Deadly Gift (23 page)

“Actually, no. Sean was reading it when we left.”

“They’re recalling those blueberries,” Cal said grimly. “There was a big article on how they think some psycho is out there, maybe some ex-employee with a grudge.”

“I’m glad they got right on it,” Marni said. “They can make sure no one else winds up with a mouthful of glass.”

“Are you absolutely sure you’re all right?” Caer asked her with concern.

“Oh, I’m fine. Honestly,” Marni said.

“We could have sued,” Cal said indignantly.

“And what would that have done? We’re far too litigious in this country,” Marni said firmly, shaking her head. “And I’m just fine.” She lowered her voice, though they were the only ones there. “It’s such a relief to know that some stranger did this, and that it wasn’t someone in the house. You know what I mean. It was awful, Amanda accusing poor Clara, on top of Kat being so certain Amanda has it in for Sean.” Marni dropped her voice even further. “Although who can blame her? Let’s face it, we all think the woman is a total bitch.”

“Sean loves her,” Cal reminded his wife. “And who knows? Maybe she loves him, too. Who the hell are we to judge? Not to mention that it’s pretty insulting to him to think there’s no way Amanda is actually in love with him. Did that make sense?”

“It did,” Marni said, looking at her husband affectionately. “It’s just that she and I are about the same age, and I look at Sean like a father figure.”

“Well, I’m going to show Caer around some more,” Zach interrupted. “See you folks later.”

“Any action on the wharf?” Marni said. “I get restless when we’re not busy.”

“I saw some people walking around checking things out,” Zach told her, but it was a lie. He didn’t want either Cal or Marni out on the water, not until he and Caer were long gone.

Cal led the way to the door, with Marni following close behind them. Zach was anxious to get going, but Cal opened the office door and stepped outside, then gasped sharply.

“What is it?” Marni demanded, pushing past Zach and Caer to reach her husband.

It was a bird. A dead bird—and a huge one.

Not a blackbird. Not a crow.

A raven.

It was lying on its back directly in front of the door, talons curled in, sightless eyes wide open.

Marni let out a frightened scream.

Cal put his arm around her and pulled her close. “Marni, it’s just a bird. A very big, very dead bird.”

“What the hell was it doing, dying right in front of the office door?” she demanded. “Oh, God, it’s a bad omen. Something awful’s going to happen.”

Zach stepped forward, ignoring her, and said firmly, “You got a garbage bag in there? I’ll pick up the poor thing and set it aside. You can call someone to pick it up.”

“We can just feed it to the fish,” Cal said.

“I wouldn’t,” Caer said quickly. They all turned to stare at her. “What if it died because something was wrong with it, because it was sick? Maybe animal control ought to incinerate it or something.”

“She
is
a nurse,” Marni said. “And it’s a good point. But get it away from me.”

With a shudder, she hurried back into the office, where she got a large garbage bag. Cal and Zach bagged up the bird together, and then Cal laid it by the Dumpster, saying that he would call animal control.

At last Zach and Caer waved goodbye to him and headed to the
Sea Sprite.

“Hop on,” Zach said, loosening the mooring ropes after she stepped lithely to the deck, then boarding himself. As he took a seat at the helm and turned on the motor, he told her that she would find both the galley and the head in the small cabin.

“Thanks, but I love being up here.”

He smiled as he steered the boat through the channel markers slowly, then opened up the throttle until they were whipping over the water. The air was cold, and the wind was stinging, but he saw that Caer didn’t flinch; indeed, she seemed to love the feel of it. Her arms were wrapped tightly around herself as she sat across from him, staring out at the water and the passing scenery.

Newport was beautiful from the bay. The rocks jutted dramatically, the lighthouse was a piece of bygone charm, and mansions stood sentinel on the cliff. The bridge connecting the city to the mainland rose so high above the waves that the cars crossing it looked like toys.

When they reached Cow Cay, Zach anchored just offshore and found a couple of pairs of waders. Caer stared at him. “We’re walking? In those?” she asked incredulously.

“It’s only a few feet, but it’s worth it to stay dry. Trust me—it’s not deep. You’ll be all right.”

She didn’t look as if she trusted him one little bit, but as he set about zipping himself into the waders, she followed suit. After carefully lowering himself into the water, he reached up to help her. She was skeptical, but she carefully dropped into his embrace.

She smelled sweet—but not too sweet—from some elusive perfume, and no amount of clothing could impede his instinctive response when he felt the vivid crush of her body against his own. He held her close, grinning, as he let her slide slowly down until her feet touched bottom. “It
is
a deserted island,” he said teasingly.

“And it’s freezing,” she told him primly.

“You’re not much of a romantic,” he said, mock accusingly, then reached for the bag of tools he had left on deck.

“Walk carefully. You don’t want to get a dunking.”

She nodded, preceding him through the shallow water to the shore.

“It’s great out here in summer,” he said.

“Really?”

“Well, if you ask me, the water is still freezing, but it’s bearable. Northerners love it. You’re Irish. You would like swimming here.”

She looked at him as if she didn’t have any idea what he was talking about.

“Are you telling me you’ve never been swimming?” he asked her.

“Actually…no. I mean yes. I mean, I haven’t.”

“You need to learn to swim. And then to dive. Being underwater…it’s another world.” He heard his voice growing husky as he added, “I have to take you south. Home, or to the Caribbean. You can’t imagine what it’s like to dive the reefs. The colors of the fish, the coral…it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen.”

