She hadn't died in peace. She'd died thinking she knew who'd murdered her nephew. Tortured because she couldn't produce the name.
Zoe blinked back tears and turned up her aunt's paved driveway. She hadn't expected to inherit the house. Olivia was meticulous in putting her affairs in order, but circumspect-Zoe hadn't known she would inherit the house and the rights to Jen Periwinkle, Christina a trust fund for Christina. They split the modest trust fund meant for their father. Olivia had willed the bulk of her estate to the nature preserve and her other favorite charities. She'd lived frugally and had a decent portfolio, but she'd given away money all through her life and was never enormously wealthy.
The brown-shingled 1890s house stood on the rockbound point as it always had. All that was missing were the pots of mums Olivia put out every year. And Olivia herself. Zoe parked in the driveway and climbed out, still not used to the reality that the house was hers now. She could sell it for a fortune. It'd buy her more time before she had to get a job, but that seemed like the classic long-term solution to a short-term problem. She had to get her life in order first. Then she could decide what to do with her aunt's house.
Using the key on her key chain, she unlocked the side door and walked into the small entry between the kitchen and the front room.
Someone was here.
She stepped into the kitchen and noted the used tea bag on the counter, felt the still-warm kettle on the stove. Whoever it was could have their own key or have come in through the porch door, which didn't have a lock. Getting one had been on Zoe's to-do list for a year. But the door was seldom used, and not having a lock for it hadn't been a problem in a hundred years.
Had Christina let someone stay here and forgotten to mention it in the excitement over the break-in at her house?
"Hello? Anyone home?"
Zoe checked the front room, but there was no sign of anyone. The porch door was shut tight. Maybe Christina had let Bruce loan a room to someone. Maybe Betsy O'Keefe had moved off Luke Castellane's yacht and needed a place to stay. Zoe doubted a burglar would have fixed himself a cup of tea, but stranger things had happened.
She started up the steep stairs to the second floor. There was no sound of the shower running. No snoring. Nothing unusual.
She called again, keeping her voice cheerful. It had to be someone she knew. "Hello, anyone home? It's me, Mama Bear. Someone's been eating in my kitchen…"
At the top of the stairs, the door to the biggest bedroom across the hall was open, and she saw the unmade bed. "Someone's been sleeping in my bed, too," she muttered, not so loud, and stood in the doorway.
It wan't anyone she knew.
Heaped on the floor was the opened, soft black suitcase she recognized from her tour of Special Agent McGrath's room at the inn last night.
Just what she needed.
She wouldn't put it past Lottie Martin to toss him out for the spilled tea. Hell of a nerve, though, to help himself to a room here. Bruce could have given him the go-ahead, but still.
Zoe returned to the hall. She supposed she had no business talking about nerve since she was the one who'd spilled the tea in the first place. She'd have to find him, figure out what was going on and take it from there.
What if McGrath was the one who'd broken into Christina's house yesterday?
At this point, Zoe was willing to entertain any and all possibilities. Barely twelve hours back in Goose Harbor and things were already a mess.
She started for the stairs but noticed that the door to the attic was cracked and stopped still. A jolt of adrenaline shot through her. Oh, no.
It had to be the wind. McGrath couldn't be in the attic. Anywhere else, but not there.
She tore open the door and ran upstairs, and only when she got to the top did she think-did she really want to confront a nosy FBI agent? What if he was a phony?
The stairs ended in the middle of the attic, with no rail or wall around the stairwell. There was a window at each end of the huge open space. It was filled with boxes, trunks, old furniture-what anyone would expect to find in an attic. Except for the space by the south window.
Zoe snatched up an old drapery rod. She made herself breathe as she picked her way through the attic junk, unable to see if anyone was in the little nook she'd made for herself during the first weeks after her father and great-aunt had died, when she'd been overwhelmed with grief, shock, anger, insanity. She'd used two old bureaus to create false walls and added a chenille rug and a dozen pillows in varying sizes, shapes and colors, anything that didn't scream "cop," that didn't remind her of touching her father's dead body…of hearing her aunt say, "I know who did it…"
The only solace she'd found in those weeks was in spending time up here. She bought yellow pads and pencils, a pencil sharpener, ten different kinds of pens, and she sat on her rug amid her pillows, staring out her window at the harbor and scribbling.
She should have dismantled her secret retreat before she left for Connecticut. Set fire to everything.
Pushing back her sense of embarrassment and violation at the idea anyone had pawed through her private space, she came around the two tall bureaus that marked one of her walls.
A lean, black-haired man had his legs stretched out and one of her yellow pads on his lap, and when he looked up at her, it was all Zoe could do to hang on to her drapery rod. He might have crawled off a Winslow Homer seascape with his blue eyes and weathered appearance, more the New England seaman than a Montana FBI agent.
He smiled at her. "You must be Mama Bear."
"And you must be Special Agent McGrath."
"Zoe West?"
She nodded. She didn't know what else to say. Ex-detective West? Almost Special Agent West? She cleared her throat. "I understand you've met my sister, Christina."
"I have."
She felt ridiculous carrying a drapery rod and self-conscious seeing the yellow pad with Chapter One scrawled in her handwriting across the top in his lap. It was as if there was nothing left in her of the veteran Maine State Police detective or even the somewhat eccentric sole detective of Bluefield, Connecticut.
McGrath got to his feet. He was tall and obviously very fit. Zoe used to be more fit before she took up residence with Charlie and Bea Jericho and started knitting and canning and milking goats, trying to put her life back together after her year of self-imposed exile. She didn't run, not since she'd found her father's body.
She watched McGrath take in her outfit of slim black pants, little fuchsia top, black flats and silver ankle bracelet and put that together with the image he, like the rest of Goose Harbor, must have formed of her. At least he couldn't see her rose tattoo.
He gave her a slight nod. "You want to call the police or just hit me over the head with that curtain rod?"
"It's a drapery rod. You can tell because of the hooks and the little pulley thing."
"Ah."
He tossed her pad onto a rose-flowered pillow. He moved with the kind of restrained control that reminded Zoe she was out of practice with her hand-to-hand combat skills. He wasn't wearing a weapon. He had on jeans, a thick black sweater and scuffed boat shoes.
She tried not to glance at the pad. She'd written in longhand, page after page of nothing anyone else was supposed to see. Ever. "Did you read-" She took a breath and decided she didn't want to know. "Never mind. Did Bruce give you permission to stay here? He has no right-"
"Bruce doesn't know I'm here. It was my idea to stay here."
His tone was unapologetic. He was simply stating the facts and letting her decide what she thought of them.