Driftwood Point (5 page)

“So?” The name meant nothing to her.

“As to why didn't I charge her what I'd have charged anyone else? Because she isn't anyone else.” He ignored the first question and finished the water before tossing the bottle end over end into a trash can near the door. “She's Ruby Carter. The last of her kind
and one of the wisest people I've ever met. She's a legend around here—a treasure—which you'd know if you'd spent a little more time with her.”

“Excuse me, but I've spent plenty of time with her over the years. I lived with her, remember?”

“Right. Seventeen years ago. How long has it been since you've spent more than a weekend home?”

“I've spent plenty of long weekends here—three and four-day weekends, actually—but I don't have to have that conversation with you.”

“Hey, you brought it up. You want to know why I spent so much of my time over there?” He leaned against the hull of the skipjack, which Lis had to admit was rotted through in several places. “You being family, you'd have to know that Ruby's store is one of the original structures still standing on Cannonball Island. It's like something out of a movie set, with those old wooden floors and shelves and that oak counter—God, you can see how it's been worked smooth over the years from the wear it's taken. That's original glass in most of the windows on the first floor. The front door is four inches thick. And that Coca-Cola sign over the front door? It still works, still lights up, did you notice? I keep telling her she should have that thing insured. The store should be on the National Register of Historic Places. As soon as I have time, I'm going to work to see that gets done.”

“Why does that matter to you? You're not an islander.”

“Cannonball Island is a place unto itself, with its own strange history, its own mythology, and its own
stories. It has its own heroes and its own villains. But it's going to undergo some changes in the not-too-distant future. The time to preserve what's there is now.”

“What's that supposed to mean? What kind of changes?”

“Ask Ruby, she knows. Now, if your interrogation is over, I'd like to get back to work.”

He put the goggles back on and picked up the sander.

“Oh, hey. I almost forgot to congratulate you. I hear you're a big-time artist now. Galleries in New York City displaying your paintings, celebrities lining up to buy them, appearances on TV, people writing about you. I heard there's going to be a special showing at the new art center.” He set the sander on a nearby cinder block. “What kind of paintings do you do, anyway?”

“Landscapes, mostly. Cityscapes.”

“Cityscapes, eh? Tall buildings, bustling traffic, that sort of thing?”

“Some. There's nature in the city, parks, too.” He was making Lis feel defensive, but she wasn't sure why. “Lots of trees, some ponds.”

“Trees and ponds.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “So you left the island and went all the way to New York looking for natural subjects to paint, and you found
trees and ponds
. There's a certain irony in that, don't you think?”

Before she could respond, he turned his back, flipped the switch on the sander, and went back to work.

Chapter Three

A
lec finished sanding the board that he would eventually replace on the hull of the skipjack. He'd been working on the boat since early spring, since the morning Ruby Carter had agreed to hand it over in return for the time he would spend renovating the old general store and building new living quarters for her on the first floor. The only money that had changed hands since then went to materials. He had paid the plumber, the electrician, and the occasional helper he'd had to hire from his own pocket. When it was all added up, Alec figured Ruby was still ahead of the game in dollars, but he'd come to own the boat he'd been dreaming about since he was a kid, so in terms of overall satisfaction—as happy as she was with her new living space—he figured he was the clear winner.

Alec stood back to admire the
Annie G
. Even now, with her partially rotten hull and holes in the bow, to Alec, she was beautiful. He knew that part of her allure was due to the legend that surrounded her, that
of the mysterious disappearance of her namesake, Anne Gregory. He'd heard the story over and over as a child, every time old Eben Carter had come into Ellison's to shoot the breeze with Alec's uncle Cliff and the two bachelors—the old one and his younger counterpart—would share a brandy or two. Alec would sit quietly at Cliff's desk doing homework or reading comic books, all the while listening to the tales the older men would tell. By the time he was twelve, Alec knew all the stories by heart, but that never stopped him from hanging on every word.

“Clifford, she was the prettiest girl on Cannonball Island.” Eb would sit on one of the old metal folding chairs Cliff kept in the shop, and he'd prop his feet up on whatever was handy—a toolbox, some concrete blocks, a tall stack of newspapers Cliff kept in the shop to wipe off paintbrushes. “Loved that girl the first time I laid eyes on her, back when we were just kids. Even then, I knew she was the only girl for me. Yessir, it was love at first sight. Couldn't believe my good luck, that she loved me, too.”

“No explaining love, Eb. No rhyme or reason to it, best I can see.” Cliff would lean against whatever boat he was working on that day and light one of the cigarettes that would, in time, take his life.

“Yep. She was a beauty.” Eb's eyes would glaze over. “Worst day of my life, the day she disappeared. Searched for her every which way, but it was like she just went
poof
! And she was gone like she was never even here.”

