Safe Harbor (20 page)

No, that's so selfish. I don't hate him; how can I hate him? He's my father.

She stopped in confusion.
But—oh, I might hate him, I don't know. I might.

"Holly—"

"Ai!" she said, startled from her re very by the tap on her shoulder.

She swung around to see Louis Bouchard, a retired partner from her father's firm, clutching his cane as he wheezed his way through a heartfelt and awkward expression of sympathy.

"How is your mother holding up, Holly?" the kindly old man said after an endless string of
terribles.
"I've wanted to come by with a bag of sweet millions for her. I know Judy sent a note, but I wanted to bring tomatoes, anyway. The reason I haven't is that I feel as if it's my fault, somehow, and that
Charlotte
would rather not see me."

"Your
fault, Mr. Bouchard!"

He nodded and leaned on his cane, looking terribly sad, terribly remorseful. His hazel eyes, rimmed by sagging lids, stared forlornly at her from under a brow that was deeply splotched from years of tending vegetables in the bright island sun.

"Here's the way I see it," he said. "I've been thinking about it a lot. If I hadn't raved about the island all those years ago to your father
... if I hadn't invited him to bring the family, those first few summers
... if I hadn't handed him access to
a
boat that made him fall in love with sailing—if I hadn't done any of those things, your father would not have bought a house on the island. And all of this never would have happened."

"You can't blame yourself, Mr. Bouchard," Holly said, seeing yet another casualty of the sorry affair. How such a sweet, kind old man could feel even remotely responsible
.
...

She tried to relieve his guilt. "Every day we make a hundred different choices that affect our destinies. At least! My father's decision to take you up on your invitation was just one of many, many choices he made back then."

The lawyer smiled and said, "That's very wise, Holly. Although I can't help feeling that Eric's decision to pitch his tent on the Vineyard was more significant than whatever car he decided to go with that year."

She laughed. He was right, of course.

He touched a finger to the tip of her nose, as if she were still eight years old. "You remember how you kids used to hunt for worms in the compost pile? Those were good times
... good times
..
. and now
...
terrible," he said, coming full circle to his opening speech.

"We'll all get through this, Mr. Bouchard. Somehow."

"Do
you think your mother'd enjoy the sweet millions?"

"I
... don't know, to be honest. I haven't seen her make a salad lately."

He made a face. "What, salad. Cut 'em up, that's all. Or don't even bother; just pop 'em in your mouth like strawberries, that's how sweet they are. It's been a hot, dry summer. We've got a bumper crop."

"Yes, all right. That's very thoughtful of you. Well, I guess I—" Not knowing how to ask him tactfully what was really on her mind, she simply blurted it out. "Is my dad staying with you?"

The old man looked surprised. "Of course. You didn't know that?"

She shook her head, embarrassed to be so out of touch. "The
Vixen
returned without him."

"That's why I'm down here. Eric asked me to retrieve his reading glasses from the boat. They're prescription, you know; he can't get another pair very quickly."

"He sent
you
down for that?"

"You can see why he would, child," he said with a note of impatience.

She wanted to scream, "No, I
don't
see! Let him retrieve his own stupid glasses!" But the word "child" smarted. It came too soon after the phrase "Lucky Charms."

"They won't let you aboard," she said, trying to sound very adult and matter-of-fact. "A forensic team is going over the boat right now."

"Oh, well. I'm here. I'll give it a try."

With a hopeful smile he leaned forward as if into the teeth of a gale and soldiered on, an eighty-something litigator who until then had never had to involve himself in anything more violent than an unseemly fight over a property line.

Waiting his turn in what was euphemistically called the "library" (there were bookshelves), Sam nursed a cup of coffee until it got cold and he didn't want it anymore. He was bored but not impatient. Being at the beck and call of the justice system was nothing new; as a kid, he'd often sat in a zonal trance in family court while social workers and advocates huddled nearby, trying to decide what the hell to do with him.

He remembered vividly his appearance in court after stealing the drug-dealer's speedboat and wrecking it on the rocks in Woods Hole. Apparently his bold exploits had created a buzz: one of the social workers had come up to him with a wry smile and said, "In all my years at this, I've never seen a ten-year-old hijack a Cigarette before. What's next? The
Queen Mary?"

Sam smiled in recollection; he liked that guy. A lot. Joe Doxie was one of the reasons that Sam—eventually—turned away from a life of crime. The other reason was Millie Steadman. A wise-guy social worker and a tenacious foster mother—they were the one-two punch of savvy and tough love that a punk like Sam had so desperately needed. Even then, it had taken a life- altering event before Sam was finally ready, at seventeen, to begin turning his life around.

Sam propped his elbows on the long conference table and stared out the windows, musing about criminal minds and psychopaths, con artist and murderous lovers, until he realized that he'd drifted into a dank and dreary place. With a conscious effort he paddled out of the sewer of his thoughts and ended up, surprisingly, in the clear river rapids of the always exciting, much too excitable Holly Anderson.

That kiss! He didn't want to think about it. What
had
he been thinking, pulling an unsuspecting woman into his arms and kissing the breath out of her? Come to think of it, she could easily have him up on assault. He wouldn't half blame her.

