Whiskey Beach

Chapter Twenty-one

AT THE END OF A LONG DAY—TWO CLASSES, A MASSIVE cleaning job and a pair of massages—Abra pulled up to her cottage.

And just sat.

She didn’t want to go in. She hated knowing she didn’t want to go inside her own home, tend to her own things, use her own shower.

She loved Laughing Gull, and had from the first instant she’d seen it. She wanted that feeling back, the pride, the comfort, the rightness of it, and all she felt was dread.

He’d spoiled it, whoever the hell he was, coming into her home, leaving his violence and death behind. A monster in the closet, in the form of a gun.

It left her two choices, she told herself. Let the monster win—give up, sit and brood. Or fight back and fix it.

Put that way, she decided, there wasn’t a choice at all.

She shoved out of the car, muscled out her table, her bag, carted them both to the door. Inside, she leaned her table against the wall before carrying her bag into the living room.

Driving nearly twenty miles up the coast to buy the smudge stick had added onto her already crowded day, but when she took it out of her bag it felt like a positive action.

She’d burn the sage, cleanse her house. If she felt her house was cleansed, it was cleansed. And once she’d reclaimed her place, she’d get serious about adding a little greenhouse so she could grow her own herbs in bigger quantities. She’d make her own damn smudge sticks, and have fresh herbs year-round for cooking.

Maybe she’d sell them, too. Another enterprise. Create her own potpourri and sachets.

Something to think about.

But for now she did her best to clear her mind, to think only clean, positive thoughts as she lit the sage, held it over an abalone shell for safety and blew out the flame to encourage the smoke. Her home, she thought. The floors, the ceilings, the corners belonged to her.

The process, walking from room to room with the scent of white sage and lavender, calmed her, as did reminding herself what she’d made there, for herself, for others.

Faith, she thought, hope, and the symbols of them forged strength.

Once she’d finished the house, she stepped out onto her little patio, gently waving the smudge stick to send all that hope and faith into the air.

And saw Eli and the dog walking up the beach steps.

It made her feel a little foolish, standing there with her smoking sage as evening settled over the beach, as the man and the happy-faced dog climbed toward her.

To compensate, she stuck the smudge stick in the river rocks around her little Zen fountain where it would burn away naturally and safely.

“What a handsome couple.” Smile in place, she walked over to greet them. “And a nice surprise. I just got home a few minutes ago.”

“What’re you doing?”

“Oh.” She glanced as he did at the smudge stick. “Just a little homey ritual. Kind of a spring cleaning.”

“Burning sage? That’s a ward-off-evil-spirits kind of thing.”

“I think of it as more a clearing out negativity. Did your family get off all right this morning?”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry I couldn’t stay to see them off. Busy day for me.”

Something wrong, she thought, or something not quite right. All she wanted at that moment was quiet, peace and—a rarity for her—solitude. “I still have a lot to catch up on,” she continued. “Why don’t I stop by in the morning before my class, get your shopping list? I can pick up what you need before I come back to do the house.”

“What I need is for you to tell me why I had to hear from Mike that someone put a gun in your house, that the police were here searching. That’s what I need.”

“I didn’t want to bring it up with your family here. I called the police,” she added.

“But not me. You didn’t call me, or tell me.”

“Eli, there wasn’t anything you could do, and with a houseful of people—”

“That’s bullshit.”

Her hackles tingled. The comfort she’d found from the ritual struck against his anger, her own, flint against steel.

“It’s not, and there was no point in me walking into Bluff House on Saturday announcing I’d just found a murder weapon in my incense box and had cops tromping all over my house.”

“There was every point in telling me. Or there damn sure should have been.”

“Well, I don’t agree. And it was my problem, my decision.”

“Your problem?” Insult punched through temper. “That’s how it is? You can come into my place with pots of soup, massage tables, Jesus, dogs. You can walk in, in the middle of the night, to close a f*cking window and fight off an assault, but when somebody plants a gun on you, tries to implicate you in a murder, it’s your problem? A murder most likely connected to me. But that’s none of my business?”

“I didn’t say that.” Even to her own ears the defense sounded weak. “I didn’t mean that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I didn’t want to dump all this on you and your family.”

“You’re in this because you’re involved with me. And you pushed and wheedled your way in.”

