by Nora Roberts
Now he needed to get back to Boston himself and regroup. Put in appearances, make sure he was seen where he was supposed to be seen, make sure he talked to those he was supposed to talk to.
Everyone would see an ordinary man going about his work, his day, his life. No one would see how extraordinary he was.
He’d rushed it, he thought now as he checked his speed, made sure he stayed within the posted limit. Knowing he was close had driven him too fast. He’d throttle back a bit, give everything and everyone time to settle.
When he came back to Whiskey Beach he’d be ready to move, ready to win. He’d claim his legacy. He’d dispense justice.
Then he’d live as he deserved to. Like a pirate king.
He drove carefully by the beach-front restaurant where Eli and Abra held hands across the table.
“I like dating,” Abra commented. “I’d almost forgotten.”
“Me, too.”
“I like first dates.” She picked up her wine, smiled over the glass. “Especially first dates where I don’t have to decide if I’m going to let myself be talked into bed.”
“I really like the last part of that.”
“You’re home. You’re home in Whiskey Beach. It shows, and I know how it feels. Tell me your plans for Bluff House. You have them,” she added, taking a finger off the stem of the glass to point at him. “You’re a plan-maker.”
“I used to be. For a while, for too long, just getting through the day was too much of a plan. But you’re right, I’ve been thinking about plans for the house.”
She edged forward, candlelight in her eyes, the roll of the sea through the wide glass beside them. “Tell me all.”
“Practicalities first. Gran needs to come back. She’ll stay in Boston and work on her therapy until she’s ready, then she’ll come home. I was thinking of an elevator. I know an architect who’d come out, take a look. There’s going to be a time when she can’t handle the stairs, so maybe an elevator’s an option. If not, eventually we could see about turning the smaller parlor into a bedroom suite for her.”
“I like the elevator. She loves her bedroom, and loves being able to go all over the house. It would help her have all that. I think it’s years off, but it’s good planning. What else?”
“Update that old generator, do something with the basement. I haven’t figured that out yet. Not a priority. The third floor’s more intriguing.”
“New office space for the novelist.”
He grinned, shook his head. “First on the list with the elevator—I want to have parties in Bluff House again.”
“Parties?”
“I used to like them. Friends, family, good food, music. I want to see if I still like them.”
The idea made her almost giddy. “Let’s plan one, a big one, for when you sell your book.”
“That’s an if.”
“I’m an optimist, so it’s when.”
He shifted when the waiter served their salads, waiting until they were alone again. Superstitious or not, he didn’t want to plan a party around the book he’d yet to finish much less sell.
Compromise, he thought.
“Why don’t we have a welcome-home party when Gran comes back.”
“That’s perfect.” She gave his hand a squeeze before she picked up her fork. “She’d love it. I know a great swing band.”
“Swing?”
“It’ll be fun. A little retro. Women in pretty dresses, men in summer suits because I know she’ll be back before the end of summer. Chinese lanterns on the terraces, champagne, martinis, flowers everywhere. Silver trays full of pretty food on white tables.”
“You’re hired.”
She laughed. “I do some party planning here and there.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
She tapped the air with her fork. “I know people who know people.”
“I bet. What about you and plans? Your yoga studio.”
“It’s on the slate.”
“I could back you.”
She inched away, just a little. “I like backing myself.”
“No investors allowed?”
“Not yet anyway. I’d like a good space, comfortable, serene. Good light. A mirrored wall, maybe a pretty little fountain. A good sound system the way the one at the church is absolutely not. Lighting I could dim. Color-coordinated yoga mats, blankets, blocks, that sort of thing. Eventually establish enough to take on a couple other instructors but nothing too big. And a little treatment room for massages. But for now I’m happy doing what I’m doing.”
“Which is everything.”
“Everything I like. Aren’t we lucky?”
“I’m feeling pretty lucky at the moment.”
“I meant that we’re both doing what we like. We’re sitting here on our first date, which I like, and talking about plans for doing other things we like. It makes having to do things you don’t like no big deal.”
“What don’t you like?”
She smiled at him. “Right now, right here? I can’t think of a thing.”
Later, curled up warm and loose against him, slipping dreamily toward sleep, she realized she liked everything about being with him. And when she thought of tomorrow, she thought of him.
