“And I take it we’re no closer to knowing who …”
“Not a clue, Aunt August.” India paused at the top of the steps. “Chief Carpenter had a man here at the house twenty-four
hours a day for the past week and says he’s not heard or seen a thing.”
“We could just have well stayed here then.” August dropped a suitcase near the foot of the steps while she removed her heavy coat.
“Oh, but then you wouldn’t have spent a week at Delia’s.” India’s eyes danced. “So tell me, what was it like?”
“Great fun. And you’re right, I wouldn’t have missed it.” August laughed. “I haven’t been away in ages, and Delia has her own little resort right there in her home. Exercise room, indoor pool, an indoor track if you want to run, India! A spa. She had a masseur come in three times last week so that we could have a massage after we worked out with her trainer.”
“Delia has her own trainer?”
“Oh my, yes. Every other day. She says it helps her stay in shape because she sits at her computer so much.”
“Well, it sounds as if you had quite a week.”
“We did, India, but I worried about you.”
“You didn’t have to.” India draped an arm around her aunt’s shoulders. “Nick took care of me, and the police were watching the cabin as well as the house.”
“Well, I just wish we could get to the bottom of this.” August slammed the closet door. “We’ve had enough, India. First Ry, then this attack on Darla that was probably meant for you. What is at the bottom of it all?”
“I wish I knew.” India took August’s arm and led her into the kitchen. “Has Delia’s private investigator come up with anything new on the phony land sale?”
“I don’t know.” Grateful to be back in her own kitchen, August went on automatic pilot and ran water for the coffee maker.
“Did she happen to mention why she has a private investigator on call?” Nick sat down at the table and folded his hands in front of him.
“What?” August asked.
“My mother. Did she say why she just happens to have a private investigator who seems to be at her beck and call?” Nick frowned.
August shrugged. “Your mother is very well known, Nick. She probably gets a lot of crank mail. I guess in her position,
it would be a good idea to have someone you can trust checking into such things.”
“Hmmm.” He rubbed his chin. “I think she was getting some pretty funky mail there for a while.”
“Then she would want to have someone available to check people out, if she had to. It makes sense.”
“I guess so.” Nick leaned back into the old wooden seat.
“Indy, can you help me carry the aquarium upstairs?” Corri called from the hallway.
“I’ll get it,” Nick told India, rising from his chair. “It’ll give me a chance to check out this turtle.”
“It’s so good to be home.” August sighed. “As merry a time as we had, there really is no place like Devlin’s Light.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Do you, now?” August’s eyebrows raised.
“Yes, I do,” India told her pointedly.
“Well. It’s about time.” August unceremoniously poured the water into the top of the coffee maker, a small smile of satisfaction on her lips. Maybe, she thought to herself, things might just work out after all. “Now then, bring me up to date on everything that happened in town while I was away.”
“I’ll miss you tonight.” Nick stood in front of India, running his hands up and down her arms. “I was just starting to get used to having you at the cabin all the time. I’m not ready for you to go back to Darien Road.”
“Ummm. Me too.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed his mouth. “But I think I need to be with Corri tonight, and I think I need to stay close to Aunt August till this is over.”
“I feel better knowing that the chief is keeping a man on watch here,” Nick told her. “But if anything doesn’t seem right, I want you to call me, hear?”
“I hear. And I will,” India promised him.
“India,” August called from inside, “Corri is ready to be tucked in.”
“I’m coming,” India told her.
“Lock up,” Nick reminded her.
“I will.” She kissed him again before sending him on his way back to the cabin alone.
“And call me in the morning.” Nick lingered for a second.
“I will.”
“And don’t open the door for anyone.”
“Don’t worry so much. We have a police guard. He has a gun. We’ll be fine.” She blew him a kiss.
She watched him as he walked to his car, then waved as he pulled away from the front of the house. Crossing her arms, she went to the end of the porch and studied the night sky, searching in the dark for a wishing star. She found one, blinking high behind the choppy clouds.
I wish that Darla
would be all right. I wish that we could find whoever it was who hurt her.
