by Nora Roberts
generation prior. Too valuable for target practice or sport, he mused, remembering his grandfather allowing a thrilled eight-year-old Eli a chance to hold one of the flintlocks while he explained its history.
Valuable, Eli thought again as he wandered the room. The dueling pistols alone were worth thousands. And easily transportable, easily sold to a collector. A locked glass-fronted case would hardly stop a thief, yet whoever had dug in the basement hadn’t taken the bird in the hand.
Hadn’t known about them? Didn’t know the layout and history of the house well enough? Besides the guns—and there had to be six figures, easily, inside that case—the house contained countless valuable, portable items.
His grandmother would have noticed, eventually. But there’d been a decent window of time between her accident and when he himself had moved in. But if and when the intruder had used that window he’d apparently kept his focus on the basement.
Focused, Eli thought again. So it wasn’t simply about money, or why not take what came easily to hand? It was about treasure.
What kind of sense did that make? he wondered. You could spend one night hauling out a few million in art, memorabilia, collectibles, silver—Jesus, his great-uncle’s extensive stamp collection on display in the library. Or you could spend God knew how many nights hacking away at the basement floor with hand tools for a legend.
More than money, then, he thought again as he prowled through the house, taking a speculative mental scan of easily portable valuables. Was it the thrill? The true belief in treasure beyond price?
Was it an obsession, like Wolfe’s obsession with him?
The idea took him back to the basement to take a closer study of the intruder’s work. On impulse, he stepped down into the trench, found it nearly waist-high in some parts. To his eye it looked as though the work started in the center of the area, then moved out in a kind of grid. North, south, east, west.
Like compass points? How the hell would he know?
He climbed out again, pulled out his phone to take photos from several angles. The cops had pictures, but now he had his own.
For whatever reason, it made him feel proactive. He liked the sensation of doing something. Anything.
To add to it, he went back up, took the brass telescope on its mahogany stand—a gift to his grandmother—out onto the terrace. Proactive meant informed. Maybe it wasn’t the best time for him to take a hike or drive to the lighthouse, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t see.
He aimed, focused, adjusted until he had a clear view of the yellow police tape. They’d blocked off the entire area, lighthouse included. He noted a few people behind the tape—the curious, and a couple of official-looking vehicles.
He turned the scope, aimed down, watched what he assumed were crime-scene techs working on the rocks, and getting soaked despite their protective gear.
A long drop, he thought, using the scope to judge the distance from the bluff to the rocks below. In all likelihood the fall would’ve been enough to kill Duncan. But shooting him first guaranteed it.
Why? What had he known, seen, done?
And how was it connected to Lindsay’s death? Logically, there had to be some connection. He didn’t believe Wolfe had that part wrong. Unless the whole thing was as illogical as digging in a basement for pirate treasure, the murders were connected.
Which opened the possibility Duncan’s murder was connected to the intruder.
Again, why? What had he known, seen, done?
A puzzle. In his other life, he’d enjoyed puzzles. Maybe it was time to find out if he still had an aptitude for them.
He left the telescope on the terrace, went back upstairs for a legal pad, a pen. This time on his pass through the kitchen he did slap a sandwich together and, what the hell, added a beer. He took it all to the library, lit the fire and sat down at his great-grandfather’s magnificent old desk.
He thought to start with Lindsay’s death, but realized that wasn’t the beginning—not really. He’d considered their first year of marriage an adjustment period. Ups and down, lateral moves, but a great deal of focus, on both sides, on outfitting and decorating the new house.
Things had begun to change between them, if he were honest, within months of moving into the house.
She’d decided she wanted more time before starting a family, and fair enough. He’d put a great deal of time and energy into his work. She’d wanted him to make full partner, and he felt he was on track for that.
She’d enjoyed the entertaining, the being entertained, and she’d had her own career path and social network. Still, they’d argued, increasingly, over his workload, or conflicts between his priorities and hers. Naturally enough, if he continued to be honest. Sixty-hour workweeks were more common than not, and as a criminal attorney he’d put in plenty of all-nighters.
She’d enjoyed the benefits, but had begun to resent what earned them. He’d appreciated her success in her own career, but had begun to resent the conflicts of interest.
At the base? He admitted they hadn’t loved each other enough, not for the long haul.
Add in her intolerance—and that was a fair word—for his grandmother, for his affection for Bluff House and Whiskey Beach, and the erosion just quickened. And he could see now that even in that first year of marriage, an emotional crack had formed between them, one that had steadily widened until neither of them had the means or desire to bridge the gap.
And hadn’t he resented Lindsay for his own decision to limit, then to end, his visits to Bluff House? He wanted to save his marriage, but more out of principle than for love of his wife.
That was just sad, he thought.
