Outside, she was met by a pleasant breeze. The humidity had receded, leaving in its wake a clear sky filled with crisp stars and a bright sickle moon. As Olivia drove beyond the town limits and later turned off the paved road onto the sandy track leading to her home, she noticed the bank of luminous clouds hanging just above the horizon.

  Their silver hue seemed especially celestial against the ebony sky. Upon reaching her house, Olivia opened the sliding door to the deck, released Haviland, and together the pair meandered through the dunes to the beach.

  For a long while, Olivia stared at the moon-illuminated clouds, thinking they looked like an ideal setting for a fairy tale castle, or the colossal abode of Jack in the Beanstalk’s giant, or perhaps the pristine, white-marbled temples of Olympian gods.

  “I met a man named Atlas tonight,” Olivia said to Haviland. “Either his parents shared a love of maps or they expected him to have enough strength to hold up the world. It’s some name.”

  Haviland barked and held his nose high, sniffing the air.

  Olivia had always adored Greek mythology and reread Bulfinch’s collection every two or three years. “Atlas was the son of a Titan, brother to Prometheus and Epimetheus,” she spoke to the night-darkened waves. “As punishment for joining in the war against the Olympians, he was condemned to bear the weight of the sky on his shoulders for all time. Because of his assignment, the Titans Earth and Sky would never again be able to meet. Never again would they embrace.”

  She glanced above the ridge of clouds to the star-sprinkled heavens.

  “What is Atlas Kraus’s burden, I wonder?”

  Olivia stood at the edge of the surf, reviewing the evening’s events. Would the next day see the resolution of Camden’s case? What might Jethro Bragg’s anger reveal? Why had he been talking to Camden? Why were Annie and Roy on edge? How would the Planning Board vote next week?

  “Let’s go in now, Haviland. We’ll come back bright and early tomorrow. Perhaps we’ll take out the Bounty Hunter and dig for treasures. For now, I just want sleep.”

  That night, she had the dream—the dream in which her mind returned to the last time she saw her father. These were not photograph-clear images, but flickered scenes stretched and bent and distorted by time.

  The dream walked a tightrope between memory and nightmare.

  Olivia was nine years old. There were her tan, skinny limbs, her favorite blue boat shoes with the untied laces stained by mud and grass, and the T-shirt with the unicorn iron-on—faded and cracked from repeated washes. Her hair was stringy and tangled, hanging down the sides of her face like a fisherman’s net. It hid the fear in her dark blue eyes.

  She was on her father’s trawler heading toward the open sea. It was the eve of her tenth birthday and the night sky was clouding over. Her father stood at the helm, guzzling cheap whiskey and grumbling to himself. He seemed to have forgotten she was there. Cold, Olivia wrapped an old sweatshirt around her shoulders. It was pink and smelled of salt and fish, but it was still a comfort.

  The night wore on.

  Suddenly, her father swiveled, his hands leaving the wheel as his eyes flashed with rage. Snatching the sweat-shirt from Olivia’s grasp, he cursed her, using language she’d never heard him speak until after her mother’s death. But every time the whiskey flowed, he searched for words that would wound his daughter. Words that would form scar after scar.

  “It’s your fault!” he snarled at Olivia. “She’s dead because of you.”

  The black sea seemed to rise with his anger, and for the first time, Olivia was terrified he would strike her. He’d raised his calloused and weathered hand above her many times, but the blows never landed.

  Springing out of his reach, Olivia scrambled into the dinghy tied to the side of her father’s boat. She jerked the rope securing it to the larger vessel from its cleat and leapt aboard. Ignoring her father’s wrathful threats, she pulled in the wet mooring line and began to row in the opposite direction.

  The clouds multiplied, obscuring the little craft in a shadow of dense, protective fog. After rowing until her arms ached and the blisters erupted on her palms, Olivia slept. When she woke, she looked around at the dark and unreadable ocean. It still felt like night, but there were no stars, no moon, no horizon line to distinguish the ocean from sky. There was only the fog.

  Hours later, a shrimper heading out with the dawn light found the drifting dinghy and brought the mute girl back to dry land.

  She never saw her father again.

  Chapter 10

  When one’s character begins to fall under suspicion and disfavor, how swift, then, is the work of disintegration and destruction.

