Whiskey Beach

Chapter Eight

ELI MADE IT FROM BOSTON TO WHISKEY BEACH IN UNDER two hours. He’d driven in then out of the teeth of the storm as it blew south. The twenty-minute hell he’d navigated in its center helped keep his mind focused.

Just drive, he’d told himself. And don’t think outside of the car and the road.

Little fingers of fog swirled up from the road as he barreled through the village. Streetlights threw out wavery beams to glisten on puddles, on streams snaking into gutters, then he was out of the lights, away from the storefronts and restaurants and taking the curve on the beach road.

He yanked the wheel, swung to the shoulder in front of Laughing Gull. Even as he strode toward the narrow front porch, the door in the neighboring cottage opened.

“Eli?”

He didn’t know the man who stepped out, dragging on a light jacket as he crossed the short patch of lawn.

“Mike O’Malley,” he said as he held out a hand. “I’ve been keeping an eye out for you.

The voice on the phone, of course. “Abra.”

“She’s with us.” He gestured toward his house. “She’s okay—mostly it just shook her up. There are a couple cops down at Bluff House. You’ll want to talk to them. I—”

“Later. I want to see Abra.”

“Back in the kitchen.” Mike led the way.

“Did he hurt her?”

“Shook her up,” Mike repeated, “scared her. He had her in a chokehold so she’s a little raw. But it looks like she hurt him a lot more than he did her. He gave her some bruises, but she made him bleed.”

Eli registered the pride in Mike’s voice, assumed it was meant to be reassuring. But he wanted to see for himself. Needed to see.

He heard her voice as they turned out of a cozy living room and into a wide-open kitchen/great room. She sat at a table in a baggy blue hooded sweatshirt, thick pink socks on her feet. She looked up, a combination of sympathy and apology on her face. Surprise replaced it when he knelt at her feet, took her hands.

“Where’s the ring?”

“Shut up.” He scanned her face, then lifted his fingers, gently, to the raw marks on her neck. “Where else are you hurt?”

“I’m not.” Her hands squeezed his, in gratitude, in reassurance. “I’m not. He scared me.”

Eli looked to Maureen for corroboration.

“She’s okay. If I didn’t think that, she’d be in the ER, whether she liked it or not.” Maureen pushed up, gestured toward the coffeepot and whiskey bottle that stood side by side. “Which do you want, or a combination thereof?”

“Coffee. Thanks.”

“I’m sorry we had to call you, sorry we had to upset your family,” Abra began.

“They’re not upset. I told them the power was out, and I wanted to come back and check on things. I’d decided to come back tonight anyway.”

“Good. There’s no point in them worrying. I don’t know if anything was taken,” Abra continued. “The police said nothing looked out of place, but what do they know? These two wouldn’t let me go down and walk through. Maureen’s pretty scary when she’s in protective mode.”

“If there was a burglary and something was taken, what would you do about it?” Maureen stopped, held up her hands to Eli. “Sorry. We’ve been in that loop for the last half hour.” She handed Eli coffee. Before she could offer milk or sugar, he downed half of it black.

“I’ll go down, talk to the cops, take a look.”

“I’ll go with you. First,” Abra said when Maureen started to protest, “I defended myself, didn’t I? Second, I’ll have police and Eli. Third, I know more about what’s in the house and where it goes than anybody but Hester. Who isn’t here. And last?”

She rose, hugged Maureen fiercely. “Thanks, not only for the socks, but for looking out for me. Thanks.” She turned to hug Mike in turn.

“Come back here and sleep in the guest room,” Maureen insisted.

“Sweetie, the only reason that a*shole was interested in me was because I came into the house when he thought he had it to himself. He’s not going to come sneaking into mine. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“I’ll make sure she’s all right,” Eli said. “Thanks for the coffee . . . and everything else.”

“She’s got Mom worry genes,” Abra told him when she stepped outside with Eli. “We all know this wasn’t about me.”

