But no one was there.
Olivia lowered the gun but did not set it down. Tucking the stock under her right armpit, she approached the jagged hole in the glass of her closed kitchen door. She rapidly shuffled her feet into the shoes she’d discarded earlier and whipped the door open, crunching shards of glass beneath her heels. A large brown stone sat overtly on the welcome mat, discarded haphazardly by the intruders in their haste to gain entry to her house.
Realizing what this meant, Olivia swung around, her eyes targeting the wide pine table upon which she’d laid the canvas tote bag containing the watercolor before heading upstairs to shower.
It was gone.
Chapter 14
It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life.
—JOSEPH CAMPBELL
Rawlings showed up out of uniform, wearing a Hawaiian shirt upon which cobalt sharks swam across a field of pale blue. His khaki shorts were covered with paint splatters, but his eyes were all business. While Officer Cook dusted for prints, Rawlings sat at Olivia’s kitchen table with an untouched cup of coffee, his fingers smoothing the pine surface as he took her statement.
“What am I going to tell Harris?” Olivia whispered miserably when they were done.
The chief covered the back of her hand with his warm palm. “We’ll get it back. The fact that it was stolen reinforces my belief that Mr. Plumley’s death was more about money and less about his profession.”
“I don’t know,” Olivia said doubtfully. “The past is a part of these crimes. It’s possible that Heinrich Kamler has come back to the area to seek his revenge against Plumley for casting him as a murderer in The Barbed Wire Flower.” She told him of her visit to Chapel Hill.
When she was done, Rawlings grew thoughtful. He asked for a broom and a dustpan and then squatted down and began to slowly sweep every shard of glass onto the pan. After dumping the entire contents into an evidence bag, the chief pivoted the bag under the overhead light, creating glints of light like sunshine on a level sea.
Meanwhile, Officer Cook had finished dusting the doorknob for prints and had bagged the rock. “Good thing we’ve got you on file already, Ms. Limoges,” he said with a wry grin.
Olivia nodded absently. She and Cook had come to an uneasy truce last year, but she still found the young man’s often condescending and close-minded attitude grating. “I’m sure the thief used gloves.” She looked at Rawlings. “If he’s after money, then he’ll try to sell this painting immediately. Where does one unload stolen artwork? This is a notch above the average pawn shop merchandise.”
“He could approach a private collector.” Rawlings passed Cook the bag of glass and opened the door for him. “See you back at the station in a few hours.”
Once the junior officer had departed, leaving the chief without a means of transportation, Rawlings glanced at his watch and then gestured toward the flat ocean visible through the bank of windows in Olivia’s living room. “Let’s take a walk before the others get here.”
Olivia hesitated. “I need to pick up our dinner from The Boot Top. I figured our meeting might run later than usual, so Michel is making something for us.”
“Can Laurel stop for it?”
“Absolutely not!” Olivia declared hotly and then turned away from the chief’s quizzical stare. “I’ll send Millay a text message. I need the practice anyway.”
Rawlings didn’t answer. His gaze slid away from her face, and he moved toward the door leading to the raised deck. Haviland followed on the chief’s heels, his black tail wagging in expectation.
Olivia labored over the message, her fingers slow to find the letters and punctuation, pocketed her phone, and eased open the sliding door. Haviland raced ahead, careening down the stairs and over the dunes toward the water.
“I envy him,” Rawlings said with a slight smile. “Why do humans lose that joy as we age? If we were younger, we’d have been right behind him, tearing down that path, howling in anticipation. We wouldn’t care if the sand was hot or the water too cold. We wouldn’t have considered how we looked in our swimsuits or whether we had enough sunscreen on. We would’ve just charged right in like little gladiators.”
He was right. Olivia had spent most of her childhood by the ocean’s edge, and every morning she’d rushed breathlessly outside to greet it, to see what treasures awaited her in the sand, to rescue beached horseshoe crabs and share the remnants of her breakfast with the gulls. It had always been there, a loyal friend. Even when it churned angrily during a storm or carried a plague of jellyfish to the shore, it was beautiful. Enchanted.
“Caution comes with age,” Olivia said. She had a strong urge to take his hand and race after Haviland, but she sensed the chief’s thoughts had already turned back to the investigation.
However, he surprised her by coming to an abrupt stop, and then he kicked off his boat shoes and walked into the surf. She watched as he dug his toes into the wet sand and then tossed a stick for Haviland into the deeper water. He stood like this for a long time, his eyes locked on the silver blur of the horizon. Olivia sat on the warm sand and watched him while Haviland investigated an interesting scent near a crab hole.
Olivia thought of Heinrich’s cabin and of a young girl giving birth to a child she probably wouldn’t see again afterward. She thought of Anders and his homecoming, of telling Harris that his painting was gone, and of Jeannie’s advice on how to win back Rawlings’ trust.
The urge to walk into the water and wash all these images away was powerful, but the sound of car tires crunching gravel on the road leading to the lighthouse keeper’s cabin pulled her to her feet. Rawlings turned as well, gathering his shoes and meeting Olivia’s gaze.
“The time for caution is over,” he told her firmly. For a moment, she thought he was referring to their relationship. Her heartbeat doubled its pace, and she tried to express her readiness to put any and all reservations aside by nodding enthusiastically. Satisfied by her response, the chief began to walk toward the dunes. “We’re going to set out bait for this killer, and when he leaves the safety of the shadows, we’re going to catch him.”
Around the front of the cottage, Laurel was helping to unload covered trays from Millay’s car. Together, the four of them entered the cottage and set the food on the countertop. Millay grabbed a beer from the refrigerator and handed it to Rawlings.
He shook his head. “I’m afraid I’m on the clock.”
“Nice uniform,” she said with a smile and then offered the beer to Olivia. “You want this or should I fix you a real drink?”
Olivia accepted the beer. “This’ll do, thanks.”
Millay’s brows shot up, her silver piercings glinting. “Whoa. What’s going on?”
Laurel grabbed Millay’s beer from her hand and retreated to the sofa. “Before you answer that, Olivia, I have something to tell all of you . . .” She paused to drink and then rested the bottle on the top of her knee. “Never mind, I’ll wait until Harris is here.”
“The chief has a plan to net Plumley’s killer,” Olivia replied to Millay as though Laurel hadn’t spoken.
Rawlings nodded. “First, I need to get you up to speed on alibis. Raymond Hatcher was at work the morning Mr. Plumley was killed, but he took a break for an hour. He claims to have driven off-site to get a McMuffin, but the McDonald’s employee who worked the drive-through doesn’t remember him and the security video is taped over every twenty-four hours. So he’s still on our suspect list.”