Safe Harbor (3 page)

She turned from the Lady of Fatima to her watchful husband, leaning helplessly, inexorably, to the left. "Is it okay if I say what it was, Jim?"

"We been through all that," he said, nodding permission.

"Okay. This engraving. It was an engraving. It was done by a man called Albrecht Durer. We looked him up. He died in 1528, so you know the engraving was old. It was of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. It wasn't very large, about the size of a sheet of notebook paper, but it had a frame just like the one on your photograph of that fishing boat
Sandra D.
wrecked on a beach—you know, the one in the Whaling Museum that I like so much? That was really nice of you, donating that one to them. The frame must've cost you a pretty penny alone. Whenever we take visitors there, I always—"

"
Ma
."

"Yes, yes. Anyway, Uncle Henry's will specifically said that we weren't supposed to—let me just get this right—'divulge ownership.' We
never did understand why. The lawyer couldn't tell us, and if I'm not mistaken, he wasn't supposed to divulge anything, either. I don't know if he ever did or not. I think he's dead now. We were confused by the whole thing, almost frightened. When we got the engraving home, we didn't know what to do with it. So we hid it in the attic."

"The attic!"

"Well, where did you expect me to keep it? The people in it were practically naked. A couple of leaves—that was
it!"

"Ma, they're Adam and Eve. Clothes weren't invented yet."

"I don't care who they are. How would that look, hanging something like that on the wall next to Our Lady? The attic is where we put it, and the attic is where it stayed."

In a softer voice she added, "In his will, Uncle Henry referred to the engraving as our 'nest egg.' That's what we thought it was, all these years."

Sam's knowledge of the sixteenth century artist was marginal, but he knew enough to realize that an engraving by Durer would be worth a considerable sum. He was afraid to pose the next question.

"Where is it now?"

His father grimaced
and said, "There's your sixty-
four thousand dollar question."

"We were watching
Antiques Roadshow,"
Millie went on. "You ever see it? I suppose not; you're not very big on television. My word, the money the stuff in your attic can be worth! They had this chair—it looked like a piece of junk and yet they said it might fetch thirty thousand dollars! You couldn't very well sit on it; it wouldn't hold a ten-pound puppy."

When his mother felt self-conscious, she babbled. Sam knew that, and yet it was all he could do not to scream
"
Eden
!
For God's sake, tell me about
Eden
!
"

Instead he made himself say calmly, "So you saw—something? On the
Antiques Roadshow?"

"They had another engraving by this same man Durer," his mother said. She covered her face with her hands and said in a muffled voice, "And it was worth more than a hundred thousand dollars."

That should have been good news to them. Great news.
Oh, damn. Oh, hell.

"What did
Eden
do with it?" Sam asked in a low and dangerous voice.

His mother shook her head. "We don't know. We don't know. Your pa and I decided it was a sign,
Eden
popping in l
ike that right after the
Roadshow.
We were still so excited. We told her all about it and showed her
our
Durer. We told her that we were faithful to Uncle Henry's wishes all these years, but that we surely needed to cash in our nest egg now if ever we did. We told her how amazed we were that it might be so valuable, but
Eden
wasn't surprised at all. She was so nice, so helpful
.
.. she knows a lot about art, you know. She's a very smart woman."

Sam's nod was grim. "I never said otherwise."

"She offered to take the engraving to
New York
and have it appraised," Millie continued, wincing from the stress of telling her tale. "She said she knew people. Oh, we said, she shouldn't go to the trouble. We said, maybe Sam would know someone, too. After all, he's a professional photographer, we said. She said, 'If you tell Sam about the Durer, he's bound to insist that you hold on to it and take money from him instead.' Well, we couldn't argue with that, could we?"

"When did she take it?"

"Three weeks ago."

"Three
weeks
—? And you're first telling me now? This is unbelievable," Sam moaned.
"
Damn
."
He slammed his hand on the tabletop and stood up so suddenly that the chair fell over backward on the shag carpeting.

"Oh, you're not going to get the way you get, are you, Sam? Oh, please don't. This is hard enough—"

"
Unbelievable
!" Sam paced the small room in self-absorbed fury. Of all the low-life scams that
Eden
had pulled, this had to be the lowest.
Eden
could spot a mark a mile away, and his parents were as naive and trusting as they came.

Which didn't go far to explain how he, the savvy and cynical Sa
m
Steadman, could have fallen for her like a clown with big feet. What a fool he'd been! Fool, fool, asshole fool! If it hadn't been for him, his parents wouldn't be sitting at their dining room table in a state of financial terror.

Fool!

He got himself under control enough to ask, "How long had she planned the appraisal to take?"

His mother shrugged. "She said she'd be in touch."

"You don't have an address or phone number, of course."

Both parents shook their heads. Millie said softly, "The number on the card she gave us isn't in service."

"Do you have any idea where she's been living? City? State?
Country,
for chrissake?" He couldn't help it; anger was flowing like hot lava from him, scorching his bystander parents in the process.

Millie bowed her head and murmured, "Jim remembers something about
Miami
. I thought she said
Memphis
. Is that any help?"

Sam sighed. "What about her car? What was she driving? Where were the plates from?"

"Jim didn't walk outside at the end, but her car was blue. It had a big carpeted trunk, I know that," said Millie. "I was nervous about the engraving getting damaged or stolen, but it looked real safe there."

