Temptation Bay (A Windfall Island Novel) (23 page)

He did, climbing to his feet then holding a hand down to her. She took it, let him help her up, and stared back at her audience, one eyebrow lifted, daring them to comment.

Hold just stood there, grinning hugely.

Jessi huffed out a breath. “Great, the first interesting thing that’s happened around here in years and Charm Boy with his pretty southern manners has to go and ruin it.”

“Sugar,” Hold said to Jessi, “if you want exciting, stick with me.”

“I’d rather eat a cake of soap. Lye soap. The whole thing.”

“Well, now, I hope you get to like the taste of it, because from the sound of things, we’re going to be spending a lot of time with one another. You and I. Together.”

Still grinning like a lunatic, Hold slipped his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels.

Maggie worked hard not to smile, especially when Jessi, irritated and more than a little frantic, appealed to her.

“Do we really need him, Maggie? I mean, it can’t be that complicated to draw a bunch of squares and circles and write names inside them.”

“There’s more to a genealogy than that. Especially when you’re tracing a whole community.”

“Windfall isn’t that big,” Jessi insisted. “Maggie, tell him. There can’t be a hundred families, if you go right back to the salvaging times.”

“We don’t have to go back that far,” Dex said, “but time is an issue. The longer it takes to solve this, the more likely my reason for being here will get out, especially with Kentucky Joe and his big mouth. And then we’ll have a problem on our hands.”

“Now, I’m about done with all the name-calling and insults,” Hold said. “If Dex’d made secrecy a matter of record, I’d’ve taken more care with what I said.” He looked at Jessi. “And who I said it to.”

“And I’d still be in the dark,” Jessi said.

“Truth is,” Dex said to her, “I’d already decided to ask for your help with the genealogy. It’ll be much easier for you to gather information than Hold.”

“In other words, I was right,” Maggie said.

“Sure, we can use those words, if that’s what’s important to you.”

Maggie shot Dex a cocky smile. “Right at this moment? Yeah. And you haven’t actually said the words yet.”

Dex grinned back. “Make me.”

“Jeez,” Jessi groaned. “Can’t the two of you put your hormones on hold for five minutes? Have some pity for the celibate in the room.”

Hold swung around and gave her a long, intent study.

“Oh, don’t be such a… a man,” she snapped at him. “Won’t it create suspicion if I go around asking everyone for their family lineage?”

“She’s got a point,” Maggie said. “Suspicion is kind of a way of life around here.”

“Then don’t ask,” Dex said. “I’m sure you can go back at least a generation on your own, and Maggie and I will keep working on the journals.”

Jessi looked over at Hold, her eyes narrowing when she caught him grinning at her. “Fine,” she bit off. “What do we do if we find anyone likely?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we have to.”

“There are no bridges on Windfall,” Jessi pointed out. “We won’t have anywhere to run when everyone finds out what we’ve been up to.”

“We don’t need a bridge,” Maggie said coolly. “I can fly.”

H
old took himself off to sweet-talk Jessi into working with him on the genealogy. Maggie stood there for a moment, staring at Dex, daring him to say a word.

Wisely, he turned toward the table, with its stacks of papers. His expression could best be described as resignation.

“Unfortunately, they’re not going anywhere,” Maggie said.

Dex took his customary seat. “Neither am I.”

“Unfortunately.” She said it with a slight smile and enough sarcasm to let him know she was kidding. Mostly. When she slid into the chair opposite his, she knew her need for distance wasn’t lost on him.

But he let it go.

She chose a stack of papers at random. Dex pulled over the yellow legal pad they were using to classify the journals and assigned it a number. Maggie wrote the number on the top page and, with a bolstering sigh, began to leaf through the pages, skimming for meaningful words or phrases.

She didn’t get far.

“What?”

She realized she’d gone still, but all she could seem to
do was stare, dumbstruck, just her eyes flying back and forth across the page.

“Out loud,” Dex ordered.

She held up a hand, and when her eyes lifted to his, she could see he’d caught her excitement. “ ‘They anchor off shore out of the reach of the Coast Guard, filled with liquid gold, for that’s what the mainlanders will pay when someone else is willing to take the risk.’ ”

Maggie flipped backward, scanning the pages until she found the beginning of the passage, then reading so fast the words blurred together. “It talks about the ships sailing down from Canada or up from the Indies,” she paraphrased.

“All that money was sliding right by Windfall Island and into Portland, while the people here could barely afford to feed their children. Ironic that running booze provided what the government couldn’t.”

“The 18th Amendment was passed in October of 1919,” Dex said, staying on point. “Eugenia went missing in thirty-one. Any idea when that was written?”

