“I love raking.” She tossed her leaf into the grass. “It’s relaxing, unless one gets blisters, which is utterly tedious.”
Emma pinned her gaze on her priest friend. “What’s going on, Finian?”
“Henrietta and Oliver are here for a visit. Oliver texted me as Julianne and Andy were cutting the cake.”
“We didn’t want to distract you and Colin from the wedding,” Henrietta said. “We hopped on a plane and here we are. Sometimes one needs to do things at the spur of the moment.”
Oliver got to his feet, his graceful movements suggesting his expertise in martial arts. He and Henrietta were in their late thirties, and they’d known each other forever but only recently had become a couple. He gestured to the bags at his feet. “We accepted Father Bracken’s gracious invitation to stay here at the rectory.” He settled his cheeky gaze on Emma with the slightest smile. “Separate bedrooms.”
Henrietta nodded to the box Emma had tucked in one arm. “I hope that’s wedding cake.”
“Cookies,” Emma said.
“Cookies, then. Brilliant. Shall we put the kettle on?”
Oliver picked up his and Henrietta’s bags by the steps. “Where’s your charming husband, Emma?”
Colin had warmed up to Oliver in the past year, but it was a stretch to call them friends. “He’s checking on food poisoning aboard a yacht in Heron’s Cove.”
Just the slightest flicker in Oliver’s eyes, but it was enough to arouse Emma’s suspicion. Henrietta, on the other hand, didn’t give anything away.
2
“What about that ER nurse you were seeing before I left town?” Colin asked as he and Kevin approached the sleek, expensive yacht, moored among a half-dozen much smaller pleasure boats at a private marina on the tidal river in Heron’s Cove. A knot of first responders were gathered on the pier. “Is she still in the picture?”
Kevin shrugged. “Sort of.”
“Why didn’t you invite her to the wedding?”
“Andy’s wedding? With all three big brothers there?”
Colin could see Kevin’s point. “So you’d have invited her if it hadn’t been a family wedding?”
“Doubt it.”
“Okay. I give up.”
“Good. The wedding was nice. Glad those two figured out they’re meant for each other. For a while I thought Julianne might throw Andy overboard and leave him to drown.”
“More likely she’d have done him in on land. She wouldn’t have left you to find his body.”
“Ha. True.”
Nothing like gallows humor while checking on a drunken yacht party.
The upscale marina was next to the main offices of Sharpe Fine Art Recovery, founded sixty years ago by Wendell Sharpe, Emma’s Irish-born grandfather. Colin glanced back at the gray-shingled Victorian, newly renovated to the rigorous standards of Lucas Sharpe, Emma’s older brother, who ran the family business. The offices were closed for the weekend, and Lucas was in Ireland with his semiretired grandfather, working and keeping each other company in the aftermath of Tim Sharpe’s death. Wendell had moved to Dublin and opened up offices there after the death of his wife sixteen years ago.
Colin reminded himself he had no reason to suspect the yacht and its ill-fated party had anything to do with the Sharpes. He shifted his gaze to the narrow channel that marked the boundary between the tidal river and the Atlantic, sparkling in the distance. The channel was just wide enough and deep enough for the yacht in question.
“You’re not going to tell me where you’ve been the past month?” Kevin asked.
“Nowhere I had to sidestep barf.”
The smallest of smiles from his brother. “Life is good, then.”
They slowed their pace as they came to an ambulance crew. Two khaki-clad middle-aged men staggered off the yacht onto the pier but shook off help from the EMTs. Guests, not passengers, they explained. They were here just for the party and would make their way home after they got some air. They didn’t get ten yards before one of them collapsed to his knees and barfed into the river. The EMTs ran to him.
Kevin grimaced. “Yeah, I know. We could be having cake and whiskey right now.”
“I don’t mind missing the cake.” Colin got out of the way of an EMT pushing an empty stretcher. “Any idea whose yacht?”
“Money guy and his wife. They chartered it out of Boston. Own crew.”
