A Madness of Sunshine

by Singh, Nalini

  The only problem was, in a town as small as Golden Cove, the town also always ­knew—­and not a single person had pointed Will in the direction of Vincent Baker. Right now, Vincent remained a “foolish married man” with a crush on a young woman who’d always flown free, in contrast to Vincent’s own ­mapped-­out life.

  As for the other wealthy man in town capable of affording that watch, he’d already proved willing to indulge in an affair with another man’s wife. Not many people knew that. Will only did because he’d driven a drunk Nikau home once, and the other man had angrily blurted out the truth.

  It turned out that Nikau and Keira had still been living together in Wellington and trying to work on their troubled marriage when Daniel entered the picture. “While I was speaking at a conference in Paris,” Nikau had said, “that motherfucker was sleeping with my wife and selling her on a life I could never give her. I came back home to find her wearing a necklace she told me she’d bought on special from a local shop, and I was stupid enough to believe her.”

  It wasn’t a stretch to imagine Daniel giving another woman jewelry as part of a new affair.

  But though Daniel and Vincent made convenient targets, Will couldn’t afford tunnel vision. Miriama could as easily have met a rich tourist. There was also the slim chance that someone in town had more money than Will realized. Shane Hennessey, for one. The novelist had a habit of saying he worked for “love, not money,” but he’d had enough cash to tidy up the old Baxter place. Then there was the residency he offered. According to the listing on the creative sites, it came with room and board and a stipend.

  Will would do nothing to narrow the focus of his inquiry yet.

  He’d switched on the heat when he and Vincent got into the SUV, but he wasn’t appreciably warmer or drier by the time he turned the vehicle around and headed down the drive. The gate began to close behind him straight after he passed, so someone at the house had been watching the feed from the discreet security camera trained on the gate.

  It was a fairly unusual thing in Golden Cove, that gate, but Will could understand Jemima’s need to keep her and Vincent’s kids from running out onto the main road. They’d have to get down a long drive to do so, but kids had fast little legs and could easily tumble out, and on these quiet roads, people didn’t always think to watch their speed.

  The Bakers certainly didn’t begrudge anyone who wanted to walk the trails that cut through their sprawling property, only asked that any walkers or hikers remain outside the wire fences that marked the family’s residential area.

  The trees were opaque shadows around him as he drove through the road unlit by anything except his headlights. The wind howled beyond, bending the trees as the rain began to batter the landscape in slashing punches.

  Golden Cove seemed even more deserted when he went through this time. Only the police station glowed with anything but basic night ­lighting—­Will had left the station lights blazing and the door unlocked so that if anyone got caught outside, they could stumble out of the rain and into shelter. He wasn’t worried about damage. The safe was empty, the filing cabinet was ­locked—­and didn’t contain sensitive documents ­anyway—­and his computer was hardly ­cutting-­edge.

  As for the gun safe, it was heavy duty and concealed under his desk. Will was qualified to handle both a Taser and a gun, but he had neither of those at the moment. His Taser had acted up the last time he’d checked it, so he’d sent it in for repair or replacement. As for the gun, the paperwork was still going ­through—­or that was what he’d been told when he inquired.

  Will had a feeling his superiors weren’t sure he could be trusted with a deadly weapon. He didn’t know why. A gun had nothing to do with why he was in Golden Cove. He’d beaten that murderous bastard’s face to a bloody pulp with his bare hands.

  Those hands tightened on the steering wheel.

  The upper windows of the ­bed-­and-­breakfast blurred gold in the rain as he passed by. The place had only three guests right now, all seasoned hikers who came regularly enough to Golden Cove that they were honorary locals. Will had run them anyway, found nothing. All three had been helping with the search.

  He looked in his rearview mirror out of habit to make sure there was nothing problematic in town as he left, was surprised not to see any lights in the supermarket. Usually, the Lees left on their bright green sign if nothing else. Could be Shan and Pat had decided to switch to backup generators to make sure their fresh goods didn’t spoil should the power go out tonight. He’d talk with them tomorrow, find out how it had gone.

