Safe Harbor (35 page)

Billy snorted and said, "Might the picture be out of focus because, duh, you're still married?"

"What, because a shitty little piece of paper says so?"

"Either that, or it's Eden herself who's holding you back."

"No.
I can't believe that."

"Why the hell not? She's got you, man. She won't let go. Geez. A vampire has less of a hold on his victims than she has on you."

"That's pure bullshit," Sam snapped. "I told you, I'm done with
Eden
. Done with her bullshit cons and her bullshit cruelty and her bullshit
... bullshit," he said, growling to a halt. "She's finally got herself the sugar daddy she's wanted all along. End of story."

"Sugar daddy, my ass. You said the poor sucker's an accountant."

"Lawyer. Real estate."

"Whatever. The point is, do I detect a certain jealousy, Sammy, my friend?"

"Not at all."

Billy sighed and said, "You gotta confront her, man. You gotta find out how you feel about her, one way or the other."

"Not gonna happen," Sam muttered. "My parents are getting their money, and that's all the closure I need."

"Talk about bullshit!"

"Shut up and fly."

C
harlotte Anderson was a hit-and-run suspect for less than twenty-four hours.

A white Volvo wagon, stolen from a parking lot in Edgartown, was found back in its old spot soon after it was taken, and Chief Cottier himself called Holly's mother to tell her the news and apologize for any inconvenience. Which was all very well, except that Holly's mother was no longer the kind of woman who could see humor in the coincidence.

"He thought I'd done it; I could tell by the way he questioned me," she said to her daughters later.

"That's his job, Mom," Holly reminded her gently. Since she herself had had a dark moment or two of suspicion, she was feeling a lot less indignant than she normally would have.

"But he was so much more sympathetic the first time he interviewed me,"
Charlotte
said. She seemed bewildered by the latest turn of events, and more fragile than ever.

Ivy saw it, too, all that progress from her visit undone. Frustrated, she said, "Too bad Mrs. Slaussen saw you leave the house so early. I never heard you, so I could have sworn to them in all honesty that you'd stayed home. What'd you have to go off and watch a sunrise for, anyway?"

Bristling, her mother became her old self again. "Excuse me? Should I just buy a fainting couch and spend the rest of my life in a swoon? Look, if I was going to go to the trouble of staking out
Eden
, you can bet that I would have finished the job. I would have flattened her like a pancake."

"Way to go, Mom!" Holly blurted, laughing.

Her mother smiled for the first time in days. "I have to admit, it really was a
hell
of a coincidence."

****

If it was a coincidence,
thought Sam after hearing from Cottier about the stolen car.

Sam had been tracked down in the loft and questioned hard on the night before, soon after Billy dumped him out of the seaplane. When he'd first heard the news about the hit and run, Sam hadn't been surprised. He figured that
Charlotte
had been trying to knock
Eden
back a little, like a pitcher throwing a brush-off ball to a batter crowding home plate.

But the recovered car had a piece of
Eden
's clothing caught in its trim, which left
Charlotte
off the hook. She was, in fact, the class act she seemed to be.

So who stole the Volvo and knocked
Eden
down with it? That was the question Sam pondered as he wandered the streets of Vineyard Haven, looking for a place to eat where the line didn't go out the door.

As for the line of candidates willing to knock down
Eden
, it could easily match the ones in any of the restaurants tonight. Sam himself was an obvious choice; he wasn't surprised by Chief Cottier's tough grilling. If he hadn't been sitting at the airport at the time of the incident, he had no doubt that he'd be looking around for a lawyer now.

Stefan Koloman was another candidate. It was physically possible—although hard to believe—that he could have pulled it off, however; he'd have needed his own plane to have beat Sam to Boston.

Had
Eden
duped and infuriated any others on the island? Stupid question. Did Tiffany's have diamonds?

As he waited among the crowd at a deli takeout, Sam considered the possibility that the driver might not have had a grudge against
Eden
at all, but against Charlotte Anderson. The sex scandal must have been common knowledge on the island by now. It wouldn't have taken a genius—only an opportunist—to swipe an unlocked car and drive it into
Eden
. Everyone knew that the rich led soap-opera lives. Running down some Other Woman and framing the spurned wife was just the kind of stunt they'd pull.

The timing had to be exquisitely right, of course; but that was true in either scenario. In either scenario, someone had to be watching the players carefully.

And that's what Sam found unnerving.

He paid for his sandwich and chips and carried his booty out of the shop. He was more demoralized than he'd been since the afternoon he learned from his parents that
Eden
was back in his life big time. What he wanted were fewer complications as one day rolled into the next. What he was getting was a whole lot more of them.

He found a bench and wolfed down the sandwich—mere fuel, something to keep him going as he doggedly pursued his recovery of his parents' nest egg. If only they hadn't waited until their backs were against the wal
l... if only they'd told him about the
Adam and Eve
years ago
... if only Eden and the
Antiques Roadshow
hadn't shown up together in his parents' lives.

If only he'd met Holly before he'd met
Eden
.

****

The phone rang as Holly walked through the door. She expected it to be Ivy. It was her father.

"Hi, honey," he said, sounding guilty and happy at the same time.

His tone infuriated Holly. She wanted to lash out at someone, and Eric Anderson was the second best someone she knew.

"
What
."

Sounding sheepish, her father said, "You heard about the stolen Volvo, of course. Your mother must be relieved."

