Safe Harbor (16 page)

"No, never.
Eden
lived in the apartment above the barn next door. But she's moved out. Permanently. Sorry." Her voice was higher-pitched now, with a note of panic in it.

"You're Holly Anderson, right?" he said through a newly venemous squint. "Her friend?"

Holly wouldn't say yes and wouldn't say no. "
Eden
's dead," she blurted. "Drowned."

"Bullshit, dead!" he snapped. His hand gripped the door as she tried to slam it shut.
"Where is she?"

"No one knows; you have to believe me! The Coast Guard are searching for her now, right now," she stammered. "Call them, see for yourself."

"You're her friend, you're in this with her. You think I can't see that?"

He was near enough for her to smell the stench of his breath. She wanted to run, but her instincts told her to stand fast: if she turned away, he'd surely chase after her.

"If she
is
alive," she said in desperation, "I'll let you know right away. I will. Just tell me who you are and where to call."

He snorted, a brutish, animal sound, and said, "Tell her I'll be back."

"How can I, when she's—"

"Tell her.
Or I'll be back to see why not."

He gave the door a sudden, vindictive push. The bottom stile dug into her bare foot, sending a bolt of agony through her. Holly sucked back a cry of pain, then slammed the door shut and locked it as he turned away. Limping, she ran to the back door and frantically jiggled the doorknob button into its locked position as well. By
the time she remembered to race back to the front window and look for a license plate, the car had pulled out of view.

She was shaking, half with fear and half with pain. All this, because of
Eden
! It didn't seem possible that one woman could blow up that many bridges in such a short time. She was a relationship terrorist, and Holly for one had had enough. Was
Eden
dead? Good damn riddance!

Go to the police. Tell them everything you know. About Sam Steadman; about the man in brown. Tell them lots of people are after
Eden
. Let the police figure it out. That's their job.

It was the reasonable thing to do—unless it somehow ended up tightening the noose around her father's neck. Paralyzed by a fear of making a wrong move, Holly held an ice-filled towel on the arch of her foot and tried to think things through. There was absolutely no point in running off half-cocked and endangering her father unnecessarily.

Damn you, Dad. What a fool you've been.

She wanted to call her sister but couldn't. Wanted to call her mother but wouldn't. Didn't even
know
where her brother was—somewhere in the south Pacific on a research vessel. She had friends on the Vineyard, but not the kind you told your deepest, darkest secrets to. There was no one—no one
—who could help her through her
dilemma.

Except Sam.

Sam was the obvious, miserable, infuriating, appallingly perfect choice. He could keep a confidence. He knew
Eden
. He was close to other people who had been hurt by her. He was smart and presentable and had a clear notion of justice, and the police would give more credence to him than they would to any daughter of a suspect. Events were swirling around Holly, and she needed to hold onto something: any old flotsam or jetsam would do.

Even Sam.

Still, there was no point in grieving over his absence, so Holly came up with a plan of her own. One, call the Coast Guard to verify that
Eden
was indeed the subject of their search. If the answer was yes, then two, call the police and tell them about the visit from the man with the gold tooth whose name she didn't know.

And Sam?

The hell with him; she'd tell the cops about him, too. Of course, Holly couldn't tell them where
he
was, either. How ridiculous. All these men with no addresses. They were like drifting souls on an alien planet. Whatever had happened to the notion of hearth and home? What was it about a sweet and cozy house on l
and that made men want to run—
sail, fly, whatever—away from it as fast as they could? Jerks! They were all jerks.

She went into her sweet and cozy living room with its sweet and cozy hearth and reluctantly closed and locked the oversized windows, stilling the sheer curtains in the middle of their merry waltz. The sheers became sullen; the fun was over.

If I had someone living here, that gold-toothed guy wouldn't dare try anything funny.

If I had a man, that guy wouldn't dare.

If I had Sam...

If.

She plucked the insidious thought from her musings the way she would a weed that was hiding under her perennials: ruthlessly. Sam was gone. So what? She didn't need Sam.
Clearly
he didn't need her.

Still resentful, still jumpy, she went around and locked every other window on the first floor—just in case. When she heard a car approach over the noisy crushed shells, her reaction was one of knee-jerk panic.

Snatching her phone as if it were a gun, she ran to the window with it and peeked outside, ready to punch in 911. There sat a Corolla, red this time.

Who would have thought that the sight of a Corolla could launch her on a rocket ride? Holly watched with rising joy as Sam got out
, paused to look at her rented-
but-someday-mortgaged hearth and home, shook his head, and approached the front door.

She got there before he did, and threw it wide open.

"Well—look who's back," she said, trying to sound the way she did not feel. "Percy Billings."

W
ith a wry smile, Sam said, "Hey, kiddo. How's it
goin'?" .

"Never a dull moment. If you're here for the crab salad, I ate it all."

"
That's all right. It would
have gone bad."

"Things do, left unattended."

His answer was a puzzled, painfully attractive smile.

So that's what charisma looks like
, Holly thought: a loopy smile in a handsome face that made the heart soar and then plunge like an ill-managed kite. Who needed that? All in all, she could do just fine without charisma.

"Are you going to ask me inside?"

"Do you have wounds that need tending?"

