The Inn At Ocean's Edge Part 2

THREE.

Leaving his boat docked at the fis.h.i.+ng community of Summer Haven behind him, Luke climbed into his old truck and headed toward home on Cliff Road. He navigated the '75 Chevy truck along the muddy road past cranberry bogs on both sides of the unpaved track. Luke's dad had bought this old heap before Luke or his sister had been born, and it held the smell of decades of fish, lobster, and cranberries. The seasons in Maine were summer, fall, winter, spring, and mud. Once the ice and snow melted, any road not paved turned to thick mud that turned slick under bald tires. This time of year he had the four-wheel drive engaged just to navigate the sludge.

Luke couldn't keep his thoughts from straying to Claire Dellamare. Could she know something about his mom's disappearance, or was he a.s.suming too much?

Megan cranked her window down, and the clean air wafted in the vehicle. "I see the wheels turning in your head. Let it go, Luke."

"You have to admit it seems heaven sent that Claire has shown up right now. She might have the key piece of information we need."

"You saw her reaction. She didn't even know she'd ever been here."

"Maybe."

His sister heaved a sigh. "I recognize that noncommittal tone. You intend to talk to her. You sure it's not just because she's wicked cunning?"

The Maine term that meant cute was hardly the word for Claire. Drop-dead gorgeous was more like it. Light-brown hair tipped in honey framed a heart-shaped face and highlighted the biggest blue eyes he'd ever seen. And those dimples? Adorable. She didn't lack self-confidence either. When she'd been outraged about the orca, she confronted them without hesitation. He liked the fire in her.

He grinned. "I only want to find out what she might know about Mom's disappearance."

He rolled down his window. "Seriously, Meg, don't you find it intriguing? Pop has always thought there had to be some connection. He tried to talk to her parents years ago, and they shut him down and wouldn't let him speak to Claire."

"She was four when she disappeared. How much do you remember from when you were four?"

He waggled his brows at her. "I remember flus.h.i.+ng your Polly Pocket down the toilet."

She punched him in the arm. "And you have never even said you're sorry!"

"Ouch." He rubbed his deltoid. "You had, like, a zillion of them."

"I had three. And that one was my favorite." She fixed a dark scowl on him. "But seriously. Most of us don't remember much from when we were four."

Now he had her. "Except traumatic things. So if you are still mad about a Polly Pocket, shouldn't she remember being lost in the woods for a solid year? And I'm not buying the amnesia thing. There has to be more to her forgetting she was ever here. I bet those memories will just take a little probing to come bubbling up."

He rested his arm on the window frame, enjoying the p.r.i.c.kle of the wind and the warmth of the sun as he navigated the muddy potholes. He scanned the expansive cranberry fields. The green plants looked healthy and well tended. Meg had done a good job of pruning the vines. In a few months a crimson tide of cranberries would be bobbing on both sides of the road.

He frowned when the family house came into view. The gray car in the driveway wasn't familiar. "Someone's there."

Megan squinted through the winds.h.i.+eld. "Looks like Pop's home health-care nurse."

A movement from the corner of his eye made Luke stomp on the brakes. One of their employees, Jimmy Bradley, came tearing from the fields. Though just out of high school, the boy was a good worker. He swiped at the blond hair flopping over his wide eyes, then doubled over, his chest heaving. He straightened, then gripped the top of the truck's door and sucked in air.

Luke got out of the truck in time to grab the kid and keep him from sliding to the ground. "What's wrong?"

His mind ran through the possible problems. Jimmy had been clearing some scrub in a field the farm had acquired a year ago. The next step would be to excavate for a new bog, then lay down sand before planting it. Luke had seen bear scat out there yesterday, and maybe the bruin had come back, though Jimmy didn't seem to be bleeding.

He lowered the boy to the road and motioned to his sister. "Grab me the bottle of water behind my seat. Hurry!" If the kid got any grayer, his face would match the pavement.

She nodded and slid across the truck to reach behind his seat. "Is Pop okay?"

Luke's pulse kicked. He hadn't even thought of his dad, but knowing the old man, he just might have gone wandering through the fields in his wheelchair to check on them. Cranberries had been his life for sixty years. "Is it Pop?" He uncapped the water bottle and handed it to Jimmy. What if their dad was lying out there dead of another stroke?

Jimmy shook his head, and a hint of color came back into his face. "Not your dad." He took a long swig of water, then wiped his mouth with the back of his shaking hand. "You have to come, Luke. I burned off . . . some cut brush . . . I'd heaped in a ditch." He shuddered and sipped the water.

Megan slid out of the truck. "It spread and you burned down a building?"

"N-No." The boy's eyes were huge as he looked up at them. "I'm not sure, but I think I found a-a dead person." His Adam's apple bobbed. "Bones."

"What makes you think they're human?" Luke had come across plenty of animal bones in his days, and Jimmy was a flatlander. He'd moved here from Illinois about two years ago. He might still be a little green. But what if Jimmy has found Mom? He didn't dare to hope.

"Hair. There's hair too." The boy's face was white, and he shook his head. "I don't want to see it again. I can tell you where to go."

