Blood Kin

by Judith E. French

  “Elizabeth? Hardly.” He laughed. “She rode into town to pick up her groceries the day before the accident. As far as I know, she was never sick a day in her life.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet her.”

  “Me too. She was one of a kind.”

  “Obviously much more pleasant than her brother.”

  Daniel pushed off with his foot and set the porch swing rocking. Bailey was sitting close enough that he could slip his arm around her shoulders, but instead he held tight to the back rail. “Will’s had a lot to make him what he is.”

  “He’s an aging man who served time in prison. That doesn’t make him Blackbeard the pirate. I don’t know why everyone’s afraid of him.”

  “Will’s a hard man. Some have reason to fear him.” He paused. “Still, if you decide to sell Elizabeth’s farm, you might ask Forest, to give him first chance to make an offer.”

  “A recluse who lives out in the woods? You think he’d have the kind of money the land is worth?”

  “If not Will, some other people on the island. Nothing’s ever been sold to mainlanders, as far as I know. Emma said you didn’t feel very welcome here. Some are bound to think you’d bring developers in, tear down the old homestead, and put up condos.”

  “It’s not mine yet,” she said. “I can hardly decide what I want to do with property I don’t own. But one way or another, I will certainly be selling. What would I do with a farm?”

  Bailey wished she’d been a little more discreet about her intentions of selling the farm, she thought later as she made ready for bed. Alone. Daniel’s demeanor had turned cooler after that statement. Before that, she’d thought he was going to kiss her . . . hoped he was going to kiss her. Hell, she’d almost made the first move and kissed him. But obviously she’d either misread his body language or offended him.

  For a few seconds she wondered if she’d been way off. She’d thought the air between them had sizzled. He’d been a perfect gentleman, but her intuition told her that beneath that country-boy charm and easy smile lurked a rascal with a dangerous streak more in common with an eighteenth-century highwayman than a simple country carpenter. Something elusive and almost scary.

  Damn, but she’d been reading too many historical romances. She tossed the paperback she’d brought with her onto the nightstand. No more Scottish lairds and kidnapped lasses for her tonight.

  She woke once in the middle of the night and sat bolt upright, breathing hard, certain that she’d heard the eerie whistling outside her window again. But as she lay there, heart racing, fingers gripping the cotton coverlet, only the rustle of the wind in the trees disturbed the deep quiet. “A dream,” she muttered, “only a dream.” She covered her head with her pillow and didn’t open her eyes again until morning.

  By nine thirty Friday morning, after sharing breakfast with a cheerful Emma, Bailey struck a deal with a sober but unshaven and obviously hungover Creed Somers to take her sightseeing around the perimeter of the island in his boat.

  “Have to have cash up front,” the waterman warned her. “Gas costs money, and they won’t give me credit at the dock. Tight as washed-wool trousers, the lot of them. Lived here all my life. Never stole a cent from nobody, and I can’t get gas for my boat without hard money.”

  Murmuring sympathetically, Bailey had handed over fifty dollars in cash, Creed had gassed up his boat, and they’d set out. The weather was cooler than the day before, cloudy with the threat of rain and with a slight chop to the waves, but Bailey was determined. If she waited, she might chicken out, and if she did that, she knew she’d always regret not trying.

  Even if she hadn’t had ulterior motives, she would have enjoyed the morning on the water. Although they passed a few crabbing boats and a larger vessel that Creed said belonged to State Fish and Wildlife, most of the time they were alone with stunning views of woods, stretches of beach, and pastureland. Now and then Bailey spied farmhouses or smaller cottages nestled into the forest or sheltered by rolling terrain.

  “The far side of the island’s mostly marsh and wetland,” Creed said, “good duck and goose hunting. That’s where Daniel discovered the senator’s body.”

  She didn’t answer. She’d almost but not quite forgotten the news stories about the gruesome find. Apparently Joseph Marshall, the senior senator from Maryland and the chair of House Appropriations, one of the most powerful committees in Congress, had been frozen faceup in the ice. The image that rose in her mind gave her goose bumps. She swallowed, trying to ease the constriction in her throat. She remembered that Joseph Marshall had been suggested by some as strong vice presidential material. So powerful and wealthy a man with so much ambition cut down in his prime. She hadn’t realized that Daniel was the one who’d found him.

