Safe Harbor

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  Immediately after dropping into one of the coveted nine seats, Sam closed his eyes, trying to shut out the string of disasters that had made up his previous day. His thoughts were murderous, and they were aimed at himself. What a jerk, what a fool, what a paranoid ass he'd been. Why couldn't he have just told Holly the truth from the get-go? Instead, these were the cards he had handed her to play:

  Hi, my name is Percy Billings. I'm a lawyer. No, wait, I'm a P.I. No, scratch that. I'm actually an idiot. Did I mention that I'm sleeping in my car? And that I'm married? To the same woman who's just destroyed your family?

  Who'd want to play a hand like that? Obviously Holly had to fold. It was the only reasonable thing to do when your cards really stank.

  Nonetheless, a small part of him fiercely resented the fact that Holly had refused to believe him when he told her that Eden no longer meant anything to him. He had been telling the truth, damn it. Holly of all people should know truth when she saw it. On the other hand, he hadn't yet told Holly that he loved her.

  Why not?

  Three possibilities came to mind. One, he hadn't been looking to fall in love and in fact preferred not to fall in love. Two, he had been too busy insisting that he didn't love Eden to have time to mention, oh, by the way, that he did love Holly. And three, he was so screwed up that he didn't think he'd ever be able to love a woman, any woman, again.

  For half an hour Sam got sucked more and more deeply into a spiral of self-doubt, and he didn't come out of it until the Cessna touched down at Logan. Jarred into action, he hopped into yet another rental and headed for the Ironic Curtain, Stefan Koloman's hole-in-the-wall gallery on Huntington Avenue. Sam had made contact with the dealer late the night before (which was grimly reassuring; it meant Koloman wasn't running around the Vineyard stalking innocent women). The men had arranged to meet at the gallery—early, if Sam could catch a flight.

  During their phone conversation, Sam had learned that Koloman had not yet heard from Eden, which wasn't surprising; without a doubt, the lady had another con up her sleeve. It was Sam's job to make sure that the art dealer understood he'd be getting his money, and that he was not to approach Holly again, under any circumstances. In the mood he was in, Sam was just itching to have the chance to drive the point home, preferably with his fists.

  He arrived at the gallery to find it locked. There was no bell; he banged loudly on the door. Eventually he heard an angry voice overhead. Koloman—unshaven, tank-topped, and half-asleep—was hanging out of an apartment window overhead, pouring down a stream of invective on his early caller.

  Recognizing Sam, he said, "Shit, man! You got no place better to go?" Annoyed, he signaled Sam to come on up.

  Sam climbed three flights of a littered, foul-smelling stairwell to the first open door, where Koloman, cigarette stuck to his lower lip, was waiting to usher him inside. The small, shabby apartment reeked of stale smoke, which would have affected the value of the many paintings stacked everywhere—if they had been real. Or even finished.

  There was a half-done rendering of what looked to be an early Renoir sitting on an easel next to a museum poster of the real thing, tacked on the nearby wall. "I see you do your own ... impressions," Sam said ironically.

  "Not me; my roommate," said Koloman, jerking his head toward the bedroom. "There's no law against it," he added, his cigarette bobbing up and down as he spoke.

  He sat on the edge of the sofa's torn, paint-smeared arm. His shoulders hulked over his thin and hairy chest, giving him the look of a bird of prey. His dark eyes, alight with curiosity, were fixed on Sam. "So. You have good news?"

  "In fact, I do." Very briefly, Sam explained that Eden Walker had found herself a wealthy patron of the arts who was willing to pay Koloman the commission that he thought he deserved. The patron would no doubt be getting in touch soon; Sam would see to that. In the meantime, Holly Anderson, the young woman on the Vineyard whom Koloman had threatened, was not to be bothered. For one thing, she was the daughter of the patron in question. For another, Sam would beat the hell out of Koloman if he set foot on her property again.

  "Do you understand? You're dead. If you go near her, you're dead," he said in a pleasant voice through narrowed eyes when he was done.

