Deadly Gift (13 page)

“If you’re right, someone really wanted him dead,” Morrissey said. “I’ll start checking around the dive shops, see if they noticed anyone suspicious. I don’t suppose they offer dives off this boat in winter, do they?”

“No, just cruises,” Zach said.

Morrissey shook his head. “Bizarre. How would the killer have gotten an air tank on board without Eddie noticing?”

“I don’t know. And, hey, the talc isn’t a guarantee. But you didn’t find anything else, right?”

“Nothing. She was clean. The guys that found her out there, a couple of Coast Guard officers, said she was like a ghost ship. Nothing disturbed, nothing at all. They hadn’t opened a can of Coke or so much as put on a pot of coffee.”

“And the weather?”

“Smooth seas and a beautiful day, crisp and cool, but that was it. Light winds, no storms, nothing,” Morrissey said.

Zach hesitated. “And no bodies washed up on shore?”

“No. No unidentified patients in the hospital, nothing. I’ll start on the dive shops, though, see what I can find out about equipment rental,” Morrissey said.

“Our killer—if we’re even on the right track with this—probably has his own equipment.”

“What about air for his tank?” Morrissey asked.

“True enough. And I’m all for checking the dive shops. Any port in a storm, as they say.”

“We’ll keep looking for some kind of a lead,” Morrissey said. “Or…”

His voice trailed off.

Zach finished his sentence for him. “Or a body.”

Morrissey only nodded grimly.

“When you make your rounds of the dive shops,” Zach said, “can you keep it on the quiet side? This may be a shot in the dark, but if we’re on to something, and if there is a killer out there, we don’t want him to know we’re getting close.”

Morrissey smiled dryly. “No problem. And I’ll ask you to share your insights with me and keep quiet otherwise.”

Zach nodded, smiling in turn. “Yeah, sorry. I know you weren’t born yesterday.”

He thanked Morrissey, and stepped off the
Sea Maiden.
Forensics could literally be a lifesaver. Few people knew that better than he did. But when nothing was available, when there were no prints, hairs, fibers or useful substances, footwork was in order.

He headed back to the office, where he found Cal, Marni and Caer bent over the desk.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Cal said. “Caer didn’t know Eddie, but she’s been hearing so much about him that I thought she might be interested in seeing some old photos, and then she asked to see his last entry in the register. I figured you would want to see it, as well.”

Caer’s eyes were clear when they met his. Why the hell did he always find her so suspicious? She’d been Sean’s nurse in Ireland—if he could guarantee that anyone was innocent of Eddie’s disappearance, it had to be her—but why the hell would she be interested in seeing the reservation book?

“Yes, I would like to see it,” he told Cal. “Did they dust it for prints?”

“They dusted everything for prints and came up with hundreds of them—so much for cleaning crews,” Cal said, shrugging. “But it’s doubtful that Mr. ‘John Alden’ touched the book anyway. Eddie is the one who made the entry.”

Zach nodded, pulling the book closer and turning it to face him.

“Right there,” Marni said, pointing.

Eddie had neatly entered the date, the man’s name, the price paid and the notation “cash.” A side note stated that they would be cruising the bay, then heading for the sound. “Pass Cow Cay,” Eddie had written.

Morrissey had told him that the boat had been found not a hundred yards off Cow Cay, a small, uninhabited island where settlers had once raised cattle, hence the name. The Park Service owned it now, and boaters often visited it in the summer, because it was legal to take pets and have picnics. On a hot day the place was frequently crowded, but in December it was deserted.

If someone
had
gotten dive equipment on board, they might have made Cow Cay easily from where the boat was found, Zach thought.

He looked up. “What’s on schedule for today?” he asked Cal.

“I’m taking a couple out on the
Sea Lady,
” he said. “Two-hour sail, that’s all.”

“Great.” Zach looked at Caer. “I’ll show you the area. Cal, I’ll take the
Sea Lass.
”

“What?” Cal said, blinking. “You want to take out the
Sea Lass?
”

“Yeah, I’ll give the Irish lass a spin in the
Sea Lass,
give her a look at the area from the water.” And get a chance to talk to her one on one, he thought, and maybe figure out why she kept raising his danger signal

Caer looked white, but she didn’t say anything.

