by S A Monk
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? We’ll never get in that soon anywhere, and tomorrow evening Nick, Jessie, and Christopher are coming over for dinner.”
“Dotty will do us tomorrow if I call her tonight. It’s not too late, and she’s off on Saturday, so she could do us at her house. She’s a good enough friend that I can ask her for a favor. We’ll go shopping after. We’ll be home by dinner. You can test out your new look on Jessie and Nick.”
“Then let’s hope it’s a good look, not a flop.”
HANNA WAS IN HER GRANDMOTHER’S KITCHEN the next evening when she heard Jessie, Nick, and Christopher, Lance’s ten-year-old son, enter the living room. Behind the closed door that led to the next room, she could hear Nick’s deep husky voice and rich baritone laughter. Butterflies swirled in her stomach. She touched her hair self-consciously. Christine and Colleen loved the new length and light blonde highlights. But what would Nick think?
Dotty had cut it to her jaw line and the nape of her neck in back, then layered it and woven it with pale blonde streaks. Afterwards, she had loosely curled it to give it more fullness and height. Instead of being pulled back off her face, it now framed it in a lightly curled style.
After the hair salon, she and her sister-in-law had gone shopping. Each of them had bought a new outfit. Hanna was wearing hers. It was a black silk sarong skirt, with tiny blue and green flowers. It fell to her knees and tied at the side of her waist. Her blouse was a sheer, sleeveless, green silk blouse, with a deep ruffled neckline that made a perfect frame for the jade pendant Nick had sent her for her birthday last year. She was also wearing the matching earrings that had come with it. She treasured the set and wore them often.
Her grandmother came into the kitchen and took the tray Hanna had in her hands away from her. “Get out of here young lady,” she admonished. “You look much too fine to be in the kitchen.”
Colleen McHenry was dressed in a pair of slacks and a pretty shirt, nothing special. “I overdressed, didn’t I?” Hanna looked down at herself self-consciously.
“No,” the older woman replied adamantly. “You look lovely, just as you should. Now, go greet our guests. And take off that apron. It spoils the look. Go get that Marine’s attention.”
“Grandma!”
“I know you’re dying to see what Nicholas thinks!” Gently, she pushed her toward the closed door. “Jessie can come in if I need any help. In fact, send her in here. Is Christine still upstairs feeding Katie?”
“Yes.” Hanna lingered uncertainly.
“Good.”
“What about Christopher? Where would you like him, Grandma?” Hanna teased.
“Oh, I don’t think he’ll let us pry him away from his Uncle Nick.” Colleen gave her granddaughter an appraising look, smiled her approval, and made a shooing motion. “Now scoot.”
Nick was sitting on Colleen’s overstuffed flower-print sofa. Christopher, who’d been his ever present shadow since he’d come home, was sitting beside him, listening to a story he was reading to him.
When Hanna walked into the living room, both of them looked up at her. Christopher grinned, then went back to the pictures in the book. Nick lost his place. The woman in front of him captured his attention completely.
She’d changed her hair, and she looked incredibly sexy in the skirt and blouse she was wearing. His eyes swept up her long shapely legs, to her slender waist, to the deep vee of her blouse. He noticed the jewelry he’d sent her for her last birthday. The set looked as lovely on her as he had imagined it would.
She robbed him of speech, and he knew she was waiting for him to greet her.
“Hanna...You look…good.” Good? What an idiot he was! Hell, she looked more than good, but words weren’t forming in his brain.
“You, too.”
He was wearing dress slacks and a long-sleeved shirt that was folded up onto his muscular forearms. He loved what her smile did to his insides.
“Sit, Auntie Hanna,” Christopher called to her. “Uncle Nick reading a story.”
Hanna resisted the urge to correct Christopher’s grammar. He’d talked so late, and then so unclearly, that whatever he said now was a miracle and a delight. She joined him and Nick on the sofa to sit on the little boy’s other side.
Her split skirt fell away from her thigh. She hurried to cover it, caught Nick watching the display of skin, and blushed. “What are you reading?” she asked.
