Rosemary Cottage

by Colleen Coble

  The woman’s eyes registered recognition. “You’re Curtis Ireland. Gina’s brother.”

  He nodded. “That’s right. I think we met at a building garage sale. This is my friend Amy. Afraid I’ve forgotten your name.”

  She opened the door a little wider and shifted the baby to the other hip. “Leah Crook. I’ve been meaning to call you. Gina left something with me, and I think you should have it.”

  Curtis glanced at Amy, then back to Leah. “What is it?”

  Leah stepped away from the door. “Come into the kitchen.”

  “Want me to hold the baby while you get it?” Amy asked. “He’s a little cutie.”

  “That would be great if you don’t mind.” Leah passed over the child.

  “Hey, little man.” Amy took him and shuffled him to one arm. He grabbed a lock of her hair in a messy grip, but she didn’t seem to mind.

  Leah led them to the kitchen. “Coffee is fresh if you want some. I’ll be right back.”

  “What could it be?” The baby started to fuss a bit, and Amy jiggled him until he quieted.

  “She seemed pretty serious about it all.” He tried to think of what Leah might have that would be important, but nothing had seemed to be missing from Gina’s things.

  She studied his face. “Are you okay?”

  “It feels weird to be poking into Gina’s privacy. I know we have to do it, but she was always a little reserved about sharing personal details. Even with me.” He couldn’t even remember how she and Ben had gotten hooked up. Likely she’d never told him.

  “I understand. I hate poking through Ben’s room too.” She rubbed her forehead. “But we have to get to the truth.”

  “If someone harmed them. I’m still not convinced.” He didn’t want to believe it. The kind of hatred that would end in murder didn’t seem to go with his smiling sister. She’d never hurt anyone in her life.

  A shadow flitted across Amy’s face, and she opened her mouth but closed it again when Leah came back into the room. The woman glanced at the baby, but Amy smiled and continued to sway. “He’s fine.”

  “Here it is.” Leah opened her fist and revealed a red flash drive.

  “That’s it?” Curtis reached for it. “Any idea what’s on it?”

  Leah nodded. “She said it was her banking information, and she wanted the backup in a safe place. I never looked at it, of course. In fact, I’d forgotten I had it until I was looking for a rubber band in the desk drawer last week.”

  Banking information. His fist closed around the drive. The contents might explain how she was able to afford this place. He held up his hand. “When did she give this to you?”

  “Five days before she died.”

  He exchanged a glance with Amy, who was leaning over to brush her lips across the little guy’s soft hair. “What did she say about it?”

  Leah shrugged. “Just what I mentioned. That she wanted the backup in a safe place.”

  The baby nestled against Amy and put his thumb in his mouth. She shifted him a bit. “Did you see anything unusual going on at Gina’s apartment?”

  Leah tipped her head to one side. “Unusual?”

  Amy nodded. “People you didn’t recognize, arguments, anyone skulking around. That kind of thing. And did Gina seem upset in any way?”

  Leah frowned. “She and Ben had a huge fight a few days before her death. I nearly called the sheriff.”

  “What happened? I’m Ben’s sister, by the way.”

  “The midwife?” She nodded at her son. “No wonder you’re good with kids. He’s asleep.”

  Curtis looked down at the child and smiled. Amy had a special touch with children. She’d be a good mother someday. “Did Ben strike her or anything like that?”

  Amy shot him an offended glare, and he looked away. Ben was no saint, no matter what she thought.

  Leah shook her head. “I don’t think so. There was a lot of shouting, and I heard things crashing like someone was throwing stuff. And there was some dude in a suit who came to see her the morning she died. She threw him out.”

  “Threw him out?” Curtis couldn’t imagine his petite sister throwing anyone out.

  “Well, not literally. She blocked the door and wouldn’t let him in. I heard her say, ‘You know better than to come here. What if someone saw you?’”

  “You didn’t recognize him?” Curtis asked.

