“India Devlin, you of all people should immediately recognize the aroma.”
“Hmmmm.” She closed her eyes and sniffed the air with purpose, then groaned with pleasure as she identified the scent. “Aunt August’s deep-dish apple pie.” She whispered the words as if in awe.
“Damn, you’re good,” he told her. “Only took you one sniff.”
“When did she bake this?”
“I am truly crushed to the bone!” He laughed. “August’s recipe. My pie.”
“You baked that?” She peered down at the perfect crust, golden and flaky, which hid the tender slices of apples lightly tossed with raisins, sugar and cinnamon.
“With my own two hands.” He grinned.
“Nick, is there anything you can’t do?”
“Sure. Lots of things.” He turned his back and proceeded to fill the glass coffeepot with water, giving India an opportunity to take a long hard look at the flip side.
Never had a pair of Lee Five Button jeans looked so good.
“How ’bout you?” He turned suddenly, catching her in the act of staring at his posterior.
“How ’bout me what?” She blinked innocently, all the while reddening at having been caught giving him the same once-over he had earlier in the day given her.
“I’d have thought you would have all of August’s recipes down pat.” He was grinning, clearly enjoying her discomfort.
“I have them all written down”—she leaned on the counter, giving her an excuse to look out the window toward the bay—“but I’m afraid I haven’t cooked in weeks. Months, maybe.”
“You’re kidding, right?” He poured the water into the top of the coffee maker.
“Nope.”
“What do you eat?”
“Whatever I can whenever I can,” she told him truthfully.
“That’s one hell of a schedule you have, lady.” From the small dishwasher he removed the same red mugs they had used earlier in the day and set them on the counter.
“Somehow it only seems really horrendous when I get away for a few days and look at it from a distance.”
“And how often is it that you get away for a few days?”
“Not very,” she admitted.
“Where’d you go on your last vacation?” he asked.
“Here,” she replied. “Devlin’s Light.”
“Now India, you know what they say about all work and no play…” He leaned over, close to her, and for a split second she thought he was going to kiss her. When he did not, she felt a pang of disappointment she had not anticipated.
“What about you?” She tried to turn the tables. “I’d say it would appear that you work a lot.”
“All the time. Every day.” He nodded. “And I love every second of it.”
“I love what I do too.” She wished she did not sound so defensive, so insistent.
“I take time off. I take several breaks a day, as a matter of fact. How ’bout you, Indy? How often do you get a break?”
“During the day? Are you nuts?” She frowned at the thought of it.
“That’s what I thought. Don’t you ever want to just lean back and put your feet up for a few minutes?”
“Nick, I don’t have quite the view that you do.” She gestured toward the deck.
“More’s the pity. It’s wonderful. Come on out for a minute and we’ll take a break right now.”
She laughed and followed him onto the deck, to stand next to him at the railing, where they both leaned their elbows at precisely the same time.
“See? It’s instinctive,” he told her. “You approach the rail, you lean the elbows and you take it all in.”
Leaning her head back slightly, India inhaled the warm tidal breath of the night, thick and salty and familiar.
“I miss it,” she admitted, her eyes still closed as she luxuriated in the sea air.
“What keeps you away?”
“My work.”
“You know you’d be able to get a job anywhere.”
“Maybe.” She shrugged and looked out across the dark water.
“No
maybe.
Want to tell me what keeps you from coming back to Devlin’s Light to stay? Or is that a secret you’re not ready to share.”
“Why would you think that I don’t want to come back?” She stared straight ahead, uncomfortable with the question. And its answer.
“Well, your family is here… your home. And from all appearances, you love it here…” His voice trailed away slightly.
“I do. More than any place,” she said softly, still not looking at him, knowing if she met his eyes she might want to tell him what he wanted to know, but not yet ready to share that part of herself.
“And yet you seem to put as much distance between yourself and your home as you can.”
India looped her fingers together and hung them over the railing, looking out to the bay but not at Nick.
“Something tells me there’s no simple answer. Maybe someday you’ll want to talk about it. Right now,” he said, pointing overhead, “there’s a serious moon on the rise.”