“‘Bout tanks and hel’copters,” Christopher announced.
“Oh, military stuff.” She smiled and looked at the pictures the child was pointing to.
“Christopher has a lot of military books,” Nick observed.
“I know,” she said. “They’re his favorites. They remind him of his Uncle Nick, whom he’s very proud of.” She smiled at the man over the boy’s head. “Read to us, Uncle Nick.”
Nick’s voice was deep and soothing. Hanna was as enthralled as Christopher was. He was finishing up the description of military vehicles when Christine came into the living room with the baby. Little Katie lay contentedly in her mother’s arms, fed and happy. Hanna rose to take the little girl from her.
“Christine, I don’t think you’ve met Nick.” She turned to him, with the baby now over her shoulder. “Nick, this is Dylan’s wife, Christine, and their baby girl, Katie.”
Nick rose and extended his hand to Dylan’s wife. “Dylan sent me photographs of you and the baby. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. It would have been sooner if I had been able to come home for your wedding.”
Christine smiled and shook his hand. “Dylan talked a lot about you.” Her smile belied her sad wounded blue eyes as she sat down in an armchair across from the sofa. “I wish you were home under better circumstances. I hear congratulations are in order, Colonel.”
“Thank you.” Nick turned to Hanna. “Can I hold her?”
Surprised that he’d want to, she put the cooing baby into his arms. “She’s five months old this week.”
He rested one big hand on the baby’s back and touched her cheek with a single curled finger. “Beautiful, like her mother,” he said, lifting his eyes to smile at Christine.
Hanna felt terrible about the little twinge of jealousy that stabbed at her. Beautiful was a much better word than good.
Since Christopher was beginning to look a little put out that his idol was giving all his attention to a baby, Hanna asked him to help her set the table for dinner. He went reluctantly, looking at Nick over his thin shoulders.
Colleen and Jessie had prepared a huge meal; a roast and all the side dishes, including three salads and two big peach pies, Nick’s favorite. When it was ready, the two families sat down at the big oval oak table. Nick took a seat next to Hanna, leaving the ends of the table to Colleen and his mother.
As he watched the four women pass the food around and help Christopher take what he wanted, he was touched by their resiliency in the face of such tragedy and mishap. Two children were fatherless, and Christine widowed. Hanna had lost a brother, and Colleen a grandson. Then there was his mother, who was beside herself worrying about his younger brother.
Nick knew they all needed his help. That’s what he was home for, to help them find out what had happened to the men in their lives. And what the hell had happened? He didn’t have a clue at this point. His gut told him Lance wasn’t dead. But Dylan was, and he didn’t believe his childhood friend had fallen off his patrol boat drunk, any more than his family did.
He couldn’t bring Dylan back, but he could help Hanna clear her brother’s name and find out what really happened to him. He was sure the police chief, whom he’d gone to high school with, and the sheriff, whom he didn’t know at all, were dead wrong about Dylan. It wasn’t right to label a man a drunk on the job, and leave that taint on his wife and baby.
He was certain the two law enforcement men in the community were giving the families the run around about Lance’s disappearance. His brother was too good a diver to have drowned. If Lance had dro
wned, his equipment would have been discovered at the bottom of the bay and at some point, his body probably would have surfaced.
Apparently, a diver from the sheriff’s department had gone into the lower end of Discovery Bay to look for Lance’s body near the place Dylan had disappeared, but nothing had been found. Nick intended to do a more thorough search as soon as he could get the proper equipment together. Lance’s body could have been caught on an underwater snag, though that seemed unlikely according to what his mother had reported. And why no sign of Lance’s rubber dinghy? That really bothered him. That alone made Nick suspect foul play. He really needed more information, and he hoped someone had something enlightening to tell him.
“So, who wants to go first?” he prompted.
Misunderstanding what his Uncle was asking for, Christopher exuberantly responded. “Me, me! My PlayStation at Grandma’s. We can play Tank Fighter. I get the black tank.”
Nick laughed. “We’ll play that later, sport, but right now I need to talk to the ladies.” He turned to Colleen at the far end of the table. “Can Christopher watch a little television in the other room? Looks like he’s finished with his dinner.”
