A killer strikes—then disappears without a trace

Shattered by her father’s murder, Zoe West left Goose Harbor, Maine. Still struggling, Zoe realizes only one thing will help to repair the damage—returning home to confront the past.

FBI special agent J. B. McGrath is burned-out after working undercover for a year. Forced to take a break, he chooses Goose Harbor as a retreat. But he isn’t lying low. He believes a killer is still loose in the town—a killer who isn’t happy to see Zoe West return.

Zoe isn’t sure she can trust the unpredictable FBI agent—or their growing attraction to each other. But the danger mounts, and one wrong move could destroy everything she and J.B. care about. Someone got away with murder and is determined to keep it that way.

Praise for Carla Neggers and her novels

“Neggers delivers another spellbinding, chilling, complex page-turner in this latest Sharpe & Donovan novel.”

—RT Book Reviews, Top Pick, on Harbor Island

“Neggers’ Sharpe & Donovan series has developed a wide following, and her books maintain a potent combination of suspense and romance.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“Well-plotted, intriguing and set mostly in the lushly described Irish countryside, the novel is smart and satisfying, and the paths of three couples growing even more devoted to each other are deftly woven into the suspenseful story line.”

—Kirkus Reviews on Declan’s Cross

“Neggers’ beautifully flowing and skillfully narrated novel is rich with dialogue that emphasizes the sights, sounds, culture and panoramic views of Ireland. Emma and Colin are as unforgettable as ever.”

—RT Book Reviews, Top Pick, on Declan’s Cross

“Heron’s Cove gives romantic suspense fans what they want…complex mystery with a bit of romance. Neggers skillfully created a compelling puzzle, refusing to reveal all the pieces until the very end.”

—RT Book Reviews, Top Pick

“Saint’s Gate is the best book yet from a writer at the absolute top of her craft.”

—Providence Journal

“With a great plot and excellent character development, Neggers’ thriller Saint’s Gate, the first in a new series, is a fast-paced, action-packed tale of romantic suspense that will appeal to fans of Lisa Jackson and Lisa Gardner.”

—Library Journal

Also by Carla Neggers

Sharpe & Donovan Series

HARBOR ISLAND

DECLAN’S CROSS

ROCK POINT (novella)

HERON’S COVE

SAINT’S GATE

Swift River Valley Series

ECHO LAKE

CHRISTMAS AT CARRIAGE HILL (novella)

CIDER BROOK

THAT NIGHT ON THISTLE LANE

SECRETS OF THE LOST SUMMER

BPD/FBI Series

THE WHISPER

THE MIST

THE ANGEL

THE WIDOW

Black Falls Series

COLD DAWN

COLD RIVER

COLD PURSUIT

Cold Ridge/US Marshals Series

ABANDON

BREAKWATER

DARK SKY

THE RAPIDS

NIGHT’S LANDING

COLD RIDGE

Carriage House Series

THE HARBOR

STONEBROOK COTTAGE

THE CABIN

THE CARRIAGE HOUSE

Stand-Alone Novels

THE WATERFALL

ON FIRE

KISS THE MOON

TEMPTING FATE

CUT AND RUN

BETRAYALS

CLAIM THE CROWN

Look for Carla Neggers’ next novel

in the Sharpe & Donovan series

KEEPER’S REACH

available soon from MIRA Books

The Harbor
Carla Neggers

www.mirabooks.co.uk

For my mother, M. Florine (Harrell) Neggers

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise for Carla Neggers and her novels

Also by Carla Neggers

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Extract from Keeper’s Reach by Carla Neggers

Copyright

Prologue

The long days of summer had come to an end, and as Olivia West sat at her kitchen table on the dark, cold October morning, she knew she wouldn’t live to see another Maine summer. Tomorrow she would turn one hundred and one. But it wasn’t just the odds catching up with her that led to her quiet certainty that she’d reached her sunset—she just knew. She had months, perhaps only days. Hours.

Her nephew, Patrick, wasn’t deterred by autumn’s shorter days. He poured himself a cup of coffee and sat across from her. He always stopped by before his walk in the nature preserve, which was just northeast of the brown-shingled 1890s house at the mouth of Goose Harbor where Olivia had lived her entire hundred years. She and Patrick both liked to be up to see the sunrise. It was one thing they had in common. Perhaps the only thing.

He was in uniform. That was unusual. Olivia licked her lips. “Patrick—”

“I can’t talk about it, Olivia.”

She understood. He had a job to do, but this time it hit close to home. He’d been preoccupied for some time but hadn’t told her everything, not that he needed to. She knew him, and she knew Goose Harbor.

She wondered what her brother would think if he could see his only child now. Patrick West, chief of police. He’d never known his father, also a Patrick. Olivia remembered seeing her baby brother off to war, knowing he wouldn’t come back, just as she knew, now, she wouldn’t see another summer.

Patrick nodded at her typewriter, an IBM Selectric II. She’d given up her Olivetti manual years ago, under protest, and had no intention of switching to a computer. “What’re you doing?” he asked.

“I’m revising my obituary.”

“Aunt Olivia, for God’s sake—”

“It’s not morbid, Patrick. Not at my age. I intend to have my affairs in order. I don’t want to leave that burden to you and the girls.”

Patrick had two daughters, Zoe, a law enforcement officer like him but with her grandfather’s zest for adventure, and Christina, who was just as rooted on Maine’s southern coast as her father and great-aunt. Their mother had died when they were little girls. Patrick had done a good job raising them. Olivia hadn’t bothered trying to replace their mother—she’d never married and didn’t really trust her maternal instincts. She thought she was a fairly good great-aunt, though.

“You’ve had your affairs in order for thirty years,” Patrick grumbled.

She glanced at the paper in her typewriter. Olivia West, 101, the author of seventy-two Jennifer Periwinkle novels, died today at her home in Goose Harbor, Maine. It was a sensible first sentence. People tended to think she was already dead. The University of Maine and Bates, Bowdoin and Colby Colleges all offered classes on her work. Her house was on the Goose Harbor walking tour. The town library had an Olivia West Room. In her mind, those were honors more suited to dead people. She knew the local paper kept an obituary of her on file. She’d asked Patrick to get her a copy of it, but he’d refused.

He got up and looked over her shoulder. She was shrunken and white-haired, her fingers gnarled, her veins prominent, her skin brown with age spots—yet she could sit here at her table, where she’d written all her books, and wonder that any time had passed at all. She glanced out at the harbor, the first of the lobster boats chugging across the quiet water in the murky predawn light. Patrick kissed the top of her head. He was paunchy and gray-haired himself, and as good a man as Olivia had ever known. “You’re morbid, Aunt Olivia. I’m talking to your doctor about antidepressants to smooth out your moods.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my moods.”

He laughed and winked at her on his way out, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Olivia knew better.

She abandoned her obituary and rolled a fresh sheet of paper into her IBM. Even slowed by arthritis and age, she managed to type quickly. Chapter One. She scrolled down a few lines.

And stopped.

She knew she’d go no further.

She couldn’t kill off Jen Periwinkle.

Olivia had watched herself wither and wrinkle, but Jen remained forever sixteen, always ready to solve her next mystery. She was timeless. She used her wits—never violence—to solve crimes. That was Olivia’s pact with her readers—Jen Periwinkle wouldn’t have to resort to violence to achieve her results. She occasionally brandished a gun and once a sword, but she never drew blood.

To kill her off, Olivia meant to have her die saving someone, probably a child. Mr. Lester McGrath, Jen’s evil nemesis through all seventy-two books, would have to die, too, but as a result of her intelligence and bravery, not at her hands.

“Aunt Olivia...Aunt Olivia!”

Zoe rushed into the kitchen from the side entrance. Olivia hadn’t noticed the sun had come up, and she didn’t have a good sense of how much time had passed since Patrick was here. An hour? The sun sparkled on the harbor waters and reflected the stunning fall foliage. Boats were out. Olivia tried to focus on Zoe, but realized something was terribly wrong and wanted to dive back into Jen Periwinkle’s fictional world.

“Oh, Aunt Olivia.” Zoe seemed to be trying to pull herself together. She was clearly shaken, her face pale, her running clothes matted with sweat and—and something else. Dark stains. Her running shoes were soaked. “I didn’t want you to hear the news from someone else—I...God...” Her eyes, blue with gray flecks like Olivia’s baby brother’s, filled with tears. “Dad’s dead.”

Olivia saw now that the dark stains were blood. It had spattered on Zoe’s gray shirt and shorts. She tried to speak, but nothing came out.

“He was shot. I found him on my run.”

“But he was just here! He stopped in to see me, like he always does. Where? Where did you find him?”

“In the nature preserve. Stewart’s Cove.” Zoe raked a shaking hand through her short blond curls, her experience as a Maine State Police detective, accustomed to dealing with crime scenes, facts and evidence, not helping her now. But this was different. This was her father. “The marine patrol, state police and local police are there now. I—I have to go back.”

“Of course. Christina—”

“She’s meeting me there.” The tears spilled down her pale cheeks, and when she wiped them with her fingertips, they mixed with her father’s blood. “Is Betsy here? I don’t want to leave you alone.”

Olivia nodded. Betsy O’Keefe was her live-in caregiver, a concession Olivia had made two years ago in order to be able to continue living in her house. Betsy had learned to leave Olivia alone as much as possible in the morning.

The nature preserve was her own doing, Olivia thought. She’d bought up the land with earnings from her books and created a nonprofit organization to maintain it. And now Patrick had been killed there.

Murdered.

Olivia raised one hand, and Zoe took it, squeezed back gently and sobbed. She looked like a young woman who’d just lost her father, not the young woman Olivia had seen only yesterday, so confident and determined, preparing to head to Quantico for her sixteen weeks of training at the FBI Academy. Patrick was proud of her but worried about her zest for adventure, her need to push herself. His father was the same way and died young in the line of duty. He was afraid Zoe would, too. Instead, he had.

“I’ll see you later, okay?” Zoe whispered.

“Yes, dear. Of course. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“And Patrick—oh, Zoe, I loved him so.”

