Amber Beach

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “Don’t we have any American boats around here?” she asked.

  “You’re riding in one.”

  “I mean commercial boats.”

  “There are a few, but most of the nonpetroleum haulers that go out of Anacortes these days are foreign.”

  Honor looked at the freighter and tried to forget she was in a small boat heading out into the San Juans in search of answers that she might not want to know.

  It didn’t work. She couldn’t forget. Kyle was a knot in her stomach and an ache across her shoulders that didn’t go away. She forced herself to concentrate on the Tomorrow, which might do Kyle some good. Worrying sure hadn’t.

  As the boat arrowed through the shipping channel, she compared shapes on the water with the shimmering green blips on the radar screen. Once they were out of the main channel, the number of big ships went down. The number of small pleasure craft soared. She felt like part of an unannounced parade.

  “I didn’t think there were that many crazy people, even in the Pacific Northwest,” she said, waving a hand at little boats zipping around on the cold water like speedy white bugs.

  “Crazy? Oh, you mean boaters. The San Juans are a mecca for small boats, especially in the summertime.”

  “Then Kyle wouldn’t exactly have stood out . . . .”

  “No. Don’t be alarmed. I’m going to slow down and get the fishing gear in the water.”

  “Oh joy. I can’t wait. Be still my beating heart.” She gave him a sideways glance. “How’s my enthusiasm index?”

  “Right off the bottom of the scale.”

  Carefully, slowly, Jake brought the boat down to idling speed and put the shifter in neutral. The wake swelled up beneath them very gently. He didn’t want to make Honor nervous. Just because he had to use her to save himself didn’t mean that he had to torture her in the process. It wasn’t much of a sop to his conscience, but it was all he had.

  Silently Honor watched while he set out the fishing rods. He kept up a running commentary about down-riggers, rod holders, cannonballs, flashers, spoons, and other words she let pass right out of her mind. Then he started in on the difference between fishing with cut plug herring versus whole herring versus artificial lures. Then he went on about trolling versus mooching versus buzz bombing.

  His enthusiasm should have been catching. It wasn’t. She tried not to yawn in his face, but she didn’t try hard enough. When he got to the part about how many “pulls” behind the boat the lure should be positioned to catch silver versus coho, and what the trolling speed should be in order to avoid getting dogfish, she held up her hands in surrender.

  “Enough,” she begged. “You’ve made your point.”

  He looked surprised. “I have?”

  “Yes! Fishing is a lot more complicated than squeezing eight inches of worm onto a one-inch hook and dunking the mess over the side.”

  “I just kept talking because I didn’t want you to be nervous.”

  “Nervous? I’m comatose. Why would I be nervous?”

  “No reason.”

  Jake hid his smile by bending over to fire up the small trolling motor. If Honor hadn’t noticed that they were adrift and the wind was starting to chop up the surface of the water, he wasn’t going to point it out. Not that there was any danger—the SeaSport could ride out a gale, much less the refreshing breeze that had come up—but Honor wasn’t at home on the water yet.

  As soon as he was satisfied with the trolling speed, he checked the two rods in their separate holders and went back into the cabin. He picked up the remote throttle control for the kicker, climbed into the helm seat, switched the computer display from the chart to the depth sounder/fish finder, and took his place in the long, elliptical line of boats trolling for salmon.

  The two Bayliners that had followed the Tomorrow swung into place much farther back. Jake had brought the SeaSport into line just behind the only Olympic he could see. He doubted it was the elusive fourth boat; the fish landing net was a faded blue and the driver was old enough to be Honor’s grandfather. Not the sort of person who would be playing tag in the dark with a speeding boat and then racing off to start fishing at Secret Harbor while the Coast Guard practiced climbing on and off the Tomorrow.

  “Take the helm and keep us in line with the boat ahead,” Jake said.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Use the binoculars.”

  “I can do that.”

  “I know what the shoreline should look like. You don’t.”