“Pushed and wheedled?” Her own insult bloomed so bright and hot, she whirled away to try to capture some of the smoke, and the calm, then immediately decided she’d have needed a smudge stick the size of Whiskey Beach Light to manage it. “Wheedled?”

“Damn right you did, from the minute I came back here. Now you’re in, and you don’t want to dump? You don’t give anybody else a chance to dump. You’re there with the shovel before the first clod hits the ground. But when it falls on you, you don’t trust me enough to help.”

“God. God! It isn’t about trust. It’s about timing.”

“If that were true, you’d have found the time to tell me. You found it to tell Maureen.”

“She was—”

“Instead of finding the time, you’re up here lighting sage on fire and waving around a smoking stick.”

“Don’t make fun of my process.”

“I don’t care if you burn a field of sage or sacrifice a chicken. I care you didn’t tell me you were in trouble.”

“I’m not in trouble. The police know it wasn’t my gun. I called Vinnie the minute I found it.”

“But not me.”

“No.” She sighed, wondering how trying to do the right thing could go so horribly wrong. “I didn’t.”

“My family left this morning, but you didn’t tell me. You weren’t going to tell me now.”

“I needed to wave my smoking stick around and get comfortable in my house again. It’s getting cold. I want to go in.”

“Fine. Go in and pack a bag.”

“Eli, I just want to be alone and quiet.”

“You can be alone and quiet at Bluff House. It’s a big place. You’re not staying here by yourself until this whole goddamn mess is over.”

“This is my house.” Her eyes stung, and she wished she could blame it on the thinning, sluggish smoke. “I’m not letting some bastard drive me out of my house.”

“Then we’ll bunk here.”

“I don’t want you to bunk here.”

“If you don’t want us in, we’ll stay out here, but we stay.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” She turned on her heel, strode back inside. She said nothing when he, with a slightly hesitant Barbie, followed her in.

Instead she went straight into the kitchen, poured herself a glass from an uncorked bottle of Shiraz.

“I know how to take care of myself.”

“No question. You know how to take care of yourself and everybody else. You don’t know how, apparently, to let someone take care of you. That’s conceit.”

She slapped the glass on the counter. “It’s independence and capability.”

“To a point, it is. Then it tips over into conceit, and stubbornness. You’ve tipped. This wasn’t like you had a leaky pipe, so you grabbed a wrench or called a plumber instead of the guy you’re sleeping with. Add the guy you’re sleeping with is involved with this whole clusterf*ck. And he’s a lawyer.”

“I called a lawyer,” she said, then immediately wished she hadn’t.

“Great. Good.” Eli shoved his hands in his pockets, paced a couple of circles. “So you talked to the cops, a lawyer, your neighbors. Anybody else other than me, of course.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t want to spoil your family’s visit. It seemed pointless for you, or any of you, to worry.”

“You were worried.”

“I needed to . . . Yes, all right. Yes, I’ve been worried.”

“I need you to tell me everything that happened, in detail. I need you to tell me what you said to the police, what they said to you. Everything you can remember.”

“Because you’re a lawyer.”

The long, quiet look he sent her accomplished what words didn’t. It made her feel foolish. It made her feel wrong.

“Because we’re involved.” His tone, quiet as the look, finished the job. “Because this started with me or with Bluff House, or both. And because I’m a lawyer.”

“All right. I’ll pack first.” When he lifted his eyebrows, she shrugged. “It’s too cold for you to sleep outside. And I know he’s got no reason to come back here again. He has reasons to break into Bluff House again. Or it feels like it. So I’ll pack some things and go with you.”

Compromise? he wondered. Isn’t this what his grandmother had spoken of? That give-and-take on both sides to find a balance.

“Good.”

When she walked away, he picked up her unfinished wine. “We won that battle,” he told Barbie. “But I don’t think we’ve won the war. Yet.”

He let her have quiet on the drive down, and stayed downstairs when she went up to unpack. If she put her things in another bedroom, he’d deal with it later. For now, it was enough to know she was with him, and safe.

In the kitchen, he poked in the fridge, the freezer. Leftover ham, he calculated, and plenty of sides. Even he should be able to put a decent enough meal together.

By the time she came down, he had the Monday night hodgepodge meal set up in the breakfast area.

“You can fill me in while we eat.”

