Safe Harbor

by Luanne Rice

  “No, he didn’t,” Sam said.

  Dana shivered with relief, but she held his hand tighter.

  “That’s why I want to help Quinn. She has something in her mind, and she won’t rest easy until we prove it’s otherwise.”

  “That’s what happened for you?”

  Sam nodded. “I stood by the rail of the Jamestown Bridge while the divers went down, and I was still there when the crane pulled my father’s truck up. It was an accident; we knew that for sure.”

  “Because he didn’t leave a note?”

  “Because he had my Christmas presents with him. He’d gone shopping in New York. They were all waterlogged, soaked through, but he’d bought me some toy trucks and a model train. I kept them for years.”

  “You did,” Dana said, seeing the glow in his eyes, thinking of how very like Quinn he was: She kept everything her parents had ever given her, wouldn’t even let people sit in their chairs.

  “It helped when I knew for sure he didn’t do it on purpose. Didn’t kill himself,” Sam said, turning his head to look into Dana’s eyes.

  She nodded, still holding his hand.

  “See, Dana. That’s what we have to do for Quinn.”

  “I know we do,” she said.

  When he stood, he handed her the mussel shell. As if it were Lily’s boat, and she could keep it safe, she held it tight. Now he pulled her up from the teak bench, took both her hands in his. The fine shell edges dug into her palm. “Are you ready?” he asked.

  “I am,” she said.

  She was too. After his story, she wasn’t afraid anymore. Whatever was hidden in the tackle box had nothing to do with Mark and Lily’s deaths. It would be drawings or family pictures, the equivalent to Sam’s Christmas presents found in the cab of his father’s truck. She ducked into the kitchen for a flashlight, and together they headed down the hill toward the garage.

  It was pitch black inside. Located at the foot of the hill’s eastern side, no light whatsoever came in. Switching on the flashlight, they closed the door behind them. Now, moving through the dark space, they stayed close together.

  “I feel like a burglar,” Dana said.

  “It’s your family’s property,” Sam reminded her. “And you’re doing this for Quinn.”

  “Thank you for telling me that story,” Dana said. “It makes this easier.”

  “You’re welcome,” Sam said. Dana pictured Quinn on her rock, and she pictured young Sam standing at the foot of the Jamestown Bridge. They were huddled over the tackle box now.

  Outside, headlights came slowly down Cresthill Road and Dana doused the flashlight. Sam’s eyes blazed, looking her way. She wondered how much he could see in the dark. She suddenly felt so tender toward him. She wanted to reach over, put her arms around his shoulders, comfort him for what had happened. Instead, she reached into her pocket and felt for the key to a lock she hadn’t yet found.

  Rumer Larkin drove past in her truck. Although she had been one of Dana’s best childhood friends, Dana hid from her now. When she turned the flashlight back on, Sam moved forward with the pry bar.

  “What could we possibly find?” she asked. “Solid-gold Kastmasters?”

  “Sterling silver sinkers?”

  “Treasure for the girls.”

  “Here goes,” he said, inserting the tip, giving one sharp push.

  The hasp cracked open. Dana leaned closer with the flashlight. She saw money inside, a thick stack of hundred-dollar bills held together with a rubber band. Beneath it were several documents, all officially printed on heavy stock, each bearing the heading “Sun Center, Inc.”

  “Oh, no,” Dana said.

  “Mark’s project.”

  Dana closed the box. She couldn’t look anymore. She didn’t understand what it meant, but she somehow knew what she had just found was the opposite of Christmas presents in Sam’s father’s truck. Outside the garage, she heard Marnie’s car pull into the gravel-strewn driveway across the street.

  “They’re home,” Sam said.

  “Quinn …” Dana said, closing her eyes.

  “Be strong for her and Allie,” Sam said, sliding his arm around her. She couldn’t resist; she felt his support, and she was glad to have it. “That’s what they need.”

  “You know, don’t you?”

  “I’m sorry, but I do,” Sam said.

  Dana had a pit in her stomach. It got worse as they opened the garage and walked across the street. Quinn and Allie were racing around, eating vanilla cones. The story of Quinn’s miniature golf victory came flowing out, with Allie pumping her fists in sisterly support.

