“And he married her,” Bailey finished.
Will glanced back at her, his weathered face a mask of grief. “Owen knew that I’d put that child in her, but he didn’t care. He wanted Anne, and he got her.”
“But they never told anyone?”
“The Taweses protect their own.”
The sound of a four-wheeler and the dogs’ barking brought Bailey to her feet. “That’s got to be—” she began.
“Daniel Catlin. I know who it is, but we’ve got to be straight on this, girl.”
“Bailey,” she insisted.
He nodded. “Bailey. Let me finish. Anne and Owen made a marriage, and they both stuck by their vows. They were good together, probably a hell of a lot better than Anne and I would have been. But when they drowned, I knew it was time for me to grow up and take my daughter to raise.”
The engine stopped. “Bailey!” Daniel’s voice. “Will? Is she inside?”
“You’re not to tell—not him, not Emma, not anybody. I’ll not have Anne shamed now. Am I making myself clear, girl?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “I won’t tell. But . . .” The implications of what he’d just said sank in. “If . . . you weren’t Beth’s uncle, then . . .”
“Then I’m your grandfather,” he finished.
She stared at him, suddenly unable to find the right words.
Daniel banged at the door. “Bailey!”
She glanced at the door and then back at her grandfather. “What do I call you now?”
“Will’s fine. Just Will.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Why the hell are you knocking, boy? You walk in any other time you damn well please.” Will winked at Bailey as he went to the door. “What’d you think? That I’d shot her and nailed her hide over my fireplace?”
Daniel came in, followed by all three dogs, one of which made a dive for the toy duck and carried it under the table. “I thought I smelled coffee.” Daniel picked up the teakettle and filled it with water from the sink faucet. “I don’t suppose you have any of that Gyokuro left?”
“Look in the back, behind the Russian Caravan blend. In that black tin.” Will glanced at Bailey. “Man can’t drink Ceylon or Earl Grey, like normal folks. No, he wants fancy foreign tea.”
Daniel grinned. “It’s all foreign tea, Will. And you like a cup as well as I do.”
“Tea’s for drinking alone. Coffee is for sharing.”
“I hear you.” Daniel put the water on to boil, got down a brick red teapot, and measured out the tea leaves.
Bailey glanced down at the large animal near her feet and edged her chair back a few inches.
“Stop fidgeting,” Will said. “She’s not going to take your leg off. Not unless you attack me with that fork, anyway.” He crouched and whistled softly. The dog went to him, duck clamped in its mouth. “You think I want this old toy? Why would I want that mangy thing?” He patted the animal’s head and it wagged its tail. “Why you scared of dogs, girl?”
“One attacked me when I was a child,” Bailey said. “I had eight stitches in my left arm and two on my chin.” She turned her hand so that he could see the scar near her elbow. “He bit my leg and my right hand too.”
“I’m sorry for that, but you needn’t worry about these three. They guard the place for me, but none of them has ever bitten anybody, so far as I know.” He patted the shaggy tricolored dog again. “This one’s Blue, and she’s a mongrel and the smartest of the bunch. The male over there, the big Chesapeake, is Raven, and the bitch is Honey. She’s the sweetest, and the hardest to keep out of my bed on a winter’s night.”
Daniel brought the teapot and his blue pottery mug to the table. As he sat down, he glanced around the room. “Where’s your shotgun, Will? That old Fox double-barrel that belonged to your daddy? This is the first time I haven’t seen it hanging over the kitchen door.”
Will scowled. “Lost it hunting last winter.”
“Lost it? How did you do that?”
“Fool dog. Raven was having some trouble climbing back into the boat, out on the far side of Freeman’s Marsh. I laid the gun down to heave him in, and it slipped over the side before I could catch it.”
“You couldn’t retrieve it?”
“Water’s twenty feet deep there, maybe more. Muck bottom.”
“Bad luck. I know how much that shotgun meant to you.” The two exchanged looks. “Funny, you never mentioned it before.”
Will shook his head. “I put some store by that gun. It cost Daddy a whole winter’s muskrat skins.”
