don’t want to know, it’s just that they can live without it. They don’t want to have to relive the grief and horror of last fall. They tell themselves it was an out-of-town drug dealer, a random act because Patrick was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He set down his mug and got to his feet, adding softly, “But not you, Zoe. You want the truth, whatever it is.”
“Maybe it was an out-of-town drug dealer.”
His gaze settled on her. He was a tall man, his skin tanned and wrinkled but not sagging. “You think the break-in at the house is connected to your father’s murder.”
“I have no reason to think anything, Stick—except that I’ve had too many milk products for lunch. Chowder, then chocolate cream pie.”
He shook his head, patient, always the one who could see through her. “Keep in touch, okay?” He kissed the top of her head. “Welcome home.”
After he left, Zoe said goodbye to her sister, who was obviously enjoying herself as she put together orders. The lunchtime crowd hadn’t dwindled. The fall foliage was at its peak, the leaf-peepers out in droves—Zoe could hear a table of seniors as they pointed out brightly colored trees along the shoreline.
She headed outside. McGrath’s lobster boat was gone. He must have left while she was talking to Stick. She walked down to the docks and squinted, picking out Bruce’s old boat up toward Olivia’s, making its way along the shore to the nature preserve and the cluster of offshore islands.
That was something else she had to do—go back to the nature preserve, to the spot where she’d found her father’s body. Today was so much like the morning she’d found him. Cool, bright, beautiful.
Maybe it could wait until tomorrow.
She and McGrath had walked down from Olivia’s. She took her time crossing the parking lot and making her way to Ocean Drive, tried to ignore the flashbacks to the countless times she’d walked this route to visit her great-aunt. She’d see her father on the way. They’d always gotten along. They’d never had any big angst-filled battles. Neither had he and Christina. Zoe didn’t know if it was because they’d lost their mother so young and it’d squeezed out all of that need to rebel, or if it was just the way he was, the way they were as a family.
When she got back to the house, she decided she’d need groceries if she was going to stick around. She pushed back the wave of loneliness, the tug of grief at the emptiness of the house, and opened windows, feeling the cool, salt-tinged breeze and hearing the ocean. She started a list at the kitchen table—then stopped.
She had to know.
She ran up to the attic and made her way to her writing nook, banging her shin on a trunk. She picked up the yellow pad she’d caught McGrath holding and felt the heat rise up from her chest to her ears.
Just as she’d thought.
There was nothing wrong with her handwriting. That liar could read it just fine.
Teddy couldn’t help it—to him the ocean smelled like a bucket of barf, especially at low tide. He couldn’t get used to it. He stood at the water’s edge of the shallow cove in front of his wreck of a cottage and watched a lobster boat pull up to the lobster-pound dock, gulls swooping around everywhere. He’d once had a gull grab a ham sandwich right out of his hand.
Luke was on the phone, bitching him out. “You moron. Betsy saw you and that FBI agent arguing.”
“We weren’t arguing. He thought I was having a heart attack.”
Luke snorted. “And you believed him?”
“No, but so what?”
Teddy walked out onto a flat, gray rock, the water around it not two inches deep at low tide. It was more or less a puddle—a tide pool, he guessed it was called. It bled into a stretch of gray mud and small, water-smoothed rocks.
“Nothing happened,” he went on. “Relax. Anybody asks, I’m watching Zoe for you, making sure she doesn’t get in over her head like last year. Because you care about her. Because Patrick West was your friend and Olivia West had a soft spot for you and you figure you owe them.”
“I don’t want people to know you and I have any connection—”
“Relax, will you? You should have thought this through before you asked me to spy on an FBI agent—”
“I don’t have to listen to this,” Luke hissed.
“Nurse Betsy say anything to you? She likes to have blueberry pie on the sly, you know. Probably figures you’ll think your arteries will clog just from watching her chow down.”
“Where are you now?”
“Cooling my heels. If McGrath spotted me skulking around your ex-cop sweetie, she could have, too. I’ll go on back to town in a few minutes.”
“Be discreet,” Luke snapped, condescending, irritable.
“Why’d you agree to hire me if you’re getting cold feet this fast? Jesus—”
“Don’t get the wrong idea, Shelton. I’m not afraid of either one of them. I just don’t want them meddling in her father’s murder investigation. It’ll just make matters worse and won’t lead to his killer. McGrath has no right to stir up trouble.” Luke breathed heavily, as if he might hyperventilate. “The West sisters have suffered enough.”
Right. Like he’d hired Teddy because he was worried about Zoe and Christina West’s feelings. Teddy watched the lobster boat ease on back around the point, toward the small, protected harbor. The temperature was going down, nightfall coming earlier and earlier. He could feel the bite of winter in the air. Luke’d be heading south soon. Teddy didn’t have any firm plans, but he had no intention of spending another winter in Maine.
“I think your instincts about our Special Agent McGrath are on target,” Teddy said. “The guy’s trouble. I don’t care if the old cemeteries around here are full of his ancestors, he’s here because there’s an unsolved murder.”
“It’s been bad enough having the state investigators snooping—” Luke sighed. “I should have thrown you off my boat that night you showed up here.”
Teddy knew he wasn’t referring to the night a week ago when Luke had asked Teddy to keep an eye on McGrath, and Zoe if she came back, but to a night more than a year ago. “But you didn’t, did you?” Teddy walked backward off his rock. “You sold me a gun you weren’t supposed to sell me.”
“What’s your game, Shelton?” Luke’s voice was low, not so arrogant now. A touch of fear in it. “Because if you’re playing me—”
“Relax. Go hump Nurse Betsy. I’ll stay in touch.”
Teddy clicked off. He felt almost smug—that’d teach the bastard to try to get the upper hand with him. He went back up to the cottage, a one-bedroom with cracked linoleum and cheap furnishings, and got his truck keys and headed out. He almost ran into Bruce’s truck on its way out from the lobster pound. Teddy waved. The guy was amazing. His first instinct was to like people. He was totally undiscriminating.
