engine and getting some heat in his truck. He probably should head back to that goddamn shack he rented from Bruce Young down by the lobster pound. It was barely winterized. He wanted to tell Luke that Zoe West was back in town, but he’d waited too long and now Luke had gone night-night.
If he stayed out here much longer, Teddy knew he’d fall asleep. Then some jerk cop would roust him and maybe see the guns and shit in back. Luke had never invited him to stay in a stateroom aboard the Castellane yacht. Understandable. How would he explain why he’d hired a guy like Teddy? Even that dumb-bunny Nurse Betsy would ask questions.
Teddy turned the key in the engine and switched on the windshield wipers and the headlights, which barely penetrated the thick fog that had rolled in off the water. The docks were dead on such a dark, rainy October night.
“What the hell,” he said, shutting down the engine.
When he pushed open the door, he could hear the tide. He didn’t know if it was coming in or going out. When he first arrived in Goose Harbor, he’d tried to keep track, but soon discovered it didn’t make any damn difference. He never went on the water. Best job he could get was working at the lobster pound. He had enough claw marks from the damn lobsters to prove it. The native Mainers almost never got clawed, not like he did. His own damn fault, they told him.
He stepped onto the wet pavement and smelled the salt in the fog. The rain hit his Yankees cap. Nothing colder than a fall rain on the New England coast. He shivered, not wanting to get too wet. The kerosene stove in Bruce’s shack would take forever to heat up the place, even as small as it was.
Teddy pulled a rag out of his pants pocket and wiped the rain off the driver’s window on the FBI guy’s Jeep. He peered inside. Not much to see. No file with “Top Secret” scrawled on it. Teddy wondered where Mr. Special Agent had gone. Talking to Luke? No way. Luke was in bed with Nurse Betsy.
“Screw it.”
Teddy got back into his truck, started the engine again and drove back up to Main Street, then cruised on over to the West house. Zoe West’s yellow Volkswagen Beetle was parked out front. Kyle Castellane was getting into his black BMW. Teddy could feel the sarcasm rising up in him. Starving artist. Yeah. Kyle’d be more shocked than anyone if he knew Teddy was working for his watery-eyed pop. Luke didn’t like the idea of an FBI agent crawling around town. He’d thought it might bring Zoe back to Goose Harbor, and it had.
Just keep me informed. Do what you have to do.
That left a lot of wiggle room.
Teddy moved on down the road before Kyle’s headlights came on, not that he was worried about being seen. He was a nobody here. Fine with him. It gave him room to maneuver. If things went the way he thought they would, he’d need every inch he could get.
The bright sunrise over the Atlantic woke J.B. early. He had no trouble remembering where he was. Upstairs front bedroom of Olivia West’s house. Or why. Zoe West. Or acknowledging that he must have been out of his mind last night.
On the other hand, he liked waking up to the sound of the ocean.
He’d cracked his window and could hear the tide rolling in, the wind gusting, seagulls crying in the distance, the putter of lobster boats. The rain and fog had blown out, leaving behind a washed sky and clear, dry autumn air. His room looked straight out on the Atlantic Ocean, which sparkled in the morning sun.
He pulled on his pants and raked a hand through his hair. Probably a good idea to get moving before ex-detective Zoe decided to inspect her property. Funny she’d decided to inspect his first.
But instead of throwing his stuff together and clearing out, J.B. found himself wandering around the big, airy house. Three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. Downstairs were another bedroom, one and a half bathrooms, an eat-in kitchen, a side entry and a dining room and living room that stretched across the entire front of the house, with canvas-covered furniture and tall windows that looked out onto a porch and beyond to the Atlantic. The kitchen window faced the harbor. He’d heard that Olivia West had penned all her Jen Periwinkle novels at the kitchen table.
He put an old-fashioned copper kettle on to boil and wondered if it was the same table. Probably. The house still had a pre-World War II feel to it, and from what he’d experienced of the residents of Goose Harbor so far, J.B. took them as a frugal lot. Waste not, want not.
He retrieved a tea bag from a clear glass jar on the counter and duly noted the can of soy powder sitting beside it. He doubted it was the old lady’s. He pulled open the Reagan-era refrigerator and noted the routine condiments, pure maple syrup, natural peanut butter and a Ziploc bag labeled “flax seed.” There were cinnamon Toaster Strudels in the freezer and a bag of frozen blueberries, the little ones, which he knew meant they were wild.
When the water came to a boil, he filled a restaurant-style mug and dunked in his tea bag, then headed through the side entry and into the front room. He eased past the dining-room table, a light film of dust on its dark wood, and walked out onto the front porch. The air was brisk, the porch furniture a mix of Adirondack chairs and rockers. There was a porch swing. He pictured the West family gathering here on summer Sunday afternoons. Now only Christina and her burnt-out older sister were left.
J.B. sipped his tea, the mug warm against his hands. This place probably hadn’t changed much in a hundred years. He could almost see Olivia playing on the stretch of lawn above the rock bluff as a child, having friends over—having his grandmother over.
Posey Sutherland McGrath.
He walked down the steps to the lawn and out to the edge of the rocks, where he looked northeast and saw the southern tip of Sutherland Island. It was named for one of his ancestors. He’d taken his rented hulk of a lobster boat around the island and spotted the old foundation of what the locals said had been a Sutherland house. Before he left Goose Harbor, he wanted to explore the island, walk around. Bruce said there was an old family cemetery there. He might or might not be on the level. He was capable of making something up just because he didn’t believe J.B. had any ancestors from Goose Harbor.
It was unclear where Jesse McGrath was from. He’d turned up in Goose Harbor and swept Posey Sutherland off her feet. She was the wealthy, sheltered daughter of Lester Sutherland, who had no use for a drifter and forbade Posey to see Jesse. The Wests weren’t as well-off as the Sutherlands—without Olivia’s writing, they’d have had to give up the house on the water. But she agreed with her friend’s father that Jesse McGrath would bring her nothing but hardship and sorrow.
Posey ignored them both and eloped with Jesse, moving first to eastern Montana, then west to a beautiful alpine meadow outside of Bozeman. That was where she had her son, it was where Jesse became a lawman, and it was where she died of a fever when little Benjamin was only seven years old. Jesse was killed a few years later in a shoot-out when he interrupted a bank robbery.
Benjamin—J.B.’s father—went to live with a schoolteacher in Bozeman. Olivia West paid for anything he needed. She even offered to have him move to Maine where she would see to his upbringing in his mother’s hometown of Goose Harbor.
J.B. knew because he had the letter. He had all of Olivia West’s letters to the friend who’d run off and left her behind. He’d found them when he’d cleaned out his father’s cabin after he died over the winter. They were bundled together in a trunk that he didn’t know if Benjamin McGrath, western Montana hunting and fishing guide, had ever opened.
Oh,
