On Fire(4)

       
           



       

Her sister's husband had made a brief appearance on Mount Desert Island,  long enough to demonstrate he hadn't put the tragedy of the Encounter  and his father's death behind him. Matt shared Sam Cassain's belief that  Emile should be in jail on charges of negligent homicide.

Riley shoved back the unwelcome rush of images and plunged ahead,  leaping from rock to rock, heedless of the fog, her flapping blanket,  the memories she was trying to escape.

She walked to the edge of a flat, barnacle-covered boulder below the  tide line. At its base, water swirled in cracks and crevices with the  receding tide, exposing more barnacle-covered rocks, shallow tide pools,  slippery seaweed. Her Tevas provided a firm grip on the rocks, although  her toes were red and cold.

Should have packed socks, she thought. Straker had probably noticed her  bare feet and smugly predicted frozen toes. She pictured him sitting by  the cottage woodstove, warm as toast as he waited for the fog to lift  and his unwelcome visitor to be on her way.

She leaped over a yard-wide, five-foot-deep crevice and climbed up a  huge expanse of rock, all the way out to its edge. At high tide, the  smaller rocks, sand and tide pools that surrounded its base now would be  covered with water, creating a mini-island. She stood twenty feet above  the receding tide. Ahead there was nothing but fog. It was like  standing on the edge of the world.

Straker could have given her five damned minutes to warm her toes by the  woodstove and have a cup of hot coffee. He could have lent her socks.

"Never mind Straker," she muttered into the wall of fog.

Something caught her eye, drawing her gaze to the left. She peered down  at water, rocks, seaweed and barnacles. Probably it was nothing.

Fog could be deceiving.

Not this time.

Riley felt her blanket drop, heard herself gasp. Oh God.

Amid the rocks, seaweed and barnacles, facedown and motionless in the shallow water, was a man's body.

Straker heard Riley yelling bloody murder and figured he had no choice.

He had to see what was up. He walked out onto his rickety porch, where a  pale, white sun was trying to bum through the fog. With any luck, the  stranded Miss St. Joe could be on her way in less than an hour.

She had always been. inconvenient.

He heard her thrashing through the brush alongside the cottage, heedless  of the maze of paths that connected all points of the small island.

"Straker--Straker, my God, there's a dead body on the rocks!"

He made a face. A dead body. Uh-huh.

He went back inside. His two rooms were toasty warm. He had a nice beef  stew bubbling on the stove. The fog, the cold, the shifting winds were  all reminders that summer was coming to an end. He couldn't stay out  here through the winter. A decision had to be made. What next in his  life?

"Straker!"

Riley didn't like sharing her island with him. She wasn't above  conjuring up a dead body just to get back at him for leaving her out in  the cold fog. He'd known her since she was a precocious six-year-old who  liked to recite the Latin names of every plant and creature she pulled  out of a tide pool.

She pounded up the stairs onto the porch. She didn't bother knocking, just threw open the door.

"Didn't you hear me?"

He stirred his stew. The steam, the rich smells were a welcome contrast  to the cold, wet presence of Riley St. Joe. She was small and wiry like  Emile, with his shock of short dark hair, his dark eyes, his drive and  intensity. She had her mother's quirky laugh, her father's straight  nose. She was difficult, competitive and a know-it-all. And she seemed  to have no idea how much he'd changed since he'd left Schoodic  Peninsula.

It was a great stew. Big chunks of carrots and red potatoes, celery,  onions, sweet potatoes, a splash of burgundy. Not much meat. Since  getting shot, he'd tried to be careful with his diet. His FBI shrink had  urged him not to isolate himself, but his FBI shrink hadn't grown up on  the coast of Maine. Two hours out of the hospital, John had headed  home. When Emile caught him camped out on Labreque Island, he'd offered  him use of the cottage. There was no telephone, no mail, not much of a  dock and the only power source an old kerosene generator and wood.  Straker had accepted.