“All right.” She sat, oddly comforted when Barbie elected to curl up by her feet instead of Eli’s. “I’m sorry I made you feel I didn’t trust you. That wasn’t it.”

“It’s part of it, but we’ll get into that later. Tell me exactly what happened. Step by step.”

His response only dampened her already soggy mood. “I wanted to meditate,” she began, and told him everything in as precise a manner as she could.

“You never touched the gun?”

“No. It fell when I dropped the box, and I left it there.”

“As far as you know, they didn’t find any prints that shouldn’t have been there?”

“No, just the fibers.”

“And the police haven’t contacted you since?”

“Vinnie called me today, just to check in. He said they should have the ballistic results tomorrow or Wednesday, but more likely Wednesday.”

“What about the gun itself? Was it registered?”

“He didn’t tell me. I think he has to be careful what he says to me. But they know it wasn’t mine. I’ve never owned a gun. I’ve never even held a gun. And if it was the gun used to kill Kirby Duncan, they know I was here, with you.”

Handily covering each other, Eli thought. Just what would Wolfe make of that? “What did your lawyer say?”

“To call him if they wanted to question me again, and that he’d contact Detective Corbett directly. I’m not worried about being a murder suspect. Nobody thinks I killed Duncan.”

“I could’ve planted the gun in your place.”

“That would be stupid, which you’re not.”

“I could be using you for sex and patsy potential.”

For the first time in what felt like hours, she smiled. “No more sex if you make me your patsy. And that’s just not logical as it only turns the light back on, makes them look at you again. Which is exactly what whoever did plant it wanted, and why they suddenly made that anonymous call to Wolfe. The fact is, really, all this reeks of setup, and Corbett’s not an idiot.”

“No, I don’t think he is. But there’s another angle. It’s possible you’ve had contact with the killer three times now. Here, in the bar and now with him planting the gun at your cottage. That’s something to worry about, and you know it. You’re not an idiot either.”

“I can’t do anything about that but be careful.”

“You could leave, go visit your mother for a while. You won’t,” he added before she could speak. “And I don’t blame you. But it’s an option. Another option is to trust me.”

Hearing him say it, knowing she’d given him cause to say it, made her absolutely miserable. “Eli, I do trust you.”

“Not where it gets sticky, you don’t. I don’t know if I blame you for that, either. Men have let you down. Your father. It’s one thing for it not to work out between him and your mother, but he’s still your father. And he chose not to be one, not to be a real part of your life. He let you down.”

“I don’t dwell on it.”

“That’s healthy of you, but it’s there.”

When he let that hang in the air, she admitted defeat. “Yes, it’s there. I don’t really matter to him, and never have. I don’t dwell on it, but it’s there.”

“You don’t dwell because it’s unproductive, and you like to produce.”

“Interesting way to put it.” Her lips curved again. “And true.”

“And you don’t dwell because you know it’s his loss. Then there’s the bastard who hurt you. That’s letting you down big-time. You cared about him, trusted him, let him in, then he turned on you. He violated you.”

“As bad as that was, if it hadn’t happened, I might not be here.”

“Positive attitude. Kudos. But it happened. You gave someone your trust and they broke it. Why wouldn’t it happen again?”

“I don’t think that way. I don’t live that way.”

“You lead an open, energetic, satisfying life that I often find amazing. The kind that takes spine and heart. It’s admirable. You don’t lean easily, and that’s admirable, too, until it gets to the point where you could lean, where you should, and you won’t.”

“I would’ve told you if your family hadn’t been here.” Then she accepted, and told the whole truth. “I probably would’ve put it off for a while. I might’ve told myself you keep getting hammered, and there was no point adding to that until I knew more or it had been resolved in some way. I might have. But that’s not about trust.”

“Pity?”

“Concern. And my own confidence. I don’t like the word ‘conceit.’ I needed to take care of myself, make decisions, handle problems and, yes, maybe take on other people’s problems to build up the confidence Derrick shattered. I need to know I can take care of things when there’s no one to depend on but myself.”

“And when there is someone else to depend on?”

Maybe he was right again, and that was where it got sticky. And maybe it was time for a little self-evaluation.

“I don’t know, Eli, I just don’t know the answer because I haven’t given myself that choice in a long time. And still, I leaned on you that night, after I was attacked. I leaned, and you didn’t let me down.”

