Luanne Rice (28 page)

“Marlena,”
he said.

“Not at all
grand, not what you would expect of a house called Rose Gables, but it was the
first home of my own. The very first place I ever bought on my own. And I did
it, after the divorce.”

“That’s a
good story, but—”

“And I got
so much support from all my friends, my darling friends the Nanouks.”

“The what?”
he asked, wondering why that name sounded so familiar.

Marlena
opened and closed the oven door. He heard the air escaping as she opened a bag
of chips. The lid of a jar was unscrewed. A moment later, she entered the
dining room bearing a tray. On it was an embroidered cloth, a vase holding a
single white rose, and a plate covered by a second embroidered cloth.

Whipping
off the cloth, Marlena said, “Voilà!”

Patrick
stared down at his dinner: a grilled cheese sandwich, pickles, and some
barbecue potato chips.

“Wow,” he
said. Was she kidding? For the first time, he wondered whether he had wandered
into the Nova Scotia version of the Bates Motel. Or maybe she was like the
crazy lady in
Misery
. The sandwich
looked good, so he ate it—quickly. Maybe she really was proud of her grilled
cheese sandwiches … but he thought the protestations about her food versus the
inn’s
were a little odd.

“Very
good,” he said. “Thank you. Okay, I’m going to head over to the inn now—”

“Would you
like to listen to the baseball game?” she asked, sounding manic and a little
desperate. “Or would you like me to play the recorder? I like it very much—I
played it as a child and have been practicing ever since my divorce. Oh—or I
could show you my needlework! I know most men don’t care about—”

Before he
could stop her, she had whipped out a bag of sewing, or something. He looked at
the mesh, the yarn, the whatever. Marlena’s needlework reminded him of
something, but he didn’t know what. Even less, he wasn’t sure why he opened his
mouth and said, “What did you say earlier?
The Nanouks?
What are they?”

“A tribe of
ancient warrior women,” she
said,
her face ashen.
“From right here in Nova Scotia.
They dressed in the aurora
borealis, seaweed, and mother-of-pearl, and they hunted the cliffs and bays,
and they survived every ice age that came their way.”

“And
they’ve helped you recover from your divorce?” he asked, staring at her
needlework, suddenly getting a very clear picture as the music played.

“Yes,” she
said defiantly.

“You’re
lying to me, aren’t you, Marlena?”

“I am not
lying. They helped me.”

“You know
Mara Jameson, don’t you?” he asked.

Marlena
Talbot didn’t reply, but her reddening face and the angry tears in her eyes
told him all he needed to know. Patrick Murphy grabbed the picture and his car
keys, and he stalked out of Rose Gables.

When he got
to his car, he grabbed for his cell phone. There was one person he had to
call—to tell her how close he was to tracking down Mara. Someone who had known
where she was all along—he was now sure of it. Hearing the word “Nanouk” made
it all so clear. He dialed the number he knew by heart, ready to rip into
her—but she didn’t pick up, and he got the machine instead.

“Hello,”
said the woman’s voice. “I’m not here right now, but if you’ll leave your name
and number, I’ll call you back as soon as I can.”

From the
very first time he’d heard it, Patrick had told Maeve she should change her
message. She should have a man’s voice on the machine—or at least say “we”
instead of “
I’m
not here right now.”
But just try getting Maeve to do anything.

“Maeve,” he
said. “It’s Patrick Murphy. There’s something I have to say to you. I’ll call
you later. But—I may have good news soon,” he said. And he hung up, thinking
that, of course, Maeve already knew that.

Chapter 24

S
ecret Agent had been checking every day, trying
to beat back the tide of trouble caused by White Dawn. The whole message board
was filled with threads titled “Secret Agent Stole My Money!” or things like
that. Ever since White Dawn’s post about checking the NOAA weather map, the
whole SpiritTown message board had realized that Secret Agent’s sister lived
many miles south of the storm track and that her house couldn’t possibly have
been destroyed—or even badly damaged. And everyone wanted their money back.

Many thoughts
ran through Secret Agent’s mind. How could he have missed checking the path of
Hurricane Catherina? He thought of all the people who were homeless, injured,
just waiting for aid from the disaster relief fund. Why couldn’t he have gotten
better information?

The bitch
had shamed him in the eyes of the message board. Whoever she was, she was as
bad as his wife.
Always blowing the whistle on him, spoiling
his projects.
No matter how hard he tried, it had never been good enough
for her. Just like White Dawn—ruining his plans.
And his
reputation.
He had carefully constructed the whole thing, and White Dawn
had brought it down like a house of cards.