  —MARK TWAIN

  The dream clung to Olivia like a sweater slung over the shoulders. Though night was long over and the dawn had brought light and heat and a high tide, Olivia couldn’t wait to get out of bed and escape the air of her room. The darkness might be gone, but the space was crowded by the memories the dream had conjured.

  Gathering her metal detector and the bag holding her folding trench shovel and nylon dishwashing brush, Olivia followed Haviland as he raced to the beach in a blur of black fur.

  As she walked past the lighthouse keeper’s cottage, Olivia glanced at the window of her childhood room, half expecting to see her child self gazing back at her. But the glass only reflected twinkles of sunlight. The day was simply too fresh and full of promise to be held captive by the past, so Olivia turned her face toward the ocean, slipped on her headphones, and felt the presence of the dream dissipate.

  She walked along the flat sand for three quarters of a mile and then headed away from the water’s edge into the dunes. It was more challenging to walk there, but she hadn’t hunted this deep around the grass-covered sand before.

  Swinging the Bounty Hunter’s disc back and forth, Olivia listened carefully to the chirps and blips, ignoring the low sound signaling pull tabs or nails. Finally, a high-pitched bleep indicated the possibility of a buried coin and Olivia removed her trench shovel from her bag and began to dig up the heavy sand. About a foot down, the tip of her tool struck something metal. Olivia tossed the shovel aside and reached into the damp hole with her fingertips.

  Haviland appeared like a phantom from behind a dune and sniffed at the pile of displaced sand.

  “Just a shotgun shell,” Olivia told him, placing the find in her bag. “That makes four this year.”

  Standing up, Olivia surveyed the flat ocean. “I think we’ll bend the rules a bit this morning. Let’s walk back by the road and see if we can discover something more interesting.”

  Trotting up to the unpaved track, Haviland happily searched the unfamiliar scents along the side of the road, his nose quivering with excitement.

  Olivia hadn’t gone more than fifty yards before the metal detector indicated another coin possibility. However, after digging through the less yielding soil, she unearthed a second shotgun shell.

  “Was someone picking off your relatives with a twelve gauge?” she demanded crossly of a curious gull and shoved the spent shell in her bag.

  Overtly disregarding her customary rule to stop after a single find, Olivia continued to move the Bounty Hunter back and forth in a gentle sweep as she and Haviland turned toward home. A few hundred yards along the road, the buzz signaling yet another coin echoed in Olivia’s ears. She almost ignored it.

  Haviland barked impatiently. He was ready for his breakfast, but Olivia wanted the ground to provide a distraction from Camden’s death, the upcoming Planning Board meeting, and her inability to complete the chapter describing Kamila’s reception by Pharaoh’s other concubines.

  “We’ll go to Grumpy’s this morning, Captain. If you help me dig.”

  Together, the pair set to work. After moving about a foot of dirt, Olivia sat back on her heels and wiped the sweat from her brow.

  “Nothing!” she shouted in annoyance. Rising, she scanned the displaced soil with the metal detector and, when the panel blinked red, spooned the dirt into a sifter. Furiously shaking the dirt free, she ended up with several large pebbles, a twig, and a corroded circle the size of a penny.

  Surrendering, Olivia dumped the unknown coin into her bag and increased her pace so that by the time she reached her house, she felt completely spent. After refreshing Haviland’s water bowl and taking a quick, tepid shower, Olivia grabbed her laptop and drove into town.

  Dixie had a sixth sense when it came to her regular customers. She always seemed to know when they’d arrive and what they were in the mood to eat. Olivia’s usual table by the window had been wiped clean and set up with gleaming utensils, a spotless coffee cup, and a glass of tap water without ice.

  Haviland jumped onto the booth across from Olivia and, after greeting Dixie with a toothy smile, focused his gaze on the passersby on the other side of the window.

  “Florentine egg-white omelet for you, ma’am?” Dixie asked, her small hands looped under a pair of pink suspenders. The unlikely accessory was clipped to the waistband of a purple crinoline skirt, under which Dixie wore a pair of white spandex shorts. Frowning, she held up her pointer finger. “Nope. You don’t feel like eggs today. You want some comfort food. Something sweet and buttery. Am I right?”

