On Fire. Carla Neggers
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easier.” Sig quickly sipped her tea and bit into the raisin toast; her mother had slathered on the butter. “I said ‘goddamn,’ didn’t I? That’s another quarter for the mason jar.”
“You’ve quit swearing again?”
“I was doing pretty well until I found out I’m having twins.” She inhaled, unable to concentrate on anyone’s problems but her own. “I want these babies, Riley. I want to be a good mother.”
“You will be. You just won’t be conventional. You haven’t started smoking again, have you?”
“Not a chance. And how’re your vices?”
Her sister grinned, and some of the usual spark came back into her dark eyes. “I have no vices.”
“Ha. You’re like Emile and Dad. The seven seas are your vice.”
“My passion,” Riley amended.
“Same difference. Now, are you going to tell me why you look like absolute shit?” When Riley didn’t answer, Sig winced. “I’ve really fallen off the wagon this time. I’ve been swearing like a sailor.”
But Riley had shut her eyes, and she squeezed back tears.
“Riley…”
“I found a dead body and almost threw up on John Straker.”
“Holy shit,” Sig said. “No wonder Mom’s making you lobster.”
Three
S traker didn’t settle quickly back into his routines. He heated his stew and took a steaming bowl of it onto his porch. It was early for lunch, but he didn’t care. The police had packed up late yesterday and left, at least for now. The island was quiet again, the waves, wind, gulls and familiar putter of lobster boats the only sounds. The return to solitude didn’t have the impact he’d expected. A few days ago, the quiet had soothed his soul. Now, twenty-four hours after Riley St. Joe and a dead body had violated his tranquility, it was getting on his nerves.
He spotted Lou Dorrman’s boat making its way across the bay toward the island and went down to the rickety dock. The sheriff tied up, jumped out and greeted him with a curt nod. It was as if Straker’s old life had reached into his new life to remind him there was no escape. “What’s up, Sheriff?”
“We just got word from the medical examiner. He won’t have final results for a while, but his preliminary exam suggests our John Doe took a blow to the head.”
Straker went still. “Accident?”
“CID’s treating it as a suspicious death. We need to know what role the head injury played in his death, did he take the hit before he was in the water, after—maybe when he washed in on the rocks.”
“I don’t know how he could have washed ashore, with the tide and the currents out here. Doesn’t make sense.”
Dorrman frowned. He’d gone to school with Straker’s father, had once dated Straker’s mother. “You have any visitors out here the past few days? Besides Riley.”
“Christ, Lou, if I offed someone, I wouldn’t dump his body on the rocks for Riley St. Joe to find.”
“Answer the question.”
“No. No visitors. And if our John Doe had spent any time on the island, I’d have known about it.”
“He wouldn’t have anything to do with one of your FBI cases?”
“If he did,” Straker said pointedly, “I wouldn’t be sitting on my porch eating a bowl of stew.”
Dorrman didn’t back down. “I wish you’d picked somewhere else to sit around for six months. You’re a burr on my butt, Straker. See to it we can find you if we have more questions.”
Straker eyed him, took in the red face, the unusual level of aggravation, even for Lou Dorrman. “What else?”
“What do you mean, what else?”
“Something else is eating at you.”
The sheriff huffed and gazed out at the water a moment. “I can’t find Emile.”
“Hell.”
“I checked his cottage, I checked the preserve. His boat’s gone, his car’s gone.” Dorrman shifted his back to Straker. “I don’t like it. A dead body turns up on Labreque Island one day, Emile disappears the next.”
“Did you check inside his cottage?”
“I can’t do that without a warrant.”
Straker could. “Give me a lift?”
Twenty minutes later, they put in at Emile’s dock. Straker didn’t wait for Dorrman. He headed up to the old man’s cottage, mounted the steps and tried the door. Locked. He held the doorknob, leaned his shoulder against the door and, putting his weight into it, pushed hard.
The door came on the second push. Piece of cake.
“Christ,” Dorrman said from the bottom of the stairs, “I don’t believe you.”
“I’m his friend. This is what he’d expect. I’ll be out in two minutes.”
Emile’s cottage was more cheap old man than world-famous oceanographer. He’d left most of his old life behind. The only remnants were copies of his books and documentaries on a shelf in the main room and a few pictures of his family aboard the Encounter. He’d taken out the trash, left a mug in the dish drainer, unplugged the coffeepot. Straker checked the downstairs bedroom. A tidy sailor to the last, Emile had made his bed, too.
Straker took the steep, ladderlike stairs up to the loft and came across a red bra, size 34B, under a creaky twin bed. It provided no clues as to Emile and his whereabouts. It did, however, provide fresh insight into Riley. She’d never been neat, but Straker wouldn’t have expected her to favor red underwear.
Best to keep his mind on the task at hand.
He joined Dorrman back outside. “He cleared out.”
“Kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
“Not my job to wonder. I’m going to take a drive down to Boston.” A sudden wind gusted off the bay; he was thinking up his plan as he went along, knowing already he’d regret it. He should go back to Labreque Island and reheat his stew. “I’ll let you know if I run into him.”
“You do that. Keep in touch.”
“You want to bug my car, make sure I don’t take off to Alaska?”
Dorrman sucked in a breath, controlling his irritation. “If it were up to me, Straker, you’d be hauling in lobsters with your old man. You’re not fit to be an officer of the law. Never have been.”
“Does that mean if I’d been killed instead of wounded six months ago you wouldn’t have marched in my funeral parade?”
Dorrman’s mouth stretched into a thin, mean grin. “There’d have been a fucking brawl over who got to lead that parade.”
Straker took no offense. Louis Dorrman didn’t like him. A lot of people didn’t like him. But Straker had friends, and he had people he trusted—and he did his job. He’d never been the most popular guy around. It didn’t worry him. What worried him were the dead body Riley St. Joe had found on his island and where Emile had taken himself off to.
The sheriff grudgingly gave him a ride back to the island and waited while Straker packed up, grabbed his car keys and rinsed out his stew bowl. He didn’t need to come back to find the place overrun with ants.
He climbed back into Dorrman’s boat. “My car’s at my folks’ place.”
“I know,” the sheriff said, as if to remind Straker he knew everything that went on in his town. He was the one who’d stayed, who