“I’m surprised that you hunt, being such an animal lover,” Bailey said.
“Deer, waterfowl, an occasional squirrel or rabbit. More for meat than sport these days.” He glanced at Daniel. “He don’t, though. Used to when he was a young buck, was a pretty damn good shot.”
“I ought to be,” Daniel said. “You taught me to use a gun.”
“Somebody had to.” Will chuckled. “His granddaddy gave him a twenty-two rifle when he was ten, but none of them took the trouble to show him how to keep from killing himself or wiping out Nathan Love’s milk cows.”
“Pay no attention to him,” Daniel said. “I only shot one cow.”
Will folded his arms over his chest. “Took half its left horn off. Nathan was some put out, I can tell you.”
“He chased me for the better part of a mile.”
“Would have caught you too, if the snow hadn’t been so deep.” Will laughed. “Daniel didn’t weigh as much as that dog over there. He could run on top of the snow crust like a fox, and Nathan kept sinking in with every step. But if he’d caught him, he’d had taken the hide off the boy’s rear end, preacher’s son or not.”
“But you don’t hunt anymore?” Bailey said. “Why?”
A shadow passed behind Daniel’s eyes. “I suppose I saw enough bloodshed in Afghanistan.”
“Pay no attention to him,” Will teased. “If they ever have an Angus hunting season, he’ll be out before dawn. He likes his steaks rare, and he won’t say no to venison stew either.”
Daniel drank his tea, and Bailey listened as the two men made idle talk about fishing and the best place to dip for soft-shell crabs in the summer. “I should get back to work,” Daniel said, glancing at her as he carried his cup to the sink. “I wouldn’t want my employer to think I was slacking on the job.”
“No need to hurry off.” Will gestured at the chair Daniel had just left. “Work’s not going anywhere. The two of you are more than welcome to stay to supper.”
“Thanks,” Daniel said, “but Emma’s making crab cakes tonight.”
“How about you?” Will looked at her.
“Perhaps another day, but I don’t have to hurry off.” Bailey didn’t want to leave—not yet. She was still in shock from what Will had told her about actually being Beth’s father, rather than her uncle. She didn’t want to wear out her welcome, but she had so many more questions that she didn’t know where to start.
“Suit yourself.” Will stood. “I was planning on putting together a fish chowder and some corn bread. Nothing fancy.”
“I’d like to get that back step fixed before one of us breaks his neck on it.” Daniel opened the back door. “A shame about your daddy’s gun.”
“Yeah, it is. Not many of those Damascus-steel barrels left.”
Will walked out on the back stoop. “Stop back tomorrow if you want some of that fish soup,” he offered. “Either that, or I’ll have to feed it to the dogs.”
When Will came back inside, Bailey looked up at him expectantly. “Is it true? Are you really my grandfather?”
Will’s mouth tightened into a thin line. “I don’t lie. Ask anybody. No matter what they think of me, there’s none who can say I ever have.”
She sat there, numb, unable to think of what to say.
His expression softened. “Maybe you’d like to take a look at your mother’s room.”
Bailey felt a rush of excitement. “Could I?”
�
�Nothing left of hers up there, course. Elizabeth cleaned it all out while I was in prison.”
“I see.” She glanced toward the front entrance and the staircase. “I guess it’s silly, but I’d still like . . .”
“Come on, then. We’ll take the grand tour.”
“I’ve always loved sketching and watercolors,” she offered, as she followed him up the steps. “I wanted to study art in college, but—”
“But you went into teaching instead,” Will finished.
“It was what my parents . . . what my father and mother thought was best for me. I probably didn’t have enough talent—”
“Art is a gift you’re born with, an eye for what’s right. When I carve a snow goose or a chipmunk, I start with a piece of wood and start whittling. I just carve away what doesn’t belong there.”
He looked back over his shoulder, and she saw a flash of mischief in his eyes. “No magic to it. You can do the same thing with a brush or charcoal, if you have the patience and a mind to it. Important thing is, have a clear picture in your head of what you want to end with before you make the first mark. Start with a blank sheet and just work in reverse.”