Silently she thanked him for not pushing her into speaking of something she did not want to speak of, something that would sully the night and take the focus from finding
clues to Ry’s death and place it instead upon her, on her past, on her nightmares.
A flock of geese landed noisily, feet first, somewhere across the bay, their loud honks drifting across the water as if to scold the lead bird for not having stopped sooner.
“How ’bout we get our coffee and make ourselves comfortable and we can compare notes?”
“Sounds good.” She started to follow him through the door.
“Just stay and relax for a minute,” he told her. “I’ll bring everything out.”
“You sure?”
“Absolutely.”
India welcomed the few minutes alone on the deck, a few minutes to listen to the night sounds of the bay, to watch for the faint splashes as fish here and there poked through the plane of the water, to rest in the stillness of the marsh. The bay at night had always offered a peace to her she had not found anywhere else.
Nick returned with a tray upon which sat two mugs of steaming coffee, a carton of half and half bearing the logo of a nearby convenience store, two plates, two forks, a knife and the entire apple pie. “You planning on eating all that?” She laughed, pointing at the pie.
“Very possibly. When was the last time you ate only one piece of August Devlin’s apple pie? Even if August herself didn’t bake it, there’s nothing else that even comes close, in my book.”
“Good point.” She grinned and sat in one of the deck chairs.
“Help yourself to coffee,” he told her, “and I’ll tend to the pie.”
She giggled as he cut two large wedges from the pie and slid them onto the plates, then handed one to India, telling her, “It’s just perfect, still warm.”
“It smells too wonderful,” she noted, her mouth watering at the very thought of it. “It is perfect,” she told him as she took the first impatient bite. “Wonderful. Heaven.”
“Agreed.” He nodded as he too succumbed to the lure of the fragrance that surrounded them momentarily, before a soft land breeze began to drift the aroma toward the bay.
“Eat fast,” he joked, “or we’ll have every raccoon within sniffing distance prowling up here for his share.”
“Corri tells me that you’re taking her to soccer on Tuesday nights.”
“Well, it’s August’s card night, you know.” He shrugged it off with a grin.
“You don’t have to.”
“Hey, Indy, it’s no big deal. Corri wants to play. Ry took her last year and she loved it. I just wanted there to be one less thing in her life that she had to do without because someone else was gone from her life.” He put his plate down to pour cream into the coffee.
“It’s very nice of you to do that.”
“I am a very nice guy. Thank you for noticing. And besides, it’s fun to watch her.”
“I meant it’s nice of you to care that she wants to play.”
“Well, I guess I’m just passing it on.”
“What’s that?”
“Oh, you know, that old expression that if someone does something nice for you, the best way of thanking them is to help someone else in return.” Nick leaned back and crossed a denimed leg, resting his now-empty pie plate on his knee. “When I was about eleven, I wanted to play baseball in the worst way. But the league rules required that one parent volunteer to coach. My dad was gone. And Mom was out of the question—you could fill the head of a pin with Mom’s knowledge of baseball and have enough room left over for the Bill of Rights. Plus she was working during the day and trying to write at night and keep up with my sisters. She didn’t have three nights each week to spare.”
“So who stepped in?” she asked.
“Mr. Hamilton. Lived across the street from us. Retired gent. Signed me up and took me to every practice. Cheered me on at every game.”
“Where’s he now?”
“Long gone,” Nick told her softly, “but I’ll never forget all he gave me. All he taught me. When my mom or I would thank him, he’d just smile and say, ’Nick, you just remember to pass it on one day.’ I’m grateful for the opportunity to do just that.”
“I hope you tell Corri that story some day.”
“Some day.” He nodded. “So, how’s the dessert?”
“Wonderful.” She sighed contentedly.
“Another slice?”
She contemplated the possibility. When was the last time she had had two servings of dessert?
“Just a small one.” She laughed.
“You look like you could use a few extra calories,” he told her.
“There’s a shabby excuse for gluttony if ever I heard one.” She speared a slice of warm apple and it melted in her mouth. If there was in fact a heaven, they would of a certainty serve warm apple pie made from her aunt’s recipe. No doubt about it.