  Dana laughed and nodded. She appeared to listen, to hear every word. Overhead, the summer breeze rustled the oak leaves. Stars shined in the dark blue sky. The children laughed and shouted. Marnie accepted Dana’s thanks. No one knew what was going on in Dana’s head, no one but Sam.

  He touched her shoulder, and when she dropped her hand behind her back, he held it tight. No one saw. Even Quinn, distracted by the joys of a July night, forgot to be vigilant. It was just Dana and Sam, waiting at the foot of the Jamestown Bridge or four fathoms above the Sundance, knowing there were more answers to seek, more questions than anyone had ever thought to ask.

  CHAPTER 15

  THAT NIGHT, DANA COULDN’T SLEEP. THE TACKLE box full of money loomed in the dark. She tossed in her sheets, just above and below the level of dreams. Stars hung outside her window. She watched the constellations tell their stories, and she made them her own. The Two Sisters danced in the sky. The Betrayed Lover hid in her cave. The night was full of secrets.

  She thought—or dreamed—of Sam. He was in her mind, trying to pull her back to earth. Out of the cave, down from the dance. He was such a grounded person, trying to help her find her way here on earth. For as long as she could remember, Dana had been drawn to archetypes. She had lived like a constellation, wheeling through the sky, a collection of stars that never really found a home. Artists, sculptors, nomads, seekers.

  Sam was … well, he was Sam. She lay awake, picturing how comfortable he seemed. He seemed to like who and where he was. The French had a phrase for him: bien dans sa peau. “Comfortable in his own skin.” And lying in bed, the heavy gray dawn light coming through the windows, she pictured his body, his skin.

  That glowing tan, from days spent in the sun on his boat. He seemed to radiate contentment. She saw the smile just behind his golden-green eyes, telling her he had learned how to be happy, that it was a secret he’d like to share. She had known his life hadn’t always been easy, but now that he’d told her about his father, she understood that he, too, had been on the other side of sadness. For the first time in weeks, she felt like painting, and she knew he had something to do with it.

  She finally got out of bed. Taking a bike ride to the post office, she found a letter from Isabel: We miss you! How is your life among your nieces, your return to your childhood home? Plenty to paint when you return, and everyone hopes it is soon. Even Monsieur Hull. Yes, Monique seems to have fled the scene, gone back to Paris or Vietnam or wherever she came from, and Jonathan moons around the harbor, painting terrible flat pictures for the tourists and smoking too many cigarettes.

  Dana already knew. Jonathan himself had written to her already, saying essentially the same thing. Seeing his name, hearing about life in Honfleur, flooded Dana with a strange and perverse longing—strictly from habit. She had once hoped for a life with Jon Hull, and Dana was a person who took her own dreams straight to heart.

  To chase them away, and to keep from obsessing about the tackle box, she took Allie sailing. And when they got home from a long, beautiful broad reach past Firefly Beach and back, she found a package by the kitchen door. Tied up in brown paper and twine, it had an envelope attached. While Allie went inside for her snack and lemonade, Dana opened the package.

  Her heart jumped. Inside were tubes of Winsor and Newton’s dark blue and royal purple, along with a full range of other colors. Included was a bag of b
rushes and a small cellophane square filled with twenty sheets of James’s Gold Leaf. The note read: Dana, you don’t have to be a detective. You’re an artist. Please let me make the calls, okay? Meanwhile, the rest of what you need is in the garage. Love, Sam.

  Beginning to smile, Dana walked down the hill and opened the garage’s heavy door. Inside, across the space from the tackle box, she found several five-and six-foot lengths of two-inch pine, a roll of canvas, a can of gesso, and a small bag of nails. Beside it all, wrapped in a huge red bow, was a brand-new hammer. Dana got the message: Sam wanted her to build a canvas.

  The thing was, after her night of lying awake, she wanted to build one. She found herself spreading out the stretchers, nailing them together with all her might. The tackle box was right where she had left it, sitting in the corner of her vision as she pounded nails and tried to decide what to paint.

