The Harbor. Carla Neggers
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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.
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