The Harbor. Carla Neggers
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Christina turned to him, color rising in her cheeks. “What?”
“Zoe. Is she on her way?”
“I don’t know.”
She knew. J.B. could see the lie in the way she shifted her eyes away from Kyle and looked down at her hands, in the flush that spread from her cheeks to her ears, in the increased agitation. Her breathing was shallow now, coming in quick, ineffective gulps.
Why wouldn’t she want to reveal whether or not her sister was on her way?
Bruce lumbered in from his door-hanging. “She drives a yellow Bug these days. She won’t be hard to spot.”
“She hasn’t—” Christina inhaled, wrung her hands together. “She hasn’t been back in almost a year. Cut her some slack, okay?”
“Right,” Bruce said. “Like she’d cut us any.”
“Anyway, I don’t know if she’s coming.”
The big sister sounded like a trip to J.B. He saw Bruce give Christina a pained look, as if he was suffering to see her with Kyle Castellane, and decided it was time to make their exit. “Come on, Bruce. A game of darts?”
“Nah. It’s too late. I have to be up before dawn. October’s good lobstering.” He pulled his gaze from Christina. “I’ll drop you off at your inn.”
* * *
His room at the inn had pink soap and pink-flowered wallpaper, and its four-poster bed was a first for J.B. The place was run by Lottie Martin, who had to be the sourest woman in the state of Maine. He always greeted her cheerfully just to watch her squirm. When he opened his door and saw that his room had been tossed, he knew she wouldn’t be happy.
He wasn’t happy.
It was a gentle toss, not a ransacking. If he hadn’t worked undercover for the past five years and become accustomed to imprinting on his mind how he’d left things, he might not even have noticed.
It helped that the perpetrator had spilled his afternoon tea on the carpet.
He knew he’d done tea for a reason. The daily afternoon ritual was served on the screened porch and featured three kinds of tea and an array of tiny muffins, shortbread and scones. He’d sneaked a cup of Irish Breakfast up to his room.
He knelt down. The stain was still damp.
Interesting.
The cottage-style bureau where he’d unpacked his clothes had been gone through. His empty suitcase. The stacks of books and magazines he’d picked up to while away the hours. Nothing was quite where he’d left it.
His visitor had even pawed through his bathroom.
And locked up afterward. Which required a key to the old-fashioned door.
Also interesting.
Lottie Martin didn’t strike him as the type to snoop. On the other hand, curiosity about him had risen steadily among local residents since he’d arrived in pretty Goose Harbor.
Nothing was missing. His gun was locked in his Jeep.
He left everything as it was and headed down to the front desk. Old Lottie was there in a corduroy jumper and turtleneck, her iron-gray hair pinned up in a bun that made her look like Auntie Em, except thinner. J.B. figured she’d opened the inn so she could surround herself with antiques and live in an old house. Guests were simply a necessary evil. Or at least he was.
“I heard Zoe West was back in town,” he said, then made an educated guess. “I thought I saw her car pull out of here.” He hadn’t, but Lottie Martin didn’t know that. “She’s staying here? You’d think she’d stay with her sister, wouldn’t you?”
Lottie took the bait. “She is staying with her sister. She stopped by to say hello. I’ve been friends with her family for years.”
“Did she ever work for you?”
“Just one summer.”
Long enough to help herself to a pass key. She probably had it in her old room, which meant she’d stopped at the house first and Christina had been covering for her. That explained some of her agitation. She was keeping the FBI agent occupied while her big sister searched his room to make sure his story added up. Bruce had called Christina on his cell phone from his truck to say he and J.B. were on their way with the door. The sisters could have cooked up their plan then.
He’d guess it was Zoe’s idea. While she was in full screwup mode, why not break into an FBI agent’s room?
“I spilled tea in my room,” he told Lottie Martin.
She frowned. “On the carpet?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She seemed to think he was being sarcastic. “No harm done, I’m sure.” Her teeth were half clenched as she spoke. “Mr. McGrath, I have a problem with your room. This is terribly awkward. I wanted to catch you sooner—” She paused, fixing her gray eyes on him. “I’m afraid you’ll have to check out. I found a room for you in Kennebunkport. It was no mean feat since this is peak foliage weekend. I’m sure you’ll be pleased with it.”
“You giving me the boot because of the spilled tea?”
“No, of course not.”
“Because Zoe West was here and you think I’m to blame?”
“Trouble does have a way of following her these days, but no, that’s not the reason. There’s a problem with the room, that’s all. It happens in these old houses.” She jotted down the name and number of the Kennebunkport inn and passed it to him. “I’ll pick up the tab myself to make up for the inconvenience.”
J.B. had to hand it to her. As socially inept and sour as she was, she’d just smoothly maneuvered him right out of her inn. He wondered if Zoe West had said anything to her, or if old Lottie had simply put the ex-detective’s visit, the spilled tea and the fact that her guest was an FBI agent together and decided to toss him to avoid any trouble. She must have heard about the break-in at the West house by now.
In her place, he’d probably do the same.
He took the paper with the Kennebunkport information on it. “I’ll pay my own way. Thanks. You know, my ancestors came here in the seventeenth century. Maybe we’re cousins.”
She didn’t like that any more than Bruce Young had.
J.B. returned to his room and packed up. He had no idea where he was going, but it wasn’t to Kennebunkport. Bruce’d probably put him up, but Bruce had dogs that looked as if they’d have the run of the place. Bruce was also part of whatever it was that had happened in Goose Harbor a year ago. After she’d found her father’s body, Zoe West had run into the water and waved down the nearest lobster boat. Bruce Young’s. He’d notified the Maine marine patrol.
It was a cold night, and dark, the clouds blocking out the moon and any stars. J.B. could taste the salt in the air, feel the dampness of an approaching storm. He dumped his stuff in the back of his Jeep and drove down to the docks, parking in the town lot. The small, protected harbor was mostly rockbound, lined with houses, with Main Street running parallel to the water above the docks. In daylight on a clear day, Olivia West’s house was visible on its point on the northeast edge of the harbor. According to town gossip, she’d left it to Zoe. Christina inherited money to buy the small clapboard building on the waterfront behind him, a run-down clam shack she’d converted into her charming café.
If he left now, J.B. figured he could be back in Washington, D.C., by morning. He had an apartment there. He didn’t know what he’d be doing next with the bureau, but he expected it wouldn’t involve undercover work, at least not anytime soon. There was talk of having him train new undercover agents. Yeah. He could give them pointers on how to kill a man in front of his children with your throat cut and bleeding, then how to live with yourself afterward.