But Zoe was gone, and Betsy O’Keefe bustled into the kitchen, her own face smeared with tears. She was a stout woman in her late forties, a registered nurse who’d moved to Goose Harbor with her widowed mother at four. Hard workers, both of them. The mother had died a few years ago. Sometimes it seemed to Olivia everyone she knew was dead.

“You’ve had a terrible shock,” Betsy said. “Come, let’s get you to bed and have you lie down a bit.”

“I don’t want to lie down. Betsy...” Olivia stopped. What had she meant to say? She couldn’t remember. It didn’t happen often, but sometimes she’d forget things. What she’d eaten for breakfast, names—she’d lose track of what she was saying. She frowned at Betsy. “I can’t—”

Olivia gasped, grabbing her chest, the jolt of adrenaline and awareness—knowledge—so sudden and forceful, it hurt. Patrick in his uniform, the job he had to do—the arrest he was making—

Betsy leaped to her side. “Miss West!”

“Betsy—I know who did it.”

“What, love?”

“I know who killed Patrick.”

Betsy was pale now, sobbing. “I—I bought a hundred and one candles for your birthday tomorrow. I hope we can fit them all on your cake. Zoe and Christina will come by—”

“Betsy—Betsy, why can’t I remember?”

“Remember what, love?”

“The murderer’s name. The bastard—”

“Maybe I should call the doctor.”

“No, don’t.” Olivia’s voice was firm. “I’ll sit here a while and think. I’ll remember. I know I will.”

Betsy made tea and babbled about birthday cakes and the leaf-peepers and whatever pleasantries she thought would distract her elderly charge—and they did. Olivia couldn’t form a coherent thought, much less call up the name of the murderer.

My God. I do know who did it.

She stared at the first line of her obituary and felt a rare tug of regret at her mortality. If only this once she could be Jen Periwinkle and forever sixteen.

One

Zoe West sat at the cluttered farmhouse kitchen table and stared out at the beautiful northwest Connecticut landscape, the hills dotted with brightly colored leaves, and she tried to piece together how she’d ended up here. It was as if one day she was headed to Quantico, and the next, she was here, canning beets and milking goats with Bea Jericho.

She knew she should be grateful. Charlie and Bea were incredible people, hardworking, determined to hang on to their land instead of chopping it up into mini-estates and making a fortune.

But Zoe didn’t belong in Bluefield, Connecticut, and she knew it. She’d known it the day she’d arrived in town almost a year ago.

She needed to go home. It was just a matter of when. Goose Harbor hovered on the horizon of her life, like a fog bank she knew would engulf her in due time. Better to deal with it. Get it over with. The status quo was untenable, increasingly impossible to endure.

She’d had three calls in three days. Bruce Young, a lobsterman who’d graduated high school with her; her sister, Christina; and Greg Sampson, the one friend Zoe had left in the Maine State Police. They all wanted to tell her that an FBI agent was on the loose in Goose Harbor.

At least they said he was an FBI agent. Apparently he didn’t want to advertise it but had slipped up with Bruce Young. His name was J. B. McGrath—Jesse Benjamin McGrath. It went right over Sampson’s head but struck Bruce and Christina as suspicious, since Jen Periwinkle’s evil nemesis was also named McGrath. Mr. Lester McGrath, a fictional character, but still. To them it was at best a weird coincidence.

Greg Sampson said he was at Perry’s waterfront bar the night Special Agent McGrath had beaten all comers at darts. Greg had no reason to check out this McGrath character’s story but thought it was legit. He reminded Zoe that a person, an FBI agent or no FBI agent, didn’t make friends in Goose Harbor by beating all comers at darts.

Deep into her second month of unemployment, Zoe was determined to resist the idea that J. B. McGrath was her problem. He was on vacation. FBI agents deserved to take vacations. Goose Harbor was a great place for a vacation, with its strips of sand beaches, its picturesque harbor, its historic houses and quaint shops and inns. That he’d arrived almost to the day of the one-year anniversary of the chief of police’s unsolved murder didn’t necessarily mean a thing.

Even in her self-imposed exile in Connecticut, Zoe would have known if the Maine State Police’s Criminal Investigations Division had asked for FBI assistance in her father’s murder investigation. The truth was, there were no new leads. They had his body, they had the two bullets that had struck him and they had very little else. No footprints in the sand, no DNA evidence left behind, no witnesses. For all anyone knew, Patrick West, Goose Harbor’s beloved chief of police, could have stumbled onto out-of-town drug dealers who shot him and made off for parts unknown.

In the weeks after his death, although she was no longer a state police detective herself and was supposed to be on her way to Quantico, Zoe had done everything she could to find her father’s killer. She’d stepped on toes of people who got in her way and toes of people who didn’t—she didn’t care. She just wanted answers. Why had a good man died that early October morning? Why had she been the one to find him?

And Olivia. Her great-aunt had died the next day, on the morning of her one hundred and first birthday. The doctor said she just gave out, but Zoe blamed herself, the shock of the news of her father’s death. She and Betsy O’Keefe—the entire town—could have conspired to keep her great-aunt from finding out what had happened. They could have tried.

“I know who killed your father. Oh, Zoe, I know...”

The ramblings of a dying woman. Zoe should have realized Olivia was in trouble, but she and Betsy had coaxed her to bed for a nap. She never got up again.

After weeks of trying to find her father’s killer, it was Stick Monroe who’d finally pulled Zoe aside and told her she had to ease off. Calm down. Let her colleagues in CID do their jobs. Stick was a retired federal judge and her mentor, her friend, and everyone knew he was the one person she might listen to. He reminded her that her class at the FBI Academy was set to start. All she had to do was drive to Washington, D.C., and get on with her new life.

Instead she withdrew from the academy and took off, ending up as the sole detective in Bluefield, Connecticut, a small town in the northwest part of the state. Nothing much had happened until the past summer, when the governor of Connecticut drowned in his own swimming pool in her town. It wasn’t an accident. Then a Texas Ranger and a Texas lawyer showed up, the new governor and her kids were nearly killed, and basically all hell broke loose.

And when it was all over, Zoe was fired. Her chief accused her of letting the Texas Ranger “run amok,” which was ridiculous—Sam Temple was a total professional. But the real reason she got the ax was that she’d stopped wearing a gun on duty in the weeks before the governor’s death. It was basic U.S. law enforcement. She was supposed to carry a weapon on duty.

After she lost her job, Charlie and Bea Jericho had offered Zoe their son’s room now that he’d married the new governor and moved out. She helped Bea can and freeze a ton of fruits and vegetables, and Bea was teaching her how to milk goats and knit.

But Zoe really knew she’d put law enforcement behind her last week when she got her tattoo—not because it was a tattoo, but because it was a tattoo of a beach rose. She’d designed it herself.

Cops didn’t have beach roses tattooed on their hips. As far as Zoe was concerned, that was another rule, right up there with carrying a gun.

She sank back in her chair. She was losing her damn mind. At least she’d quit smoking. She’d let a pack-a-day habit creep up on her this past year but had finally kicked it.

What she needed to do now was say goodbye to Bea and Charlie, the sheep, the chickens and the goats and go home.

When her cell phone rang, Zoe assumed it was someone else from Goose Harbor calling to tell her about Special Agent J. B. McGrath.

But it was Christina, her voice shaking, her words coming out tight and fast. “Zoe—Zoe, the police just left. Someone broke into my house. Can you believe it? Who’d do something like that?”

They’d both inherited their father’s house when he died, and since Christina was already living at home, she’d simply stayed there. Their great-aunt had left Zoe her 1890s house overlooking the harbor, and Christina enough money to open a breakfast-and-lunch café on the town docks. By all accounts, the café was doing well, but Zoe had yet to go there. She hadn’t stepped foot in Goose Harbor since she’d fled for Connecticut.

“Are you okay?” she asked her sister.

Christina sniffled. “Yes. I wasn’t here. I close up the café at three, and today I did cleanup as fast as I could—I was done by four. Kyle and I came back here to work on his documentary on Aunt Olivia—” She took a breath, and Zoe could hear her sister’s hesitation. Kyle Castellane wasn’t one of Zoe’s favorite people. He was young, rich, arrogant and determined to do this documentary on Olivia despite the grief Christina and Zoe both still felt at her death. To him, it was a matter of “strike while the iron’s hot.” Christina didn’t share Zoe’s frustrations—she thought Kyle was brilliant.

“Go on, Chris,” Zoe said softly, reining in her own tension. No one had ever broken into their house. Not ever.

“The house—it wasn’t torn up, but you can tell someone’s been through here. They came in through the side door. Bruce is bringing a new one by tonight.”

“Anything taken?”

“No. Not that I can see. The police think they were looking for cash, maybe because I run a café, and when they didn’t find any, just ran off.”

It happened all the time. Still, the timing felt odd on top of the calls about the vacationing FBI agent. Zoe sighed. “I’m sorry, Chris. What can I do?”

“Come home. Zoe, I—I don’t like this. I’ll admit it, I’m scared. What if this FBI agent is stirring up trouble? What if—”

Zoe stopped her—they were on the same wavelength. “I can leave here in thirty minutes and be there in about four hours.”

“Really? You’re sure? I don’t want to wimp out. I’m not making mountains out of molehills, am I?”

“Let’s hope so, Chris. I’d rather have molehills to deal with than mountains, wouldn’t you?” Zoe tried to lighten her sister’s mood. “By the way, do you know how to knit?”

“Sure. Aunt Olivia taught me.”

“Good. You can help me finish this scarf I’m knitting. It looks like a dead snake. Wait until you see it. I think I’ve dropped a million stitches—”

“Zoe!”

But Christina managed a laugh, although Zoe felt only marginally better when she hung up. She didn’t have a lot of stuff. She’d never owned much. It wouldn’t take her a half hour to pack—it’d take her fifteen minutes.

Two

Perry’s waterfront bar was located on the southern end of Goose Harbor’s Main Street. Its bank of windows overlooked the docks; its barn-board walls were decorated with wooden lobster traps, fake lobsters and framed black-and-white pictures of lighthouses and Maine days gone by. J. B. McGrath nursed a beer at a small corner table. He was thirty-six, tall, lean, black-haired, blue-eyed and had a face that would look right at home on a wanted poster. He was good at undercover work, and he’d been doing it a long time. Maybe too long. That was why he was in Goose Harbor, Maine. He was on vacation. Not his idea.

