Carrie Alexander - Count on a Cop

by Nobody’s Hero

  Connie returned to the boxwoods. As soon as she finished, the garden plantings would be complete. She’d have only the final touches to see to, which was no small task. Her clipboard lists were rife with notations on details and reminders that needed to be checked off before Saturday.

  While she dug, Connie’s thoughts turned to her daughter. Pippa was ten years old, an intelligent and inquisitive child who had grown too solitary and quiet since her father had passed away. Because Philip’s treatments had frequently kept him from working, he’d acted as Pippa’s primary caregiver during the day while Connie had been at school or work. His death from the leukemia two years ago had come after years of illness, no less difficult for being expected.

  Connie was strong. The loss of her first and only true love still hurt badly, but she had finally reached the point where she could manage the sorrow. Pippa’s continuing grief was her main worry.

  Her daughter needed a boost. She’d hoped that a week on Osprey Island would at least get the girl outdoors. But so far Pippa had been more alone than ever, absorbed with scribbling in her notebook and rereading the few Trixie Belden mysteries she’d been allowed to pack.

  Pippa clung to her precious Trixies as though they were life rafts. Philip had read the stories to her, one or two chapters a night. The tomboy detective—with her eager exclamations of “Gleeps!” and “Jeepers!”—had remained a part of their nightly ritual until the very end.

  No wonder Pippa wasn’t ready to let go of that strong link to her father. Connie didn’t expect her to. She only wanted to encourage her child to move ahead with her life.

  Connie straightened and pushed back the wiry strands of hair that had come loose from her ponytail. The sweater she’d put on that morning against the island chill had been tied around her waist for hours now. With the temperature heating up, the manual exertion had her sweating through her cotton blouse, as well. Determined to finish, she tamped the soil down around the boxwoods and went to find a hose to water them.

  The gardener was nowhere to be seen. Graves had resented Connie’s presence from the start, especially after she’d brought in her own off-island workers to do the clearing and demolition of the old garden and its hardscape structures. He’d had it easy for years, doing only a minimum of upkeep to the grounds. Anders Sheffield hadn’t bothered with the family’s vacation estate until he’d married Kay, who’d soon begun to fancy herself becoming a proper New England grand dame. Thus the refurbishing had begun.

  The current mistress of the manor didn’t strike Connie as the outdoor type. Kay had never displayed a great appreciation for horticulture, either, but that wasn’t Connie’s concern. Her only responsibility was to turn the grounds into a showplace.

  Hose in hand, she turned away from the outdoor tap and paused to take in the panorama of trimmed hedges and lavishly blooming flower beds. Four more days and she could turn in her final bill, then take time off at last to concentrate on Pippa.

  Voices drifted from the open windows of Peregrine House. “I don’t know why we have to go to all this trouble to impress your friends,” huffed Anders Sheffield. He was in his fifties, more than a decade older than Kay, with two grown sons from previous marriages. Each successive wife had been taller, blonder and more beautiful than the last. The next one would have to be a six-foot Swedish supermodel.

  “What about all the boring business associates of yours that we invited?” Kay responded in a lethally quiet tone.

  Ice cubes clinked. Connie checked her watch. Early yet for cocktails.

  “I don’t need to impress them,” Anders sneered. “They hope to impress me.”

  “Nothing impresses you. All the work I’ve done…” Kay’s voice trailed off as the couple moved out of the room.

  All the work I’ve done, Connie said to herself. Her only regret was that her thriving business had taken her away from Pippa, when the girl needed her mother most.

  MIDMORNING WAS TOO EARLY for lunch, but Sean had nothing else to do. He got out a can of ravioli and cranked the lid off with the handheld opener he’d found in a kitchen drawer. He took a plastic fork from a box and ate the pasta cold, straight out of the tin. Not cold, he decided after a deliberate culinary evaluation. Room temperature. Almost tasteless, too, but the effortless cleanup was worth the sacrifice.

  He threw out the can, the ravioli only half-eaten. His appetite had been lousy for a while now.

  The lid of the trash swung shut. So much for lunch. Now what? The day stretched before him, empty and endless, with nothing but his thoughts to fill in the silence.