  Warily Honor took over the controls. She soon discovered that the boat responded very slowly when it was on the trolling engine. In fact, it was a pig to hold in line.

  While she learned the rhythm of steer, correct, overcorrect, oversteer, repeat as necessary, Jake picked up the binoculars and scanned the shoreline. He didn’t see anything unexpected. There was a small settlement tucked way back at the mouth of the harbor, plus some salmon pens farther out along the edge of the bay. None of the small craft he saw matched the specifications in Kyle’s registration papers for the Zodiac. No dive equipment was lying carelessly about on the shore. No anchor was stranded on the rocks. No unusual debris decorated the beach.

  When Honor managed to bring the SeaSport about and begin the return leg of the troll, Jake switched to watching the other boats as they passed by thirty or forty yards away. They couldn’t escape from his scrutiny, because the SeaSport was between them and the open sea.

  Jake smiled. It was the nervous-making kind of smile.

  “Well?” Honor asked.

  “Well what?”

  “What do they look like?” she asked impatiently.

  “Idiots. They don’t have any fishing gear in the water.”

  “I’d say that speaks highly of their intelligence,” she retorted.

  He didn’t answer. He had just spotted a double-dealing Lithuanian trying to look like a salmon fisherman. As though realizing too late that he was on center stage with a spotlight in his face, Dimitri Pavlov turned away from the passing boat.

  “Snake Eyes,” Jake said distinctly.

  “What? Let me see.”

  “Keep steering. He’s not going anywhere. I want a look at the other boat that was following.”

  Honor stared over the distance separating the two boats. She couldn’t make out the features of the man who was driving the boat. To her eye, he seemed to be bouncing around a lot.

  “Why is his boat wallowing around on the water more than we are?” she asked.

  “Bad hull design, bad trim, bad driver, or any combination thereof.”

  “What difference does . . . never mind. I passed my limit on useless facts for the day somewhere between dogfish and buzz bombing.”

  “You sure?” he asked.

  She looked at the smile spreading on Jake’s mouth beneath the binoculars. Her pulse kicked. That slow grin of his was deadly.

  “Positive,” she said. Her voice sounded husky. She cleared her throat. “Recognize anyone in the second boat?”

  “Two men. One woman. Two fishing rods.”

  “Why just two?”

  “Only two fishing licenses on board would be my guess.”

  “His and hers?”

  “His and his. Most fishermen are—”

  “Men?” Honor interrupted dryly.

  “Yeah.”

  He didn’t say that the woman in question was Ellen Lazarus, who had a mind like a bear trap and thighs to match. He didn’t recognize the men with her, other than that the guy driving the boat was a clean-shaven, close-cut, squared-away generic military type. And Conroy was right—the driver looked too young to be a captain in anyone’s navy.

  Jake wondered which of the Whidbey Island NAS boys had been pressed into service as a fishing guide for Uncle Sam’s entry into the amber treasure hunt. Whoever it was, he knew how to fish. The rods made a clean arc against the gray-blue water. Each rod tip moved in slow rhythms that told of a flasher turning beneath the surface of the sea, luring fish to c
ome up, have a look, and stay for dinner.

  The man with Ellen might have been a sport fisherman in his spare time, but he was working now. He didn’t even glance at the rods arching off to port and starboard of the stern. The man had a pair of binoculars against his eyes and he was memorizing everything about the Tomorrow.

  Jake gave him a casual, one-finger salute and lowered the glasses. Honor snatched them up, adjusted them for her own eyes, and looked at the first of the two boats.

  “You sure that’s Snake Eyes?” she asked. “I can’t see much beneath that miserable cap he’s wearing.”

  “I’m sure.”

  She started to object that she wasn’t that good an artist—her sketch and a glance through binoculars at forty yards weren’t enough for certain identification. Then she looked again. What she could see of the man was unappetizing enough to go with her memory of Snake Eyes. Clothes that were as cheap as they were ill fitting. A hat that should have been burned as a health hazard. Hands that were allergic to soap.

