Whiskey Beach

by Nora Roberts

  “Hey!” Abra bolted out after him. “You don’t say good night to your friendly waitress?”

  “You were busy. Jesus, get inside. It’s cold out here.”

  “I’ve got heat to spare after running around in there for the last three hours. You looked like you enjoyed yourself.”

  “It was a nice break. I like your friends.”

  “Maureen was your friend before she was mine, but yeah, they’re the best. I’ll see you on Sunday.”

  “On Sunday?”

  “Your massage. It remains therapeutic,” she said when she caught the look on his face. “Even if you stop stalling and kiss me good night.”

  “I already left you a tip.”

  She had an irresistible laugh, a sense of happy his system wanted to absorb like water. To prove he could, he moved in, taking his time, this time. He laid his hands on her shoulders, then slid them down her, feeling the warmth she still held from all the body heat pulsing inside the bar.

  Then he leaned down, took her mouth.

  Slow and smooth this time, she thought, soft and dreamy. A lovely contrast to the earlier shock and urgency. She slid her arms around his waist, let herself drift.

  He had more to give than he believed, more wounds than he could admit. Both sides of him pulled at her.

  When he eased back, she sighed. “Well, well, Eli, Maureen’s absolutely right. You have skills.”

  “A little rusty.”

  “Me, too. Won’t this be interesting?”

  “Why are you rusty?”

  “That’s a story that calls for a bottle of wine and a warm room. I have to get back in there.”

  “I want to know the story. Your story.”

  The words pleased her as much as a bouquet of roses. “Then I’ll tell you. Good night, Eli.”

  She slipped back inside, to the music, the voices. And left him stirred, and wanting. Wanting her, he realized, more than he’d wanted anything but peace for much too long.

  Eli worked through a rain-drenched Saturday. He let the story absorb him until, before he realized the connection, he’d written an entire scene with wind-driven rain splatting against the windows where the protagonist found the key, metaphorically and literally, to his dilemma while wandering his dead brother’s empty house.

  Pleased with his progress, he ordered himself away from the keyboard and into his grandmother’s gym. He thought of the hours spent in his Boston fitness center, with its sleek machines, all those hard bodies, the pumping music.

  Those days were done, he reminded himself.

  It didn’t have to mean he was.

  Maybe the jelly bean colors of his grandmother’s free weights struck him as mildly embarrassing. But ten pounds remained ten pounds. He was tired of feeling weak and thin and soft, tired of allowing himself to coast, or worse, just tread water.

  If he could write—and he was proving that every day—he could pump and sweat and find the man he used to be. Maybe better, he mused as he picked up a set of purple dumbbells, he’d find the man he was meant to be.

  He wasn’t ready to face the mirror, so he started his first set of biceps curls standing at the window, studying the storm-churned waves battering the shore. Watched water spume up against the rocks below the circling light of the white tower. Wondered what direction his hero might take now that he’d turned an important corner. Then wondered if he’d written his hero around that corner because he felt he’d turned, or at least approached a turn of his own.

  Christ, he hoped so.

  He switched from weights to cardio, managed twenty minutes before his lungs burned and his legs trembled. He stretched, guzzled water, then went back to another round of weights before he flopped, panting, onto the floor.

  Better, he told himself. Maybe he hadn’t made it a full hour and felt as if he’d just completed a triathlon, but he’d done better this time.

  And this time he made it to the shower without limping.

  Very much.

  He congratulated himself again on the way downstairs on a hunt for food. He actually wanted food. In fact, he was damn near starving, and that had to be a good sign.

  Maybe he should start writing these small progressions down. Like daily invocations.

  And that struck him as even more embarrassing than lifting purple weights.

  When he stepped into the kitchen, the smell hit him seconds before he spotted the plate of cookies on the island. Any idea of slapping together a sandwich went out the rain-washed window.

  He lifted the ubiquitous sticky note on the film of plastic wrap, read as he pulled the wrap up and snagged the first cookie.

  Rainy day baking. I heard your keyboard clacking, so didn’t want to interrupt. Enjoy. See you tomorrow about five.

  Abra

  Should he reciprocate for all this food she kept making? Buy her flowers or something? One bite told him flowers wouldn’t make the grade. He grabbed another cookie, hit the coffeemaker. He decided he’d build a fire, pick a book at random out of the library and indulge himself.

  He built the fire to roaring. Something about the light, the snap, the heat meshed perfectly with the rain-whipped Saturday. In the library with its coffered ceiling and dark chocolate leather couch, he scanned the shelves.