“I can’t get involved again with someone who won’t give as much as she takes, take as much as she gives. I found out, the hard way, if you do you end up empty-handed and bitter. I guess we both have to decide how much we can give, how much we can take.”

“I hurt you because I didn’t reach out.”

“Yeah, you did. And you pissed me off. And you made me think.” He rose, picking up dishes. Neither of them had done justice to the meal. “I let Lindsay down.”

“No, Eli.”

“Yeah, I did. Our marriage might’ve been a mistake, but we were in it together. Neither of us got what we wanted or expected out of it. At the end, I couldn’t stop what happened to her. I still don’t know if she’s dead because of some choice I made, choices we made together, or just some random piece of bad luck.

“I let my grandmother down, going longer and longer between times coming here, or seeing her at all. She didn’t deserve that. We almost lost her, too. Would it have happened if I’d spent more time here, if I came here to stay with her after Lindsay’s murder?”

“You’re the center of the universe now? You want to talk conceit?”

“No, but I know, I know I’m somewhere in the center of this, and all of it’s connected.”

He turned to her, didn’t go to her, didn’t touch her, but stood with that space between them.

“I’m telling you, Abra, I’m not going to let you down. I’m going to do everything, whether you like it or not, whether you sleep with me or not, to make sure nothing happens to you. And when this is done, I guess we’ll see where we are, and where we go from there.”

Because she felt a little boxed in, she rose. “I’ll do the dishes.”

“I’ve got it.”

“Balance, or as you said, give-and-take,” she reminded him. “You fixed the meal, I clean up.”

“Okay. I want a copy of your schedule.”

She felt, literally, prickles of warning at the back of her neck. “Eli, it changes. That’s the beauty of it.”

“I want to know where you are when you’re not here. I’m not a goddamn stalker. It’s not about keeping tabs or trying to sew you in.”

She put the plate she was holding on the counter, took a breath. “I want to say I didn’t think that, or mean that. And I also realize something I didn’t until today, until all this. I realize I brought more baggage with me from D.C. than I thought. I think—hope—it’s down to a small hand tote. I hope I’ll figure out how to toss that out.”

“It takes time.”

“I thought I’d finished the time, but apparently not quite. So . . .” She lifted the plate again, slid it into the dishwasher rack. “I’m here most of the day. I have my morning class, church basement, and I have a massage at four-thirty. Greta Parrish.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

She finished loading the dishwasher, began to wipe off the counters. “You haven’t touched me, not once since you came up the steps to my cottage. Why is that? Because you’re mad?”

“Maybe some, but mostly because I don’t know how you feel about it.”

Her eyes met his, held. “How do I know how I feel about you touching me if you don’t?”

He brushed a hand down her arm first, then turned her toward him. Drew her in.

She dropped the rag on the counter, locked her arms around him.

“I’m sorry. I was holding things back, holding things in. But . . . Oh God, Eli, he was in my house. He went through my things. He touched my things. Derrick went through my things. He touched my things, broke things while he waited for me to come home.”

“He won’t hurt you.” Eli pressed his lips to her temple. “I won’t let him hurt you.”

“I have to get past it. I have to.”

“You will.” But not alone. Not without him.

When she left the next morning, he told himself not to worry. Not only was the church less than two miles away, but he couldn’t think of a single reason for anyone to harm her.

She’d be back by mid-morning, and once he knew she was safely in the house, he could work. With his mind too busy to slide into the story, he went down to the basement, spent nearly an hour unloading the shelves, walking them back.

It took more time to open the panel from the basement side, and once he had, he decided to oil the hinges.

The creak added interesting atmosphere, but should he want to surprise anyone, silence served. Armed with a flashlight and a box of lightbulbs, he worked his way through the passage, testing each light, moving on, until he’d reached the third floor.

Once he’d oiled those hinges, he considered, then angled a chair in front of the panel, checked to make sure he could open and close it again, then backtracked.

He repositioned the shelves, again tested so he could easily move around them, in or out of the panel. Then he reloaded them.

Camouflage, he thought, should he want or need it.

Trap set, or nearly. All he needed was the hook and the bait.

Since working in the passages transferred dust, grime, he changed, washed up, then spent some time checking out video cameras and nanny cams on the Internet.

He was pouring himself his first Mountain Dew of the day when Abra came in with her market bags.