“You were the one attacked, so it’s very much about you. I’m driving.”

“I’ll follow you in my car, otherwise you’ll just have to drive me back.”

“That’s right.” He took her arm, steered her to his car.

“Fine. Everyone’s got Mom worry genes tonight.”

“Tell me what happened. Mike didn’t give me the details.”

“When the storm rolled in, I couldn’t remember if I’d closed all your windows. I aired out the house today, and couldn’t remember if I closed the window in Hester’s gym. It nagged at me, so I went down to check. Oh, I took a container of turkey stew—with dumplings—down while I was at it.”

“Speaking of Mom genes.”

“I prefer ‘helpful-neighbor genes.’ The power was out. I feel stupid now as I didn’t think twice about it, or the fact that it hadn’t been out in the area, at least not five seconds earlier. I was just annoyed. I used my little flashlight to go back to the kitchen, got a bigger one.”

She let out a huff of breath. “I didn’t hear anything, didn’t feel anything, which pisses me off as I like to think I’ve got this little sixth sense thing going on. Major fail on that tonight. So, I went upstairs, and of course I had closed the window. Then I came down again, nixed the idea of going into the basement to see if I could get that old generator running, which even eliminating spiders, dark, spooky, I don’t know the first thing about generators. Then he had me.”

“From behind.”

“Yes. There was thunder, and the rain and wind, but still I hate knowing I didn’t hear or feel anything until he grabbed me. After my initial panic, kicking, clawing at his arm—”

“Skin or cloth?”

“Cloth.” Little details, she acknowledged. The former criminal attorney would think of them, just as the police had. “Wool, I think. Soft wool. A sweater or coat. My mind wasn’t that sharp as my air supply was cut off. Lucky for me, without consciously thinking I went into defense mode. I taught some classes on it. SING. That’s—”

“I know what it is. You remembered how to use it?”

“Some part of me did. I told the police this already,” she said when he pulled up at Bluff House. “I jammed back with my elbow, and it took him by surprise. And hurt him, at least a little, enough his grip loosened some because I could breathe. I stomped on his foot, which probably didn’t hurt as much as throw him off since I was wearing Uggs. Then I swung around and aimed toward his face. I couldn’t see it in the dark, but had the sense of it. Heel of the hand. Then the coup de grâce.”

“Knee to the balls.”

“And I know that hurt him. I didn’t really register it at the time as I was running like a maniac for the door, for my car, but I’m pretty sure I heard him go down. And the nose shot worked, too, because he bled on me.”

“You’re pretty calm about it.”

“Now. You didn’t see me curled up in Maureen’s arms crying like a baby.”

But the idea of it tightened every muscle in his body. “I’m sorry about this, Abra.”

“Me, too. But it’s not your fault, and it’s not mine.” She got out of the car, smiled at the deputy who approached. “Hi, Vinnie. Eli, this is Deputy Hanson.”

“Eli. You probably don’t remember me.”

“Yeah, I do.” The hair was shorter, and brown rather than bleached blond, the face fuller. But Eli remembered. “Surfer dude.”

Vinnie laughed. “Still am when I can grab a board and a wave. Sorry for the trouble here.”

“So am I. How did he get in?”

“He cut the power. Shorted it out, and jimmied the side door—the one going into the laundry room. So he knew or suspected there was an alarm. Abra said you left late this morning, went into Boston.”

“That’s right.”

“So your car wasn’t here all day, into the evening. You can take a look around, see if there’s anything missing. We called the power company, but they’re probably not going to get on this until tomorrow.”

“Soon enough.”

“We didn’t find any vandalism,” Vinnie continued as he led the way. “We got some blood on the floor right in the foyer, and on Abra’s pajama top and hoodie. It’s enough for DNA if he’s in the system, or if we get him. But that’s not going to be quick.”

He opened the front door, shone his light, then picked up the flashlight Abra had dropped and he’d already set on a table in the foyer.