That didn’t tell Colin much. He and Kevin boarded the yacht but didn’t have to sidestep vomit until they reached the sundeck, where the party had taken place. Except for a few splatters and pools of vomit, the sundeck was appealing with its cushioned seating, bar and Jacuzzi. It looked as if people had been having a good time and then started getting sick with a sudden onset of symptoms.
A young woman in a navy polo shirt and tan khakis was loading plates, glasses, flatware and napkins onto a tray. “Not everyone made it to a head, as you can see. Whatever it was took people by surprise.” She set the tray on the bar. She was small, even waiflike, with short blondish hair, pale blue eyes, freckles and an unexpectedly brisk manner. She spoke with an English accent. “My name’s Georgina Masterson. I’m the chef. I’m not sick, but I didn’t eat any of the food.”
Kevin introduced himself, then Colin. “Is everyone on board accounted for?”
“Richie is doing a head count. Richie Hillier, the captain. I don’t know the exact number who were on board. Six passengers and four crew, but how many guests came just for the party? I couldn’t say. Another ten people, maybe. It was a last-minute thing. Heron’s Cove wasn’t one of our planned stops. It was added last night.”
“Why’s that?” Colin asked.
She shrugged her thin shoulders. “One of Melodie’s whims. A New England foliage cruise was her idea.” Georgina snatched a wet rag out of an unseen sink and slapped it onto the shiny bar. “And you have no idea whom I’m talking about. Melodie and Bryce Fanning chartered the yacht. They’re newlyweds, actually. They’re celebrating their one-year anniversary. We arrived here at the marina early this morning. Next thing, I’m pulling together a party for twenty people.”
Colin walked over to the bar. “Where are the Fannings now?”
Georgina waved a slender hand vaguely toward the stairs. “EMTs took Bryce out on a stretcher. Melodie’s going with him. She’s sick, too, but she’s rallying. The EMTs and local police have been great. I’m just...dazed, I guess you’d say. I can’t believe this is happening.” She abandoned the rag and added more dishes to the tray. “We were supposed to leave late this afternoon and make stops in Camden and Bar Harbor, but who knows what will happen now. I don’t know why the police are here. I don’t know what made people sick, but it’s nothing criminal, I assure you. And it’s not due to anything I prepared.”
Colin wasn’t surprised at her defensiveness. He’d done a few food-poisoning checks on various types of boats and ships during his marine patrol days, and rarely did anyone want to lay claim to causing it. “Could someone have brought contaminated food on board?”
She seized on that one. “Yes, absolutely. I wouldn’t necessarily have noticed. I was in the galley most of the time. It’s so easy to make a mistake with food, especially when you’re transporting it. People think they know what they’re doing, and they don’t.”
“Happens all the time,” Kevin said.
She flicked the wet rag back into the sink. “One of the passengers took off down the stairs. He looked terrible. I think he was bolting to his cabin to be sick. I hope he didn’t pass out on the stairs or something. Would you mind taking a quick look for him? I’d feel better knowing he’s okay, or that the EMTs found him. I just...” She gulped in a breath, her eyes wide, her pale skin ashen. “I don’t want anyone to die.”
She grabbed a fresh tray and set off from the bar to a cluster of chairs.
Colin followed Kevin down the narrow stairs
. They didn’t run into anyone until they reached the guest cabins on the lower deck. A man lay sprawled on his side across the threshold of a small, well-appointed cabin. He had one arm clamped on his lower abdomen, his teeth clenched in agony. A pool of orange vomit was soaking into the cream-colored carpet by his head. He was in his late forties, trim, fit, with gray-streaked dark hair.
When they were open, the sick man’s eyes were pale gray.
Colin swore under his breath and knelt next to the man he knew as Jeremy Pearson. Might be his real name, might not be, but it wouldn’t be the name he was using aboard Bryce and Melodie Fanning’s chartered yacht. The scars on his hands and face attested to his decades with the SAS, MI6 and now MI5, but they could be explained away. Car accident, bar fight, cooking mishap.
“Hold on, Kevin,” Colin said. “Stand back.”
