In Shelter Cove (Angel's Bay)

by Barbara Freethy

  She could see that Nancy didn’t want to hear more, but she had to finish it. “Mr. Isaacs brought me a letter from Derek. In it, Derek said that he’d done things he was ashamed of, that he’d lied and created a false life that he’d started to believe in. He’d lost track of what was fake and what was real. It was all so cryptic I couldn’t make sense of it until now.”

  Nancy sat down at the kitchen table. “You could be wrong, Brianna. He could have been talking about other mistakes, simple errors that we all make.” She twisted her hands together. “Where did you find the paintings?”

  Brianna didn’t want to answer, but she had no choice. “They were hidden at Jason’s house.”

  “Jason!” Nancy exclaimed. “He’s still setting Derek up. He’s making you doubt Derek. He’s the reason you’re confused. He’s an evil, evil man.”

  Brianna sat down across from her mother-in-law and put her hand over Nancy’s. “I love you, Nancy. You and Rick have been like parents to me. I’ve been incredibly touched by your generosity and your love. You are two of the most wonderful people I have ever met in my life, and the last thing I want to do is hurt you.” She fought back tears at the sorrow and fear in Nancy’s eyes. It wasn’t fair that she had to suffer more pain, but they all needed to find their way to the truth. “This isn’t about Jason. It’s about Derek. I need to know who he really was.”

  “You do know. He was the man who loved you.”

  “But who else was he?”

  “Are you sure you want to find out?” Rick interjected, his expression bleak. “I doubt it will make any of us happy.”

  “I am sure,” she answered. “I’m never going to regret loving Derek, because I wouldn’t have Lucas if I hadn’t fallen for your son. And I wouldn’t have you, either. I don’t want to lose you.”

  “We don’t want to lose you, either,” Nancy said. “But Jason is poisoning your mind. He wants to take Derek’s place in your life. It’s not right.”

  “I’m making my own decisions. Jason may have made mistakes, but we both know now he couldn’t have been completely wrong.”

  “How can we help?” Rick asked quietly.

  “Would you mind picking up Lucas from school? I want to take one last pass through all the boxes that came from Derek’s house, and then I need to talk to some people, starting with Wyatt. I don’t think he’s been as forthcoming as he could be.” She didn’t want to get into the Kane-Delgado connection at this point; she’d already dumped enough on Nancy and Rick.

  “Take all the time you need, Brianna,” Rick said. “We must have the truth, whatever it is.”

  The Markham Gallery was crowded when Jason stopped in. He hadn’t been in the gallery in quite a few years, but it was exactly as he remembered, with floor-to-ceiling windows and an array of mirrors and lights that added to the atmosphere of importance and grandeur.

  “Jason,” Katherine said, coming up to him. “Can I help you?”

  “I’d like to talk to your aunt and uncle.”

  “They’re out, but they told me about the paintings. I was blown away.” She tipped her head toward a quieter alcove. “Let’s step over there.”

  He followed her across the room. “Did you know that Derek was a skilled forger?” he asked when they were alone.

  “I knew he was a fabulous artist,” she said, her dark eyes concerned. “I didn’t realize he’d gone in that direction. Was this a one-time thing? Had he done it before?”

  “I don’t know. Right now, I’m just concerned about The Three Faces of Eve. Derek had to have access to the paintings in order to copy them, and the paintings were here before they were moved to the museum.”

  She nodded. “They were in the vault. I saw them right before I left on my trip.”

  “Who has access to the vault?”

  “My aunt and uncle, my cousin Dane . . .” She thought for a moment. “Wyatt, of course. He’s an investor in the gallery. I assume he has all the keys and codes. Maybe George Randall. He works here part-time and often does the close late at night. That’s it. You don’t think my aunt or uncle had something to do with this, do you?”

  “I’d like to talk to them. When will they be back?”

  “They didn’t say, but I’ll tell them you’re looking for them.”

  “Thanks.” He could see in her eyes that she had something else she wanted to ask him. “What?”

