Safe Harbor

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  As Sam walked out after Holly, Charlotte reached down for her handbag.

  "I've never been interrogated before," he heard her say as he left the office. "Will you be needing my driver's license or anything?"

  In the hall it was all Holly could do not to take a swing at Sam.

  "Lucky Charms? Could you be more patronizing?"

  Sam shrugged and said, "If the cereal fits..."

  "Why did you back-pedal from every single statement you made to me about Eden? I felt like an unmatched sock just hanging alone in there to dry," she said angrily. "I just don't see how—"

  "Will you hold it down!" Sam muttered, grabbing her by the elbow. He began to steer her toward the door. "I didn't leave you hanging out to do anything. You were doing a great job of that all by yourself. The more you shouted your father's innocence, the more Cottier looked convinced that you were hiding his guilt."

  "But my father didn't do anything—except, okay, to run off with her. Why should he be the prime suspect?"

  Sam looked her directly in the eye and said, "Holly. It doesn't take a rocket scientist."

  It was the pinprick to Holly's balloon of hot air; she found herself deflating fast. "You don't know him," she said on a sigh. "And neither does Chief Cottier. That's the whole problem."

  The shoulder strap of her purse had slipped down over her forearm. Sam lifted the strap and tucked it back in place with a chin-up kind of smile and murmured, "They're not going to put an innocent man behind bars. I have every intention of telling the chief what I know about Eden. It's just that I prefer to do it one-on-one instead of in a group encounter, that's all."

  Holly looked deep into his eyes and suddenly remembered why it was she wanted him in the apartment above her studio.

  "Okay, that's understandable," she admitted, then added, "I'm sorry for ... all of that in there. I was going off half-cocked. It was the yellow tape around the boat, I guess. It freaked me out."

  Sam said generously, "Let's not forget Stefan."

  "Yeah. That, too."

  The fake kiss hadn't helped, either, she decided as they stepped outside. What kind of man grabbed a woman on a public dock and then kissed the living daylights out of her just to create a diversion? What kind of man could fake a kiss so well?

  She squinted in the blinding sunshine and said with a very casual shrug, "Would you rather I waited here instead of at my mother's house for you? Because, y'know, it makes no difference to me."

  "Absolutely not," Sam said. "Why hang around a police station when you can be somewhere comfortable? I'll walk back after I'm done here and we can take it from there."

  Take it from there. Take what from where? It was making her crazy, the way he always seemed to mean either more—or less—than he was saying. Here was a man who could keep his own counsel. How did he feel about her? What did he know about Eden? She opened her mouth to ask him to explain what he meant, then shut up again. This was not the place to arm-wrestle him for answers.

  "See you back at the ranch, then," she said, obviously frustrated. She turned to go.

  "You bet. Holly?"

  When she turned around again, it was to hear him say, "I'll get to the bottom of this. Trust me."

  He didn't have to offer her that reassurance; he was under no obligation at all. It made her feel warm inside—almost as warm as during the fake kiss. "All right," she said with a steady look. "I'll do that."

  His own expression was grim as he returned inside the station to face the officer on the case.

  ****

  Holly walked back to her mother's house the long way around, detouring past the docks. The Vixen was still there, taped off from the rest of the world. Don't touch me, the boat seemed to say, bowing its head in shame. Unclean.

  It all looked so strange, so utterly wrong. And yet, what had she expected to see? Her father, hosing off salt from the deck while he chomped on an unlit cigar in tired bliss after a long day's sail?

  If only.

  Suddenly she was back to feeling furious at him for bringing down suspicion on himself and humiliation on them all. At a minimum there was the scandal of the affair to deal with, and if Eden wasn't found—if she really was alive and clever enough to fade into the crowds with her stolen engraving—there would always be lingering suspicions no matter how innocent Eric Anderson was.