What if
Secret Agent had really had a sister—and what if she had really lost her house
in a severe hurricane? All it took was one vindictive bitch to take the candy
cane away. Take the goodwill away. Take the money right out of homeless
people’s hands. All that money Secret Agent had collected—what if he had really
sent it to his sister? These were the kinds of issues a vindictive bitch had no
idea about.

White Dawn.

He signed
onto the board, clicked onto her profile. What he saw gave him a start. Before,
when he had looked, she had nothing listed there. Now he saw that she had
filled in a name:

“Patty
Nanouk.”
Patricia—that was his wife’s real name.
Could
it really be her? Out there in cyberspace, bringing him down? And what did
“Nanouk” mean?

He scrolled
a few lines down, to the place where it said “occupation.” Then he read what
she—White Dawn, Patty Nanouk, whoever she was—had written:

“Crusader for justice against psychopathic con men.”

It was her.
It really was. How often had she called him a psychopath? And how often had he
tried to soothe her, telling her that yes—he was one, it was true. But that was
just because of his terrible, abusive childhood. No one had ever, ever loved
him as she
did,
no one else was capable of healing him
as she was.

He was
getting therapy, he had told her. He was going to workshops. There was help
available—he was trying to get better. Didn’t she understand that? Was she
willing to just walk away—throw it all away? Destroy him in the process?
Because if she did, then she was no better than he was. In fact, she was worse.

He couldn’t
help who he was. Depression was an accepted illness, and so was what he had. He
wanted to love her, and he was trying—but being a psychopath was hard. When
they said he had no conscience or empathy, well, that just wasn’t true. He did
have empathy. He felt things. Deep in his soul, he felt the pain of being an
abused child, and of what that made him. It kept him from all the pleasure he
should have as an adult—as a husband or father. He grieved for himself!

How could
they say he had no empathy?

Well, fuck
White Dawn, Patty Nanouk, and his wife. He wondered whether they were all the
same person. Honestly, he didn’t really care. He had porn open at the same
time, and he was in an incest survivor’s chat room with a girl he’d met online
last night, and he was totally over what had happened at SpiritTown.

Over it.
There were plenty of other message boards out
there, plenty of other bleeding hearts with too much money and a need to give
it away—and Secret Agent had a PayRight account.

No more
“Secret Agent” for him. That name was toast. From now on, at least until he
found an interesting prospect that required a more creative handle, he’d just
go by “Edward.”

Patrick
finally made it back to the Cape Hawk Inn, just as the sun was setting over the
harbor. The last of the whale boats was steaming back to the dock, leaving a
wake of silver out behind. The big lightbulb going on about Maeve had thrown
him into a dark sadness—he had thought they trusted each other.

He felt a
tug to walk down to the water, get aboard a boat. He didn’t like having ground
beneath his feet for too long—he needed the feel of a deck, and the waves
rocking. He hoped that Flora was okay without him, guarding the
Probable Cause
along with Angelo. More
than anything, he hoped he would have this case solved for good by the end of
the night.

Pushing
those thoughts from his mind, he again climbed the porch steps to the inn.
Inside, the lobby was lively. Strains of Celtic music wafted down the hall from
the bar. People dressed for dinner walked in and out of the formal dining room.
Waiters served drinks by the lobby fireplace, which was crackling with a fire.
Even though it was July, the northern air had a slight chill.

The minute
he stepped through the door, he noticed a semicircle of women looking over at
him. The woman who had first greeted him—and sent him to Rose Gables—stood out
front, and he made his way across the room to her. The women behind her were
not smiling.

“Well,
well,” he said. “If it isn’t the lady who told me there was no room at the inn.
I really have to thank you—sending me along to Casa de Grilled Cheese. That was
a clever diversion.”

“Marlena
sends her apologies. I really caught her up short. She’s quite an excellent
cook, but I didn’t give her enough notice. I’m sorry.”

He ignored
the apology. “Is there really a Camille Neill?”

“There is.
I’m her daughter-in-law, Anne Neill.”

“So, that
part’s true.”

“Yes. I’m
sorry to say, though, that she really is asleep right now. She’ll be up
tomorrow morning. You can ask her anything you want then.”

“Why are
you stonewalling me,” he asked, “when it’s obvious that you know Mara Jameson?”

“How is it
obvious?” Anne asked. She was tall and elegant, and she had a lot of practice
dealing with people. Working at an inn, she probably had to handle lots of
drunks and jerks. But Patrick’s patience was pretty thin right now.