“But…” Marni said.

“Yes?” Zach stared at her.

“Sorry, sure, whatever you like,” she said. She knew Sean had given him carte blanche to borrow any unused boat when he was in town. “No, no, I’m sorry. I just thought you were anxious to look for Eddie, and I thought Caer was working…that Sean might need her.”

“Sean has Kat right now, and she wants some time with her father,” Zach said. “Caer?”

Despite her obvious fear, she nodded.

“Are you going to need a hand?” Marni asked.

“No, we’ll be fine,” Zach said.

“Are you a sailor, Caer?” Cal asked.

“Not really, but I’m game for anything,” she said, making an attempt to sound happy.

False cheer, Zach thought. But that was all right. “Come on, then, I’ll show you the
Lass.
”

He caught her by the elbow and led her out. “I take it you’ve never been out on a sailboat before?” he asked as the door closed behind them.

She shook her head.

“Are you afraid of water?”

“No.” He led her down the dock to the
Sea Lass’
s berth. The
Sea Lass
was a twenty-five-footer, just right for a couple or a small family.

She was also equipped with a first-class engine, which was perfect, since Zach had no intention of taking a leisurely cruise.

“Hop on,” he said.

She stared at him.

“Go on.”

She didn’t exactly hop, but at least she made it aboard.

He released the boat from the dock and directed Caer to a white bench near the main mast.

“I can’t help you sail, you know,” she called to him over the hum of the engine.

“We’re not going to sail.”

“What are we doing, then?”

“Motoring out to the spot where Eddie’s boat was found,” he told her.

The air was crisp and clean; it was a day just like the one when Eddie had ventured out. And disappeared.

Zach eased the
Sea Lass
away from the dock and past the channel markers.

When he looked back, both Cal and Marni were standing on the dock, watching them head out. He wished he were close enough to read their expressions.

W
hy on earth people would
want
to do this, Caer couldn’t begin to imagine. Though the boat moved smoothly enough—and with considerable speed, once they had cleared the dock area—it was cold. And windy. The combination was almost painful.

Zach didn’t seem to notice. He held the tiller and kept his eyes on the distant island they were speeding toward.

There was a cabin. He
might
have suggested that she go inside and stay warm, but he hadn’t. Then again, he didn’t seem to notice the cold, or that the wind, created as much by their speed as anything else, was whipping against their cheeks like a dozen finely honed knives.

She gritted her teeth and sat tight, not about to say a word. It seemed like an eternity before he cut the engine.

Despite having been out for what felt like forever, they had ended up in the middle of nowhere. There were no other boats anywhere near them, and even the island they’d been heading for was a good hundred yards away.

She could barely move; she felt as if her joints had frozen solid where she sat.

Zach was once again oblivious. He stood, and strode back and forth along the deck, looking intently at their surroundings, then started working a winch.

“What are you doing?”

“Dropping anchor,” he told her.

She managed to rise at last, but she hurt.

“Is that how you usually take a sailboat out?” she asked him.

“No. You usually sail.”

“Why does it have a motor, if it’s a sailboat?”

“So you don’t have to sail.”

“Then why have a sailboat?”

“Because you usually want to sail, of course.” He stared at her strangely. “Sometimes,” he explained, “there’s no wind. And sometimes, like today, you just want to move fast.”

She followed him to the front of the boat, moving carefully as she stretched protesting muscles and tried to adjust to the motion of the boat. The sea appeared calm, but the boat still rocked on the water.

“What do you see?” he asked her.

“Water,” she told him.

“What else?”

“The sky.”

“And Cow Cay,” he said thoughtfully.

“What on earth are you getting at?” she asked him, frowning. “Do you think that Eddie is hiding on Cow Cay?”

“No,” he said, and looked at her intently. “Eddie is dead.”

“How can you know that?”

“Because Eddie isn’t a prankster. He would never worry Sean or Kat like this. He wouldn’t have missed Sean and Amanda’s going-away party.”

“Do you think it’s possible that he was hurt, that he fell overboard, that—”

“He had a passenger—we know that,” Zach said. “It’s unlikely they both just fell overboard.”

