Skin Deep (4 page)

Rob shook his head again. “I know he is—or was—your husband. But what a jerk. You can’t demand that someone with a vocation stop doing what they love just to soothe your ego. I know I couldn’t stop being a doctor if I tried. It must have been awful.”

Garland looked up at him. Not all of her friends had understood what not being able to quilt had meant to her.

“I have to confess that I cheated,” she said, toying with her mug again.

Rob cleared his throat and shifted in his chair.

She chuckled. “No, not like that. I started taking art classes again a couple of years ago when Derek thought I was going into Boston to do work for the Junior League. I managed to get a lot of the required classes out of the way, but it wasn’t easy. I could only take one course at a time. Fortunately the school’s been pretty understanding. So part of being down here is doing an independent study and finally making some quilts.”

“Well, good for you.” A slow smile spread across Rob’s face as he in turn stared at his mug. “You know, I had no idea all this lurked under that attractive young society matron exterior when I first met you. But I hope you’re not going to be all work and no play now that you’re down here permanently.”

Garland’s stomach flip-flopped. Attractive? Young? Thirty-six wasn’t exactly young but it wasn’t middle-aged, was it? There might be a few lines at the corners of her eyes, but there wasn’t a single strand of gray in her dark blonde hair. God knew she’d checked often enough when she first found out about Derek’s girlfriend. Was Rob just being nice? Or was there something else behind his words?

A car door slammed in the driveway, then another. Rob glanced out the window. “Captain Howe,” he commented. “About time someone responded to your 911 call.”

“The police!” Garland sat up. “But I asked for medical assistance!”

“I know. I’m just as mystified—not to mention ticked off—as you are, but I guess we’ll have to take what we can get as far as emergency response goes.” He rose and stretched. “Besides, considering the shape your guests are in, I would have suggested you call them anyway. The police’ll do what they can to find out who they are—look at missing persons reports, check their prints, and start trying to figure who the hell did this to them.”

Captain Edward Howe looked like he’d been hired from Central Casting, with his crew cut and big-man-slightly-gone-to-seed physique. The officer with him whose name badge said “Moniz” was a little less typecast, but looked like he was doing his best to catch up to his older colleague.

Rob greeted them with a nod. “Hello, Ed. How’s the knee, Ben? You going to give it a break from the softball this spring?”

“It’s better, thank you. I was kind of hoping you’d say I could play this season…” Officer Moniz glanced at his superior officer and trailed into silence.

“Come see me next week and we’ll talk. Captain.” Rob turned his attention back to the other man. “I’m assuming you’re here because you got the message from the emergency dispatcher?”

Captain Howe’s expression didn’t alter, but his ears began to turn pink at the edges. “Uh, yeah. They’re sorry ‘bout that. Things were a little hectic over there—”

“It was inexcusable,” Rob snapped, all affability gone. “You’re just lucky I answered my phone this morning so I could help Mrs. Durrell out. We’ve got a father and son upstairs who look like a bunch of drugged-up trainee meatpackers had a field day with them then dumped them in the sound to drown. The son’s unconscious and the father can’t remember much more than his name.”

The captain’s ears were now bright red, but his face had gone oddly pale. Garland thought she heard him mutter a faint “Crap!” under his breath.

“Now, dammit, Ed, I want you to find out who the hell they are and who did this to them. And where they’re from, so we can get them back to their family,” Rob continued.

But Alasdair said that they had no family. Garland remembered the bleak look on his face when he’d told her that.

“And transport to Cape General Hospital might be appreciated, too,” Rob finished. “I don’t know what you folks were up to this morning, but now’s your chance to stop screwing around and do your jobs.”

Garland took a deep breath. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Huh?” All three men stared at her.

“You don’t have to take them to the hospital. They can stay here until the police figure out who they are and where they belong.”