“The passages are only dated with month and day, but I’d say this takes place a good ways into Prohibition. From what I can tell the crews were fairly well established.” The room went silent but for the whisper of paper as Maggie leafed through the pages, looking for a date. “Here,” she said about halfway through the stack of copies, “January, 1928. This ends in the spring of that year.”

Dex reached across the table, pulling the top sheet from her discard pile. When she saw him sorting through the journal copies, comparing the handwriting with the other journal copies, she did the same. By the time they were finished, they’d come up with five more possibilities.

Maggie took the copies and placed them side by side. Dex came around the table to look over her shoulder, but
she barely noticed, caught up in the puzzle. She flipped through the pages, finding enough dates to put them in what she thought was the correct order.

“This one,” she placed her right hand on the copy second from the end, “should include the time of the kidnapping.”

She handed Dex the copies. “You read, I’ll take notes.”

He held her eyes for a few, humming seconds.

“It’s your case.”

Dex nodded, then handed her a legal pad before seating himself in the chair next to hers. It didn’t take him long.

“There was a measles epidemic,” he said somberly, reading a list of names, children who’d died in the summer and fall of 1931, when Eugenia had been taken from her nursery in Boston.

“You’re not writing. You okay? Maggie?”

She rubbed her aching eyes, said, “Give me the names again.” But she put her pen down before he could. “You know, the genealogy isn’t just a tool for you to solve the kidnapping, it’s for the island, too. These children are gone, but they had families.”

“You’re right. But hiding the truth from them doesn’t solve anything.”

“I just… You need to be really sure before you open the door to this kind of pain.” She took the pages from him and began to write, the scratch of her pen disturbing the tense silence.

“Can you tell who wrote it?” Dex asked when she was finished.

Maggie started a little. She’d forgotten he was there, but now all she could seem to think about was the heat of him so close beside her, the scent of his skin, the way it made her nerves tremble to know his eyes were on her.

She got to her feet, taking the excuse to put a little distance between them as she began to check the first and last pages of the journals they were working with. “I don’t see a name, and I made sure to copy everything with writing on it, even the front and back covers.”

“And she’s back behind her walls.”

She rounded on him, but made sure to stay a safe distance away. “Excuse me?”

“Where’s the woman who was nearly in tears reading about a bunch of dead kids you didn’t even know?”

“What good do my tears do them and their families?”

“I’m not letting you freeze me out.”

Maggie backed away from him. It mortified her, but it would be even more embarrassing to throw herself at him. “You just want to have sex.”

He grinned. “I wouldn’t mind seeing that tattoo again. I don’t think I took the time to properly appreciate it before.”

“That’s where my heart is.”

He kept coming, taking his time as he circled her around the table. “Warning me or reminding yourself?”

“You don’t need warning and I don’t need reminding.”

“Are you sure?”

She didn’t bother to ask him if he referred to himself or to her or to both of them. She just wanted him to go away and stop asking questions that made her think about things she didn’t want to think about. Like her feelings for him. “We should take the list over to the office. Hold and Jessi can start with these families.”

That stopped him. He held her gaze another minute, but he quit stalking her. The case, she thought, took precedence over everything else.

She probably should have been more grateful.

Hold looked at the list briefly, then handed it over to Jessi. “You’re thinking it’s possible, if Eugenia was brought to Windfall, that she might have replaced one of the kids who died from the measles,” Hold said.

“Insensitive jerk,” Jessi sniffled.

“Jess.”

Hold put up a hand. “It’s not that I don’t feel for these people, Jessi. I don’t know them personally like you do.”

Jessi sniffed again, but she relented enough to glance over at Hold. “If Eugenia took the place of a baby that died, wouldn’t the family have hidden it completely? What I mean is, maybe the name isn’t on this list at all.”

Dex crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall. “I can see it being kept from the mainland, but do you really think nobody in the Windfall community would know, or at least figure it out?”

“It was coming onto winter,” Hold said. “With an epidemic like measles, people would have been keeping to themselves even more than usual.”

“To prevent the sick and recovering children from being exposed to more illness,” Maggie said, “Flu, bronchitis, even a common cold would have been devastating to an already weakened system. By the time spring came around six, seven months later, if Eugenia was switched with a baby close to her own age, it’s likely no one would have noticed a difference.”

“We can’t know until we rule out the names on this list,” Hold put in.

“So we’ll start there,” Jessi said, raising her voice as the radio squawked. She looked over at Maggie. “Are you expecting anyone?”

“No.” Maggie crossed the room, picked up the mouthpiece,
and answered with Windfall Island’s code, feeling her heart stop at the response.

