by J. S. Marlo
“That figures.” The lampposts along the rural road leading toward Buccaneer had all but disappeared, making it impossible to read his expression. “Will you see him again?”
Her social life had become the talk of the household. “I don’t know.”
“I suppose that’s better than yes.”
His animosity toward Chris baffled her. “You don’t like him. May I ask why?”
“He’s pushy, and he wants to get his hands on Buccaneer.” The edge in his voice suggested deep resentment. “That’s it.”
The reasons didn’t satisfy her. “Are you saying he’s only dating me to get me to sell?”
He slowed down as he neared an intersection and looked in her direction. “You deserve better.” To hear Bill echo her pa sounded eerie. “Anyway—” His attention returned to the road in front of him. “I’ll drop you off at Buccaneer, and I’ll see you in a few days.”
“A few days?” The statement gave a new meaning to the presence of the duffel bag on the backseat. “Are you going somewhere?”
“I have family affairs to straighten out. I’ll be back when I’ll be back.” He switched the radio on, and a folk song filled the air. “End of discussion.”
***
After cooking supper for the two for them, Gail left for the funeral home to pay her last respects to an acquaintance who had passed away a few days earlier. Alone in the empty house, Avery couldn’t resist the opportunity to snoop into Buccaneer’s affairs. He borrowed the flashlight from the kitchen drawer and strolled down the hallway.
The thrill of a clandestine search rushed blood to the tips of his fingers as he picked the lock of the oak door leading to Rowan’s private quarters. Of all the illicit skills he’d learned from Grandpa Stone, covertly breaking and entering continued to be the most useful. The knob turned without resistance, and the door opened quietly. He locked it behind him to avoid suspicion in case he chose a different exit.
Plugged at ankle level, a nightlight illuminated the hallway. He counted three doors on each side. All closed.
A tumbling sound was coming from the closest door on the right. He peeked inside with the flashlight. A bathroom that doubled as a laundry room. On the front of the washer, a dial glowed red, indicating the minutes remaining in the washing circle.
The next two rooms on the right, a utility closet and a linen closet, showed nothing out of the ordinary.
The door opposite the laundry room led to a bedroom. He shined the light into the room as he poked around. On the night table near the bed, two pictures stood side by side. In the first one, a young woman with auburn hair held a redhead toddler on the bare back of a foal. The resemblance between the woman and Rowan was uncanny, and he suspected the woman to be her mother. In the second frame, a teenage Rowan wearing a cowboy hat posed on a mare at a county fair. A mischievous smile crinkled her eyes.
With the tip of his finger, he caressed the high cheekbones baked by the sun. No other redheads he’d met turned such a lovely shade of tan in the summer.
A buzz startled him. On the corner of the dresser, Rowan’s cell phone vibrated. He glimpsed the name and number displayed on the screen. Dr. C. Malcolm.
“Malcolm? Aren’t you on a date with Rowan?” Regardless of why the doctor was calling, she should have carried her phone with her.
Prying into her personal life served no purpose, so he ventured into the next room, a windowless office smaller than a jail cell. To her credit, she’d managed an efficient use of the limited space.
Her laptop rested on the desk. A few clicks on the keyboard gave him access to all her unprotected files. “You need a password.”
He browsed through her financial records and frowned at the current summer report. After showing steady growth and profits under Mattie’s management, Buccaneer recorded its highest vacancy rate and its first loss in eight years. As he dug further, Avery found details of a personal loan, interest-free. Who’s keeping you afloat, Rowan? Step-daddy?
Rachel would have found the source of the money in less time than it took him to scribble the date and amount on a sticky note pad discarded near the laptop. You and Baby S. belonged behind a desk. I should never have listened to your objections. He might as well have killed them himself, but her persuasion—
Rowan’s computer beeped as a message downloaded into her inbox, a reminder of his current and treacherous location.
Reminiscing wouldn’t help him find the motives behind Mattie’s death and Rowan’s glass scare. Concentrate, Stone.