Luke looked at Megan. "Call the sheriff, and I'll go see what this is about." He turned back to the boy. "What's the location?"

Jimmy pointed over the crest of the horizon. "The new field. There's a ditch that runs through it. Right where it turns and goes into the woods."

"I know the spot." Luke grabbed Jimmy's arm and shoved him toward the truck. "Show me the grave."

Pain. Claire blinked her eyes and tried to make out where she was. Gritty sand itched her back and legs. A cool ocean breeze brushed her legs, and she blinked at the dusky sky overhead. Her fingers grazed bare flesh on her thigh, and she tugged her skirt down.

"Ayuh, easy now." The man leaning over her was in his fifties with kind hazel eyes in a sea-weathered face as brown as the bark on a tree. He wore a tan s.h.i.+rt and black slacks. "You've got a lump on the back of your head the size of an albatross egg." He eased her into a sitting position.

Her head spun, and she blinked to clear her vision. The pain in her head throbbed in time with her heartbeat. Only a bit of light came from the western horizon, and that small patch would be gone soon. The surf thundered to her left, and the strong scent of salt and kelp made her stomach turn even more.

She needed to get back to the hotel. "What happened?"

"You tell me, missy. You called the dispatcher and reported a murder. When we got here, we found only you."

The woman. She squinted in the dim light and glanced around, but all she saw was another deputy standing in the shadows. "Could you help me up?" The pain in her head intensified as he got her onto her feet, and she stood swaying until the agony ebbed to a dull roar.

"Her body was right there." She pointed to a depression by a large rock. "I checked her pulse, and I think she was dead, but I tried CPR anyway."

"You're Claire Dellamare? You match the description."

She nodded. "How did you know my name?"

"Your father called and asked us to look for you. Said you should have been back two hours ago. I'm Sheriff Colton and this is Deputy Waters. Your father said you rushed off all upset after a panic attack, and you'd been gone several hours. You sure you're not imagining it?"

She narrowed her eyes at him, then reached up, wincing as her fingers probed the large goose egg on her head. "Did I imagine this?" His impertinent question was all because of her panic earlier. She'd seen people question her mother all her life, but she was not at all like her mother. Not in any way.

The younger deputy stepped into better view. He was in his thirties with a pencil-thin mustache and pants that hung too low beneath his pendulous belly. "You might have fallen."

Was that a sneer? Claire ignored the avid curiosity in his gaze and tipped her chin up to face down his skepticism. "He hit me on the head from behind."

Colton took her arm and turned her toward the steps up to the hotel. "Ayuh, all I know is some beachcombers from the hotel found you lying here and stayed with you for the hour it took us to get here. Maybe you should get some rest tonight, Ms. Dellamare. Things might be a little clearer tomorrow."

She jerked her arm out of his grip. "I'm perfectly clear now. See that big rocky cliff? They were struggling there. He pushed her toward the edge, and I yelled for him to stop, but I don't think he heard me. The next thing I knew, he tossed her over the edge." The nausea roiled in her stomach again when she remembered the sound the woman's body had made when it hit the sand.

His only reaction was a slow blink of his eyes. She grabbed his arm. "You have to believe me."

"Then where's the body?" The younger cop hiked at his pants.

"Maybe the murderer took it." She rubbed the back of her neck, but the tight knots under the skin didn't ease. "I recognized the woman. It was Jenny Bennett from the hotel." When a slight gasp came from Waters, she glanced over to see all color had washed from his face. "You know her?"

"You sure it was Jenny?" The deputy's voice choked, and his eyes were wide and horrified.

"Positive. I met her when I checked into the hotel. I'd spoken with her on the phone, and she introduced herself."

Colton put his hand on his deputy's shoulder. "Go on home and check." Waters took off for the steps without answering, and the sheriff watched him go. "He and Jenny live together. So I hope you're wrong, Ms. Dellamare. Waters has an engagement ring in his pocket and is planning to ask her to marry him this weekend."

Claire gulped. "And I just blurted it out to him."

He dug a metal tin of Altoids out of his pocket and popped one in his mouth. "You didn't know. And I'm still hoping you're just a little off-kilter and Waters finds her safe and sound at home."

Claire wanted to be wrong. Could she have been wrong about her attacker looking like the man in her nightmares? "I saw him before he hit me." She described him to the sheriff.

"Could be any one of hundreds of hunters in this area."

She was beginning to doubt herself until her head throbbed again. She hadn't imagined someone hitting her. "I'll paint him for you. I remember his face clearly."

"Sounds fine, just fine, Ms. Dellamare."

He didn't believe a word she'd said. "I'd better get back to the hotel. My father will be worried."

"Your dad seemed a mite upset."

"I'm their only child. You know how that can be." She glanced at her watch. Three hours. No wonder her father was frantic.

She let him a.s.sist her up the step, the pink granite glimmering in the fading light. Muscles she'd forgotten she had began to complain at the long walk up the cliffside. Lights spilled from the hotel windows, and tasteful yard lights illuminated the landscaping along the expansive green lawns.