At the top landing, Will led the way past a bathroom, stopped in front of a closed door, and cleared his throat. “Look all you want,” he said huskily. “I haven’t set foot in there since I came home.”
“Thirty-five years?”
“Yep. Nothing left for me in there.”
He turned and went back downstairs, leaving her to turn the knob and gaze into the empty room. Faded pale yellow wallpaper with pink roses curled and peeled on three walls. On the fourth, two big windows, curtainless, opened onto the outside world from a fairy-tale forest mural complete with rainbows, waterfalls, unicorns, and dancing otters. The painted walls showed the decay of time, the braided rug was thick with dust, the ceiling laced with cobwebs, but amid the stark silence and the sorrow lingered a hint of laughter.
Bailey’s throat constricted with emotion. She pulled the door shut with too much force and hurried back to the main floor. Will Tawes—her grandfather—stood in the adjoining room gazing at the charcoal of Elizabeth on horseback.
“I’m sorry I . . .” She took a deep breath and wiped her eyes. “I’m . . . I wish I’d known her. Aunt Elizabeth.”
“She would have liked you. You two would have got on like peas in a pod. She was a teacher too, you know. Acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
“I was so wrong about her,” Bailey said. “I’d conjured this image in my head of a sick old woman.”
“Elizabeth?” Will snorted in amusement. “Strong as an ox. Never needed a doctor in her life, except one time she fell out of the barn loft and broke her arm. She rode those horses of hers every day, rain, snow, or sleet. Never could figure how she fell down those steps.”
“Is that how she died? An accident?”
He nodded. “She’d gone up and down that staircase every day of her life.”
“It must have been a shock to you.”
Grief etched his features. “It was. So long as Elizabeth drew breath, I thought there might come a time when we could mend fences between us. But then she was dead. And where I’m going, I don’t expect to see her again.”
“Where you’re going?” she asked. “Are you planning on—”
“Going to hell, if there is one. I don’t suppose I’ll be too welcome anywhere else in the hereafter.”
“Why would you say a thing like that?”
He scoffed. “I’ve done a lot to be ashamed of in my life, girl, but what I’ve done is between me and my Maker. If you’re not staying to supper, you’d best get on back to Emma’s.”
“Can I come here again? Another day?”
He shrugged. “I don’t suppose there’s any way to keep you away, short of digging a moat and filling it with alligators.”
“Thank you.” She clasped his hand. For an instant he gripped her fingers.
“Mind you, keep a sharp eye on Daniel. He’s a good man, but he’s not for you. Daniel’s carrying his own demons. There’s things in his past that eat at him. You just remember, he’s a Catlin and you’re a Tawes. The two don’t mix any better than matches and black powder.”
Later that evening, Daniel borrowed Emma’s boat on the pretense of doing some night fishing, took rods and bait, and crossed to Kent Island. Mooring the skiff at a dock, he went to the Jetty, ordered two beers and a half pound of steamed shrimp, and took a corner table under a burned-out Coors sign. At precisely ten o’clock Lucas, in faded jeans, a torn tee that read INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF ELECTRICAL WORKERS—LOCAL 18, and a dirty ball cap, walked into the bar with a tall, lanky ponytailed man whom Daniel had never seen before.
The two stopped and looked around, letting their eyes adjust to the dim lighting; then Lucas spied him and waved. “Hey, Bubba,” he called. Anything bitin’but the black flies?” Lucas asked in a passable rendition of a Baltimore blue-collar accent as he and his companion joined Daniel at the table.
Lucas hadn’t changed a bit. He was a man whom few people would notice in a crowd, and even fewer remember. His dark hair, regular features, and swarthy complexion were common enough that he could pass for a native anywhere but Scandinavia. It wasn’t until you gazed into Lucas’s small, dark eyes that you saw something exceptional, a cool intelligence and the ruthless expression of a feeding barracuda.
“A rock, but I had to throw the damned thing back,” Daniel replied. He waved to a passing waitress. “Couple more Buds here.”