  “As usual,” Olivia agreed. “I’ll be decadent and have the Oyster Bay French Toast.”

  “With a side of carcinogenic bacon?”

  Olivia smiled. “Yes, please.” She examined the pieces of fabric covering her friend’s forearms and elbows. “Are those arm socks?”

  “Arm warmers,” Dixie corrected. “They’re all the rage with the teenage girls. I borrowed my daughter’s just to see what all the fuss was about. Any luck on this morning’s treasure hunt?”

  Haviland issued a muffled bark.

  “Two shotgun shells and a coin. The coin’s soaking, but from what I could see, it’s an Indian Head penny. Can’t read the date yet.”

  Dixie shook her head. “That’s a lot of effort for a penny, isn’t it? No wonder you stay so damned thin. Let me put your order in and then I’ll come back and fill you in on some gossip you’ll find very interesting.” With a wink, she skated off to the kitchen.

  Booting up her laptop, Olivia tried to immerse herself in her ancient Egyptian setting. She imagined Kamila bathing in a cool, shallow pool filled with floating lotus blossoms. Afterward, she’d rub her skin with costly oils and drape herself in the thinnest linen shift. Sitting on a low stool in the morning’s sunshine, Kamila would comb out her long, black tresses as she watched an ibis strut around the lush, private garden.

  Just as Kamila was attempting to make friendly overtures toward a group of three older concubines, Dixie returned with Olivia’s bacon and a platter of meat and eggs for Haviland.

  “So,” Dixie began. “You know Grumpy’s got a cousin who works at the airport?”

  “Grumpy’s got a cousin working in every profession in the county,” Olivia remarked.

  Dixie smirked. “Probably three counties. But this cousin likes to tell us when the fancy planes come in. He keeps a list of them in a notebook. Writes down the rich or famous passengers whenever he can recognize them.” She paused, waiting for Olivia to sample her bacon. “Guess who flew in as early as the cock crows this morning?”

  “One of the Talbots?” Olivia deduced.

  Looking disappointed, Dixie scowled. “You’re no fun. How’d you know that?”

  “Our writing group has been researching the family. Dean likes to appear and soften up the locals prior to any vote that might influence one of his bigger projects. He’s got less than a week to butter up all the Planning Board members. I guess the Ocean Vista condos weren’t grand enough to get him down here,” Olivia remarked. “’ Course, we all approved that development in a flash. It was the first time somebody realized Oyster Bay was a real gem. Shows you how smart Talbot is. He decided to build before that Time article was ever written.”

  A ring sounded from the pick-up window and Grumpy’s quizzical eyes searched out his wife. Seeing her positioned for a good long chat, he pointed at the platters of food and then turned away to focus on his grill.

  “Be right back.” Dixie skated off to deliver tall stacks of pancakes to the patrons seated in the Phantom of the Opera booth. She whisked back to the kitchen, grabbed Olivia’s order and two stainless steel containers of warm pure maple syrup and, after depositing the first with the pancake eaters, returned to Olivia’s table.

  Easing the heavy porcelain platter onto the table, Dixie said, “Don’t see that Talbot’s got too much convincing to do on this project either. Grumpy and Roy are voting for the new development and you know damn well Ed Campbell is going to say aye. After all, he’ll be signing a load of new loans for the folks who want to buy those houses. Shoot, Ed’ll probably be made president of the bank before they finish pouring the first foundation.”

  Chewing on a piece of soft, cinnamon-laced French toast, Olivia silently agreed. “That leaves Marlene and me and whether the two of us have issues with the lack of green space or the displacement of wildlife doesn’t much matter, does it? Cottage Cove is going through. It only takes a majority to pass a proposal and the majority will vote in favor of this one.”

  Dixie chucked Olivia on the arm. “Don’t sound so down. Think of the treasures you could find when they start digging up the park land.”

  Olivia immediately envisioned the grumbling excavators as they crunched the soil with their metal teeth. Thinking of an excavator biting through the crumbing steps and collapsing the iron fence surrounding the tiny graveyard forced her to put her fork down.

  “How did you find out how Roy was going to vote so quickly?” she asked Dixie, hoping to expunge the image of the decimated burial site from her mind.

