Moondance Beach

  Clancy reared back. “Lena?”

  “Yes. Lena. Mellie’s daughter.”

  “Uh, no. Nobody knows Lena well. I don’t even know if Mellie knows her well.”

  “You make her sound like the Unabomber or something.”

  Clancy must have thought that was funny, because he laughed pretty hard. “Nah. She’s great. She’s just, well, Lena is unusual. She does her own thing and doesn’t seem to need other people for much.” Clancy stopped talking and smiled. “Anyway, you’re not exactly a social butterfly yourself. Does anyone know you well?”

  Duncan attempted to answer his brother’s question but stopped, unsure what to say. The truth was that Justin had known him well, and so had Mike and Scotty, Terrence, Paul, Jax, Simon, and the other members of his platoon. But he had a feeling that was not what his brother was asking.

  Did anyone really know him? The whole man and not just the warrior? Duncan had never given it much thought, and now wasn’t the time to start. The dog chose that moment to start licking his shoe. He shoved her away with his foot.

  “Look. I need to run something by you. And it’s going to sound really bizarre, but I want to tell you the whole thing and then you can tell me what you think.”

  Clancy leaned back in his office chair. “Sounds promising. Go for it.”

  Duncan leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “I decided to go for a run last night. My plan was to do about three miles, but the beach was like Animal House—I was tripping over kids everywhere.”

  Clancy frowned. “I know. We rounded up sixteen kids last night—underage drinking and public intox mostly.”

  “My God. Were we that bad as teenagers?”

  Clancy laughed. “Definitely.”

  “Anyway, so I ended up running a lot farther than I intended, just to get away from the hormone-a-palooza. And ended up on old Harry Rosterveen’s land.”

  “Yep. Moondance Beach. It’s Lena’s now.”

  “Right. So I decided to chill for a few minutes and lie back in the sand to watch the stars. The sky was clear and the water was calm.”

  “You sound like one of the brochures in Safe Haven’s lobby.”

  “Would you stop with the heckling and let me tell you what happened?”

  “Sure.” Clancy cleared his throat.

  “So all of the sudden I think I see . . . No, I’m almost positive I see a tail flip out from the water.”

  “A tail.”

  “Yeah, a fantail. Like on a dolphin.”

  “How close?”

  “I’m talking right up on the beach, maybe twenty feet from the sand.”

  “Well, that’s not unheard of. Injured or sick dolphins and whales sometimes hang out in shallow water, where they feel safe. They’ve been known to beach themselves at night for that reason.”

  Duncan shook his head. “Thanks, Professor, but I know all that, and that’s not what I’m describing to you. A fantail flipped out of the water with a splash, a playful kind of movement. But I didn’t see it again. What I saw instead was . . . I saw a woman.”

  “Say what?”

  “So I’m pressing myself into the sand, making myself invisible, you know, total ninja shit, and I see a head and shoulders come out of the water. I see a woman walk toward the beach, right out of the water, and she’s naked.”

  Clancy did that thing with his eyebrows again.

  “She walks all the way out and, holy shit, she’s the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen in my freakin’ life. Pale skin, dark hair, an incredibly beautiful face. I’m talking stunner. Naked. A naked stunner of a woman, coming out of the water, right in front of me.”

  Clancy appeared slightly uncomfortable, crossing and uncrossing his legs several times. He might have been trying not to laugh.

  “What? You don’t believe me?”

  “I didn’t say anything! You told me to wait till you told the whole story. This is what waiting looks like. Jeezus!”

  The dog was back. She had decided to plop down for a nap, and she rested her little black nose on the top of Duncan’s shoe. He ignored her and went back to the issue at hand. “Anyway, this woman is perfect and naked and she walks right past me, and I’m not even breathing. She looks so calm and peaceful, like she’s in a trance or something. No shit. And then she heads up the beach and I get the fuck out of there.”

  Clancy’s eyes were big. Duncan waited for a response. Nothing.

  “Say something!”

  “Oh, so now I’m allowed to speak?” Clancy spun around in his chair to face the credenza. He poured himself a cup of coffee, then found a Styrofoam cup in a drawer and poured one for Duncan.