Rob frowned. “Garland, I don’t think that’s a good idea—”

“I do. They’re not just—just stray dogs that you send to the pound. How long could they stay at Cape General, Rob? You yourself said they’d probably only be there overnight. What then? A homeless shelter? They have nothing, and I have this big house.”

“Garland, you can’t. Ed, back me up.” Rob turned to Captain Howe.

But the captain wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I can’t say I think it’s a good idea, but I can’t stop you, ma’am.”

“You’re not going along with this, are you?” Rob asked him incredulously.

“It’s Mrs. Durrell’s decision, not mine. If she wants to let them stay with her while we...look into this, I have nothing to say about it,” Captain Howe replied. “Now, if that’s settled, we’ll be moving on—”

Rob looked as though he were barely restraining his temper. “Wouldn’t a description and a victim’s statement come in handy if you’re going to try to find out who they are and what happened to them?”

Captain Howe shuffled his feet. “Well, I—”

“They’re probably both asleep,” Garland cut in. Something about Captain Howe bothered her. Was it the way he kept surreptitiously wiping his hands on his pants as if they were sweating? Whatever it was, she didn’t want him upstairs in her house, looking at her poor defenseless castaways. “Can’t we give you their description so you can get started on the identification, and you can come back tomorrow to take a statement?”

“Yes, ma’am, we can do that,” Captain Howe agreed before Rob could say anything. “Officer?”

Officer Moniz pulled out his notebook and nodded. “Go ahead, doc.”

Rob glowered at them all indiscriminately, but gave her an extra frown. “Fine. Father is an adult Caucasian male, age approximately thirty to forty, who states his name is Alasdair but did not seem to remember his surname. Height about six-three, build strong but a bit underweight, perhaps due to malnourishment. Brown shoulder-length hair. Eyes brown. Slight peculiarity in hands—”

Garland turned to him. “What?”

“Didn’t you notice? He’s got webs.”

“Webs?”

Rob waggled his hands. “Just below the first knuckle of each finger. It’s rare, but it happens. Most people have them removed as children. The boy has them too.”

This time there was no mistaking the captain’s heartfelt expletive. Rob looked at him in puzzlement “Is anything wrong, Ed?”

Captain Howe’s face had gone white again but he shook his head. “No. I, uh…I just remembered something I forgot to do this morning.” He pulled his own notebook from his pocket and scribbled something in it. “Go on.”

Garland could see his by the set of his jaw that his teeth were clenched. What had that been about? She looked at Rob.

He shrugged and shook his head at her very slightly, then continued. “No tattoos or other distinguishing marks noticed during rendition of medical attention. Extensive cuts and contusions recently inflicted, serious but not life-threatening, definitely intentional and possibly ritualistic.”

The captain’s pencil paused. “That’s—that’s a little hard to prove, don’t you think?” he asked.

“Do you want to see them?”

“It’s not necessary,” he said quickly. “And the boy?”

Rob ran through a quick description of Conn. Captain Howe listened impassively while the junior officer scribbled away, then turned toward the front door. “Well, I think we’ve got what we need here. Moniz?”

“Can I offer you a cup of coffee before you go?” Garland asked. “I’d just made a fresh pot before you arrived.”

The captain shook his head and continued edging toward the door. “Thank you, ma’am, but we need to get back to the station and start running some checks on this—on him.” He jerked his head toward the stairs. “We’ll get back to you as soon as we find anything out. See you later, Doc.” He reached for the doorknob.

“I’ll call this week,” Moniz said to Rob. “Bye, Miz Durrell.” He ducked his head and followed Captain Howe.

Rob shook his head as she closed the door behind the two officers. “I wish I knew you better, so I could spank you. Garland, are you nuts?”

“Why? Captain Howe obviously didn’t want anything to do with them. And I can’t just abandon them. You heard what I said.”

“I heard you, and I’m going to use your words against you. You were right, this guy’s not a stray dog that you can start feeding because he wandered into your yard. What if it turns out that he’s an addict? Or fleeing the mob or something? Do you really want to get embroiled in this?”