She understood as she drifted with the sea sighing outside, if she let herself slip just a little more, she would love.
She could only hope she was ready.
Twenty-three
FROM THE NAME—SHERRILYN BURKE—AND THE VOICE over the phone—brisk Yankee—Eli pictured a lanky blonde in a smart suit. He opened the door to a fortyish brunette in jeans, a black sweater and a battered leather jacket. She carried a briefcase and wore black Chucks.
“Mr. Landon.”
“Ms. Burke.”
She pushed a pair of Wayfarers on top of her short cap of hair, held out a hand to shake his. “Nice dog,” she added, and held out a hand to Barbie.
Barbie politely shook.
“She’s got a hell of a bark, but doesn’t appear to have much bite.”
“The bark does the job.”
“I bet. Some house you’ve got here.”
“It really is. Come on in. Can I get you some coffee?”
“I never turn it down. Black’s good.”
“Why don’t you go in, sit down. I’ll get it.”
“Maybe we could save time, and I’ll go to the kitchen with you. You answered the door, you’re getting the coffee. That tells me it’s the staff’s day off.”
“I don’t have staff, which you already know.”
“Part of the job. And, full disclosure,” she added with a smile that showed off a crooked incisor, “I wouldn’t mind a look around. I’ve seen some magazine spreads,” she added. “But it’s not like being in it.”
“All right.”
She studied the foyer as they walked on, then the main parlor, the music room with its double pocket doors that could open to the parlor for parties.
“It goes on and on, doesn’t it? But in a livable way instead of a museum. I’ve wondered. You’ve kept the character, and that says something. Inside matches the out.”
“Bluff House is important to my grandmother.”
“And to you?”
“Yeah, and to me.”
“It’s a big house for one person. Your grandmother lived here alone for the last several years.”
“That’s right. She’ll come back when her doctors clear it. I’ll stay with her.”
“Family first. I know how it is. I’ve got two kids, a mother who drives me crazy and a father who drives her crazy since he retired. He put in his thirty.”
“Your father was a cop?”
“Yeah, he was one of the Boys. But you knew that.”
“Part of the job.”
She smirked. Then turned into and around the kitchen. “This isn’t part of the original, but it still manages to reflect the character. Do you cook?”
“Not really.”
“Me either. This kitchen looks l
ike one for serious cooking.”
“My grandmother likes to bake.” He moved to the coffeemaker as she made herself at home on an island stool. “And the woman who takes care of the house is a pretty serious cook, I’d say.”
“That would be Abra Walsh. She’s . . . taking care of the house for you now.”
“That’s right. Is my personal life relevant, Ms. Burke?”
“Make it Sherrilyn. And everything’s relevant. It’s how I work. So I appreciate getting a sense of the house. I’m also an admirer of Ms. Walsh’s mother. And from what I’ve learned, I got some for the daughter. She’s making an interesting life for herself here, after some hard knocks. How about you?”
“Working on it.”
“You were a decent lawyer, of your kind.” She added that quick smile again. “Trying to be a writer now.”
“That’s right.”
“Your name would make a splash. Old money, scandal, mystery.”
Resentment curdled inside his belly like sour milk. “I’m not looking to make a splash off my family’s money, or my wife’s murder.”
She shrugged. “It is what it is, Mr. Landon.”
“Make it Eli if you’re going to insult me.”
“Just getting a gauge. You cooperated with the police more than I’d have expected after your wife’s murder.”
“More than I should have, in hindsight.” He set her coffee in front of her. “I wasn’t thinking like a lawyer. By the time I did start thinking, it was a little late.”
“Did you love her?”
He’d asked for a woman, he reminded himself. Someone fresh and thorough. He’d gotten one, and an investigator nothing like the one he’d hired after Lindsay’s death.
Now he’d have to deal with the result.
“Not when she died. It’s hard not knowing if I ever did. But she mattered. She was my wife, and she mattered. I want to know who killed her. I want to know why. I spent too much of the last year defending myself and not enough really trying to find the answers.”
“Being the prime suspect in a murder tends to keep you on the hot seat. She cheated on you. Here you’re trying to have a fair and civilized divorce with a lot of money and family rep at stake. Even with the prenup, a lot of money and goods at stake, and you find out she’s been playing you for a fool. You go into the house, one your money paid for as hers was still in trust when you purchased it. You confront her, lose your temper, pick up the poker and let her have it. Then, it’s holy shit, look what I did. You call the cops, covering it with the old ‘I came in and found her.’”