  He took a sip—and nearly spit it out. “This tastes like it just drained out of my combat boots.”

  “Good to the last drop.” Clancy raised his mug in a toast. It was obvious to Duncan that his brother was stalling for time.

  “Just say it, man.”

  Clancy nodded. “All right. Here’s what I think. I think that you’ve been through a lot. Your injuries were severe, and that kind of trauma can affect your brain. I think you need to give yourself time to heal. Go easy on yourself. You might be pushing yourself too hard.”

  “So you think I’m nuts?”

  “I didn’t say that.” Clancy took another swig of coffee, obviously weighing his words. “You want to be sure who you saw last night, correct?”

  Duncan shrugged. “Sure. Just out of curiosity.”

  Clancy seemed puzzled. “Hold up. So you’ve never actually seen Lena? I mean, before last night you haven’t run into her anywhere in the last, say, decade or so?”

  “Of course not. I’m only here a few days out of the year, and I barely stay long enough to see my own family—why would I see her?”

  “Point taken.” Clancy sipped his coffee. “And you haven’t looked her up on the Internet?”

  Duncan shook his head. “No. It didn’t even occur to me until right this second.”

  “Shall I do the honors?”

  Just as Clancy turned to his computer, the dog jumped in Duncan’s lap and plopped down like she belonged there. He wrapped his hands around the little body, feeling how bony she was under all that matted fur, and put her back on the floor. She couldn’t have weighed more than a sack of groceries.

  He watched Clancy search the terms “Adelena Silva,” “mermaid paintings,” and “images.” He got immediate results and turned the monitor toward Duncan so he could get a close look. The screen was filled with thumbnail shots of more mermaid paintings than should be allowed by law, plus pictures of Lena at art shows, parties, interviews, and fairs.

  Clancy clicked on one image in particular, and it expanded to fit the entire screen. It was a photo of a striking woman with long, dark hair, laughing almond-shaped eyes, and a sexy half smile. In this photo she was wearing a burgundy velvet evening gown cut to her sternum, her slim throat draped with exotic-looking jewelry.

  “Holy shit.”

  “That her?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Hmm. So we have a confirmed sighting of our local celebrity skinny-dipping with the fishes. Want me to call TMZ?”

  Duncan knew his brother was trying to lighten the mood, but his head was spinning. He didn’t know how to process this information, especially in the context of everything else.

  He really had seen a tail.

  Then he’d seen a woman rise from the ocean.

  The woman was someone he’d known as a kid.

  She was the famous artist Lena Silva, known for her paintings of mermaids.

  One of her paintings had caused him to have the most devastating sex dream of his life.

  But now he realized that dream hadn’t been about the painting. It had been about her.

  “You all right?”

  “Huh? Yeah.” The dog would not give up and was now sitting by his shoe again, leaning her dirty fur against his calf.

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Yes, except this lice-encr
usted hair ball won’t leave me alone, and I think your coffee just blasted a hole through my stomach lining.”

  Clancy smiled. “So what’s the upshot here? Are you thinking of asking Lena out?”

  “What?” Duncan jolted to attention. “Hell, no. I’m leaving as soon as the Navy clears me for active duty. Why would I want to start dating someone on Bayberry Island? Especially a chick who paints mermaid pictures?”

  “It was just a question. No need to lash out.” Clancy held out his open palms in the same gesture he’d used to calm down their father at the birthday dinner. It had to be a cop thing. “I think you should take Ondine home with you. Spending time with a dog lowers your blood pressure, relieves stress, and increases feelings of well-being.”

  “Not this dog. She just increases my need to take a shower.”

  “Do you want to hear what I know about Lena?”

  He shrugged.

  “Well, I know she’s very good at what she does and she works hard at it. She always agrees to appear at Island Day to help us bring in the people, and they wait in line for hours to get her to sign a poster or take a picture with her. And I know she takes very good care of Mellie and is a big supporter of several charities here on the island, too.”

  “Sounds like a decent person.”

  “You two were friends when you were kids, right?”