  How were they ever going to hold their heads up in a tight-knit community like theirs again? Holly was reasonably well-known on the island; she was a soft touch who could be relied on to donate her work to the nonstop charity events that seemed not only to benefit but to bind the year-rounders, both struggling and fortunate. She loved being able to do her share, loved seeing her whirligigs pop up in yards and gardens all over the island. After years of putting down roots and nurturing them carefully, to have them hacked at so violently was unbearable.

  In a deep funk, she walked past Periwinkle, a small dress shop that stayed open year-round, and caught the eye of the owner, who was in the window stealing a straw hat from the head of a mannequin there. Mrs. Fletcher's smile was as tight as it was brief as she turned away quickly to tend to her customer.

  She knows. They all do. And they don't, they won't, know what to say.

  Holly tried not to wallow in the vat of her misery, but the footing was too slippery to climb out easily. Her life was going to be affected in so many different ways. The Strawberry Festival, the All-Island Art Show, Illumination Night—all of her favorite community gatherings, ruined, possibly forever. Could she ever show up at them again? She couldn't see how.

  She stepped up the pace so that she wouldn't have to look through any more windows at any more people she knew. She tried to appear like a Type-A business woman with lots of Very Important Things to do. What a joke. Holly Anderson—the one who loved to meander through town, and stop and chat, and ooh and ah at the charming window displays, and stick her nose in every flower box she passed—that Holly Anderson was going to have to behave completely out of character now.

  I hate him, she decided; I really do.

  No, that's so selfish. I don't hate him; how can I hate him? He's my father.

  She stopped in confusion. But—oh, I might hate him, I don't know. I might.

  "Holly—"

  "Ai!" she said, startled from her re very by the tap on her shoulder.

  She swung around to see Louis Bouchard, a retired partner from her father's firm, clutching his cane as he wheezed his way through a heartfelt and awkward expression of sympathy.

  "How is your mother holding up, Holly?" the kindly old man said after an endless string of terribles. "I've wanted to come by with a bag of sweet millions for her. I know Judy sent a note, but I wanted to bring tomatoes, anyway. The reason I haven't is that I feel as if it's my fault, somehow, and that Charlotte would rather not see me."

  "Your fault, Mr. Bouchard!"

  He nodded and leaned on his cane, looking terribly sad, terribly remorseful. His hazel eyes, rimmed by sagging lids, stared forlornly at her from under a brow that was deeply splotched from years of tending vegetables in the bright island sun.

  "Here's the way I see it," he said. "I've been thinking about it a lot. If I hadn't raved about the island all those years ago to your father ... if I hadn't invited him to bring the family, those first few summers ... if I hadn't handed him access to a boat that made him fall in love with sailing—if I hadn't done any of those things, your father would not have bought a house on the island. And all of this never would have happened."

  "You can't blame yourself, Mr. Bouchard," Holly said, seeing yet another casualty of the sorry affair. How such a sweet, kind old man could feel even remotely responsible ....

  She tried to relieve his guilt. "Every day we make a hundred different choices that affect our destinies. At least! My father's decision to take you up on your invitation was just one of many, many choices he made back then."

  The lawyer smiled and said, "That's very wise, Holly. Although I can't help feeling that Eric's
decision to pitch his tent on the Vineyard was more significant than whatever car he decided to go with that year."

  She laughed. He was right, of course.

  He touched a finger to the tip of her nose, as if she were still eight years old. "You remember how you kids used to hunt for worms in the compost pile? Those were good times ... good times ... and now ... terrible," he said, coming full circle to his opening speech.

  "We'll all get through this, Mr. Bouchard. Somehow."

  "Do you think your mother'd enjoy the sweet millions?"

  "I ... don't know, to be honest. I haven't seen her make a salad lately."

  He made a face. "What, salad. Cut 'em up, that's all. Or don't even bother; just pop 'em in your mouth like strawberries, that's how sweet they are. It's been a hot, dry summer. We've got a bumper crop."

  "Yes, all right. That's very thoughtful of you. Well, I guess I—" Not knowing how to ask him tactfully what was really on her mind, she simply blurted it out. "Is my dad staying with you?"