  Koloman nodded sullenly and flicked off a coil of ash that was lying next to a tomato stain on his ribbed undershirt. "Why do I wanna waste my time going after this Anderson chick?" he said with a shrug. "She ain't got the money."

  "Exactly," said Sam. "I'm glad we agree."

  Koloman stared at the floor a moment, then looked up. "The deal is, no one gets to know Stefan Koloman got his money, right? No one."

  Sam didn't care. He said, "If that's the way you want it."

  "That's the way I want it," Koloman answered, scowling.

  Sam let it pass. "Just one more thing. Did you ever let Eden know the way you felt about being cut out of the transaction?"

  Koloman snorted. "How? The bitch keeps moving."

  Sam said, "True enough. Well, Stefan. Thank you for your time. And good luck with the new ... inventory," he added with a nod to the easel. "I'll let myself out."

  At street level, Sam took a deep breath of hot August air which, compared to the stuff in the apartment upstairs, was as refreshing as the Alps in May.

  Next stop: Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

  ****

  The call from Chief Cottier surprised Holly; she thought she was done with all that. As it turned out, he wasn't looking for her. He was looking for Charlotte Anderson.

  "I don't think she has any big plans for the day. Why?" Holly wanted to know.

  "Thanks very much for your help," said the Chief. He hung up without responding to her question.

  Half an hour later, Holly had her answer. Her father called, and he was in a state of holy rage.

  "Where's your mother? Where is your mother?"

  "How am I supposed to know?" Holly said, both anxious and annoyed. "Why does everyone keep asking me that?"

  "Because Eden was run down by a white Volvo wagon this morning," he said. He was barely able to sputter the words.

  "Oh, my God. Was she hurt?"

  "Of course she was hurt! She was shaken up, she's black and blue. She has a possible concussion."

  "You can't possibly think it was Mom's car."

  "What else can I think? Who has a better motive?"

  "That's outrageous! Offensive! How can you think that?"

  "Eden saw the wagon as it sped off. She wouldn't lie. What could she gain by making it up? When I told her that your mother has a white Volvo, she was shocked. Naturally she didn't want to go to the police. I had to go to them myself to report it."

  "You did? Dad, how could you?"

  "This was a deliberate hit and run, Holly, for God's sake." He added, "And what do you care, if it wasn't your mother?"

  "I don't care. Do what you want. Do what you damn well want!" She hung up in a state of fury.

  It was a coincidence. There were probably half a dozen white Volvo wagons on the island. And yet ... what had her mother said? Accidents happen.

  Holly shook off the cold misgivings that washed over her like January breakers and drove straight to her parents' house. She was waiting in the kitchen, nursing a cup of cold tea, when her mother returned.

  "Where have you been?" Holly said. "Everyone's looking for you."

  Dumping her handbag on the counter, Charlotte said, "Really? I didn't know I was that sought after anymore."

  "You weren't with Ivy and the girls; they're off with Bebe and her kids today."

  "That's right," her mother said, throwing Holly a sharp look. "I wasn't."

  She excused herself and went off to the first floor powder room, leaving Holly to fret over her evasive manner. When she returned, Holly picked up where she'd left off. "Mom—where have you been all day?"

  "Out. Stop giving me the third degree." She began flipping through the day's mail, dumping flyers in the recycle box, putting aside the first-class mai
l.

  "Consider it a dress rehearsal for Chief Cottier," said Holly with a pounding heart. "He's looking for you."

  Her mother looked up. The expression on her face was carefully bland. Holly remembered, not for the first time, that her mother possessed a minor in dramatic art and had acted in community theater.

  "Did he say what he wanted?" Charlotte asked.

  "No. But Dad did."

  "Your father called? Here?"

  The bland look crumbled, if only for a moment. In its place was a fearful look of dread and hope.

  "Dad called me at my house. Eden's been in an accident."

  Her mother looked away. "Well! I can't say I'm surprised."

  Holly jumped up and took her mother by the shoulders. "Mom—look at me. A white wagon ran Eden down in the parking lot, and Chief Cottier is looking for you. Is there anything you want to tell me?" she asked, choking on the urgency in her voice.

  "I've told you. Eden's reckless; she probably wasn't looking where she was going."

