She snapped her jaws shut, realizing that what she said was tantamount to a confession.
“I want a lawyer. I am not saying another word until I have a lawyer.”
Carpenter turned to the young officer who had accompanied him to the house. “Help her up, Sergeant. Easy now with those cuffs. We don’t want a lawsuit for excessive force.”
“You were right,” India told Nick, “that whole land-scam thing was a fraud.”
“I don’t understand.” August sighed deeply and sank to the steps.
“Byers thought it was too risky to kill India after having killed Ry,” Nick explained. “But he needed access to the beach if he was going to be able to get around the restrictions on the number of horseshoe crabs he needed to get his hands on. The only way to get to the beach was through India.”
“Horseshoe crabs?” August exclaimed. “Why on earth did Lucien Byers want a supply of horseshoe crabs?”
India related the importance of the ugly crustaceans to her aunt, then added, “I guess he knew I’d never willingly sell off the beach, and so he had to find a way to get me to turn some portion of it over to him.”
“Right. He was betting that you’d eventually offer him a settlement before you would let the Devlin name be touched by scandal.”
“I can’t say that it wouldn’t have worked.” India sighed.
“Except that Maris got antsy,” the chief told them. “It was taking too long. She decided to go ahead with her own plan and kill India. The Twelfth Night Ball presented the perfect opportunity. She hid on the grounds, watching for a chance. She thought she’d found it, there in the gardens.”
“Except that it wasn’t India,” Nick said softly.
“Poor Dar.” India’s eyes filed with tears.
Carpenter motioned to the officer to take Maris out to the waiting police car.
“You were here in the house one night when I was here alone,” India called to Maris. “It was you that I heard on the steps.”
“More than one night. I even left you a little calling card once.”
India frowned, trying to recall.
“I left one of Ry’s records on your bed,” Maris told her.
“Weren’t you afraid of being seen by someone who, unlike Corri, would know that you weren’t a ghost?”
“I just couldn’t resist.” Maris shrugged. “It was all part of the game.”
“Was terrifying Corri just part of the game too?” India’s eyes began to blaze.
“I needed a source of information from within the family.” Maris shrugged indifferently. “I still had a key to the house, so I used it.”
“You frightened her.” India stood up, her fists clenching, and Nick took her arm, protecting her from the possible consequences of taking one more swing at Maris. “You let her believe that she was your daughter.”
“You mean she isn’t?” Nick and August asked in unison.
Before India could answer, a tiny, trembling voice from the top step asked, “She’s not my mommy?”
“Corri, sweetheart, come here,” India said gently, holding her arms out to the child who stood wide-eyed, surveying the scene below: two police officers, Maris in the doorway with her hands cuffed behind her back, everyone else in nightclothes.
“She’s not my mommy?” Corri repeated.
“Sorry, kid, I know what a disappointment it must be, but no, I’m not,” Maris said, cocky even now.
“Who is my mommy?” a confused Corri asked.
“A cousin of Maris’,” India told her. “She died when you were very small. That is, assuming that that wasn’t a lie too.”
“That wasn’t a lie,” Maris told her.
“So I don’t have a mommy at all.” Corri’s tiny face darkened as she pondered this latest bit of news.
“I’m sorry, sweetie, that you had to find out this way.” India sat down and pulled the little girl onto her lap. “But it doesn’t change things. You are a part of this family, now and always.”
“Oh, please!” Maris rolled her eyes. “You Devlins are all alike.” To the sergeant she said, “Get me out of here before the music begins to swell in the background. I can’t take another minute under this roof. I’d rather be in jail.”
“Well then, we’ll be more than happy to accommodate you.” The chief pointed to the door.
Without a backward glance, Maris was gone.
“Corri, I know this must come as a big shock,” India told her. “I know it must be hard to find out that the person you thought was your mother isn’t really.”
“No.” The word was muffled somewhere in the area of India’s shoulder.
“No, what, sweetie?” India asked the child.
“No, it’s not hard, that she’s not my mommy.”
India looked from August to Nick.
“You’re not upset to find out she’s not?”
