“You on official business?” he asked.
“No. Were you looking for me?”
“Yes.” He explained about his call to Dun Harrison. She seemed distracted while he spoke, and her reaction wasn’t all he’d hoped for.
“Well, that’s good news. If she agrees to talk with you.”
He frowned. “I’ll buy you a cup of coffee if you’ll tell me what’s wrong.”
She hesitated. “I could use one, but I’ll tell you what: Why don’t we let my father give us a cup. I’m on my way to see him.”
Curious about the man who had raised her, Guy followed in his car to the yacht harbor. It seemed like the loneliest place in the world today, and that wasn’t just due to his mood. Many of the docks had collapsed and lay submerged in the oil-slicked water; a derelict fishing boat, its paint cracked and blistered, listed to one side on the murky bottom; sand had reclaimed much of the channel; trash dotted the jetty. The Rhoda A, no longer a handsome craft, was the marina’s only functional tenant.
Rhoda came up beside him. “Pretty grim, huh?”
“In a way. Why does your father stay here?”
“There’s no place else he wants to be.”
Meaning he didn’t care about his surroundings, and Guy wondered why.
Rhoda motioned to him and they began walking along the dock toward the CrisCraft.
A large man with razor nicks on his clean-shaven chin and broken veins on his nose was sitting on deck, an amber drink in hand. He pushed back his baseball cap and watched them approach, his apparent pleasure at seeing his daughter becoming tinged with wariness as he regarded Guy. “Come aboard, Deputy,” he called. “Who’s your friend?”
Rhoda stepped onto the boat with the natural ease of someone who had spent a good part of her life on the water. Guy followed clumsily. When Rhoda made the introductions, Jack Antolini’s eyes glinted knowingly. “So you decided to take your old man’s advice, did you?”
“For once.”
Now what did that mean?
Jack led them below and offered them a choice of coffee or Irish whiskey. Rhoda opted for the former, and Guy, in the interest of manly fellowship, took the latter. As they sat down at the small table Jack motioned at a police scanner that was muttering on the galley counter. “I hear they’re looking for your friend Wayne. He finally go too far?”
Rhoda’s face grew troubled. “I don’t know what to think, Dad.” Guy listened with growing surprise as she explained about Wayne’s sudden flight.
Jack shook his head. “Not right to put out a pickup order on him, Deputy.”
“It was Ned Grossman who put it out. And before I reported to him, I did everything I could to raise Wayne on his personal radio, as well as called his house and anybody who might have seen him. If he’s running, we can’t politely ask him to come in and tell his side of the story.” There was a testy note in Rhoda’s voice that Guy hadn’t heard before. Some friction between father and daughter.
Jack said, “I don’t care what Wayne’s involvement with those canyon people was, he’s not a man who’d murder anybody, much less children.”
“But this Chrystal Ackerman—”
“She may’ve been thrown off the cliff behind the old filling station, but that doesn’t prove Wayne did it. He took the Blakeley woman there over thirteen years ago. That doesn’t mean he’s been back since.”
Rhoda made a helpless gesture with both hands, then laced her fingers around her coffee mug. The tension in the small cabin was palpable now.
Guy said, “I think you’re right, sir.”
They both looked at him as if they’d forgotten he was there.
He cleared his throat and went on. “Wayne’s a violent man, but his sister told me he only started acting out after the canyon killings. It’s possible he really cared for Claudia Blakeley, and her death started a process of decline.”
Jack glanced at Rhoda. “Well, he did lose those blood samples.”
Now he was allying himself with her, as Guy had intended. “An honest mistake,” he said.
“He let my girl take the blame.”
“Covering his ass, and she let him.”
“He might’ve known who did the killings and was trying to protect them.”
“Might have.”
Jack frowned, confused by Guy’s shifting point of view. Rhoda stifled a grin. Guy was beginning to understand the dynamic between them, and while it amused him, he sympathized with both.
He said, “Rhoda mentioned you were in law enforcement all your working life. You must have some interesting stories.”
Beside him Rhoda sighed, but the sound was full of relief.
At close to six when her father asked Guy to make a run to the supermarket for another fifth of Bushmills, Rhoda started to protest. But some unspoken agreement had been struck between the two men, and they ignored her. After Guy left she leaned on her elbows at the table, watching Jack tidy the galley and turn on the cabin lamps against the encroaching dusk.
“You’ve got that New York City journalist tamed good, honey,” he said.
“He’s far from tame, but at least I can keep an eye on him.”
“Heard you took him to Vegas with you.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Ned Grossman know about that?”
“Not yet.”
“Better not tell him.”
“Why not?”
“Violation of procedure. Besides, Grossman’s interested in you — and not just because you’re a good deputy.”
“What on earth would make you think that?”
“Not what — who. Valerie Middleton. She claims she can see it every time Grossman looks at you.”
“When did she tell you that?”
“Last night, when I went by her house to try to cheer her up.”
“You what?”
“Valerie had just lost her best woman friend. She needed some company.”
The idea of her father calling on Valerie struck Rho as odd. Was that why he’d shaved and, she thought, raggedly trimmed his hair? “I didn’t know the two of you were close.”
“Valerie’s the best friend I’ve got. How could you not know that? For over thirty years she took my phone messages and brought me coffee and held me together when things got to be too much.”
Rho shook her head in amazement.
Jack frowned. “What, I can’t have a woman friend? I was supposed to live like a monk after your mother took off?”
“But Valerie’s husband—”
“He took off not much later. And things just happened.”
She thought back to her childhood, remembering little things: the fudge and cookies Valerie would send home with Jack; how she was always there for her when he couldn’t be; the weekends when she and Valerie’s son, Joe, would be tended by a sitter while both parents were away from home. Easy to understand why such details had not added up when she was a child, but why hadn’t she caught on later?
“Sometimes,” she said, “I can’t believe how little we know about the people we’re closest to.”
Jack sat down and took both her hands in his, bringing back memories of long, serious talks as he tried to be both father and mother to her. “Honey, since you discovered boys in seventh grade, you were too caught up in your own romantic life to notice mine. And you haven’t been close to anybody for thirteen years now.”
He was right. She hadn’t. Tears welled up as she thought of all that lost time. Lost love. All that loneliness as she’d hidden within her carefully crafted emotional armor.
“Now don’t cry. You hear me, Deputy?”
“Yeah, I hear you.” She pulled her hands away, grabbed a tissue from a box on the table, wiped her face, blew her nose.
“Everything’s changing for you now,” Jack said. “Changing for me, too. For the town. You can feel it.”