  A long walk, he decided. The physical therapist had said walking would be good for working his leg muscles back into shape, as long as he didn’t overdo it and reopen the wound.

  “Not much chance of that,” he muttered, his hand going to the misshapen dent where a .32-caliber slug had torn through his thigh. The island was less than three miles long, from the southernmost ferry dock to Whitlock’s Arrow, a rocky outcropping that shot straight into the frothing surf of the Atlantic. He’d head north. The Potter cottage was halfway up the island, so a trip to Whitlock’s Arrow would be no more than a three-mile jaunt, round trip.

  Not an exceptionally long walk, but a good start. By the end of his two weeks, he’d be scaling cliffs.

  The sun wasn’t yet at its zenith, but it had grown hotter. Sean knotted a bandanna over his head, slid on a pair of sunglasses and took off down the lane. He followed the road north, moving at a clip that kept the occasional bikers or strollers from breaking his momentum with their cheery hellos.

  The view was impressive, even though the drop to the ocean wasn’t as steep on the western side of the island. Waves surged over the rocks; grass and wildflowers nodded in the breeze. He breathed the air—thick with brine and the pungent smell of evergreens—into the bottom of his lungs as he walked along Shore Road, coming to realize how grateful he was to be a long way from the job he’d previously lived for.

  Gulls spiraled above the rocks up ahead, dropping down, then alighting in a flapping cacophony. The laughter of a group of picnickers sent Sean off the lane and onto the dirt paths that wound around the heart of the island, leading in no discernible pattern to various woodland cottages.

  The hush was immediate. Towering pines closed ranks overhead, their interlaced branches blocking out all but intermittent patches of the vivid blue sky. Even the crash of the surf subsided until it was only background noise. The rhythmic pulse of the island.

  Sean slowed, testing his pulse. He was out of shape. Getting blasted at short range by a crazed ex-con tended to have that effect.

  A flash of reddish brown at the edge of a small meadow caught his eye. Too slow for a deer. Too tall for a fox.

  He took off his sunglasses and polished them on the hem of his plain white T-shirt, watching out of the corner of his eye as the same redheaded girl from that morning peeked out from behind a tree. Had she been following him the entire way?

  He walked on, not glancing back until he reached a fork in the path. “Right or left?” he called.

  After a short silence, the girl blew out a disgusted breath. “Whatsa matter? Are you lost?”

  He didn’t turn. “I’m taking you home.”

  A twig snapped as she stepped out onto the path. “I don’t want to go home.”

  “I can’t have you trailing me all over the island.”

  “How come?”

  “It’s dangerous.”

  She edged closer. “What’s dangerous?”

  He angled his head, taking a better look at her. She was short. Not abnormally, just kid-size. Genius observation.

  The girl had pale, freckled legs and a round body. She wore shorts and an untucked T-shirt with pit stains. The binoculars hung around her neck and a spiral notebook was clamped under one arm. Her hair was fuzzy, drawn into stubby braids that barely reached her shoulders. Behind a pair of wire-frame glasses, her hot, red face was squished into a frown.

  “You look like an
angry tomato,” he said.

  Her mouth opened, then closed into an even tighter pucker. She shook off a few flecks of forest debris before shooting out her chin. “You look like a…a…peg-legged pirate!”

  He remembered the bandanna on his head and laughed. “Fair enough.”

  Her small, chubby hand clenched a pen. “How come it’s dangerous for me to follow you?”

  “Just because.” He moved off a couple of steps, but she kept pace. “Don’t you have parents? Shouldn’t you be at home?”

  “My mom’s working,” she blurted, then looked sorry she’d given that away. Still, she added, “I’d just be alone there.”

  “You shouldn’t tell that to a stranger.”

  She blinked. “I know.”

  He started off, taking the path to the left. “Don’t follow me anymore. Go home.”

  He listened to her moving behind him, relieved when she turned onto the path that led toward the more populated southern end of the island. He stopped and watched as she progressed slowly, kicking at pinecones, glancing over her shoulder.