"Nope. For the moment I'm shipshape," he said, still smiling.

"Then why
are
you here?"
To see me, to see me. Say it.
The kite began climbing in a dizzying spiral.

"I ran into a brick wall in
Boston
, so I thought I'd backtrack a little and start from where I left off. Which is to say, here."

Nosedive. "She hasn't come back, if that's what you mean."

"I didn't think she had. Not alone, anyway. But sooner or later your father has to bring the
Vixen
back to his dock. When he does, I'll be there waiting."

"What do you plan to do? Perch on a pole like a seagull?"

Again the smile; up went the kite.

"Not if I can find a place to rent."

Up and up and up. "If you mean the place I think you mean, it's all but spoken for. I showed the apartment to five waitresses last night, and they loved it. They're coming by tonight with a deposit."

He had just one word to say to that. "Five?"

"It's the only way they can afford the rent. They promised to be as quiet as butterflies."

"Did you check out their references?"

"They didn't have any; this is their first place."

He laughed out loud at that. "You're new at this landlord stuff, I see."

"Not at all," she said dryly. "You'll recall that I rented to
Eden
. I figure I have nowhere to go but up."

The smile softened into something like commiseration. "Don't rent to them."

"I need the money."

"I have the money. Rent to me."

"Sam, I can't," she said in anguish, even as that kite soared ever higher. "Things have happened. You don't know." What was she
doing,
yammering on about the apartment? "Something's happened.
Eden
is missing. It doesn't look good. My father's being questioned. And a man was here, looking for
Eden
. He was some kind of thug. I'm just on my way to the police station. You didn't notice the Coast Guard helicopter, either, I'll bet," she said, finishing up on a dizzying note.

Sam blinked and tried to take it all in, then gestured inside. "Do you mind if we sit down?"

Holly suddenly realized that she'd been barring the door to him. "I'm sorry," she said, stepping back to let him. "New force of habit."

She led him into her locked-up living room and opened all the windows again before taking a seat opposite him in front of that brick hearth that she loved so well. The firebox was in hibernation now, hiding behind a copper screen painted over with bright red poppies, deep purple irises, and lacy green ferns. The painted firescreen was Holly's first effort—not as good as some that she had done since then on commission, but much more beloved.

Books and magazines and sketches were heaped in sliding piles on the battered seaman's chest that sat foursquare in front of the slipcovered sofa, confined to shore duty for now. A gust of wind sent some sketches tumbling like rose petals onto the rag rug, adding to the sense of cheery disarray.

Sam seemed to take in the room and then dismiss it, which made Holly wince. One woman's clutter is another man's litter, she supposed. He was probably one of those minimalist types. She hated minimalism.

"From the beginning," he said.

She related the news, if that's what it was, that Marjory had delivered about Eric and Eden—only without the pregnant pauses, raised eyebrows, and cheap dramatic tricks to which her mother's friend had resorted. Holly was entirely adult about it, entirely calm. But when she was done she yielded briefly to a shudder of stressed-out sobs.

"I'm sorry," she said, pulling herself back out of her emotional tailspin. She plucked a tissue from a nearby
b
ox and blew her nose. "
This is just such an unbelieva
ble, ongoing
... disaster."

Sam had let her speak, sob, and apologize, all without interruption. It was unnerving. "Aren't you going to say something?" she asked.

"I don't believe it."

"Of course not. None of us does. But that's where all the evidence points—and then there's my mother's dream."

"About?"

"
Eden
. It was horrible. I've never seen my mother so terrified in my life." Holly described the nightmare In a few terse phrases, then added, "My mother has always had premonitions that way. The night that my uncle in
Phoenix
died in his sleep, she dreamed that she was packing a suitcase with black clothes, including a hat with a black veil like Jacqueline Kennedy wore. Five years ago, at the exact same moment that my grandmother had a fatal
heart attack, my mother started
up from a deep sleep during a vacation in
California
with a melody going through her head: it was the melody from
Doctor Zhivago,
my grandmother's favorite song in the world."

"It means your mother had fears for their health," Sam said quietly. "That's all."

Holly shook her head. "Both deaths were unexpected," she argued. "There have been other dreams, lesser dreams, but they've been just as eerily on the mark. My mother gets devastating migraines afterward. Believe me, this isn't exactly a
gift
that she has."

Sam hardly heard her. For a long moment he sat with a look of intense concentration on his face. And then he jumped—exploded, really—out of his chair.

"No way! No way! This is too much like
Eden
. This is exactly the kind of stunt she'd pull."

"Really? She'd do something like that?" He may as well have told Holly that there really was a Santa Claus.

"Absolutely," he said. He grabbed the mantel with both hands and leaned into it as if he wanted to push it through the wall. "She's not dead," he muttered at the floor. "She's
not
dead! She can't be!"

Holly stared at him. She didn't want
Eden
to be dead, either, but
... some of the oppressiveness returned, she didn't know why.

"Tell me about this thug," Sam said without turning around. "Was he tall and thin or short and fat?"

"Tall. He didn't look thin to me."

"Did he tell you his name?"

"No. He had a gold tooth."

"Stefan Koloman!
Damn
, what was he doing here?"