  “No, but his car was a big black Mercedes. You could tell he had money from that suit he wore.”

  Amy shifted the baby. “Any idea where he was from?”

  Leah looked a little shamefaced. “I have to admit I looked at his car. I was taking the kids to the beach, and I took a peek at the license plate as I went past. It was a North Carolina plate.”

  That didn’t tell them much. The flash drive bit into Curtis’s palm. But the information on it might.

  FOURTEEN

  Curtis’s office was through double French doors off the living room. Amy liked it from the first. Nautical books and Coast Guard manuals lined one wall. Several plaques showed off awards he’d won. She wanted to peruse them at leisure, but he gestured her to the desk where he’d booted up the flash drive on his MacBook.

  “They’re Quicken files. Like Leah said, it appears to be bank information.” He opened the Quicken program, and numbers flashed onto the screen. He scrolled down to the bottom. “Holy cow, she had over two hundred thousand dollars in this account. It was opened with three hundred thousand.”

  Amy could see his shock, but surely that wasn’t a lot of money to the Irelands. “You didn’t know she had that kind of money?”

  He leaned forward, still reading. “She never went to college and worked in a fudge shop all her adult life. Hardly the way to make that kind of money. Mom and Dad stopped giving her money years ago. She ran through it like a drunk on vodka.” He whistled softly. “There’s another account here too. It’s got another hundred grand in it.”

  Amy hadn’t gone through Ben’s bank account, but her father had. “I’m not sure I could tell anything by looking at Ben’s financials. He made good money.”

  “But he spent a lot too. That fancy convertible and his jewelry.”

  The comment felt a little accusatory to her, but she let it pass. It was Ben’s money to spend. He didn’t owe an explanation to anyone.

  “Could you ask your father if he saw anything out of the ordinary?”

  Amy could have shuddered at the request, but she nodded. “I could, but it won’t be fun.”

  “I hardly think anything about this investigation is fun.” He leaned back in the leather chair. “If you want privacy for the call, I can leave.”

  “Stay. I need the support.” She sighed and pulled her cell phone from her purse. With each ring, the tension in her shoulders intensified. Her father would not be happy that she was poking into this.

  Her father’s deep voice answered with a trace of impatience. “Amy, hello. We haven’t heard from you in a week. Your mom was getting worried.”

  Always start with the attack calculated to induce guilt. Guilt was her father’s usual mode of control. And if her mother was truly worried, why hadn’t she called? “Hi, Dad. I’m here in Hope Beach.”

  The long silence spoke of his disapproval. “I’d hoped you’d abandoned that idea.”

  She heard voices in the background. “Am I interrupting?”

  “We’re hosting a campaign party for Preston. He’s facing quite a battle this election.”

  “Tell him I said hello. I met some ladies on his campaign out here. Listen, I have a quick question, and I’ll let you go. You looked over Ben’s financial statements. Did anything seem odd to you?”

  “Odd in what way?” His voice grew even stiffer.

  “Did he have a lot of money in different accounts?”

  Her father was silent a minute. “I wouldn’t call it a lot of money. A couple hundred thousand in different accounts. Why do you ask?”

  She gave Curtis a thumbs-up. “Just trying to fi
gure out who might have had something against Ben.”

  Her father’s sigh was pronounced. “He drowned, honey. I wish you’d give up this obsession. It isn’t healthy.”

  “I have to know for sure, Dad,” she said softly. “I just have to.”

  “I know, I know. We worry about you, you know. Your mother and me. It’s time you were settled. We’d like to see you happy with a good husband.”

  He used to say a baby or two, but the unspoken words hurt even more. It was a familiar lecture, one that usually produced the expected sense of failure. “I’m happy, Dad. In fact, I think I’m going to set up practice here and move to Hope Beach permanently.” While her father might have been able to pull some strings and help find a supervising doctor for her, she closed her mouth. This was her problem to fix.