  Her scowl deepened. “What are you doing?”

  “Watching to see that you really go.” He made a shooing motion.

  She stomped off, but he wasn’t convinced. He waited until she was out of sight, then followed, coming upon her almost immediately where the path twisted. She was scribbling inside her notebook, and looked up guiltily when he approached.

  “I thought you were going home.”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t say that. You did.”

  Spunky girl. “You can’t keep following me.”

  “I wasn’t. I was making—” She cut herself off by slapping shut the tablet.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “I don’t tell strangers my name.”

  He nodded. “Do you live on the island?”

  “For now.”

  “Will you stop bothering me if I tell you my name?” She weighed the question, so he added an extra tidbit to tip the scales. “It’s not Potter.”

  Her eyes got big. “Then you’re a renter.”

  “More or less. The name’s Sean Rafferty. I’m from Worcester, Massachusetts, originally, but now I live in Holden. It’s a small town.”

  The girl smiled. “I was guessing Boston, ’cause of the accent.”

  “I’ve lived there, too. I’m on vacation for two weeks. And that’s all you need to know.” He made the shooing motion again, but it worked about as well on little girls as it did on his elder neighbor’s cats. He pointed at the path, doing his best imitation of his first duty sergeant. Or his father, a decorated trooper who’d run a tight outfit at home. “Go. Now.”

  She went, reluctantly, looking small and alone.

  Sean waited a couple more minutes, debating with himself while pine siskins hopped from branch to branch, nattering in chirps that punctuated his thoughts. A couple of teenagers came barreling down the path on mountain bikes, whooping back and forth harmlessly enough, but that settled it. Sean took the path to the right. He could just as easily walk down-island as up.

  The girl soon realized she was being followed. She sped up, not liking it any more than he had.

  In a short while, the path emerged from the woods and they were on the hard-packed dirt and gravel of Cliff Road. Beyond an ancient post-and-beam fence, sheer cliffs dropped into the booming surf.

  After another quarter mile, the road veered inland again, losing the ocean view to a copse of pines. The girl scurried past gates guarding a couple of the larger island estates before turning between a pair of mossy stone pillars. A heavy iron gate that bore a scrolled initial S stood open. A plaque on one of the pillars read Peregrine House.

  A poor little rich girl? Sean hadn’t figured her for that.

  The estate’s gravel driveway led into a thick forest. The girl had already disappeared, but he could’ve sworn she’d turned off too quickly, into the woods. Maybe she was fooling with him, planning to double back.

  He strode through the pillars, looking off into the woods, trying to pick up the girl’s trail.

  “Hey!” a woman shouted.

  Sean halted at the start of a woodsy path so narrow it was almost grown in by the crowded foliage. He saw the peak of a red-roofed cottage among the trees.

  A woman charged down the main driveway, spewing pebbles in her wake. Corkscrew curls of dark red hair bounced around her face, which was suffused with color.

  He lowered his sunglasses, taking a good long look.

  “Hey, you, mister,” she accosted him. One fist raised. “What do you think you’re doing, following my daughter home?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  SEAN SURRENDERED WITH his hands up. “Uh, hey. It’s not what you think.”

  “Pippa?” the woman called. “Pippa, are you all right?” She aimed a finger at Sean before heading toward the overgrown trail. “Don’t you dare move. I want to talk to you.”

  Sean remained frozen. She said talk the way his mother used to, when he and his brothers had been raising hell in the neighborhood and she’d resorted to threatening them with a talk from their father. The talk was usually a scolding, sometimes followed by a licking when the crime had been particularly heinous.

  The girl had reappeared. “Jeez, Mom. Why are you yelling?”

  So her name’s Pippa, Sean thought, but his gaze was on the mother. With the wild red hair and the fighting attitude, she was the spitting image of her daughter. Except that the chubbiness around Pippa’s middle had migrated in different directions in the mother, giving her an hourglass figure on a petite frame.

  The woman gripped her daughter’s shoulders. She bent to stare into the child’s downcast eyes. “Are you okay, Pippa? Did this man try to hurt you?”