  Only once did she check the box: The five thousand dollars were still inside. She kept working, pulling the canvas tight, brushing the gesso onto the cloth. A storm of emotions swirled through her chest. Everything she hadn’t painted in the last year wanted to come out. All her doubts and fears, her anger and grief, her love for Lily, her hurt for Jonathan, swirled inside like a tornado trapped in a box.

  While the gesso dried, she went to check on the girls. Allie was reading, and Quinn had disappeared on one of her jaunts. Checking with the binoculars, Dana found her sitting on the big rock, staring out to sea. Wanting to do her part to help Sam, Dana called Marnie to talk some more about the Sun Center.

  “The Emerald City,” Marnie laughed. “That’s what Lily and I called it—a nice place for old mothers so daughters wouldn’t have to worry. We were going to send Martha and Annabelle there. Lily thought daughters everywhere would thank Mark for building it. Health and wellness for the elderly: what a revolutionary idea!”

  “Did she ever say anything bad about it?”

  “Only that it was too far away, that it kept Mark away from home too much. You know Lily, Dana. Joined at the hip with everyone she loved: She felt the same way about you and France. If it was possible for someone to be mad at a whole country, well, that’s how Lily felt about France. It had you in its clutches.”

  “It did,” Dana said.

  “The anniversaries are coming up next week,” Marnie said. “One year—I can hardly believe it.”

  “Neither can I.”

  “Do you have any plans for a service? Maybe it will be the right time for Quinn and Allie to let you scatter the ashes.”

  “I hope so,” Dana said. But when she hung up, her thoughts were more on the Sun Center, on what Sam might find when he made his calls. She wondered where he was, why he hadn’t given her the packages in person. She wondered what he was doing, when she would hear from him again.

  But Jonathan had once treated her wonderfully too.

  AS MUCH AS Dana wasn’t a detective, Sam wasn’t really one either. But he did have his brother’s blood, which gave him certain investigatory advantages. To make sure he was proceeding correctly, he dialed Joe’s cell phone from the deck of his boat and wondered where it was going to ring.

  “Connor,” Joe said gruffly, answering the phone.

  “That’s nice,” Sam said. “Someone calls to say hello, and you practically bark into their ear.”

  “You know what time it is here?”

  “I would if I knew where you were, if you ever got around to letting me know.”

  “Didn’t Caroline send you a postcard?”

  “Don’t blame it on your wife—she sends me plenty of postcards. The problem is, they arrive a week after you’ve moved on to the next place. Where are you?”

  “Onboard the Meteor, off Madagascar.”

  “Doing what, or shouldn’t I ask?”

  “Diving on a wreck. What else?”

  “You’re a long way from Firefly Beach.”

  “No kidding. Caroline’s mother calls twice a day, asking when we’re coming home.”

  “When are you coming home?”

  “In October. Is that why you called? Ya miss your big brother that much?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” Sam snorted. “I’m calling because I need to pick your sneaky mind.”

  “‘Sneaky’?”

  “Yeah. All that red tape you have to cut through, getting to the wreck. You know, local officials, national officials, rival dive teams, permits, archaeological considerations, crap like that. How do you get to what you want?”

  “I treat it like a research problem. Treasure, empirical data, it’s all the same thing. You make notes, set goals, look at the hypotheticals. Shit, it’s late here. What’s your situation?”

  “What do you make of a tackle box filled with cash?”

  “Bigger fish than fish.” Joe chuckled.

  “No kidding.” Sam stared at the deck at his feet. Par for the course: him on one boat, Joe on another, several oceans apart.

  “Tell me the particulars, kid,” Joe said. “I’ll give you my sneaky mind for free.”

  Sam let him have it. He told his brother about the Graysons’ boat going down, their daughter thinking it wasn’t an accident, the box of money. Joe listened, seeming to take in every detail.

  “Sounds like someone found some trouble,” Joe said after Sam was finished filling him in.

  “That’s what I think.”

  “Cash in a box makes me think kickback, bribe, graft. Maybe Mark got paid off for something.”

  “For what though?”