  “That feels a little like a cop-out,” her dad said. “Burying yourself on a primitive backwater island. It’s a vacation spot, not a place to live full-time. They’re hardly in the new century. I could help you set up in New York or somewhere that would appreciate your skills.”

  Her heart warmed at his concern. “Thanks, Dad, but I like it here. And I’m needed.” She heard someone call his name in the background. “I’ll let you go. Give Mom my love and tell her I’ll call soon.”

  “Bye.”

  The phone clicked in her ear with the words I love you still on her lips. Closing her mouth, she put her phone way. “Ben had about the same amount of money tucked into his accounts. Dad didn’t seem to find it unusual, and maybe it’s not.”

  “But it might be. You have to admit it seems odd that the amount was the same.”

  “What does that tell us, though? We have no idea where the money came from. It might be that Ben had a profitable investment and decided to split it with Gina. He needed to pay support, after all.”

  His brows rose. “Amy, as far as I know, he never gave Gina a dime for Raine.”

  The condemnation in his tone stung. “I’m not sure she would have told you.”

  He winced, then nodded. “He never married her. That was bad enough as far as I was concerned.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t sure Raine was his,” she shot back. When she saw his stricken expression, she wanted to take back the words. “I’m sorry, Curtis.”

  “Apology accepted,” he said in an even voice. “Gina never valued herself very highly. I never understood it. Our parents coddled her and doted on her every word. After her divorce from Travis, she changed.”

  “She was married?”

  “It lasted all of nine months. Then she moved back here and told me she never wanted to hear Travis’s name mentioned again. So I never asked what went wrong. I think she was trying to bury her pain with meaningless sex. It didn’t work. Then there was a long spell where she didn’t darken the door of the bar. She started helping out at the campaign headquarters when Tom was running for reelection and seemed to enjoy that and moved on to Preston’s campaign.”

  That much made sense to Amy. “Which is where she met Ben, I bet. He was always interested in politics and liked getting involved in small-town races.”

  “I think you’re right, now that you mention it.” He rose and shut the lid of his laptop. “I’d better go relieve Ede.”

  His dismissive tone hurt more than it should have. She wanted to ask him about their next step, but she set her jaw and followed him from the office.

  Curtis moved his chess piece. “Checkmate!”

  “You’re the man!” Josh leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “I thought I had you.”

  Curtis grinned, his gaze moving around the break room. A perfect blue sky out there today had left the shift quiet. No storms in the forecast, no distress calls.

  An e-reader in her hand, Sara sat outside in a deck chair with her feet up. Alec was outside also, talking on his cell phone. Probably checking up on Libby and the baby.

  Josh lifted a brow. “You look serious, buck. What’s up? The pretty lady you’ve been hanging with?” His grin was cheeky.

  “She is pretty,” Curtis said. “But we’re not really going out. She doesn’t believe Ben and Gina’s deaths were accidental.”

  Josh’s grin faded. “I have to tell you, Curtis, I have always been a little suspicious of Gina’s death. The fact that we could never find who did it, and we never found the boat that hit her. It has never set well with me.”

  “Me neither, but I tried to accept it as the accident it was called.” He told Josh about the flash drive and the money. “So where did she get that kind of money when she told me Ben wasn’t paying support? She sure didn’t earn it making fudge.”

  Josh began to put the chess pieces back in the box. “Yeah, that’s not likely.”

  His voice was carefully neutral, and Curtis gave him a quick stare. “You know something. What is it?”

  Josh shrugged. “I saw her over on Ocean Street a couple of times when I was checking on a kid we fished out of the bay.”

  Ocean Street was a run-down area of the island, and several meth labs had been shut down there after an explosion. “You think she was involved in drugs?” Curtis shook his head. “I can’t see her doing anything like that. She was crazy about Raine. I know there was a girl from church she was trying to help whose dad was arrested. Maybe Gina was trying to help her.”

  “Maybe. I wouldn’t have said anything if you hadn’t mentioned that kind of money.”