“Right,” she agreed.

She watched as he disappeared below deck, then reappeared a minute later with a large storage bin. He opened it, and pulled out something large and yellow. He pulled a tab, then threw it overboard, hanging on to a cord so he wouldn’t lose it.

The yellow thing inflated and turned into some kind of a raft.

“What are you doing?” she asked incredulously.

“Going to the island.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not.”

“In…
that?
”

“You bet. I won’t be long.”

“Oh, no, no, no. You’re not leaving me here.”

He looked at her and arched a brow slowly, amused. “You want to come with me?”

“Yes.”

“You’re better off staying here. I’ll keep an eye on the boat the whole time. There’s no one on board with us. I checked it out.”

“I’m going with you,” she said stubbornly.

“You really want to go?”

“Want to? Hell no. But I’m going, anyway.”

“Suit yourself.”

He went to the side of the boat and pulled out a pair of oars from a bin built into the fiberglass hull, then turned back to her. “Come on. I’ll help you down first.”

She eyed him warily, not at all certain that she wouldn’t fall into the water in the process. But his grip was strong, and she made it safely from the
Sea Lass
into the blow-up dinghy, sitting quickly and carefully, so as not to rock it. He handed her the oars, then followed.

It didn’t take him long to row to the island; still, she felt the icy chill of the water beneath her all the while.

He propelled them right up onto the sandy beach of the small island, then hopped out quickly and reached out a hand to her. “Thank God you’re not the stiletto type,” he said, eyeing her leather boots, with their broad one-inch heels.

“How do you know I’m not the stiletto type on occasion?” she asked.

He looked at her dryly. “Are you?”

“Maybe.”

Her shoes still sank into the sand. “You might have warned me what we would be doing,” she called to him. He was pulling the little dinghy higher up on the beach, and as soon as he finished, he started moving purposefully along the shore.

The island seemed strange and stark, she thought as she followed. There were scattered trees, but they bore no leaves. It was winter, she reminded herself. There was some greenish-brown scrub grass, and seaweed teased at the shoreline.

A gull cried forlornly overhead.

Zach walked along the beach, then back, and looked out at the boat. After a moment he turned and retraced his steps, moving further away this time. Hugging her arms around her chest to keep warm, she followed him.

About a hundred feet along the increasingly craggy shoreline, he came to a dead stop.

“What does that look like to you?” he asked her.

She looked down at the ground. It didn’t look like anything. Then she studied the area more closely.

“Um, it looks like…something was dragged over the sand for a foot or two,” she said.

“I don’t think so,” he said.

“Then what?”

“A footprint.”

“A footprint? That would be one big foot.”

“A footprint from a flipper, to be exact,” he told her. He started to move again, slowly backing inland half a step at a time, looking for a trail to follow. Instinctively, she moved away from the area where he was searching.

He came to a halt again, shaking his head. “We won’t get anything from it—too much time has passed. I think it proves I’m right, but…” He stared at her for a moment, then pointed. “Walk in that direction. Look for anything, anything at all, that doesn’t belong here.”

“What doesn’t belong here?” she asked him.

“Anything. It’s posted no picnicking in winter. The water can get too rough, so they don’t want to encourage people to come out here. The park crew goes through at the end of the summer season and cleans, so there shouldn’t be anything left to indicate anyone’s been here.”

Ten minutes later, she decided that the park department did a good job. She couldn’t find anything at all.

But when she moved back toward Zach, he was down on his knees in the damp sand and scrub grass. He had taken a small plastic bag from his pocket, and was carefully placing a few blades of grass in it.

“Grass doesn’t belong?” she asked.

“There’s something on it. Okay,” he said, rising, “we’re done. We can go.”

“No,” she said firmly. “We’re not done.”

“Yes we are.”

“Not until you tell me what the hell we were doing,” she told him stubbornly.

He glanced at her with annoyance.

“Hey, you’re the one who brought me here. If you didn’t want me asking questions, you should have left me on shore,” she said in exasperation. “I know you’re investigating Eddie’s disappearance, but—”

“Talc,” he told her quietly.

“Talc?” she repeated, confused.

