Firefly Beach (4 page)

“What’s with Skye?” Clea asked finally.

“I wish I knew,” Caroline answered.

Caroline pictured Skye’s handsome and ego-laden husband. Skye and Simon, both extraordinary artists, had lived a wild, bohemian lifestyle for as long as it had suited Simon. Running off with his model, he left Skye just before their fifth anniversary. Skye’s dark moods had worried Caroline when they were kids, but they had gone dormant recently, until Simon met someone else.

“It’s not because of Simon,” Caroline said.

“What, then?”

“I think it’s history catching up with her,” Caroline said.

“What history?”

“She killed a man, Clea.”

“But she didn’t mean to,” Clea said plaintively.

“That can’t bring him back.”

“She’s drinking away her guilt,” Clea said, “like Dad.”

“Like Dad.”

They drove on. Caroline lived in a small cottage of the Renwick Inn. Capitalizing on the family name, Caroline ran it as a hostelry that catered to artists. The inn itself was two hundred years old, a rambling white saltbox with seven chimneys and four secret closets. It had gardens and pine woods and outbuildings and a big red barn. It occupied one hundred acres on the Ibis River, a tributary of the Connecticut River, and it had once belonged to their grandparents.

Every year artists came to the Renwick Inn for the summer and parts of the other seasons to paint and escape the city and fall in love with each other. Every August at the end of the season Caroline held a renowned ball to celebrate love and creativity and new work and money in the bank. As Clea drove into the winding drive, Caroline saw that the parking lot was full.

“Good,” she said. “Paying guests.”

“Artists these days have to be pretty prosperous to afford the rates you charge.” Clea laughed, counting the cars.

“Well, they’re not all artists,” Caroline said. “I just advertise as an artists’ retreat because that seems to pull them in.”

“It always did,” Clea said, probably remembering their own childhood, all the would-be protégés and hangers-on who would congregate around their father, hoping for some of his talent or glamour or mystery to rub off.

Outside, the air was muggy, hot, and still. Heat rose from the lazy river, shimmering in the moonlight. The inn guests loved their ceiling fans, screened porches, mosquito nets, kerosene lamps. They paid extra for a certain rusticity. They wanted flickering candles, tangled gardens, dinners al fresco on weathered picnic tables, mismatched plates and glasses, a cozy bar with a fireplace, and plenty to drink. They disdained modern conveniences, so Caroline obliged by not providing air-conditioning, television, telephones, or electric alarm clocks.

“Will you come in?” she asked Clea, not wanting their night to end. “We have a great new chocolate cake I want you to try.”

“Sure,” Clea said.

Inside, they walked straight through the lobby. Guests were milling around, drinking and waiting for dinner. Michele, the manager, had everything under control. They walked straight past a row of their father’s paintings to the back porch. Caroline settled her sister on a glider and ran to the kitchen. She set up a tray with chipped china coffee cups, a pot of coffee, and two big slices of cake.

“Hold me back,” Clea said when she saw the cake.

“Wait till you taste it,” Caroline said.

While conversation buzzed in the other room, the sisters hid out on the porch, eating the dense chocolate cake and watching a flock of geese land on the moonlit river twenty yards away.

“The river’s pretty, but it’s not the ocean,” Clea said.

“We’re saltwater girls,” Caroline said. “Dad always said that.”

They were facing the river, when suddenly an arc of headlights illuminated the trees. A line of cars pulled into the inn’s circular drive. A truck rumbled up, and another. The sound of boisterous male voices carried across the property.

“Maybe they have us mixed up with the Catspaw Tavern,” Caroline said, referring to the roadhouse five miles north.

“Let’s go set them straight,” Clea said, curious.

The two sisters walked into the lobby, where a pack of sunburned, unshaven men wearing frayed and grimy clothes were pouring through the front door. Michele, alarmed, stood at the reservations desk, ready with directions to the Catspaw. The Renwick Inn was refined, genteel. These men clearly had the wrong place.

“Got any vacancies?” asked one man. He had a mop of salt-damp black hair, a faded tee-shirt advertising a bar in Key West, and a chipped front tooth. His massive gut stretched the shirt to its limits; his tattooed biceps were as thick as Michele’s waist.