A rustle in the leaves to her right caught her attention. She stepped back toward the house, instinctively moving into the shadows.
“Oh, Taylor!” She placed her hand over her fluttering heart as the young police officer rounded the corner. “You gave me a start. I didn’t see the patrol car. Are you early?”
“I’m sorry, India,” he said. “I didn’t mean to. My car has a flat, so I walked over from the station. And it’s already eight o’clock—that’s my shift.”
“Aren’t you going to be cold out here?” India frowned.
“Maybe, by the time we get towards midnight.” He shrugged.
“Let me get you a key,” she told him, disappearing into the house momentarily. “If you get really cold, just come in for a while. You can watch as good from inside as you can from outside, I guess.”
“I probably won’t use it, but thanks anyway. My instructions were to patrol the outside.”
He held the key out to her, but India shook her head, telling him, “Keep it, just in case.”
“Well, I should probably run it past the chief,” Taylor noted.
“Tell him I said thanks for keeping you here.”
“I’ll do that.” The officer touched the brim of his hat as he must have seen the sheriffs in old Westerns do.
India took the steps two at a time and all but skipped down the hall to Corri’s room.
“Now,” she told the child, “I want a full report on everything you did last week.”
“Oh, Indy, it was so fun.” Corri yawned. “Did you know that Delia has a swimming pool in her house?”
“No! Now, where in her house was it? In the living room?” India sat on the side of the bed and pulled her feet up, settling in for a chat.
“Of course not, silly.” Corri giggled. “It was in a room off her big sunroom. Delia has two sunrooms. One is real big and has fancy tiles and big fans in the ceiling and lots of plants and white furniture. The other is small and has a little chair with a sort of stool to put your feet on and it’s all white and green and has trellises on the wallpaper.”
India could almost picture it, a small, serene private retreat for the world’s most popular writer of mysteries.
“And the pool is very big and has lots of pretty tiles on the bottom and there are even trees in there.”
“Trees in the pool?”
“No, in the pool room.” Corri laughed, then her face grew very serious. “But guess what else she has, India.”
“I can’t.”
“Delia has ponies,” Corri confided, clearly awed.
“Ponies?”
“And horses. They all live in a big barn. They even have a big circle in the barn to ride in. And”—she held her breath—“she said I could ride any pony I wanted.”
“So, which one did you ride?”
“All of them.”
“All of them?” India fought to bury a laugh.
“I couldn’t decide, and I didn’t want any of the ponies to think I didn’t like them, so I took turns and rode all of them.” Corri nodded, sinking back onto her pillow. “But not the horses. They were all too big. I told them that someday I’d be bigger, and I’d come back and ride them too.”
India tucked the soft pale pink blanket under Corri’s chin.
“Do you think I will, Indy?” Corri’s eyes were at half mast. “Go back someday?”
“I feel certain of it, sweetie.”
“Good. I liked it there. It’s different from Devlin’s Light.
There’s no bay. But there’s a pond. It was so fun.” She sighed, and her eyes closed just a teensy bit more.
“What was the best part?” India asked, sliding her legs to the side of the bed, knowing that, within seconds, Corri would be fast asleep.
“The ghost couldn’t find me there.” Corri smiled into her pillow.
“What?” Startled, India froze at the side of the bed.
“The ghost couldn’t find me,” Corri repeated.
“Corri, honey, there’s no such thing as ghosts.”
“There is, Indy, there is.”
“Tell me what it looks like, sweetie,” India said gently, anticipating Corri’s description of a white-sheeted thing, or perhaps a vaporous specter that floated above the floor. What had this child been watching on TV? “Describe your ghost to me.”
“Mommy.” Corri yawned into her pillow.
“The ghost looks like your mommy?” India whispered to the child, who was all but fast asleep.
“Umm-hmm.”
India sat motionless for a very long moment. Maris had been such a painful thorn in the side of the Devlins that she had forgotten there was one in the house who might view her in a totally different way. Whatever she may have been as a person, she was still Corri’s mother. And Corri must have missed her so much that she had herself convinced that she still saw her.