“We get a break-in now and then, on rental cottages empty during the off season. But that’s mostly kids looking for a place to hang out, have sex, smoke dope or, at worst, vandalize or steal some electronics. This doesn’t look like kids. None of the local boys would risk Bluff House, for one thing.”

“Kirby Duncan. Boston PI. He’s been poking around, asking questions about me.”

“It wasn’t him,” Abra said, but Vinnie took out his book, noted down the name.

“It was dark. You didn’t see his face.”

“No, but I had an up-close-and-personal with his build. Duncan’s soft in the middle, paunchy, and this man wasn’t. And Duncan’s shorter, more beefy.”

“Still.” Vinnie tucked his book away again. “We’ll talk to him.”

“He’s at Surfside B-and-B. I poked around,” Abra explained.

“We’ll check it out. There’s some easily portable valuables in the house, and electronics. You’ve got a nice laptop upstairs, there’s flat-screen TVs. I imagine Ms. Hester’s got jewelry in a safe. Maybe you had some cash sitting around?”

“Yeah, some.” Eli took the kitchen flashlight, started upstairs. He checked the office first, booted up his laptop.

If Duncan had been after anything, he suspected it would be a look at his personal e-mail, files, Web history. So he ran a quick diagnostic.

“Nothing since I shut it down this morning. That shows.” He opened drawers, shook his head. “It doesn’t look like anything’s been gone through. And nothing’s missing in here.”

Eli walked out and into his bedroom. He opened a drawer, saw the couple hundred in cash he kept for easy access. “If he was up here,” Eli said as he shone the light, turned a circle, “he left everything just the way I did.”

“It could be Abra interrupted him before he got started. Look, you should take your time, take a good look around. You may want to wait until you’ve got some light. We’ll be doing drive-bys, but he’d be pretty damn stupid to come back at this point. It’s late,” Vinnie added, “but I don’t have a problem rousting a private investigator out of bed. I’ll follow up with you tomorrow, Eli. Do you want a lift home, Abra?”

“No thanks. You go ahead.”

With a nod, he took out a card. “Abra’s got one, but keep this around. You call me if you find anything missing, or have any more trouble. And if you pick up a board, we could see if you remember any of those lessons I gave you back in the day.”

“In March? The water’s freaking freezing.”

“That’s why real men wear wet suits. I’ll keep in touch.”

“He hasn’t changed much,” Eli commented when Vinnie’s footsteps receded. “Well, the hair. I guess bleached-out shoulder-length isn’t police issue.”

“But I bet it was cute on him.”

“You know each other? Before tonight, I mean.”

“Yeah. He lost a bet with his wife last year and had to take one of my yoga classes. Now he’s a semi-regular.”

“Vinnie’s married?”

“With one and a half kids. They live down in South Point and throw exceptional barbecues.”

Maybe Vinnie had changed, Eli thought as he continued to scan the room. He remembered a rail-thin guy, perpetually high, who’d lived for the next wave and dreamed of moving to Hawaii.

The beam passed over the bed, then came back to shine on the hand towel, the pipe-smoking fish. “Really?”

“I’m going to see if I can manage a guard dog next. Maybe a rottweiler or a Doberman. Maybe it’ll work.”

“You’re going to need a bigger towel.” He scanned her face in the dim light. “You’ve got to be tired. I’ll take you home.”

“More wired than tired. I should’ve skipped the coffee. Look, you shouldn’t stay here without any power. It’s going to get colder, and no lights, no pump, so no water. I’ve got a more-or-less guest room and a really comfortable sofa. You can take either.”

“No, that’s okay. I don’t want to leave the house empty after this. I’m going to go down and bang on the generator.”

“All right. I’ll go down, too, make girl noises and hand you inappropriate tools. You’re gawky yet, but you should be able to stomp on any spiders. It’s wrong, I know, considering the good work they do, but I have a thing about spiders.”