When Holly didn't bother to answer, he said quickly, "We want to arrange to hand the money over to the Steadmans, and
Eden
thinks the best way to accomplish that is to give it directly to their son."

The idea absolutely floored Holly. "Sam, you mean.
Eden
's husband."

"Please, Holly. That's only a formality. I've recommended an attorney to Eden who will handle the divorce."

"And you don't feel threatened by her wanting to see him," said Holly, incredulous.

"No, actually. I don't," her father said in the lawyer's tone that she knew so well. "Obviously
Eden
can arrange to see Sam any time she likes. I'm not her jailer. Nor could I be if I wanted to."

He added in a gently beseeching way, "Holly, I'd like us—all of us—to act like adults in this. It's been a little rough, a little emotional, but now we have to start mending. It's Eden who's setting the example; she wants to begin the process by setting things right with Sam."

"That should make him very happy," Holly said dryly, but inside she felt as if someone was on the loose and pulling apart her organs.

"After that,
Eden
would like to sit down with your mother and just
... talk, woman to woman. She'd like to see us all be a family again. She'd like, eventually, to be friends. She knows it won't be easy or quick—"

By now Holly was hemorrhaging emotionally; she said faintly, "Are you out of your mind, Dad? Are you completely insane?
Eden
will never be welcome here. Mom shouldn't—I can't—Ivy won't—accept her. Are you completely out of your mind?"

"All right, all right, I'm sorry I brought it up," he said, cutting short her breathless rejection. "It's too soon; I see that now. The reason I called is to find out where Sam is staying on the island. He is still on the island, isn't he?"

Holly glanced at the rental check that Sam had handed her in the barn. It had a smear of blue paint on it now that obscured the numbers in the amount box. She wasn't sure she could cash the check if she wanted to. Was it the numbers or the written words that the bank went by? She couldn't remember.

"I don't know if he's still on the island," she said, staring at Sam's chicken-scratch writing. "He was staying in the barn." She walked over with the phone to a window and looked out in that direction for lights. In the winter, she would know. Not now, with the trees leafed out. She told herself that she didn't care; but if it were winter, she would know.

"Can I ask you just to run out and check?" her father said meekly. "I know there isn't a phone."

"No, Dad. You'll have to go see for yourself."

There was disappointment in his voice as he promised to keep in touch.

Holly hung up in a state more numb than depressed. She felt like a ladybug who's been flitting happily along from flower to flower, minding her own business, and suddenly gets caught in a vast and sticky web of relationships. Family? Friends? Lovers? The words were so
tangled that they had no meaning anymore.

All in all, the best thing, the most logical thing, was for her to enter a cloister. Yes. One of those places where you tended the vegetable garden and ate on wood trestles and most of all, never had to converse with another living soul. Because people only told you what they wanted you to know, anyway, and never what
you
wanted to know. So nuts to everyone; it was the cloisters for her.

There was a knock at the door—Ivy, irate. "Where the hell have you been?" she asked, breezing past her sister into the kitchen. "Mom half-convinced me that you'd challenged
Eden
to a duel."

Holly rolled her eyes. "Life should be that simple. I was in Chilmark all afternoon, fawning at the feet of a new client. I should have blown off the appointment."

"Have you heard from Sam yet?"

"Nope."

"Not to sound picky," Ivy said, "but you're not making this any easier, getting involved with
Eden
's husband. Or ex-husband. Or whatever he is at this point. I think he shares a little too much history with
Eden
for Mom's taste."

"Ha. Trust me, Sam's the least of Mom's problems," said Holly. She dropped down on a chair, pulled another one out with her toes, and put up her feet on it. "Dad just called and told me that
Eden
wants to become best friends with us all."

That took Ivy's breath away. She stood with mouth agape and then, unexpectedly, broke into laughter. It was contagious; Holly laughed, too.

"I have to meet this woman," said Ivy. "She doesn't sound real."

"No problem: Dad can hardly wait to bring her around."

"He's not that dumb!"

"Sure he is."

"She's
not that dumb."

Holly scrunched her face into a thoughtful squint. "No, there, I'd have to agree with you.
Eden
has an ulterior motive, I have no doubt."

"Forcing us to seem like the bad guys?"

"There you go," said Holly, raising her water bottle in salute. Wearily, she said, "You know what? I don't want to think about her any more; she makes my head hurt."

"Fine. Let's go over tomorrow: beach in the morning, Bouchards for lunch, and then to the
Camp
Ground
for the festivities. Pray that it doesn't rain; they're talking about pop-up thunderstorms. I feel so bad that we came so late this year. Usually we work up to Illumination Night; this is like having dessert before dinner."

She glanced at her watch and grimaced. "I promised the
girls we'd have make-your-own
pizza tonight; they must be starving by now."

Holly got up to walk her sister to the door; it was still such a treat to have her around again, and now the visit was almost over. She embraced Ivy in a quick hug and said, "You didn't have to drive over. Why didn't you just call instead?"

"I did. Three times. Check your machine." A kind of grayness passed over Ivy's blue eyes. Her voice sounded clouded, too, as she said, "I can't shake this feeling that something awful is going to happen, I just don't know to whom. Things have been so strange
... and it doesn't help that I know about Stefan Koloman. Really, Holly, keep that stupid back door locked
.
I feel better now that I've seen you, but
... keep it locked, please."