Once Alec asked his uncle what Eb was talking about, what had happened to Annie.

“Nobody knows, Alec. That's the tragedy of it.” Cliff's eyes had shifted to the photograph of Eb and his boat that hung on the wall. He'd taken it just before the skipjack races the previous spring. “Young woman vanishes into thin air like that, it's just not right. No one who knew her will ever know peace. For sure, old Eb won't.”

“Who was she?” Alec persisted.

“Girl from Cannonball Island. Eb's sweetheart. They were going to be married that year at Christmas.”

“Maybe she ran away,” Alec had suggested. “Maybe she didn't want to marry Eb and have her name on the back of his boat.”

Cliff had nodded. “More than one said the same thing back then, but according to everyone who knew her—including her sisters and her best friends—she was crazy about Eb and wanted to marry him.”

“So she just was gone?” The eight-year-old Alec had a problem grasping the concept. “Like, one minute she was standing there and the next minute she wasn't? Like magic?”

“More like one night she was sleeping in her bed, the next morning she was nowhere to be seen. The police investigated and thought that someone had gotten into the house overnight and took her.” Cliff had taken a long drag on his cigarette, blew out a mile-long stream of smoke. “It's a mystery, all right.”

“A stranger came in and just carried her away,” Alec had said softly.

“Looked that way. I heard it said they found a cut screen in the back door in the morning, so it seems
logical.” Alec's uncle Cliff was always looking for the logic in any situation. “Course, back then, just about no one locked their doors at night. Not here in town, not over there to the island. Folks trusted more back then.”

“If the door wasn't locked, why'd someone cut a hole in the screen? Why didn't they just open the door?”

“Well, now, that's a good question, Alec. My guess is that whoever took her away didn't know the door would be unlocked. Or maybe that night, the locks were on, who knows? Only thing we know for certain is that the next day, Annie was missing and there was no trace of her left behind.”

“I didn't know that could happen.”

The idea worried Alec that some unknown person could work his way into your house and steal you away and no one would ever find you and no one would ever know what happened to you because you would never be found.

“Well, I don't think you need worry about that happening around here.” Cliff reassured Alec. “We've got something the Gregorys didn't have.”

“What?”

“Sadie.” The German shepherd Cliff had gotten for Alec for his birthday the year before had turned out to be not only the boy's best companion but a great watchdog.

“Sadie.” Alec had nodded. “Sadie wouldn't let anyone come into our house.”

“You bet she wouldn't.” Cliff had patted Alec on the head and gone back to work, and from that day
on, Alec slept soundly, secure in the knowledge that anyone who reached for him in the dark would find themselves in the vise of Sadie's strong jaws.

But he'd never forgotten the story, and the way his heart had skipped a beat the first time he'd heard it. As an adult, the boat made him think of romance and love that never died. Not that he'd ever known such a thing. He'd thought he'd been in love a time or two, but knew he'd never known the kind of passion that old Eben Carter had felt for his Annie, the kind that could last a lifetime.

Funny, he thought as he washed up before locking the shop for the day, that the object of his very first crush should pop up when he'd finally gotten his hands on the boat he'd coveted for so long, not that Lis Parker had been aware of his infatuation. He'd secretly had a thing about her from the time Mrs. Warner, their fifth-grade teacher, had moved his desk so that his seat was right behind the mysterious dark-haired beauty from the island. Mysterious, because she rarely spoke with anyone except other islanders. He'd even become friends with geeky Jerry Willets because he heard that Jerry lived across the road from Lis. The friendship had been short-lived, he recalled, because the hoped-for invitation to Jerry's house had never come, and because Alec discovered that he ­really didn't like Jerry after all.

Since Lis was always so aloof, he'd never gotten to spend much time in her company outside of school, so he made sure he signed up for every class she took, going so far as to enroll in a poetry class in which he had no interest. But she never gave him
a second look. They'd been juniors the year he decided he would in fact be the master of his fate: He was going to go for broke and ask Lis Parker to the junior-senior prom.

He'd chosen a time when there were other kids standing around the student lounge, hoping their presence might bring him luck. After all, she wouldn't turn him down in front of all those other kids, right?

“So, Lis,” he'd said as he walked up to her, his stomach doing flips and his heart pounding even as outwardly he exuded nonchalant confidence. “Want to go to the prom with me?”

“No.” That was all she'd said. One word. No. No explanation, no excuse, no
thanks anyway
. Just . . . no.

He'd stared into her eyes as if he hadn't heard her. When he realized she wasn't going to smile and say, “Just kidding,” he prayed for the floor to open, swallow him whole, then close over his head.