  “My aunt said she didn’t know where the forgeries were found. Care to enlighten me?”

  “Sorry, it’s an ongoing investigation.”

  “It seems strange that they’d suddenly be found now. It must have something to do with Brianna coming to town.”

  He could see the curiosity in her eyes, but he wasn’t about to share the fact that the forged paintings had been in his garage all along. He had no idea what kind of relationship she had with her aunt and uncle and Wyatt, but since she worked with them, he had to assume that she was in their camp.

  “Do you still think Derek stole the paintings?” she asked. “Or has this changed your mind?”

  “Let’s just say my mind is open, and I’d appreciate any help you can give me.”

  “My suggestion would be to talk to my aunt first,” Katherine said. “She knew Derek a lot better than my uncle or Wyatt did.” She paused. “It hasn’t been easy for her to be the woman between two strong and powerful men. She sometimes gets tired of their shadows.”

  “Are you trying to tell me something?” he asked sharply.

  “I think I just did,” she replied. Then she walked away.

  * * *

  Jason stopped off at Wyatt’s studio next, but he was also out. He needed a new angle, and aside from Katherine’s cryptic remarks about Gloria, the only lead he had was Wyatt’s blood tie to Delgado. He had to know if that was real.

  He thought about calling Brianna, but he’d rather talk to her when he had something definitive to say. And she had no way of proving the blood link beyond the letters she’d found. He needed someone who was up on Angel’s Bay history . . .

  Making a sharp turn, he headed to Kara’s house. The Murrays were one of the founding families of Angel’s Bay, and they knew more about the bloodlines of the original twenty-four shipwreck survivors than anyone.

  After parking in front of the house, he jogged up the steps and rang the bell. He pushed it again when no one immediately answered, then felt guilty. The baby was probably sleeping, and Kara was going to be pissed at him for waking her up. He shouldn’t be adding more stress to their lives when he knew they’d been having trouble connecting in the past few weeks.

  He was just about to leave when Kara threw the door open. Her red hair was mussed and tangled, and she was scrambling to secure the tie around her silk bathrobe. Her legs were bare, and her lipstick was smudged. He saw Colin coming out of the bedroom wearing just a pair of sweatpants and realized he’d interrupted more than the baby’s nap. But at least there was a grin on Colin’s face and not a scowl. In fact, they both looked happier than they had in a long time.

  “Well, well,” he drawled. “What have we here?”

  “We were taking a nap,” Kara said hastily, a sparkle in her eyes.”

  “Is that what you’re calling it these days? Sorry to interrupt. Get back to doing what you were doing.”

  “Did you want something?” Kara asked. “Because we’re . . . done.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Colin teased, coming up behind her and sliding his arms around her waist. “This is intermission.”

  “Don’t you two have a baby somewhere?” Jason asked.

  “At Grandma’s,” Colin replied.

  Jason nodded approvingly. “Way to fully utilize the babysitting time.”

  “So what’s up?” Colin asked. “You rang the doorbell with a hell of a lot of purpose.”

  “I need some information, Kara. Do you have any of those family trees your grandmother made up for Founders Day?”

  “I do. Why would you want them?”

  “I need
to see the line of descendants from Francine Kane. A lot has happened. I can’t get into it right now, but I’d love your help.”

  “Come in,” she said, stepping aside. “I’ll get it.”

  “What’s this all about?” Colin asked when they were alone.

  “We found forgeries of The Three Faces of Eve. Derek painted them. It’s quite probable he was planning to switch them for the originals during the robbery, but he either didn’t have time or changed his mind.”

  “I guess the case isn’t closed anymore,” Colin said with concern in his eyes.

  “It’s wide open. I missed something, Colin. Something important.”

  “Are you sure? If he painted forgeries, he’s still looking guilty to me.”

  “I need to know how guilty.” Jason glanced over his shoulder to make sure Kara was nowhere in sight. “So it looks like you got over your little problem, huh?”