  “Nobody knows exactly what happened.” Creed leaned over the side and spit a wad of tobacco. “Went out by hisself duck hunting and never come back alive. Found his dogs, though. Safe and sound. They wandered up to Allan Goldsborough’s farm. Nice Labs they were. Golden. Don’t know what happened to the dogs after that. I suppose the family sent somebody for them.” He pointed. “There’s your aunt Elizabeth’s place. See it, through the trees there?”

  “Yes, yes, I do. Where’s Uncle Will’s home? Is it nearby?”

  “Near enough.” Creed turned the bow of the skiff out away from the shoreline.

  “I want to talk to him. Can you take me there? To his house?”

  “Nope. Not goin’ anywhere near’m.” Creed’s accent seemed to thicken, and she thought she read something like fear in his eyes.

  “I’ll give you twenty dollars more. Just let me off on the beach.”

  “Not for two hundred greenbacks. Not for a thousand.”

  “Wait, please. Can you let me get off on Aunt Elizabeth’s dock? Just tell me what direction his house is in, and I’ll find it myself.”

  Creed shook his head.

  Bailey fished in her wallet and came out with a new fifty-dollar bill. “No one will know. Just pull up to Elizabeth’s dock. You don’t have to wait for me.”

  “Are you out of your head, girl? You don’t know what you’re messin’with. Will Tawes is meaner than a constipated snake—beggin’ your pardon.”

  “I’ve already met him—talked to him. He isn’t going to hurt me. I’m his great-niece. Either let me off, or . . . or I’ll jump off.”

  “Damn fool woman,” he muttered, but he turned the bow back toward the creek mouth. “Serves you right if he does shoot you. Damned mainlanders. Think we’re stupid.”

  Bailey didn’t hand over the fifty-dollar bill until the bow of the skiff nudged against the dock. “Which way to his house?”

  Creed scowled and pointed. “It’s not far. Just follow the shoreline. Call out before you come up on him. He carries a rifle wherever he goes, and people say it don’t take much to set him off.”

  As Creed’s boat pulled away, Bailey wondered if she’d made a mistake. If her great-uncle’s behavior in the house had been any indication of his temperament, he might take a shot at her. But she didn’t think so. Forest McCready had vouched for him. And Will Tawes was her relative. They shared Tawes blood, if what everyone said was true. She couldn’t miss this chance to question him about her mother. If she went back to Newark without knowing the answers to her questions, she might never find out.

  From the dock, Elizabeth’s farmhouse looked even bigger and grander than it had from the land. There was a whole brick story-and-a-half wing on this side that she hadn’t noticed before. Surely somebody would pay a fortune for this view.

  Walking along the beach, she found an overgrown lane through the woods that led in the direction Creed had pointed. She followed it, dodging briars and what looked like poison ivy for several hundred yards. Then through the thick foliage she smelled wood smoke and spotted one corner of the roof of a house.

  Ahead, a dog’s warning bark brought Bailey to an abrupt, heart-pounding halt. Immediately from the shoreline on her right came a guttur
al baying. Then a third dog sounded in the underbrush to her left. Bailey’s knees turned to water. Dogs were her greatest weakness. Since kindergarten, when she’d been attacked and severely bitten by a stray on her way home, she’d suffered a deep and persistent fear of dogs. Frantically she grabbed a fallen branch to defend herself and backed against the nearest tree.

  A massive red dog burst from the underbrush. Bailey raised the stick over her head.

  “Hold it right there!” Ax in hand, Will Tawes stepped out of the trees and onto the path directly in front of her. “You’re trespassing.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Bailey’s gaze flicked from the man with the ax to the enormous Chesapeake Bay retriever that materialized out of the thick cedars. It padded forward, hackles raised, teeth bared, and yellow-golden eyes locked on her.

  Beads of sweat ran down the outside of Bailey’s throat to trickle between her breasts. Dogs. Why did there have to be dogs?

