“Mostly on Greenwood Lake, but also on the Hudson.”
“I’ve only sailed on the ocean. How does it compare to lake or river sailing?”
“There are swells and tides to contend with out there.” He jutted his chin toward the sea. “Not to mention all the land hazards along the coast.”
“Was this your first ocean sailing experience?”
He shook his head and started to rise, clearly done with our conversation.
“Nicholas’s grandparents are coming to take him away,” I blurted out, added awkwardly, “I know you’re fond of him.”
He turned a worried face toward me. “Where will they go?”
“I think they live in Connecticut.” I didn’t know why I was telling him this. To gain his trust? “That’s not for public consumption.”
He looked at me as if to say, Do I seem like someone who goes around blabbing everything I hear? “If I’ve learned anything in my two decades of teaching, it’s discretion. Both how to be discreet, and when it’s appropriate to be.”
15
Cassandra
Christopher and I walked back in awkward silence. When we arrived at the carriage house, I mentioned I’d be heading into town shortly.
“Let me know if you need a ride,” I told him.
But after we parted company, I didn’t see or hear from him, so I took myself to town to help Lu at the Congregational Church. A detour for tree removal forced me to park on Harbor Drive, at the end of the beach, near Laura and Jason’s cottage. Before trekking to the church, I walked to the edge of the road to check on the progress of the repairs. There were no work crews in the vicinity, but I did spy a couple huddled near the rocks at the shore. Had there not been something familiar in the man’s stance and the woman’s short dark hair, I would have walked away. But a moment later they turned around, giving me a good look at their faces.
“What the …?” I didn’t know which was more surprising, that Wes Creed was roaming free or that he was having a rendezvous with Helene Kleister.
I didn’t want them to see me, so I ducked up the street to call Daniel.
“I just saw Wes Creed. Did you know he’d been released?”
“Yeah. Brooks just called to tell me that they couldn’t hold him any longer without charging him, and with no evidence …” he left the thought dangling. “He’s been instructed not to leave the area.”
“Well, he’s still here, and keeping interesting company.”
“How’s that?”
“He was with Helene Kleister.”
“Where was this?” His tone sharpened.
“On the beach by Jason and Laura’s place.” I went on to ask, “Do you think they could be having an affair?”
“It’s possible. There’s no denying Creed’s a real charmer.”
“Always a useful trait for a roving rogue like Wes.” I had no doubt said rogue would be roving right out of Whale Rock again shortly.
“It may also be why Nicholas reacted so strangely to Creed’s photo the other day.” Daniel blew out a frustrated breath. “If they are having an affair, then Wes has been lying.”
* * *
Lu had already left the Congregational Church when I finally arrived, but it was a nice surprise to see Robyn Landers there helping out.
I sidled up to where she was working on care packages.
“Sorry we never got around to forming our First Wives Club.” I resurrected the joke we’d shared when we both became newly single last fall.
“Yeah, well you’re the lucky one who found love again so soon,” she kidded back. “Sorry about your wedding.”
Robyn hadn’t been invited, but nothing happened in Whale Rock without everyone knowing.
“Sadly, Mother Nature doesn’t check the calendar for weddings.” I then asked, “How badly was Land’s End damaged?”
“Not as bad as most. I hear my renter is staying with you until it’s repaired.”
“That’s right. How well do you know Christopher?” I thought it a good chance to do a little digging.
“Not well at all.”
“I was surprised that an outsider was able to snatch it up.”
“I didn’t even have to advertise. I put the word out, and some folks from Orleans called and said they had a friend who was interested.”
“Anyone I’d know?”
“The Montrose family?”
I shook my head and then asked, “Is your boat back in the water yet?”
“No. Not a top priority.” She gave me a mischievous smile. “Luckily I have a new friend who’s been letting me bunk with him.”
I was about to ask more when Robyn got a call and walked away to talk privately.
“I’ve got to run,” she told me when she got back. “Nice to catch up.”
“We should go out for drinks some night,” I told her.
“Let’s plan on it.” She looked around the fellowship hall of the church. “Once the aftermath of Chantal has been cleaned up and life in Whale Rock is back to normal.”
It was late afternoon when I returned to The Bluffs. I’d just let Whistler out when his barking brought me to the porch in time to watch a Whale Rock police cruiser pulling to a stop. Brooks tossed the dog a biscuit and then walked purposefully toward the carriage house, only nodding a hello to me.
It was a hot, still day and I easily heard his booming voice asking, “Have a minute for a chat, Mr. Savage?”
“Right now, I’ve got nothing but time,” Christopher responded before the two men disappeared inside.
A few minutes later, Daniel called.
“Brooks is here,” I told him.
“I know. The Kleisters’s investigator has been putting on the pressure. Brooks is worried he’ll show up at The Bluffs and make a mess of our investigation.”
“Anything prompting this?”
“I was at the Kleisters when the grandparents showed up, giving it one more shot to get Nicholas to open up.” Brooks was using Daniel for the more delicate interviews, capitalizing on his FBI experience.
“Did he?”