“Does he look like an addict or a criminal to you?” she demanded. “Does the boy? He’s just a baby, for God’s sake. Somebody hurt them and abandoned them to die on a beach. Now somebody’s got to help them, and I guess that’s me.”

“But damn it, Garland…”

“What?” She stood still and met his eyes, not blinking. “Who better? I already know a thing or two about being hurt and dumped.”

He looked at her, ruffling his hair in agitation, then sighed. “All right. If you’re not going to be reasonable, then you’ve got to let me help you. You’ve just moved to town after a nasty divorce and it sounds like you’ve got your own healing to do. Taking on someone else’s healing as well is too much.”

That stopped her. “I didn’t mean to drag you into—that is, you’ve got your own patients to concern you—”

“And they aren’t my patients now? Or you, for that matter?”

“I wasn’t aware that I required a doctor’s care.” The coolness in her voice made her want to kick herself. Rob would think she was being a jerk.

“You’re not under a doctor’s care. You’re under my care.”

“There’s a difference?”

“Yeah, there’s a difference.” He looked at her, his face stern. “I need to do some errands. I’ll be back tonight to check on them around six. And I’ll be bringing dinner and a bottle of wine with me. Now do you get what the difference is?”

Her stiffness melted away. “I get it,” she said softly. “Six would be lovely.”

His expression relaxed, and a hint of that boyish smile appeared at the corners of his mouth. “Good. If they start to feel feverish, or if the father seems more disoriented or confused, call me. Try to get some food—something light—and liquids into them. I’ll leave you some painkillers, too. He might need them. Don’t give the boy any. If he wakes and seems uncomfortable, call me.” Rob briskly went to retrieve his medical bag, left her a couple of pills in an envelope, and shrugged on his jacket.

“Some rest for you might not be a bad idea, too. It’s barely ten in the morning and you’ve already had a full day,” he said at the door.

“Yes, Dr. Mowbray, sir.” Garland made a face at him.

He snorted, and half-opened the door. “Oh, and by the way...Garland?”

“Yes?”

“Welcome to Mattaquason.” He grinned at her, and left.

Chapter 3

A
fter Rob left, Garland wandered into the great room and began to slowly tidy up. What a strange morning it had been, finding Alasdair and Conn like that. And meeting Rob Mowbray again. She’d thought her new life would be quiet, a little lonely perhaps at first. Instead, she had two amnesiac houseguests and a date with the cutest guy in town. Welcome to Mattaquason indeed. If this was what the first twenty-four hours in town had brought her, what would next month be like?

She folded the blanket and plumped the cushions on the couch into fullness. Two people, father and son, wash up on a beach in early spring with no clothes and no memory of how they got there. She made a mental inventory of their injuries—the bruises, the blackened eyes—while trying not to think of the appalling brutality of the cuts. Ritualistic, Rob had called them. Who could have hurt a small child in such a deliberately cruel way? Had this Alasdair run afoul of some gang? Organized crime was everywhere, even on Cape Cod. Smuggling, drugs…all these existed under the wholesome, summer-paradise façade that Cape Cod liked to show the world.

One of her art teachers had maintained that it was possible to read personality in faces. She thought about Alasdair’s, stern and unsmiling and haggard, and under it all, chiseled and beautiful. No, with a face like that, he wasn’t a criminal any more than Rob was. Nor could she imagine that he would be involved with anything that might endanger his son—not if his anxiety over him just now was any indication.

She went to the kitchen, got the dustpan and brush from the closet, and went back into the great room to sweep up the sand they’d tracked in from the beach. Then there was Captain Howe. He’d been nervous, troubled, almost as if he’d known something about her castaways and didn’t want to have to deal with them. But how could he? Or—or was there something not quite above-board going on in the Mattaquason police department? Was that why the 911 people had been so incoherent? But how could they—

A
thud-thud-a-thud-thud
sounded on the front door, followed by a muffled, “Hey, Garland! You home?”