“Lady,”
Patrick said, trying to stay polite, “it’s obvious because your eyes
practically jumped out of your face when you saw her picture. And because you
sent me on a wild-goose chase to poor Marlena’s house—what the hell do you know
about me? What if I were a serial killer? I’m a total stranger, and you sent me
to your friend’s house to take a freaking nap.
Oh—and because
she told me about the Nanouks.”

“Excuse
me?” Anne asked, and it was echoed by several of the women standing behind her,
glaring at Patrick with daggers.

“The Nanouks.
She said the Nanouks got her through her
divorce, and then I knew.”

“And just
what do you think you know?” one of the other women asked.

“She told
me they’re a tribe of warrior women,” he said.
“Some ancient
crew of women who wear the dawn and sunset or something like that.”

“Ancient,”
one of the other women said, chuckling.

“The aurora
borealis, not the dawn and sunset,” someone else corrected.

“
We’re
the Nanouks,” Anne explained.
“We’re a club of friends.”

“Friends?”
he said, gazing across their heads at a poster advertising whale-watch
cruises—with the outline of a whale’s tail flaring out of the sea.

“Yes,” she
said. “We support each other.”

Patrick
frowned, puzzled. If that was true … he put it all together with the
embroidered glasses case that he had seen at Maeve’s. Just a small thing,
always on her side table, with her stack of books—the eyeglass case had a cream
background, with the word “Nanouk” done in block letters, in several different
shades of blue yarn. And the very faint outline of a whale’s tail, the stitches
wearing out.

“If that’s
true,” he said, “then I believe that Mara Jameson is a member of your club.”

“We don’t
know any Mara Jameson,” Anne said as Patrick began to pass her picture around
the group.

“You may
not know her by that name,” he said. “But she’s here, I know it. And she has a
nine-year-old daughter.”

Marisa and
Jessica sat in Anne’s office, off the lobby, watching everything through the
glass door. Anne had warned Marisa about the detective’s visit. She had
intercepted Marisa and Jess earlier, when they had arrived with the latest
batch of pine pillows. Because of the confusion—having a retired police officer
here, looking for a woman who had disappeared nine years earlier—Anne had
called a meeting of the Nanouks, to decide what to do.

Some of the
women, having been victims of domestic violence, had had bad run-ins with the
police and courts. The legal system didn’t understand the problem. They would
look at a handsome, well-spoken man like Ted, and at a shrieking, dissembling
woman like Marisa, and more often than not, they would believe the man.

Once Marisa
went to court to ask for a restraining order against him—but since she didn’t have
any physical evidence of beatings, and since his threats were over ten hours
old, the judge had refused to grant an order. Marisa had left, trembling. How
could she explain that she was in so much shock, she could hardly remember the
details of what he had said, the terror of having him hold her by the hair and
tell her that if she ever tried to run away from him, he’d track her down and
make her daughter suffer?

Marisa knew
that some of the Nanouks—older, wiser, and more recovered than Marisa—had had similar
experiences with the police. Anne knew it too, and hadn’t wanted to make any
decisions without consulting with everyone. And Marisa had certainly needed her
friends’ advice, regarding the best tack to take.

“If you
tell him, maybe Ted will go to jail,” Jessica said, peeking out the window.

“Or maybe
he won’t,” Marisa said.

“He killed
Tally.”

“I know,
honey.”

“And he
said he’d hurt us.”

“Exactly.
That’s why I want to be careful. Telling on Ted
isn’t necessarily safe.”

“You mean
people might not believe us?”

“Yes,”
Marisa said. But she couldn’t look Jessica straight in the eye as she said it.
She no longer felt sure about that. Back when she had first run away, she had
been so afraid—a quivering wreck of her former self. But she had had the guts
to pack up her daughter, take her to safety. Over the last month, she had made
friends with these great women, and they had believed her—every single one of
them.
Making Marisa finally able to believe in herself.

“What would
be so bad, telling?” Jessica asked. “We’ve already told the Nanouks our real
names. We could go right out there and tell the policeman. And he could arrest
Ted.”

“Hmm.”

“We could
see our friends, back home. Aunt Sam … I wouldn’t want to leave Cape Hawk for
good—I’d miss Rose too much. But Mommy—don’t you want to be able to go home
again?
If we want to?”

“Yes,”
Marisa said quietly, missing her old life so much she ached.

“So do
I
. Let’s go out there, Mommy.”

“Are you
sure? Are we doing the right thing?”

Her
daughter looked at her, long and hard. She tilted her head, touched Marisa’s
cheek. Her eyes were pleading with her, and Marisa could read the message even
before Jessica said it out loud.

“You’re the
mother,” she said. “You have to decide.”

And Marisa
knew she was right. She kissed the top of her daughter’s head, took a deep
breath, and because she was the mother, opened the office door.