No darts tonight. He’d pissed off enough locals. He was from Montana but could handle himself in a lobster boat. He was an FBI agent but argued lobstering with people who’d done it all their lives. He was a guy on vacation who didn’t have the grace to lose at darts once in a while. None of which endeared him to the good people of Goose Harbor.

Bruce Young pulled out a chair and plopped down across from him with a frosty beer glass. “Eight o’clock and nobody’s ready to kill you? Slow day, McGrath.”

Bruce grinned and unzipped his Carhartt canvas jacket. He was built like a rock cliff, a big, red-faced man with scars and nicks on his hands from working his string of lobster pots day after day. His blue eyes were so like J.B.’s own, J.B. wouldn’t be surprised if he and Bruce were distant cousins. But that was another thing—the locals didn’t believe J.B.’s ancestors hailed from Goose Harbor. They thought he’d just made that up.

J.B. hadn’t made it up. His grandmother was a Sutherland, as in Sutherland Island off the Olivia West Nature Preserve—as in Olivia’s best friend, Posey Sutherland, who ran off with drifter Jesse McGrath after World War I and ended up in Montana and dead at twenty-seven.

Her father, Lester Sutherland, disowned her.

Hence, Mr. Lester McGrath, Jen Periwinkle’s evil nemesis. A combination of two men Olivia West hated because of what they had done to her friend Posey.

“I heard some of the guys talking about setting fire to your boat. They think you’re obnoxious.” Bruce took a long drink of his beer. “I reminded them it’s my damn boat.”

“Old, wooden, practically leaking.”

“That’s a great boat. The guys said if you don’t get out of town or get an attitude adjustment, they’re going to tie your hands and feet together and throw you in the drink.”

J.B. shrugged. “Wouldn’t do them any good.”

“Uh-huh. You’re a highly trained federal agent, drown-proofed and everything.”

Skepticism had crept into Bruce’s tone. He obviously had his doubts about J.B.’s credentials, too. J.B. didn’t mind. He hadn’t produced an I.D. or really confirmed one way or the other he was with the bureau. Bruce had guessed it. His truck had backfired, and J.B., still on edge from his last investigation, had gone for his weapon—not that he was carrying one. Bruce nailed him then and there. “You a cop? A fed?” J.B. just said he was on vacation. Period.

The talk about tossing him overboard wasn’t serious—he’d invaded these men’s turf, and they were re-marking their territory, letting him know they didn’t care if he was on edge or why. He was bad company. They weren’t going to give him an inch.

“Nobody believes you’re here on vacation,” Bruce said.

“Why not?”

“You don’t look like you take vacations.”

J.B. didn’t disagree. He looked as if he’d spent the past year working on an undercover operation that had ended badly, leaving him with his throat half slit and the searing memory of killing a man in front of his own children. Not what J.B. had envisioned when he’d infiltrated a group of violent criminals who used their virulent antigovernment beliefs to justify robbery, murder and the possession and distribution of illegal assault weapons and explosive devices.

“I’m doing genealogical research on my Maine roots,” J.B. said.

“Uh-huh. You a Mainer. I like that. You ever been to Maine?”

“This week.”

“There you go.”

“My ancestors helped settle Goose Harbor in the seventeenth century.”

“So did mine.”

“You see? We could be cousins.”

Bruce wasn’t amused. “Yeah, right. Listen, Mc-Grath—” Bruce sighed, staring at his nearly untouched beer. “Christina West’s house was broken into today. The police think it was some idiot looking for cash, but I’m wondering—you didn’t have anything to do with it, did you?”

J.B. shook his head. He hadn’t heard about the break-in. “No.”

“Because, you know, some people think you’re here because of her father’s murder last year—”

“Bruce, I’m on vacation. I know about the murder, but that’s it.”

Bruce rubbed a big hand across his face. “I know. It was stupid. I just—Chris is so damn young, and she’s here on her own.”

“What about her sister?”

But J.B. knew about the sister. Zoe West was a screwup. The rising star, the local hotshot pushed hard and fast because she made everyone else look good, too. She should have gotten her ass kicked along the way, but instead she got accepted into the FBI Academy for new-agent training. It was only natural she’d think she could solve her father’s murder—only natural she’d come unglued and fallen apart when she’d had to face his death, her aunt’s death, her own limitations, the kind of real-world experience she must have known was out there but hadn’t had to confront herself.

Zoe West had bowed out of the academy, moved to Connecticut and got herself fired from what was likely her last job in law enforcement.

A screwup.

J.B. thought of the man he’d killed. The looks on the faces of his three children. Nine, eleven and fourteen. They were horrified, furious, filled with hate. J.B. didn’t know what would become of them. Their father, a murderer and a rapist, a man who’d taught other people how to build bombs and convert legal weapons into illegal weapons, had attacked J.B. from behind, without warning, and stuck a knife in his throat, and J.B. fought back. It was self-defense. But nothing, he thought, was ever that simple.

He’d been forced on vacation by his superiors. “Take a break, McGrath. As long as you need.”

Bruce drank more of his beer. J.B. could tell Zoe West wasn’t Bruce’s favorite subject. “Christina’s just twenty-four. Zoe shouldn’t have left her here on her own. I don’t know what the hell she’s still doing in Connecticut—she doesn’t have a job. I think everyone in town’s told her about you by now.”

And everyone in town knew because Bruce had told them. “You talk to her?”

“Yeah. Made no difference. She went on about goat’s milk when I talked to her.”

“Did you tell her about the break-in at her sister’s house?”

“No. I expect Chris did, though.”

J.B. smiled. “You have a soft spot for Christina West, don’t you?”

“Up yours, McGrath.”

“She’s okay?”

Bruce’s expression softened. “Yeah. I’m supposed to bring her a new door. Want to go with me?”

J.B.’s instincts told him not to get in any deeper with the West sisters. He was in deep enough. He’d been interested in Goose Harbor because of his ancestors, but he’d actually come here because of Patrick West’s murder. His own father had died over the winter, an old man who’d loved western Montana—and yet he never would have been born there without his tragic connection to the Wests and Goose Harbor, Maine.

J.B. knew he should cut the night short and go back to his inn, but he got to his feet and followed Bruce Young out to buy a new door for Christina West.

* * *

Bruce did most of the work. Installing a solid wood door was nothing to him. J.B. finally quit pretending to help and joined Christina and her boyfriend, Kyle Castellane, in the kitchen. The West house was built in 1827—a plaque above the door said so—on a corner lot on a side street behind the town library. Yellow clapboards, black shutters, roses. Their mother had died of lupus when the girls were two and nine. It was one of the many tidbits J.B. had learned about the West sisters since he’d decided to vacation in Goose Harbor.

Christina looked agitated. She was tall, slender and usually quick with a smile, but not tonight. Wisps of long blond hair had worked their way out of her braid and into her face, which was lightly freckled and pretty, making J.B. wonder about her older sister, the ex-detective. Christina wore the white ruffled blouse and slim black pants that were her basic uniform at her café. Kyle, the boyfriend, was sandy-haired and good-looking, dressed in his habitual gray sweatshirt and khakis. He also had on a five-thousand-dollar watch. They both stood with their backs against the kitchen counter.

J.B. had on jeans, a black chamois shirt and boat shoes he’d managed to scuff up properly during his four days on the Maine coast. His sports watch cost about a hundred bucks. He’d had to buy a new band for it after he’d bled on the old one when he got his throat slit. The scar wasn’t all that visible when he wore collared shirts.

He had a feeling Christina West already knew about him, but he went ahead and introduced himself. “I’m J. B. McGrath. I’m on vacation here in Goose Harbor.”

“I heard,” Christina said. “I’ve seen you at the café a few times.”

He smiled, aware of her tension. “Hard to resist wild blueberry muffins and warm apple pie. Chowder’s good, too.”

She couldn’t muster much of a smile back at him. “Thanks.”

“You’re FBI, aren’t you?” Kyle asked.

“I’m just a guy with some time off.”

The kid didn’t like his answer. “Some people are saying you’re a phony.”

J.B. shrugged. “It’s a crime to impersonate a law enforcement officer.”

Kyle Castellane liked that answer even less than the first one. “I’d like to see some I.D.”

“Would you?”

“Yeah. Why the name McGrath? Don’t you think that’s a hell of a coincidence?”

“McGrath’s not an uncommon name.” It was a fact, but it left out the rest of the facts—that he knew why Olivia West had picked the name Mr. Lester McGrath for Jen Periwinkle’s evil nemesis. She hadn’t plucked it out of thin air. “I can’t blame people for wondering.”

Kyle wasn’t pacified. “Why did you pick Goose Harbor for your vacation?”

“Cute name.”

“I can call the local police and have them check you out.”

Christina touched his arm. “Kyle...”

“It’s okay,” J.B. said. “He can check me out. No problem.”

Her blue eyes fastened on him. “You know my father was killed last year, don’t you?”

J.B. nodded. “I do. I’m sorry.”

She swallowed visibly. “Thanks. It’s hard not having answers.” Her gaze drifted to the side door, where Bruce was almost finished with his work. “The police don’t have any reason to believe the break-in’s connected in any way to Dad’s murder.”

“Did you call Zoe about it?” Kyle asked.

“After the police left,” Christina said. “You were back at your apartment.”

Kyle, who’d rented the small apartment above her waterfront café, seemed put out. “Why didn’t you tell me? Is she on her way?”

Christina turned to him, color rising in her cheeks. “What?”

“Zoe. Is she on her way?”

“I don’t know.”

She knew. J.B. could see the lie in the way she shifted her eyes away from Kyle and looked down at her hands, in the flush that spread from her cheeks to her ears, in the increased agitation. Her breathing was shallow now, coming in quick, ineffective gulps.

Why wouldn’t she want to reveal whether or not her sister was on her way?

Bruce lumbered in from his door-hanging. “She drives a yellow Bug these days. She won’t be hard to spot.”