  Not that she was a fashion queen herself in her black jeans, blue-green sweater, blue-green wind jacket, white deck shoes, and hair combed by the playful wind. But at least she was clean. Snake Eyes wasn’t.

  “Yuck,” Honor summed up, and focused on the next boat.

  “He’s a regular Prince Alarming,” Jake agreed. “Recognize anyone in the second boat?”

  “Nope. The woman looks a bit overdressed for fishing. Nice jacket, though. Red that clear is hard to find.”

  Jake preferred Honor’s sleek, sea-colored wind shell and sweater to Ellen’s expensive red jacket, but he didn’t say anything. He couldn’t help wondering if the rest of Ellen’s clothes would catch up with her before she ruined the ones she had. Obviously she had been yanked out of whatever office job she had been working on and shot into Anacortes to seduce one J. Jacob Mallory. No time to pack. No time to say good-bye. Just grab a cab and blast off to the next brushfire.

  He had enjoyed that kind of life once. Now he didn’t miss it at all.

  A glance over his shoulder told Jake that nothing was happening with the fishing rods. He wasn’t surprised. None of the other circling boats had dropped out of line to fight a fish. He glanced at the fish finder. Nothing was returning a sonar echo except the flat bottom of the bay.

  “Nobody’s catching anything,” Honor said.

  “Tide won’t change for half an hour.”

  “So?”

  “There’s a saying around here that ninety-five percent of fish are caught during the ten-minute bites at tide change.”

  “Then what are all these people doing here now?”

  “Praying for the other five percent.”

  “I was right the first time. They’re crazy.”

  “Relax. The best-kept secret about fishing is that it’s a grand excuse to do nothing.”

  Honor didn’t look convinced. Or relaxed.

  He switched the screen to the chart plotter and called up the Secret Harbor route Kyle had stored. For the moment he was assuming that the dashed route on the chart was simply a preferred trolling route and the cross marks along that route were places where Kyle had caught fish.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “A chart showing Secret Harbor. That’s Cypress Island. Across the channel is Guemes Island.”

  She leaned into the narrow aisle to get a better look at the screen. “What’s the dotted line that loops around?”

  “I’m assuming it’s the trolling route Kyle preferred. It’s real close to the contours of a little rise that shows on the charts.”

  “What are these marks?”

  “Probably places where he caught fish.”

  “But you’re not sure?”

  “No. That’s why I’m retracing this route.”

  “How will doing this help us find Kyle?”

  Jake hesitated. Even his quick mind didn’t see a useful way of ducking the question. Besides, the sooner Honor accepted that her brother was a thief, the less she would feel betrayed by Jake when she found out that he was no more a fishing guide than she was a woman who was yearning to learn how to fish.

  Jake didn’t want to be classed in the same lying category as Honor’s ruthless, treacherous, charming brother.

  “I think you’ll agree that your brother and a fortune in amber disappeared at the same time?” Jake asked mildly.

  Honor closed her eyes, then opened them and met his level glance. “Yes, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s a thief.”

  Even more than a month’s growth of beard couldn’t hide the impatience and anger that drew Jake’s mouth into a hard line. He switched the lower screen from chart to depth sounder and stared at the colorful red and blue screen. Flat bottom. Ninety feet down. No fish showing. Nothing had changed.

  Including Honor’s stubborn belief in her brother.

  “You’re a loyal sister but a lousy thinker,” Jake said. “You’ll get a lot closer to where your brother is if you take the most likely explanation for the facts as we know them and work from there.”

  “You think Kyle stole the amber.”

  Jake glanced up from the screen. “Can you think of a better explanation?”

  She opened her mouth. Nothing came out. She swallowed. “I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it.”

  He raised one dark eyebrow and waited.

  “I . . . I just . . .” Her voice died into a painful silence.

  “Never mind,” he said roughly. “Believe whatever you have to, but don’t expect the rest of the world to worship at the altar of Kyle Donovan.”