Still, he hadn’t cheated, so points for him.
He’d spent a lot of time trying to calculate when her infidelity had begun. Conclusion? Not quite two years into the marriage, when she’d claimed to be working late, when she’d started to take solo weekend trips to recharge, when their sex life had gone to hell.
He wrote down the approximate date, her name, her closest friends, family members, coworkers. Then drew a line from one, Eden Suskind. Both casual friend and coworker, and the wife of Justin Suskind, Lindsay’s lover at the time of her death.
Eli circled Justin Suskind’s name before continuing his notes.
Eden stood as her cheating husband’s alibi for the night of Lindsay’s murder. He’d hardly had a motive in any case. All evidence pointed to his plans to take her on a romantic getaway in Maine at what had proven to be a favorite hotel.
His wife certainly had no reason to lie for him, and had been humiliated and devastated when the affair came to light.
Eli’s investigator had pursued the possibility of an ex-lover or a second one, one who’d confronted Lindsay and killed her in a fit of temper and passion. But that seed hadn’t borne fruit.
Yet, Eli reminded himself.
She’d let someone into the house that night. No forced entry, no signs of struggle. Her phone and e-mail records—home and work—had shown no communications with anyone who hadn’t been cleared. Then again, Wolfe had been focused on him, and his investigator could have missed something. Someone.
Dutifully, Eli wrote down all the names he remembered, right down to her hairdresser.
At the end of two hours, he’d filled several pages of the tablet, had cross-references, unanswered questions, two assaults, if he counted his grandmother’s fall, and a second murder.
He’d take a walk, he decided, let it simmer.
He felt good, he realized. Despite—maybe even because of—the muscle aches, he felt damn good. Because he knew as he walked out of the library he’d never let himself be railroaded a second time.
Kirby Duncan’s killer had done him a horrible kind of favor.
Twelve
ABRA RANG THE BELL FIRST AS MUCH FOR MANNERS AS THE need for a little assistance. When no one answered, she dug out her house key, unlocked the door, then maneuvered her massage table inside. An automatic glance at the alarm pa
nel and its blinking light had her muttering the new code as she punched it in.
“Eli! Are you up there? I could use a little help here.”
After silence, she huffed out a breath, used her table to prop the door open before heading back to her car for the market bags.
She carted them inside, dumped them, muscled her table and tote into the big parlor. Went back for more market bags, carried them into the kitchen.
After she’d put away the fresh groceries, pinned the market receipt to the little bulletin board, she unpacked the container of potato and ham soup she’d made that afternoon, the beer bread she’d baked and, since he apparently had a taste for them, the rest of her chocolate chip cookies.
Rather than hunt him down, she walked back, set up her table, arranged the candles she’d chosen, stirred up the fire, then added a log. Maybe he intended to make an excuse about not wanting or needing his scheduled massage, but he’d have a hard time with that since she had everything in place.
Satisfied with that, she wandered upstairs on the off chance he was too engrossed in his work to hear her, taking a serious nap, in the shower, in the gym.
She didn’t find him, but did find his method of making the bed was hauling up the duvet. She fluffed it, and the pillows—a tidy bed was a restful bed to her way of thinking—folded the sweater he’d dropped on a chair, tossed the socks on the floor beside it in the hamper.
Wandering out, she tried the gym, and took the yoga mat stretched out on the floor as a positive sign. Curious, she poked through his wing of the second floor, then went down again to look around the first. She spotted the legal pad, the empty plate and beer bottle (at least he’d used a coaster) on the fabulous old desk.
“What are you up to, Eli?” She picked up the dish, the bottle as she read the first page of his notes. “Now this is interesting.”
She didn’t know all the names, but followed the lines connecting them, the arrows, the scribbled notes. A few clever sketches scattered through the notes. He had his grandmother’s hand, she realized, recognizing one of Detective Wolfe with devil horns and a sharp-toothed snarl.
As she paged through—he’d obviously spent some time on this, she mused—she found her own name, its connection to Hester, to him, to Vinnie and to Duncan Kirby.
And a sketch of her, too, delighting her. He’d drawn her lounging on the sand at water’s edge, a mermaid’s tail a serpentine curl from her waist.
She trailed her fingertip along the tail before reading on.
He’d done a timeline of the night of Duncan’s death, one that seemed pretty accurate to her own memory of events. And he’d listed the death as between midnight and five a.m.
So the police had talked to him, as they had to her.
That couldn’t have been pleasant. Since his car was out front, he’d be on foot. She’d made soup, baked bread, done a short yoga practice to calm herself down after the police visit. She suspected Eli had vented his tension into the notes. And was likely walking off the rest.
Good for him.
She carried the dish and bottle to the kitchen, then stepped out onto the terrace. Surprised to see the telescope, she moved to it. When she looked through the eyepiece, the lighthouse filled her view.
