Safe Harbor (5 page)

"Well, Nancy told me this morning that Eden once mentioned that she'd never been to France," Charlotte said. "I believed
Eden
. I believed everything she said." She added softly, "And so did your father."

"He'll discover what a fraud she is."

"What if he doesn't?"

Charlotte
's lip began to tremble and Holly thought,
I have to do something, anything, to stop the flow of this pain.

She grabbed her mother's hand and began hauling her up from her chair. "Mom, you are not going to sit in your kitchen and cry anymore—not tonight, anyway. We're going to Mad Martha's for ice cream. It's the only sensible solution to all this."

Her mother smiled haplessly—a pale echo of the warm and winning version that Holly was used to—and dabbed at her gray Katharine Hepburn bun. "My hair's a mess."

"It looks fine," Holly said, tucking in one of the longest loose ends. "You look beautiful."

And she did, too. The lines in her face made her look more kind than old, and those few extra pounds only made her more huggable. Her eyes were far and away the most beautiful that Holly had ever seen: large, green, and luminous, with thick black lashes that had never seen the business end of a mascara brush. Charlotte Anderson's beauty was of the deep-down kind. How could anyone turn his back on it?

"Come on; it's a beautiful evening," Holly coaxed. "Let's not stay inside."

Her mother sighed an acquiescence, but her mind was somewhere else. "We're so convinced that
Eden
's a gold digger," she mused. "What if your crazy theory is right, and Percy Billings is looking for her to give her a chunk of money? Wouldn't that be something? Do you think
... do you think she'd dump your dad?"

Holly shrugged philosophically. "Who knows? It would have to be an awful lot of money."

But in the meantime she was thinking,
Eden
could rub an inheritance in people's faces as proof that she wasn't a
fter Eric Anderson's money. She
'd do that even if she were a gold digger.

"Maybe she's already dumped him," said
Charlotte
wistfully. "Maybe he's going to walk through the front door just as soon as we go out the back."

"Then we'll go through the front, just in case." Holly meant it to sound light; it came out grim.

Ignoring it,
Charlotte
said, "I should wash my face.
Would you get me my sunglasses
from the upper deck? Lately the sun hurts my eyes when it's low."

And of course your eyes are puffy from crying,
thought Holly, but she merely said, "Sure," and took the stairs two at a time to the second floor, then through a sitting room onto a deck outside of it.

The deck had a million-dollar view of
Vineyard
Haven
Harbor
. Holly hadn't been on it since her mother opened up the house for the summer; she'd been too busy with her work. She was dismayed to see that the white balusters that surrounded the deck had started to peel. That was inevitable with a house by the sea
... but still.

She remembered spending what had seemed like an entire summer on that deck when she was ten, painting every single one of those balusters for thirty-five cents apiece.

"You say you want to be an artist when you grow up," her father had said with a twinkle in his eye. "Let's see if you've got the right stuff. Let's see if you've got what it takes to keep going, after it stops being fun."

First Holly had counted all the balusters, and then she had done some multiplication. Seventy dollars! She'd never made that much money at one time in her life. It was going to be the most fun thing she ever did.

But it wasn't. It was hot and boring and endless. After every baluster came another baluster. Holly wanted many times to throw down her brush and run off to play, but she kept at it—not because she wanted the money anymore, but because she wanted to be one of those people who had the Right Stuff. Because she wanted, most of all, not to disappoint her father.

How bitterly ironic.

She couldn't bear to be up there. Her mother's sunglasses were lying on a bistro table in a corner; Holly scooped them up and turned to go back down. She was surprised to see the old telescope, still mounted on its tripod, that her father had liked to use whenever an interesting boat sailed into the harbor. On an impulse, she turned and stooped to squint through the eyepiece. As she suspected, the telescope was focused on the slip where her father kept the
Vixen
tied up.

As she feared, the slip was empty.

T
he Flying Horses Gallery opened at ten
a.m
. Sixty seconds later, Sam strolled through the door. He had been told the day before by a pretentiously discreet assistant that he'd have to speak about
Eden
with the gallery owner herself.

The owner, it turned out, was slightly less discreet.

"Ah, yes," said Clai
re Delaney, sizing him up after
sipping from a paper coffee cup. "
Eden
. She worked here briefly, but you won't find her on the island. I understand that she's off
... well, let's just say, yachting, at the moment," she explained with a dry smile. "Do you know her?"

"Vaguely. It was many years ago." That was more or less the truth. "We're not exactly pals," he ventured. Also the truth.

The gallery owner was forty, citified, and well turned out—uppity, but nouveau uppity, Sam decided. There was still something a little downtown about her. He could see it in the way she looked him over with interest.

He liked that in a woman; he wasn't much for guessing games.

She said, "
Eden
took up with one of our more respected summer colonists. Unfortunately, she did it while she was working for me. I didn't like that. This is a small island. When people talk about the Flying Horses Gallery, I'd prefer that it be about an exhibit here—not an exhibition."

"Do you mind if I ask how
Eden
got the job?"

She shrugged. "My ex-business partner knows her. Jeffrey has an unfortunate—well, it doesn't matter," she said briefly. "He knew her."

"Where can I get in touch with your business partner?"

"Ex. I have no idea. Try Palma de Majorca.

Sam probed her a little more. "When I knew her,
Eden
used to broker the occasional transaction," he said, keeping it bland. "Does she still?"