  “He’s a developer, right? Maybe some guy with a field paid Mark to put the old-age home there.”

  “They do that?”

  “God, you’re naive. You wouldn’t believe the number of palms I’ve crossed with silver over the years. It’s the way of the world. Haven’t you ever slipped a maître d’ twenty bucks for a better table?”

  “This wasn’t twenty bucks. It was a few thousand.”

  “Yeah? Well, sounds like you’re on it. You’ll find out, I’m sure. But I’ve got a question for you. You’ve given me the rundown, told me the players. What I want to know is, who is she?”

  “What?”

  “The aunt. Who is she?”

  “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

  “Plenty,” Joe said, whistling. “You have research grants this summer. Getting you out of your lab is nothing short of a freaking miracle, so she must be something special. Sam, the detective—way to go!”

  “Shut up, asshole.”

  “Hey, don’t talk to me that way. I’ll get Caroline after you. Seriously, Sam—what’s the deal?”

  “I know her from way back. We’re old friends. I’m just doing her a favor.”

  “Holy shit,” Joe bellowed all the way from the Indian Ocean. “It’s not her, is it? The mystery woman?”

  “Shut up.”

  “The girl you followed to the Vineyard? It is, isn’t it? The none-of-your-fucking-business lady?”

  “The what?”

  “That’s what you said to me every time I asked you about her. I’d come back from Belize, and there you were, stupid in love, and no matter what I asked, you’d tell me ‘none of your fucking business.’ That’s how I knew you were in deep. You’d never talked that way before. It’s her, isn’t it?”

  Sam ignored him. He stared down at the piece of paper before him. He already had called information, gotten the number for the Sun Center in Cincinnati. What the hell he was going to ask, he didn’t know. Joe was whistling on the phone from Madagascar, and Sam wasn’t one bit closer to knowing what to do next.

  “You still there?” Joe asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. You asked me what I do to get past red tape.”

  “I did.”

  “I do what I do best. Ask nice, sign on the dotted line, and get diving. That’s your plan, isn’t it?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The boat—Sundance, didn’t you say? The kid thinks her parents scuttled
the boat? Find out for her. Go down there.”

  Sam closed his eyes, rocking on the water. The sun baked down on his bare shoulders. It felt hot and dry, and he wanted to dive into the bay and wash everything off. He knew Joe remembered Sam’s old vigil—waiting for the divers to pull his father’s truck up.

  “What should I look for?”

  “You know, Sam. Open seacocks. A lack of structural damage. When can you get down there?”

  “Next week. After the summer session’s over and I can use the research vessel. It has the echo sounder I need—unless, of course, you and Caroline are planning to come back sooner. I could really use the Meteor.”

  “If I weren’t so greedy, maybe I would. This is a big one, Sam. More treasure than I’ve ever gone after before. A caïque filled with South African diamonds, straight from the mines and headed for India. Fit for a sultan.”

  “A sultan, that’s you,” Sam said. “Well, thanks for the advice.”

  “One last thing. The aunt—what’s her name?”

  “None of your fucking business,” Sam said, hanging up the phone.

  A WEEK WENT BY and everything seemed different. Quinn didn’t know what was going on. Sam kept calling. He’d ask for Aunt Dana, and they’d have long conversations, with her keeping her voice down low. Or he’d leave strange messages on the answering machine like: “I called our friend in Ohio, he’s getting back to me this afternoon. So far, I’m not getting any red flags, but I’ll keep trying.”

  Quinn tried to keep from going mad with curiosity. Perhaps the oddest thing of all was that Aunt Dana had set up a studio in the garage—the grossest, darkest place there was. Spiderwebs were everywhere, and not a bit of light came in unless the door was open.

  Running down the hill with Sam’s latest message, Quinn found her aunt standing before the empty canvas.

  “What’s a red flag?” Quinn asked.

  “Gale warnings,” Dana said, “if you’re talking about sailing. Why?”

  “Sam said so far he’s not getting any red flags. What’s that mean?”

  “I guess it means everything is going well. That it’s smooth sailing,” her aunt said, staring intently at her canvas as if she were seeing something that wasn’t there.