“She hasn’t—” Christina inhaled, wrung her hands together. “She hasn’t been back in almost a year. Cut her some slack, okay?”

“Right,” Bruce said. “Like she’d cut us any.”

“Anyway, I don’t know if she’s coming.”

The big sister sounded like a trip to J.B. He saw Bruce give Christina a pained look, as if he was suffering to see her with Kyle Castellane, and decided it was time to make their exit. “Come on, Bruce. A game of darts?”

“Nah. It’s too late. I have to be up before dawn. October’s good lobstering.” He pulled his gaze from Christina. “I’ll drop you off at your inn.”

* * *

His room at the inn had pink soap and pink-flowered wallpaper, and its four-poster bed was a first for J.B. The place was run by Lottie Martin, who had to be the sourest woman in the state of Maine. He always greeted her cheerfully just to watch her squirm. When he opened his door and saw that his room had been tossed, he knew she wouldn’t be happy.

He wasn’t happy.

It was a gentle toss, not a ransacking. If he hadn’t worked undercover for the past five years and become accustomed to imprinting on his mind how he’d left things, he might not even have noticed.

It helped that the perpetrator had spilled his afternoon tea on the carpet.

He knew he’d done tea for a reason. The daily afternoon ritual was served on the screened porch and featured three kinds of tea and an array of tiny muffins, shortbread and scones. He’d sneaked a cup of Irish Breakfast up to his room.

He knelt down. The stain was still damp.

Interesting.

The cottage-style bureau where he’d unpacked his clothes had been gone through. His empty suitcase. The stacks of books and magazines he’d picked up to while away the hours. Nothing was quite where he’d left it.

His visitor had even pawed through his bathroom.

And locked up afterward. Which required a key to the old-fashioned door.

Also interesting.

Lottie Martin didn’t strike him as the type to snoop. On the other hand, curiosity about him had risen steadily among local residents since he’d arrived in pretty Goose Harbor.

Nothing was missing. His gun was locked in his Jeep.

He left everything as it was and headed down to the front desk. Old Lottie was there in a corduroy jumper and turtleneck, her iron-gray hair pinned up in a bun that made her look like Auntie Em, except thinner. J.B. figured she’d opened the inn so she could surround herself with antiques and live in an old house. Guests were simply a necessary evil. Or at least he was.

“I heard Zoe West was back in town,” he said, then made an educated guess. “I thought I saw her car pull out of here.” He hadn’t, but Lottie Martin didn’t know that. “She’s staying here? You’d think she’d stay with her sister, wouldn’t you?”

Lottie took the bait. “She is staying with her sister. She stopped by to say hello. I’ve been friends with her family for years.”

“Did she ever work for you?”

“Just one summer.”

Long enough to help herself to a pass key. She probably had it in her old room, which meant she’d stopped at the house first and Christina had been covering for her. That explained some of her agitation. She was keeping the FBI agent occupied while her big sister searched his room to make sure his story added up. Bruce had called Christina on his cell phone from his truck to say he and J.B. were on their way with the door. The sisters could have cooked up their plan then.

He’d guess it was Zoe’s idea. While she was in full screwup mode, why not break into an FBI agent’s room?

“I spilled tea in my room,” he told Lottie Martin.

She frowned. “On the carpet?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She seemed to think he was being sarcastic. “No harm done, I’m sure.” Her teeth were half clenched as she spoke. “Mr. McGrath, I have a problem with your room. This is terribly awkward. I wanted to catch you sooner—” She paused, fixing her gray eyes on him. “I’m afraid you’ll have to check out. I found a room for you in Kennebunkport. It was no mean feat since this is peak foliage weekend. I’m sure you’ll be pleased with it.”

“You giving me the boot because of the spilled tea?”

“No, of course not.”

“Because Zoe West was here and you think I’m to blame?”

“Trouble does have a way of following her these days, but no, that’s not the reason. There’s a problem with the room, that’s all. It happens in these old houses.” She jotted down the name and number of the Kennebunkport inn and passed it to him. “I’ll pick up the tab myself to make up for the inconvenience.”

J.B. had to hand it to her. As socially inept and sour as she was, she’d just smoothly maneuvered him right out of her inn. He wondered if Zoe West had said anything to her, or if old Lottie had simply put the ex-detective’s visit, the spilled tea and the fact that her guest was an FBI agent together and decided to toss him to avoid any trouble. She must have heard about the break-in at the West house by now.

In her place, he’d probably do the same.

He took the paper with the Kennebunkport information on it. “I’ll pay my own way. Thanks. You know, my ancestors came here in the seventeenth century. Maybe we’re cousins.”

She didn’t like that any more than Bruce Young had.

J.B. returned to his room and packed up. He had no idea where he was going, but it wasn’t to Kennebunkport. Bruce’d probably put him up, but Bruce had dogs that looked as if they’d have the run of the place. Bruce was also part of whatever it was that had happened in Goose Harbor a year ago. After she’d found her father’s body, Zoe West had run into the water and waved down the nearest lobster boat. Bruce Young’s. He’d notified the Maine marine patrol.

It was a cold night, and dark, the clouds blocking out the moon and any stars. J.B. could taste the salt in the air, feel the dampness of an approaching storm. He dumped his stuff in the back of his Jeep and drove down to the docks, parking in the town lot. The small, protected harbor was mostly rockbound, lined with houses, with Main Street running parallel to the water above the docks. In daylight on a clear day, Olivia West’s house was visible on its point on the northeast edge of the harbor. According to town gossip, she’d left it to Zoe. Christina inherited money to buy the small clapboard building on the waterfront behind him, a run-down clam shack she’d converted into her charming café.

If he left now, J.B. figured he could be back in Washington, D.C., by morning. He had an apartment there. He didn’t know what he’d be doing next with the bureau, but he expected it wouldn’t involve undercover work, at least not anytime soon. There was talk of having him train new undercover agents. Yeah. He could give them pointers on how to kill a man in front of his children with your throat cut and bleeding, then how to live with yourself afterward. It didn’t matter that he’d done what he had to do, that he’d had no other choice. But wasn’t that the point? Leave yourself options. Always leave yourself options.

A puff of fog floated off the water and enveloped him as if it meant to, as if he was its target. He walked across the nearly empty parking lot to the intersection of Ocean Drive. If he turned left, it’d take him to Main Street and Goose Harbor village. Right, along the northeast edge of the harbor, past Olivia West’s house and the nature preserve named for her.

Olivia West’s house was unoccupied, sitting on its lonely point like something out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Bruce said Zoe kept the lights and heat on and had it cleaned once a month, but didn’t know what to do with it.

J.B. did. He’d sleep there tonight.

Bruce had also said that Olivia West had never bothered to get a lock for the porch door. J.B. could walk right in. And why shouldn’t he? Zoe West had gotten him tossed from his inn. He figured she owed him a night’s lodging.

Three

Christina paced in the kitchen and alternated between horror and delight at what her sister had done. Zoe was just relieved Special Agent McGrath hadn’t walked in while she was searching his room. She didn’t know where she’d be if he had, but it wouldn’t be in her sister’s kitchen eating hummus and red onion on pita. Lottie Martin, fortunately, had seemed content to pretend she didn’t know what was going on. She would be curious about McGrath herself, and she wouldn’t want to get in Zoe’s way.

Not that she’d found much of anything.

Knocking over the tea had nearly done her in. She was a better cop than a sneak, and she didn’t exactly have the law on her side. More to the point, no way would J. B. McGrath not remember having spilled tea on Lottie Martin’s carpet. He’d see the stain and know it wasn’t his doing.

So long as he didn’t realize it was her doing, Zoe thought she was all right. She’d slipped out, relocked the door with her pass key and managed to get out of the inn without incident.

“I can’t believe you actually did it,” Christina said. “God, Zoe, what were you thinking?”

“I was thinking he wasn’t a real FBI agent.”

“If he’d caught you—”

“He didn’t. And I didn’t steal anything out of his room. Relax, I’m in the clear. Otherwise there’d be a cruiser in the driveway right now.”

“Or him. You haven’t met him.”

Zoe stretched out her legs and munched on her pita sandwich. Christina had made the hummus herself, from scratch. Over the past year, she’d added her own touches to the kitchen—baskets and brightly colored towels, gourmet gadgets, a hand-thrown pottery bowl their father would have considered extravagant. But Zoe could still feel his presence, as if he might walk in from the garden with an armload of tomatoes and chuckle at how agitated his two daughters were. He was the steadiest man Zoe had ever known. He took everything in stride. She thought she took after him, but in the days after his death, and then her great-aunt’s, Zoe knew she’d been a total madwoman.

“It’s weird being back,” she said.

“I know it must be.” Christina stopped pacing and opened a cupboard door. Kyle had taken off after Zoe returned, but promised to stop in again. “Why don’t I make us drinks? What would you like?”

“Scotch on the rocks.”

Christina grinned. “That’s easy.”

Zoe struggled to smile back. She was still thinking about that spilled tea—and the sight of Agent McGrath’s razor on the sink. She didn’t know why that got to her. “The place looks good, Chris. I can’t wait to see the café.”

“It’s great—I’m having such a good time. It’s a lot of work, but I love it.” She got out two glasses, filled them with ice and poured the Scotch, a brand she would have picked with the same care she took with everything related to food. She brought the two drinks to the table and sat down. “Zoe, I don’t know—maybe I overreacted to the break-in.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you’re here, I guess. It makes me think—” She lifted her glass but didn’t take a sip. “I don’t know, I guess it makes me think the break-in must be related to Dad’s death if you’re here.”

“I was fired in August. I should have come home sooner.”

“To do what?”

Zoe drank some of her Scotch. It was her father’s drink. Scotch on the rocks. Not often, and only in the evening. She didn’t really like it. She knew Christina didn’t, either. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. First things first, okay?”

“Sure.”

“I don’t have any theories about the break-in, Chris. I’m not going to go off half-cocked. It’s been a year—”

“I know, but you haven’t been here. Zoe, I’ve gotten used to not having any answers. I’m not saying I like it, but I’ve gotten used to it.”

Zoe nodded. “You’re afraid I haven’t.”

“I know you haven’t. It’s not in your makeup.”