  For now, he drove on through a Golden Cove that was silent and cold and dark.

  It got even colder and darker once he hit the far edge of town and left behind what few lights were burning. He drove with care, his eyes on alert for a patch of pink or orange. He didn’t even realize he was doing it until his headlights flashed on something and he stopped the ­vehicle… To see it was only the silver underside of a ­wind-­tossed candy bar wrapper.

  It blew away with the next gust.

  Putting the car back into gear, he carried on and made the turn into Anahera’s drive.

  His SUV rumbled along the gravel, pulling up to a stop next to her Jeep. She’d left on the porch light, and he was grateful for it as he got out and jogged toward the cabin. He’d locked the watch and tin safely inside a special compartment he’d built himself in back of his vehicle, hidden beneath the well for the spare tire. He’d also made sure the sirens would go off if anyone tried to get into the ­vehicle—­and they were loud enough to penetrate even this weather.

  The door opened before he reached the porch. “I heard your car,” Anahera said as his boots hit the wood. “You’re drenched.”

  “Accident on the road out of town,” he said, shaking himself off as well as he could.

  “Everyone okay?”

  “Yeah.” He wiped his face. “I should leave my jacket out on the porch. I’ll dribble all over your place otherwise.”

  “The wind will rip it away and down to the water.” Anahera waved him inside. “There’s a little area here where you can hang it up. My grandmother didn’t like mess, had this put in when my grandfather built the cabin.”

  Will saw what she meant when he stepped inside. The cabin had what might be called a mudroom in some places. Except it wasn’t that big. It was more like a shallow ­pre-­entrance. On the left side was a board with hooks. Anahera’s anorak hung on one. On the other side was a large shoebox bench seat with a pair of boots already underneath.

  Will undid his jacket and hung it on a hook beside Anahera’s anorak, the orange color and white ­high-­visibility stripes bold next to the olive green. Then, taking a seat on top of the bench seat, he bent down to unlace his boots and get them off his feet. He chucked his soaked socks beside his boots, having placed the boots under the seat. By then, Anahera was back with a thick yellow towel.

  “Thanks.” He began to dry his sopping wet hair.

  “You can thank Josie. She’s the one who supplied me with extra ­towels—­sometimes, I think that woman sees the future.”

  Will still couldn’t see how Anahera and Josie’s friendship had ­endured—­Josie might have a business, but the café wasn’t her focus. She was the kind of woman who made a packed lunch for her husband and who doted on her son; she’d been known to shut the café if her son’s school needed a parent volunteer and she didn’t have staff to manage the café while she was gone. She’d no doubt bestow the same maternal attention on the child she was currently carrying.

  For Josie, her life was complete. She felt no need to ever leave this small town.

  Anahera couldn’t be more different. Not only had she left Golden Cove to carve out a life so unique that many here would never understand it, she had a hardness to her that Josie would never have. Anahera, Will thought, knew more about the dark side of human nature than her friend could even imagine.

  “I’ll be sure to thank her,” he said after rubbing his hair to
some semblance of dryness. “I don’t suppose you have a heater out here?”

  Arms folded over the thick cable knit of her chocolate brown sweater, Anahera leaned against the edge of the doorway into the cabin proper. “Townie. Soft as they come.”

  “That’s me. Can’t do anything without my fluffy slippers and cup of tea.”

  Anahera laughed as she walked into the cabin, the sound unexpectedly husky. When he followed, still using the towel in a vain effort to dab himself dry, he found the place warm and snug. A fire crackled in the fireplace, a pile of logs stacked to one side of it. “Did you get the chimney cleaned?”

  “Are you always this way?” Anahera asked. “Annoying?”

  “It’s my job. And if you burn down this place, I’m the one that’s going to have to do the paperwork.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence. And yes, the chimney’s fine. My mother taught me how to take care of that myself.”