  Novels, biographies, how-to’s, poetry, books on gardening, animal husbandry, yoga—apparently Gran really got into the practice—an old book on etiquette, and a section of books centered on Whiskey Beach. A couple of novels, he noted, which might be interesting, histories, lore, a scattering of those written about the Landons. And several referencing pirates and legends.

  On impulse he drew out a slim leather-bound volume titled Calypso: Doomed Treasures.

  Considering the trench in the basement, it seemed apt enough.

  Stretched out on the couch, fire blazing, Eli munched on cookies and read. The old book, published at the turn of the twentieth century, included illustrations, maps, biographical snippets of whomever the author deemed a major player. Enjoying himself, Eli delved into the fateful last voyage of the Calypso, captained by the not-very-infamous pirate and smuggler Nathanial Broome.

  The book carved him as handsome, dashing, full of derring-do, which was probably a crock for any who didn’t subscribe to the Errol Flynn or Johnny Depp school of pirates.

  He read of the battle at sea between the Calypso and the Santa Caterina described in an adventurous, bloodless style that made him suspect, perhaps unfairly, the author had been a woman writing under the masculine nom de plume Charles G. Haversham.

  The boarding and sinking of the Santa Caterina, the pillaging of its stores, the killing of most of its crew turned into high-seas adventure, with hefty doses of romance. Esmeralda’s Dowry, according to Haversham, had been magically imbued with its mistress’s loving heart so the jewels could be held only by one who’d found true love.

  “Seriously?” Eli ate another cookie. He might’ve put the book down for a different selection, but the author had so obviously enjoyed the writing, and the style proved ridiculously entertaining, and took him into pockets of the legend he’d never heard before.

  He didn’t have to believe in the transformative power of love—as transmitted in this case by magical diamonds and rubies—to enjoy the telling of it. And he appreciated the consistency of the romantic bent in the author’s contention that rather than a lowly seaman surviving the fateful wreck of the Calypso—with the treasure—it had been the dashingly romantic Captain Broome.

  He read the entire book to its tragic (yet romantic) conclusion, then paged back to study the illustrations again. Warmed by the fire, he dropped into a cookie coma with the book on his chest. He dreamed of sea battles, of pirates, of glinting jewels, of a young woman’s open heart and of betrayal, redemption and death.

  And of Lindsay, lying in the trench in Bluff House’s basement, the stone and dirt stained with her blood. Of himself standing over her, pickax in hand.

  He woke in a sweat, the fire burned to a red simmer, h
is body stiff. Queasy, shaken, he dragged himself off the couch, out of the library. The dream, that final image, held so strong, so clear in his mind, he went down to the basement, walked through the maze of rooms. And he stood over the trench to be sure his dead wife wasn’t there.

  Stupid, he told himself. Just stupid to feel the need to check out the impossible because of the delusion of a dream brought on by a silly book and too many cookies. Equally stupid to think—hope—that because he hadn’t dreamed of Lindsay in a few nights’ running he was done with it.

  However foolish it was, his earlier optimism and energy faded like chalk in the rain. He needed to go back up, find something to do before he let the dark close around him. God, he didn’t want to fight his way back into the light again.

  Maybe he’d fill in the trench, he told himself as he started back. He’d check with Vinnie first, then he’d fill it in. Make it go away, and screw whoever had come into Bluff House on their idiotic treasure hunt.

  He nursed that little spark of anger—so much better than depression—fanning it as he continued back. Letting it grow and heat against whoever had violated his family home.

  He was through being violated, through accepting that someone could have come into his home—or what had been his—killed his wife and left him to hang for it. Through accepting anyone might have come into Bluff House and had anything to do with his grandmother’s fall.

  He was through feeling victimized.

  He stepped up into the kitchen, and stopped dead.

  Abra stood, her phone in one hand, and a really big kitchen knife in the other.

  “I really hope you’re thinking of slicing some giant carrots with that.”

  “Oh God! Eli.” She dropped the knife on the counter, where it clattered. “I came in, and the door to the basement was open. You didn’t answer when I called out. Then I heard someone, and . . . I panicked.”

  “Panicking would be running. Sensible panicking would be running and calling the police. Standing there with a knife isn’t sensible or panic.”

  “It felt like both. I need . . . Can I . . . Never mind.” She simply got a glass, got a bottle of wine from the refrigerator. After drawing out its jeweled stopper, she poured it like breakfast juice.

  “I scared you. I’m sorry.” Her hands shook, he noted. “But going downstairs may happen from time to time.”