But Zoe wasn’t going there, reliving the nightmares and bad decisions, the confusion and grief of the past year. She took another sip of her Scotch and jumped to her feet. “You have to look at my knitting and see if you can figure out what I’m doing wrong.”

“Zoe—”

“No, I’m serious. Knitting’s a great stress reliever. I’m determined to learn. Bea Jericho took me to a yarn store in Litchfield and had me pick out a beautiful, hand-dyed yarn. Milk-gray. She insisted I’d like knitting better if I started out with yarn I loved.”

Christina shook her head. “I can’t believe you’re learning to knit.”

“Not only that,” Zoe said, “but I know how to milk goats.”

* * *

Teddy Shelton sat behind the wheel of his rusting-piece-of-crap pickup and tried to figure out his next move. He’d pulled into the town lot next to the FBI agent’s Jeep. If he leaned forward, he could see down the docks to the yacht club and the deep-water slip where Luke Castellane had his multimillion-dollar yacht. Luke’s kid had a crummy apartment above Christina West’s café. He was playing the starving artist. He’d tire of Christina once he finished his documentary on Olivia West. No question in Teddy’s mind. Kyle Castellane was a spoiled, self-absorbed little prick.

Teddy wondered if Kyle’s documentary was just a way to stir up a bees’ nest and get people focused on Patrick West’s death again. The state police investigation was still active, but people’d settled down, assumed someone from out of town had killed him. Chief West could have had terrorists plotting an attack right under his nose, and he’d never notice. Not in Goose Harbor, he’d think. No way.

Yeah, well. He’d learned. Those last minutes before he’d bled to death must have been something. Oh, shit, I should have known.

Fat raindrops pelted Teddy’s windshield. He didn’t know why he couldn’t afford a decent truck. At least he had all the weapons he wanted. Most of them, anyway. He’d like a couple more grenades. He had more flash-bang grenades than he needed—they were all noise and light and smoke, designed to distract and confuse, not to destroy. Maybe he could trade some for the kind of grenades that could blow a guy’s legs off.

He kept his personal arsenal in an apple crate in the jump seat behind him. Sometimes it’d push up against the driver’s seat. Not too comfortable on his back. But it was good to know he had an MP5 handy if some asshole tried to take him out on the interstate.

The lights on the Castellane yacht went out. It was ten o’clock. Jesus. He’d been in southern Maine a year, and still had no intention of ever keeping lobsterman hours. Luke Castellane was a notorious hypochondriac, always thinking something was wrong with him, probably because his father, Hollywood director Victor Castellane, had dropped dead of a heart attack at fifty-five. Luke’s mother died three years later. Ovarian cancer. From what Teddy gathered, they’d been total jackasses. They used to summer in Goose Harbor, and Luke had continued the tradition after he grew up, married, had a kid, divorced and turned the modest inheritance from his parents into a bloody fortune. Now he sailed up and down the coast in his yacht all summer and spent the winter at his house in Key West.

Chubby Betsy O’Keefe was living with him. Nurse Betsy. She was plain as a bucket of oats and built like a fire hydrant, but all Luke would care about was the R.N. after her name. And who else would have her? Teddy figured she was in it for the goodies.

The rain picked up. It was pounding on his windshield now. He could feel the damp cold and debated turning on the engine and getting some heat in his truck. He probably should head back to that goddamn shack he rented from Bruce Young down by the lobster pound. It was barely winterized. He wanted to tell Luke that Zoe West was back in town, but he’d waited too long and now Luke had gone night-night.

If he stayed out here much longer, Teddy knew he’d fall asleep. Then some jerk cop would roust him and maybe see the guns and shit in back. Luke had never invited him to stay in a stateroom aboard the Castellane yacht. Understandable. How would he explain why he’d hired a guy like Teddy? Even that dumb-bunny Nurse Betsy would ask questions.

Teddy turned the key in the engine and switched on the windshield wipers and the headlights, which barely penetrated the thick fog that had rolled in off the water. The docks were dead on such a dark, rainy October night.

“What the hell,” he said, shutting down the engine.

When he pushed open the door, he could hear the tide. He didn’t know if it was coming in or going out. When he first arrived in Goose Harbor, he’d tried to keep track, but soon discovered it didn’t make any damn difference. He never went on the water. Best job he could get was working at the lobster pound. He had enough claw marks from the damn lobsters to prove it. The native Mainers almost never got clawed, not like he did. His own damn fault, they told him.

He stepped onto the wet pavement and smelled the salt in the fog. The rain hit his Yankees cap. Nothing colder than a fall rain on the New England coast. He shivered, not wanting to get too wet. The kerosene stove in Bruce’s shack would take forever to heat up the place, even as small as it was.

Teddy pulled a rag out of his pants pocket and wiped the rain off the driver’s window on the FBI guy’s Jeep. He peered inside. Not much to see. No file with “Top Secret” scrawled on it. Teddy wondered where Mr. Special Agent had gone. Talking to Luke? No way. Luke was in bed with Nurse Betsy.

“Screw it.”

Teddy got back into his truck, started the engine again and drove back up to Main Street, then cruised on over to the West house. Zoe West’s yellow Volkswagen Beetle was parked out front. Kyle Castellane was getting into his black BMW. Teddy could feel the sarcasm rising up in him. Starving artist. Yeah. Kyle’d be more shocked than anyone if he knew Teddy was working for his watery-eyed pop. Luke didn’t like the idea of an FBI agent crawling around town. He’d thought it might bring Zoe back to Goose Harbor, and it had.

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-detective 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 glass 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 waitstaff 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.

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 wasn’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. His voice was deep and slightly raspy, as if it’d been dragged over sharp rocks a few times.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because you got me thrown out of my inn.”

“What? I did no—” She stopped herself. Why make a denial? Why lie? He hadn’t asked a question or demanded an explanation. No point in painting herself into a corner. “I’ll see you downstairs in the kitchen.”

“As you wish.”

Right. As if she had any control over the situation. She took her drapery rod with her, about-faced and headed back to the stairs, just missing falling into the stairwell and ending her return to Goose Harbor with a broken neck—which would have served her right.

Five

J.B. made his way down the attic steps thinking Zoe West must have known she wasn’t dealing with a real threat or she’d never have come after him with a drapery rod. Either that or she’d gone more off the deep end as a cop than even he’d expected.

He debated packing up his stuff before heading down to the kitchen, then decided not to keep ex-detective West waiting. She had a right to be pissed at finding him in her attic, but he didn’t feel bad about it. At some point in her not-too-distant past, she’d decided to resurrect Jen Periwinkle. He’d read the first chapter on her yellow pad. He knew she’d written it because she’d put her name at the top of the first page in neat block letters. It was pretty good. Her Jen Periwinkle was a little older than Olivia West’s Jen Periwinkle, and she had a boyfriend. A young FBI agent. J.B. got a kick out of that. No sign of Mr. Lester McGrath in what he’d read.

He’d watched Zoe West drive up to her aunt’s house in her yellow VW and could have alerted her to his presence at any time, but he hadn’t. Not very nice of him, but she had searched his room. He figured she deserved to find him in the attic.

She had her kick-ass cop face on when he joined her in the kitchen. She was standing with her back to the sink and her arms crossed. He noticed she had more flecks of gray in her blue eyes than her sister did; she wasn’t as tall and her blond hair was shorter. She didn’t have as many freckles. With the little shirt and pants and the ankle bracelet, she didn’t look as if she’d ever carried a gun. J.B. suspected that was pure prejudice on his part, but there it was.

“I’d like an explanation,” she said.

“An explanation of what?”

No reaction. “Of why you’re here.”

“In Goose Harbor or in your house?”

“Both.”

He pulled out a chair at the table and sat down, keeping an eye on her. “I’m in Goose Harbor on vacation, and I’m in your house because I figured you owed me one for pawing through my room.”

“Your name’s J. B. McGrath?”

“Jesse Benjamin McGrath.”

“And you are with the FBI, right?”

“I was trying to keep a low profile, but yes. Do you want to see my credentials?”

She gave a tight shake of the head. “I understand your ancestors are from Goose Harbor.”

“That’s right.”

“McGraths?”

“No.”

“You know that Jen Periwinkle’s evil nemesis is named McGrath?”

“He’s fictional,” J.B. said. “I’m not.”

She muttered something that sounded like “more’s the pity,” then dropped her arms to her sides. “You had nothing to do with the break-in at my sister’s yesterday?”

“No.”

“You’re not involved with the investigation into my father’s murder?”

He could feel his expression softening. “No, I’m not.”

“Why Goose Harbor? Why now?”

“I was due a vacation.” He didn’t need to tell her he’d been ordered to take some time off. “My ancestors are from here. I’d heard about your father’s murder and knew it was still unsolved—I won’t say I haven’t tried to put the pieces together in my own mind.”

“But it’s not why you’re here?”

He decided now wasn’t the time to try to explain the relationship between her great-aunt and his grandmother. He shook his head. “Not specifically, no. Detective West—”

“Zoe’s fine. I’ll never be a detective again.”

He got to his feet. “I’ll make my bed, pack up and clear out.”

“In a minute. First you can help me get my things out of the car.” She started for the side entry and glanced back at him. “Then we’ll be even.”

It was as much of an admission as he was going to get that she was the one who’d gone through his room last night. He walked behind her out to the side porch and down the stone walk to her VW Beetle, its back stuffed with boxes, bags and a heavy suitcase that had to be forty years old.

Zoe nodded at two knitting needles and a mass of milky-gray yarn spilling out of one of the bags. “That’s my scarf. I started with a hundred stitches and now I have seventy-seven. What do you suppose happened to the other twenty-three?”

“You dropped them.”

“Dropped them where?”

There was a glint of humor in her eyes—more gray in the late morning sun than blue—as she opened the driver’s door. “Bruce says you’re a closet eccentric,” J.B. said.

“He said that about Aunt Olivia, too. Bruce is an authority on two subjects: lobstering and the Maine coast. Anything he says on any other subject is not to be trusted.”

J.B. was still confident the flax seed and the soy powder were hers. “He says you refused to carry a weapon on duty and encouraged a Texas Ranger to interfere in the investigation into the Connecticut governor’s death.”