If only she could crawl into the crisp white sheets waiting in her room. She needed to have all her faculties and strength when she confronted her father about what she'd learned from Luke. But she'd never sleep now if she didn't find out what had happened here all those years ago.

FOUR.

Lights blazed from the hotel, and the soft tones of "My Girl" filtered through speakers placed around the manicured lawn. By the time Claire stepped into the lobby, fragrant with watermelon candles, every muscle in her body throbbed, and she limped from the pain in her right hip. She must have gone down hard on that side. Clinking gla.s.ses mingled with laughter from the lounge as she walked across the pink-granite tiles toward the elevator.

She waited for the panic to hit her again, but she felt strangely calm and focused. At least now she knew what had caused that uncharacteristic reaction from her. When several people glanced at her out of the corners of their eyes, she looked down. She was still barefoot and had lost her shoes somewhere along the way. Her hair must be filled with debris from the beach as well, and a smear of muddy sand adorned her left leg.

A bellman rushed to intercept her path toward the elevator. "Ms. Dellamare, your parents are in their suite. May I accompany you to that location?"

"My mother is here?"

He nodded. "She arrived moments ago." She would have preferred to have confronted her father alone.

Since she didn't have any idea where the suite was, she let him lead her down a hall painted with murals of singers from the sixties, then on to a private elevator and up to the fifth floor. The thought of telling her parents everything that had happened tonight made her cringe, but she put one foot in front of the other down the hall until the bellman rapped on a door tucked into the end of the hall.

"Mr. Dellamare, I have your daughter with me."

The solid wood door opened, and her mother reached for Claire. Claire's eyes burned as the familiar scent of her mother's Hermes perfume slipped up her nose. Over her mother's shoulder, she caught a glimpse of the room as her mother drew her inside. The suite was white on gray with bold splashes of color and more pictures of famous people from the sixties. A picture of the Fab Four showed The Beatles smiling at the camera with two large striped umbrellas over their heads.

Something about the umbrellas . . .

She slammed her eyes shut, and through a fog she heard her father thank the bellman before the heavy door shut behind her. A crazy swirl of panic rose in her again, and she fought it. She was safe here. There was nothing to fear. She took a few deep breaths, and the pressure eased.

Her mother rushed toward her and drew her close. "I came as soon as I got your message that you were on your way here. You should have told me sooner." Mom took her shoulders and drew her away to give her a tiny shake. "Really, Claire, you frightened me to death! It was almost like-"

"Lisa, can't you see she's exhausted?" Claire's father removed a pillow from an armchair. "Here, sit down, Claire. You look done in. What happened to you? You've been gone for hours."

Almost like . . .

Almost like the other time she'd gotten lost? A time shrouded in mists of forgotten memories? She gripped her mother's wrist. "You came as soon as you heard I was heading to join Dad here, you said. Was it because you were afraid I'd remember the last time I was here? Why didn't you tell me?"

"You remember?" She exchanged a long look with Claire's father. The plea in her mother's eyes made Dad take a step forward.

"Not exactly. But I must remember something, and that's why I had a panic attack." Was that relief in his eyes?

He licked his lips. "I'm not sure it was a panic attack, Claire. You used to have asthma when you were little. Maybe the sea air triggered another one."

"I've never had an asthma attack in my memory. And you're avoiding my question. Why didn't you tell me I'd been here?"

Her father put his hand on her shoulder. "We travel widely, Claire. I couldn't tell you every place you've ever been. And I wasn't expecting you here anyway, remember? You just came of your own volition."

Her gut twisted, and she curled her hands into fists in the lap of her stained and torn dress. The cowardly part of her didn't want to get into it tonight when she was exhausted and shocked, but she'd been drifting too long, asleep in a pleasant dream where nothing bad ever happened. Something terrible had happened here. She could feel it, could sense the way every cell in her body cringed at the sight of this place.

She inhaled, then looked up at her parents. Both strikingly good-looking in their expensive clothing and carefully arranged hair. A perfect couple, everyone said. She'd never heard them fight either. Was her disappearance the reason her mother had always been so fragile?

Her mother twisted the giant diamond on her finger. "You're wearing a peculiar expression, Claire. And look at you. No shoes. You're filthy, and your hair is a wreck. What happened to you this afternoon? Your father even called the sheriff. Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, Mom. Some guy killed the woman at the counter when I checked in, Jenny Bennett. I called the sheriff, but the killer sneaked up on me and hit me over the head." When her mother gasped, Claire shook her head. "I'm okay. The sheriff is looking for him."

"You were attacked? Does he know you saw him?" her father asked.

"I'm sure he does and that's why he hit me." Claire fingered the lump on her head. She badly needed to wash the mud and debris out of her hair.

Her mother put her hand to her mouth. "What if he comes back? You need to leave here. Get to our house where we have security." She looked at Dad. "Harry, you need to hire a bodyguard. If he knows Claire saw him, he might try to harm her again."

Claire leaned forward in the chair. "I'm not going anywhere without some answers. It's time I was told the truth."