Safe Harbor (19 page)

"Mr. Anderson is not under arrest," he said at length. "The investigation is in its preliminary stages and so far we have no direct evidence that a death has occurred."

No body, thought Sam. Naturally. Because
Eden
wasn't dead. She couldn't be dead. He refused, still, to believe she was dead.

"We've interviewed Mr. Anderson," continued Chief Cottier, "just as we're interviewing anyone who may have information leading to the whereabouts of Eden Walker. That includes the present company."

"Where
is
my father, if he's not under arrest? He's not on his boat."

"That's correct. The yacht has been impounded until the State Police have completed their investigation. Any evidence they collect will be sent to the crime lab for analysis, and sometime after that, depending, the boat will be released."

He hesitated, then added, "As for Mr. Anderson, I believe he's staying with a friend on the island for now."

"Which friend?" Holly wanted to know.

"Ah, sorry. You'll have to ask him."

"How can I ask him if I don't know which friend?" she said in rising frustration.

"The Bouchards have probably taken him in," her mother said.

But Holly, bless her loyal soul, wasn't done defending her father. She glowered at the impassive officer and said, "You're treating him like a criminal!"

"We're treating him like a
person of interest
. There's a difference."

"None that I can see," she countered. "You may as well suspect—
him,"
she said, jumping up from her chair and swinging her arm to point at Sam. "He has an excellent motive: he wants his stolen engraving back. It's worth a fortune. Who says he wouldn't kill for it? Why not interrogate
him!"

Sam smiled wryly and said, "That's exactly what Chief Cottier would like to do, if only you'd give him the chance."

"Holly, you are out of control. Will you
please
sit back down?" her mother said. She turned to the chief and said, "I'm sorry; this miserable affair has us all on edge."

"Don't apologize, Mother.
We're
not the ones conducting the witch hunt."

Cottier declined to rise to the bait, which made him a hell of a better man than Sam.

"Be that as it may," he said calmly, "I really would like to have a few words with Mr. Steadman. I'll tell you what. Suppose I interview him now, and I'll come by your house later this afternoon. How would that be?" he asked, smiling.

He said it as if he
were
hoping that Holly would find time for a nap
before then.

His condescension sent Holly's outrage up another notch. "What do you think I'm going to do? Feed you facts that you can turn around and use against my father? How stupid do you think I am?"

Pretty stupid,
thought Sam. The way she was going on, even
he
was beginning to believe that her father was guilty. With someone like Holly rallying to his defense, Eric Anderson was going to end up in a cell on death row in no time flat.

"Okay, young lady," Sam said, getting up from his chair to show her the door. "No more Lucky Charms for
you.
Sugar-free breakfasts from now on in." Turning his back to the chief, he twisted his features into a warning scowl fierce enough to stop a charging rhino in its tracks.

A rhino, maybe; not Holly. "I can't believe that you people don't have real crooks to catch," she said, turning back to the beleaguered police chief. "A stranger came to my door this morning and all but threatened to kill me. Look at my foot; it's black and blue! Put
him
in your pretty new jail. Leave my father alone. Sam, tell him that
Eden
is just scamming everyone! Tell him!"

"I never said that," Sam said quickly.

"You implied it!" She threw up her hands. "Oh, what's the use? All you care about is your godforsaken engraving!"

"Not
true," Sam said in a low growl. It had never been true. Now it was not true for a whole new set of reasons.

Something in the way he said it seemed to calm
h
er down. She faltered in her tirade, then abandoned it altogether. Bringing her chin up, she said regally, "If you want me, Chief Cottier, I shall be in my barn."

"In your—?"

"Holly, I want to get this over with," said
Charlotte
, annoyed. "I'm not taking you home now."

"I'll walk."

"And what about him?"

Him, of course, being Sam. "No problem," he said immediately. "I'll just—"

"Where are you staying?"
Charlotte
interrupted.

"Good question." He looked at Holly.

"Oh, all right. I'll meet you back at my mother's house and bring you home."

That got
Charlotte
's attention. "Home? Whose?"

"He's staying in the apartment over the barn. We just decided."

"Really."
Charlotte
turned her green gaze on Sam and looked him up, then down, in a whole new way. "I wasn't aware of that."

"We just decided, Mom, I told you."

"So you're staying on the island a while?" she asked Sam with leery interest. "May I ask why?"

Damned if Sam could even remember at that point. "I thought I'd stick around to see if I could learn anything about
... about the engraving," he said. He sure
wasn't going to say,
"about
Eden
."

"See?" Holly said glumly. "He's obsessed with that thing."

"Well, can you blame him? If it's valuable and his parents are worried
.
.. I think it's commendable that he's concerned about his parents' welfare."

"Are you saying that I'm
not
the type to be concerned?" asked her daughter, bristling.

"I said nothing of the sort! Holly, what has got into you?"

Chief Cottier had lost patience with the lot of them. "Mrs. Anderson, I'll try to be brief, but I really would like to move this along."

"Of course," said
Charlotte
. She turned to Sam with an apologetic smile that he found oddly touching and said, "I won't be long, Mr. Steadman, I promise; I don't have much to say. And then Chief Cottier can have you all to himself."