As a consequence, Emile's younger granddaughter was in his doorway. He  glanced at her from his position at the stove. She was pale, shaking,  eyes wide.                       
       
           



       

"I heard you," he said.

"Bastard--why didn't you come? You know more about... oh, damn."

She turned even paler. Straker put down his slotted spoon. Hell.

Maybe she had seen a dead body.

"Finish your sentence. This is good. I want to hear what it is you think I know more about than you do."

"Dead bodies."

It was almost a mumble. He said, "The fog can fool you."

"Damn it, Straker, you don't need to tell me about fog. I saw  his--his--his hair and his hand" -Her eyes rolled back in her head.

"I think I'm going to throw up."

He sighed. Damned if he needed that.

"Bathroom's in there."

"I know where the damned" -She interrupted herself with a curse and  lurched across the linoleum floor to the short hall that led straight to  the bathroom. It was in an ell tacked onto the cottage. In the old  days, there'd just been an outhouse. Straker had locked her into it once  when she was eight or nine and especially on his nerves. Emile hadn't  been too pleased with him. Riley, the little snot, had screamed and  carried on far more than was necessary. Straker had it in the back of  his mind that was what she was doing now. Exaggerating, going for the  drama.

He followed her, although not with great speed or enthusiasm. Still, if  she choked on her tongue or something it was a long trek to an emergency  room.

Between moaning and swearing at him, she got rid of the contents of her  stomach. She managed fine. Straker, leaning in the doorway, found  himself noticing the shape of her behind as she bent over the tank. He  grimaced. He'd been out on his deserted island longer than he'd thought.

Leaving that realization for later pondering, he went out to the kitchen  and checked the kettle he kept on the woodstove. The water was  bubbling. He got down a restaurant-style mug Emile had probably lifted  from a local diner a million years ago, dangled a tea bag in it and  poured in the hot water.

Riley staggered back into the main room. She was trembling visibly and  had a wet washcloth pressed to her forehead. Her color had improved, if  only from the blood rushing to her head from pitching her cookies.

"It was the brownie," she said, dropping onto an ancient wooden folding chair at the table.

Straker shoved the mug in front of her. The table was in front of a big  picture window overlooking the bay, still enveloped in fog. "I thought  it was the dead body."

"I wouldn't have thrown up if I hadn't eaten the brownie."

But she didn't smile. There was no spark in her dark, almond-shaped eyes.

"I don't have a phone," he said.

"We can use the radio on my boat to notify the police. I'll go have a look, make sure you weren't seeing things."

"I'll go with you." She tried a sip of the tea, the tea bag still dangling.

"I don't want to stay here alone."

"If the guy's dead, he's not going to come crawling in here."

That rallied her. She pushed her chair back so forcefully it almost  tipped over. She was still trembling, but she squared her shoulders.

"Just let's go."

She took a couple more quick sips of tea, wiped at her face once more  with the wet washcloth and pushed past him to the door. She looked a  little wobbly, but Straker kept his mouth shut. Riley wasn't one to like  having her weaknesses pointed out to her. He wondered if this was her  first dead human. Her job put her in contact with stranded whales and  dolphins.

Then he remembered last year's tragedy. Five dead, a narrow escape with  her own life. She hadn't retreated to a deserted island to lick her  wounds. Physically unharmed, she'd returned to her work at the Boston  Center for Oceanographic Studies. Straker doubted she'd acknowledge any  mental scars from her ordeal.

He followed her along a wet, winding path. She pushed hard, although her  head had to be pounding and her energy drained from being sick.

The fog continued to hang in, thick, damp and cold, reducing visibility  to just a few feet despite the sun's attempts to bum through.

Straker felt the familiar tightness in his chest and incipient sense of  panic that had nothing to do with following Riley St. Joe to a corpse.

Fog had come to make him feel claustrophobic, as if his soul had spilled out of him and claimed the rest of the world.

Maybe he should have picked a cabin in the Arizona desert.