She was just about to share this thought when Nick asked, “So, tell me, what information have you been able to dig up about Manning and Hatfield?”
“The Paloma P.D. wasn’t able to find out a whole lot. Hatfield has a history as an agitator. Seems to have joined in just about every protest launched at Bayview State over the past eight years. Heavy on environmental issues. I can’t tell whether he’s truly committed to the causes he becomes involved with, or if he just likes the action and the rhetoric. Either way, the consensus is that he’s very much nonviolent. I got pretty much the same report on Manning.”
“Is Manning a tall man, salt-and-pepper beard, wears a backpack and always has a pair of binoculars around his neck?”
“That’s pretty accurate from what I recall. Unfortunately, I left the reports back in Paloma, but he was described as being about six-two, about one hundred seventy pounds, brown hair, a little gray at the temples, close-cropped beard. You’ve met him?”
“He was around a few times there in late May, early June, then again back in late June. First he was protesting the number of people on the beaches during the bird migrations. Next he was trying to work up support for his efforts to ban the fireworks display for July Fourth. Said it spooked the birds.”
“Do you know if he had any dealings with Ry?”
“I don’t know that I’d call them dealings, exactly, but I know they had words on more than one occasion.”
“Words?”
He nodded. “Ry had wanted to open the beach for the first two weeks in June so that people could come to watch the migrations.”
“And Manning didn’t like the idea?”
“Manning thought that publicizing the spawning of the horseshoe crabs and the bird migrations, to encourage people to come to watch, would frighten the birds away. He was very open—some might say hostile—about his opposition to Ry’s plans.”
India frowned. “I don’t recall Ry wanting to do much more than make the public more aware of how important the Bay is, in an ecological sense. Where its place is in the grand scheme of things.”
“A few months back, he and Darla were talking about opening a tea room in the first-floor rooms of the lighthouse. So that people coming to watch the whole horseshoe crab thing could sit out there on the point and have a light meal while they watched Mother Nature’s main event. Ry thought it would remove the sightseers from the immediate area of the activity while still providing an excellent vantage spot.”
“And at the same time use the Light for something constructive and permit Darla to start her own business.” India put her mug down on the floor near her feet. “Manning and Hatfield don’t sound promising as suspects. I’d sure like to know who Ry saw that week, what his last few days were like.”
“Well, I can take a drive out to Bayview and try to reconstruct his day at school. Maybe get a list of his students.”
“They won’t want to give you that.”
“The administration won’t, but I do know a few of Ry’s friends on the faculty. I’m sure one of them will help out. Maybe I can dig up some information that might prove helpful.”
“You mean you’ll look for clues?”
“Sweetheart, in the immortal words of Henny Young-man, a clue is what the police boast about when they can’t find the criminal.” He laughed. “I’m just going to see if I can re-create his day, talk to the people he talked to.”
“I think Chief Carpenter already did that,” she reminded him.
“Maybe he missed someone.” Nick shrugged. “In any event, it can’t hurt. Maybe someone will remember something. You never know. Unless you don’t want me to.”
“Why would I not want you to? I just hate to see you waste your time,” she added.
“Well, something might turn up. And besides, it will make me feel better. Like I’m doing something for Ry.”
“You are doing plenty for Ry. Stopping in to see Aunt August—”
“She’s a special lady. I just stop by to give her a hand now and then.”
“And Corri…”
“She’s a special little girl. I enjoy her company.”
“And Darla? Aunt August said you showed up in your four-wheel to deliver her baked goods to her customers when her road was washed out after a bad storm a few weeks back.”
“Darla is working very hard to get Darla’s Delectables off the ground. How could I have left her stranded with all those muffins and breads and whatever else she had spent the past two days baking? It was no big deal. A drive out to her house, a drive into town.”
“And into Cape May.”
“It’s not that far, India. Darla needed help. She’s struggled to start up this little business of hers for the past two years. She has finally established a pretty decent clientele. I hated to see her lose out because of an ill-timed storm.”