Safe Harbor (18 page)

For whatever reason, her vote of confidence in Sam touched him. What an amazingly trusting young woman she was. How amazingly vulnerable.

It was Charlotte who had the last word. "If your father is a suspect, then the police will want to question me eventually. I'd just as soon get it over with."

So off they went, this time, in
Charlotte
's Volvo with Sam in the back. They could
easily have
walked down to the dock, just as they could walk to the police station. He had to wonder if
Charlotte
had a dread of being under public scrutiny. Would her neighbors be watching from behind their lined drapes and
black
shutters? Probably.

Humiliation: it was one tough emotion to slog through. He'd had to do it himself after
Eden
skipped town and the police came a-calling.

It may have been the instinct to hide that made
Charlotte
stay behind the wheel when they reached the marina; or it may have been the simple fact that there was no place convenient to park.

Whatever the cause, Holly ended up being the one who approached the dock master. Muttering something to Sam about him being the mean one, just their luck, she abandoned their agreed-upon plan to sweeten him up and tried crashing the gate instead.

"No dice, Miss Anderson," said the dock official, stopping them when Holly tried to breeze through the gate. "You can't go aboard the
Vixen
until the crime scene guys are done with it. They're off gettin' lunch, but they'll be back."

"Is my father still on the boat?" she wanted to know.

"Nope. He wasn't on it when it got towed in. Don't know where he is."

"All right. We won't go aboard," she promised, but she began heading down the dock anyway.

"Whoa whoa whoa. Where you goin'?"

"To see
... someone else. To see if Dr. Pell is aboard
Sweet Tooth."

"He's not."

"May I check?"

"I'll be watching."

"Go ahead," she said, and she took Sam's hand as if they were lovers out on a leisurely stroll.

Bemused, Sam waited until they were out of earshot and then murmured, "And what exactly is it that you hope to accomplish?"

"Number one, to irritate him," muttered Holly. "And number two—I don't know. To irritate him."

She stopped and Sam stopped and both of them seemed to realize at the same time that they were holding one another's hands.

"Well," said Sam with a somewhat perplexed smile. "Here we are."

"Where, Sam?" she said, gazing at him with a sudden shift into gravity. "Where exactly are we?"

"The
Vixen?"
he said, inclining his head toward the boat.

"The—yes, right!"

A deep, wonderful blush spread across her cheeks. She turned away and made a production of looking the yacht over. "I wonder if they left someone aboard," she said, putting one foot on the transom and leaning on the stern rail as she tried to get a look below.

"Hey, hey, get off there!" came the inevitable shout from the end of the pier. "What'd I tell you?"

Holly dropped back down to the dock. "I wasn't going to go aboard!" she yelled back.

And if anyone believed that, Sam had a couple of tickets for a luxury cruise on the
Bounty
that he'd like to sell.

"You know, you can't go tramping all over a crime scene," he said in an undertone. "
People get arrested for that
."

He wondered whether Holly might be deliberately trying to contaminate the scene, presumably to insure her father's freedom. But after she rolled her eyes at him like a sulking teenager, Sam decided that such nefarious thoughts had never crossed her mind. If anyone was having nefarious thoughts, in fact, it was Sam: he was judging Holly through his experience of
Eden
.

And meanwhile, the evil dock master, flanked by two grim-faced men, was bearing down on them fast. Sam
had an abhorrence of being grabbed by the collar and tossed off the premises (it had happened to him once too often in the bars of
New Bedford
) so he said, "Quick! Pretend we're in love!"

He grabbed Holly, swung her around, and kissed her hard on the mouth, catching her so much by surprise that she went limp and he ended up bending her in a backward dip, like the sailor on the famous cover of
Life
magazine.

Holly might have gone limp, but she hadn't gone dead. Sam heard a soft moan from deep in her throat, and suddenly, amazingly, she was returning his kiss. Her tongue met his and his mouth came down harder and he couldn't get enough of her.

Nor would he. Among other considerations, he and Holly were standing on a public dock in the path of approaching police.

"Hey, you two. Get a room!"

Sam broke off the kiss to see the younger of the investigators grinning broadly as he climbed nimbly aboard the
Vixen.
Sam grinned back in a suitably leering way.

The other cop wasn't as good-humored about the show. "Take it somewhere else," he said. "Move away from the boat."

Or I'll shoot
seemed to be his unspoken promise. Grateful that the distraction had been a success, Sam began hauling the little vixen away from the big
Vixen.

"Didn't I tell you? Didn't I?" he said through gritted teeth. "
For crissake
, you'll get us both thrown in jail." ,

She had to skip to keep up. "What's the big deal? You told me yourself that you've been there."

"To
scare
you. To put the fear of God in you. To—"

"Impress me, maybe? And what about that kiss?" she said, tacking off in another direction. "Another attempt to impress?"

"Hey, that was
your
idea."

"Holding hands was my idea!"

"And that's what we're doing."

"Is that why my fingers are turning blue?"

Sam held up the hand he was gripping so securely. She was right: he was holding her just a tad too tightly.

"Sorry," he muttered. He let her go.
Damn
. What a ridiculous distraction she was from the business at hand. She had his emotions bouncing around like a trick rubber ball; he couldn't seem to get himself under control.