“I can make manly noises and get my own inappropriate tools. You should get some sleep.”

“I’m not ready.” She gave a kind of shaking shrug. “Unless you have strong objections to my company down there, I’d rather stick around. Especially if I can have a glass of wine.”

“Sure.” He suspected, whatever she’d said to Maureen, she had nerves about being alone in her own house.

“We’ll both get drunk and bang on the generator.”

“That’s a plan. I did a kind of half-assed cleaning down there before you came, at least in the main area, the wine cellar, seasonal storage. I don’t really go beyond there, and I don’t think Hester has in years. The rest of the place is huge and dark, dank and just pretty scary,” she told him as they started downstairs. “It’s not my favorite place.”

“Spooky?” he said, and turned the flashlight under his chin for a horror-movie effect.

“Yes, and stop that. The furnaces make grunting and grinding noises, things clang and creak. And there’s too many strange little rooms and spaces. It’s The Shining of basements. So . . .”

She stopped in the kitchen, got out the wine herself. “Courage from the grape, which may also counteract the very late-night coffee and adventure. How was everything at home? In Boston?”

“It was good. Really.” If she needed to talk about something else, he could talk about something else. “Gran looks stronger, my parents look less stressed. And my sister’s expecting her second child. So there was something to celebrate.”

“That’s wonderful.”

“It switched the gears, if you know what I mean,” he said as she poured wine for both of them. “Instead of being careful not to talk about why I moved here, we stopped thinking about it.”

“To fresh starts, new babies and electricity.” She tapped her glass against his.

After one sip she decided to take the bottle down to the basement. Maybe she would get a little drunk. It might help her sleep.

The basement door creaked. Naturally, she thought, and hooked a finger in one of Eli’s belt loops as he started down. “So we don’t get separated,” she said when he glanced back.

“It’s not the Amazon.”

“In basement terms it is. Most houses around here don’t even have basements, much less Amazon basements.”

“Most aren’t built on a cliff. And part of it’s above ground level.”

“A basement’s a basement. And this one’s too quiet.”

“I thought it made too many noises.”

“It can’t make them without the furnaces, the pumps and God knows what other intestines are down here. So it’s too quiet. It’s waiting.”

“Okay, you’re starting to freak me out.”

“I don’t want to be freaked out alone.”

At the base of the steps, Eli took a flashlight from its wall charger in a well-stocked and meticulously organized wine cellar.

There’d been a day, he imagined, when every niche would have held a bottle—the hundreds of them systematically turned by the butler. But even now he calculated a solid hundred bottles of what would be exceptional wines.

“Here. Now if we get separated you can send me a signal. I’ll get the search party.”

She released his belt loop, turned on the flashlight he gave her.

Like caves, that’s how she thought of Bluff House’s basement. A series of caves. Some of the walls were the old stone where the builders had simply carved through. There were passages and low archways, section to section. Normally, she could have flipped switches and flooded it with welcome light, but now her beam shimmered and crossed with Eli’s.

“Like Scully and Mulder,” she commented.

“The truth is out there.”

Appreciating him, she smiled and stayed close behind him as he ducked an archway, turned left and stopped, with Abra bumping into him.

“Sorry.”

“Hmm.” Eli shone the light on the chipped red paint of the mammoth machine.

“It looks like something from another world.”

“Another time, anyway. Why haven’t we updated this? Why haven’t we hardwired a new generator into the house?”

“Hester didn’t mind power outages. She said they helped remind her to be self-sufficient. And she liked the quiet. She’s well-stocked with batteries, candles, wood, canned goods and so on.”

“She’s going to be self-sufficient with a new, reliable generator after this. Maybe this bitch is just out of gas.” He gave it a light kick. He took a glug of wine, set the glass down on another utility shelf and, crouching down, opened a five-gallon gas can. “Okay, we’ve got gas here. Let’s check the creature from another world.”

Abra watched him circle behind it. “Do you know how it works?”