  "It was a white Volvo wagon, Mom!"

  "Oh, for God's sake! Did it have an angel whirligig on it?" her mother snapped, wrenching herself free of Holly's grip.

  "Oh! I... don't know. No one said."

  "Then stop looking at me as if I were Jack the Ripper and leave me alone. This migraine is killing me. I'm going to bed."

  She did look riven by pain. Holly murmured something inadequate and watched in misery as her mother dragged herself up the stairs.

  Relieved and yet mortified by her lapse of faith, Holly escaped from the house and past her mother's whirligiged wagon. It wasn't until she turned the key to the engine of her truck that a thought occurred to her.

  Almost against her will, she climbed down from her truck and walked back to the Volvo. She had to stand on tiptoe to see the center of the roof, but the mark there was clear: a suction-cup imprint, right alongside the actual suction cup holding the whirligig to the roof.

  The angel must have fallen off sometime, she told herself as she hurried back to her truck.

  It couldn't have been removed.

  ****

  Sam Steadman had to lean hard on his pal Billy to get him to fly him back to the Vineyard. Twice in high season: it was asking a lot.

  "Tell you what," said Billy, banking the seaplane gracefully to the south-southwest. "Give me that old snowblower in your garage and we'll call it even. You never use it, anyway."

  "Take it. The thing hates me."

  "Deal. So: tell me why I'm spending my afternoon flying you for free instead of passengers for hire?"

  Sam stole a sip of coffee from his friend's thermal mug. "Couldn't get a flight to the Vineyard. You've spoiled me, buddy."

  "Not what I mean. What were you looking for in New Hampshire?"

  "Anything I could find out about Eden. She spent time aboard the Vixen in a marina there. The yardhands told me she was all over them, asking questions about the repairs they were doing. I'm convinced she's into a new scam, but I'm damned if I can figure out what it is. I have a theory or two, but don't ask me to explain them. They're still half-baked."

  "Fine by me. Where's your lady friend Holly? I kinda miss getting smacked on the back of the head every two minutes."

  "'Lady friend' is probably going too far," Sam said grimly. "Try 'mortal enemy'."

  "Uh-oh. You told her about Eden?"

  "You got it."

  Billy muttered one of his more thoughtful profanities and said, "Why the hell you didn't divorce that female years ago is beyond me."

  "Let it go, Billy. This one's old."

  "I getcha. You finally told your folks, too. Did Millie box your ears?"

  "Damn tootin'," Sam said, instinctively scanning for Vixens on the water, now awash in shimmering gold from rays of the setting sun. "She's grounding me. For the rest of my life."

  Chuckling, Billy said, "Millie brings a whole new scariness to that tough-love thing, don't she?"

  "Yeah ...."

  "What's up?" Billy said right away. "Something's eating you big time. Is it Eden, or is it Holly?"

  "Damned if I can tell you. I ... ah ... well, Holly has hit me hard, no doubt about it. Harder than I ever thought possible. But the photo's out of focus, and I don't know why—I mean, besides for the obvious reason that she hates me now."

  Billy snorted and said, "Might the picture be out of focus because, duh, you're still married?"

  "What, because a shitty little piece of paper says so?"

  "Either that, or it's Eden herself who's holding you back."

  "No. I can't believe that."

  "Why the hell not? She's got you, man. She won't let go. Geez. A vampire has less of a hold on his victims than she has on you."

  "That's pure bullshit," Sam snapped. "I told you, I'm done with Eden. Done with her bullshit cons and her bullshit cruelty and her bullshit ... bullshit," he said, growling to a halt. "She's finally got herself the sugar daddy she's wanted all along. End of story."

  "Sugar daddy, my ass. You said the poor sucker's an accountant."

  "Lawyer. Real estate."

  "Whatever. The point is, do I detect a certain jealousy, Sammy, my friend?"

  "Not at all."

  Billy sighed and said, "You gotta confront her, man. You gotta find out how you feel about her, one way or the other."

  "Not gonna happen," Sam muttered. "My parents are getting their money, and that's all the closure I need."

