go no further.
She couldn’t kill off Jen Periwinkle.
Olivia had watched herself wither and wrinkle, but Jen remained forever sixteen, always ready to solve her next mystery. She was timeless. She used her wits—never violence—to solve crimes. That was Olivia’s pact with her readers—Jen Periwinkle wouldn’t have to resort to violence to achieve her results. She occasionally brandished a gun and once a sword, but she never drew blood.
To kill her off, Olivia meant to have her die saving someone, probably a child. Mr. Lester McGrath, Jen’s evil nemesis through all seventy-two books, would have to die, too, but as a result of her intelligence and bravery, not at her hands.
“Aunt Olivia...Aunt Olivia!”
Zoe rushed into the kitchen from the side entrance. Olivia hadn’t noticed the sun had come up, and she didn’t have a good sense of how much time had passed since Patrick was here. An hour? The sun sparkled on the harbor waters and reflected the stunning fall foliage. Boats were out. Olivia tried to focus on Zoe, but realized something was terribly wrong and wanted to dive back into Jen Periwinkle’s fictional world.
“Oh, Aunt Olivia.” Zoe seemed to be trying to pull herself together. She was clearly shaken, her face pale, her running clothes matted with sweat and—and something else. Dark stains. Her running shoes were soaked. “I didn’t want you to hear the news from someone else—I...God...” Her eyes, blue with gray flecks like Olivia’s baby brother’s, filled with tears. “Dad’s dead.”
Olivia saw now that the dark stains were blood. It had spattered on Zoe’s gray shirt and shorts. She tried to speak, but nothing came out.
“He was shot. I found him on my run.”
“But he was just here! He stopped in to see me, like he always does. Where? Where did you find him?”
“In the nature preserve. Stewart’s Cove.” Zoe raked a shaking hand through her short blond curls, her experience as a Maine State Police detective, accustomed to dealing with crime scenes, facts and evidence, not helping her now. But this was different. This was her father. “The marine patrol, state police and local police are there now. I—I have to go back.”
“Of course. Christina—”
“She’s meeting me there.” The tears spilled down her pale cheeks, and when she wiped them with her fingertips, they mixed with her father’s blood. “Is Betsy here? I don’t want to leave you alone.”
Olivia nodded. Betsy O’Keefe was her live-in caregiver, a concession Olivia had made two years ago in order to be able to continue living in her house. Betsy had learned to leave Olivia alone as much as possible in the morning.
The nature preserve was her own doing, Olivia thought. She’d bought up the land with earnings from her books and created a nonprofit organization to maintain it. And now Patrick had been killed there.
Murdered.
Olivia raised one hand, and Zoe took it, squeezed back gently and sobbed. She looked like a young woman who’d just lost her father, not the young woman Olivia had seen only yesterday, so confident and determined, preparing to head to Quantico for her sixteen weeks of training at the FBI Academy. Patrick was proud of her but worried about her zest for adventure, her need to push herself. His father was the same way and died young in the line of duty. He was afraid Zoe would, too. Instead, he had.
“I’ll see you later, okay?” Zoe whispered.
“Yes, dear. Of course. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“And Patrick—oh, Zoe, I loved him so.”
But Zoe was gone, and Betsy O’Keefe bustled into the kitchen, her own face smeared with tears. She was a stout woman in her late forties, a registered nurse who’d moved to Goose Harbor with her widowed mother at four. Hard workers, both of them. The mother had died a few years ago. Sometimes it seemed to Olivia everyone she knew was dead.
“You’ve had a terrible shock,” Betsy said. “Come, let’s get you to bed and have you lie down a bit.”
“I don’t want to lie down. Betsy...” Olivia stopped. What had she meant to say? She couldn’t remember. It didn’t happen often, but sometimes she’d forget things. What she’d eaten for breakfast, names—she’d lose track of what she was saying. She frowned at Betsy. “I can’t—”
Olivia gasped, grabbing her chest, the jolt of adrenaline and awareness—knowledge—so sudden and forceful, it hurt. Patrick in his uniform, the job he had to do—the arrest he was making—
Betsy leaped to her side. “Miss West!”
“Betsy—I know who did it.”
“What, love?”
“I know who killed Patrick.”
Betsy was pale now, sobbing. “I—I bought a hundred and one candles for your birthday tomorrow. I hope we can fit them all on your cake. Zoe and Christina will come by—”
“Betsy—Betsy, why can’t I remember?”
“Remember what, love?”
“The murderer’s name. The bastard—”
“Maybe I should call the doctor.”
“No, don’t.” Olivia’s voice was firm. “I’ll sit here a while and think. I’ll remember. I know I will.”
Betsy made tea and babbled about birthday cakes and the leaf-peepers and whatever pleasantries she thought would distract her elderly charge—and they did. Olivia couldn’t form a coherent thought, much less call up the name of the murderer.
My God. I do know who did it.
She stared at the first line of her obituary and felt a rare tug of regret at her mortality. If only this once she could be Jen Periwinkle and forever sixteen.
Zoe West sat at the cluttered farmhouse kitchen table and stared out at the beautiful northwest Connecticut landscape, the hills dotted with brightly colored leaves, and she tried to piece together how she’d ended up here. It was as if one day she was headed to Quantico, and the next, she was here, canning beets and milking goats with Bea Jericho.
She knew she should be grateful. Charlie and Bea were incredible people, hardworking, determined to hang on to their land instead of chopping it up into mini-estates and making a fortune.
But Zoe didn’t belong in Bluefield, Connecticut, and she knew it. She’d known it the day she’d arrived in town almost a year ago.
She needed to go home. It was just a matter of when. Goose Harbor hovered on the horizon of her life, like a fog bank she knew would engulf her in due time. Better to deal with it. Get it over with. The status quo was untenable, increasingly impossible to endure.
She’d had three calls in three days. Bruce Young, a lobsterman who’d graduated high school with her; her sister, Christina; and Greg Sampson,