“Short of a tantrum, Nicholas resisted leaving his family. Finally, he told Matthew that he couldn’t talk because he and Savage had a secret pact.”
That didn’t bode well for Christopher. “Any idea what the pact was?”
“That’s what Brooks is trying to find out.”
“He’s not likely to say much.” I told Daniel about my chat with the man and what he’d said about discretion.
“To hell with discretion. If this secret pact has anything at all to do with what happened to Lucas, then Savage has an obligation to tell us. He’s an adult, for crying out loud, and this isn’t a game.” Daniel didn’t even try to hide his frustration.
“I don’t think Christopher would put a child’s life in danger.”
“We don’t really know him, Cass.”
“True,” I said to appease him.
“I also have a hunch that Nicholas was being sent away out of fear he’d say something incriminating.”
“Does your hunch have anything to do with today’s little rendezvous between Wes and Helene?”
“Well, that’s one possibility.” He cleared his throat. “Creed did show up at the harbor shortly after you spotted them and has been hard at work all day. Speak of the devil, here he comes. Gotta go.”
I took my sketchbook out on the porch, where I could catch Brooks before he left. I was itching to get back to my painting. It had been months since I’d had any quality time in the studio. My life had not been my own, what with the wedding plans. My art had fallen by the wayside.
I’d become absorbed in my sketch and didn’t notice Brooks until he stepped onto the porch, alarming me enough to break my charcoal stick.
“You startled me!”
“That was my aim.” He laughed.
“I haven’t heard that laugh in a while, Chuckles.”
He dipped his head in agreement. “Not much to be amused about lately.�
�
“Right.” I closed my drawing pad and set it aside. “Coffee?”
“It is my drug of choice.” Looking exhausted, Brooks followed me inside and nearly collapsed onto a kitchen chair.
“Have you slept at all?” I asked, setting up the coffee maker.
“Barely.” He rubbed his large hands across his face. “The whole team has been working around the clock trying to find Lucas. Not to mention we have the Lee Chambers case.”
“Any progress?”
“This storm has slowed that investigation to a snail’s pace. I’ve got Bland and Kirkpatrick working on it, but there’ve been no leads. We’re hoping forensics will provide us with something to follow up on.”
“Was Christopher helpful?” I asked casually, setting the cream and sugar on the table.
“Not particularly. I’m still not convinced this Savage guy knows as little as he’s claiming. Though he insists he could get Nicholas to talk.”
“Maybe you should let him try,” I suggested.
“The parents have thrown down a gauntlet. Short of a court order, my hands are tied.” He sighed. “What do you think of the guy?”
“He’s not easy to read.” I measured my next words carefully. “But being quiet and detached doesn’t make a person evil.”
Brooks stared pensively into the cup I had just set before him.
“If I didn’t make that coffee myself, I’d swear you were reading tea leaves,” I ribbed him gently.
“It’s killing me not finding that kid.” The pain was etched into the lines of his face. “It’s been four days now. Too long.”
Though he’d yet to officially change the investigation from search and rescue to search and recovery, I could tell my friend feared the cruelest outcome. There were too many scenarios to consider. Had Lucas been swept away by the storm? Abducted? Or worse?
“Remember that little boy in North Carolina who got lost in the woods last year? He was gone for several days before they found him. We can’t lose hope yet.”
“Right now, hope is all we have.” Brooks pushed himself up from the table and stepped onto the porch as Teddy Howell’s gray jeep pulled up to the house.
“What’s he doing out here?” Brooks mumbled.
“Hey, Cass.” Teddy beamed a familiar smile at me. Now that I knew Theo Howell was his mother, I tried to resurrect a memory of the young woman. But it was too long ago for me to determine which of the dark, exotic beauty queen’s features this young man may have inherited.
Brooks asked, “You looking for me?”
In a flash, Teddy’s smile disappeared. “I tried to call but got voicemail. Daniel said you were out here, so I thought it just as easy to come to you.”
Brooks glanced at his phone and frowned. “What did you find?”
My stomach lurched when Teddy produced a clear evidence bag that contained what looked like a child’s sweatshirt and a small sneaker.
“Where were these?” Brooks’s voice was gruff in that way men get when trying to mask their emotions.
“The shoe was wedged under the water in between the rocks at the north end of the beach in front of Jason and Laura’s place.”
Which meant it was also near Christopher Savage’s cottage.
“And the shirt was caught in some lines of a sailboat in the harbor.”
“Good work, Ted.” Brooks laid a hand on the younger man’s shoulder, producing an awkward moment for the two of them. “I’ll take it to show the Kleisters. See if they can identify either as Lucas’s.”
“It could be nothing, right?” I said. “I mean, lost shoes and clothing are a regular occurrence along the beach.”
“Absolutely,” Brooks said, though he didn’t look at all confident.
“Do you want us to continue diving?” Teddy asked.
“Call it a day. I’ll get in touch later. I’m heading in for a strategy meeting now.” Brooks looked at the evidence bag. “After a visit with the Kleisters.”
Teddy nodded grimly. It appeared he also thought this find was a bad omen.