“Yeah. We’ve gone up against each other a few times. It’s been a while, but you don’t forget.” He looked back at her. His eyes widened as he aimed the light on her left shoulder. “Ah . . .”

She jumped, spun around in circles, glass in one hand, bottle in the other. “Is it on me? Is it on me? Get it off!”

She stopped when he laughed—full, deep, helpless laughter that struck a wonderful and warm chord inside her even as it infuriated.

“Damn it, Eli! What is it with men? You’re all such children.”

“You took out an intruder, in the dark, alone. Then you squeal like a girl over an imaginary spider.”

“I am a girl, so I naturally squeal like one.” She topped off her glass, drank. “That was mean.”

“But funny.” He gripped the gas cap on the generator, twisted. Got nothing. He rolled his shoulders, tried again. “Suck it.”

“Want me to loosen it for you, big boy?” She fluttered her lashes.

“Go ahead, yoga girl.”

She flexed her biceps, came around with him so they stood hip to hip. After two mighty attempts, she stepped back. “Apologies. It’s obviously welded on.”

“No, it’s rusted and old and whoever put it on last time was showing off. I need a wrench.”

“Where are you going?”

He stopped, turned back. “Tool department’s back here, or it used to be.”

“I don’t want to go back there.”

“I can get the wrench all by myself.”

She didn’t much want to stay where she was alone, either, but couldn’t bring herself to admit it. “Well, keep talking. And don’t make any stupid gagging or choking or screaming sounds. I won’t be impressed.”

“If the basement monster attacks, I’ll fight him off in silence.”

“Just keep talking,” she insisted as he walked deeper into the dark. “When did you lose your virginity?”

“What?”

“It’s the first thing that came to my mind. I don’t know why. I’ll go first. The night of my senior prom. It’s a cliché for a reason. I thought it was forever, Trevor Bennington and I. It was two and a half months, six if you count pre-sex. . . . Eli?”

“Right here. Who dumped whom?”

“We just drifted apart, which is unsatisfying. We should’ve had some drama, some deception and fury.”

“Not all it’s cracked up to be.” His voice echoed eerily, making Abra turn to ujjayi breathing as she skimmed her flashlight around the area.

She heard a kind of thump, a curse. “Eli?”

“Damn it, what’s that doing here?”

“Don’t be funny.”

“I just rapped my damn shin on a damn wheelbarrow because it’s sitting in the middle of the damn floor. And . . .”

“Are you hurt? Eli . . .”

“Come back here, Abra.”

“I don’t wanna.”

“There’s no spiders. I need you to see this.”

“Oh God.” She inched her way along. “Is it alive?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“If this is a stupid boy trick, I’m going to be very unamused.” She breathed easier when her light hit him. “What is it?”

“It’s that.” He pointed with his light.

The floor, a combination of packed earth and stone, gaped open. The trench ran nearly wall to wall, as wide as six feet, as deep as three.

“What . . . was something buried there?”

“Somebody obviously thinks so.”

“Like . . . a body?”

“I’d say a body’s more likely to be buried than disinterred in a basement.”

“Why would anyone dig down here? Hester never said anything about excavation.” She ran her light over a pickax, shovels, buckets, a sledgehammer. “It would take forever to dig in this ground with hand tools.”

“Power tools make noise.”

“Yes, but . . . Oh my God. That’s what this was about tonight? Coming down here to dig for . . . whatever. The legend? Esmeralda’s Dowry? That’s ridiculous—and that has to be it.”

“Then he’s wasting time and effort. For Christ’s sake, if there was treasure, don’t you think we’d know, or have found it by now?”

“I’m not saying—”

“Sorry—sorry.” He paced away. “All this wasn’t done just tonight. This is weeks of work, a few hours at a time.”

“Then he’s been down here before. But he cut the power, jimmied the door. Hester changed the alarm code,” Abra remembered. “She asked me to change the code when she got out of the hospital. She was upset, and it didn’t make any sense at the time, but she insisted. A new code, and to rekey the locks. I just did it, about a week before you moved in.”

