I tell him about the contents—the wedding dress, the dried flower, the memorabilia from a love story long past—and he nods. “I just keep thinking that there’s a clue inside. If she disappeared, it had to be for a reason. Or, do you think she was . . . ?”
“I’ve wondered the same thing,” he says. “Hey, we’re a couple of journalists. If anyone could dig up the truth, it’s us, right?”
I grin. “Except that I write about resort vacations and you photograph food.”
Alex returns my smile. “Yes, there’s that.”
His phone rings in the kitchen. “Sorry,” he says. “I’ll be right back.”
“Hello,” he says, picking up the cordless on the wall. A moment later, he frowns, then presses the phone to his chest. “I’ll just be a minute,” he says.
I smile and pick up a book on the coffee table about sailboats. “No problem.”
I flip through the pages of the book, but I can’t help but overhear snippets of Alex’s conversation in the back bedroom. “Are you serious? . . . Unless you’ve changed your mind. . . . Yes, you know that. . . . No! . . . Kellie, honestly, I’m not going to have this conversation for the one thousandth time. . . .”
Kellie. So my hunch was right. But why is she calling? Why does he sound so angry? I hardly recognize his voice, so bitter and defensive.
“Sorry,” he says a moment later, setting the phone back on the wall. He sighs and takes a big drink of water. “Where were we?”
“Listen,” I say, thinking of his past with the mysterious Kellie, a past that might not be resolved, and suddenly I feel tired. “That kayak trip exhausted me. I think I’ll head back and take a nap this afternoon.”
Alex looks momentarily wounded, but his smile returns. “OK. But promise you’ll have dinner with me one night soon.”
“I promise.”
I secure the kayak to the cleat, then walk around to the front door. I reach into my pocket for the house key but instead find the hospital bracelet I displaced from the chest.
Darn. I’ve locked myself out. I think of paddling back over to Alex’s, but then I notice Jim ahead. He’s whistling a familiar tune and holding a bucket of paint. He appears to be touching up the trim on his parents’ houseboat.
“Hi,” I say, walking toward him.
“Morning,” he replies. “I’m finally getting around to painting the house. Mom’s been on my case.”
“It looks nice,” I say. “Hey, I seem to have locked myself out. You don’t happen to have an extra key, do you?”
“No,” he says, setting the bucket and brush down. He wipes a smudge of beige paint on his T-shirt. “But I know how you can get back in.”
“You do? How?”
He winks. “Remember, I grew up on this dock.”
I smile and we walk down the dock to my houseboat. Jim turns over an empty flowerpot and uses it as a stepstool to pull himself up to the roof. He climbs to the rooftop deck, reaches his hand through the open porthole window, then unlatches the door to the deck.
“There you go,” he says. “I’ll open the front door downstairs and meet you there.”
I’m not sure how I feel about the ease with which he has just broken into my bedroom, but I’m also grateful not to have to call a locksmith. “Thanks,” I say once I’m in the living room. “I take it you’ve done that a time or two?”
He grins, but seems distracted. “Wow,” he says. “It always amazes me how little this place has changed over the years.”
I’m not surprised, actually. The houseboat is charming in its simplicity. Fir floors. Whitewashed, wainscot walls. Sturdy, classic cabinets and finishes. “What was it like when you were a boy?”
“Well,” he says, looking around, “the sofa was here, just as it is now. But there was art everywhere, really abstract pieces that looked strange to a boy of eight.” He walks to the kitchen counter and eyes one of the barstools. “I used to sit here and watch her in the kitchen.”
I reach into my pocket and feel the plastic bracelet between my fingers. “Penny?”
He looks as if he hasn’t heard this name uttered in a very long time. It has power over him; I can tell.
“Can you tell me about her?” I ask gently.
He rubs his jaw, and it’s obvious that what he’s about to share may be hard for him. “I was just a boy when Penny came to live here,” he says. “She was the young bride of Dexter Wentworth. The artist.”
I point to the painting. “So he was the one who painted the ship?”