  The first animal, the one that had startled her by leaping out of the undergrowth, moved to stand between her and Will. The dog’s lips were drawn back over ivory fangs, ears pressed tight to the head. Both dogs had ceased barking, but their unnatural silence seemed even more lethal.

  Black specks danced before Bailey’s eyes, and an odd buzzing sounded in her head. She opened her mouth to speak, but all that came out was a small gasp.

  “Hell and damnation. Put down that branch. You’re scaring my dogs.”

  Scaring his dogs? Her stomach clenched as it had the morning after she and Elliott had finished a bottle of cheap tequila. Her vision blurred as she lowered the stick, swallowed, and managed, “Call them off. Please.”

  Will made a slight gesture with his right hand. Instantly both dogs dropped onto their bellies. The fiercest-looking one, a male with a huge head and a scar across his muzzle, emitted a deep rumble low in his throat.

  “Hush, now.”

  The animal lowered his head to rest his muzzle on paws half the size of Bailey’s hands, but continued to stare at her. She suspected that if she made a move toward his master, those gleaming teeth would find her . . . would clamp and tear through flesh and bone. People said that animals could smell fear, but she didn’t possess the strength to control hers or to keep from trembling.

  She wanted to run, to put distance between her, the dogs, and Will Tawes with his big ax, but she couldn’t. She’d started this, and she had to finish it. “If you’re Elizabeth’s brother, you’re my uncle.” Her voice sounded feeble, even childish, but it was the best she could summon.

  For what seemed forever he said nothing, merely studied her with an unwavering gaze. She’d been told that he was older than his sister, but he didn’t appear to be a man in his mid-sixties. Despite the graying hair, he was lean and muscular, and he moved with the ease of a man in his prime.

  “Leave the past be. Get off my land. Go home, and don’t come back.”

  She glanced at the dogs to make certain they hadn’t moved closer. “You’re the only relative . . . the only blood relative I have,” she managed. “I have the right to know what happened to my mother. Why, after three months, you decided to put me up for adoption.”

  He shook his head. “You’ll get nothing from me but heartache. Get out of here while you can.” He rested the blade of his ax beside the toe of his heavy work boot and leaned on the handle.

  “My mother was your niece. You must have cared something for her. And if Aunt Elizabeth left me her farm, that makes us neighbors. All I want—”

  “Are you deaf, girl, or just stupid?”

  “I’m not stupid! And I suspect that you aren’t either. Why won’t you have the decency to answer a few questions about my family?”

  A third dog, a tricolored mongrel with long hair and one pale blue eye ringed in black, crept out of the tall grass and sidled up to push his nose into the back of Will’s knee.

  Eyeing the dog, Bailey said, “Don’t I have the right to know about my family? About how my mother—”

  “Let her rest.”The blue eyes that glared out of her uncle’s rough-hewn face were hard.

  “I can’t.”

  He shrugged. “Suit yourself.” Turning, he strode away down the path toward his house.

  “Wait! Uncle Will.”

  The three dogs trotted after him.

  “Uncle Will!” She ran after him into the yard, but before she could catch up, man and animals crossed the wraparound porch and entered the house. “Please!” The oak door slammed shut, and she heard the solid click of a metal bolt.

  Bailey banged on the door with her fist. “All I want is to know how she died.”

  Silence.

  She pounded again. “I’m not going away. You might as well open up, or I’ll stay here all day!”

  Minutes passed. She knocked again without results.

  Frustrated, she sat down on the top step. “I can be just as stubborn as you can!”

  A dog woofed.

  Her heart skipped a beat, and she summoned her courage to shout, “I mean it!”

  In the distance, a boat motor coughed, caught, and roared.

  Bailey ran around the corner of the house in time to see a skiff leaving the dock with her great-uncle and the three dogs on board. “Damn it! Coward! Come back here!”

  She kicked at the oyster-shell path. “Double damn it!” It wasn’t fair. First she had no one of her own, and then she had a great-aunt and -uncle and the possibility of answers. And now she was as clueless as she’d ever been.

  No, she told herself. That wasn’t true. She’d discovered where she was born, who her mother was, and where she’d been christened. Or had she? Was it all some perverse game?