  The old man looked surprised. "Of course. You didn't know that?"

  She shook her head, embarrassed to be so out of touch. "The Vixen returned without him."

  "That's why I'm down here. Eric asked me to retrieve his reading glasses from the boat. They're prescription, you know; he can't get another pair very quickly."

  "He sent you down for that?"

  "You can see why he would, child," he said with a note of impatience.

  She wanted to scream, "No, I don't see! Let him retrieve his own stupid glasses!" But the word "child" smarted. It came too soon after the phrase "Lucky Charms."

  "They won't let you aboard," she said, trying to sound very adult and matter-of-fact. "A forensic team is going over the boat right now."

  "Oh, well. I'm here. I'll give it a try."

  With a hopeful smile he leaned forward as if into the teeth of a gale and soldiered on, an eighty-something litigator who until then had never had to involve himself in anything more violent than an unseemly fight over a property line.

  Chapter 16

  Waiting his turn in what was euphemistically called the "library" (there were bookshelves), Sam nursed a cup of coffee until it got cold and he didn't want it anymore. He was bored but not impatient. Being at the beck and call of the justice system was nothing new; as a kid, he'd often sat in a zonal trance in family court while social workers and advocates huddled nearby, trying to decide what the hell to do with him.

  He remembered vividly his appearance in court after stealing the drug-dealer's speedboat and wrecking it on the rocks in Woods Hole. Apparently his bold exploits had created a buzz: one of the social workers had come up to him with a wry smile and said, "In all my years at this, I've never seen a ten-year-old hijack a Cigarette before. What's next? The Queen Mary?"

  Sam smiled in recollection; he liked that guy. A lot. Joe Doxie was one of the reasons that Sam—eventually—turned away from a life of crime. The other reason was Millie Steadman. A wise-guy social worker and a tenacious foster mother—they were the one-two punch of savvy and tough love that a punk like Sam had so desperately needed. Even then, it had taken a life- altering event before Sam was finally ready, at seventeen, to begin turning his life around.

  Sam propped his elbows on the long conference table and stared out the windows, musing about criminal minds and psychopaths, con artist and murderous lovers, until he realized that he'd drifted into a dank and dreary place. With a conscious effort he paddled out of the sewer of his thoughts and ended up, surprisingly, in the clear river rapids of the always exciting, much too excitable Holly Anderson.

  That kiss! He didn't want to think about it. What had he been thinking, pulling an unsuspecting woman into his arms and kissing the breath out of her? Come to think of it, she could easily have him up on assault. He wouldn't half blame her.

  That kiss. The way she returned it ... the way he, hmm, sprang to attention ... that kiss! Where had it come from? He puzzled over that kiss, mulled over how good it had felt, until he found himself paddling furiously out of those dangerous waters as well. Nope. He had absolutely no desire to go over the falls in a barrel.

  He went back to staring at the swaying trees and concentrated on the upcoming interview. Sam had been through interviews and interrogations more than once before. He knew that an investigating officer could choose to play a good cop or a bad one, depending on the witness. Sam's guess was that with Charlotte, Cottier had been a sympathetic cop who had moved out from behind his desk and had talked to her as any family man would talk to a woman who had been publicly humiliated by her no-good shit of a husband.

  But someone as proud as Charlotte Anderson would never descend to accepting sympathy. She wouldn't admit to humiliation, and certainly not to resentment or vindictiveness. One-word answers and brief phrases, that's all that Cottier was likely to have got out of her, no matter how understanding he seemed.

  Which meant that the officer would be waiting with heightened interest and bated breath to hear anything that Sam had to say.

  Finally the chief walked in, carrying a laptop and a printout. Sam had little doubt that they held his criminal history, but the look that Cottier gave him was one of pure civility.

  "Before we begin—get you some coffee?" he asked, holding up his own mug.

  "I'm fine, thanks."

  "This time of day, I hit a wall unless I have a shot of caffeine." Pulling out a molded chair, he said in an affable tone, "Hey, I understand that you're a pretty well-known marine photographer."