Lucas slid into a chair next to Daniel. Ponytail sat directly across, his back to the bar. “You’re on time, I see,” Lucas said, and then, louder, “You know my old lady’s brother, Al.”
“Yeah. How’s it hanging?” Daniel said.
Don’t overdo it, Lucas, he thought. A little more local color, and he was apt to puke on Lucas’s worn work boots. “Blend in” had been the cardinal rule for field agents. “Do nothing that would attract attention.” He casually took Al’s measure. Young, maybe thirty at most, and a little edgy for the role he was playing. The straggly ponytail was a good touch, but the jeans were new, and instead of Levi’s, Daniel suspected they might be Polos. He wondered if Lucas was breaking in a new kid or if he’d brought Al here as a reinforcement.
The waitress returned with the beer. Lucas took a sip of his and grimaced. Al merely played with his glass.
“Thought all you good ol’ boys drank Bud,” Daniel remarked.
“Questions,” Lucas said, once the waitress had moved on to other customers.
Daniel glanced at Al and then back to Lucas. “I agreed to talk to you. Alone.” He stood and tossed a twenty-dollar bill on the table.
“No need to get testy.” Lucas nodded to the younger man. “Wait in the truck.”
Al glared at Daniel. “Are you going to be intimidated by this—”
“Make up your mind,” Daniel said. “He goes or I do.”
Lucas nodded. “Have it your way.” He motioned toward the door. “Outside.”
His partner pushed the beer back, rose, and walked out.
Daniel went the men’s room, returned in two minutes, and sat down in the same seat again. “Are we recording?”
“No. Care to frisk me?”
“I’ll pass,” Daniel said. “What can I do for you?”
The waitress showed a couple to the table next to theirs, and Lucas lowered his voice. “Someone on Tawes had been blackmailing the senator for the past fifteen years.”
Daniel tried not to show surprise. If what Lucas said was true, someone else might know about Marshall’s connection to the drug trade. He almost laughed at his own stupidity. Of course the agency would know. And Marshall’s associates in Washington, the ones who were equally guilty of betraying the American public and using their own power to line their pockets. But on the island? Lucas must be lying. Who on Tawes could possibly have that information? “You have proof?” he asked.
“We’ve learned that fund
s had been deposited regularly to a bank in the Caymans. We haven’t been able to track down who the blackmailer is, but we will.”
“What makes you think it wasn’t another of Marshall’s retirement nest eggs?”
“He did his private banking in Zurich. That’s keeping the grieving widow in Prada.”
“So what’s this got to do with me?” The hair prickled on his arms as he took another drink of Bud. It was warm, but it gave him something to do. Did they think he’d killed Marshall? Did the agency care? Or was this meeting a trap? He wondered what his chances were of seeing Tawes again.
Lucas leaned forward. He smelled of breath mints. “Marshall was an important man. The opposition party had his name on the short list of possible vice presidential candidates in the coming election.”
“Really? It was my impression that it was a done deal.”
“You know a lot for a carpenter with shit on his shoes.”
“A pity the senator didn’t live long enough to run.”
A man and a blond woman at the bar exchanged angry words. She snatched up her purse and walked toward the entrance. “Bitch!” he shouted.
She twisted around, smiled, and lifted three fingers. “Read between the lines, you limp dick!” A round of laughter from the crowd followed her out the door as the man called to the bartender for a double.
Lucas turned his attention back to Daniel. “The agency would be pleased if you’d check around, see who on Tawes is living beyond their means.”
“Nobody comes to mind.” Daniel rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Money’s tight for watermen and farmers.”
“Not for you, apparently.” Lucas smiled thinly.
“You suspect that the senator’s death wasn’t accidental.”
“The supposition is that old Joe got tired of paying, went to the island to confront his blackmailer, and that unknown party shot him.”
“Am I a suspect?”
Lucas shrugged. “You have to admit you had a grudge against him.”
I hated his guts, Daniel thought, trying to hold back the sudden tide of mingled grief and rage that threatened to knock him off balance with Lucas.
Blood Kin Page 18
