“People know this place is a treasure trove,” Liam said.
She frowned, looking at him. “This house is my home, and I’m not going to set myself up to be paranoid to live here, Liam.” She lifted her hair, letting it fall on her neck again in an offhand manner. “Where did you have in mind to go?” she asked him.
“Nowhere—until we’ve gotten the windows closed again,” he said firmly.
She frowned, ready to protest.
“Please, Kelsey. Don’t be paranoid—do be responsible. I’ve had a lot of officers busy around here, you know, clearing out teenagers and opportunists,” he said.
“Sure. I’ll run upstairs, if you want to run around downstairs,” she conceded.
He nodded. He watched her head for the stairway, then decided to do a circle of the house himself.
Odd. When they had been kids, they had never thought about any kind of danger when Kelsey had forgotten her key and they’d crawled in through the broken screen in back, over the washer and dryer. Now the thought that the house was vulnerable in any way made him extremely unhappy.
He quickly secured the windows in the dining room, kitchen, laundry room and family room, and then went into Cutter’s office. He walked over and closed the one big window, securing the bolts on it. He paused, looking around the office. Even with the crates and boxes aligned between the desk and the window, there was something different about the room.
He thought about it a moment and realized that it looked lived-in. Naturally. It was where Cutter had spent most of his time.
He didn’t know why, because he knew what he had just done, but he went back to secure the window once again. He liked the room, but for some reason it gave him an uneasy feeling.
When he came out, he met Kelsey in the living room.
“All locked up,” she said cheerfully.
He tried to shake his feelings of tremendous unease, remembering that his life had not been particularly normal in the last year. His own grandfather’s death had brought David home, to answer an unsolved murder. Vanessa Loren had come to them specifically because of the brutal killing of her coworkers, and none of the mysteries had afforded easy answers, not to mention the fact that they had all been cast into extreme danger. Perhaps he had become so jaded and suspicious that he couldn’t even look at his friends with trust.
And if he kept behaving like a law-enforcement tyrant, there would be no reason for Kelsey to pay attention to anything that he had to say.
“Turtle Kraals?” he suggested. “It’s just across the bight.”
The Merlin house was on a tiny spit of land that was actually just a geographical feature of the bight. The bight was about a twenty-acre span in the bay—although the word itself came from the Old English byht, which meant bend, or a bay created by a bend. By the bight was a bigger bay, which confused many people.
The marina was close. Tourists boarded old schooners and other craft to sail in the bight.
The Merlin house still seemed remote.
“Turtle Kraals it is,” Kelsey agreed. “Shall we swim,” she asked with a grin, “or drive on over to the marina? Or walk?”
“We’ll play it lazy and drive,” he said.
In less than twenty minutes, they were seated in the restaurant.
Liam brought the gray plastic bag in with him, but didn’t mention it at first.
They both apparently knew the conversation was going to grow more serious, but they began with casual suggestions about food. “Conch chowder! I haven’t had any in ages,” Kelsey said.
“It’s good here, very good,” Liam said.
“Ah, fresh snapper. That sounds good,” Kelsey said.
“What are we having tomorrow?” Liam asked.
“Oh, everything I could think of!” she said. “They had fresh mahimahi, so I bought some fish. Ribs, chicken, hot dogs, hamburgers…corn, salad, potato salad, baked beans, all kinds of stuff. A pack of desserts—you name it!”
“Well, then, snapper might be a nice choice tonight,” he said.
She nodded. Their waitress arrived, and they ordered. When the woman had gone, Kelsey stared at him. “All right. What’s in the bag?”
“Cutter’s belongings. Valaski, the medical examiner, gave them to me,” Liam said.
She didn’t reach for the bag. “Valaski,” she said softly. “He came when my mother died. I thought he was ancient then. But I was young.”
“He’s closing in on retirement. But he’s good at what he does,” Liam said. “He kept Cutter’s clothing for the mortuary,” he said.
She nodded. “He’ll have a viewing on Sunday night, and I’m having him buried in the family plot on Monday morning.”
“That’s good,” Liam said. He handed her the bag. She didn’t open it.
“Kelsey, when I found him, he was clutching the little casket in the bag, and a book titled In Defense from Dark Magick was on his lap,” Liam said.
“Oh?”
“Don’t you want to see them?” he asked. “Oh, and his watch and Masonic ring are in the bag, as well. I’m sure they will mean something to you.”