  The customers in the Cats booth were signaling Dixie for their check. She smiled and nodded at them but didn’t move. Turning back to Olivia as though she had all the time in the world, she leisurely continued their conversation. “Annie and Roy and that brother of his were parked right next to us last night. We couldn’t help but trade thoughts on the proposal.”

  “I met Atlas Kraus after the meeting as well. He seemed … odd.” Olivia was fishing, hoping Dixie would reveal her take on the stranger. Olivia trusted her friend’s ability to read people.

  “Not odd. I can warm up to odd. I’m odd. You havin’ a dog for a best friend is odd. No offense, love.” She blew a kiss at Haviland. “Annie told me that her brother-in-law used to have a family of his own in Idaho or Iowa. Wife left him and took their kid to another state. Told him not to call or visit. Ever. Can you imagine? Anyhow, word is he hasn’t been the same since.” Dixie pulled a sympathetic face and began to skate away. Looking over her shoulder, she paused. “He’s got a damaged look to him, but maybe this town can heal him like it’s been healin’ you.”

  With Dixie’s words echoing in her head, Olivia left Grumpy’s and drove straight to The Yellow Lady. Cosmo waved to her from the front porch, looking refreshed and comfortable. He was seated in one of the cushioned wicker chairs and had his feet propped on a pillowed ottoman. He cradled a mug of coffee in both hands and a selection of newspapers sat on an end table nearby. A stack of eight-by-eleven typed papers rested on his lap.

  “Good morning, Goddess of the Carolina Coast.” Cosmo set down his coffee, clasped the papers against his chest, and jumped up in order to kiss Olivia on both cheeks. He then performed a sweeping bow in Haviland’s honor, but the poodle was more interested in finding a shady spot to rest than in flattery. His belly stuffed, he waddled over to one of the mammoth potted ferns, stretched out beneath its emerald fronds, and closed his eyes.

  “Excuse Haviland’s rudeness. He overindulged this morning. But you’re looking well,” Olivia informed Cosmo pleasantly as she took the seat on the other side of the end table. The wicker creaked and crackled as she settled into the chair. She placed her forearms on the armrests, frowning. She didn’t like furniture that protested over having to bear the weight of a human body.

  Cosmo waved off her compliment. “If I let Annie feed me one more comfort meal you’re going to have to transport me in a pickup truck bed. Go right ahead and line it with hay. Then a nice, talking spider can write words in her web to spare my being turned into Greek sausage links!”

  Olivia laughed.

  The two of them fell silent for a moment, listening to the buzzing of insects and the sound of a lawn mower rumbling in a neighboring yard.

  “I hear they’re questioning a suspect down at the police station,” Cosmo said softly and caressed Camden’s pages. “Some man named Jethro. Do you know him?”

  “I didn’t know he’d been taken into custody, though I was aware that the chief had questions for him,” Olivia answered after a moment. “Jethro’s an army vet. He makes his living selling clams and oysters. Resides on a houseboat and generally keeps to himself.”

  Cosmo’s lovely eyes turned dark. He suddenly squeezed them shut in pain. “Why would he hurt Cam?”

  Olivia’s gaze traveled beyond the porch to a bed of calla lilies and lantana. “Honestly, I can’t see why he would, but I don’t know him personally, Cosmo. I do have a hard time believing he reads or writes poetry, but the chief must have his reasons for considering him a suspect”

  “There must be thousands of those little poems out in the world, Olivia.” Cosmo gestured at the packet in his lap. “There’s all kinds of creative writing for the taking on the Web. Maybe the poem wasn’t an original. Maybe this Jethro is some kind of plagiarizing psychopath.”

  Choosing her words carefully, Olivia said, “You raise a valid point about the poem. I shouldn’t have assumed it was original just because I couldn’t find it on the Internet. You may also be on target regarding Jethro.” She paused, considering. “He may be unstable. He may even suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Still, I can’t help but wonder why he’d randomly attack Camden. There’s no connecting factor between the two mean.” Olivia thought of Millay’s strong conviction that Jethro wasn’t involved in the murder. She had to talk to her soon and find out once and for all why the young bartender had such unshakable faith in Jethro’s innocence.

 

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