  Duncan nodded. “For a short time, I suppose we were friends.”

  “Well, I sure remember Lena crushing on you when you were in high school.” Clancy grinned. “She followed you around like a lost puppy.”

  Duncan stared down at the lost puppy with the ridiculous name resting against his leg. A crush? Lena? He didn’t remember.

  “Something’s bothering you,” Clancy said. “Want to tell me what it is?”

  Slowly, Duncan returned his attention to his brother. He heard himself laugh. “I am perfectly fine.”

  “Excellent news!” Clancy uncrossed his legs and leaned in toward Duncan. “I’m going to deputize you and make you serve your community during festival week.”

  “What?”

  “Sure. Under Municipal Code Section 8, subsection 42-B, paragraph 2, as police chief of Bayberry Island, Massachusetts, I have the authority to appoint, at my discretion, temporary peace officers to ensure the safety of our many Mermaid Festival visitors.”

  “Nice try, man, but the United States Navy’s not gonna look kindly on that. I’m on medical leave, but I’m still the property of Uncle Sam.”

  “Fine.” Clancy sighed. “Then I’ll ask you to help us out on the down-low, no police powers, just an extra set of eyes and ears—more of a volunteer tourist facilitator. You know, a facilitator-slash-bouncer.”

  Duncan squinted at his brother. “Now you’re just making shit up.”

  Clancy couldn’t suppress his laugh. “No, seriously. I would appreciate your help. You’re here, right? In fact, you’ll be here for the entire festival week, and I don’t think that’s happened since you were in high school. So why not pitch in? Or maybe you’d rather help Ma decorate for the clambake?”

  Duncan pictured himself hanging Chinese lanterns around the dance floor and putting centerpieces on the tables.

  “Exactly what would I be doing?”

  “Just keep an eye out for shoplifters on Island Day and radio it in. Or maybe lend a hand with crowd control during the parade. Total civilian stuff.”

  Duncan grunted.

  “Chip will find you a BIPD shirt and a pair of standard-issue shorts. I know we got some extras around here somewhere.”

  Duncan couldn’t help but laugh. “Damn, man. A hallucinating, tourist facilitator in a pair of shorts. If that doesn’t scream Bayberry Island, I don’t know what does.”

  “Give yourself a break, Uncle Duncle,” Clancy said, grinning. “You weren’t hallucinating—you were just trespassing on private property and violating a citizen’s right to skinny-dip in peace.”

  “Good.” Duncan got up from the chair, the dog standing, too. “Then just do me a favor and throw my ass in the slammer until the Mermaid Festival is over. Please.”

  Chapter Eight

  Sanders Garrett signed the freight receipt and told the driver to go ahead to the Bayberry Island Municipal Airfield, where he’d meet him within the hour.

  He found Lena on her favorite perch, a Victorian chaise placed in front of the wall of windows facing the sea. The heavy piece of furniture was made of elaborately scrolled mahogany and covered with ripped and stained upholstery that might have once been velvet. Sanders knew Lena would never restore it. No matter that it was soaked with a hundred years of linseed oil—it had too much sentimental value in its lived-in state. It was her way of holding on to her late mentor and teacher in New York, Madame Broussard.

  “Too early for wine?”

  As she turned away from the window, Sanders could see she’d been lost in thought. Lena blinked at him as if she’d forgotten he was there.

  She just kept getting more beautiful, he realized. He might have been biased—being her manager and dear friend—but each year seemed to add another layer of polish to Adelena Silva’s beauty. Yes, there were remnants of the seventeen-year-old sprite he’d met at the Art Institute of Chicago all those years ago, but the girlish energy was no longer her dominant trait. Lena’s personality had softened, her talent had deepened, and her beauty had blossomed all over the damn place.

  “You’re gorgeous. You know that, right?”

  “Moi?” She batted her dark eyelashes and rested her fingertips against her paint-splattered oversized sweatshirt. “In this old thing?”

  “C’mon.” He pulled her up from the chaise. “Let’s have a toast before I have to get back up on that rubber-band-powered plane, shall we? This may be the last time you see me alive.”