Claire Delaney gave him a surprised look. "Buying or selling?"

"Selling."

She said briskly, "
Eden
was
a sales clerk, after all. As for what she bought or sold on her own time, I'm afraid I couldn't say."

It was a dismissal. Clearly she wanted Sam out of there. Was that because she was itching to call Jeffrey and give him a heads-up that someone was after
Eden
?

Sam flashed her a thoughtful smile and said, "Thanks for your help. Do you have any idea where
Eden
has gone off 'yachting'?"

She shrugged and said, "Eric could have taken the
Vixen
anywhere."

Sam lifted an eyebrow, and she explained. "
Vixen
is the name of Eric's boat. Rich, don't you think?"

Sam's response was a cool look.

Embarrassed, she added quickly, "I do feel badly for Eric's wife, though.
Charlotte
's a dear."

"I think I ran into her leaving the gallery yesterday," Sam said, calling up an image of the green-eyed brunette with the Debra Winger nose.

"You may have. She's in here fairly often." Suddenly the gallery owner decided to haul out her uppity tone. "And now you really
must
excuse me, Mr. Billings."

He was barely out the door when she picked up the phone and began punching in a number.

****

An hour later,
Sam was still searching for a room for the night. He must have been out of his mind, thinking he could just wing it on the Vineyard in August. He'd spent the previous night sweltering on a cot jammed under the eave of a shabby bed-and-breakfast, and even that miserable hovel was now booked until Labor Day.

He was standing on the street, juggling
a cell phone,
inn brochures, a pen, and a notepad when he caught a glimpse of the lady with the Debra Winger nose, inching down the main drag in a bright red pickup truck that was carrying a couple of battered bureaus in the back. A FedEx van ahead of the pickup was stopped for a delivery, blocking its lane of traffic.
Charlotte
apparently ran on island time; she seemed resigned.

Without thinking, Sam hung up in the middle of booking the one and only free room on the Vineyard and ran up to the driver's side of the pickup.

"Hey,
Charlotte
!" he said, slapping the side of her door in a far too jovial greeting.

She jolted out of her reverie with a confused smile that he somehow liked to see.

"Percy?

"Who? Oh! Yeah."

"I'm not Charlotte, Percy."

"Yes you are," he told her. "Charlotte Anderson."

"Holly
Anderson."

"No, I'm sure she said
Charlotte
."

"Who?"

"Claire Delaney.

"Claire?
She
knows who I am."

"I know. She said."

"My name is Holly Anderson. Once and for all, who are
you?"

"I'm—hmm." Sam glanced left and right and said in a lower voice, "Can you keep this under your hat? My real name is Sam. Sam Steadman."
Here we go. Take two.
"I'm a private investigator."

She laughed out loud. "Oh, please," she said, more than mildly contemptuous. "First you're Percy Billings, probate attorney. Now you're Sam Steadman, private eye. How corny can you get? Use a little imagination when you choose your names, at least."

Annoyed by her reaction, Sam said, "I'm not here to use my imagination. I'm here to find Eden Walker."

"Best of luck to you."

"Look, Mrs. Anderson, we need to talk," he said, gripping the door frame through the open window. "This is important. I wouldn't—"

A car behind them barked furiously at the pickup's heels: traffic had begun to crawl again. The woman—Charlotte, Holly, whoever—began rolling up her window. "I'm not a
Mrs.
, and I don't want anything to do with Eden or her lying cronies. Go away!"

The pickup took off with a squeal, and the guy in the Jeep behind it tried his best to run Sam down for good riddance. Sam jumped back on the curb and began jogging behind the moving traffic, waiting for the FedEx wagon to block the flow again. When it stopped in front of an insurance agency, he grabbed his chance. Opening the door of her truck, he scrambled onto the passenger seat.

"Oh, for Pete's sake," she said. "Out, before I call a cop."

"If you're not a
Mrs.
, who are you?"

"
Ms
. Anderson, to you. I'd make you call me miss if it didn't sound so damned virginal," she added with a defiant look.

Compared to
Eden
—compared to most women—Sam thought she sounded pretty damned virginal indeed, but he declined to offer an opinion about that. "Well, who's Eric Anderson, if he's not your husband? Your brother?"

"He's my father, if you must know," she said, staring straight ahead and shifting back in gear. "Now get out of the car." She grabbed her purse from between them and put it behind her seat.

"'Your
father
!
Good God. How old is he?"

She scowled. "Sixty-two."

"Sixty-two!
Eden
's thirty!"

"No shit, Sherlock."

"So
...
Charlotte
's your mother."

"You're quick."

"I'm sorry it had to happen to your mother," he said, as if she'd been struck by terminal disease. "I've heard she was a good woman."

"She's not dead, you know. Thank you for your concern. Get out of the car."

"Look, we really are getting off on the wrong foot here. Can we just begin over again?"

Traffic stopped. Holly turned a blazing green gaze on him and said, "No beginning, no middle, no end. What has happened to me and my family is an intensely personal affair. I'm not interested in sharing our heartbreak with a lawyer, a private eye, a jealous boyfriend, a psychopathic liar, or
... or whoever you are," she said, sputtering to a halt.

She leaned over his lap, setting his nerve endings humming with her pleasing scent, and unlatched his door. "Go."