She couldn’t blame him for that. In fact it made her wish she had a telescope of her own. Hugging her arms against the chill, she stepped to the edge of the terrace to scan the beach.
And there he was, she noted, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched a bit against the wind. She watched until she saw him veer toward the beach steps.
She went back inside, poured two glasses of wine, then carried them both to the door to meet him.
“Gorgeous day, isn’t it?” She passed him a glass. “You can almost smell the leading edge of spring if you try hard enough.”
“Spring? My ears are frozen.”
“They wouldn’t be if you’d worn a hat. I’ve got the fire built up again in the main parlor.”
But his gaze had already landed on the kitchen counter. “You brought more cookies.”
“They’re for later.” Deliberately she stepped over to block him. “After wine, conversation, massage, then the really excellent ham and potato soup and beer bread I made this afternoon.”
“You made soup and bread.”
“I considered it therapy after dealing with the police. You reap the rewards. They came here, too.”
“Yeah, they were here.”
“You can tell me about that while we drink this wine. Or do you want me to go first?”
“Chronological order.” He stripped off his jacket, tossed it on a kitchen stool. “What?” he said when she just stared at him, eyebrows lifted.
“Didn’t your mother teach you to hang up your things?”
“For Christ’s sake,” he muttered, but he snatched the jacket up, walked to the laundry room to tag it on a peg. “Better?”
“In fact, perfect. Chronological puts me first.” On impulse she grabbed the bottle of wine. “In case,” she added as she started toward the big parlor.
“You set this up?” he said when he saw the massage table.
“I did, and get the weird thoughts out of your head. A massage is a massage, sex is sex. You may get one with the other, but not when I’m charging you. And I am.”
“For the massage or sex, because I should know the rates going in.”
“You’re a funny guy when you’re not brooding.” She sat on the sofa, curled up her legs. “So, basically, I had to take the two detectives, one local, one Boston, through what happened here on Thursday night when I initially came in to check the windows, backtrack to my conversation with Duncan in the church basement. Toggle back to what time you came back from Boston, meeting me at Mike and Maureen’s, coming here to talk to Vinnie. What I said to him, what you said, what he said—all of which you already know. Going down to the basement, ultimately finding the big hole, and verifying I stayed over, crashing on this very spot. What time I got up, which was about six. At which time I considered going upstairs and crawling into bed with you, though I didn’t see the need to tell them that.”
“You didn’t see the need, apparently, to tell me either until now.”
“No, I didn’t. You were dead asleep. I did go up,” she added.
His eyes narrowed. “You came upstairs that morning?”
“I did. I woke a little uneasy—residual stress, I guess. And really grateful I wasn’t alone, but with all of the night before playing around in my head so I felt alone down here. I went to see if you were, by any chance, awake, and you weren’t. I debated waking you up, decided against. The fact was, seeing you up there helped me not feel alone down here.”
“You should’ve woken me. Depending on how you did, you could’ve stayed up there, or I’d’ve come down here with you so you wouldn’t have been alone.”
“Hindsight. I did tell the police I went upstairs early, saw you were still sleeping, so just came back downstairs. I got the very clear impression your Detective Wolfe thinks I’m a big ho and a skanky liar.”
“He’s not my Detective Wolfe.”
“He thinks he is.” Abra took a sip of wine. “I ran it through for them. I came back down, made coffee, ate some fruit, cut up some melon, pineapple and so on for you, made an omelet, left it on warm, wrote you a note, went home and meditated before I changed for an early class.”
“They knew coming in here I couldn’t have killed Duncan, then driven into Boston, searched his office and apartment, driven back.”
“His office? In Boston? What’s all that?”
“Apparently somebody tossed Duncan’s office and apartment in Boston, cleaned out his records, his computers. Which points to his client being his killer, unless you’re convinced I killed him. But they talked to you, knew you saw me here at nearly two in the morning and around six in the morning. Not just hard for me to pull all that off in four hours—not possible for me to pull it off. They knew there wasn’t enough time.”
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nbsp; “That depends.” She took another drink. “If you’re Wolfe and I’m a big, skanky lying ho, that puts me on the slippery slope to co-murderer.”
“Jesus Christ.” Eli set his glass down to press the heels of his hands to his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, shut up. You’re not insinuating I’m a big, skanky lying ho co-murderer. Wolfe doesn’t believe he can be wrong about you killing Lindsay, which means you had to have killed Duncan, which means I’m a big, skanky and so forth. I’ve known people like him. They absolutely, without question, believe they’re right, so everything that calls that rightness into doubt is a lie, an evasion, a mistake.”
She slugged down some wine. “People like that make me . . . impatient.”