  “Always so dramatic,” she said, laughing.

  That laugh never failed to take Sanders back in time, to the poorest—and happiest—years of his life. Art school was a time when nobody had a dime and too many of them shared an apartment that should have been condemned, in a neighborhood that should have been under martial law. And they didn’t even notice.

  Life then was delicious and juicy and their group lived off their passions—for painting, sculpture, graphic design, filmmaking, for the city of Chicago, and occasionally, for one another. They hadn’t been trampled by reality quite yet, and they were free to be as unusual as they dared.

  It amused Sanders that all these years later, the shyest and most humble of the bunch, Lena Silva, had become an international art rock star, while the most vocal counterculture rebel badass—himself—spent his days writing contracts, booking gallery showings, and managing the assets of those with real artistic ability.

  Of his five clients, Lena had the biggest share of talent. She had the most of everything else, too—money, heart, kindness, and eccentricity. But as much as he loved her, Sanders couldn’t relate to her lifestyle. Lena Silva was all mermaid, all the time, and she lived on an isolated little island known for its mermaid legend, for God’s sake.

  The only island Sanders could tolerate was Manhattan, and the only mermaids he believed in were the ones that flew off the gallery walls at well above catalog price.

  As they exited the studio, Sanders’s eye caught that old pencil drawing Lena refused to part with. It was a sketch of her face when she was about eleven, and though it had been done with a startling lack of skill, the artist had a good eye for detail—Lena’s detail. The crude pencil strokes captured a young girl with a mixture of innocence and understanding beyond her years. It showed the face of a young girl in love.

  It occurred to Sanders that Lena hadn’t mentioned the artist in a few weeks. He would have to remember to ask her about him.

  They grabbed a bottle of Malbec and two glasses, then squished together in the rope hammock on her side porch. The sun had dipped behind the house, and the combination of shade and breeze was delightful. Lena rested her head on his shoulder while he poured.
>
  “Here’s to another embarrassingly successful Paris show.” Sanders clinked his glass to hers. It had taken three hours that morning to catalog and crate twenty canvases. All but one would travel from Bayberry to Boston, and then on to Galerie de la Mer in the city’s Marais district—Sanders riding along as bodyguard. The last canvas was headed to Seattle.

  “And a toast to one very happy dot-commer,” Lena reminded him.

  “Of course! Here’s to Rhonda on the Rocks. May she enjoy sunning her double-Ds for the rest of her days. Cheers.”

  Lena took a sip and snuggled up to him, and for a few moments they didn’t talk. Sanders began to notice the silence.

  “You good, sweetie? You seem a little pensive today.”

  She shrugged. “You just emptied my studio of two years’ worth of work. I’m not complaining, but it seems a little hollow in there right now, you know?”

  Several weeks had passed since she’d mentioned her wounded warrior. Maybe the news wasn’t good.

  “Is he getting better?”

  “Absolutely. He’s doing great.”

  “Have you had a chance to talk to him?”

  When Lena shook her head, her hair rustled back and forth on his neck. “You know my rule.”

  Sanders chuckled. Ah, yes. He knew all about her “Duncan Flynn rule.”

  As a gorgeous woman, Lena had never lacked for male attention. Men were drawn to her like moths to a bug zapper. But Sanders had watched every relationship she’d had since the age of seventeen implode. As far as he had been able to tell, the problem was Lena’s no-frills honesty. When the time came to bring up the “L” word, she would calmly inform the man du jour that she would not be able to love him.

  “I’ve loved the same man since childhood,” she would say. “I don’t think I’m capable of loving anyone else.”

  This revelation usually didn’t go over well.

  He respected Lena’s devotion, but he didn’t fully understand it. First off, the dude was a Navy SEAL, a precision-honed instrument of war, and Sanders couldn’t imagine what he and a woman like Lena would have in common. And then there was the fact that Lena had never even told this SEAL person that she loved him. The man had left for the Naval Academy before Lena had even graduated from high school. So from then until now, she’d heard about him only through her mother. And that meant this soldier of hers had been out there fighting terrorists and getting himself blown up without ever knowing Lena Silva loved him.