Colleen smiled and got up. “He sure can.” She helped the boy carry his dishes to the kitchen, then took him into the den to help him find a program that was suitable.
Nick smiled, seeing the plate of cookies and glass of chocolate milk Colleen carried for his nephew. He remembered her doing the same thing for Lance and himself when they’d come to visit Dylan and Hanna as children.
While they waited for Colleen to return, Christine took the baby upstairs for a nap, and Nick helped Hanna clear the table of dishes. Once that was completed and Christine came back down, Jessie brought out a warm peach pie that she cut into large slices, then topped with vanilla ice cream. It was Nick’s favorite dessert. Along with the pie, Jessie poured everyone fresh cups of coffee.
Nick attacked his pie in big bites. “Geez, Mom, I haven’t had anything like this in three years! You haven’t lost your touch.”
“Thank you, son. I love to spoil you.”
“I’m too old to be spoiled,” he chided her.
“You’re never too old to be spoiled.”
Nick grinned lovingly at his mother, swallowed the last of his pie, then turned to Christine. “Do you want to go first, while Katie’s asleep?”
They all knew that they were supposed to fill Nick in on what each one knew, so the young widow nodded and smiled ruefully. “I’ll piece together what we learned from everyone in the first few hours after Dylan’s death. The sheriff’s dispatcher sent Dylan out to Nat Simm’s place around six thirty in the evening. Nat had called in another complaint that someone in a cabin cruiser was messing with his crab pots again. Nat lives at the south end of Discovery Bay, near Discovery Junction. He keeps his traps in the bay, south of the spit. He’d been making complaints about poachers messing with his equipment. His neighbors had been complaining about it as well in recent months. Nat says Dylan stopped by, took the report, saw the cabin cruiser that was anchored near the pots, then headed out in his patrol boat to talk to the boater. Dylan radioed the dispatcher that he was going to check the guy’s boat registration and fishing license. Nat says it was getting dark, and Dylan was concerned the cabin cruiser didn’t have his running lights on. From the shore, he saw Dylan reach the cabin cruiser and board it. About ten minutes later, Dylan drove off in his patrol boat, then the cabin cruiser left.”
Nick listened without interruption, and then asked, “Did Nat give a description of the boat? Make or model? Any description of the guy onboard? Did Dylan radio anything back in after boarding the cabin cruiser?”
“Not that I’ve heard,” Christine replied. “The dispatcher said that Dylan didn’t get back to her. Nat said it was getting too dark to get a good description of the boat and the driver. The only thing he could tell the deputies was that the boat was a cabin cruiser, about thirty feet long, not too old, probably a Bayliner.”
“After Dylan drove off, did the other boat follow him?”
“Nat said they both headed north, out of bay.” Christine frowned. “It’s not much, is it?”
“At least we have a witness who saw something,” Nick said, trying to sound encouraging.
“We need to talk to Nat Simms again,” Hanna interjected. “Lance was going out to talk to him the day he disappeared.”
“I definitely need to talk to him again. I think I remember him. He’s been in that old trailer on the shoreline forever, hasn’t he?” Nick asked, looking around the table for an answer.
“Yes, he has,” his mother told him.
“I want to go with you when you talk to him,” Hanna said. “Nat’s a bit of a cantankerous old character, but he likes me.
“Isn’t he an ex-Marine?” Nick asked again. When Hanna nodded, he added, “We’ll go see him together.”
“You know, I’ve been staying over here with the baby since... well, you know....” Christine spoke up again, avoiding stating the painful reason why. “But not too long afterward, I went home to get some things, and the back door was open. I know I didn’t leave it open. In fact, I locked everything up when I moved over here. When I went back, nothing seemed missing or damaged, not even the door lock, but I sensed someone had been inside. I could just feel it, you know. Why would someone come in and not steal something?”
“I don’t know, but you and I will go back Monday and do another search. Could be someone was looking for something they didn’t find, so they decided not to raise any suspicions, although leaving the door open wasn’t smart.”