Colin scanned Jeremy for any signs he wasn’t experiencing some kind of ordinary food-borne illness. Excess saliva—classic foaming at the mouth—or effusive sweating. Pinpoint pupils. Convulsions. Delusions. Unresponsive. All could point to a neurotoxic reaction characteristic of exposure to a chemical weapon, one of Jeremy’s areas of expertise.
“It’s just food poisoning,” he managed to mutter through clenched teeth.
“You need medical attention,” Colin said.
Jeremy tucked his knees up as he was obviously seized by severe abdominal cramping. “I need a bloody coffin.”
Colin looked up at Kevin. “Can you fetch the EMTs?”
His brother nodded. “You’ll wait here?”
“Yeah.”
Kevin hesitated half a beat, long enough for Colin to get the message. His brother knew something was up, but he said nothing as he rolled off to get help.
Once Kevin was out of earshot, Colin shook his head at his British friend and colleague, pale and writhing in agony. “I hope to hell you’ve expelled whatever’s nailing your sorry ass, because, damn it, I need answers.”
“Don’t blow my cover. I’ll explain once I’m done dying.”
Jeremy moaned, curling up into a ball in obvious agony. Colin knew he didn’t have much choice. He’d have to wait. That meant Kevin would, too, and he wasn’t patient, either. Patiently waiting for answers wasn’t a Donovan strong suit.
“What is your cover?” Colin asked.
“Art consultant.”
What the hell? Colin got out of the way as Jeremy rolled out of his tight ball, tried to get up on his hands and knees and hurled again. No question the EMTs would decide to transport him to the emergency room for assessment and treatment.
Jeremy finished puking and collapsed. The guy was a mess. “Guess you had more to expel,” Colin said. “I’ll get you fresh clothes for the hospital. You’re going to need them.”
He stepped past Jeremy and entered the small, well-appointed cabin. He glanced around for any obvious indications that could explain why a senior MI5 officer—a friend—had slipped into his wife’s hometown—land of the Sharpes—as an art consultant. As far as Colin knew, Jeremy Pearson’s knowledge of art was limited to the Mona Lisa.
He got a change of clothes from a closet, keeping an eye out for any evidence that might explain what the sick MI5 officer was up to on the Fanning yacht. He didn’t expect to find anything before Kevin returned with the EMTs, and he didn’t.
Just that his British colleague was a boxers guy.
* * *
EMTs got Jeremy Pearson onto a stretcher and loaded him into an ambulance. Colin had shoved his friend’s things into a laundry bag hanging in the closet and used it as an excuse to follow the ambulance to the ER.
Kevin didn’t say anything until they were back in his truck, en route to the hospital. “You going to tell me what’s going on?”
Colin watched out his window as the truck wound through the pretty village of Heron’s Cove with its weathered-shingled shops and restaurants, another world from Rock Point. “I don’t know what’s going on,” he said finally.
“The guy just now. William Hornsby. British art consultant. Sharpe world?”
Hornsby. So that was Jeremy’s cover name. “I need room to maneuver, Kevin.”
His brother sucked in a breath. “Okay. Do your thing. For now.”
Colin debated asking Kevin for a list of everyone on board for the party, everyone who’d gotten sick. Passengers, guests, crew. He wanted names, addresses, phone numbers. Whatever he could get. But food poisoning wouldn’t necessarily trigger that kind of response. So far, he had no evidence it wasn’t what it looked like—accidental.
Kevin slowed for an elderly couple crossing the street. Summer was the busiest season for Heron’s Cove, but fall was a close second, the village center crowded with leaf-peepers. “I bought apples yesterday.”
“Apples,” Kevin said. “Right. Good, Colin.”
“Cortlands. Emma says Cortlands are good for pies. They’re still in my truck. She likes to bake pies to relax.” He paused, wondering why the hell he’d brought up the apples. “The biggest decision I expected to make this weekend was whether to add a dash of nutmeg to the pie or leave it out. That’s a thing with her.”
“Would you notice one way or the other?”
“Doubt it. You?”
Kevin shook his head. “No.”
“I bought the apples at a local orchard. I made Mike stop on the way from the airport. He stayed in the car.”