“For rooms?” Michele asked, frowning.

“Yeah.” The man laughed. “What’d you think I meant?”

“Well…” Michele said, gracefully ignoring the innuendo. She perused the reservations book. “How many rooms do you need?”

“Six,” the man said. “We can double up. And some of us’ll be staying on the boats.”

“On the boats?” Michele asked, grabbing her chance. “You might be happier with a place nearer the marinas. I have a list of motels…”

“The boss wants this place,” the man said, shaking his head. “He was definite about it.”

“How long do you need the rooms?” Michele asked.

“Indefinitely. All summer, maybe. We’re working offshore, got a big salvage operation going—”

“Loose lips sink ships,” another man interrupted. He chuckled, but his eyes were serious. “Quit trying to impress the ladies.”

“Offshore?” Caroline asked. “Just a little east of here?” She was thinking of the boats she had seen from Firefly Hill, their lights glowing like downtown.

“That’s right,” the first man said. He grinned proudly, revealing a broken tooth.

“We definitely don’t have individual rooms available all summer,” Caroline said. “But Michele might be able to find one or two for tonight, then move you around as things come available.”

“Shit,” the man said. “Boss’ll be disappointed. Danny, you’d better run outside and tell him. Maybe he’ll want to head back to the marina after all.”

Some of the men had drifted into the dark, cozy bar. Candles flickered on every table, some of the old oak surfaces carved with artists’ drawings and initials. Landscapes and nudes covered the walls. One by one, the houseguests looked up. They were either artists or people attracted by artists, and they regarded the seafarers with a mixture of alarm and curiosity.

Behind the bar was a particularly lush and decadent nude, depicting a large-breasted blond woman with tragedy in her eyes. The trick of the painting was that the background was money. At first glance it appeared to be foliage, but if you looked closely, it was coins and currency. To the artists, the picture was a sophisticated conversation piece, an excellent execution of trompe l’oeil done by one of Caroline’s guests, who had gone on to become well known. But to the new visitors it was lewd and lascivious, and they stood around making loud toasts to the model’s erect nipples.

Caroline stood quietly, listening to Clea and Michele ask each other what should be done. The language was growing raunchy. Some of the guests were squirming, staring with distaste at the men. Clea and Michele began to circulate among the tables, attempting damage control by offering drinks on the house.

“Are my guys behaving themselves?” came a deep voice from behind her.

“Not exactly,” Caroline said, turning to see who had spoken.

The man was tall and fair. He had tousled blond hair, streaked from the sun and salt. His blue eyes were wide and clear, and their serious expression was deep, in contrast with his smile. He wore a faded blue polo shirt, the tails untucked and the collar frayed. His arms were tan and strong.

“Hey, captain,” called the man with the broken tooth and tattoos. “We want to buy you a drink.”

“How about remembering you’re not at sea anymore,” the blond man said good-naturedly to his crew at large. “Be scientists and gentlemen.” They listened with no apparent rancor, nodding and raising their glasses. One of them bought the man a drink, and it appeared to be a glass of cranberry juice. He held it, and Caroline could see how big his hands were.

“Danny says you’re all booked up?” the man asked.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can offer you two rooms for tonight, but that’s just because we had unexpected cancellations. I think you’ll have a hard time finding enough rooms for as long as you want them. Black Hall gets pretty busy in the summer.”

“I’m disappointed,” the captain said. “I’ve always wanted to stay at the Renwick Inn.”

“Really?” she asked, skeptical but flattered.

“Really,” he said.

“We get a lot of artists here,” she said. “Not many sailors and…what did you say? Scientists?”

“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” he asked, surveying his ragtag crew, desperately in need of razors and shampoo, drooling over the sad-eyed nude. “Half those guys are oceanographers and the other half are pirates.”

“Which half are you?” she asked.

“I’m definitely a pirate,” he replied.

“No kidding,” she said. They stood there, smiling at each other. He had a sultry sexiness about him, but in spite of his easy way, there was something secretive behind his eyes.

“I run a salvage company in Florida,” he said. “We dive on sunken ships, bring up what we can. Sometimes we contract out for government work, and sometimes we do our own thing.”

“What do you salvage?” Caroline asked.

“Treasure.” He grinned.

