Deadly Gift

by Heather Graham

  He shook his head then, a flash of his frustration showing.

  “Not a single sign,” he said again. “It’s like they carried a couple of cinder blocks out there, tied a rope around them and sank themselves. I’ve had police divers down there, and they haven’t found a thing, but it’s a big bay, and they could be anywhere. I wish to God I had more to tell you. I wish I had an answer. But I don’t.”

  “And you’ve given up already,” Sean said, anger and bitterness in his tone.

  Zach held silent. Morrissey hadn’t given up; he seemed to be the dogged kind of policeman who never gave up, but who didn’t go off in passionate rages, either. Sean, on the other hand, was emotionally involved and couldn’t keep himself from showing it, which was perfectly understandable.

  “No, sir, we have not given up,” Morrissey said firmly. “We have followed every lead. The problem is, those leads dried up quickly, and so far we haven’t found any others.”

  “I’ll go down and take a look at the boat, Sean,” Zach said, then turned to Morrissey. “I know the boats and the family. If there’s anything amiss, something subtle that someone else might not see, it’s just possible that I will.”

  “Fine with me. Cal and his wife were out, and your daughter, too, Mr. O’Riley. They’ve taken a look around, as I’m sure you know. We don’t mind help, and we don’t mind being wrong. But don’t think that we give up easily. We don’t.”

  Morrissey, with his short iron-gray hair and weary bulldog face, turned to Zach. “The boat is back at the wharf. There’s still crime tape around it, but I’ll go over with you.”

  There was a tap on the door, and Sean barked, “Come in.”

  Kat entered the room. “Dad, Caer says it’s time for your medicine. And that she needs to take your blood pressure.” She glanced at Morrissey with a hopeful smile.

  “Sorry, nothing new. And I was just getting ready to leave,” he said.

  “And I’ll be going with him,” Zach announced, rising.

  “Where?” Kat asked.

  “To the boat,” Zach told her briefly.

  She studied him gravely, and then, to his surprise, she almost smiled. “Take Caer with you.”

  “Kat, I’m going out there to—”

  “Take Caer. Amanda is going shopping, and I can stay with Dad. It will give her a chance to see a bit of town, not to mention get a sense of what this family’s all about—and to understand that she’s going to pretty much have to leash Dad to keep him from trying to get back out on the water.”

  Sean looked at his daughter impatiently. “I’m obeying every word the doctors said, young lady. And my stomach is right as rain now, by the way.”

  “But you put a lot of pressure on your heart, and your blood pressure soared off the charts,” Kat said.

  “True enough,” Sean agreed—surprisingly easily, Zach thought. “By all means, Zach, give the girl a chance to get out.”

  “I’ll wait for you out front,” Detective Morrissey said.

  Sean stood. Kat moved closer to take his arm, and he started to protest, but he loved his daughter, and Zach saw his features soften as he let her lead him out.

  “Zach, you can take my BMW and follow Detective Morrissey with Miss Cavannaugh. That way, he won’t need to bring you back here.”

  Zach’s coat was hanging in one of the closets by the mudroom that led from the kitchen to the garage. The mudroom had been part of the house before any of the more modern renovations had been done, and it retained its charm, with black and white tiles and etched glass.

  He donned his coat, then waited impatiently by the door for Caer.

  She appeared a few minutes later. He wondered if he looked annoyed, because she hesitated when she approached him. “I’m sorry. Apparently everyone thinks I need to get out and see my surroundings,” she told him.

  He nodded briefly. “Where’s everyone else?”

  “Bridey is still in her room, and Amanda hasn’t appeared yet, but Kat says she’ll be going out shopping when Bridey gets up.” She hesitated again.

  He smiled. “And Kat thinks this is a safe time for you to go out, because she’ll be with her father and can keep him safe from Amanda,” he said flatly.

  She shrugged. “Yes.”

  “All right, let’s go.”