“She didn’t just fall.” The sudden certainty of it punched like a fist. “The son of a bitch. Did he push her, trip her, just scare her so she lost her footing? Then he left her there. He left her on the floor.”

“We need to call Vinnie.”

“It can wait till morning. This isn’t going anywhere. I turned the wrong way. To get the wrench. I got mixed up. It’s been years since I’ve been down here, and I went the wrong way. We used to scare ourselves spitless in here when we were kids. It’s the oldest part of the house. Listen.”

When he fell silent, she heard it clearly. The grumble of wave over rock, the moan of wind.

“Sounds like people—dead people, we’d think. Pirate ghosts, and dead witches from Salem, whatever. I can’t remember the last time I was back this far. Gran wouldn’t come back here. She didn’t keep anything back here. I just turned the wrong way, otherwise I might never have found this.”

“Let’s get out of here, Eli.”

“Yeah.” He led her out, stopped before the first turn to pluck an old adjustable wrench from a shelf.

“It’s the jewels, Eli,” she insisted as they picked their way back to the generator. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. You don’t have to believe they exist. He does. Legend deems them priceless. Diamonds, rubies, emeralds—flawless, magical, exquisite. And gold. A queen’s ransom.”

“A rich duke’s daughter’s ransom, if you want to be accurate.” He fought off the gas cap with the wrench. “They existed, and would probably be worth a few million, a lot of millions at this point. They’re also somewhere at the bottom of the ocean with the ship, the crew and the rest of the booty.” He peered in, shining the light. “Dry as an old virgin’s . . . as dust,” he corrected. “Sorry.”

“You were about to be very vulgar.”

She held the light while he filled the tank. Picked up her glass and held the light while he fiddled with switches, some kind of gauge.

He punched the power button. The machine belched, farted, coughed. Eli went through the routine again, then a third time—and it caught.

“Let there be light,” she announced.

“In a few well-selected locations.” He took the glass she offered him, and his hand brushed hers. “Jesus, Abra, you’re freezing.”

“Imagine that, in a damp, unheated basement.”

“Let’s get upstairs. I’ll get a fire started.” Instinctively he wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

And instinctively, she leaned into him as they walked.

“Eli? I don’t want to believe it, but could whoever did this be local? They had to know you weren’t at home. They couldn’t have risked cutting the power and breaking in if you were here. It was early, really. Not long after nine-thirty.”

“I don’t know the locals the way I used to. But I know there’s a PI at one of the local B-and-Bs. It’d be his job to know I wasn’t here.”

“It wasn’t him. I’m sure of it.”

“Maybe not. But he’s working for someone, isn’t he?”

“Yes. Yes, he is. Or with someone. Do you really think he—or they—hurt Hester?”

“She started downstairs in the middle of the night. None of us could ever figure out why. I’m going to start looking at this, all this, from a different angle. In the morning,” he added as they reached the kitchen.

He set down the flashlight, the glass, then rubbed her arms. “It’s colder in the Amazon than I thought.”

She laughed, shook her hair back, lifted her face.

They stood, bodies close, his hands slowing to a stroke instead of a rub.

She felt the flutter in her belly, one she’d ignored since she began her sexual fast, and the lovely rise of heat behind it.

She watched his eyes change, deepen, flick down and linger on her lips before coming back to hers. And, drawn, she leaned toward him.

He stepped back, dropped his hands.

“Bad timing,” he said.

“Is it?”

“Bad timing. Trauma, upset, wine. Let me get a fire started. You can warm the chill off before I take you home.”

“All right, but tell me it cost you a little.”

“A lot.” For another moment, his eyes stayed steady on hers. “A hell of a lot.”

That was something, she supposed, as he walked away. She took another sip of wine even as she wished they’d chosen another way to warm the chill off.