  “I appreciate the information, but I know my sister. She changed after Raine was born. I might have believed she’d do something like that a couple of years ago, but that old life was behind her.”

  “If you say so.” Josh shrugged.

  Curtis stared at him hard. “Is there something else you’re not telling me?”

  “I didn’t care much for Ben. When I met him, I thought he was a great, upstanding guy. Then when I listened to him awhile, it was all about him and his plans. What if he had her doing something over there for him? He could be persuasive.”

  “You mean like being a courier for drugs?” Curtis thought about it a minute. Josh nodded. “That would explain why he came to the island at least once a month. But I’d like to think Gina had more sense than that.”

  “People in love can get sucked into things they never planned.” Josh put the lid on the chess game. “Which is why I don’t intend to ever let things get that far with a woman. Love ’em and leave ’em.” He studied Curtis’s face. “You might keep that pretty Amy at arm’s length, buck. I see the danger signs all over you.”

  “We’re just after the truth. So, seriously, you don’t intend to ever get married? Why not? Raine is so much fun. You’d be missing out on a lot.”

  Josh turned away. “It rarely turns out great. My dad was married five times after my mom died, each woman worse than the one before. And my mom wasn’t so great either. My earliest memory is of her passed out on the bed. It’s easy to be deceived by a pretty face.”

  It was the most Josh had ever said about his past. A lot of pain there. “Sorry, buddy. But don’t shut the door to something God might have for you.”

  Josh put the game box back on the shelf with the others. “You’re talking about Sara, aren’t you? She looks a lot like my sister, did I ever tell you that? My sister has had three husbands so far, and she’s only thirty-five. Her pretty face has sucked in lots of guys, but she can’t stay true to any man. It’s sad.”

  “Sara isn’t your sister. You should know by working with her for three years that she’s trustworthy.”

  Josh shrugged. “Really, buck, is anyone trustworthy?”

  Curtis watched him walk out the back door and head to the hangar. Sara might as well give up. The man would never let down his defenses.

  FIFTEEN

  Amy stepped back and admired the soft yellow color of the walls that would be her new examining room. She’d ordered the sign for the yard first thing this morning, but only Curtis and Libby knew she’d made up her mind. Soon the entire island would know. If she cou
ld find a new supervising physician.

  Her phone rang, and she saw it was one of the several doctors she’d called. “Dr. Hollensby, thanks for getting back to me. How’s golf?” She’d always liked the middle-aged gynecologist. She’d worked for him right out of college.

  His genial smile was in his voice. “Been too busy to get out so far this year, Amy, but I’m going this afternoon. What’s this about you moving to some remote island in the Outer Banks?”

  “It’s true. And I need a supervising physician.”

  “You know I’ve never done that.”

  “I know. But this place needs me.” She launched into a description of the island’s location and the women living there. “And I’ll even give you a vacation here whenever you want. I’ve got a great cottage on the island that’s been in my family forever.”

  “Bribery?” His voice held laughter.

  “If that’s what it takes. I’m desperate, Doctor. I have to do this. I just have to.” He went silent a few moments, and she held her peace, praying he’d understand.

  He cleared his throat. “I’ll think about it. Let me get back to you.”

  “Okay. I appreciate the fact you didn’t say no right off. Can I send you some information about the island and the need?”

  “Go ahead. I’ll look at it. My next patient is here.”

  “When can I expect an answer?”

  “Give me two days.”

  She sighed and put her phone away. Her head ached, and she rubbed her eyes before picking up the paintbrush again. She’d been feeling a little tired lately, but surely that meant nothing. She needed to get that blood test redone, but she’d put it off.

  Her head thumped dully from the fumes so she stopped to make a kale smoothie after the last wall was done. She’d just poured her drink from the blender to her glass when the doorbell rang. Carrying her green smoothie, she hurried to the front door and saw Curtis through the glass. Ridiculous how her pulse jumped every time she saw him.