  Pippa looked up with an owl-eyed blink. Her lower lip stuck out. “No, Mom.”

  “We only talked,” Sean said.

  “You talked?” The mother wheeled on him. “What are you doing, talking to a ten-year-old girl in the middle of nowhere? There’s something fishy going on here.” She looked ready to tear his head off with her hands, but she swallowed hard and turned back toward her child. “I’m warning you right now, buster. Stay away from my daughter.”

  “That’s fine.” Sean flicked his chin toward the girl. “You be sure to tell her to keep away from me, too.”

  The mother had Pippa in a headlock, crushed to her bosom. She threw him a look. “You can bet on that. And I’ll also be talking to the Jonesport police about strange men who prowl the woods looking for…” She snorted. “Conversation.”

  Sean was running short on patience, but he jammed his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and retreated a few steps so he wouldn’t appear threatening. “I only followed her because—”

  “Then you admit it.” The mother clutched Pippa even tighter before abruptly releasing her. “Run up to the house now, Pip. I’ll be along in a minute.”

  Pippa hesitated, grimacing as if she wanted to speak up. “Okay,” she finally whispered, then turned and ran off.

  The mother advanced on Sean, her hands clenched and her chest heaving. He couldn’t help admire her ferocity, even if it was directed at him. He was Irish; he liked a woman with spirit. And the flaming hair didn’t hurt, either.

  “Do I get to explain before I’m condemned?” he asked.

  She tossed her head back. “Go ahead. Try and worm your way out of it. I know what I saw—you creeping after my little girl, glancing around to be sure no one was watching.”

  He supposed he might have appeared furtive, although he was positive he hadn’t crept. “I followed her only to see that she got home safely. I swear on my honor, that’s all there was to it. No harm intended.”

  “Right.” The woman folded her arms, regarding him skeptically. “And what about the ‘talk’?”

  “I caught her following me through the woods. She was lurking around my cottage, too, yesterday and this morning.”

  The woman’s eyes flickered, betrayi
ng the slightest hesitation. “I’m sure. So you’re blaming the victim?”

  “There’s no victim here. You keep your daughter away from me, and I’ll stay away from her.”

  “You’re claiming that Pippa was at your house?” She shook her head. “I don’t believe it. Why would my girl be interested in you?”

  “How should I know? You’re her mother.”

  She frowned.

  “Maybe it was some kind of game.”

  “I…” The woman drew in a breath, lifting her chin an inch higher. She couldn’t have been taller than five-two, at least ten inches shorter than Sean. “I’ll speak to her.”

  He nodded. “Good.”

  Her mouth thinned. “That doesn’t mean I believe you.”

  “You don’t have to, as long as your daughter tells the truth.”

  “Pippa doesn’t lie to me.”

  Sean hoped not. “If you want me…” to apologize for your tirade, perhaps “…I’m staying on the west side, at Pine Cone Cottage, just off Shore Road.”

  “Wonderful.”

  She offered only the one sarcastic word, with no name, so he nodded and walked away, certain they’d meet again. Presumably under better circumstances. Osprey was, after all, a very small island.

  CONNIE WAITED UNTIL they were seated at the dining table with their lunch—toasted cheese and tomato sandwiches—before she started in with the inquisition. Pippa was expecting it, and took a huge bite when her mother said, “All right. Tell me what happened.”

  “Mmph, mouth’s full.”

  “I’ll wait.” Connie speared a dill pickle out of the jar. The juice speckled the table’s watermarked wood surface, and she swiped it up with a paper napkin.

  The Sheffields had installed Connie and her daughter in a somewhat ramshackle, long-forgotten guesthouse, as all the bedrooms in the main home were reserved for their VIP guests. Small and dark, the cedar-shingle house was hidden out of sight, in the woods not far from the front gate. The accommodations were summer-camp rustic, with thin, sagging mattresses, balky plumbing and flyspecked screens, but the privacy was wonderful. Constant exposure to the Sheffields worked Connie’s last nerve. Anders Sheffield was an entitled snob with morality issues, and the lady of the manor was too unsure of herself to give him the boot up the butt that he deserved.