Deep Waters

  “For heaven’s sake, Elias. How can you think of this and peanut butter sandwiches at the same time?”

  “A man has to get his nourishment where he can.” He kissed the inside of her thigh and inhaled the intoxicating scent that flooded his senses.

  She gasped and clutched at his hair. “I think this may be getting a little kinky.”

  “It would only qualify as kinky if we actually brought the peanut butter into bed with us.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.” He took her delicate little clitoris between his lips. It grew firm and plump and taut. The taste of her was incredible.

  “Elias.”

  “Better than peanut butter.”

  “Okay, okay, you win.” She sounded suddenly breathless. “But we take a shower before we make the sandwiches.”

  “If you insist.”

  Forty-five minutes later, freshly showered and garbed in a white terry cloth robe, Charity stood at the kitchen counter and sawed through the center of a stack of peanut butter sandwiches.

  “Ready in here, Elias.”

  “I’m on my way.” His voice came from the hall.

  “You know, I’m never going to look at a jar of peanut butter in quite the same way again.”

  “Me, either.” He appeared in the kitchen doorway. He was wearing his shirt unbuttoned over his jeans. He had used his fingers to comb his shower-damp hair straight back off his high forehead. His eyes slid possessively over her. “You sure know how to whet a man’s appetite.”

  “Sit down before you slip on your own drool.”

  “Good idea.” He waved the brown envelope at her as he walked to the table. “Did you forget this?”

  “Guess I got distracted.” She carried two plates laden with sandwiches to the table near the window. “Go ahead and open it. I’ve got peanut butter on my fingers.”

  “I could lick it off for you,” he offered earnestly.

  She gave him an eloquent glance. “Open the envelope.”

  “Spoilsport.” He sat down, ripped open the envelope flap, and glanced inside. “Looks like photos. Polaroids.”

  “Really?” Charity went back to the sink to rinse her fingers under the faucet. “Who would put a bunch of pictures under my door? Is there a note?”

  “I don’t see one.” Elias turned the envelope upside down and dumped the photos onto the table. “No note. Maybe someone from the pier took these and thought you’d like to see them.” He paused briefly. “On second thought, cancel that theory.”

  Charity dried her hands on a kitchen towel. “What’s wrong?”

  He sat back in his chair and gestured toward the three pictures scattered on the table. “See for yourself.”

  Curious, she walked to the table and glanced at the shots.

  They weren’t very clear. The scene was blurred in the background. The color was off, and the composition was amateurish. She frowned, uncertain at first of just what she was looking at.

  Then the image of a woman spread-eagled on a bed registered.

  The woman’s blond hair was fanned out on a pillow. Her ankles and wrists were bound to the bed with what appeared to be handcuffs. She was clad only in crotchless leather panties and a leather brassiere with holes cut out to reveal puckered nipples. A massive dildo lay between the woman’s legs. An object that looked like a riding crop was positioned on the bed beside her.

  “Oh, my God,” Charity whispered, horrified. “It’s Phyllis Dartmoor.”

  Fifteen minutes later Elias wolfed down the last peanut butter sandwich. He hadn’t realized he was so hungry. He brushed the crumbs from his hands and looked wistfully at the empty plate. He’d eaten all but one of the sandwiches.

  He realized he felt better than he had all day.

  Nothing had changed. He still had Keyworth to face. But the decision to go back to Seattle to deal with the situation had made things clearer.

  And sex with Charity had done wonders for his sense of reality.

  Charity, however, looked very troubled. Her mood was beginning to worry him. She was still nibbling on the first half of the sandwich she had started fifteen minutes ago. Her eyes kept straying to the brown envelope on the table beside her. She had shoveled the photos of Phyllis Dartmoor back inside as soon as she had realized what she was looking at, but it was obvious her mind was still on the pictures.

  Elias lounged in his chair, shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans, and stuck his legs straight out under the table. “What are you going to do about those photos?”

  Charity sighed. “Give them to Phyllis, I suppose. I don’t know what else to do with them.” She met his eyes. “Who could have left them under my door? And why?”

  Elias considered briefly. “There’s a limited market for that sort of thing. It’s no secret that you and Phyllis have been feuding for the past few months. Maybe someone wanted to give you some ammunition to use against her.”

  “That’s sick.”

  “True.”

  “What did the person expect me to do with those awful pictures?” Charity asked.

  Elias shrugged. “Try to blackmail poor Phyllis? Get her to back off her plans for Crazy Otis Landing?”

  “That’s outrageous. How could anyone possibly think I’d do something like that?”

  “It does seem a little over the top, doesn’t it?” Elias agreed. “Whoever it was must not know you very well. But that leaves a hell of a lot of possibilities. Like most of the population of Whispering Waters Cove.”

  “It doesn’t make sense.” Charity hesitated. “Unless—”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless Phyllis has a really serious enemy here in town. But I can’t imagine who it would be. I mean, she can be forceful and even difficult at times, but let’s face it, most people supported her position on the pier. The only ones who didn’t were the Crazy Otis Landing shopkeepers, and I refuse to believe that Bea or Radiance or Yappy or Ted would do something like this.”

  “Doesn’t seem very likely.” Elias paused. “There’s another possibility.”

  “Which is?”

  “Maybe whoever took those pictures tried to blackmail Phyllis with them. Maybe she refused to pay off.”

  “So the blackmailer decided to punish her by leaving the photos under my door? He must have assumed that I disliked Phyllis enough to embarrass her with these pictures.” Charity’s mouth twisted. “Someone doesn’t think much of me.”

  Elias raised his brows. “It’s probably safe to assume that whoever left those pictures here believes that everyone else in the world operates in the same moral vacuum as himself.”