  She looked out the window as he drove, but her expression gave away nothing. Newport had once been a haven for the filthy rich. But, as always, where there were filthy rich, there were those who had to serve them, so once the city had been a place of economic extremes. That had changed with the advent of the federal income tax, and now the population, like that of most cities, represented a continuum of financial where-withal. Most of the mansions were now owned and maintained by the Preservation Society of Newport County, and were open to the public for a fee. Tourists flocked into the area, even in winter—or maybe especially in winter—to see the way the other half once lived and to enjoy the events the Preservation Society sponsored.

  Though the O’Riley house sat high up on a cliff, the offices were at the wharf, where the charter boats could come and go in the comparative calm of the inlet.

  When he reached the wharf, he drove into a parking space marked O’Riley, then watched Caer as she emerged from the car. The breeze took hold of her hair and swept it lightly around her face. She seemed to love the feel of it, and to enjoy the sight of the many boats in their berths. There were other charter businesses besides O’Riley’s, but Sean had the best setup, an old Victorian-style office on a spit of land between docks, with old wooden steps leading up to the front door. The other rental offices were much smaller, some of them just one-person shacks with windows.

  The parking lot paralleled much of the waterfront, with a restaurant at the far end, where the docks ended and a sweep of granite rose up from the sea, and they were surrounded by other businesses, all of which were tourist oriented. The Lucky Whale advertised seaside souvenirs, while Narragansett Niceties boasted the finest in New England art. A nearby chowder house claimed to have the world’s best clam chowder to eat in or take out. Caer stood for a long moment and simply observed it all.

  He saw that Detective Morrissey was waiting for them on the dock next to the O’Riley’s Charters office.

  “Come on, I’ll take you into the office. You can hang out there while I’m talking to Detective Morrissey.”

  “No problem,” she said.

  He walked her up the steps to the office and opened the door. Cal was at a desk, doing paperwork, and Marni was dusting the cases holding some of the treasures Sean had found over the years: a sextant from the sixteen-hundreds, the anchor from a long-gone whaler, a display of early American coins, and more. She stopped when she saw them and offered a broad smile, but once again, Zach thought, it didn’t seem real.

  “Well, hello,” she said, walking over to give Zach a kiss on the cheek and nodding at Caer.

  “Zach,” Cal said with pleasure. “And Miss Cavannaugh.” His pleasure at seeing her seemed no less genuine.

  Zach suspected the Johnsons’ reactions to Caer were typical—and typically split according to gender. She was so stunning that a man would have to be have dead or of a different persuasion not to notice her, while Marni, like most women, might well feel threatened, not just by Caer’s beauty but by her own husband’s reaction to the other woman. Marni was a very attractive woman herself, but she was in her thirties and insecure that her own youth and beauty were fading. She never reacted this way to Kat, but she’d known Kat a long time, not to mention that Kat was more interested in music than anything as mundane as anyone’s appearance, including her own.

  Right now, she was obsessed with her father.

  And Amanda.

  “So Sean is doing well?” Marni asked.

  “Very well,” Caer assured her.

  “And now that he’s safely back home, are you going to explore America?”

  “I’ve been retained through the end of the year,” Caer told her.

 
“But you’re already checking out the city, aren’t you?” Marni asked sweetly, but with an edge.

  “Kat wanted some alone time with her father,” Zach put in.

  “How anyone can be alone in that house full of bitches is beyond me,” Marni said beneath her breath, but just loudly enough to be sure the words were audible.

  No one had asked her, and silence seemed to stretch as everyone tried to think of a way to get back on more casual ground.

  “Marni,” Cal said uncomfortably, breaking the silence at last. “That was unnecessary.”

  “I’m sorry,” Marni said, and she appeared to be sincere. “I guess I’m not being very welcoming, am I, Miss Cavannaugh?” she asked Caer. “It’s been a tense six months here, since Sean and Amanda were married. Kat’s so unhappy. And Amanda loathes it when Kat comes back to town. Poor Sean, I don’t see how he manages.”

  Cal rose and set an arm affectionately around her shoulders. “Marni really cares about Sean, and it upsets us both to see him this way.”

