemplating what to do with him, much like his mother had done when he was a child.
She sighed again, and rose from her
seat. He began preparing an argument to counter the dismissal he saw coming, but then stopped himself. It appeared that she wasn’t kicking him out after all; she was reaching for a bottle of whiskey—a rather nice one, he noted—and two glasses. In silence, he watched as she poured the whiskey and then added a single ice cube to each glass.
“Let’s go sit outside,” she said. It seemed cold for that, but he rose, took the glass she offered, and followed her out the back door onto a porch that held two Adirondack chairs. On the way, she grabbed two blankets, tossing him one as they sat. He placed it on his lap, but she unfolded hers and tucked it around her body, saying, “This is one of my favorite places to be.”
Drew pulled his eyes from her form to follow her gaze out into the darkness—only it wasn’t actually all that dark. With a full moon hanging above them, the sky faded from a bright sapphire to a much darker midnight as it collided with the horizon. The stars shone the way they do in cooler temperatures—somehow seeming a bit sharper, a bit brighter. A hill on the far side of a small lake rose like a dark shadow and the lake, a deep inky blue, held the brilliant reflection of the moon above—the water so still that, had the hill not been there to provide perspective, the moon and its reflection could have been confused with one another. To say the least, it was beautiful.
“I can see why.” He heard, more than saw, her head roll toward him. But he didn’t turn to face her. This night, this view, this land, meant something to her. And so he absorbed it. The changing, fading light. The crisp air that carried the hint of smoke from some fireplace nearby. A night owl hooting in the distance.
In companionable silence, they sipped their drinks. And after a long stretch, Carly surprised him by telling him what he’d come to find out, her voice quiet in the night.
“Yes, you’re right, I did know Marguerite,” she said. “Long ago, our paths crossed. Circumstances put us both in the middle of an investigation into corrupt FBI agents. And, yes, I knew the kind of work she did, I knew she was with the marshals,” she clarified, then paused before continuing. “I was stunned when Vivi and Daniel rolled her over and I saw her face. Our town is big, but not so big. It wouldn’t have been a huge surprise if the victim had been someone I knew from town and I had braced myself for that. But seeing someone I knew from DC was something I hadn’t been prepared for and it was more of a shock than it might have been otherwise.”
She stopped talking but he knew she had more to say. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
He could hear her swirling the ice in her glass, then taking a sip. When she’d brought her glass back down to rest on the arm of her chair, she answered. “Like I said, I knew she was a marshal. But I haven’t seen her in years, and I didn’t know what she was working on when she was killed. I didn’t know if she was undercover or not. I thought it best to keep her identity a secret until I had more information.”
“And the marshals? Were you the one who gave them the tip?”
This time he looked and caught the tail end of her nod. “I did. I know her aunt and I arranged it with her that she would call it in. I figured that way there was less chance that if Marguerite had been working on something, we would call unwanted attention to it. A quiet tip seemed the most effective and efficient way to get her superiors involved.”
“So you’re done then? You’re going to let it go?”
She lifted a shoulder. “There’s not much I can do anymore,” she said. And the sense of relief he felt at her words far outweighed what it ought to. He worked with a lot of women in law enforcement, a lot of highly capable women whom he at times both relied on and who relied on him. But never had he felt such relief at knowing the danger he feared for one person, one woman, was no longer a threat.
“I’m glad to hear that,” he said. He thought about saying more, but didn’t know what that “more” would be. And so they continued to sit in silence beside each other for a good long while, even after they’d both finished their drinks. When an owl swooped across the sky, startling them with his call, they each let out a small laugh. The moment they’d been sharing disappeared.
Rising from his seat, he took his glass in one hand and the still folded blanket in the other. She rose too and, throwing her blanket over her shoulder to free a hand, opened the door. He laid his blanket back down where she’d picked it up earlier and she tossed hers on top of it then took his glass and placed it in the sink with hers.
Drew didn’t stop as he made his way through the kitchen, fearing that if he did, it would be much harder to leave. Following him to the front door, Carly opened it and he stepped out onto the front porch. He turned to say . . . what? Good-bye? Thank you?
But she beat him to it. “Drew?”
“Yes?”
“What is it you want from me?”