“I’m
glad
that she’s not. She was scary.” Corri raised her head to look into India’s eyes. “Mommies are not supposed to be scary.”
“Did she scare you when she came into your room at night?”
“She didn’t!” August exclaimed.
India met her aunt’s eyes over the top of Corri’s head and nodded that it was, in fact, true.
“It scared me because she said if I told you that she was there, that she would make people come and take me away.” Corri lifted a teary face, and India’s heart nearly broke.
“Corri, no one can take you away. You belong to us. Ry adopted you, remember?” India cradled the child in her arms.
“But Ry died. She said they would take me and give me to someone else.”
“You are not going anywhere, Corri Devlin. I promise you that.” India kissed the top of her head and rocked the girl slowly in an ageless, maternal motion.
“Indy.” Corri sat up suddenly, as if something of great import had just occurred to her. “Little girls need to have a mommy.”
“This is very true.” India bit her lip, watching the old light begin to return to Corri’s face.
“You could be my mommy.” Corri twisted one of the buttons on the front of Indy’s nightshirt.
“I suppose I could.” India nodded, as if contemplating the possibility.
“And
you”
—Corri turned and pointed at Nick—“could be my daddy. Ollie said it’s better to have both.”
“Hmmmph.” Nick sat down next to them on the step, rubbed his chin thoughtfully and winked at her. “Ollie just might be on to something.”
“Corri, I think that we should—” India began.
“That we should all give this some thought and talk about it tomorrow.” Nick spoke as much to India as to Corri. “But right now, I think we should all go back to sleep. It’s been a very busy night for all of us.”
“Indy, would you tuck me in?” Corri asked.
“You betcha.” India held out her hand to the child.
“’Night, Nick.” Corri pressed a kiss to his cheek and started up the steps. “‘Night, Aunt August.” Corri covered a yawn with a small fist.
August patted the tangle of strawberry-blond curls as they passed her on the steps.
“Oh, the havoc that that woman caused in this family,” August said angrily as she went the rest of the way down the steps. “To think of what she did to my boy … what she did to that precious child … to Darla …”
“Well, there’s some consolation, somehow, in knowing that she’s not Corri’s mother.” Nick watched August pick up the fireplace poker and return it to its place in the sitting room.
“Hmmmmph,” August snorted. “No surprise there.
Non
generant aquilae columas.”
August locked the front door, then went to the back of the house to check the back door, leaving Nick standing in the hallway to translate on his own.
He smiled as the meaning became clear.
Eagles do not bear doves.
“I thought you might be down here.” Nick’s long legs covered the short distance from the top of the dune to India’s spot at its base in two strides.
She patted the space beside her on the sand and he sat down.
“I love it here this time of the year.” She sat with her elbows resting on her upraised knees. “I love all of it—the
bay, the marshes, the tiny islands out in the inlet, the lighthouse. I love all of it, all of the time.”
A slight breeze bent over a broken stalk of goldenrod that had, in late summer, graced the dune with color. Its flowers long dried and browned, the grayed wand waved along the sand, leaving a trail of tiny swirls to mark where it had been. India picked at the dried seed head.
“It won’t be long before the dune will be all greened up again.” She pointed to the yellow clumps of beach grass, the ragged little stand of bayberry with their scrawny limbs, the sea rocket that the breeze rustled along the sand like tumbleweed.
He watched her face but did not offer comment. He liked watching that soft glow come over her eyes.
“It’s so peaceful here,” she went on, in a contented, lazy voice. “But in another month or so, the birds will be back to nest and to breed. It’s such a vital place.” She pointed in the direction of his cabin, but he knew she meant the salt marshes that lay next to it and behind. “Man has messed with the marshes in every conceivable way over the years. We’ve drained them, dredged them, redirected them, polluted them. But it always comes back. It has to. It’s too important a link in the food chain. It’s taken us hundreds of years to recognize what the Indians who lived here knew. Every tiny organism has its place. Every worm and every crustacean. They’re all part of the whole. And I love every bit of it.”
A lone gull swept down, low over the water, searching for a last meal in the late afternoon. The sky was just beginning to turn slightly darker, the palest blue easing deeper, the lavender light just taking the first steps toward fading to purple. In the distance, the lighthouse rose majestically, casting a serene shadow on the waters.