  "Marine photographer, yes. Well-known, probably not."

  "You have a book. That's impressive. I've never been much with a camera myself. Point 'n' shoot, that's me."

  "No pun intended, I hope."

  Cottier grinned and said, "I dunno. Don't they say all puns are intentional on some level?"

  Sam nodded. First round to the chief.

  "As you can imagine, I'm interested in what Miss Anderson had to say earlier about you and Eden Walker," Cottier said, sliding his keyboard into position. "Very interested." He explained that he was going to take a few notes and that he was going ask Sam to read them over afterward and sign them, if that was all right with Sam.

  It was all right with Sam.

  Cottier slid a pair of reading glasses over his nose and began to hunt and peck his way through a series of routine biographical questions that Sam dutifully answered. It was all in the computer, anyway.

  Furrowing his brow in an apparent hunt for some missing key, the chief said, "Okay, now, let's see... have you ever had any previous contact with the law? You know, traffic court, stuff like that, or been arrested for any other offenses?"

  Sam squared his shoulders against the back of his chair. His elbows had nowhere to go; his hands gripped the tops of his thighs. Try as he might, he couldn't help tapping the soles of his shoes alternately on the floor: old habits died hart.

  "I was what used to be called," he said with a wry smile, "a juvenile delinquent."

  "Uh-huh," said Cottier, studiously hunting and pecking. "Mind telling me what sort of offenses?" he asked without looking up.

  Sam felt the muscles of his jaw working. "Stealing, mostly."

  "Uh-huh. Big stuff? Little stuff?"

  "Some of each. A car. A boat. Rosaries."

  "No shit," said the chief. He looked up from his keyboard. "Rosaries?"

  "They weren't for me. At one point I had foster parents who put me in a Catholic school. I sold the rosaries at half price to the kids in my class. It was a captive market."

  Sam was seven when he took the rosary—one rosary. He gave it to a girl he had a crush on. But he felt like being outrageous with Cottier, he didn't know why.

  The chief had no intention of yielding authority by giving in to a smile. He said blandly, "Okay, let's move on. I assume you know the situation: Eden Walker was reported missing after going windsurfing off the Vixen, Eric Anderson's yacht. Her body has not been recovered, although given the tide and curren
t direction, that isn't surprising. What I want to know from you is—just let me get this question in the computer—do you have any personal knowledge of Eric Anderson?"

  "No, not at all."

  "Mm-hmm. Ever done business with him or been at the same event as him?"

  "Nope."

  "All right." Tap, tap, tap went the keys. "Do you have any mutual acquaintances that you know of?"

  "Obviously: Eden Walker."

  "Right. Okay, then, how do you know her, if not through Eric Anderson?"

  Showtime.

  "I was married to her for about a year before she split."

  The tap-tap-tapping stopped. Cottier lifted his head, and there was nothing even remotely amused in the calm look he bestowed on Sam. "Married, were you? Okay," he said, going back to the keyboard. "How long ago was that?"

  "She left about seven years ago."

  "And this was after a year of marriage," he said, tapping quickly. "The reason for the breakup, that would be...?"

  "She never gave me a reason. She just left."

  "And you haven't seen her since then?"

  "Nope."

  "But somehow she got hold of this, uh, engraving of your parents. How did that happen?"

  "About three years ago, Eden started dropping in occasionally to visit my parents, apparently because she needed money—"

  "And you approved of this arrangement?"

  "I didn't approve or disapprove. I didn't know."

  "Ah. Your parents lent her money on the Q.T., is that it?"

  "That's it."

  "So she took the engraving three years ago?"

  "No. She took it a few weeks ago. My parents waited awhile before they called me."

  "Miss Anderson mentioned that your parents were devastated by the loss. Is that your recollection?"

  "I think they were but tried not to show it."

  "These are your adoptive parents?"

  "That's correct."

  "Their names?"

  "James and Mildred Steadman."

  "Do you have a good relationship with them?"