Carla Neggers - On Fire

“Nope. I told her I’m shadowing you because I don’t trust you to mind your own business and I needed a cover story, and she showed me to the sharks.”

“You did not.”

He laughed.

“I hate you, Straker.”

“You hold that thought. You staying in for lunch?”

“I’m not telling you.”

“Okay, I’ll find out on my own—”

“Yes! Yes, I’m staying in for lunch.” She hated him, hated him, hated him. But his laugh still resonated, low and deep. He was a very dangerous man. “You?”

“Abigail’s bringing us clam chowder.”

He hung up, and Riley had to pry her fingers off the receiver.

She raced down to the volunteer office, where, indeed, Abigail Granger had ordered clam chowder lunches for her volunteers.

“Would you like some?” she asked. “We always order extra.”

Riley smiled stiffly. “No, thanks. I was just checking out a rumor.”

Straker was there. He hadn’t lied. Abigail wasn’t the sort who’d see through him. She was thirty-nine, fair-haired and fine boned, with striking blue eyes and a well-honed sense of style and grace. She never griped about anyone or anything, although she was divorced and the mother of two teenage boys away at school.

Like Bennett Granger, her deceased father, she wasn’t a scientist, but her dedication to the Boston Center for Oceanographic Studies was total. She’d taken his place on the board of directors. If she wanted to fall for John Straker’s phony sob story, she could.

“I heard about your terrible ordeal this weekend,” Abigail said. “I’m so sorry. How are you doing?”

From her tone Riley guessed she hadn’t heard that the body had been identified as Sam Cassain. Abigail had never said what she believed happened to the Encounter. Matthew Granger—her brother and Riley’s brother-in-law—was the one who knew. Emile was responsible, period, never mind that he’d been like a second father to Bennett’s two children, showing them how to tie knots and sing to the periwinkles. His downfall had left a void in their lives, too, even if Abigail repressed it and Matt raged against it.

Riley decided she didn’t really want to tell Abigail it was Sam’s body she’d found. “I’m okay.”

Abigail frowned. Her expensive navy suit, although simple, looked out of place amid the stripped-down furnishings of the volunteer office. The center had a policy of putting its funds into research, public displays and facilities that benefited its marine and aquatic population—not into plush furnishings for staff and volunteers. “I understand you were visiting Emile.”

“I spent Monday night at his place on Schoodic.”

“Riley? Are you all right?”

She attempted a shaky smile. “It’s just been a tough few days.” There was no way around it. She had to tell her. “Abigail, I heard this morning—the body I found. It was Sam Cassain.”

Abigail clutched a stack of papers with her long, thin, manicured fingers. “That’s awful. Does Henry know?”

Henry Armistead was the center’s executive director, handpicked by Bennett Granger. He’d won the board’s gratitude for his impeccable handling of the public relations nightmare the Encounter tragedy had presented. Sam’s death would give the gossip and the center’s critics fresh life—reason enough for Riley to have gone straight to him first thing that morning.

“I don’t know,” Riley admitted. “I haven’t told him.”

“I think you should,” Abigail said with certainty. “I imagine the police will want to talk to him about Sam. And reporters…” She took a breath, regaining her poise. She would think of the center first. She always did. “We need to put a strategy in place for handling the inevitable questions. Oh, Riley, this is horrendous. You know Sam was in Maine over the weekend, don’t you?”

Her head spun. “He was?”

“Yes, I thought you saw him. He stopped at the house on Friday before the cocktail party. He said he just wanted to see how we were doing.” She faltered, suddenly awkward. “Oh, dear. What if we were the last people to see him alive? How on earth did he end up on Labreque Island, of all places? It must have been an accident.”

Riley half wished she’d taken her grandfather’s cue and cleared out for a few days. Then people could have jumped to the wrong conclusions about her, too. “I have no idea, and I’m trying not to get ahead of myself with questions I can’t answer. I should have talked to Henry sooner. I’ll go see him now.” She hesitated, debating. “Will you be talking to Matt? Sig knows about Sam, but I doubt she—”

“I’ll get in touch with him,” Abigail said, briskly polite. Whatever her opinion of her brother’s marital problems, she would never say.

Riley ducked out without bringing up the topic of oddballs who might have shown up that morning for the PTSD volunteer program. She went out to the exhibits. No sign of Straker. The low lighting gave the sense of being underwater as tourists, school groups and businesspeople on their lunch hour intermingled, checking out exhibits that ran from small aquariums to the huge, multistory saltwater tank.

The PTSD volunteers, she knew, stayed in the bowels of the center, away from any hint of crowds. But she didn’t see Straker there, either. Maybe his clam chowder had arrived. Riley had no desire to disturb the rest of the group’s lunch. With a huff of exasperation, she stormed outside to collect her wits before she ventured up to see Henry.

A stiff breeze gusted off Boston Harbor, bringing with it the feel of autumn. She wanted to be out on the water now, in her kayak, paddling with the wind. Just imagining it helped calm her.

Straker materialized at her side, his impact like a hot gust. “Nice fountain. Dolphins, whales, otters, seals. I like the walrus, myself. A fountain with a sense of humor, which is more than I can say about most of the people who work here. You’re an intense group.”

“What did I do to deserve you on my case?”

His gaze cooled. “You found a dead body on my island.”

“I thought you were having lunch with your PTSD friends.”

“It was yuppie clam chowder. Now, a good haddock chowder with a pat of butter and a sprinkle of black pepper—that would have had me.” He laid on his downeast accent, but Riley could see the tightness in his jaw, the hint of tension in his eyes. They were good eyes. Alert, expressive, as cool and impenetrable a gray as a Maine fog. She shook off the image, wondering what had got hold of her. He went on, “I expect I owe Abigail Granger an apology.”

“For what?”

“I was pretty much a jerk to her. I lied, and I put her on the spot.”

“You’ve never apologized before for being a jerk.”

He scowled. “You’re smart, Riley. But you’re not sweet.” He started off without a word.

“You aren’t really going to apologize to Abigail, are you?”

“I might.” He glanced back at her, a spark of humor lighting his face. “You know, she’s a hell of a lot nicer than you are.”

“Sam Cassain stopped in to see the Grangers on Friday,” Riley blurted.

He stopped. She could see his FBI-trained mind clicking into gear. This wasn’t the mind she knew. She knew the mind that wanted to drown her. She had to remember this wasn’t the boy she’d known on Schoodic Peninsula.

“On Mount Desert?” he asked.

He said it, dessert, the way the locals did, as in the French Mont Desert, or barren mountain, for its hills of pink granite. She nodded. “Abigail told me.”

“Where did Cassain live? What’s he been doing the past year?”

“Last I heard he was working on the docks in Portland, but he still had his place down here—out in Arlington, I think. He hadn’t settled into a new job, so far as I know.”