  “The man driving the amber shipment was killed when it was stolen,” Honor said in a strained voice. “Could you believe that your brother was a thief and a murderer?”

  “I’m not close enough to my stepbrothers or half brothers for it to get in the way of my judgment.”

  Jake looked back at the fishing rods. Nothing new there, either. He turned back to Honor.

  “Whatever the circumstances,” he said in a neutral tone, “I’m assuming that Kyle and the amber are together. Some other people in official positions seem to be assuming it, too. Can we agree on that much, at least?”

  She nodded.

  He let out a hidden breath and sorted quickly through the information he had gotten from the newspapers rather than firsthand in Kaliningrad or from Ellen and Conroy.

  “Okay,” Jake said. “Do you know how much bulk we’re talking about?”

  “Six feet, two inches, about one-ninety,” Honor said in a clipped voice.

  “I meant the amber. How big a shipment are we talking about?”

  “I don’t know. Depends on the quality, I guess. The newspaper mentioned a million dollars. From the cost of the one shipment Kyle just sent me, a million dollars would buy a lot of ordinary amber.”

  “Is that what Donovan International is claiming from its insurer—a million bucks?”

  “We don’t have a claim. We never received the amber, so it wasn’t ours to lose.”

  Bullshit, Jake thought savagely, but he didn’t say anything aloud. Obviously the Donovan males were hiding a few things from their beloved little sister.

  “How about the amber itself?” he asked. “Was it raw or worked?”

  She frowned. “I’m not sure, but I think both.”

  Excitement threaded through Jake. Honor was the first person who had mentioned worked amber as opposed to material fresh from the mine. Unless he took Ellen’s talk about the Amber Room seriously. He really didn’t want to do that. He was still praying that Ellen was chasing a ghost.

  The last thing he needed was the kind of trouble a stolen Amber Room would bring down on his head. Financing a handful of wannabe rebels was one thing. A dumb thing. Stealing a piece of a country’s cultural history was quite another.

  Wars had been started for less.

  “What kind of worked amber?” Jake asked casually.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Old or new stuff?
Cups, sculptures, boxes, rosaries, tables, candlesticks, mosaics, jewelry? What was the worked amber like?”

  “Really old. Neolithic. Kyle started collecting Stone Age pieces when he was handling the jade trade for Donovan International. Then he discovered the small Neolithic figurines or pendants carved of opaque amber. Bastard amber is what he called it.”

  Jake knew the type of amber object Honor was describing. It was another of the things he and Kyle had found in common: Jake had a long-standing fascination with fossil resin shaped into art by people who had been dead thousands of years. The Amber Room’s history was a lot more recent. The eighteenth century rather than thousands of years b.c.

  He let out another hidden breath. Let Ellen grab hold of the fairy dust. He had something more real to chase: a shipment of top-quality raw amber from Kaliningrad. He knew just what the shipment looked like to the last gram—he had packed it himself—but he didn’t know how much the Donovan family knew.

  “Kyle used to send jade he had collected back with the other stuff Donovan International bought,” she said. “When he started collecting Neolithic amber carvings, I assumed he would transport them home the same way, with a commercial shipment.”

  “So, any worked amber in the missing shipment was just old stuff for his own collection,” Jake said.

  “As far as I know. But he was working with another collector, too.”

  Jake tensed. “Who?”

  “Kyle just called him Jay. He really liked him. Said he was the kind of man I should be dating instead of—” She broke off sharply.

  Jake raised his eyebrows in silent question.

  “My brothers think I should date men like them. Stubborn. Arrogant. Too big for my comfort. Hardheaded.” Then Honor sighed and admitted, “Intelligent. Enough integrity and backbone for a regiment. Loyal. Occasionally quite wonderful.”

  “But only occasionally,” Jake said dryly.

  “Hey, I’m a sister. That’s as good as it gets.”

  “So you’ve been dating spineless, hesitant, stupid, weak men.”