“I didn’t encourage him—I just didn’t stop him. And I didn’t refuse to carry a weapon—I just didn’t.” She lifted out a backpack and hoisted it onto her shoulder. “Any other questions?”

“About a million, but I’ll resist.”

She said nothing and grabbed a plastic bag overflowing with books, the top one a primer on domestic goats. J.B. watched her turn up the walk to the side door. He could almost see the demons swooping around her, haunting her, toying with her as she tried to tell herself she had to get used to the idea that she might never know who killed her father—that she might never know if telling her aunt about his murder had somehow contributed to her death.

She stopped on the side porch and turned back to him. “How much did you read of what I wrote?”

“None of it. You have lousy handwriting, Detective West.”

“That’s very decent of you,” she said quietly, unexpectedly. “Thank you.”

But he could see she knew he’d lied. He felt like a heel. She’d only picked through his underwear and his reading material, none of which he’d written himself.

After they got the last of her stuff out of her car, J.B. made his bed, packed, cleaned his bathroom and wiped down the kitchen counter and sink where he’d made tea. Then he offered to take Zoe West to lunch at her sister’s café.

To his surprise, she accepted.

* * *

Betsy O’Keefe stretched out on a cushioned lounge chair on the afterdeck of Luke Castellane’s yacht and listened to the seabirds. A lifelong resident of Goose Harbor, she still barely knew a seagull from a duck. Just wasn’t interested. She closed her eyes and welcomed the ruffle of a breeze over her. It had warmed up nicely. Almost seventy degrees. Luke had on a toasty warm-up suit, but Betsy, in elastic-waist yellow jeans and an oversize white shirt, wished she’d put on shorts that morning.

Luke hissed impatiently as he read a health article at the nearby table. He was always reading health articles. After Olivia died, he’d invited Betsy over to check his blood pressure three times a day for a week. He was worried the stress of Patrick West’s murder and all the publicity of Olivia’s death would push him into a stroke. He was in his early fifties, sandy-haired and good-looking, if a little too whip-thin from his diet and exercise regimen. Healthy as a horse. She’d had her eye on him even before that terrible twenty-four hours last fall, but even she was surprised when he took to her.

She could do worse than Luke Castellane.

His cell phone rang. He sighed—if anything did him in, it would be his natural impatience—and answered it. “Yes, what is it?” He listened a moment. “I can’t talk right now. Do nothing without my permission. Is that understood?”

He didn’t give whoever was on the other end a chance to respond before he disconnected.

“Who was that?” Betsy asked mildly.

“What? No one. A money matter. Go back to sleep.”

“I wasn’t sleeping.”

He didn’t reply. Olivia West had always had a soft spot for Luke. She told Betsy it was because she saw what his parents did to him. His oddities, she believed, were a direct result of their psychological abuse and neglect, and that at heart, Luke was a good man who wanted to be able to connect with other people and have healthy relationships but didn’t know how.

Olivia had left Betsy a generous sum that she’d immediately put away as her nest egg for the future. She didn’t know how long Luke would have her but didn’t delude herself into thinking it would be forever.

She swung her feet onto the deck and sat up. “I’m going for a walk. Care to join me?”

He shook his head.

“I wonder if there’s any news on who broke into Christina’s yesterday. I’m so glad she and Kyle weren’t there. He’s working like a demon on his Olivia West documentary, but I understand his materials are all at his apartment above the café, so it wasn’t in any danger.”

“No one’s interested in his documentary.”

Betsy stood up. “I suppose not. I was thinking more of vandalism or an accident.”

Stick Monroe, one of Luke’s few longtime friends, had stopped by that morning and mentioned Zoe was back. Luke seemed uninterested, but Betsy felt a stab of unpleasant anticipation, not because she didn’t like Zoe. Because they shared a secret.

I know who killed Patrick....

Poor old Olivia. To die thinking she knew the identity of her nephew’s murderer. It was ridiculous, of course, and Betsy agreed with Zoe there was no point mentioning it to anyone. Olivia had been so befuddled, and now she was dead.

Betsy told Luke goodbye and walked out onto the yacht club dock. In a week or so he’d be sailing for Florida, with various stops on the way. She thought she was invited, but she wouldn’t count on it until they were actually en route—for all she knew, Luke would ask her to stay behind in Goose Harbor.

As she walked toward the town docks, she fantasized that Luke was watching her and thinking sexy thoughts about her. Instead he was probably counting his daily fat grams or fretting about his blood pressure. She tried not to delude herself into thinking she really mattered to Luke. Only Luke mattered to Luke.

She had a sudden urge for a piece of wild blueberry pie. Christina West made the best in southern Maine. How lucky her café wasn’t a hundred yards off. Luke had commented not long ago that he hadn’t had blueberry pie in fifteen years.

His loss, Betsy thought, deciding she wouldn’t think about sugar, fat, refined flour, trans-fatty acids or calories at least for the next hour. Wild blueberries were a good source of antioxidants, but she wouldn’t even think about that. She’d just eat her pie and enjoy herself.

Six

Luke Castellane was paying him to keep an eye on Special Agent McGrath and Zoe West, but Teddy thought he might have to go over to Luke’s fancy yacht and beat the shit out of him. Arrogant, rude bastard. Hanging up on him. Teddy just wanted him to know that the FBI agent and Zoe West were having lunch at Christina’s Café. He was reporting back like he said he would. Wasn’t that why the asshole was paying him?

The FBI agent appeared out of nowhere and leaned in Teddy’s open truck window. Teddy didn’t rattle. He had a black tarp over his arsenal in back, an MP5 handy if he needed it. “Yeah? What do you want?”

“I thought you were having a heart attack. You’re okay?”

“Yeah, fine.”

“My mistake. Local?”

“Look, I’m in a hurry. I don’t have time for a chat.” Teddy didn’t bother keeping the sarcasm out of his tone, but he decided he didn’t want McGrath memorizing his license plate or lifting his prints off a coffee cup. He made himself ease off. “Thanks for checking up on me. Nice to know if I do have a heart attack, there are people around who’ll do something.”

“Sure. No problem.”

Teddy started the engine, and the FBI agent stepped back, still with his eyes narrowed and his cop look. Teddy wondered what he’d done to attract the guy’s attention. Maybe he could smell ex-cons and illegal weapons. “Heart attack, my ass.”

He didn’t know what he was supposed to do now. Wait for Luke to call with instructions, he guessed. He headed back through the village with its cute shops and pretty houses and took a side road down along the water just south of the harbor, veering off onto a dirt road until he came to Bruce Young’s lobster pound. The place was starting to pick up with lobster boats pulling in to turn in their catches. The tide was out. Teddy couldn’t stand the smell.

The driveway to the cottage he was renting from Bruce split off from the dirt road. Teddy shook his head when he saw its sagging roof and half-rotted back steps. Bruce was probably waiting for it to fall down so he could put up something new when he got the money together. He’d warned Teddy the place was a dump.

With a little luck, push would finally come to shove, and before he had to spend another hellish winter here, he’d be in good shape and moving on from Gooseshit Harbor, Maine.

* * *

“I thought you were on vacation.”

J.B. heard the slight surprise in Sally Meintz’s voice. He was in his Jeep on his cell phone. Sally was at her desk at FBI headquarters. Her surprise was very slight. There was a note of sarcasm in her voice, too. Not much got to her anymore. She was one of the thousands of support staff that kept the FBI and the rest of the federal government running. She was sixty, the mother of four, the wife of a retired marine officer and a by-the-book type. She didn’t like doing favors on the sly. But she would if she got talked into it, and she wasn’t a tattletale.

“I am on vacation. I just want you to run a plate for me.”

“State?”

“Maine.”

“Right. You’re there on vacation.” She’d let a little more sarcasm slip into her tone. “Give me the number.”

He gave her the license plate number of the rusting truck whose driver J.B. had known wasn’t having a heart attack. He’d spotted the truck last night outside Christina West’s house and then again this morning passing Olivia West’s house, not long after Zoe had turned up the driveway. The third strike was outside Christina’s Café at lunch.

“What do I get for doing you a favor?” Sally asked.

“My undying respect and affection.”

“I already have that. You coming back to Washington for good after this vacation of yours?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“They want to keep you from going off the deep end. God knows why. I’d let you jump.”

She disconnected. J.B. tossed his cell phone onto the seat next to him. Maybe it was a stretch to call Sally Meintz a friend. He climbed back out of his Jeep and stood in the sunlight. He could see his rented lobster boat bobbing in the water. At least no one had set fire to it overnight.

Zoe was still at the small table overlooking the water in her sister’s café, working on a massive piece of chocolate cream pie. J.B. had had a bowl of haddock chowder with her and watched the reactions of the people who knew her when they realized she was back in town. Alert, awkward, even nervous—or maybe it was seeing her with him. People probably wouldn’t mind if they both went away.

He spotted Bruce Young on the docks and walked down to join him. He had on his Carhartt and a black turtleneck as he untied his lobster boat, a fairly new vessel with all the bells and whistles—radar, GPS, a good radio, plastic-coated wire traps, lighter in weight than the old wooden traps. The knowledge and instincts of guys like Bruce still mattered, but maybe not as much as they used to.

“Been out today?” Bruce asked, not looking up from his work.

“Not yet.”

“Heard you had lunch with Zoe.”

“Fish chowder. She put butter in hers.”

“Best way to eat it. A pat of butter, a little pepper. People think she’s here to kick your ass and teach you not to toy with the good people of Goose Harbor.”

J.B. smiled. “Can she play darts?”

“Zoe? No way. She can shoot, though.”

“I camped out at her aunt’s house last night.”

Bruce grinned at him. “She catch you?”

“In the attic.”

“Good thing she doesn’t go armed anymore. What’d you want with Teddy?”

J.B. frowned. “Who?”

“Teddy Shelton. The guy in the truck. You were just talking to him—”

“Oh, him. I thought he was having a heart attack. You know him?”

Bruce lifted a thick rope into his callused hand. “I’m renting him a cottage down by the lobster pound. He does odd jobs around town.”