As Sam walked out after Holly,
Charlotte
reached down for her handbag.

"I've never been interrogated before," he heard her say as he left the office. "Will you be needing my driver's license or anything?"

In the hall it was all Holly could do not to take a swing at Sam.

"Lucky Charms? Could you
be
more patronizing?"

Sam shrugged and said, "If the cereal fits..."

"Why did you back-pedal from every single statement you made to me about
Eden
? I felt like an unmatched sock just hanging alone in there to dry," she said angrily. "I just don't see how—"

"Will you hold it
down!"
Sam muttered, grabbing her by the elbow. He began to steer her toward the door. "I didn't leave you hanging out to do anything. You were doing a great job of that all by yourself. The more you shouted your father's innocence, the more Cottier looked convinced that you were hiding his guilt."

"But my father didn't do anything—except, okay, to run off with her. Why should
he
be the prime suspect?"

Sam looked her directly in the eye and said, "Holly. It doesn't take a rocket scientist."

It was the pinprick to Holly's balloon of hot air; she found herself deflating fast. "You don't know him," she said on a sigh. "And neither does Chief Cottier. That's the whole problem."

The shoulder strap of her purse had slipped down over her forearm. Sam lifted the strap and tucked it back in place with a chin-up kind of smile and murmured, "They're not going to put an innocent man behind bars. I have every intention of telling the chief what I know about
Eden
. It's just that I prefer to do it one-on-one instead of in a group encounter, that's all."

Holly looked deep into his eyes and suddenly remembered why it was she wanted him in the apartment above her studio.

"Okay, that's understandable," she admitted, then added, "I'm sorry for
... all of that in there. I was going off half-cocked. It was the yellow tape around the boat, I guess. It freaked me out."

Sam said generously, "Let's not forget Stefan."

"Yeah. That, too."

The fake kiss hadn't helped, either, she decided as they stepped outside. What kind of man grabbed a woman on a public dock and then kissed the living daylights out of her just to create a diversion? What kind of man could fake a kiss so
well?

She squinted in the blinding sunshine and said with a very casual shrug, "Would you rather I waited here instead of at my mother's house for you? Because, y'know, it makes no difference to me."

"Absolutely not," Sam said. "Why hang around a police station when you can be somewhere comfortable? I'll walk back after I'm done here and we can take it from there.
"

Take it from there.
Take what from where? It was making her crazy, the way he always seemed to mean either more—or less—than he was saying. Here was a man who could keep his own counsel. How did he feel about her? What did he know about
Eden
? She opened her mouth to ask him to explain what he meant, then shut up again. This was not the place to arm-wrestle him for answers.

"See you back at the ranch, then," she said, obviously frustrated. She turned to go.

"You bet. Holly?"

When she turned around again, it was to hear him say, "I'll get to the bottom of this. Trust me."

He didn't have to offer her that reassurance; he was under no obligation at all. It made her feel warm inside—almost as warm as during the fake kiss. "All right," she said with a steady look. "I'll do that."

His own expression was grim as he returned inside the station to face the officer on the case.

****

Holly walked back to her mother's house the long way around, detouring past the docks. The
Vixen
was still there, taped off from the rest of the world. Don't touch me, the boat seemed to say, bowing its head in shame. Unclean.

It all looked so strange, so utterly wrong. And yet, what had she expected to see? Her father, hosing off salt from the deck while he chomped on an unlit cigar in tired bliss after a long day's sail?

If only
.

Suddenly she was back to feeling furious at him for bringing down suspicion on himself and humiliation on them all. At a minimum there was the scandal of the affair to deal with, and if
Eden
wasn't found—if she really was alive and clever enough to fade into the crowds with her stolen engraving—there would always be lingering suspicions no matter how innocent Eric Anderson was.

How were they ever going to hold their heads up in a tight-knit community like theirs again? Holly was reasonably well-known on the island; she was a soft touch who could be relied on to donate her work to the nonstop charity events that seemed not only to benefit but to bind the year-rounders, both struggling and fortunate. She loved being able to do her share, loved seeing her whirligigs pop up in yards and gardens all over the island. After years of putting down roots and nurturing them carefully, to have them hacked at so violently was unbearable.

In a deep funk, she walked past Periwinkle, a small dress shop that stayed open year-round, and caught the eye of the owner, who was in the window stealing a straw hat from the head of a mannequin there. Mrs. Fletcher's smile was as tight as it was brief as she turned away quickly to tend to her customer.

She knows. They all do. And they don't, they won't, know what to say.

Holly tried not to wallow in the vat of her misery, but the footing was too slippery to climb out easily. Her life was going to be affected in so many different ways. The Strawber
ry Festival, the All-Island Art
Show, Illumination Night—all of her favorite community gatherings, ruined, possibly forever. Could she ever show up at them again? She couldn't see how.

She stepped up the pace so that she wouldn't have to look through any more windows at any more people she knew. She tried to appear like a Type-A
business woman
with lots of Very Important Things to do. What a joke. Holly Anderson—the one who loved to meander through town, and stop and chat, and ooh and ah at the charming window displays, and stick her nose in every flower box she passed—that Holly Anderson was going to have to behave completely out of character now.

I hate him
, she decided
; I really do.