  Colin’s grin widened. “It turned out not to be so much of a problem. I took your advice. I spilled my guts to Kara, and it turned her on. She practically jumped me, and well . . . you know how I like it when she does that.”

  “Glad I could help,” he said, happy the two of them had found their way back to each other.

  Kara returned a moment later with a notebook. “Okay, what do you want to know?”

  “Which one of Francine’s sons was Wyatt descended from?” he asked.

  “That would have been David, the younger son.” She lifted her gaze to his. “Why does that matter?”

  “Because I think Francine and Victor Delgado had an affair after the wreck, and she had his baby—the baby she passed off as her youngest child.”

  Kara looked back down at the chart. “He was born nine months after the wreck. The dates are close if the affair happened quickly, but I thought Victor was obsessed with Eve.”

  “Apparently, he found some comfort elsewhere.”

  “That’s amazing,” Colin cut in with surprise. “Wyatt and Derek were related to Victor. Did they know?”

  “Derek did, and I’m guessing Wyatt did, too. What about Ramón Delgado?” he asked impulsively. “Did he have any children?”

  “You know, the funny thing is that Ramón and the other two survivors who ended up at Shelter Cove weren’t part of the original twenty-four survivors. Their stories weren’t depicted in the quilt, because it was made before they found their way up the coast. They’re often not even mentioned at Founders Day.” Kara turned the page over. “Let’s see. Yes, here it is, Ramón had a daughter named Ava. Pretty close to Eve, isn’t it?”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She married a man by the name of Douglas Tanner. They had one girl, Jane, who married Randolph Hillman. She had a daughter named Elizabeth, who then had a daughter named Rhea. Nothing but girls in that line. It ends with Rhea, born in 1941, married to John Lawrence in 1965, daughter Gloria.”

  His pulse leaped in excitement. “Gloria?”

  Kara looked back at him with the same surprise in her eyes.

  “As in Gloria Markham?” he added.

  “It doesn’t say, but it’s an odd coincidence.”

  “I don’t think it’s a coincidence at all,” he said. It wasn’t just Wyatt who was tied to the Delgado brothers. Gloria was related to Ramón, the much maligned younger brother and quite possibly the original thief of the paintings. Had she repeated history? Had she decided that Victor’s paintings of Eve would never see the light of day? Katherine had told him to talk to Gloria first. Did she know? Was she trying to hint without completely giving up her aunt? “I have to go,” he said abruptly.

  “Go where?” Colin asked.

  “I’ll let you know when I get there.”

  “You can’t leave us hanging, dude,” Colin said. “We’ll worry about you.”

  “I think you’ll find some way to distract yourselves. I’ll explain everything later. By then, I should know who took the paintings.”

  “I thought it was Derek,” Kara said.

  “So did I, but I don’t anymore.”

  As he left the house, his cell phone rang. His body tightened at the gruff voice on the other end. “Wyatt, I’m glad you called me back. I’ll be at your studio in ten minutes.” He felt a surge of adrenaline as he got back into his car. Someone was finally ready to talk.

  EIGHTEEN

  Brianna sat on her couch and spread out Derek’s sketches on the coffee table. Now that she knew about the forgeries, about the way he’d slipped his initials into the art because he just had to let someone know what he’d done, she couldn’t help thinking that he’d left her a clue as well.

  She put aside the scenes of her or Lucas; she was interested in the sketches he’d done of the town. Three stood out: the caves in Shelter Cove, the art studio, and the Markham Gallery with its wall of mirrors. There were no distinct people in any of the scenes, just shadows and shapes that implied some sort of energy, and a lot of that energy felt hostile. Was she feeling Derek’s anger or someone else’s?

  Why had Derek drawn these particular scenes? They were places that were important to him in some way, but was there more to it than that? Was he trying to tell her something?

  She didn’t know why Derek hadn’t switched the fakes for the originals. But hiding them at Jason’s condo had been deliberate. As Jason had said, what better place to hide something incriminating than in the garage of the man who was investigating him?