“He’s not from Goose Harbor?”

“I don’t know where he’s from. He showed up last summer. He keeps to himself. He tried working at the pound, but he didn’t like it.” Bruce shook his head. “Hates the smell of the ocean.”

“Why not move on?”

“Don’t know. Teddy’s not your big talker.” Bruce tossed the rope into his boat and climbed aboard. “What’d Zoe do when she found you in the attic?”

“Came after me with a drapery rod.”

“You backed down?”

“Amen.”

“Yeah. You wouldn’t want to lose a fight with a fired cop over a drapery rod.”

Words to live by. J.B. watched Bruce’s boat ease slowly out of the busy dock area and head south toward his lobster pound for another few hours’ work.

When Sally Meintz rang him back, J.B. didn’t tell her he already knew Teddy Shelton’s name. She said, “The plates are registered to a Teddy Shelton in Goose Harbor, Maine. Guess what else?” She paused, waiting for an answer.

J.B. sighed. “What else, Sally?”

“I did a little more checking while I was at it. He’s an ex-con. Served seven years in federal prison after he was convicted on charges of transfering and possessing semiautomatic assault weapons. ATF nailed him.”

“When did he get out?”

“Last July.”

He must have come straight to Goose Harbor. Three months later Patrick West was murdered. “Find out what you can about his case, okay? Thanks, Sally.”

“I like it when you say thank-you. It gives me hope for the rest of the world. What do I get for my trouble?”

“A cop-killer, maybe.”

She sighed, serious now. “That’d be worth it.”

The state and local cops had to know all about Teddy Shelton. It was a stretch to think he had anything to do with Chief West’s death, but J.B. didn’t like spotting an ex-con three times in less than twenty-four hours. Not at all.

* * *

Zoe dipped her fork into the last of the real whipped cream atop her pie and pretended she didn’t notice J. B. McGrath down on the docks. Lunch with him had been more unsettling than she’d expected. At times he seemed to be so on edge, she thought he might jump through the window—other times, she thought it impossible to ruffle him about anything. He was intense, focused, not even close to relaxed after almost a week on vacation.

But now she had to deal with Stick Monroe. Her old friend sat across from her and eyed her over his mug of black coffee. “I thought I might find you here.”

Zoe ignored his knowing tone and smiled, glancing around the crowded, charming café. “It’s great, isn’t it? I used to think someone ought to bulldoze this place into the harbor. I didn’t see the potential Christina did. She works hard, but I think she loves it.”

Stick nodded in agreement. He had on his usual outfit of corduroy shorts and rugby shirt—he wouldn’t switch to long pants until it was bitter cold. He was seventy-two but looked at least ten years younger, a fit, healthy, white-haired retired federal district court judge. His family had summered in Goose Harbor for as long as Zoe could remember. He was the last of them—he’d never married, never had kids. Everyone was surprised when he gave up his lifetime appointment and retired. But he seemed content to take long walks along the water, work in his garden and read books. He’d never been much on boating. His friends included everyone from statesmen and corporate executives to lobstermen and cops. He was brilliant, but he wasn’t a snob.

“You came back because of the break-in?” he asked.

“It was the catalyst. I was ready. I’m unemployed.”

“So I hear.”

Zoe couldn’t detect any disappointment in his tone, but it had to be there. He’d been her mentor since she was a little girl, encouraging her, opening up a broader world to her. Despite her great-aunt’s fame, she was content to stay in Goose Harbor. So were her father and sister. But Zoe had the feeling Stick had hoped for more from her than going into the FBI—following in his footsteps, maybe. Law school, U.S. attorney, federal judge. He’d never made it to the appeals court—maybe he thought she would.

Now she was a fired cop. A Quantico no-show. Jobless.

“I’ve learned to knit,” she told him, then smiled. “Sort of.”

“Zoe—”

She could see the concern in his warm brown eyes. “I’m not here to make trouble, Stick.”

“What about the FBI agent, McGrath?”

“He’s on vacation. He helped Bruce put in a new door at the house.”

Stick leaned back in his chair, his coffee untouched. “I called in a few favors with contacts I still have in Washington and checked him out. He’s a powder keg, Zoe. This vacation wasn’t his idea.”

“Something happened?”

“An ultra-right-wing, antigovernment crackpot tried to slit his throat. Almost succeeded. McGrath killed him. The guy’s three kids were there.”

Zoe winced. “That’s awful.”

“He was working undercover. I’m not supposed to tell you any of this.” Stick drank some of his coffee. It must have been cold, because he took a huge gulp, swallowed it, then regarded her with obvious concern. “Those undercover types are all nuts. You know that.”

It was one of the most persistent stereotypes in law enforcement, but it didn’t come from nowhere. Zoe set down her fork. She wasn’t hungry anymore. “What else do you know about this undercover investigation?”

“It was out west. Violent extremists constructing and trading in illegal weapons and explosive devices and plotting the assassination of local, state and federal officials. McGrath infiltrated their network over several months, posing as a buyer. It turns out a local cop was involved and tipped off the bad guys. Hence, the nearly slit throat.”

“I’d need a vacation after that, too.” Just as well he’d seen her out in the driveway before she’d come at him with her drapery rod and sense of violation and humiliation. She didn’t want to surprise an FBI powder keg. “Well, I’ll give him wide berth. What’re you up to these days, Stick?”

He smiled. “Worrying about you.”

“Ah.” She smiled back at him. “Always good to know I’ve got a judge looking out for my best interests. I’m not out of control anymore, Stick. I don’t know what’s next for me in my life, but—”

“You want to know who killed your father.”

His blunt remark caught her off guard, and she felt herself going pale. “Of course I do.”

“It’s not that people around here don’t want to know, it’s just that they can live without it. They don’t want to have to relive the grief and horror of last fall. They tell themselves it was an out-of-town drug dealer, a random act because Patrick was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He set down his mug and got to his feet, adding softly, “But not you, Zoe. You want the truth, whatever it is.”

“Maybe it was an out-of-town drug dealer.”

His gaze settled on her. He was a tall man, his skin tanned and wrinkled but not sagging. “You think the break-in at the house is connected to your father’s murder.”

“I have no reason to think anything, Stick—except that I’ve had too many milk products for lunch. Chowder, then chocolate cream pie.”

He shook his head, patient, always the one who could see through her. “Keep in touch, okay?” He kissed the top of her head. “Welcome home.”

After he left, Zoe said goodbye to her sister, who was obviously enjoying herself as she put together orders. The lunchtime crowd hadn’t dwindled. The fall foliage was at its peak, the leaf-peepers out in droves—Zoe could hear a table of seniors as they pointed out brightly colored trees along the shoreline.

She headed outside. McGrath’s lobster boat was gone. He must have left while she was talking to Stick. She walked down to the docks and squinted, picking out Bruce’s old boat up toward Olivia’s, making its way along the shore to the nature preserve and the cluster of offshore islands.

That was something else she had to do—go back to the nature preserve, to the spot where she’d found her father’s body. Today was so much like the morning she’d found him. Cool, bright, beautiful.

Maybe it could wait until tomorrow.

She and McGrath had walked down from Olivia’s. She took her time crossing the parking lot and making her way to Ocean Drive, tried to ignore the flashbacks to the countless times she’d walked this route to visit her great-aunt. She’d see her father on the way. They’d always gotten along. They’d never had any big angst-filled battles. Neither had he and Christina. Zoe didn’t know if it was because they’d lost their mother so young and it’d squeezed out all of that need to rebel, or if it was just the way he was, the way they were as a family.

When she got back to the house, she decided she’d need groceries if she was going to stick around. She pushed back the wave of loneliness, the tug of grief at the emptiness of the house, and opened windows, feeling the cool, salt-tinged breeze and hearing the ocean. She started a list at the kitchen table—then stopped.

She had to know.

She ran up to the attic and made her way to her writing nook, banging her shin on a trunk. She picked up the yellow pad she’d caught McGrath holding and felt the heat rise up from her chest to her ears.

Just as she’d thought.

There was nothing wrong with her handwriting. That liar could read it just fine.

Seven

Teddy couldn’t help it—to him the ocean smelled like a bucket of barf, especially at low tide. He couldn’t get used to it. He stood at the water’s edge of the shallow cove in front of his wreck of a cottage and watched a lobster boat pull up to the lobster-pound dock, gulls swooping around everywhere. He’d once had a gull grab a ham sandwich right out of his hand.

Luke was on the phone, bitching him out. “You moron. Betsy saw you and that FBI agent arguing.”

“We weren’t arguing. He thought I was having a heart attack.”

Luke snorted. “And you believed him?”

“No, but so what?”

Teddy walked out onto a flat, gray rock, the water around it not two inches deep at low tide. It was more or less a puddle—a tide pool, he guessed it was called. It bled into a stretch of gray mud and small, water-smoothed rocks.

“Nothing happened,” he went on. “Relax. Anybody asks, I’m watching Zoe for you, making sure she doesn’t get in over her head like last year. Because you care about her. Because Patrick West was your friend and Olivia West had a soft spot for you and you figure you owe them.”

“I don’t want people to know you and I have any connection—”

“Relax, will you? You should have thought this through before you asked me to spy on an FBI agent—”

“I don’t have to listen to this,” Luke hissed.

“Nurse Betsy say anything to you? She likes to have blueberry pie on the sly, you know. Probably figures you’ll think your arteries will clog just from watching her chow down.”

“Where are you now?”

“Cooling my heels. If McGrath spotted me skulking around your ex-cop sweetie, she could have, too. I’ll go on back to town in a few minutes.”

“Be discreet,” Luke snapped, condescending, irritable.

“Why’d you agree to hire me if you’re getting cold feet this fast? Jesus—”

“Don’t get the wrong idea, Shelton. I’m not afraid of either one of them. I just don’t want them meddling in her father’s murder investigation. It’ll just make matters worse and won’t lead to his killer. McGrath has no right to stir up trouble.” Luke breathed heavily, as if he might hyperventilate. “The West sisters have suffered enough.”