The question didn’t shock him, but it did catch him off guard. Partly simply because she’d asked it, but mostly because, put so bluntly, he didn’t actually know. Over the past two days, he’d made up all sorts of reasons to see her, talk to her, be with her. There was an easy answer, of course—they were two consenting adults obviously attracted to each other—but it wasn’t an answer he was willing to give because that wasn’t the question she was really asking. What she was really asking was if he wanted something more than the obvious. A question he truly didn’t have an answer for. And though he hated to admit it, he said just that.
“I don’t know.” He held her gaze with his. In her steady regard he read no censure or judgment. Despite the doubts he’d seen in her eyes since she’d learned what he really did for a living, she seemed to see, and accept, the truth he now offered her.
“Good night, Carly,” he said quietly.
For a moment, her head rested against the edge of the door, then she straightened and offered him a small smile.
“Good night, Drew.”
Much later that night, as he lay in Kit’s guest room replaying their conversation, he realized she hadn’t actually agreed to let the investigation go.
• • •
Carly glanced out the window of Frank’s Fed Up and Fulfilled Café. A drizzly weather front had moved in overnight and settled in for the morning. The streets were damp and the air looked thick and gray. But the tiny drops of water drifted down from the clouds so gently that the leaves would stay in place and the brief system wouldn’t shorten the fall colors.
“It’s way too complex,” Marcus said.
She turned back to her breakfast companion and let out a deep breath. “Yeah, I know. As much as I don’t want it to be, it is,” she said before taking a sip of her mocha. Frank’s mochas and a fall morning were pretty close to her idea of a perfect way to start the day.
“Based on what Wyatt was telling me last night,” she continued, “I’m worried that if there are triggers attached to Marguerite, or to us, I’d set them off before I even entered her name in the search engine.”
Wyatt didn’t come close to Naomi’s computer expertise, but he had significantly more know-how than Carly or Marcus. And what he’d explained to her—trap doors, warning flags, ghosts, and all sorts of other tricks and snares—had pretty much shot down any last hope she’d had of trying to look into Marguerite’s death, or the past case, herself.
“No kidding. I’m hearing it secondhand from you and I may never look at a computer the same way again.”
She gave him a look of commiseration and they both returned to their food, or what was left of it. She picked at the last piece of her egg and bacon bagel, Marcus scooped up the last of his yogurt and granola.
“I bet Naomi would know how to get through, or at least spot some of the things Wyatt talked about,” she said without looking up. She wanted to test the idea with Marcus. She’d given it some thought herself, but involving Naomi had its risks. Because Naomi was Vivi’s cousin, Carly knew that anything she asked of Naomi might get back to Vivi. But she could deal with the grapevine of gossip. What truly concerned her was the possibility that Naomi’s actions would be tr
aceable, and could bring repercussions back to her in Boston.
“Yeah, she could,” Marcus agreed slowly. “We’d have to manage the situation with Vivi though.”
Carly noted his lack of caution. In order to see if his expression matched his tone—if he was truly considering it—she looked up. And caught a glimpse of Drew watching them. With her back to the door, she hadn’t seen him come in. Standing to the side of the line of people waiting to order, he appeared to be waiting for his food. Watching them from less than five feet away.
“Drew,” she said in acknowledgement.
“Carly,” he responded.
“You remember my partner, Marcus Brown,” she said.
The two men nodded to each other, but neither made to shake hands.
“I hope you got a good night’s sleep after I saw you last night,” Drew said.
That was a surprise volley. She glanced at Marcus, who was looking back at her. She thought about saying that she’d simply run into Drew at Anderson’s, but if she didn’t mention that he’d come to her house afterward, Drew might.
“I did, thank you,” she said, as Frank called Drew’s name.
His eyes lingered on her for a moment before he mumbled a good-bye and went to collect his breakfast—which he’d thankfully ordered to-go. She watched him walk out of the café, bag and coffee in hand.
“Last night? What the hell?”
She took a deep mental breath and cursed Drew. “I saw him at Anderson’s was all,” she said. “He was there when Wyatt and I were having dinner.”
Marcus eyed her for a good long moment. “Is there something going on between you two? I saw how he was looking at you—”
“Stop,” she cut him off with a raised hand. “There is nothing going on between us. We’ve seen each other a few times over the past few days is all. Remember, he was one of the ones who, well, he was one of the ones who called the body in on Monday. He was there, too, at the site. You didn’t see him since you mostly focused on the roads, but he and his friend Ty Fuller were there all morning.”
An Inarticulate Sea Page 8