“I’m sure it is,” she agreed, suddenly cool, then asked, “So where is this Banshee Rock?”

He pointed. “Right there.”

He passed her and strode over to the rock. It was an oddly shaped piece of granite, standing by itself as if placed by a giant hand. It stood about ten feet high and four feet wide at the base.

“We’ll be systematic,” he said. If she was going to be all business, so would he.

Opening the canvas bag, he took out the metal detectors, pick and shovels. “We could get lucky and find it immediately, but I have a feeling it’s not going to be so easy.” She watched as he walked around the rock, trying to figure if there was a spot where it looked as if someone might have dug centuries before. It took a while, as he kept circling with the metal detector. Caer watched him, then started using her own.

At one point she cried out with pleasure and dropped down to her knees in the sand. “I found something!”

He hurried over and started to dig. A moment later, he held up a spoon.

“I don’t suppose it’s an antique?” Caer asked hopefully.

“Sorry—it was swiped from a local fish place,” he said, showing her the engraving on the handle. “But now we know your metal detector works. We’ll find more.”

“There might not be anything to find,” she said glumly. “Nothing that matters, anyway.”

“There is. I know there is.”

He went back to searching, and a few minutes later he paused, standing dead still and staring. But not at the rock itself. His vision was focused on a spot twenty feet away, toward the shore, where he suddenly realized that someone else had been digging.

“Look,” he said, striding toward the area. As he got closer, he could see that there were a number of places where someone had been busy with a shovel.

Zach used the metal detector to systematically search the sand. Caer started working nearby, emulating the grid pattern he was walking.

There wasn’t a sound from either of their instruments.

“Maybe, if there was something, it’s been found,” she suggested.

He shook his head. “We’d know.”

“How?”

“Because something would be different,” he said, turning back to stare at her. “Something in the O’Riley household would be different. Whoever killed Eddie would…well, they wouldn’t be a part of the household anymore.”

She walked over to him. “Maybe a stranger killed Eddie. Isn’t that what we’re all hoping? Maybe Sean getting sick was just coincidence.”

She was staring at him earnestly, as if wanting could make it so.

He sighed. “We don’t know anything. Except that someone else is looking for whatever Nigel Bridgewater might have buried. Let’s get to it, shall we? We’ll start over by the rock where we got a couple of potential readings.”

“Maybe there’s nothing there except for some kind of tarp protecting the documents he was delivering. Maybe there’s no metal to find,” Caer said.

“I’m willing to bet there are coins.”

He started with an area by the south face of the rock, digging industriously. However long it took, he was going to keep digging until he found something.

Caer started working alongside him, but he was so preoccupied that he didn’t realize how hard the going was until she set down her shovel and let out a sigh. “I’m sorry, but my muscles aren’t accustomed to this. This is hard work,” she said. It wasn’t a complaint, just an observation.

“I shouldn’t have brought you. I’m sorry. This is real labor.” He was developing blisters himself, he realized.

“I don’t mind. I just need to stop for a bit.”

“Go ahead, take a break,” he told her.

“I’m going to walk around a bit, see the island.”

“All right. Stay within yelling distance.”

“Zach, we’re the only idiots out here.”

He leaned on his shovel, indicating the dug-up area of the beach. “Someone else has been here—and they could come back.”

She stared at him, then at the previous dig, and shivered. “Good point. I won’t go far.”

She walked off, and he started digging again. After a while, he realized that even though he was in good shape,
his
muscles were aching, too. Time to take a break himself.

“Caer?”

He couldn’t see her.

“Caer?”

He dropped his shovel and walked north, toward a copse of trees, skeletal and forlorn in winter.

He still couldn’t see her, and he looked out toward the water with a sense of rising unease. The
Sea Sprite
was still drifting at anchor just off shore, and no other boats were near.

A screeching caught his attention, and he looked up.

Birds. More birds. And not gulls. Gulls would have belonged.

They were black birds.

“Caer?”

His unease became an inexplicable fear for her, and he hurried into the copse of trees. Barren branches, pathetic in the winter air, brushed his shoulders. He looked up and realized that the sun was already beginning to set.

“Caer!”

Then he saw her. Her back was to him, and her head was bent over. She was staring at something in her hands.

For a moment he thought she had made a discovery in the sand, but then he realized that she had taken her letter from her pocket and was reading it.

He approached slowly. She was studying the words as if disturbed by whatever they said.

“Caer?”

She jerked, hearing him at last, and looked up.

“Is something wrong?” he asked her.

“Oh, no.”

“Then what is it?”

“Just…my friend. He’s here. In the States. I have to figure out how to meet up with him somewhere along the line, that’s all.”

She quickly folded the letter and shoved it back into the pocket of her jeans. “I’m sorry. I was just distracted.”

He knew he generally had a good poker face, but it must have failed him then, giving away his suspicions, because she quickly smiled and rose. “I’m sorry. I should have been digging, not reading my mail.”

He nodded, but he held his arms still by his sides as she came closer and pressed the full length of that glorious body against him.

The wind picked up. He heard that wild screeching again and looked up to the sky.

It was a scene out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. There were birds everywhere.

Black birds.

High above the winter-barren trees, they swooped high, then low, circling and making that terrible noise.

Caer obviously didn’t like them, staring up with what could only be dread in her eyes.

The sun was well and truly setting, he saw. It was time to abandon their efforts for the day and get back to the wharf. And since he hadn’t managed to find anything on his own, he needed to speak with Morrissey.