“Treasure?” she asked, still skeptical.

“Yeah,” he said. “Sometimes it’s just fishing gear and a water-logged outboard motor. A drunken captain who didn’t know the water and went aground. Or a family sailboat the father didn’t know how to navigate and hit a rock.”

“I’m sure you didn’t come all the way up from Florida to raise a family sailboat,” Caroline said.

“That’s right,” he replied. “Earlier this year I went off Louisiana and brought up a chest of yellow topaz. A mound of silver pesos four inches high and eighty feet long. All from a Spanish brig that went down in 1784.”

The romance of wrecks had always intrigued Caroline. Growing up at Firefly Hill, she and her sisters would look out to sea and imagine the ships that had gone down on the rocky shoals. There were legends about pirates and wreckers on this coast, and one memorable tale about an English ship lost in a terrible storm. “Do you expect to find something like that up here?” she asked, growing excited at the prospect. “Real treasure?”

“Maybe,” he said, smiling enigmatically.

“The English ship. Is that what you’ve come for?” Caroline asked, suddenly understanding. She pictured the boats offshore, the secrecy in the men’s expressions. The man had come north to excavate the old shipwreck.

Caroline had learned about it in third grade; all the Black Hall kids had. An English sea captain came to the colonies, his hold full of arms and the king’s gold. He fell in love with the lighthouse keeper’s wife, and she was going to run away to England with him. But their ship sank on the Wickland Shoals in a great gale. “Tell me her name, the ship that sank,” Caroline said finally.

“The
Cambria,
” the man said, watching her face.

“That’s right!” she said, looking into his eyes. As she did, she had the feeling she knew him, had known him for a long time and knew him well. A strange sensation came over her: Her skin tingled, and the hair on the back of her neck stood on end.

“How did you find out about it?” she asked. “It’s only a legend. People have looked before, and they’ve never found any trace. It happened nearly three hundred years ago, if it happened at all.”

“It happened,” he said softly.

“But how did you hear? It’s a local story. I’ve never read anything about it.”

“You told me about it,” the man said.

“I told you?”

“In one of your letters you wrote about a ship that had sunk within sight of your house. The
Cambria.
You’d learned about it in school, and you could see the spot from your bedroom window. You’re Caroline Renwick, aren’t you?”

She felt the blush spread up her neck. Reaching out, she took his hand. It felt rough and callused, and his grip was tight and didn’t let go. She recognized him now. He looked so much like his picture, that smile and the light in his eyes. She had carried his picture around for ten years, and she was surprised she hadn’t recognized him the minute he walked in the door.

“Joe,” she said. “Joe Connor.”

“I should have called first,” he said. “But we came north kind of suddenly.”

“Joe,” she said again.

“The Renwick Inn,” he said. “I’ve always wondered whether it was you. Or your family, at least.”

“It’s hard to believe,” she said. “That we’ve never met before. Of all the times for you to show up…”

“Life’s strange,” he said, still smiling. But something about the cast of his eyes made her see he was backing off. Whatever friendliness he had initially shown was tempered by their past, the secrecy of his business, or something else. He glanced around, nodded at his men in the bar.

“It is,” Caroline said. “Strange that you wanted to stay at my inn, considering…”

“Considering what?”

“Everything. Considering everything.”

“That’s ancient history,” Joe said. “You run an inn, and I need a place to put my crew.”

“Your crew? Not you?” Caroline asked.

Joe shook his head. “I stay at the site, on board one of the ships. So do most of my guys, but we need a base on land. Showers, a bar, a restaurant.”

“Looks like they’re enjoying the bar,” Caroline said, watching the bartender frown as he poured shots of Southern Comfort. “Can’t say I remember the last time I saw someone drinking shots in there.”

“My guys a little too rough for you?” Joe asked with an edge. He grinned. “Good thing you’re booked. We wouldn’t want to coarsen your place up. We’ll finish our drinks and clear out.”

Caroline brushed back her hair. She felt stiff, off balance. He’d be leaving soon, and she wanted to be glad. Meeting him brought back bad memories, a lot of hurt. She’d done plenty to block the pain out of her life, and she didn’t need to open the door and invite it back in. So when she opened her mouth, her words surprised herself. “Like I said, we have two rooms free.”