Jayne Krentz - Dawn in Eclipse Bay

“Why would I want to do that?”

“If you stay at the cottage you’ll get in the way of Gabe’s courting.”

“Maybe I’ll take you up on that offer. Don’t want to interfere with the lovebirds.” Sullivan chuckled.

Mitchell eyed him suspiciously. “What’s so funny?”

“Just thinking about what the folks in town will say when they find out that I’m your houseguest.”

“Huh.” Sullivan grinned. “Probably figure we’ll try to knock each other’s teeth out.”

“Probably.”

“Now that’s settled, maybe I should fill you in on some of the stuff that’s been happening around here.”

Fifteen minutes later Sullivan was ready to explode. “Why the hell wasn’t I told about the break-ins? I didn’t have a clue that Lillian was in danger.”

“Take it easy. Like I just said, everything is under control. Gabe took care of Flint for you.”

“I should have been informed.”

“Gabe put the fire out before anyone realized just how big it was.” Mitchell heaved himself up out of his chair. “Bryce will have dinner ready in a while. I generally have a glass or two of something beforehand. As I recall, you used to do the same.”

“I haven’t changed.” Sullivan watched the darkness close in over the bay. “A little something at this time of day helps a man relax.”

“That it does.”

Mitchell went to a cabinet, hauled a bottle out of a cupboard and splashed whiskey into two glasses. He brought the two drinks back across the room and handed one to Sullivan without comment.

They drank their whiskeys and watched the darkness thicken outside the window.

After all these years, Sullivan thought, it was good to sit here and share the twilight with the one other person in the world who understood why this was such a bad time of day.

“They say the memories fade as you get older,” Mitchell said after a while.

“They lie.”

Lillian parked her car in the driveway behind Claire’s red compact, got out and walked across the graveled drive toward the porch steps. All four doors and the lid of the compact’s trunk were open wide. Two suitcases and a file box occupied the trunk.

The front door of the house banged open just as she reached out to knock. Claire lurched forward, head down, onto the porch, struggling with an oversized suitcase. She was dressed in sweats and running shoes. Her hair was anchored in a ponytail.

The loud, strident voice of a radio talk-show host holding forth on politics poured out of the doorway behind her.

“Need a hand?” Lillian asked above the hammering of the radio pundit.

Claire jolted to a stop, breathing hard. She looked up quickly, startled.

“Lil.” She let go of the suitcase. “Sorry, didn’t hear you drive up. What are you doing here?”

“You told me you were leaving town today. I came by to see if I could help with the packing.”

“Thanks.” Claire looked at the compact’s trunk and then down at the suitcase that she had angled through the doorway. “I underestimated the job. Guess I hadn’t realized how much stuff I had accumulated here in Eclipse Bay. I’m taking the essentials with me in the car. The moving-van people will be here at two o’clock for the rest.”

“Point me in the right direction.”

“I finished my office. I was just getting started on the bedroom and bath. If you want to take the kitchen, I would be forever grateful.”

“No problem.” Lillian moved through the doorway.

Claire followed her. She went to the table where the radio blared and turned off the political hot talk. The sudden silence left an uncomfortable vacuum.

“You’re a good friend,” Claire declared. “Unlike some others I could mention. You will notice how none of the other members of theteam bothered to show. Turns out they all had something unexpected come up at the last minute. Why am I not surprised?”

“Claire-”

“Getting fired from a political campaign staff endows you with instant invisibility. Did you know that? Like being in the wrong crowd in high school.”

Lillian cleared her throat. “Where are the packing cartons?”

“In the laundry room off the kitchen. Help yourself.”

Lillian went toward the kitchen.

“There’s coffee on the counter,” Claire called after her. “And some croissants from Incandescent Body. You know, that bakery is one of the few things I’m going to miss about this place.”

“Understandable. It’s very good.”

Lillian went into the kitchen and opened the cupboard doors. She did a quick survey of the contents of the cabinets, getting a feel for the size of the job, and then went into the laundry room to look for boxes.

