Sanctuary (44 page)

“Good morning.” Damn it, all she'd wanted was a quick slug of coffee before she went out to work. Not just wander or brood, but work. She'd awakened for the first time in weeks refreshed and focused, and she didn't want to waste it.

“Clear morning,” Sam said. “Thunderstorms and strong winds by evening, though.”

“I suppose.” She opened a cupboard.

Silence stretched between them, long and complete. The trickle of coffee as Jo poured it from pot to cup was loud as a waterfall. Sam shifted, his khakis hissing against the polished wood of the bench.

“Kate told me ... she told me.”

“I imagined she would.”

“Um. You're feeling some better now.”

“I'm feeling a great deal better.”

“And the police, they're doing what they can do.”

“Yes, what they can.”

“I was thinking about it. It seems to me you should stay here for the next little while. Until it's settled and done, you shouldn't plan on going back to Charlotte and traveling like you do.”

“I'd planned to stay, work here, for the next few weeks anyway.”

“You should stay here, Jo Ellen, until it's settled and done.”

Surprised at the firm tone, as close to an order as she could remember receiving from him since childhood, she turned, lifted her brows. “I don't live here. I live in Charlotte.”

“You don't live in Charlotte,” Sam said slowly, “until this is settled and done.”

Her back went up, an automatic response. “I'm not having some wacko dictate my life. When I'm ready to go back, I'll go back.”

“You won't leave Sanctuary until I say you can leave.”

This time her mouth dropped open. “I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me right enough, Jo Ellen. Your ears have always been sharp and your understanding keen. You'll stay here until you're well enough, and it's safe enough for you to leave and go about your business.”

“If I want to go tomorrow—”

“You won't,” Sam interrupted. “I've got my mind set on it.”

“You've got your mind set?” Stunned, she strode over to the table and scowled down at him. “You think you can just set your mind on something that has to do with me after all this time, and I'll just fall in line?”

“No. I reckon you'll have to be planted in line and held there, like always. That's all I have to say.” He wanted to escape, he wanted the quiet, but when he started to slide down the bench to get up, Jo slapped a hand onto the table to block him.

“It's not all I have to say. Apparently you've lost track of some time here. I'm twenty-seven years old.”

“You'll be twenty-eight come November,” he said mildly. “I know the ages of my children.”

“And that makes you a sterling example of fatherhood?”

“No.” His eyes stayed level with hers. “But there's no changing the fact that I'm yours just the same. You've done well enough for yourself, by yourself, up to now. But things have taken a turn. So you'll stay here, where there are those who can look out for you, for the next little while.”

“Really?” Her eyes narrowed to slits. “Well, let me tell you just what I'm going to continue to do for myself, by myself.”

“Good morning.” Kate breezed in, all smiles. She'd had her ear to the door for the last two minutes and calculated it was time to make an entrance. It pleased her to enter a room in that house and not find apathy or bitterness. Temper, at least, was clean.

“That coffee smells wonderful. I'm just dying for some.”

In a calculated move, she brought a cup and the pot to the table, sliding in beside Sam before he could wriggle away. “Just let me top this off for you, Sam. Jo, bring your cup on over here. I swear I don't know the last time we sat down for a quiet cup of coffee in the morning. Lord knows, after that chaos in the dining room last night, we need it.”

“I was on my way out,” Jo said stiffly.

“Well, honey, sit down and finish your coffee first. Brian'll be coming in soon enough to tell us all to scat. You look like you got a good night's sleep.” Kate smiled brilliantly. “Your daddy and I were worried you'd be restless.”

“There's no need to worry.” Grudgingly, Jo got her coffee and brought it to the table. “Everything that can be done's being done. In fact, I'm feeling so much calmer about it all, I'm thinking about going back to Charlotte.” She shot a challenging look at Sam. “Soon.”

“That's fine, Jo, if you want to send the lot of us to an early grave with worry.” Kate spoke mildly as she spooned sugar into her coffee.

“I don't see—”

“Of course you see,” Kate interrupted. “You're just angry, and you have a right to be. But you don't have the right to take that anger out on those who love you. It's natural to do just that,” Kate added with a smile, “but it's not right.”

“That's not what I'm doing.”

“Good.” Kate patted her hand, as if the matter were settled. “You're planning to take some pictures today, I see.” She glanced over at the camera bag Jo had set on the counter. “I got out that book that Nathan's father did on the island. Put it in the public parlor after I'd looked through it again. My, there are some pretty photographs in there.”

“He did good work,” Jo muttered, struggling not to sulk.

“He sure did. I found one in there of Nathan, Brian, and I suppose Nathan's younger brother. Such handsome little boys. They were holding up a couple of whopping trout and had grins on their faces that stretched a mile wide. You ought to take a look at it.”

“I will.” Jo found herself smiling, thinking of Nathan at ten with a trout on the line.

“And you could think about doing a photo book on the island yourself,” Kate went on. “It would be just wonderful for business. Sam, you take Jo over to the marsh, that spot where the sea lavender's full in bloom. Oh, and if the two of you go through the forest, along the southwest edge, the path there's just covered with trumpet vine petals. That would make such a nice picture, Jo Ellen. That narrow, quiet little path just dusted with fallen blossoms.”

She went on and on, chattering out suggestions without giving father or daughter a chance to interrupt. When Brian trooped in the back door and stared, baffled, at the cozy family group, Kate beamed him a smile.

“We'll be out of your way in just a shake, sweetie. Jo and Sam were just deciding which route they were going to take around the island today for Jo's pictures. Y'all better get started.”

Kate got up quickly, gathering Jo's camera bag. “I know how fussy you are about the light and such. You just tell your daddy when it strikes you as right. I can't wait to see what kind of pictures you get. Hurry along now, before Brian starts to fuss at us. Sam, you get a chance, you take Jo down to where those baby terns hatched a while back. Goodness, look at the time. You two scoot.”