“I spoke with Chief Carpenter about an hour ago,” Nick told her. “It seems that even Maris’s marriage to Ry was a fake. They arranged for a phony justice of the peace to perform the ceremony. After she ‘drowned,’ she lived with Byers.”
“That’s the only bit of good news that’s come out of this mess.” India looked back toward the bay where the white-caps
chased each other to the shore. “That, and the fact that Maris is not Corri’s mother.”
“The worst of it’s over now.” Nick stroked the back of her hand with gentle fingers.
“It’ll never be over,” she told him. “Ry will always be dead.”
“We can’t change that, Indy. We can only move on.”
He desperately wanted to ask her about that, about where they’d be moving on to, and
when
, but he feared the answer. If she was to leave him soon, did he really want to know today, when her hair smelled of salt and the winter sun and her eyes looked like dusty lilacs just after a summer rain? Right now he wasn’t sure that he wanted to talk about the future and the hole she would leave inside him when she left.
“When I went into the office yesterday morning, I found an interesting bulletin on my desk.” She turned to him.
Nick’s stomach twisted, but he refused to blink.
“What was that?”
“A memo from the FBI. They picked up a man in Utah a few weeks back. He was living in a cabin in the mountains. They were led to him by a ten-year-old girl whom he had abducted. She got away.” India’s voice dropped to almost a whisper. “She found her way back to town. She was able to tell the police where the cabin was.”
Nick waited, wondering the significance.
“His name was Russell Tanner.” She swallowed hard.
“Russell Tanner?” Nick frowned, trying to recall if he had heard the name before. It was unfamiliar.
“He was a drifter. He drifted through Devlin’s Light once, back in 1979.”
“The man who killed your friend?” he asked.
India nodded. “Sooner or later, they all get careless. They take one victim too many, and they get caught. I’m only sorry that he was so careful for so very long. My heart breaks for all the pain he’s caused over the years.” She paused and took a deep breath. “There were bodies buried around the cabin. Five bodies. Five more girls like Lizzie who will never grow up.”
Nick massaged her shoulders, and she exhaled.
The drone of a boat’s engine disturbed the silence. Out across the bay, a Boston whaler headed toward the inlet and the marina on the other side.
“But there is some consolation.” She turned his face up to his.
“That he was finally caught?”
“That he was caught in Utah.” She smiled wryly. “Utah is the only state left that still uses a firing squad. Of course, legally they have to give him a choice between that and lethal injection. But we can always hope that he’ll be perverse and will opt for the firing squad. I’ve heard it happens sometimes.”
“What happens?” Nick continued the slow, easy kneading of the muscles on the back of her neck.
“That the convicted will choose the nastier means of dying, thinking that he’s making it more difficult for the executioners. Not that it would be hard to pull the trigger on him.” India dug absentmindedly in the sand with a broken piece of shell. “It wouldn’t bother me in the least to watch them put the hood over his head. Watch them pin the X on his chest to mark where his heart is. If in fact he has a heart.”
She watched a wild cat stalk an errant piece of sea grass that had blown toward the water. Nick sighed, wondering if the news from Utah had put to rest the demons that had stalked her for so many years. He took her hand and traced the outline of her fingernails with the tip of his index finger, asking nothing else from what was left of the day than to sit on the hard, cold sand, wrapped in winter clothes, watching the last traces of the day dip into the bay.
Finally, when he knew he had to, he asked, “What will you do now?”
“What do you mean?”
“Now that Ry’s killer has been caught …”
“It doesn’t change my plans.” She shrugged.
He exhaled sharply, his heart seeming to escape his body along with his breath.
“When will you be leaving?”
“Leaving?” She frowned.
“To go back to Paloma.”
India looked into his eyes and saw such sadness there.
Poor Nicky
, she thought.
He hasn’t figured it out yet.
“Your three months are almost up,” he reminded her.
“True.” She nodded and tried to look solemn.
“And Ry’s killer has been caught. And that’s why you took the leave, isn’t it? To find out who killed Ry?”