  She sat on the edge of the porch and looked around. She was hot, thirsty, and a long way from town. She scoffed. Town? Tawes wasn’t a town; it hardly qualified as a village. More like an asylum. No wonder she was such a basket case. With so much inbreeding on the island, she was fortunate she hadn’t been born with two heads.

  Grudgingly, she had to admit that this wasn’t what she’d expected. The outbuildings and yard were well kept, the house trim, and the barn freshly painted. In an open area, trees had been cleared for a garden. Neat rows of vegetables mulched with straw radiated from a scarecrow in a red hunter’s vest and cap. Hummingbird feeders hung from the porch rafters; there was even a birdbath under a peach tree.

  It seemed that Will Tawes was an enigma.

  Now what? She felt foolish, but not foolish enough to give up.

  On a whim, she rose, went to the nearest window, and peered in. The shadowy room was orderly, with comfortable furniture, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and paintings on the wall. No stacks of old newspapers or bales of discarded clothes. No giant balls of string. It was becoming very clear that her uncle Will was not the backwoods crackpot she’d expected. She moved along the porch to look into the next room, but there inside shutters were closed, blocking her view.

  At the end of the porch, a modern addition with floor-to-ceiling windows appeared to have been added on to the story-and-a-half brick residence. Here, a wide cedar deck looked out over the dock and bay. The first window was obscured by drawn blinds, but the second was unobstructed. Bailey shaded her eyes from the bright sunlight and gazed into a spacious room with a high cathedral ceiling and skylights.

  “Ohhh,” she gasped. Tables. Chairs. Easels with partially drawn sketches of birds of prey. Lifelike carvings of ducks and geese in various stages of completion. An otter that looked real enough to breathe lay on its back with a fish between its front paws, and just inside the window stood an exquisite replica of a raccoon with two babies, her paws against the glass, black nose pressed against the glass, staring out.

  “You old scoundrel. I know an artist’s studio when I see one.”

  Excitement made her giddy. This wasn’t a case of mistaken identity. She’d found where her love of sketching and watercolor had come from. And crazy or not, she’d found her identity. She wasn’t Bailey Elliott—she wa
s Bailey Tawes of Tawes Island. For the first time in her life, she had roots and a family history.

  The implications of what she’d seen made Bailey’s walk back to the village seem insignificant. Far from discouraging her from attempting to talk with her uncle, the visit made her want to know him more. She wanted to inspect his work closely and find out if her mother had possessed a talent for drawing or sculpting. She was eager to question Emma about Will’s skill at carving, but when she got back to the house, she found it overflowing with women.

  “Don’t tell me that I forgot to mention it this morning?” Emma hurried past with a basket of eggs, a box of tea bags, and two bottles of concentrated of lemon juice. “Today is Mama’s eighty-fifth birthday party. Half the island will be here by evening.”

  “Please don’t think you have to include me,” Bailey began. “I can—”

  “Nonsense, girl. Grab an apron and a knife and start peeling potatoes. Grace has it in her head that we’ll need fifty pounds of potato salad.”

  “But I don’t have anything for a birthday gift for—”

  “No gifts. Cousin Harry Parks’s youngest had to have heart surgery just after he was born. We’re all chipping in what we can to help with what insurance didn’t cover. Mama insisted on it. You can donate or not. No one will know or care a dot.”

  “I’ll be glad to help out. If you’ll just let me change my clothes—”

  “Bailey! Out here!” Cathy, the young teacher she’d met at the dock, motioned to her from the open kitchen door. “I’ve got a dishpan full of steamed crabs to pick for crab cakes. Can you give us a hand? We’re on the back porch.”

  Helping Cathy sounded better than being trapped in the hot kitchen on potato-salad detail with Grace Catlin and two gray-haired women in Mother Hubbard aprons. Bailey hurried upstairs, washed, and changed into a clean T-shirt and shorts. Taking the path of least resistance, she exited the B and B by the front door. Rounding the house, she joined her new friend, who immediately introduced her shy sister-in-law Maria, a chubby brunette in her early thirties, and a neighbor, Amy, who also taught at the school.