The small space was crowded with the usual jumble of odds and ends that tend to wind up in laundry rooms. A long shelf above the aging washer and dryer held a collection of soap, bleach, and dryer-sheet packages, together with squeeze bottles of glass cleaner and stain remover. A mop and a broom were propped in a bucket in the corner. The basket on the floor next to it was filled with rags.

A selection of empty cardboard cartons was stacked on top of the washer and dryer. She chose two and went back into the kitchen. Methodically she began emptying Claire’s cupboards.

Impulse had brought her here today. She did not know what she was looking for. She only hoped that she would know it when she saw it.

Half an hour later, the two cartons filled, she went out into the living room and down the hall to the room Claire had used as a second office. The desk and file cabinet were still there but they had been cleaned out.

Claire appeared in the hall, a box filled with bathroom items in her arms.

“Finished with the kitchen already?”

“No. I need some strapping tape.”

“On the table in the living room.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t know what I’d have done without you today.” Claire went past her toward the front door. “Next time you’re in Seattle, give me a call. I’ll take you to dinner.”

“I’ll do that.”

She waited until Claire disappeared outside and then ducked into the bedroom. The closet doors and the drawers in the chest beneath the window stood open, making a quick search easy. She examined an array of shoes first. Ignoring the high heels and pumps, she looked for a familiar pair of loafers.

They were nowhere in sight. Maybe they had already been packed. She opened one of the unsealed cartons.

Claire’s footsteps sounded on the porch. Adrenaline surged through Lillian, making her hand tremble.

This was pointless. She was wasting her time. She dropped the lid of the carton and hurried out of the bedroom. She started back along the hall.

Too late. Claire was already in the living room, looking at the strapping-tape device that rested on the coffee table. She turned and saw Lillian. A frown crossed her face.

“Didn’t you find the tape?” she asked.

“I stopped to use the bathroom.” Lillian kept moving. She went to the coffee table and picked up the tape. Her pulse was pounding. “I’m almost finished with the kitchen.”

“Terrific.”

She took a deep breath and made herself walk briskly but not too briskly back into the kitchen. She knelt beside the cartons and went to work sealing them.

Claire’s footsteps receded back down the hall toward the bedroom.

Lillian wondered if her heart would ever stop pounding. Clearly she was not cut out for this kind of thing. But there would never be a better opportunity to satisfy her curiosity.

She finished taping the boxes, got to her feet and went back into the laundry room for more cartons. Her pulse had finally slowed. She moved two large boxes aside to get at the medium-sized one that looked right for the contents of the silverware drawer.

She noticed the crumpled piece of navy blue cloth on top of the rag basket when she put the boxes down beside it. The blue fabric was not faded or torn. It looked new.

It looked familiar. She had an artist’s eye for colors. She remembered them.

Her pulse picked up speed again. Her heart was pounding now.

Don’t get too excited. Probably nothing. Just a rag.

Cautiously she reached into the basket, picked up the wad of navy blue cloth and shook it out. It was the shirt Claire had worn the day she had stopped by the cottage to warn her that Marilyn still wanted Gabe.

There did not appear to be anything wrong with the garment. No rips or holes that would have explained how it had come to be relegated to the rag pile. Could have fallen out of the laundry hamper by accident, she thought.

She flipped the shirt around to examine the back.

The smear of dried red paint on the right cuff made her go cold.

“Oh, damn,” she whispered.

She had come here this morning on the off chance that she might get some answers.Be careful what you wish for.

“How are you doing in here?” Claire came to stand in the doorway of the laundry room. “Need more boxes? I’ve got some-”

She broke off at the sight of the navy blue shirt dangling from Lillian’s fingers. Her eyes went to the paint-stained cuff.

“It was you who trashed my studio.” Lillian put the shirt down on the washer. “I knew there had to be some evidence somewhere. It’s almost impossible to work with a lot of paint and not get some on your clothes.”

The blood drained from Claire’s face. She swallowed twice before she managed to speak.

“You can’t prove anything,” she stammered. “You can’t prove a damn thing, do you hear me?”

“Probably not. Unless, of course, you kept the VPX 5000. But I’m sure you had enough sense to ditch it. Did you throw it into the bay? That’s what I did with my client files.”