Not pausing to observe the irony, Sam asked, "Did you see any evidence of luggage in her car? Trunks, suitcases, clothes on hangers?"

"No, not r—oh, wait. There was a duffel bag on the back seat. You know, like a sailor would use? I thought it looked a little sporty for
Eden
, because she's so very feminine. Maybe it belonged to someone else."

Just what we need; an accomplice.
Sam said, "Did
Eden
allude to anyone else? Maybe a man she's seeing?"

Surprising, how it smarted to ask that.

His mother said, "No. She didn't talk about anyone. We were commenting on that afterward. We think maybe she still has feelings
....
Well, anyway. No."

"Okay, apparently we're at a dead end, then," Sam decided, disgusted by the realization.

Amazingly, his mother seemed determined to believe the best instead of facing the worst. "It's probably taking longer than she thought to get the appraisal, that's all. She said it was a very important piece of art and that appraisals take a little while, you know. I wouldn't have raised all this hullabaloo at all, except Jim insisted we tell you."

She threw an accusing look at her husband, who said slowly, plaintively, "One of them mortgage people come by yesterday, Sam. How do the bastards know?"

"Dad, don't you dare take out a loan from those shysters," said Sam angrily. "Don't you dare. I'll take care of the bills until this gets cleared up."

"We have enough money," his mother insisted.

Yeah, right.

"I'd like to stay here tonight," he said, surprising his
parents. "Maybe you'll remember something."

Sam's plan was to canvas the neighbors the next morning and question them about
Eden
's car. The working-class neighborhood was fairly close-knit, full of porch-sitters with easy views through chain-link fences. Maybe someone had been sitting on a stoop and had recognized
Eden
from the old days; maybe they'd be able to recall a license. It was going to be humiliating, going door to door in search of
Eden
. Sam dreaded it, and yet he was flat out of any other ideas.

Until three
a.m
. That's when he bolted upright in the spindle bed that his father had painted Superman-blue shortly after they had taken him in.

Phone calls.

He clung to the possibility until he dropped off to sleep, and in the morning, over waffles and O.J., he said to his parents, "Did
Eden
make any long-distance phone calls while she was here?"

His mother, misinterpreting, said, "Well, yes. She would have used her calling card,
normally
, only there was some kind of problem with it. She said that she'd square up
w
ith us after we got the phone bill."

"All
right,"
he said, making a victory fist. "Now we're getting somewhere." It wasn't like
Eden
to be so careless; but then, the risk of a call being remembered was relatively small. "Has the bill come in?"

"Yesterday." Picking up on his enthusiasm, his mother hurried over to the Formica counter and brought the unopened bill to him. "I haven't even—"

Sam took his knife, still all buttery, and slid it under the flap. Heart hammering, he scanned the toll calls on it. There were half a dozen made to the same number—his mother's sister—and one to
Martha's Vineyard
.

Sam punched in the number and reached someone at a gallery called the Flying Horses.

He hung up. A faint glimmer of a smile, the first in twelve hours or so, hovered at the edges of his lips. He got up from the breakfast table and dropped a kiss on top of his mother's gray hair. "She didn't take off for
Germany
with it," he said. "That's something, at least."

Next stop:
Martha's Vineyard
.

A
fresh southwest wind was kicking up seas and slapping them against the sides of the ferry as it steamed through a fleet of sailboats scattered like daisy petals across the sound. Ahead lay
Martha's Vineyard
, blue-gray in the summer haze. Sam Steadman leaned on the starboard rail and squinted into the afternoon sun.

Yeah. This is more like it.

He had fled the cabin, which was crammed with August tourists and smelled like cheap food, for the open air of the upper deck. His work as a marine photographer had taken him aboard every conceivable type of vessel, from kayak to freighter, and always it was the same: the scent, the sight, the sound of the sea is what brought out the best in him. He took deep, long breaths of air, filling his lungs with its salty essence, and rued again the time he had to spend on shore.

Sam considered it one of life's great ironies that he wasn't cut out for a full-time job at sea. The long hours, brutal conditions, and sheer terror of a fisherman's life were not for him. Merchant Marine? Too many hours belowdecks. Navy? Coast Guard? Too many times in jail for that. Nope. Chronicler of seamen, that was what suited hirn.

He still remembered the day he held his first camera, an Instamatic, probably stolen, that at fourteen he'd bought for five bucks from a pal. The local paper had been sponsoring a cat photo contest, and even though Sam didn't have a cat, he knew where to find them: on the wharves, scrounging for rats and fish guts.

The photo he submitted, of a white cat sleeping hammock-style in the folds of a fishing net, took first place. He won a gift certificate for fifty dollars at JC
Penney and realized, for the first time, the difference between a job and a career.

Although his record as a human being remained spotty for the next few years, he kept up his interest in photography, and eventually he traded his Instamatic for a Canon, the Canon for a Nikon. Awards followed, and pretty good money, too, and all because Sam liked to hang out by the sea.

The sea.
He inhaled deep—for the moment, content.

A pair of lovers strolled by, hand in hand, and that brought Sam to thoughts of
Eden
. He had first met her on the waterfront. Friends had introduced them at a harbor fair in
Boston
, and they had hit it off immediately. Both of them, it turned out, liked fried clams, French rum, and calypso. It was only later that he learned that if it suited her purposes,
Eden
could feign an appetite for a plate of rotting goat innards.