“Hi!” She dumped the bags, reached into one. “Look what I got you!” She turned to Barbie with a big rawhide bone. “This is for a good dog. Have you been a good dog?”

Barbie slapped her butt to the ground.

“I thought so. Have you been a good boy?” she asked Eli as she unsealed the bone.

“Do I have to sit on the floor?”

“I got makings for my lasagna, which is legendary, and for tiramisu.”

“You can make tiramisu?”

“We’re going to find out. I’ve decided to have a good feeling about today, and part—a good part—of the reason is balance. Or knowing we’re working on finding a balance. Another?” Now she wrapped her arms around Eli for a squeeze. “I found out you don’t hold grudges.”

“I can hold grudges with the best of them,” he countered. “But not against somebody I care about.”

“Grudges are negative energy turned inward, so I like knowing you can let go. And speaking of negative energy, I stopped by my cottage, and it felt better. Not all the way back, but it felt better.”

“Due to a smelly smoking stick?”

She drilled a finger in his belly. “It worked for me.”

“I’m glad, and sincerely hope you’re not thinking we need a couple of cases of smelly smoking sticks to offset the negative energy in Bluff House.”

“It couldn’t hurt, but we can talk about that later.”

Much, much later, he also sincerely hoped.

“Are you going to work now? I’ll just strip the bed and grab the laundry, then I’ll stay out of your way until you break.”

“Fine. But I want to show you something first.”

“Sure. What?”

“Up.” He jerked a thumb at the ceiling before taking her hand. “You missed a spot.”

“I did not.” Automatically insulted, she picked up her pace as they went upstairs.

“A really big spot,” he added. “Up.”

“Third level? I only do that once a month. Just vacuum and dust. If you wanted it back in use, you should have—”

“Not that. Not exactly. I’m thinking about moving my office up there, though, into the south gable.”

“Eli, that’s a fabulous idea.”

“Yeah, I’m playing with it. Great light, great view from there. Really quiet. Too bad I don’t paint or sculpt because the old servants’ hall would be a hell of a studio.”

“I’ve thought the same. One of the beach-facing bedrooms would be a wonderful little library—like for your reference books, a kind of library/sitting room when you wanted to take a break but not actually stop work.”

He hadn’t thought that far, but . . . “Maybe.”

“I could help you set it up if you decide to do it. Oh, these wonderful ceilings. So much potential, and I’ve always thought it was a shame not to use the whole house. Hester told me she used it years ago to paint, but found she worked better in her own sitting room, and best of all outside. It’d be hard on her to do two flights of stairs in any case.”

“The whole house is exactly what I’m thinking of using again.” He walked over, opened the panel.

“Oh! My God, this is fabulous. Just look at this.” She dashed over to do just that. “This is so utterly cool.”

“The lights work.” He demonstrated. “Now. And it goes all the way to the basement. I moved the shelves out so the panel works down there.”

“I would’ve played princess warrior in these as a kid.”

“Really?” And he found he could picture it perfectly. “See, you missed a big spot.”

“I’ll get on that, if you make sure any spiders bigger than a housefly are dispatched first. You should open up all the panels.”

“I’m thinking about it.”

“To think of all the times I’ve cleaned in here and never realized this existed. It’s . . . He doesn’t know about this.” Eyes alight, she looked at Eli. “He doesn’t know.”

“I don’t think so. He sure as hell hasn’t used it. It took Mike and I and a lot of sweat to move that armoire. And it took me over an hour working alone to move the shelves out far enough to get through.”

“Laying an ambush. Eli—”

“I’m thinking about that, too.”

“Proactive instead of defensive.” Hands fisted on her hips, she strode around the room. “I knew this was going to be a good day. We can do something. We could catch him in the act.”

“I’m thinking about it. It’s not as simple as jumping out and saying boo. If the simplest explanation is also true, he’s not just an intruder. He’s a murderer. We don’t just jump into this.”

“We plan,” she agreed. “I think creatively when I clean. So I’ll get started, and we’ll both think.”

“And we wait to hear from the cops.”

“Oh yeah.” She deflated a little. “I guess we do. Maybe they’ll trace the gun and this will all be done. It would be better that way. Not as exciting, but realistically better is better.”

“Whatever happens, I won’t let you down.”

“Eli.” She took his face in her hands. “Let’s make a new pact, and promise not to let each other down.”

“That’s a deal.”