The wastebasket flashed at the bottom corner of the screen. What do we have here? Jumping into the odorless cyber trashcan beat the real-life alternative. He clicked on the lone file she’d deleted and read the complaint letter she’d written about some slanderous reviews.
Some of the words she used didn’t belong in her pretty mouth, and he cringed reading them. I hope you didn’t send this. Alienating the man holding Buccaneer’s reputation in his hands equaled financial suicide.
He searched her email account and found a more polite version of the same letter, which quoted the libelous reviews. I stand corrected. The webmaster had deserved every unsavory word for allowing the reviews on his reputable site, but Rowan had resisted the basic impulse to sink to his level and had tamed her official complaint. On the sticky note, Avery also noted the name of the website. Buccaneer might not be a five-star hotel, but it provided clean, quiet rooms and excellent meals at a decent price. Whoever compared Buccaneer to a rat hole not only lied, but potentially cost Rowan thousands of dollars in lost revenues by generating negative publicity. No wonder reservations plummeted. If he’d read those reviews, he might not have booked here either.
What else do we have? Rowan had downloaded various government brochures regarding labor laws, employment standards, minimum wages, wrongful termination, and so on. He rubbed his chin as many possible scenarios crossed his mind. If Rowan intended to change Gail’s or Bill’s terms of employment, it gave both of them a motive to harm her.
A door slammed shut somewhere in the house, and adrenaline shot through his body. The time index in the top-right corner of the laptop said 9:39 p.m. Someone had come home earlier than he’d predicted, and his first thought was for Gail.
He pocketed the sticky note, flipped down the laptop cover, and turned off his flashlight. Approaching the door, which had remained ajar, he peeked into the hallway. Every muscle in his body tensed in anticipation of the squeaking or squealing that would give away his presence.
Keys jiggled, and a lock clicked. The oak door swung open, and he glimpsed Rowan’s delicate frame. “Gail?” Her head swayed in his direction. “Are you home?”
He recoiled behind the wall and drew ragged breaths. The dark silence amplified the noises in the house. Under Rowan’s steps, the floor creaked. Any moment now, and she would barge in on him, demanding an explanation.
“I guess not. Telling you about Bill’s trip…” The words faded into a whisper.
She’d walked away. The reprieve gave him time to plan a diversion. He risked another look. The light in her bedroom was on, and footsteps grew louder once more.
“…bath and relax.” An exquisite vision wearing yellow lingerie exited her room. Pale creamy skin edged the lacy undergarment, a lovely contrast to the bronze outer layer exposed every day to the sun. “Pa is right. I shouldn’t settle for second-best.”
Wishing for water to moisten his parched throat, he swallowed hard. Who she meant by second best was open to interpretation.
Arms outstretched, she tiptoed to reach high up into the linen closet. “I can’t stop loving him any more than…” A stack of towels fell on her head. She tossed the pile back into the closet, grabbed a red one, and slammed the door. “Running away was a mistake.” The towel slung over her shoulder, she marched into the laundry room. “I should have…”
The pipes in the wall rattled as water whooshed through them, obscuring her voice. Avery had heard enough of her love rant. For his own sanity
, he needed to get her off his mind.
He gave her a few more seconds to settle into the tub before sneaking out of the office.
Once he returned to his room, he dialed Caster’s number.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Dawn crept in on Rowan’s restless night.
The long aromatic bath had failed to lure her into dreamland, and she’d turned and tossed in bed. Unlike her mother, who had the fortunate ability to mend her broken heart within months of shattering it, Rowan was stuck in a time loop, unable to move on.
“What’s wrong with me?” She wanted to scream at the first of ray of sunshine for dancing around the blinds. The man she loved had forgotten to release her heart when he’d let her go—when she’d let him go. The man who awakened nervous butterflies in her stomach with his kiss mourned the loss of another woman. And the man who wanted to spend time with her had ulterior motives, or so said Bill, which didn’t matter since she cared as much about him as she cared about jellyfish. “There are way too many men in my life.” Exasperated, she tossed her blanket aside and got up.