  Will looked around the room, taking in the cleanly swept surfaces, the old wooden table that stood neatly in one corner, two rickety chairs tucked in underneath. There was no bed, which meant there had to be more to this place than met the eye. “You have another room?”

  Anahera used her thumb to point over her shoulder. “Facilities down that way,” she said, misunderstanding the reason for his question. “I don’t have anything for you to change into.”

  “I’ll dry out.” To make that go faster, he took off the gray shirt he was wearing over a white T-­shirt and, dragging one of the chairs close to the fireplace, hung the shirt on the back. While his jeans would no doubt remain heavily damp until he made it home, his lightweight tee should dry quickly enough.

  Deciding he needed to wash his hands, he walked down the small hallway hidden behind the kitchen area and found himself facing the partially closed door to another room. Prior to that and on the right were the toilet and shower. On the left was the open door to an empty room that had probably been Anahera’s mother’s bedroom.

  He was more interested in the other bedroom. It boasted a bed, from what he could see, and not much else. And Anahera isn’t a suspect, he reminded himself when his brain began to scan automatically for signs of trouble. He supposed that, technically, she was as viable a suspect as anyone in Golden Cove, but she had no motive that he could see. She’d returned only days earlier and he was beginning to get the feeling that whatever had happened to Miriama, it had to do with the ­town—­and with secrets.

  28

  Stepping into the bathroom, he washed off the traces of black grit that had sunk into the lifelines on his palms, probably while pushing Vincent’s sedan off the road.

  When he examined his face in the cracked mirror above the sink afterward, the man who looked back at him had a haggard edge to him, dark stubble having appeared on his jaw and his cheeks still a little sunken. “You’ll never be a poster boy, Will.”

  The scent of coffee was warm in the air when he returned to the living room.

  “Have you eaten?” Anahera asked from where she stood at the compact kitchen counter that ran along the back wall.

  Will shook his head. “I’ll grab toast when I get back home. We should talk over what you heard tonight at the volunteer meeting.” Will didn’t know Anahera, but he’d run her the day she arrived; it was only prudent to find out if the town’s new resident had a record. The last time a prodigal had returned to Golden Cove, he’d turned out to be a drug dealer who hadn’t quite left his old life behind.

  He’d abandoned his plans to set up shop in town after Will made it clear he’d do everything in his power to throw the other man in prison.

  Anahera, by contrast, had no criminal record.

  What she did have was a glittering career as a classical musician. Yet there was no sign of music in this room. Not even a small radio.

  Of course, it was obvious most of Anahera’s belongings hadn’t yet arrived. She’d also have taken everything important with her when she said ­good-­bye to the Cove; no point leaving it here to be stolen, vandalized, or impacted by the elements.

  “You can have some of this pasta,” she said, stirring in the sauce. “The sauce is from a packet, but it’s hot and it’ll fill you up. And I won’t have to eat leftovers for three days in a row. I’m so used to cooking ­for—­” She cut herself off with the suddenness of a woman who’d slammed up hard against an emotional wall.

  Will didn’t need her to finish her sentence. He knew she’d buried her husband seven months ago. “Thanks,” he said, as if he hadn’t noticed her abrupt silence. “I never say no to pasta.”

  “I’m having a glass of red with it.” She lifted a plain drinking glass filled about a third of the way up. “I’d offer you the same in my incredibly elegant stemware, but I’m thinking that you’re probably still on duty.”

  “Not officially.” Will moved to lean his hip against the counter on the other side of the portable gas stovetop she was using to cook the pasta. A lot of the locals owned one of those; most used them for camping or hunting trips. Probably a good idea for Anahera to stick to that until she could have all the wiring in the cabin checked out.

  “But,” he added, “in a place like this, where I’m the only police officer around, I’m never really off duty.” Will liked it that way. It gave him less time to think, less time to relive the past, less time to apologize to the small ghost who never seemed to hear him.

  Anahera took a sip of her wine before saying, “I made coffee, too. Mugs on your right.”

