Safe Harbor (4 page)

Fool, fool, fool.

The strolling couple stopped a few steps away to embrace; Sam studiously ignored them and tried to concentrate on the task at hand.
Eden
had stolen his parents' engraving, and he was going to get it back no matter what. It was as simple as that. He turned his back on the lovers, the sun, and the sea and retraced his steps to the confinement of the cabin, where he had left his duffel. There was a book in his bag on German artists. He wanted to give it one more look.

****

The Flying Horses Gallery seemed too upscale for the honky-tonk atmosphere of Oak Bluffs, the most souvenir-ridden of the Vineyard's small towns. Sam stood across the street from the gallery and pondered his next move as a stream of tourists ebbed and flowed around him.

He hated the thought of lying—he was as bad at it as
Eden
was good—but he had little choice. He needed an excuse for being on her trail. After shrugging into the cotton blazer that he'd slung over his shoulders, Sam snugged his tie and crossed the narrow, car-clogged street. The window displays that flanked the gallery's black door were minimal. A seascape in a heavy, gilded frame was perched on an easel in one of them, and a grouping of carved, painted whirligigs was sparely arranged in the other.

Sam paused on his way inside to check out the whirligigs: a scarecrow with arms that would circle in the wind, a seagull with wings that would do the same—and a winged pig. He read the label in front of the last:
Pigasus.
Despite his grim mood, Sam smiled at the whimsy, then turned to go inside.

He was just in time to see, leaving the gallery in the other direction, a woman he'd know anywhere on earth. Her back was to him, but the curve of the hip, the way her hair bounced as she walked
...
.

"Hey!
Eden
! Hold it," he snarled, grabbing her arm before she got away again.

He whirled her around and faced, not Eden Walker Steadman, but—well, not Eden Walker Steadman.

The woman was around
Eden
's age, but her eyes were wide with apprehension as she looked, not at Sam,
but desperately aro
und her. Presumably for a cop.

"Oh, geez, I am so
sorry"
Sam said, aghast. "I, ah
... whoa. Really. I'm sorry. You look just like someone else."

"No, I
don't,"
she said with brisk hostility. "Please let go of me. Do I look like a blonde to you?"

"Uh, no. Brunette, washed in shades of auburn. Definitely not a blonde. Sorry. Here. Um
..." He let her go, then patted smooth the sleeve of her pale blue sundress. He was behaving, of course, like an idiot, but he didn't know how to assuage this innocent victim whose face bore absolutely no resemblance to
Eden
's.

Her eyes w
ere green, very green, for one
thing, whereas
Eden
's were a startling blue. "I was told that I might find
Eden
, uh,
Walker
here, at the gallery," he said, winging it.

"You might have. Once."

Yes!

And her nose had a bridge to it. An interesting nose, a Debra Winger nose, but nothing like
Eden
's, which was straight and aristocratic. "I don't know what this
Eden
looks like," he went on, "so naturally I thought—"

"You just said that I looked like her," the woman pointed out.

Not at all.
Eden
had high, hollow cheekbones; this woman had more rounded ones. "And so you do. Look like her, I mean. From the description of her that I got, I mean."

"I'm a
brunette
."

"Yes. You are."

"
Eden
's a blonde!"

"No, she's not."

"How do
you
know?"

Shit. Caught. He wriggled free and made a dash for the end zone. "What did you mean, I might
once
have found her here? She isn't here anymore?"

"Who
are
you?"

Leery of what stories
Eden
might have made up about him, Sam lied and said, "Percy. Percy Billings." God, a Percy, yet. He couldn't have named himself Stone or Cliff or something.

"Look, Mr. Billings—"

"Call me Percy." Hey, what the hell.

"Look... Percy..." She cocked her head sideways at him. "Percy? Honestly? You don't look like a Percy."

Thank God for that.
"Be that as it may..." he said with a smile. "I'm an attorney. A probate attorney named Percy Billings."

Up came her left eyebrow. "Really? My father's a probate attorney."

Holy shit. "Small world," he said faintly.

"What firm are you with?"

Holy shit. "None that you'd know. I'm from, uh,
Austin
."

"You don't sound like a Texan. You sound
New England
."

"I wasn't born in
Austin
; I just practice there."

"Are you looking for
Eden
on business?"

Oh, yeah: she had the Attorney Gene, all right. And yet she looked so fresh, so winsome. "I'm not here to subpoena
Eden
or anything, if that's what you're worried about," he reassured her.

"Attorneys don't serve subpoenas."

"We can if we want to," he said. He didn't know if they could or not; he was flying blind and getting mo
r
e disoriented by the minute. Just his rotten luck to stumble onto a probate attorney's daughter who happened to know
Eden
.

"Look, I appreciate your effort to protect
Eden
's privacy," he said, "but it's really hot and—"

"Shouldn't you be used to the heat?"

"—I'd like to get on with my mission. Thank you for your time."

He gave her a barely civil smile and turned to head back to the gallery.

"Wait, Percy-if-that's-who-you-are!"

Back around he turned. She looked completely undecided about whether to trust him or not. "Why are you looking for her?" she said in a voice that sounded oddly distressed.

With a softer smile he said, "I'm afraid I can't breech my client's confidentiality."