Right. Like he’d hired Teddy because he was worried about Zoe and Christina West’s feelings. Teddy watched the lobster boat ease on back around the point, toward the small, protected harbor. The temperature was going down, nightfall coming earlier and earlier. He could feel the bite of winter in the air. Luke’d be heading south soon. Teddy didn’t have any firm plans, but he had no intention of spending another winter in Maine.

“I think your instincts about our Special Agent McGrath are on target,” Teddy said. “The guy’s trouble. I don’t care if the old cemeteries around here are full of his ancestors, he’s here because there’s an unsolved murder.”

“It’s been bad enough having the state investigators snooping—” Luke sighed. “I should have thrown you off my boat that night you showed up here.”

Teddy knew he wasn’t referring to the night a week ago when Luke had asked Teddy to keep an eye on McGrath, and Zoe if she came back, but to a night more than a year ago. “But you didn’t, did you?” Teddy walked backward off his rock. “You sold me a gun you weren’t supposed to sell me.”

“What’s your game, Shelton?” Luke’s voice was low, not so arrogant now. A touch of fear in it. “Because if you’re playing me—”

“Relax. Go hump Nurse Betsy. I’ll stay in touch.”

Teddy clicked off. He felt almost smug—that’d teach the bastard to try to get the upper hand with him. He went back up to the cottage, a one-bedroom with cracked linoleum and cheap furnishings, and got his truck keys and headed out. He almost ran into Bruce’s truck on its way out from the lobster pound. Teddy waved. The guy was amazing. His first instinct was to like people. He was totally undiscriminating. It’d never occur to him his buddy Teddy had an illegal arsenal in the jump seat. Grenades, semiautomatic assault weapons, so-called large capacity feeding devices.

Nah, not Bruce. He was oblivious.

Bruce slowed to a crawl and stuck his head out his window. “You play darts? Come by Perry’s later. Maybe you can beat the FBI agent.”

Teddy didn’t know what to say. “Okay. Yeah, I’ll see you later.”

* * *

Zoe drove out to a market south of town and bought staples, like bread, juice, milk and cereal, then stopped at a farm store for local produce—Cortland apples, butternut squash, potatoes, carrots, fall spinach. She bought a jug of apple cider and a half-dozen cider doughnuts, eating one on the way back through the village.

She stopped at her childhood home, now her sister’s home, and let the engine idle while she gripped the wheel with both hands and thought about the break-in. Her father had insisted on locks on the doors. He was chief of police. He wasn’t going to make it easy for anyone to just walk in. He’d once stopped by Olivia’s with a lock for her porch door, but she distracted him with some other project—locks made her feel like she was in prison. One was enough. The logic of having locks on both her doors defeated her.

“Oh, Christ...”

The tears came out of nowhere. Zoe breathed in through her nose, trying to get control of herself. It’d been a year, and she still missed them both, her father, her great-aunt. They’d always been there. The rocks of her life. Her anchors. Everything they’d ever wanted in life was right here. She could talk Washington, D.C., and world events and federal law enforcement with Stick Monroe—with her dad and Aunt Olivia, it had always been about Goose Harbor.

Zoe wiped her cheeks with her fingertips and ate another cider doughnut.

Maybe if she stayed in town, she could make her peace with not knowing who’d killed her father, or why, or if Olivia’s death was in any way related.

I know who killed him.

“Ah, Aunt Olivia. Where’s Jen Periwinkle when we need her?”

Jen used her wits to distinguish good clues from bad clues—and there were always clues. The police had Patrick West’s body and the two bullets that had killed him. That was all.

Zoe pushed back her thoughts, her overwhelming sense of grief, and instead of driving back through town and fighting the leaf-peepers, she took the tangle of back streets, passing inns and summer houses, smaller homes owned by year-round locals, until she came out on Ocean Drive just above the nature preserve named for her great-aunt.

She turned onto a gravel road and drove a hundred yards to a parking area and visitors’ center amid a pine grove. This time she got out of her car. The air was cooler here, a slight breeze stirring. She looked up at the pine needles etched against the cloudless blue of the sky, heard birds in the distance—it was migrating season for hawks.

The preserve’s self-guided trails were open from dawn until dusk. Zoe found herself on the wide, three-mile gravel loop trail. She’d come out here to run ever since she was a teenager. After she’d resigned from the state police, she’d run the loop trail every day to train for the FBI Academy. She remembered how excited she was about her future, how her life had seemed to stretch before her. Now she didn’t know what would come next. It was enough to plan dinner. She sometimes wondered if that was why she’d responded to the rhythms of the Jericho farm, milking and feeding the goats, harvesting the garden. Even with knitting, she had to stay focused on the present.

She passed interpretive signs describing the wildlife and plant life, the geology of southern Maine’s curving coastline and broad stretches of beaches, the cluster of three small offshore islands with their tricky currents and narrow passages. There were benches for birdwatching and scenic views, but she didn’t stop for anything.

The bright yellow leaves of a dozen thin birch trees told her she was close to Stewart’s Cove. She slowed her pace, her throat tightening with tension, anticipation. It was late in the afternoon, and most of the tourists had left. She was aware that she was alone, possibly no one even within shouting distance.

Except for J. B. McGrath.

He was standing on a flat, wet rock that would be covered soon as the tide rose. It was about three yards from where she’d found her father.

“It’s a beautiful spot,” he said.

She nodded tightly, fighting the images of a year ago. Her father sprawled on his stomach. His blood had seeped into the wet sand and shallow water of the rising tide.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I saw your car and followed you. I came around the other way—I didn’t expect to beat you here.” His smile was surprisingly gentle. “No need for a sharp stick.”

She edged closer to the water. The wind caught her in the face, and she wished she’d worn a jacket. She crossed her arms over her chest and tried to focus on the cresting waves out beyond the mouth of the small cove. J.B. didn’t move from his rock. She let her gaze settle on him, realized he was a good-looking man, rugged, sexy, undoubtedly an independent type if he’d survived as an FBI undercover agent for any length of time.

“First time you’ve been back here?” he asked quietly.

She nodded. “It’s a beautiful spot. So peaceful. My father was trying to lower his blood pressure and cholesterol, so he’d taken up walking before work. But he was in uniform. CID’s inclined to think he was meeting someone, either here in the preserve or shortly after his walk. He stopped at Aunt Olivia’s that morning. She was always up early.”

“Did you have a chance to ask her what they discussed?”

“Her revised obituary. Dad thought she was morbid.”

J.B. smiled and moved off his rock, his shoes sinking into the wet sand. He joined her on the packed, dry sand of the short stretch of beach. “I understand the police don’t believe his body was moved. He was shot here.”

“The shooter could have come in by boat or by land—it wouldn’t be hard to stay concealed. At that hour, lobster boats would be out or heading out, but they’re in deep water this time of year.” She sighed, bile rising in her throat, and she wished she hadn’t eaten so much, could feel the pie and doughnuts churning in her stomach. “It’s not for me to investigate my father’s death. That was made clear to me last fall.”

“You run roughshod over everyone?”

“I just wanted answers. At first people understood, but when the investigation stalled—” She broke off, dropping her hands to her sides. “It wasn’t an easy time. In CID’s place, I’d have done the same thing. I’d resigned. I was on my way to Quantico.”

“Losing your father and aunt the way you did must have pulled the rug out from under your life. I’m sorry.” He shifted away from her, and for the first time she noticed the three-inch scar on his jaw, just below his left ear. He’d been a split second from becoming the subject of a murder investigation himself. But he glanced back at her and asked, “Teddy Shelton—you know him?”

His question caught her by surprise. “Not really. He worked at the lobster pound last summer—I think he’s renting a cottage from Bruce. Why?”

“He popped up on my radar screen today. It’s probably nothing. You must want some time here on your own. I’ll see you around.”

Zoe didn’t stop him. She’d get his Teddy Shelton story out of him later. He walked back up to the trail, falling in with a trio of seniors, and she didn’t move until they were out of sight. Then, shivering in the chilly ocean air, she sat on a three-foot boulder and watched the tide slowly roll in, the two smallest islands visible offshore, just the northern tip of the largest, Sutherland Island, visible. They were mostly rock and evergreens, but their rugged look was deceptive. Their thin soil actually made them very fragile, easily damaged by careless hikers and kayakers. Luke Castellane’s father, Hollywood director Victor Castellane, had bought Sutherland Island years ago—the nature preserve wanted to add it to its onshore acreage.

Zoe stared at the short stretch of beach, not breathing, seeing herself a year ago when she realized there was no hope, her father was dead. She hadn’t known if the shooter was still nearby, if she was in danger, but she hadn’t been able to make herself respond like a law enforcement officer—it was her father dead before her.

She could still feel the water seeping into her running shoes as she ran out into the cove, screaming at a lobster boat down toward Sutherland Island. It turned out to be Bruce Young’s.

It occurred to her then and had stuck with her for the past year that her father’s murder had something to do with her. Was she supposed to find his body? It was no secret she ran in the preserve. Had she told him something in the weeks before that ultimately got him killed? Had a case she worked on when she was with the state police come back to haunt not her, but her father?

In the first weeks of the investigation, the state detectives had looked into all those possibilities. But there was nothing—no lead, no potential lead—that connected back to her.

So, what about Teddy Shelton?

She doubted it took much to pop up on McGrath’s radar screen, but still.

She leaped suddenly up off the boulder, as if she’d been bitten by a spider, but it was just nervous energy, restlessness. She’d spent the last two months milking goats and knitting. Why hadn’t she come back here sooner? She was convinced now, just as she was a year ago, that the answers to her father’s murder didn’t lie outside of Goose Harbor. They were here, in her hometown.

I know who did it....

Then again, maybe she was letting herself be misled by a dying old woman’s ramblings.

“Damn.”

She took a breath and walked back up to the trail. The three-hundred-acre preserve was her aunt’s legacy, as much as her Jen Periwinkle novels were. Olivia had had a long, good life. It was some consolation. Her father’s was cut short, in midlife. He hadn’t even had a chance to fight back. For him, Zoe’s only consolation was that he hadn’t suffered—the coroner said he’d most likely died almost instantly.

The first murder in Goose Harbor in thirty years.

She glanced back at the cove, the afternoon light waning as the tide washed over the sand and rock. There were worse places to die.

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