Enemy Waters

by Justine Davis

  So which image was wrong?

  He’d glanced at her as the question formed in his mind, but now looked back. Roger was staring at him again, in that assessing way.

  “Your father died young?”

  “Far too,” he said shortly. It wasn’t something he discussed with anybody easily, let alone total strangers.

  “How?”

  Cooper grimaced. “He was a cop. Killed in the line of duty.”

  The man’s gaze narrowed. What was he, some sort of cop-hating wing nut? Cooper wondered. There were places they abounded, he knew, those people who never made the connection that the very cops they hated were what enabled them to do their hating in peace.

  “How?” Roger asked again.

  That did it. He truly didn’t talk about that. “What does this have to do with you renting me the dock space?”

  “More than you might think,” the old man said.

  Cryptic. He hated cryptic. It always involved guessing, then got tangled in motives and worse, emotions, and your chances of interpreting all that right were marginal. His mother told him he was better at it than he thought, he just didn’t understand the process and that made him scoff at it.

  Your instincts are good, Cooper, she always said. You just don’t trust any conclusions that don’t come out of some concrete process with evidence to back it up. Just like your father.

  Wow. The memories were running wild today.

  To hell with it, he thought. The rowing was good for him.

  “All I’m asking for is dock space. I’ll pay you the going rate for a couple of weeks. In advance if you want it.” Thanks, Tristan, he added silently. “I’ll clean up after myself, shut down and be quiet at a reasonable hour we agree on. I won’t do any damage, or if I inadvertently do I’ll repair it.” His mouth quirked. “And I won’t bother you, or your home or steal from you.”

  He stopped, a little startled himself at the burst of words. He thought Roger almost smiled.

  “I see,” the older man said, and Cooper had the uncomfortable feeling the man did see more than he’d intended.

  “That’s the deal. It’s up to you.”

  “And my tenant.”

  Cooper frowned. “I thought you lived there.”

  “I do. But I have a guest house.”

  “Oh. So I have to pass muster twice?”

  “Would you mow my lawn?”

  Cooper blinked at the non sequitur. “Mow…?”

  “I’d rather tend my vegetables, and the fruit trees. Can’t wait for the darn grass to die back for the winter.”

  Cooper resisted the urge to shake his head at this odd turn.

  “Maybe you should turn it all into vegetables then.”

  “I could,” the man said with a nod. “But my wife always liked a nice, green yard. To chew it up after her death doesn’t seem quite right.”

  Cooper’s assessment shifted suddenly. Perhaps his earlier questions had simply been those of someone familiar with the death of a loved one to someone else in the same boat.

  “Problem is,” Roger said, “it’s too big, and I’m tired of pushing that mower around.”

  “You should get a riding one.”

  “I’ve got one, but it hasn’t run for a couple of years. And I figured the exercise was good for me.”

  “I could look at it, maybe get it going again.”

  “You’re good with engines?”

  “Tolerable.” He hesitated, then looked up and met Roger’s gaze as he added, “My dad was a good teacher.”

  There was a silent instant before Roger’s eyes narrowed, and then he nodded. It was as close as Cooper could come to an apology for his earlier shortness, and Roger seemed to understand.

  “You mow that blessed lawn, and get that riding mower running, I’ll give you a week at my dock.”

  Cooper smiled. He couldn’t help himself; the old guy reminded him of his uncle Marty, always dealing. “Never pay when you can barter,” he always said.

  “I might need more time,” Cooper said,

  “You can pay for that,” Roger said. “Or I’ll find something else that needs fixing. I’ve got a green thumb, but I’m all thumbs when it comes to things mechanical.”

  “Deal,” Cooper said.

  Roger nodded, and lifted his empty coffee mug in a gesture to Nell, who had filled everyone else’s but left them to talk. But apparently she was watching, because she started toward them with the pot.

  “You two reach an agreement?” she asked as she filled first Roger’s, then his.

  “We have,” Roger said.

  “All right,” Nell said.

  “Thanks,” Cooper said, smiling at her. He took a sip of the brew, which was maintaining the quality that had directed him here in the first place.

  “You’re welcome.”

  The door opened for new customers, a group of six who had to be from warmer climes, judging by the way they were bundled up on this relatively mild day. Sheila, who worked the register and seated people, was on a break, so Nell was on her own for the moment. She glanced at him, then at Roger, and nodded. Then she left to go seat the newcomers.

  Cooper set down his coffee mug and looked at Roger. “I guess the only thing left is to pass inspection with your tenant.”

  “You just did.”

  He frowned. “I just did?”

  Roger nodded. Belatedly, it hit him. His head snapped around to look at Nell, who was leading the new group to a big table in the middle of the room with that practiced smile.

  “Nell?” He looked back quickly, aware that in his chagrin he’d almost said Tanya; he’d better start thinking of her as Nell, or he was going to blow it. “She’s your tenant?”

  He should have guessed. Something about this case had screwed up his mind.

  “She is. So in fact, I suppose you had already passed inspection, or she never would have suggested the idea to me. There are lots of people around here with dock space. And she’s very…protective.”

  “And vice versa,” Cooper said.