  Taking hold of a thick green mug from the grouping of four mismatched ones on the counter, Will picked up the ­old-­fashioned and heavy metal teakettle she’d used to keep the coffee hot. “Something like this,” he said, lifting up the teakettle, “it’d probably set you back two hundred dollars in one of the designer stores in the big cities.”

  Anahera laughed, the emotion reaching the darkness of her eyes. “You’re right. But that particular kettle has been in my family for the past fifty years or so.”

  “They don’t make them like they used to.” Will put the kettle back down on the large wooden coaster beside the ­stovetop—­that coaster looked like an offcut from a plank, but it did the job.

  “Is your electricity from a generator?”

  Anahera shook her head. “My mother had the lines put in when she was living here.” Her smile faded. “I asked the electricity company to turn the lights back on and everything seems to work. But I’m not chancing using the stove or oven yet.”

  She’d lifted the pot of pasta and taken it to the table before he realized her intent. “Come on, let’s eat.”

  Will picked up the wine bottle and his mug of coffee, then walked over to join her. After putting both on the table, he went and removed his sodden shirt from the back of the chair, leaving the garment spread out on the floor in front of the fire.

  As he moved the chair back to the table, Anahera picked up a loaf of French bread from the counter. “Courtesy of Josie again.” The smile was in her voice. “She says she didn’t sell it at the café today, had Tom pass it to me at the volunteer meeting. I think she’s afraid I’ll starve myself out of grief if she doesn’t make sure I’m fed.”

  Tearing the long loaf in half, she placed one half on the cutting board she’d put on the table beside the pot of pasta, then broke the other half into quarters. She took one quarter and bit into it, as if in silent repudiation of her friend’s assessment.

  Will had seen grief manifested a hundred different ways: in the movies, they liked to show people weeping and wailing or going numb and collapsing. But the truth wasn’t always so simple. Some people got angry.

  Like Anahera.

  The cop ate quietly, Anahera thought. Methodically. As if it was a task that had to be completed, as if the taste of the food meant nothing to him. Anahera might’ve been insulted except that she knew she was a good cook even when limited to packet sauce and the basic spices she’d picked up at the Lees’ supermarket.

  However, she
had the feeling she could’ve put a cordon bleu meal in front of the cop and he’d have eaten it the same way. This wasn’t a man who took time to enjoy the small pleasures of life.

  Had he been born like that, or had life changed him, made him into this?

  If she had to guess, she’d say the latter. No one was born without the capacity for joy in the soul. Life leached it out of them, drop by drop.

  Lifting up her glass, she took a deliberate sip of the wine. The smell of alcohol used to make her throw up, but she’d refused to be held hostage to the past and to her father’s addictions. So she’d taught herself to enjoy it as it was meant to be ­enjoyed—­in small doses.

  Edward had helped; he’d introduced her to a whole new world of fine wines and decadent cocktails. Before that, all she’d known was the cheap plonk you could get down at the local supermarket. But no matter how good the wine, Anahera had never felt the desire to overindulge. To do so would be to spit on her mother’s ashes and that was the one thing Anahera would never do.

  “This is really good.” Will’s voice was steady, his eyes watchful.

  Anahera was ­near-­certain he was trying to make the kind of conversation he thought he should make. “You eat like it’s fuel,” she said, her tolerance for bullshit at an ­all-­time low. “Are you sure you even tasted it?”

  The face that looked back at her wasn’t expressionless as much as opaque. Controlled. Probably a good skill to cultivate when you were in a line of work that involved interrogating suspects. “I tasted it,” he said evenly.

  But Anahera was no longer thinking about the food. “Am I a suspect?” It wasn’t something she’d considered, given how recently she’d returned to Golden Cove, but by that same token, Will didn’t know her, had no reason to rule her out. “Is that why you asked me to watch people and report back? So you could compare my report with someone else’s and see if I lied?”

  He held her gaze with the flinty, unforgiving gray of his. His eyes reminded her of the ocean on a perfectly still day before a ­storm—­it might appear calm, but turbulent currents dragged underneath. “You have a good imagination,” he said mildly.