  “I know. It’s not that. It’s that on top of . . .” She took a long drink, a long breath. “Eli, they found Kirby Duncan.”

  “Good.” His earlier anger could round back again, and this time with a target. “I want to talk to the son of a bitch.”

  “You can’t. They found his body. Eli, they found his body caught in the rocks below the lighthouse. I saw the police, I saw all these people over there, so I went out. And . . . he’s dead.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he fell.”

  “That’s a little too easy, isn’t it?” They’d come for him again, he thought. The police, with questions. No getting around it.

  “No one’s going to think you had anything to do with it.”

  He shook his head, unsurprised she’d read his thoughts. He stepped forward, took the glass, took a long drink of his own. “Sure they will. But this time, I’ll be prepared for it. You came to tell me so I would be.”

  “No one who knows you will think you had anything to do with it.”

  “Maybe not.” He handed her back the glass. “But it’s going to fuel the beast. Accused murderer connected to victim of another death. Plenty of dirt to throw, and some of it’s going to hit you if you don’t keep your distance.”

  “The hell with that.” Her eyes fired at him. The color distress had washed out of her face surged back. “And don’t insult me that way again.”

  “It’s not an insult, it’s a warning.”

  “The hell with that, too. I want to know what you’re going to do if you believe some people will think you had anything to do with this, if you believe dirt’s going to be tossed at you.”

  “I don’t know yet.” But he would. This time he would. “Nobody’s going to chase me out of Bluff House or away from Whiskey Beach. I stay until I’m ready to go.”

  “That’s good enough. Why don’t I fix us some food?”

  “No, thanks. I ate the cookies.”

  She glanced at the plate on the island, and her jaw dropped as she counted a lonely six cookies. “Good God, Eli, there were two dozen. You should be sick.”

  “Maybe a little. Go on home, Abra. You shouldn’t be here when the cops come. No telling when, but soon enough.”

  “We can talk to them together.”

  “Better not. I’m going to call my lawyer, just to let him know. Lock your doors.”

  “All right, fine. I’ll be back tomorrow. I’d like you to call me if anything happens.”

  “I can handle it.”

  “I think you can.” She angled her head. “What happened, Eli?”

  “I had a good day, mostly. There’s been more of them lately. I can deal with this.”

  “Then I’ll see you tomorrow.” She set the glass aside, laid her hands on his face. “Eventually you’re going to ask me to stay. I like wondering what I’m going to do about that.” She brushed his lips with hers, then pulled up her hoodie against the rain and left.

  He liked wondering, too, he realized. And sooner or later, the timing just had to get better.

  Eleven

  HE ROSE AT DAWN, AFTER PULLING OUT OF A NASTY DREAM where he looked down at a broken, bloody, staring Lindsay on the rocks below Whiskey Beach Light.

  He didn’t need a shrink to buy him a clue into his subconscious on that one.

  He didn’t need a personal trainer to tell him every bone, every muscle, every freaking cell in his body hurt because he’d overdone the pumping iron the day before.

  Since there was no one around to hear, he whimpered a little as he dragged himself to the shower, hoping the hot water would pound out some of the aches.

  He sweetened the pot with three Motrin.

  He went down to make coffee, drank it while dealing with e-mail. Time, he figured, for another update to his family. He wished he could realistically edit out any reference to break-ins and dead bodies, but at this point, better they hear it from him than elsewhere.

  Word always traveled. Ugly words traveled fast.

  He took care with the delivery, assured them all the house was secure. If he glossed over the death of a Boston PI, he thought he was entitled. For Christ’s sake, he’d never even laid eyes on the man. Deliberately he left the impression of an accident. It could have been an accident.

  He didn’t believe that for one quick minute, but why worry the family?

  He segued into progress on his book, the weather, made some jokes about the book he’d read on the Calypso and the dowry.

  He read it over twice, decided weaving the bad news through the center, bookending it with light and positive, equaled the best framework. Hit send.

  Remembering his sister, and their bargain, he wrote another e-mail just to Tricia.

  Look, I’m not editing . . . very much. The house is secure, and the local cops are on it. At this point it looks like some asshole’s been digging for mythical treasure. I don’t know what happened to the guy from Boston, whether he fell, jumped, or got tossed over the cliff by Captain Broome’s vengeful ghost.

  I’m okay here. Better than okay. And when the cops come around—and I know they will—I’ll deal with it. I’m ready to.

  Now, stop scowling at the screen, and I know you are. Go find somebody else to worry about.