  But where were the originals? She was convinced Derek didn’t have them. She wasn’t sure he even knew where they were. Perhaps someone had turned on him—there had been a plan, but something had happened. Derek had taken the fall, and his partner in crime had let him sit in that jail cell for five years.

  She heard footsteps coming up the porch steps and jumped to her feet. When she opened the door, she expected to see Jason, but it was Katherine Markham.

  “Hi,” Katherine said tentatively. “Can I talk to you?”

  “Come in,” Brianna said, stepping back.

  “I spoke to Jason earlier, as well as my aunt and uncle. I know about the forgeries,” Katherine said as she walked around the coffee table. Her gaze fell on the sketches. Surprise flashed across her face. “Are these the sketches Derek did in prison?”

  “Some of them.”

  Katherine sat down on the couch, her gaze moving from one sketch to the next.

  “Those are the ones of Angel’s Bay,” Brianna said, taking a seat in the chair across from her. “I feel like Derek is trying to tell me something, but I’m not getting it.”

  Katherine didn’t answer right away. It seemed to take some effort for her to drag her attention away from the sketches. Finally, she lifted her head, gazing at Brianna. “He’s trying to tell you where the paintings are.”

  “I think so, too, but where? I thought he’d incorporate some pieces of the Eve paintings into these, like a trail of bread crumbs, but nothing jumps out at me.”

  Katherine looked back down at the sketches. Then she turned to the other stack. “What are these?”

  “Those are of me and Lucas. That one is the first time we met,” she said, following Katherine’s gaze.

  “He always loved looking at a woman in a mirror,” Katherine murmured. “He used to tell me that while most people think the glass doesn’t lie, because a mirror is the purest form of reflection, variations in the glass can still shape the truth in a way that’s almost unrecognizable. That’s why he used to paint objects through the perspective of a mirror.”

  “He did seem to have a fascination with them,” Brianna said. The more she talked with Katherine, the closer she felt she was coming to something, but it was just out of reach. “I know the answer is right in front of me. I just have to figure it out.”

  Katherine cleared her throat. “Maybe I can help. I came here to tell you that I think you’re on the wrong track, suspecting Wyatt. I feel like I’m betraying my family, but I feel so bad for you and Lucas. And for Derek most of all. I think his partner was my aunt Gloria
.”

  Her heart skipped a beat. “Why do you think that?”

  Katherine gave her a steady gaze. “Because they had an affair—a long-running affair over several years. Derek broke it off after the two of you got engaged.”

  Brianna swallowed hard, a knot growing in her throat. Gloria was married and at least fifteen years older than Derek.

  “I saw them together once at my aunt’s art studio. She told me later that Derek had asked her to pose for him, and one thing led to another. She said she was sorry, and maybe she was, but she was also crazy about Derek. I’m sure they came up with the plan to steal the paintings together.” She paused. “I didn’t want to tell Jason this, because I didn’t want to be his source of information. It’s my family we’re talking about, and my job. My mother is ill. I need the money. No one can know that I tipped you off.”

  “I understand. So if your aunt and Derek were in it together, where are the paintings now?”

  Katherine looked down again. She picked one sketch up and smiled to herself. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before. It’s so clear. And Jason should have figured it out, too, because they used to go there all the time.”

  “Shelter Cove?” Brianna asked in confusion.

  “The caves,” Katherine replied, a light in her eyes. “They go way back under the bluffs, where it’s completely dry and very secluded, and no one ever goes there anymore.” She jumped to her feet and glanced down at her watch. “The tide won’t be coming in yet. I’m going to check it out. I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

  “Wait,” Brianna said. “I’ll come with you.”

  “Lucas isn’t here?”

  “No, his grandparents are watching him today.”

  “Great. Do you have a flashlight? We’ll probably need it.”

  “I’ll get one,” Brianna said. It felt good to take some action, and with a little luck, maybe Katherine’s hunch would pay off.

  During the drive to the cove, Brianna was caught up in her thoughts. She couldn’t imagine Gloria and Derek together, but they did share a passion for art, as well as, apparently, each other.