  “Not to mention that Kat’s convinced Amanda poisoned her father somehow,” Marni said.

  “Kat is certainly concerned about her father,” Zach said noncommittally.

  “And let’s face it, we’re all fearing the worst about Eddie,” Cal said softly.

  “Cal,” Zach said, “what happened that day? Were you out on another charter? What about you, Marni? You spend a lot of time in the office, right?”

  “Of course I spend a lot of time in the office,” she said indignantly. “I work very hard. We all know that Cal’s the new man, and he and I both put in our fair share of effort.”

  “Marni, I’m not casting aspersions, I’m just wondering where you were when Eddie booked that charter and took it out,” Zach said.

  “Oh,” she said, then, “Oh,” again, as if she realized she had been oversensitive and felt a little silly. “It was the day Sean was leaving for Ireland. I was out buying him some new wool socks for the trip, those special socks that are supposed to support your feet when you’re walking,” she said. “We intentionally didn’t schedule anything for that day.”

  “And it should have stayed that way,” Cal said bleakly.

  Marni shook her head sadly. “If only one of us had been around.”

  “Marni, don’t start with that,” Cal said. “If only Eddie hadn’t accepted that last-minute reservation. If only there had been a storm, and no one had gone out. We could play that game all day.”

  She nodded.

  “So, Cal…?” Zach said.

  “What?” Cal asked, frowning.

  “Where were you that day?”

  “Oh,” Cal said. Apparently his mind had been on his wife. He smiled at Marni, then looked back at Zach apologetically. “At home, napping. There was no need for all of us to be in the office. Eddie said he had stuff to do, though I don’t actually know what it was.” He, too, sounded defensive.

  “Hey, I’m just asking, hoping you might have seen or heard something you forgot until now,” Zach said.

  “How I wish,” Marni told him fervently.

  “Sorry,” Cal said. “All we have is Eddie’s note in the book.”

  “Right,” Zach said. “Hey, will you excuse me? Detective Morrissey is waiting for me so I can take a look around the Sea Maiden. I was hoping you could show Caer around the wharf, let her get a look at the boats.”

  “Sure, I can show Miss Cavannaugh our little fleet,” Marni said.

  Zach glanced at Caer. If she was worried about being left in the care of a jealous she-wolf, she betrayed no sign of it.

  “I’d love to see the boats,” she said. “And please, call me Caer.”

  Zach promised to be back as soon as he could, then left to meet Morrissey.

  The detective didn’t appear to be impatient. He was leaning against one of the dock’s support pilings as if he had all the time in the world.

  There was crime scene tape circling the Sea Maiden. She was sixty feet long, three-masted, beautiful even at rest. She wasn’t the largest boat in the fleet, but Zach knew that she was the one Eddie—and everyone else—loved the most. She was so sleek and maneuverable that, despite her size, one man could sail her. One of the prime attractions of an O’Riley’s tour, though, was the chance for passengers to help sail the boat, and Eddie had loved to work with people, young and old, teaching them how to read the wind and set the sails.

  “You can go on aboard,” Morrissey told him. “The crime scene unit has finished up,”

  Zach stepped on deck. Her sails were furled, and everything he’d heard seemed to be correct. There was absolutely no sign of a disturbance of any kind. He paced from bow to stern, studied the sails and the helm, and then went into the cabin. There were no suspicious notes lying on the desk, the radar seemed to be working just fine, and there was nothing wrong with the radio. Charts of Narragansett Bay and Rhode Island Sound were pinned to the wall.

  Zach went through the galley, the main cabin, the heads and the two sleeping compartments. Everything was just as it should be.

  As he passed the head on his way back to the ladder topside, he noted something that he had missed the first time. He hunkered down on the balls of his feet to study it.

  Morrissey had followed him down, but had kept his distance, silent as he watched Zach conduct his examination of the vessel.

  “Talc,” he said now.

  “You had it checked out?” Zach asked.