  “Yes,” Roger agreed easily.

  It seemed the PI gods were smiling on him on this one, Cooper thought, forgetting for the moment about the weeks of drudgery that had gotten him this far. He’d found her despite the radical change in her looks, and now he’d landed literally in her backyard. He was going to be able to keep an eye on her and get some needed work done on The Peacemaker at the same time.

  His only qualm was what her reaction would be when she found out he’d lied to her. Well, not exactly lied but certainly abridged the full story. He told himself not to worry about it. Once she saw her brother was alive and well, she’d be in a forgiving mood.

  Why it mattered that she forgive him was something he didn’t try to explain, even to himself.

  Chapter 6

  “This is a great place,” Cooper said.

  “It is,” Nell agreed.

  She watched as he went about tying up his boat with competent, practiced motions. “Nice boat,” she said. “Roger said it was your father’s.”

  He didn’t really wince, but she knew that kind of pain too well not to recognize it, even in a split-second flash.

  “Yes. And yes.”

  “I’m sorry. I know how hard it is to lose someone too young.”

  Roger had told her what Cooper had told him. The fact that his father had been a police officer killed in the line of duty had somehow eased her mind about him, although she supposed it was silly to assume that because the father had been one of the good guys, the son was, too. After all, it hadn’t worked that way in reverse. Tris had been her rock, but their father had abandoned them long ago, and for all her understanding of why it had happened, and all the distance lent by time passed, the core pain never left her.

  “But it’s nice that you have it, that you keep it and take good care of it, in his memory,” she said, meaning it. She wished there was something like that she could do for Tris.

  He went still for a moment. He must
be wondering what was up with her, she thought. This was the most personal thing she’d said to him, and it had to stand out after her aloofness.

  “It is,” he said, “the hardest work I’ve ever done, trying to keep it to his standards.”

  The admission moved her. “A perfectionist, was he?”

  “About this, yes.”

  She knew a little about perfectionists. They could be hard—or impossible—to live with.

  “Roger says a boat is a hole in the water that you pour money, time and, if you’re not careful, your entire life into.”

  “That why he doesn’t have one?” Cooper asked.

  “Yes. He used to, but he gradually downsized so that now all he has is that little runabout, for fishing and crabbing.”

  Cooper looked toward the little fiberglass boat, maybe ten feet long, with a small trolling motor on it, pulled up onto the beach next to the dock.

  “I should get one of those motors. Heck of a lot easier than rowing.”

  “Rowing’s good exercise,” she said.

  “That’s what I keep telling myself.”

  “It must be. You’re in good shape.”

  For an instant he looked startled. What, did he think she hadn’t noticed? True, it was only in the routine way people catalogued other people, in slots labeled kid, adult, dog lover, lousy driver, quiet, boisterous, whatever. But she’d have to be blind not to see that he was indeed in good shape. Rowing did amazing things for a man’s shoulders, if nothing else.

  “Passable,” he said with a shrug of those shoulders.

  He glanced up then, his attention obviously caught by something. She turned in time to see Roger coming outside the house and onto the small patio.

  “Roger’s owned this place a long time?” he asked.

  “His family has, for about a hundred years. Used to be a working farm.”

  “You sure it still isn’t?” he asked, glancing farther up the gentle slope toward what Roger called his garden.

  She nearly laughed. It was a bit more than your average backyard vegetable garden with a fruit tree or two. She didn’t know much about it herself, but even she could appreciate the variety Roger managed.

  “It is amazing.”

  “This isn’t the easiest place to grow vegetables,” Cooper said. “With the short season and all.”

  “Roger told me. But he’s got ways around it. A greenhouse, something he calls cold flats, cloches, other things. He starts very early so things are pretty healthy when he finally actually plants them.”

  “Where’s your place?” he asked.

  Her breath caught in her throat, and just that quickly the ease she’d begun to feel vanished. She could sense the instant panic coiling deep inside her, ready to be unleashed. She fought it down. It was a perfectly normal question. Just answer it, she told herself. He was going to be here, after all, and it’s not like you were going to keep it a secret.

  “Up there,” she said, gesturing to the south side of Roger’s house.

  She saw him glance that way, apparently spot the corner of the little white building with cheery yellow trim, and nod. He went immediately back to coiling the excess mooring line into a neat circle on the dock, and she let out a long breath.

  See? she told herself. Simple. Meaningless chatter between two people who didn’t know each other but were suddenly going to be in close quarters for a while. She needed to rein in the paranoia. She’d opened this door by coming down here and talking to him, and it was going to look pretty odd if she slammed it shut now.

  She thought she’d been ready. If she hadn’t, she would never have even mentioned him docking here to either man. Or if she’d changed her mind, all she would have had to do was tell Roger and that would have been it. And she certainly wouldn’t have come down here when she’d seen his boat arrive.

  “So, how long have you been here at Roger’s?”

  He wasn’t even looking at her, he was lifting out a folding set of steps, for when the tide was in and the boat would ride higher. Nothing secretive or evil in the question, it was just more casual chatter.

  “A few months.”

  “How’d you land all the way up here in Port Murphy?”

  Suspicion spiked again. “What makes you think I haven’t been here all along?”