“You were away for a good spell. Apples and autumn. Nostalgia.”
“I guess.”
Kevin sped up when they got onto the highway, the ambulance long since leaving them behind. “If I hadn’t dragged you to Heron’s Cove, you could be peeling apples with Emma right now.”
“I don’t think so,” Colin said.
Kevin glanced sideways at him. “What?”
Colin held up his phone. “Just got a text from her. Oliver York is in Rock Point.”
“Our cheeky art thief.”
“You’re not supposed to know that.”
“But I do.”
“Henrietta Balfour is with him. They’re an item these days. Grew up together.”
“She was involved with that business in August.”
Colin nodded without comment. That business included an opioid overdose in London that Henrietta, Oliver and Emma’s grandfather had navigated, and then Tim Sharpe’s death in Maine. A hell of a blow that had been.
“I’ll save my questions,” Kevin said. “We’ll get this sorted out. One step at a time.”
Some of the tight knots in Colin’s stomach loosened. Whatever was going on with his and Emma’s British friends, he wouldn’t have to deal with it on his own. He wasn’t in the midst of a solitary undercover mission. He was home. He had Kevin, Mike, Mike’s fiancée, Naomi, his folks, Finian Bracken, and he had Emma.
3
Colin slipped through curtains into Jeremy Pearson’s private treatment room in the ER. Jeremy was hooked up to an IV and heart monitor, stable and done, apparently, purging whatever toxin he’d ingested. He moaned under his thin hospital sheet.
A real moan or not, Colin had marginal sympathy given Jeremy’s unannounced presence in Maine. “Pretending to be asleep?”
“I’m afraid I’ll hurl again if I open my eyes.”
“Warn me. I’ll step out.”
“You’re a heartless bastard, Donovan. Always have been. Wasn’t you? You’ve been wanting to poison me for months.”
“It wasn’t me. Doctors suspect it was something you ate at the party. It came on fast, so it probably wasn’t salmonella. Any ideas?”
“No.”
If their roles had been reversed, Colin had no doubt Jeremy would have jumped in the ambulance and interrogated him between episodes of the toxin evacuating his system.
“A dozen people on board got sick. Abdominal cramping, vomiting, diarrhea—”
Colin glanced behind him, but the curtains were shut tight, any medical personnel on the other side busy with their work. Solid walls on three sides prevented anyone else from listening in.
He shifted back to Jeremy, who’d lowered his hand and was lying still now, probably to keep nausea and cramping at bay. “Why are Henrietta Balfour and Oliver York in Rock Point?”
No reaction from the ER bed.
“Emma’s having tea and cookies with them and Finian Bracken at the rectory.”
Jeremy shut his eyes. “Wedding cookies?”
“In the shapes of pumpkins, acorns and leaves.”
“Autumnal. That was your brother with you on the yacht? He’s not today’s groom, I hope.”
“Kevin. Groom’s Andy.”
“The lobsterman brother.”
“Yeah. How did you know about the wedding?”
“Because I was trying to avoid crashing it.” He opened his eyes. They were red-rimmed and bloodshot, and he was pale, a greenish cast to his skin. Despite how sick he was, he focused with a seriousness more typical of the hard-ass intelligence officer Colin knew. “I was going to alert you this evening.”
“Alert me to what?”
“My presence on your patch. My name—”
“William Hornsby. You’re an art consultant from London.” Colin managed to keep his irritation in check. The guy was sick, after all. “What’s going on? Why are you here?”
“Let me die first. Then I’ll come to you in a dream and answer your questions.”
“You’re not dying.” Which Jeremy knew. “Are the Fannings on your radar?”
Two doctors and two nurses pulled back the curtains and gave Colin a pointed look. He got the message and left. Jeremy had faded, anyway. “Food poisoning” covered a lot of territory but wasn’t as alarming as a synthetic boutique nerve agent. Biological and chemical attacks weren’t his specialty, but he did know the drill—the symptoms, dangers, protocols and a few of the potential players. The stuff of nightmares if he was the type to have nightmares.
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