  “Hey, we’re not the big city, but we do have a decent crime lab,” Morrissey told him. “Yes, we checked it out. It’s talc.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Any idea what it could be doing there?” Morrissey asked. “I mean, who the hell needs talc for a pleasant sail out into the sound?”

  “No one—that I know of,” Zach told him, straightening. “I can’t imagine anyone needing talc for anything other than a wet suit.”

  Morrissey stared at him, frowning. The man was apparently not a diver, Zach thought.

  “Wet suits are tight fitting—they have to be. Talc helps a diver get one on.”

  “You think Eddie was going diving?” Morrissey asked.

  “No. Eddie would never have gone diving in winter.”

  Strange, he thought. The company hired an outside cleaning company to make sure their boats were always spotless, so the odds of the talc being left over from a previous trip were slim to none.

  But it might make sense, even if the sense it made was disheartening. If someone had come aboard with the intention of killing Eddie and getting away with it scot-free, what better way to simply disappear after the murder than to dive overboard and swim to safety, wearing a wet suit for insulation against the cold water? There would be no need for a second conspirator to motor up and pick up the killer, meaning there would be no one to squeal, no one to tell the truth out of guilt or under pressure, no one to break.

  “You think someone came aboard, killed Eddie, jumped off the boat and swam away?” Morrissey asked.

  “I think it’s possible.”

  “Do you know how cold that water is this time of year?” the detective asked.

  Zach nodded.

  “If you’re right, someone really wanted him dead,” Morrissey said. “I’ll start checking around the dive shops, see if they noticed anyone suspicious. I don’t suppose they offer dives off this boat in winter, do they?”

  “No, just cruises,” Zach said.

  Morrissey shook his head. “Bizarre. How would the killer have gotten an air tank on board without Eddie noticing?”

  “I don’t know. And, hey, the talc isn’t a guarantee. But you didn’t find anything else, right?”

  “Nothing. She was clean. The guys that found her out there, a couple of Coast Guard officers, said she was like a ghost ship. Nothing disturbed, nothing at all. They hadn’t opened a can of Coke or so much as put on a pot of coffee.”

  “And the weather?”

  “Smooth seas and a beautiful day, crisp and cool, but that was it.
Light winds, no storms, nothing,” Morrissey said.

  Zach hesitated. “And no bodies washed up on shore?”

  “No. No unidentified patients in the hospital, nothing. I’ll start on the dive shops, though, see what I can find out about equipment rental,” Morrissey said.

  “Our killer—if we’re even on the right track with this—probably has his own equipment.”

  “What about air for his tank?” Morrissey asked.

  “True enough. And I’m all for checking the dive shops. Any port in a storm, as they say.”

  “We’ll keep looking for some kind of a lead,” Morrissey said. “Or…”

  His voice trailed off.

  Zach finished his sentence for him. “Or a body.”

  Morrissey only nodded grimly.

  “When you make your rounds of the dive shops,” Zach said, “can you keep it on the quiet side? This may be a shot in the dark, but if we’re on to something, and if there is a killer out there, we don’t want him to know we’re getting close.”

  Morrissey smiled dryly. “No problem. And I’ll ask you to share your insights with me and keep quiet otherwise.”

  Zach nodded, smiling in turn. “Yeah, sorry. I know you weren’t born yesterday.”

  He thanked Morrissey, and stepped off the Sea Maiden. Forensics could literally be a lifesaver. Few people knew that better than he did. But when nothing was available, when there were no prints, hairs, fibers or useful substances, footwork was in order.

  He headed back to the office, where he found Cal, Marni and Caer bent over the desk.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” Cal said. “Caer didn’t know Eddie, but she’s been hearing so much about him that I thought she might be interested in seeing some old photos, and then she asked to see his last entry in the register. I figured you would want to see it, as well.”

  Caer’s eyes were clear when they met his. Why the hell did he always find her so suspicious? She’d been Sean’s nurse in Ireland—if he could guarantee that anyone was innocent of Eddie’s disappearance, it had to be her—but why the hell would she be interested in seeing the reservation book?