That kiss. The way she returned it
... the way he, hmm, sprang to attention
... that kiss! Where had it come from? He puzzled over that kiss, mulled over how good it had felt, until he found himself paddling furiously out of
those
dangerous waters as well. Nope. He had absolutely no desire to go over the falls in a barrel.

He went back to staring at the swaying trees and concentrated on the upcoming interview. Sam had been through interviews and interrogations more than once before. He knew that an investigating officer could choose to play a good cop or a bad one, depending on the witness. Sam's guess was that with
Charlotte
, Cottier had been a sympathetic cop who had moved out from behind his desk and had talked to her as any family man would talk to a woman who had been publicly humiliated by her no-good shit of a husband.

But someone as proud as Charlotte Anderson would never descend to accepting sympathy. She wouldn't admit to humiliation, and certainly not to resentment or vindictiveness. One-word answers and brief phrases, that's all that Cottier was likely to have got out of her, no matter how understanding he seemed.

Which meant that the officer would be waiting with heightened interest and bated breath to hear anything that Sam had to say.

Finally the chief walked in, carrying a laptop and a printout. Sam had little doubt that they held his criminal history, but the look that Cottier gave him was one of pure civility.

"Before we begin—get you some coffee?" he asked, holding up his own mug
.

"I'm fine, thanks."

"This time of day, I hit a wall unless I have a shot of caffeine." Pulling out a molded chair, he said in an affable tone, "Hey, I understand that you're a pretty well-known marine photographer."

"Marine photographer, yes. Well-known, probably not."

"You have a book. That's impressive. I've never been much with a camera myself. Point 'n' shoot, that's me."

"No pun intended, I hope."

Cottier
grinned and said, "I dunno. Don't they say all puns are intentional on some level?"

Sam nodded. First round to the chief.

"As you can imagine, I'm interested in what Miss Anderson had to say earlier about you and Eden Walker," Cottier said, sliding his keyboard into position. "Very interested." He explained that he was going to take a few notes and that he was going ask Sam to read them over afterward and sign them, if that was all right with Sam.

It was all right with Sam.

Cottier slid a pair of reading glasses over his nose and began to hunt and peck his way through a series of routine biographical questions that Sam dutifully answered. It was all in the computer, anyway.

Furrowing his brow in an apparent hunt for some missing key, the chief said, "Okay, now, let's see... have you ever had any previous contact with the law? You know, traffic court, stuff like that, or been arrested for any other offenses?"

Sam squared his shoulders
against the back of his chair. His elbows had nowhere to go; his hands gripped the tops of his thighs. Try as he might, he couldn't help tapping the soles of his shoes alternately on the floor: old habits died hart.

"
I was what used
to be called," he said with a wry smile, "
a juvenile de
linquent."

"Uh-huh," said
C
ott
i
er, studiously hunting and pecking. "Mind telling
m
e what sort of offenses?" he asked without looking up.

Sam felt the mu
s
cles of his jaw working. "Stealing, mostly."

"Uh-huh. Big stuff? Little stuff?"

"Some of each.
A
car. A boat. Rosaries."

"No shit," said the chief. He looked up from his keyboard. "Rosaries?"

"They weren't for me. At one point I had foster parents who put me in
a
Catholic school. I sold the rosaries at half price to the kids in my class. It was a captive market."

Sam was seven when he took the rosary—one rosary. He gave it to a girl he had a crush on. But he felt like being outrageous with Cottier, he didn't know why.

The chief had no intention of yielding authority by giving in to a smile. He said blandly, "Okay, let's move on. I assume you know the situation: Eden Walker was reported missing after going windsurfing off the
Vixen,
Eric Anderson's yacht. Her body has not been recovered,
although given the tide and current direction, that isn't surprising. What I want to know from you is—just let me get this question in the computer—do you have any personal knowledge of Eric Anderson?"

"No, not at all."

"Mm-hmm. Ever done business with him or been at the same event as him?"

"Nope."

"All right." Tap, tap, tap went the keys. "Do you have any mutual acquaintances that you know of?"

"Obviously:
Eden
Walker
."

"Right. Okay, then, how do you know her, if not through Eric Anderson?"

Showtime.

"I was married to her for about a year before she split."

The tap-tap-tapping stopped. Cottier lifted his head, and there was nothing even remotely amused in the calm look he bestowed on Sam. "Married, were you? Okay," he said, going back to the keyboard. "How long ago was that?"

"She left about seven years ago."

"And this was after a year of marriage," he said, tapping quickly. "The reason for the breakup, that would be...?"

"She never gave me a reason. She just left."

"And you haven't seen her since then?"

"Nope."

"But somehow she got hold of this, uh, engraving of your parents. How did that happen?"

"About three years ago,
Eden
started dropping in occasionally to visit my parents, apparently because she needed money—"

"And you approved of this arrangement?"

"I didn't approve or disapprove. I didn't know."

"Ah. Your parents lent her money on the Q.T., is that it?"

"That's it."

"So she took the engraving three years ago?"

"No. She took it a few weeks ago. My parents waited awhile before they called me."

"Miss Anderson mentioned that your parents were devastated by the loss. Is that your recollection?"

"I think they were but tried not to show it."

"These are your adoptive parents?"

"That's correct."

"Their names?"

"James and Mildred Steadman."

"Do you have a good relationship with them?"