Humiliated, Alec had muttered something like, “Oh, okay, then,” and walked away, his cheeks burning like they'd been set on fire, his confidence soundly shot in the butt.

The moment had remained in his memory as the single most embarrassing moment of his life. No one had ever made him feel quite as awkward as Lis had in the fifteen seconds it had taken her to respond, and it annoyed the hell out of him to discover that she still could make him feel just a little like that insecure adolescent he'd once been.

His phone rang in the back pocket of his shorts, and he wiped his hands on his shirt before answering.

“Jansen.”

“Alec, you wanted me to call at eleven and remind you about your meeting with Brian Deiter at one.” His assistant, Lorraine, was one of the very few people in his world that Alec couldn't live without. She had never failed to keep him on track.

He glanced at his watch. It was exactly eleven. Her call was, as always, on time to the minute.

“Thanks, Lorraine. I'll finish up here and stop home to clean up and then I'll be in. Can you have those latest wetland studies copied for me?”

“Already done and in a folder on your desk. And yes, I made a copy for Mr. Deiter.”

“You are worth your weight in gold, lady.”

“Platinum,” she corrected him.

“Whatever makes you happy. See you soon.”

Alec cleaned up his equipment and his workspace, then left through the side door. He padlocked the shop and headed for his car, which he'd left parked in front of the old showroom. Someday he'd get the boat sales business up and running again, but he knew that was a few years down the road. Right now, he was lucky he could steal a few hours away from his office to work in the shop on the skipjack.

And someday I'm going to build them
, the classic Chesapeake Bay crafts. Deadrises. Skipjacks. Maybe even a bugeye.
As far as Alec knew, there was only one of the latter left in operation. Might be fun to build one if he could find a buyer.

He made a quick stop at his house, where he showered and changed into what passed as summer business attire—khaki shorts and a polo shirt—and drove to his office on Elgin Road. He parked in front
of the building he'd purchased the year before and got out. The sign over the door—
ALEC M. JANSEN, PhD, ENVIRONMENTAL CONSULTANT
—always gave him a thrill. Who'd have ever guessed that the boy who'd skipped school every chance he got would eventually achieve such status?

Lorraine greeted him with a nod and went straight to the important stuff. “Jesse Enright called to let you know the contracts for the Borden project are ready for you to sign. Said to stop in and take a look when you get a minute; he's in all afternoon and tomorrow morning.”

“Thanks. Can you let him know I'll stop by around three?” Alec mentally added a visit to his attorney's office to his list of things to do after his one o'clock.

He skimmed through the stack of phone messages, all written down on pink
While You Were Out
slips in Lorraine's precise cursive. Even if voice messages had been left for Alec, Lorraine, who mistrusted most electronic devices, insisted on writing it all out herself.

“What if there's a power outage and you can't get your voicemail?” she'd asked archly when Alec told her she could just send to voicemail every call he was unable to take. Before he could respond, she added, “Besides, no one wants to talk to a machine. Everyone hates that.”

By “everyone,” Lorraine meant Lorraine. Alec never brought it up again.

While only in her forties, Lorraine had the mindset—not to mention the wardrobe—of a much older woman. She wore her long dark blond hair—streaked
with gray since she was in her early twenties—in a long ponytail that lay flat and straight against her back. Her suits were gray or black, and if she wore a dress, it was a shirtwaist or a sheath that was at least a size too large. Flat-heeled shoes, always, and no jewelry. But Alec couldn't have cared less what she wore, or how she looked, though there were days when he did have to bite his tongue. Lorraine was efficient, doted on Alec, and nothing—but nothing—ever got past her. Alec wouldn't think of crossing her. To his mind, she was the perfect employee, and he was grateful every day to have her.

“I'm off to meet with Deiter,” he told Lorraine after he'd taken a glance at his mail, which she'd opened and stacked on the middle of his desk in order of what she perceived as importance. She was rarely wrong. “I'll stop at Jesse's when I'm finished. If I'm not back by four, you can leave if you like.”

“My hours are till five.” She returned to her computer and the report she was typing from his hand notes. “I'll be here until then.”

“All righty, then.” Alec smiled to himself and left the office.

A quick trip down Charles Street brought him to Cannonball Island. Once he'd crossed the bridge, he was minutes from his destination, the island being only eighteen miles from the bay to the bridge. He passed few houses, most of the residents having built their homes closer to the interior, on the far side of the dunes. The few small cottages he did see had been abandoned and boarded up a long time ago, their once-white picket fences staggering to stay
upright. Alec knew that within the fenced front yards he'd find the grave markers of those who'd lived and died there. It was a long-running tradition that islanders buried their dead on the property where the deceased had lived. Alec drove by slowly, careful to note where each of the family graveyards were located.