Just keep me informed. Do what you have to do.
That left a lot of wiggle room.
Teddy moved on down the road before Kyle's headlights came on, not that he was worried about being seen. He was a nobody here. Fine with him. It gave him room to maneuver. If things went the way he thought they would, he'd need every inch he could get.
Four
The bright sunrise over the Atlantic woke J.B. early. He had no trouble remembering where he was. Upstairs front bedroom of Olivia West's house. Or why. Zoe West. Or acknowledging that he must have been out of his mind last night.
On the other hand, he liked waking up to the sound of the ocean.
He'd cracked his window and could hear the tide rolling in, the wind gusting, seagulls crying in the distance, the putter of lobster boats. The rain and fog had blown out, leaving behind a washed sky and clear, dry autumn air. His room looked straight out on the Atlantic Ocean, which sparkled in the morning sun.
He pulled on his pants and raked a hand through his hair. Probably a good idea to get moving before ex-de-tective Zoe decided to inspect her property. Funny she'd decided to inspect his first.
But instead of throwing his stuff together and clearing out, J.B. found himself wandering around the big, airy house. Three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. Downstairs were another bedroom, one-and-a-half bathrooms, an eat-in kitchen, a side entry and a dining room and living room that stretched across the entire front of the house, with canvas-covered furniture and tall windows that looked out onto a porch and beyond to the Atlantic. The kitchen window faced the harbor. He'd heard that Olivia West had penned all her Jen Periwinkle novels at the kitchen table.
He put an old-fashioned copper kettle on to boil and wondered if it was the same table. Probably. The house still had a pre-World War II feel to it, and from what he'd experienced of the residents of Goose Harbor so far, J.B. took them as a frugal lot. Waste not, want not.
He retrieved a tea bag from a clear class jar on the counter and duly noted the can of soy powder sitting beside it. He doubted it was the old lady's. He pulled open the Reagan-era refrigerator and noted the routine condiments, pure maple syrup, natural peanut butter and a Ziploc bag labeled "flax seed." There were cinnamon Toaster Strudels in the freezer and a bag of frozen blueberries, the little ones, which he knew meant they were wild.
When the water came to a boil, he filled a restaurant-style mug and dunked in his tea bag, then headed through the side entry and into the front room. He eased past the dining-room table, a light film of dust on its dark wood, and walked out onto the front porch. The air was brisk, the porch furniture a mix of Adirondack chairs and rockers. There was a porch swing. He pictured the West family gathering here on summer Sunday afternoons. Now only Christina and her burnt-out older sister were left.
J.B. sipped his tea, the mug warm against his hands. This place probably hadn't changed much in a hundred years. He could almost see Olivia playing on the stretch of lawn above the rock bluff as a child, having friends over-having his grandmother over.
Posey Sutherland McGrath.
He walked down the steps to the lawn and out to the edge of the rocks, where he looked northeast and saw the southern tip of Sutherland Island. It was named for one of his ancestors. He'd taken his rented hulk of a lobster boat around the island and spotted the old foundation of what the locals said had been a Sutherland house. Before he left Goose Harbor, he wanted to explore the island, walk around. Bruce said there was an old family cemetery there. He might or might not be on the level. He was capable of making something up just because he didn't believe J.B. had any ancestors from Goose Harbor.
It was unclear where Jesse McGrath was from. He'd turned up in Goose Harbor and swept Posey Sutherland off her feet. She was the wealthy, sheltered daughter of Lester Sutherland, who had no use for a drifter and forbade Posey to see Jesse. The Wests weren't as well off as the Sutherlands-without Olivia's writing, they'd have had to give up the house on the water. But she agreed with her friend's father that Jesse McGrath would bring her nothing but hardship and sorrow.
Posey ignored them both and eloped with Jesse, moving first to eastern Montana, then west to a beautiful alpine meadow outside of Bozeman. That was where she had her son, it was where Jesse became a lawman, and it was where she died of a fever when little Benjamin was only seven years old. Jesse was killed a few years later in a shoot-out when he interrupted a bank robbery.
Benjamin-J.B.'s father-went to live with a schoolteacher in Bozeman. Olivia West paid for anything he needed. She even offered to have him move to Maine where she would see to his upbringing in his mother's hometown of Goose Harbor.
J.B. knew because he had the letter. He had all of Olivia West's letters to the friend who'd run off and left her behind. He'd found them when he'd cleaned out his father's cabin after he died over the winter. They were bundled together in a trunk that he didn't know if Benjamin McGrath, western Montana hunting and fishing guide, had ever opened.
Oh, Posey, can you believe I sold a book? You'll read it, I know. Please don't take offense at my villain, Mr. Lester McGrath. I couldn't resist.
Lester Sutherland moved to Boston not long after his daughter ran off. There were no Sutherlands left in Goose Harbor. Olivia hadn't liked Posey's father, and she hadn't liked Jesse McGrath. She'd made that clear in her letters.
J.B. noticed his tea had gone cold.He headed back inside for more tea and a closer inspection of the house where Olivia West was born, lived her entire life and died. What the hell, he was practically family.
Zoe had apple coffee cake with her sister at the café and then sat with a cup of coffee at a small table overlooking the harbor and tried to pretend her life was normal. It felt so normal, being back in Goose Harbor, watching the activity on the docks. As the sun came up and the morning wore on, there were more tourists and pleasure yachts. The lobster boats were out in deeper water where the catch was plentiful this time of year.
Christina was too busy behind her glass-front counter for chitchat. Her café was just what Zoe had expected. White tables and blue linens, milk-glass vases with yellow mums, watercolors by local artists on the walls, a constant flow of people. Christina and her wait staff all wore black bottoms, white tops and blue aprons.
The food was wonderful. Zoe remembered how Chris would get up early even as a teenager to make wild-blueberry pancakes and set the table with their mother's white bone china.
Finally, Zoe gave up her table and headed back outside, welcoming the cool breeze blowing in off the water. She debated checking with the local police about the break-in yesterday, but she knew better. They wouldn't have anything.
She wondered where Agent McGrath was. The lobster boat he'd rented from Bruce was tied up at the dock. Christina wanted her to talk to him and find out what he was doing in Goose Harbor -cop to cop, she said, as if an FBI special agent would tell Zoe anything.
With any luck, he'd decided to continue his vacation elsewhere.
Then she noticed a Jeep with D.C. license plates parked in the town lot and gritted her teeth. No. Special Agent McGrath was still in Goose Harbor.
She got into her car and drove out along Ocean Drive, her stomach constricted, the apple coffee cake churning, her fingers in a death grip on the wheel as the road edged along the water. She could see it was choppy out on the ocean. She rolled down her windows and heard the waves and the wind, smelled the salt and tried not to cry.
Until she was in her late nineties, Olivia would walk from her house to the docks almost every morning. She said walking helped her think, helped a story to simmer. There was a famous picture of her leaning on her cane above the rocks on Ocean Drive. It had run in papers all over the country on her ninetieth birthday.