“Maggie?” Jessi laid a hand on her shoulder.

“It’s a military helicopter, ten minutes out.”

“Tell the pilot he can’t land here.”

“I can’t refuse privileges, Jess. I won’t.”

“But—”

“He’s not the entire military.” She picked up the radio and gave them the go-ahead to land.

“I can tell him you’re not here.”

“Your father?” Dex asked.

Maggie ignored him, sharing a long look with Jessi. She was tempted, truly tempted. “I won’t let him make a liar out of you, Jess,” she finally said, starting for the door. “Or a coward out of me.”

Dex stepped in front of her, took her by the arm. “Talk to me, Maggie.”

She shook him off, and after a speaking look to Jessi, she kept walking. Jessi stayed where she was and kept Hold with her. Dex Keegan, on the other hand, couldn’t have cared less for her preferences.

He fell into step with her, forced her to stop in the empty lobby and deal with him. “Take a hint, Keegan.”

“You won’t tell me what’s going on, and I won’t find out by staying inside.”

“Not everything that happens on this island is your business.”

“You’re my business, Maggie.”

She snorted softly. “Typical man. Give him a little affection, spend a night in his bed, and he thinks he can tell you what to do.”

“I spent the night in your bed,” Dex shot back. “I can’t say I recall there being a lot of affection involved.”

“On either side.”

Her famous temper was in full bloom, but so was his. “Damn it, Maggie, why can’t you, just once, open up? Tell me what’s wrong.”

“You think barking at me is going to get you what you want?” She made a disgusted sound in the back of her throat. “I grew up being intimidated by the best.”

“My old man was military, too. They can be tough on their kids.”

She paced away, wrapped her arms around her waist, so cold and empty she felt like she’d collapse into the void where her heart should be if she didn’t hold on tight.

“What about your mother?”

“What about her? She was so beaten down—”

“He hit her?” Dex started for the door, realized there was no one to take his temper out on yet, and came back. “He hit you?”

“No, he didn’t hit my mother, and he only slapped me once when I was sixteen. I ran away.”

Dex moved in, silent and cold, furiously cold. She couldn’t worry about his anger now. She needed all her strength for the confrontation to come, and she wouldn’t be doing any of them a favor—especially not Dex—by letting him go off on her father.

Phillip Solomon was nothing more than hot air and bluster when it came to his lone offspring, if only because he knew it would reflect badly on him. He’d have no selfish reasons to pull his punches toward a man foolish enough to defend her. No matter what she felt for Dex, she wouldn’t have him on her conscience because he felt sorry for her.

“If you could step off,” she began.

Dex blinked once, only just seeming to realize he’d backed her up against the wall. He took one step away,
then another, woodenly because, she decided, he was still angry. But not with her.

“I’m sorry.”

“What for? You’re right about military men being hard on their children, but you were a boy.”

“I have a sister,” Dex said, his smile slight and fleeting. “He was easier on her.”

She swallowed against the tightness in her throat. “Before I even understood what the word ‘disappointment’ meant, I knew I was one to my father. For starters, I was born a girl. When he noticed me at all, it was to let me know I was nothing, and would be nothing. The most I could aspire to was wife. I saw how well that worked out for my mother.” She turned away, staring out the window. “She could never please him, either.”

“She gave up,” Dex said. “You never did.”

“I don’t know if she gave up. Sometimes I wish I’d known her before she met him. I wonder if maybe…” She broke off, shook herself out of the dream she’d had so often as a child. It came less and less now, and Maggie realized she’d given up—on her mother. Another sorrow she could have laid at her father’s door. If she’d bothered to keep a tally.

“He tore her down, year after year, until she thought even less of herself than he did. She didn’t think of me much at all. I was her failure, you see. She didn’t give him a son. He never let her forget it. It was just too bad for him that I had more of him in me than was good for either of us.

“After I ran away, he found me and sent my mother and me here. For her it was exile, for me it was coming home.”

“The tattoo was your way of rebelling.”

She looked at him for the first time since he’d let her go. “I’ve always wanted the sky. I made the mistake of telling
him about it once.” Her smile turned sad. “I was young, young and hopeful enough to think what I wanted mattered to him. He laughed. So I set out to prove I could do it. It wasn’t that difficult. He’d never cared enough to look at my report cards, or take an interest in me. It was only in public he made sure we appeared to be a real family.”

She looked over at him. “You saw it the other day. He’s a master at putting on a good show.”

“It wasn’t that good a show, Maggie.”

“Not to anyone who looked closely.” And Dex would have looked closely, even if it hadn’t been her. He was that kind of man, the kind who looked beneath the surface. And when he found a wrong, he’d want to right it.