Catherine Coulter - The Cove

"Tell me about him."

She took another bite of toast. "I can't afford you, remember, James?"

"I sometimes do pro bono."

"I don't think so. Have you discovered anything about the old couple?"

"Yes, I have. Everyone I've spoken to is lying through their collective dentures. Marge and Harve were here, probably at the World's Greatest Ice Cream Shop. Why doesn't anyone want to admit it? What's to hide? So they had ice cream-who cares?"

He pulled up short, staring at the pale young woman sitting across from him. She took another bite of the dry toast. He lifted the dish of homemade strawberry jam and handed it to her. She shook her head.

He'd never in his life told anyone about his business. Of course, old Marge and Harve weren't really his business, not really, but then again, why the hell had everyone lied to him?

More to the point, why had he said anything about that case to her? She was a damned criminal, or at least she knew who had offed her father. If there was one thing he was sure of, it was that.

Whatever else she was-well, he'd find out. She had come to him. Confronted him. It saved him the Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

trouble of seeking her out again.

"You're right. That doesn't make any sense. You're sure folk lied to you?"

"Positive. It's interesting, don't you think?"

She nodded, took another bite of toast, and chewed slowly. "Why don't I ask Amabel why no one admits to remembering them?"

"No, I don't think so. I'm the private investigator here. I'll do the asking. It's not your job."

She just shrugged.

"It's too early for the World's Greatest Ice Cream," he said. "Maybe yo'd like to go for a walk on the cliffs? You look pale. A walk would put some color in your cheeks."

She gave it a lot of thought. He said nothing more, just watched her eat the rest of that dry toast that had to be cold as a stone. She stood, brushed the crumbs from the legs of her brown corduroy slacks, and said, "I need to put on my sneakers. I'll meet you in front of Amabel's house in ten minutes."

"Excellent," he said, and meant it. Now he was getting somewhere. He'd open her up soon enough, just like a clam. Soon she would tell him all about her husband, her mother, her dead father, who hadn't called her on the phone. No, that was impossible.

She also seemed perfectly normal, and that bothered him as well. When he'd found her hysterical and frightened yesterday, it had been what he'd expected. But this calm, this open smile that, to his critical eye, held no malice or guile, made him feel he'd missed the last train to Saginaw.

When he met her in front of her aunt's house, she smiled at him. Where the hell was her guile?

Fifteen minutes later she was talking as if there wasn't a single black cloud in her world. "... Amabel told me that The Cove was nothing until a developer from Portland bought up all the land and built vacation cottages. Everything went smoothly until the sixties, then everyone just forgot about the town."

"Someone sure remembered, someone with lots of money. The place is a picture postcard." He remembered old Thelma Nettro had told him the same thing.

"Yes," she said, kicking a small pebble out of her path. "It's odd, isn't it? If the town died, then how was it resurrected? There's no local factory to employ everyone, no manufacturing of any kind. Amabel said the high school closed back in 1974."

"Maybe one of them has discovered how to tap into the Social Security Computer system."

"That would only work in the short term. The fund only has money for, what is it? Fifteen months? It's scary. No one would want to count on that."

They stood on the edge of a narrow promontory and looked down at the fierce white spume, fanning upward when the waves hit the black rocks.

"It's beautiful," she said as she drew in a deep breath of the salt air.

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"Yes, it is, but it makes me nervous. All that unleashed power. It has no conscience. It can kill you so easily."

"What a romantic thing to say, Mr. Quinlan."

"Not at all. But I'm right. It doesn't know the good guys from the bad guys. And it's James. You want to climb down? There's a path just over there by that lone Cypress tree that doesn't look too dangerous."

"I don't want you fainting on me, Quinlan, if you get too close to all that unleashed power."

"Threaten to knee me and I'll forget about fainting for the rest of my life."

She laughed and walked ahead of him. She quickly disappeared around a turn in the trail. It was a narrow path, strewn with good-sized rocks, snaggled low brush, and it was too steep. She slipped, gasped aloud, and grabbed at a root.

"Be careful, dammit!"

"Yes, I will be. No, don't say it. I don't want to go back. We'll both be very careful. Just another fifty feet."

The trail just stopped. From the settled look of all the brush and rocks, there'd been an avalanche some years before. They could probably climb over the rocks, but Quinlan didn't want to take the chance.

"This is far enough," he said, grabbing her hand when she took another step. "Nope, Sally, this is it. Let's sit here and commune with all that unleashed power."

There was no beach below, just pile upon pile of rocks, forming strange shapes as richly imagined as the cloud formations overhead. One even made a bridge from one pile to another, with water flowing beneath. It was breathtaking, and James was right, it was a bit frightening.

Seagulls whirled and dove overhead, squawking and calling to each other.

"It isn't particularly cold today."

"No," she said. "Not like last night."

"I'm in the west tower room at Thelma's Bed and Breakfast. The windows shuddered the whole night."

Suddenly she stood up, her eyes fixed on something just off to the right. She shook her head, whispering,

"No, no, it can't be."

He was on his feet in an instant, his hand on her shoulder. "What the hell is it?"

She pointed.

"Oh, my God," he said. "Stay here, Sally. Just stay here and I'll check it out."

"Oh, go to hell, Quinlan. No, I don't like Quinlan. I'll call you James. I won't stay put."

But he just shook his head at her. He set her aside and made his way carefully through the rocks until he was standing just five feet above the body of a woman, the waves washing her against the rocks, then Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

tugging her back, back and forth. There was no blood in the water. "Oh, no," he said aloud.

She was at his side, staring down at the woman. "I knew it," she said. "I was right, but nobody would listen to me."

"We've got to get her out before there's nothing left of her," he said. He sat down, took off his running shoes and socks, and rolled up his jeans. "Stay here, Sally. I mean it. I don't want to have to worry about you falling into the water and washing out to sea."

Quinlan finally managed to haul her in. He wrapped the woman, what was left of her, in his jacket. His stomach was churning. He waved to Sally to start climbing back up the path. He didn't allow himself to think that what he was carrying had once been a living, laughing person. God, it made him sick. "We'll take her to Doc Spiver," Sally called over her shoulder. "He'll take care of her."

"Yeah," he said to himself, "I just bet he will." An old man in this one-horse town would probably say that she'd been killed accidentally by a hunter shooting curlews.

Doc Spiver's living room smelled musty. James wanted to open the windows and air the place out, but he figured the old man must want it this way. He sat down and called Sam North, a homicide detective with the Portland police department. Sam wasn't in, so James left Doc Spiver's number. "Tell him it's urgent,"