  "Talk about bullshit!"

  "Shut up and fly."

  Chapter 26

  Charlotte Anderson was a hit-and-run suspect for less than twenty-four hours.

  A white Volvo wagon, stolen from a parking lot in Edgartown, was found back in its old spot soon after it was taken, and Chief Cottier himself called Holly's mother to tell her the news and apologize for any inconvenience. Which was all very well, except that Holly's mother was no longer the kind of woman who could see humor in the coincidence.

  "He thought I'd done it; I could tell by the way he questioned me," she said to her daughters later.

  "That's his job, Mom," Holly reminded her gently. Since she herself had had a dark moment or two of suspicion, she was feeling a lot less indignant than she normally would have.

  "But he was so much more sympathetic the first time he interviewed me," Charlotte said. She seemed bewildered by the latest turn of events, and more fragile than ever.

  Ivy saw it, too, all that progress from her visit undone. Frustrated, she said, "Too bad Mrs. Slaussen saw you leave the house so early. I never heard you, so I could have sworn to them in all honesty that you'd stayed home. What'd you have to go off and watch a sunrise for, anyway?"

  Bristling, her mother became her old self again. "Excuse me? Should I just buy a fainting couch and spend the rest of my life in a swoon? Look, if I was going to go to the trouble of staking out Eden, you can bet that I would have finished the job. I would have flattened her like a pancake."

  "Way to go, Mom!" Holly blurted, laughing.

  Her mother smiled for the first time in days. "I have to admit, it really was a hell of a coincidence."

  ****

  If it was a coincidence, thought Sam after hearing from Cottier about the stolen car.

  Sam had been tracked down in the loft and questioned hard on the night before, soon after Billy dumped him out of the seaplane. When he'd first heard the news about the hit and run, Sam hadn't been surprised. He figured that Charlotte had been trying to knock Eden back a little, like a pitcher throwing a brush-off ball to a batter crowding home plate.

  But the recovered car had a piece of Eden's clothing caught in its trim, which left Charlotte off the hook. She was, in fact, the class act she seemed to be.

  So who stole the Volvo and knocked Eden down with it? That was the question Sam pondered as he wandered the streets of Vineyard Haven, looking for a place to eat where the line didn't go out the door.

  As for the line of candidates willing to knock down Eden, it could easily match t
he ones in any of the restaurants tonight. Sam himself was an obvious choice; he wasn't surprised by Chief Cottier's tough grilling. If he hadn't been sitting at the airport at the time of the incident, he had no doubt that he'd be looking around for a lawyer now.

  Stefan Koloman was another candidate. It was physically possible—although hard to believe—that he could have pulled it off, however; he'd have needed his own plane to have beat Sam to Boston.

  Had Eden duped and infuriated any others on the island? Stupid question. Did Tiffany's have diamonds?

  As he waited among the crowd at a deli takeout, Sam considered the possibility that the driver might not have had a grudge against Eden at all, but against Charlotte Anderson. The sex scandal must have been common knowledge on the island by now. It wouldn't have taken a genius—only an opportunist—to swipe an unlocked car and drive it into Eden. Everyone knew that the rich led soap-opera lives. Running down some Other Woman and framing the spurned wife was just the kind of stunt they'd pull.

  The timing had to be exquisitely right, of course; but that was true in either scenario. In either scenario, someone had to be watching the players carefully.

  And that's what Sam found unnerving.

  He paid for his sandwich and chips and carried his booty out of the shop. He was more demoralized than he'd been since the afternoon he learned from his parents that Eden was back in his life big time. What he wanted were fewer complications as one day rolled into the next. What he was getting was a whole lot more of them.

  He found a bench and wolfed down the sandwich—mere fuel, something to keep him going as he doggedly pursued his recovery of his parents' nest egg. If only they hadn't waited until their backs were against the wal l... if only they'd told him about the Adam and Eve years ago ... if only Eden and the Antiques Roadshow hadn't shown up together in his parents' lives.

  If only he'd met Holly before he'd met Eden.

  ****

  The phone rang as Holly walked through the door. She expected it to be Ivy. It was her father.