“I’ve been afraid to go back,” Christine admitted.
“I don’t blame you, but this time I’ll be with you.”
“What would someone be looking for?” Christine wanted to know.
Nick shook his head, perplexed. “Maybe something Dylan was working on?”
“I don’t know.” The young mother was at a loss.
“We’ll brainstorm when we go over there. Your memory might get jogged once you’re inside looking with me.”
Jessie got up again to clear the dessert dishes from the table and pour more coffee. When she returned, Colleen turned to Hanna.
“You better tell Nicholas what happened to you last week.”
Hanna had to smile at her grandmother’s use of Nick’s full first name. No one but Colleen called him Nicholas. “I think Nick has heard about it from his mother.” She took a sip of her coffee, reluctant to make too big a deal out of her late night incidents. “Nick has enough to worry about.”
His gaze sharpened on her, his gray eyes narrowing. “Why don’t you let me be the judge of that? Worrying about each one of you is my job right now.”
The intensity of his gaze made her shift a little on her chair. “I think I should tell you what I know about Dylan and Lance first.”
“Fine, but that won’t get you off the hook from telling me what happened to you.”
Hanna knew he wouldn’t let her forget, but she began by telling him what she knew about her brother’s death.
“Dylan was supposed to pick me up from work the night he died.” She glanced at Christine’s pale taut expression, and reached out to squeeze her hand compassionately. “I waited at the hospital a long time, then called Christine. She hadn’t heard from him, either. Then I called the sheriff’s office. The dispatcher told me that she’d sent him out to Nat Simms. She hadn’t heard from since. They tried to contact him and got no response. The next morning, they finally sent a patrol boat and helicopter out. They found his boat in the middle of Discovery Bay, drifting into shore on the current. There was an empty bottle of whiskey on board, but no Dylan. The next day, divers went out to search. Deputies from the sheriff’s office and the police department interviewed everyone who lived along the shore, near Nat’s place. A couple of older people had seen the cabin cruiser out by their crab pots, but hadn’t been able to give any better description of it than Simms had. No one
had seen what might have happened to Dylan. Like Nat, they just saw his patrol boat go by on its way back into Port George. Four days after he disappeared, Dylan’s body was found floating in the bay by a passing boater.”
Christine caught back a sob and shot up from the table, tears spilling down her cheeks. Colleen immediately went after her. When Hanna looked across the table at Nick, tears were pouring down her cheeks, too.
“I’m sorry to make you dredge all this up again,” Nick said, his voice low and husky with compassion.
“It has to be done.” Hanna took the tissue Jessie handed her. “It’s infuriating how the police chief and the sheriff have handled the case. That idiot Port George has for a coroner examined Dylan’s body and did a quick test for drugs and alcohol. He determined after only the most minimal of exams that Dylan fell off his patrol boat, drunk, and subsequently drowned. Death by accidental drowning due to alcohol intoxication was his official report. We were all outraged. Dylan would not drink on the job. The coroner also determined that Dylan’s head wound was caused by his fall off his boat.
“That head injury really bothered me, so I had a Seattle medical examiner, who’s a friend of mine, come over to take a look. They wouldn’t let him do another autopsy. He only got to look at the body and exam the final report. But even with that little bit of information, he concluded that the alcohol in Dylan’s blood was too small to have caused him to pass out and fall off his boat. In fact it was so minimal, he considered it negligible. After examining the head wound, he said it appeared to have been caused by a hard object, swung with enough force, probably from behind, to either knock Dylan unconscious or kill him. The damage and location suggested something the size and shape of a baseball bat. Without further examination, Dr. Newell, the medical examiner from Seattle, couldn’t provide conclusive proof, and the presence of alcohol in the blood remains a mystery. But he thinks it is highly likely that Dylan died from blunt force trauma and was thrown overboard afterwards.”
Hanna couldn’t go on. Being clinical didn’t ease the anguish of knowing her brother had suffered such a traumatic injury. More than likely, he’d never had a chance to defend himself because he was struck from behind. Tears brimmed in her eyes again and trickled down her face. She tried to wipe them away, but they kept coming.