She all but dragged Sam to his feet, kept nudging and talking until she'd shoved them both out the door.

“Just what the hell was that, Kate?” Brian asked her.

“That, with any luck at all, was the beginning of something.”

“They'll go their own ways when they're five feet from the house.”

“No, they won't,” Kate disagreed as she started toward the ringing phone on the wall. “Because neither one of them will want to be the first to take that step away. While they're each waiting for the other one to back off first, they'll be heading in the same direction for a change. Good morning,” she said into the receiver. “The Inn at Sanctuary.” Her smile faded. “I'm sorry, what? Yes, yes, of course.” Automatically, she grabbed a pencil and began scribbling on the pad by the phone. “I'll certainly make some calls right away. Don't worry now. It's a very small island. We'll help in every way we can, Mr. Peters. I'll come on down there to the cottage myself, right now. No, that's just fine. I'll be right along.”

“Mosquitoes getting in through the screen again?” Brian asked. But he knew it was more than that, much more.

“The Peterses took Wild Horse Cove Cottage with some friends for the week. Mr. Peters can't seem to find his wife this morning.”

Brian felt a quick stab of fear at the base of his spine. He couldn't ignore it, but told himself it was foolish overreaction. “Kate, it's not quite seven A.M. She probably got up early and took a walk.”

“He's been out looking for almost an hour. He found her shoes down by the water.” Distracted, she ran a hand through her hair. “Well, it's probably just as you say, but he's terribly worried. I'll run down there and calm him down, help him look around until she comes wandering home.”

She managed a thin smile. “I'm sorry, sweetie, but this means I'm going to have to wake Lexy up so she can take the breakfast shift in my place this morning. She's liable to be snappish about it.”

“I'm not worried about Lexy. Kate,” he added as she headed for the door, “give me a call, will you, when Mrs. Peters gets home?”

“Sure I will, honey. Like as not she'll be there before I make it down to them.”

 

 

BUT she wasn't. By noon Tom Peters wasn't the only one on Desire who was worried. Other cottagers and natives joined in the search, Nathan among them. He'd seen Tom and Susan Peters once or twice during their stay and had a vague recollection of a pretty brunette of medium height and build.

He left the others to comb the beach and the cove while he concentrated on the swath of land between his cottage and Wild Horse Cove. There was barely an eighth of a mile between them. The verge of his end forested then, giving way to dune and swale. He covered the ground slowly and saw, when he reached the stretch of sand, the crisscrossing footprints of others who had come that way to look.

Though he knew it was useless, he climbed over the dunes. The cove below was secluded, but anyone there would have been spotted half a dozen times by now by others who were searching.

There was only one figure there now, a man who paced back and forth. “Nathan?”

He turned and, seeing Jo mounting the incline between the dunes, held out a hand to help her up.

“I went by your cottage,” she began. “I see you've heard.”

“That must be the husband down there. I've seen him a couple of times before.”

“Tom Peters. I've been all over the island. I was out working this morning, from about seven. One of the Pendleton kids tracked us down an hour or so ago and told us. He said her shoes were down there, by the water.”

“That's what I heard.”

“People are thinking she might have gone in to swim, and . . . The current's fairly gentle here, but if she cramped or just swam out too far . . .”

It was a grim scenario, one that had already occurred to him. “Shouldn't the tide have brought her in by now if that's what happened?”

“It may yet. If the current carried her along for a while, they could find her down the island at the next tide change. Barry Fitzsimmons drowned like that. We were about sixteen. He was a strong swimmer, but he went out by himself one night during a beach party. He'd been drinking. They found him the next morning at low tide, half a mile down.”

Nathan shifted his gaze to the south, where the waves were less serene. He thought of Kyle, sinking under blue Mediterranean waves. “Where are her clothes, then?”

“What?”

“It seems to me if she'd decided to go swimming, she'd have stripped down.”

“I suppose you're right. But she might have come down in her bathing suit.”

“Without a towel?” It didn't quite fit, he decided. “I wonder if anyone's asked him if he knows what she was wearing when she left the house. I'm going down to talk to him.”

“I don't think we should intrude.”

“He's alone and he's worried.” Nathan kept her hand in his as he started down. “Or he had a fight with his wife, killed her, and disposed of her body.”

“That's horrid and ridiculous. He's a perfectly decent, normal man.”

“Sometimes perfectly decent, normal men do the unthinkable.”

Nathan studied Tom Peters as they approached. Late twenties, he decided, about five ten. He looked fit in wrinkled camp shorts and a plain white T-shirt. Probably worked out at the gym three or four mornings a week, Nathan thought. He had a good start on his vacation tan, and though the stubble on his chin gave him an unkempt appearance, his dark blond hair had been cut recently, and cut well.

When he raised his head and Nathan saw his eyes, he saw only sick fear.

“Mr. Peters. Tom.”

“I don't know where else to look. I don't know what to do.” Saying the words out loud brought tears swimming into his eyes. He blinked them back, breathing rapidly. “My friends, they went to the other side of the island to look. I had to come back here. To come back here, just in case.”

“You need to sit down.” Gently Jo took his arm. “Why don't we go back up to your cottage and you can sit down for a while? I'll make you some coffee.”

“No, I can't leave here. She came down here. She came down last night. We had a fight. We had a fight, oh, God, it's so stupid. Why did we have a fight?”

He covered his face with his hands, pressing his fingers against his burning eyes. “She wants to buy a house. We can't afford it yet. I tried to explain to her, tried to show her how impractical it is, but she wouldn't listen. When she stormed out I was relieved. I was actually relieved and thought, Well, now, at least I can get some sleep while she goes out and sulks.”