Quietly turning off the bedroom light, India leaned back over the sleeping child to kiss her goodnight.
No matter how
much we love her
, India acknowledged,
I guess she will
always be Maris’s daughter.
How, India wondered, had one such as Maris given life to a child so loving, so good as Corri?
And how to convince Corri that there was no ghost?
Tomorrow
, she told herself as she tip-toed from the room,
I’ll talk to Aunt August and see if she has any thoughts on how to deal with the situation.
But when India awoke the next day, her aunt had already left the house to run errands, and the ghost was forgotten for a while.
“Corri seemed to really enjoy staying at my mom’s,”
Nick told India when he came in through the back door later that afternoon. Not trusting the school bus to get Corri home safely, he had insisted on picking her up himself after school. “She got to ride the ponies.”
“All of them.” India nodded. “Did she tell you?”
“So that none of them would have hurt feelings.”
“It boggles my mind that Maris Steele could have given birth to a child who is so sensitive to the feelings of others. Even if those others are ponies.”
“Well, I’d say that this time the apple fell far from the tree. You hate to say it of anyone, Indy, but Corri is better off without her mother in her life. A woman who schemes, steals…”
“And yet Corri misses her so much she even thinks she sees her.” India thought back to the bedtime conversation of the previous evening.
“What do you mean, she thinks she sees her?” Nick frowned.
“Corri thinks she sees Maris’s ghost. She is adamant about it. She told me last night that the best thing about being at your mother’s was that the ghost couldn’t find her.”
“That doesn’t sound like a child who misses her mother. That sounds more like a child who is
relieved.”
“I don’t think it’s a simple thing, Nick. From all accounts, all of Corri’s memories of Maris may not be good ones, but the fact remains that she was still her mother, and I’m sure that Corri loved her all the same.”
“Maybe we should talk to her, help her to understand that there are no ghosts.”
“I tried to do that. She insists she sees her.”
“Look, I have an idea.” Nick pulled India onto his lap. “Why don’t we take Corri out to the cemetery and show her Maris’s grave again. We’ll explain to her that that is where her mother’s body is buried, and that once you are dead and buried, you can’t—Indy, what’s that look for?”
“That’s not exactly Maris’s grave.” India squirmed uncomfortably.
“Indy, she’s either buried there or she’s not.”
“She’s not.”
“She’s not?” he repeated. “Then who is?”
“No one. Maris’s body was never recovered. Ry erected that marker as a memorial, for Corri’s sake.”
They looked at each other for a very long, hard minute.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Nick asked.
“I don’t know what I’m thinking. It’s too bizarre,” India whispered. “Do you think Maris could be… I mean, why would she pretend to be… If she really wasn’t…”
“Maybe she faked the whole thing.”
“Why? Why would she do that?”
“Probably for the same reason she pushed Ry down the lighthouse steps. Which would have been the same reason she tried to kill you last week. But she’s not going to get you, Indy.” Nick’s jaw squared. “She’ll have to get through me first. And I’m not budging.”
“It has to be money.” India began to pace. “I
knew
she never loved him. It was never in her eyes. She married him for money. She killed him for
money.”
“Lucien Byers,” Nick said softly. “My mother said that her private investigator—who is former secret service with major league connections—can’t find a lead on any of the people who were supposedly at the settlement where Maris sold this parcel of land to Byers.” Nick frowned. “What if
none
of these other people ever existed? What if it was all a scam?”
“You mean Maris didn’t sell land to Lucien? That he made it all up?” India crossed her arms over her chest and sat on the arm of the sofa. “Why would he have pretended to have bought land from Maris? Why would he have come here at all? It doesn’t make any sense, Nick.”
“Supposing there was something that he wanted, something he could only get from Ry, and he used Maris to get it…”
“Then Maris got what they wanted, then pretended to drown?” India frowned. “If she had what she wanted, why go to the trouble of faking her own death? Why didn’t she just divorce Ry?”
“And why did she come back and kill him? And why would she come back now?” Nick’s eyebrows knitted together.
“And why would Byers come here and tell me he’d bought land he hadn’t bought?”