The smell of fresh coffee lured her into the kitchen where Gail hummed in front of the counter.
“Morning, Miss Rowan. You’re up awfully early. Did you forget we have no other guest except for Mr. S.?”
Unfortunately, she hadn’t forgotten that money flew mostly in one direction. Out of her checking account, not in. “I was hungry and couldn’t sleep.”
Gail placed a cup of coffee on the table along with a fresh baked muffin. “Then try this. Apple and chocolate chip muffin with a twist.”
The chocolate melted in her mouth as her teeth sank into the chewy bits. “Did you add apple chunks to the applesauce?”
A devilish smile curled Gail’s lips. “Apple chunks combined with a secret ingredient. How does it taste?”
Her taste buds didn’t detect any secret ingredient. “Delicious.” She sat at the table and took a sip from her cup. “Can I have another one? I need all the chocolate I can ingest this morning before I go for a long run.”
***
On the brink of consciousness, Avery held onto the images vividly playing in his mind. Radiant in her sparkling white dress, Rachel walked by his side, her hand firmly tucked into the crook of his elbow. A halo of pure light crowned her head. Incandescent tendrils of orange and red interweaved with her hair, igniting a fire around her smiling face. She lifted luminous green eyes toward—
He bolted upright in his bed, his head brushing the slanted ceiling. The blanket was heaped on his lap. Gasping for air, he stared into the fading dream. Rachel didn’t have green eyes. “Rowan.” The woman had invaded the deepest recesses of his subconscious. He needed to break the spell before he made a fool of himself.
Any hope of going back to sleep vanished with the dream. He got up, dressed, and descended into the kitchen. The French door leading onto the deck was ajar. Her back turned to him, Gail was beating a mat over the railing. Seeing no point in disturbing her from her daily chores, he grabbed a muffin from the plate sitting on the table and exited through the front door. A strange gray pickup, its box filled with gravel, was parked between Gail’s car and his Blazer. Someone had shown up early this morning.
Jarring noises drew Avery around the side of the house. At work around the gazebo, a man hammered the lattice down and dumped the debris into a wheelbarrow.
“Hey there!” Avery yelled over the racket. “What are you doing?”
The look the man gave him as he turned around stumped Avery. Terry Jordan belongs in the cemetery, not at Buccaneer.
“You’re that nosy writer, aren’t you?” Jordan removed his baseball cap and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand before putting the hat back on, this time with the visor facing backward. “If you need to know, I’m working.”
Stating the obvious didn’t enlighten Avery. “Are you knocking down the gazebo?”
“Bill asked me to seal the floor, fill the crawling space with gravel, and close the perimeter with full boards. He doesn’t want any more digging.”
“I see.” The three partial skeletons waiting in the garage suggested the presence of many more bones, and the last time Avery had talked to Rowan, she sounded determined to unearth the missing skulls. “Is Miss Rowan aware of this new development?”
The groundskeeper’s eyes glistened with something resembling anger or defiance. “After Bill drove Miss Rowan home last night, he noticed a bloody trail in the garden. An animal poked its muzzle under the gazebo and unearthed a small rusty knife with a sharp blade. If it’s Fred’s dog, Miss Rowan will never hear the end of it. Bill called me on his way to the airport and asked if I could take care of it this morning before anyone else gets hurt.”
Bill delegated his task to Jordan, the same man who gave him a solid alibi for the afternoon of Mattie’s death. Interesting. And that didn’t even begin to explain why Bill had given Rowan a ride home, what had prompted him to check the garden, or how he had seen the blood in the dark. “Why did Bill go to the airport?”
“Catch a plane. He had urgent matters to attend. That’s all I know.”
“I see.” Ignorance was a blissful convenience. “You do know there are more remains underneath the gazebo, and that Miss Rowan isn’t done playing archaeologist?”