“I don’t want you to say anything to anyone, but I think I know how Eddie’s killer managed to make him disappear, then disappeared himself.” And why on earth was he telling
her
this? he asked himself.

“With…talc?”

“He killed Eddie, dived off the boat and came here. I don’t think the killer was working with an accomplice. I think he stashed a boat here earlier.”

“Wouldn’t
that
have taken an accomplice?”

He shrugged, granting her point. The killer wouldn’t have needed an accomplice to get back once he had a boat, but stashing the boat would have taken help. There was no other way back to Newport from here. Unless he’d towed it out here, left it, then gone back, hoping no one would wonder why he had started out with two boats and come back with only one.

“Maybe. I keep thinking, though, that the killer was working alone. The thing is,
how?
And does any of this mean that Sean is in danger, as well? Maybe Kat isn’t so crazy after all.”

Caer exhaled slowly. “Someone would really…jump off a boat into that water on purpose?”

“I think so.”

“But…”

“He wore a wet suit, and he used talc to get into the wet suit. There was a tiny trail of talc on the
Sea Maiden.
And I think I just found a few traces of it on the underside of this grass.” He started walking toward the dinghy, then stopped short when he got there. She’d been following closely and crashed into his back.

He turned around, steadying her. The way he looked into her eyes made her nervous.

“I don’t know who or what you really are, but I do believe that you really mean to help Sean.”

Her eyes widened. “I swear, I am—”

“Don’t lie to me. Just swear that you really mean to help Sean.”

“I really mean to help Sean. I swear.”

He kept studying her. She didn’t drop her lashes, and she didn’t look away. How the hell did he know he should trust her, and yet realize that everything about her was wrong?

His gaze turned suspicious. “You’re really taking care of him properly? And all his medications are correct?”

“Yes.”

“Want to tell me anything else?” he asked her.

She was acutely aware then that they were alone on an island—winter-barren, surrounded by a frigid sea—and that the wind and the gulls were the only witnesses to whatever occurred between them. She was also aware of him as a vital, living, breathing man, the heat of his energy almost palpable even against the chill of the air and sea.

His eyes probed into hers, aqua and hard. Sharp. They seemed to cut like a knife.

“I have nothing to tell you,” she said flatly, returning his stare.

“Don’t betray my trust,” he said.

“What trust?” she asked, a note of bitterness in her tone.

“I’m amazed that you even dare to ask.”

She looked out toward the boat. “I swear to you that I am here to keep Sean O’Riley alive and well, and see to it that he lives for years to come.”

She looked back at him. His gaze hadn’t relented, and she hesitated when he reached for her hand.

“I’m just going to help you back into the dinghy,” he told her.

She felt foolish, and offered him her hand.

He was silent as he rowed back, then balanced easily in the little inflatable boat to help her back on the
Sea Lass,
before climbing aboard himself and dragging the dinghy up after him. He deflated it quickly, then restored the oars to their bin.

He didn’t head straight back to the helm, though. He found towels below and thoroughly dried the dinghy, then folded it back into its storage bin.

She was staring at him. He looked back at her and spoke curtly. “I don’t want anyone to know where we’ve been.”

“All right.”

“Grab some sodas from the galley, or a couple of beers. It has to look as if I was showing you the area,” he said.

“You
did
show me the area,” she told him.

He watched her for another moment, then nodded.

She started to pull two beers from the small refrigerator in the galley, then opted for sodas instead.

She was, after all, a nurse. She was going back to take care of a patient. She shouldn’t be drinking.

Apparently he had decided that he did trust her, at least a little bit, or maybe he’d finally noticed that she was freezing and had started to feel concerned for her welfare.

“You might want to sit in the cabin for a while. The sun’s going to start going down soon, so the ride back will be colder.”

“I’m all right,” she told him.

She wasn’t. She was just stubborn. But she sat on the bench just as she had on the journey out and waited for him to raise the anchor and rev up the engine.

The sea spray flew around them, liquid crystals in the air. He kept their speed high until he neared the channel markers, then slowed accordingly. When they neared the dock, he asked her to stand up and help with the tie ropes. She took them as ordered, but she had no idea how they were supposed to be knotted.