  He straightened up and looked at her head-on. His expression was puzzled. “Your tan?” he suggested.

  She drew back slightly. “What?”

  “People up here try, but it’s hard, unless your budget runs to tanning booths,” he said.

  “Oh.”

  Well, there was a giveaway she’d never thought of. And she’d tried so hard to think of everything. Maybe she should have stayed at the same latitude instead of coming north.

  But as Roger had once pointed out to her, half the people here had come from somewhere else. His own beloved Margo had been from Arizona, had forsaken the dry, sunny south for his sake, and had come to love the damp, mossy and beautiful northwest.

  “You okay?”

  She sighed. “Just thinking about Roger. And his wife.”

  “Oh, yeah, I meant to ask about that, so I don’t say anything that upsets him. She died, I gather?”

  Tanya nodded. “Ten years ago. They’d been married nearly forty years. More than half his life.”

  “Only thing I can think of worse is someone who’s been there all your life,” he said.

  She froze. The panic uncoiled, struck. Her gaze shot to his face. This time he was looking at her, so intently it was as if he’d expected some sort of reaction.

  “All your life.” Like Tris.

  Involuntarily she backed up a step, away from him. God, she’d made a horrible mistake. Jeremy had sent him, and she’d invited him here. She was such a fool, falling for…what? He was good-looking enough, but she was pretty much immune to that; Jeremy was considered by most to be a very handsome man. He seemed the polar opposite of Jeremy’s driven ambition, bumming around on his boat, had that done her in? Or was it the cop thing, foolishly trusting him because of what his father had been?

  He’d been speaking again, and she belatedly tuned back in. “…how I felt when my dad died. It was like the world had literally crumbled around me.”

  He’d been thinking of his father? She felt an odd shakiness inside, the aftermath of the spike of panic-induced adrenaline.

  “He was my hero,” Cooper added simply, and that quickly her fear and suspicion died away. Could a man who could speak with such open love and admiration of his father be a bad guy?

  “I’m sorry,” she said again, meaning it. “How long ago was it?”

  “A long time. I was fourteen.”

  Almost half his life, she guessed; he looked thirtyish. Even younger than she’d been when her mom had died. Degrees of loss, she supposed, didn’t really matter much; when you loved someone the pain was too horrific to bear. “That’s awful.”

  “It was.”

  He looked down at the dock, then up the hill toward the house, then at the water. As if he could look anywhere but at her.

  “I’ll let you get settled in,” she said, when it seemed clear he wasn’t going to say anymore.

  He gave his head a little shake. “Thanks. I’ve got a couple of things to do before dinner.” He gave her a sideways glance. “You know Roger invited me?”

  She hadn’t. “Lucky you. He’s a great cook. And he loves cooking for guests.”

  “Will you be there?”

  “It’s not our night.”

  He blinked. “Your night?”

  “Sundays. I usually eat with him on Sunday nights. That’s when he misses Margo the most. I think it helps, the distraction, I mean.”

  “Having a pretty woman around would do that,” he agreed.

  She gave him a narrowed look. And here he’d been being so sincere. But if there was anything she was sure of, it was that she’d successfully buried any trace of the glamorous woman she’d once been. Pretty had long vanished, and she knew it
, was pleased with her new cloak of plainness, for more reasons than she would ever have imagined.

  Still, the obviously false flattery stung, for reasons she didn’t want to think about.

  “He’ll have to try that sometime,” she retorted. She turned on her heel and left him there, not even bothering to look back.

  Chapter 7

  Ouch, Cooper thought, as he watched her stride away.

  He should have left out the “pretty,” he supposed. He hadn’t meant anything by it. And he hadn’t—he swore he hadn’t—been thinking of the woman in the news photo. A shallow, carefree goof-up he might be, but he hadn’t been trying to flatter her, win her over with meaningless compliments. It had just been a phrase that rolled out.

  Nice. Yeah, that’s what he should have said. A nice woman, instead of a pretty one.

  But then again, he wasn’t sure nice applied. Touchy, edgy, prickly….

  Of course she’s nice, he told himself. She wouldn’t have done this otherwise, would never have even talked to Roger about letting him stay here. He was, after all, a stranger, no matter how much he might know about her.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw her pause in her journey up the slope, saw that Roger had started down and they’d met halfway between the edge of the small patio and the water. They chatted for a moment—Cooper wondered if she was telling the old man he was a jerk—and then each proceeded on their way, she toward the little yellow-and-white building, he continuing this way. Coming to check on the new tenant, no doubt.

  Cooper had meant to just say hello and to thank the man again, but instead the first words out of his mouth were, “I didn’t mean to make her mad.”

  Roger lifted a graying brow. “Did you?”

  “She didn’t say anything?”

  “Nell has a lovely knack of keeping her own counsel. If she’s upset with you, she won’t tell the world.”

  “Oh.” He gave the man a sideways look. “Why would being called pretty upset her?”

  “Ah.” The man said it as if he saw much more than the simple question revealed. “Perhaps because she works very hard at not being pretty?”

  Cooper blinked. He’d better take care around this guy, he was obviously perceptive as well as smart.