In light of the discovery of a knife, Avery agreed with Bill’s plan of action, but he had the uncanny suspicion that Rowan hadn’t been apprised of the full situation yet.
“It looks to me she was pretty thorough.” As Jordan pointed underneath the gazebo, his index finger drew an arch. “Her search extended outward from the middle.”
To get a better view of the search area, Avery crouched down using his cane as support. Unobstructed by the missing lattices, the sun shone on the dirt disturbed by her digging. “Impressive.” Rowan had covered the entire area within two feet of where the lattices used to stand.
“Like I said, there isn’t much left to unearth. She’s one tenacious girl.”
“Another endearing quality,” Avery muttered as he stood, the images from his dream still lingering in his mind.
“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to finish digging around the perimeter before I dump the gravel underneath.” The groundskeeper’s attention shifted to him, and his gaze settled on the scar at the hem of Avery’s shorts. “If you want to help, Mr. Writer, there’s a spare shovel in the shed.”
The challenge energized Avery. While walking toward the shed, he bit into the muffin. In his mouth, chunky morsels exploded with flavor. Gail had baked another delicious treat.
He regretted grabbing only one.
***
Chris abhorred mistakes. He didn’t make them often, and when he did, he set to correct them immediately, or he exerted damage control.
Sighing, he parked his car in Buccaneer’s driveway.
The evening with Rowan had come to an abrupt end before he had a chance to rekindle their relationship. The reckless scuba diver had chosen a lousy night to resurface under a dinghy and sever his arm.
He knocked on the front door as a formality and didn’t wait for an answer before entering the premises. Gail met him in the kitchen doorway.
“Doctor?” A smile stretched her sagging skin. “If you’re here to see Miss Rowan, you just missed her. She went running.”
If he hurried, there might be a chance of catching up with her. He presented Gail with his jacket. “Would you mind? I really need to talk to her.”
“I’ll hang it in the vestibule.” She pointed at the back door. “Faster that way.”
“Thanks.”
No guest was having breakfast on the terrace, and the garden was deserted. He stepped onto the cobblestone path as Stone exited the shed with a shovel. With his scruffy appearance, the man resembled an injured drifter, and Chris didn’t understand why he lingered on the island.
“Early start, Mr. Stone? Has Rowan recruited you to weed the garden while she goes running?”
Pitching the shovel within
inches of Chris’s shoes, Stone leaned against the handle. That the man favored his right leg was obvious. “We’re dumping gravel under the gazebo. We could use another set of arms, Doctor.”
The news pleased Chris. “I wish I could help, but I’m late for my hospital rounds, and I haven’t even talked to Rowan yet. When did she decide to put an end to this digging nonsense?”
“Well…she may not have been fully informed of Bill’s plan yet.” A smirk lit Stone’s otherwise bleak expression. “In the unlikely event you do catch up with her, feel free to tell her.”
After another ruined evening, Chris had no desire to provoke Rowan’s wrath by mentioning her scheming handyman or his foolhardy acolyte. “Your confidence in my running abilities is touching. Please, don’t work too hard. I wouldn’t want to see you as a patient.”
Without waiting for Stone’s reaction, he sped toward the path edging the cliff.
***
While she jogged along the cliff, Rowan gazed at the ocean. Sparkles of light shimmered over the surface of the water like stars in a midnight sky. She loved the ocean as much as she loved the mountains, and she’d always dreamed of settling down on an island.
“Maybe I should look into the work market.” If she could find a part-time job in geology, the additional revenue would go a long way toward paying Buccaneer’s bills.
She veered onto the narrow downward trail leading to the cove where Avery had rescued her from the menacing jellies. Pebbles rolled and tumbled as she carefully stepped on—
“Rowan! Wait!”
Stunned to hear his voice, she regained higher ground and jogged in place while waiting for him. “Chris? What are you doing here? How did you find me?”
“It’s—Gail.” Short of breath, he loosened his tie and undid the first button of his wrinkle-free shirt. “Where were you heading?”