“That’s the way they saw it.”
“The police.”
“The police, Lindsay’s parents, the media.”
“The parents don’t matter, and the media, again, is what it is. And the cops couldn’t, in the end, make the case.”
“The police couldn’t, not definitively, but that doesn’t make me innocent to them, or anyone else. Lindsay’s parents? They lost a daughter, so they do matter, and they believe I got away with it. The media may be what it is, but it’s weight. They made a pretty good case in the court of public opinion, and my family suffered for that.”
She studied him quietly as he spoke, and he realized now she’d gotten a sense of him just as she’d gotten one of Bluff House.
“Are you trying to piss me off?”
“Maybe. Polite people don’t tell you much of anything. Lindsay Landon’s case looked slam-dunk on the surface. Estranged husband, sex, betrayal, money, crime of passion. You’re going to look at the husband first, and the person who discovers the body. You were both. No sign of break-in, of struggle. No sign of a burglary gone bad, the public fight with the victim earlier that day. A lot of weight.”
“I’m aware of the weight.”
“The problem is, that’s all there is. Surface. You go below, and it falls apart. The timing’s sticky—the time of death, the time you were seen by a number of witnesses leaving your office, the time you deactivated the alarm to come in. So you couldn’t have gone in and out again, then back, as you were seen at your office, had appointments, conversations until after six p.m. And witnesses corroborate when the victim left the gallery where she worked. She entered the house, again verified, about two hours before you walked in the house that night.”
“The cops figured the timing was tight, but it was possible for me to go in, argue, kill her, then try to cover it before calling nine-one-one.”
“It didn’t hold up well on reenactment, even the prosecutor’s reenactment. Good coffee,” she said in an aside, then continued. “Then there’s forensics. No spatter on you, and you can’t deliver blows like that without spatter. No spatter on your clothes, and witnesses verify the suit and tie you wore when you left the office. When did you have time, in an approximate twenty-minute window, to change your clothes, change back again? And where were the blood-spattered ones, or whatever you used to cover your suit?”
“You sound like my lawyer.”
“He’s a smart guy. Add no history of violence, no prior bad acts. And no matter how they came at you, you stuck to the story. They couldn’t shake you off it.”
“Because it was the truth.”
“Added to it, the victim’s own behavior weighed on your side. She was the one lying, the one cheating, the one planning on a generous settlement while she carried on a secret affair. The media made that case, too.”
“It’s easy to smear a dead woman, and it’s not what I wanted.”
“But it helped, so did the phone calls logged between her and Justin Suskind after you confronted her that afternoon. Shined the light on him awhile.”
He couldn’t face coffee, he realized, and opened the refrigerator for water. “I wanted it to be him.”
“Problems there. One, motive. Unless you subscribe to the theory she decided to break it off or step back after her confrontation with you. The motive problem deepens because she was good at keeping him a secret. Friends, coworkers, neighbors—nobody knew about him. Some suspected there was someone, but she never talked about it. Too much at stake. She didn’t keep a diary, and the e-mails between them were careful. They both had a lot at stake. They met almost exclusively in hotels or out-of-town restaurants, B-and-Bs. Nothing the cops dug up pointed to any tension between them.”
“No.” He wished that didn’t continue to sting, even if the sting had gone dull. “I think she cared about him a great deal.”
“Maybe she did, or maybe she just liked the adventure. You’re probably never going to know for sure. But the biggest problem with Suskind as killer is he’s alibied by his wife. His betrayed wife. She comes across as mortified, even devastated, by this affair, but she tells the police he was home that night. They had dinner together, alone as both kids were at a school function. Then the kids get home about eight-fifteen and confirm Mom and Dad are hanging out at home.”
She opened her briefcase, took out a file. “As you know, the Suskinds recently separated. I figured she might change her tune now that the marriage is going under. I talked to her yesterday. She’s bitter, she’s tired, she’s done with the husband and the marriage, but she doesn’t change her story.”
“Where does that leave us?”
“Well, if you cheat with one, maybe you cheat with others.