"Why are you
looking
for her?" she demanded, sounding genuinely anguished now.

"I'm sorry. Really. If you would just tell me where I can find her..."

"Find her? Sure. Just—look for the nearest married man!" she said bitterly, after which she suddenly burst into tears, changed her mind, stopped, turned, and ran away.

While Sam, agape, watched her flee, three thoughts went through his mind. One: she was obviously the wife of
Eden
's latest prey. Two: she didn't look anything like Eden, either from the front
or
the back. And three:
Eden
was now a blonde.

Oh, and four: it stung like hell to know that
Eden
was still running around seducing other men.

The only good news, and it was scant good news indeed, was that Sam's hunch had been right.
Eden
had
taken off for
Martha's Vineyard
, and her trip had everything to do with the engraving. Had she brought it here with evil intent? That was a no-brainer. Where was
Eden
now? He didn't know. Where was the Durer? He didn't know.

He was sure he was about to find out.

Praying that she hadn't already fenced it, Sam stepped inside the quiet, intimate gallery.

****

Holly Anderson escaped up
Circuit Avenue
and didn't stop to catch her breath until she reached the main entrance into the
Camp
Ground
, the old revivalist meeting place that was now one of the most charming sites in
New England
. Ahead of her, in the middle of a large and soothing oasis of grass, stood the historic Tabernacle, a massive whimsy of iron and pipe and rafters holding up a corrugated roof that was topped by a spire, itself topped by a large, plain cross. Rimmed all around by tiny, wildly colorful and extravagantly scrolled gingerbread houses, the plain old Tabernacle beckoned Holly, as it always did, to come sit down and muse a bit.

It was easy to do that in the
Camp
Ground
. Maybe it was the thick canopy of trees, muting the sounds of the cars, mopeds, ferries, sirens, and boom boxes that bounced around the crowded waterfront. Maybe it was the eye-popping colors of the tiny, tent-sized Carpenter Gothic cottages, loud enough to drown out anything short of a nuclear explosion. Whatever the cause, the silence on the often empty green was a delight, one of the best-kept secrets on the island. If Holly needed a quick fix of serenity while she was in Oak Bluffs, this was where she came.

All alone, she took a seat under the cool shade of the Tabernacle and tried to make sense of the mysterious Mr. Billings. He had unnerved her, no doubt about it. When had she last burst into tears in front of a man? Never, to be exact. Her conviction that Percy Billings was not who he seemed was overwhelmed by her mortification that Percy Billings, whoever the hell he was, had seen her cry.

Why is he looking for
Eden
?

That's what Holly wanted to know. She spent the next hour sitting alone on the bench, with only a handful of wanderers passing in and then out of her view, as she fixated on the edgy-looking male with the sissy- sounding name.

Even if he were a lawyer, which was hard to believe, why would he want or need
Eden
? Why, why, why?

Eventually Holly came up with what she thought was the only possible explanation: he was there to bring
Eden
news of someone's death, and maybe an inheritance.

"But lawyers don't do that personally, not unless they're friends of the families," her mother argued over dinner that night. The two women were in constant communication now, comparing every new theory, every sad thought about the crisis that had mowed them down just three days earlier.

Charlotte Anderson reflected for a moment. "Maybe he's a private investigator who was working for a law firm," she threw out. "He sounds a little rough aroun
d the edges, despite the jacket
and tie."

Holly bobbed her head from one side to the other. "That's slightly more plausible, I guess. But the fire in his eyes when he spun me around—boy, now that
was
personal. He didn't look either like a lawyer
or
a P.I. just then."

"A jealous boyfriend?" her mother suggested, not without a certain amount of hope.

"
I
don't think so," Holly decided. "He was too flustered when I turned out not to be
Eden
. And too stunned when I told him my father was a probate attorney. Ha! I got him there."

Charlotte Anderson peeled away a blob of congealed cheese from her slice of cold pizza and laid it aside on the plate. "He and Eden sound like birds of a feather, if you ask me," she muttered, poking at the remains. "Two liars."

For whatever reason, Holly wanted to defend her Mr.
Billings. "We don't know that for sure. We should at least give him the benefit of the
doubt."

Her mother lifted her head. Tears, one more rainfall in a record season, began to fall again. "Oh, what's the difference?
Eden
's gone and Mr. Billings is, too, by now. We'll never know what he wanted." She wiped her eyes rather fiercely with her napkin.

"I suppose you're right," Holly conceded.

It was an oddly disappointing realization. Percy Billings was an intriguing man with a wide range of emotions. Embarrassment, sheepishness, a good-looking guy, bravado, anger, a good-looking guy, arrogance—Holly had seen all of that in the space of five minutes with him.

Too bad he was a liar.

"Do you suppose she really was an orphan?"
Charlotte
asked out of the blue.

"Hmm?
Eden
? Hard to say," Holly answered. "The o
n
ly time I ever ventured a question about her family, she told me it was far too painful a subject to go into. Somehow she made it sound as if they all died on the
Titanic."

Charlotte
smiled wryly. "Yes, she was good at that. Remember when she told us that she had been studying art at the Sorbonne, but that she left to come back and care for her best friend who was dying of cancer?"

"Sure I do. Why?"