The two men departed together just as Christopher left with Gypsy for another walk. Knowing he was usually gone for at least an hour, my internal debate began: The carriage house belongs to me, after all. I have every right to go in there. Yes, but this was nothing short of invading his privacy. But what’s the harm, unless I find something incriminating? And if I do, then it should be discovered, right?
“I’ll go in for ten minutes,” I told Whistler and left him outside the carriage house to alert me if anyone came along. If Christopher returned, I decided I’d use the excuse that I was there to gather sheets from the bedroom Edgar and Jimmy had used, so the first thing I did was strip the bed before poking around the rest of the carriage house.
I knew Christopher had been bunking on the Murphy bed in the far corner of the living area. He was a very tidy man. The bed was put away, there were no dirty dishes in the sink, and his clothes were neatly folded in his open bag. There was no way I could rifle through there without it being noticed.
My attention was drawn to the stack of books and periodicals on the kitchen table, lying next to the book bag Evelyn had delivered. Most focused on the pirates and shipwrecks of Cape Cod. There was a book entitled Graveyard of the Atlantic and several more on the history and local lore. Edgar’s book on the enduring mysteries of Cape Cod was set to the side. I noticed there was a bookmark, so I opened it to find he was reading the chapter about the fire at The Bluffs. It made sense that he’d be curious about a story that occurred in the home where he was staying, I told myself.
I then picked up a publication from the top of the stack and flipped it open to an earmarked page. Inside was a reprint of an article from the May 1970 edition of the Cape Cod Times, headlined “Mystery of Drowned Boy Remains Unsolved.”
Late September of last year, the body of a child was found washed along the rocky northern end of Whale Rock. Local tour boat owner, James Mitchell, had spotted the body while sailing back to Whale Rock Harbor.
“Having sailed these waters my entire life, I knew it was too risky to approach the shore by watercraft.” An hour later he returned by land with Sheriff Walt Lindsey. County coroner, Dr. Calvin Jones, made the preliminary determination of death by drowning, though in his statement he claimed that the condition of the body made it difficult to determine if the trauma inflicted on the child had been the result of tumultuous conditions of the sea or from blows that may have occurred before the child ended up in the water.
An anonymous source close to the investigation reported that much of the flesh from the extremities had been eaten away by sea creatures, allowing barnacles to attach to the exposed bone. From this rumor sprung the nickname Barnacle Boy, though never uttered with anything but compassion by the local townsfolk.
As of this writing, some eight months after the child’s body was discovered, his identity remains a mystery. This follows an exhausted search campaign to identify the child by untiring local and national law enforcement.
“It is simply mind boggling that no one has come forward to claim this unknown boy,” Sheriff Lindsey said at a press conference late yesterday, announcing that the town’s petition to have a proper funeral and burial for the child had been granted by the state. “This child matches no missing person claim going back well beyond what would be considered a normal time frame based on the pathology results. There has been no connection made to any other missing persons or unidentified human remains discovered within the same time period.”
Led by Miss Fiona Patrick, mother of James Mitchell, the town put forth a request to give the child a proper Christian funeral and burial and have raised funds to cover the cost. In accordance with Massachusetts law, the body will not be cremated because of potential religious belief of the family should they be located at a later date or come forward to claim the child. No further details will be disclosed by investigators.
I knew the story well but had never seen this particular article.
I wouldn’t have given it much more thought had the room not filled with the familiar scent of Percy and Celeste. I dropped the magazine when Whistler began to bark an alert and now scrambled to pick it up and return it to the pile. Then I grabbed the bed linens and let myself out. I needn’t have rushed; it was only Laura. She was sitting in a porch rocker, generously doling out her attentions to Whistler.
“How’s the foot?” I asked.
“It would be better if I could take pain medication.” She flinched. “What were you doing in the carriage house?”
“Collecting Edgar and Jimmy’s sheets.” I lifted the stuffed pillowcase as evidence.
“Uh-huh.” She wasn’t buying it.
“Oh, all right.” I sat in the rocker next to hers. “I was doing a little scouting.”
“Find anything?” She leaned forward, unable to conceal her eagerness.
“Nothing incriminating.” I told her about the books on pirates and shipwrecks that Evelyn had delivered.
She actually yawned before saying, “Yeah. Edgar said he was working on a special project for his class. Kids would love studying that kind of thing in school. So?”
“He also seems to have been studying up on the Mitchell family’s tragic history and Barnacle Boy. He’s clearly interested in local lore.”
“Hmm. It’s funny. When I called Edgar to tell him I couldn’t meet him today, he was grumbling about not finding what he was looking for at the library. I wonder if Christopher beat him to the very materials he’s trying to track down.”
“Could be.”
“I suppose you’ve already heard that Wes Creed was released?” Evidently, Laura hadn’t been resting all afternoon—more likely on the phone with her sources.
I nodded, debating whether to tell her about my sighting of Wes and Helene together, when she surprised me by what she said next.
“Remember the ring you saw by the dumpster where that drug dealer’s body was found?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Well, it isn’t a ring as in jewelry. It’s a key ring. With a key attached.”
“Does it have anything to do with Lee Chambers?”
Storm of Secrets Page 10