Charlotte
zipped down the window at their approach. "What was
that
all about?" she asked, but whether she was referring to their inspired performance or their encounter with the investigators, Sam couldn't say.

"It was all Sam's fault," said Holly, distancing herself from him.

"Did you find out anything?"

"Just that Dad wasn't on the boat; it got towed in. They must be dusting it for prints and taking samples of bl—well, whatever it is they do when they investigate."

Charlotte
said wearily, "I suppose the police station's next, then."

Wondering now about the wisdom of accompanying them, Sam reclaimed his seat in the back of the car. It gave him a chance to study this mother-and-daughter pair, these key players in the drama that had begun in a
New Bedford
bungalow over a piece of lemon meringue pie.

The women's conversation ricocheted all over the place, from the mundane to the profound. Sam sat bemused and took it all in; he'd never been privy to women-talk before.

"Oh, look—the Websters have taken out their whole row of forsythia,"
Charlotte
remarked. "What do you suppose they'll plant there instead?"

"Bayberry, hedge roses; anything with thorns. You know how they hate it when the dogs from next door wander through."

''They're such old farts."

"So uptight. It's hard to believe you're the same age."

"I know," said
Charlotte
dryly. "I feel so much older."

"Very funny. How's your head?"

"Will you stop going on and on about my head? My head is fine."

"You know it isn't."

"Well, it won't be, if you keep it up."

"When are you going to see a doctor about them? They're always making new breakthroughs."

"Quiet and dark, that's all I need."

"Well, here we are on a crowded, sunny afternoon, headed for the police station. That should do the trick."

"Did you lock your back door when you left? I don't want that thug lying in wait for you."

"Sam will take care of him."

"Who? Oh." She cast a brief glance over her shoulder at Sam and then said to her daughter, "You know, it's not
that
much of an effort to turn a lock."

"It doesn't work right."

"You just won't make the effort. I don't know why you're not more determined about things. Have you done anything at all on that home-fumishings proposal?"

"When? In my spare time?"

"You need to shut this out, that's all. Shut this out and get to work."

"Mother.
This isn't like having a bad hair day. We don't have a clue what Dad's done with
Eden
or what the police have done with Dad."

"Do what I do. Don't think about it."

"Of course you think about it! That's why you get the damn migraines!"

"Here we are."

"Let me do the talking."

"Absolutely. I wouldn
't know what to say. Mr. Stead
man?"
Charlotte
gave him her wonderfully bright smile. "Will you be joining us?"

I
nside the recently built station, the three were quickly ushered into the office of Tisbury Police Chief Matthew Cottier, a barrel-chested, middle-aged guy who in another age might have shipped out to sea with Herman Melville under Captain Pease. But the captain was long gone, and so was the one who'd written so eloquently about men, their ships, and the
ocean
. In their place was someone who pumped iron instead of hauled on halyards and who wouldn't know a gudgeon from a pintle, sitting in an air-conditioned jailhouse quaintly shingled to satisfy a variety of historically minded commissions.

It wasn't the same.

Still, for all his well-educated manner, the chief had enough of a rough edge about him that Sam sat up and took note. Sam knew a townie when he saw one: Matthew Cottier was not the kind of man who would roll over and play dead just because some rich man offered him a biscuit.

"I was about to call you, Mrs. Anderson, to see when it would be convenient to ask you a few questions." The chief glanced at the others, then suggested politely, "Perhaps this would be a good time. I wonder if I could talk to you you alone for a few minutes."

Up in arms went Holly. "I have every right to be in on this, sir. Eric Anderson is my father, after all."

Cottier conceded the point with a nod, then turned to Sam. "And your connection is—?"

"With Eden Walker," said Sam, choosing his preposition carefully. The last thing he wanted was for Holly to discover then and there the true nature of his relationship to
Eden
. He'd been trying to tell her about it since the day he nearly knocked her down in front of the gallery, of course, but the timing so far had never been right. Then and there seemed spectacularly not right.

He confined himself to stating simply that Eden had had in her possession a valuable piece of art that belonged to his parents, and that his parents had called him to find out when Eden would be returning it, because they were becoming somewhat concerned.

Holly immediately jumped in with the candid version. "Somewhat concerned?
Somewhat
? You told me they were devastated!"

"I don't remember the exact word I used," he said, keeping it carefully nonchalant. It was better to state the facts without the drama and then see where the questioning went; didn't she realize that?

Apparently not.

"Sam! For crying out loud, tell him what you told me! That
Eden
was up to her old tricks; that she wasn't dead, that she couldn't be dead!"

Shit.

The chief turned to him with interest. "Maybe the best thing would be for you and me to—"

"Ju
st a minute, please,"
Charlotte
interrupted. "I came here to find out about my husband. I think I'm entitled
to that information before you go off on a tangent."

Surprisingly, the chief didn't take offense at her imperious tone. He rubbed the back of his ear while he considered her demand. He sighed. He picked up a pencil and tapped its eraser on the sheaf of papers stacked in front of him. He sighed again. He acted in every way like a car dealer who's about to give his last, best offer.