  “But if the photographer’s goal was revenge against Phyllis, why not leave the pictures with Tom down at the newspaper?”

  “Even a scandal sheet wouldn’t print that kind of stuff, and the Cove Herald is no tabloid. It’s a family newspaper.”

  “Good point.”

  “When you think about it, you were the logical choice as far as the blackmailer was concerned,” Elias said. “Because you are the one person in town who has been going toe-to-toe with Phyllis. Everyone knows that the two of you are involved in a feud over the pier.”

  “We were in a feud until you showed up,” she reminded him tartly. “I’d hoped the matter was settled now that you’ve made it clear that you’re not going to sell, but it looks like some people are still expecting you to pull an off-shore rabbit out of the hat. Enigmatic man of mystery that you are and all.”

  He watched her intently. “You believe me when I tell you that I have no plans to broker a sale of the pier to one of my clients, don’t you?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Uh-huh.”

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean, why?”

  “I just wondered why you believed me, that’s all. It’s not like I’ve given you any proof of my intentions.”

  “Contrary to popular opinion, I don’t find you to be nearly as mysterious and enigmatic as everyone else see
ms to think you are.”

  It wasn’t, he realized, the answer he was looking for. But he did not know what that other, more elusive answer was, so he would have to settle for this one.

  “What about the photos?” he asked.

  Charity shuddered. “I wish I could burn them, but I’m afraid that wouldn’t solve the problem.”

  “The good news is that they’re color Polaroids. That means it’s highly unlikely that there are any duplicates.”

  Charity looked up quickly. “Are you sure?”

  “The photographer would have had to take the originals to a sophisticated photo lab to get them copied. And no reputable lab would handle them. That’s the reason for using a Polaroid in the first place.”

  “Well, that’s something at least. I’ll take the pictures to Phyllis first thing in the morning before we leave for Seattle. Lord knows what I’ll say to her, but she needs to know what’s happened.”

  “Want me to go with you?”

  “No. It would only humiliate her further if she knew you had seen them.”

  “You may be right. Although, judging by those pictures, she’s not exactly the shy, retiring type. Who would have guessed that the mayor of Whispering Waters Cove was into whips and leather?”

  “Someone knew,” Charity whispered. “And he tried to use the information. I wonder what piece of slime did this to her.”

  “Rick Swinton.” The stunned shock in Phyllis’s face transmuted itself into tight-lipped rage. Her hand trembled as she stared at the photos she held. “That lousy son of a bitch. That goddamned, sleazy bastard. I told him I wouldn’t pay. I was so sure he was bluffing.”

  “Swinton?” Charity was briefly startled. “Well, I guess that makes a certain kind of sense. He is definitely a low-life.”

  “The lowest form. And to think I thought he was devastatingly sexy when he first came to see me last month.” Phyllis’s mouth twisted. “He wanted to talk about reaching an accommodation between the community and the Voyagers, he said. Suggested we go out to dinner. Insisted we drive to another town so that we could have some privacy.”

  Charity sat tensely on the pale sofa in Phyllis’s elegant taupe and beige living room. She tried to think of something helpful or supportive to say. Nothing much came to mind. “That’s when he took the photos?”

  “No. That was just the start of our affair. He didn’t take the pictures until a couple of weeks ago.”

  “You’ve been seeing him ever since the Voyagers came to town?” No wonder Phyllis had taken a rather laid-back attitude toward the problem of the Voyagers’ presence in Whispering Waters Cove, Charity thought. Phyllis had been laid-back in more ways than one.

  “You can’t know what it was like. Rick was incredible in bed. I had never met a man with enough stamina to keep up with me until I met him.”

  Charity swallowed. “I see.”

  Phyllis stared at the bowl of cream roses on the glass coffee table. “He was the only man who had ever really responded to my needs. He understood the fantasy. But I broke it off after he took the pictures. He said it was all part of the game, but it made me nervous. I had to think of my career. Then he came to me with his demands for blackmail.”

  “The bastard.”

  “I tried to get the photos back. I searched his motor home for them the night those silly Voyagers were all down on the beach waiting for the spaceships. But I couldn’t find them.”

  So it had been Phyllis she and Elias had seen leaving Rick Swinton’s motor home, Charity thought. One small mystery was solved.

  “It’s none of my business, but I think you did the right thing when you refused to pay blackmail,” Charity said. “Obviously when you didn’t meet his demands, he tried to retaliate by leaving those photos under my door. Not exactly a brilliant stroke of revenge.”

  “He must have believed that you’d use them against me somehow. If nothing else, he wanted to humiliate me. Rick has a thing about getting even with people. But I thought he was just bluffing with those photos.”

  “A real charmer.”

  Phyllis dragged her eyes away from the roses and gave Charity a searching glance. “You didn’t fall for his charms.”

  “Not my type.”

  “Lucky you. It irritated him, you know.”

  “What did?”

  Phyllis shrugged. “The fact that you refused to go out with him. He mentioned it once or twice. I could tell it rankled. I’m surprised he didn’t retaliate in some way.”

  Charity had a sudden vision of the night she had returned home to find her cottage vandalized. The damage had been done less than a week after she had turned down Swinton’s demand for a date. “Maybe he did,” she said softly.

  Phyllis didn’t seem to hear her. “You came straight to me with the pictures. You didn’t even try to manipulate me.”

  Charity clasped her hands tightly together. “What do you think I am?”

  “You’ve made it clear during the past couple of months that you’re determined to fight me every inch of the way when it comes to the issue of Crazy Otis Landing.”

  “You must have a pretty low opinion of me even to suggest that I’d use photos like that to get what I want.”

  A dark flush appeared in Phyllis’s cheeks. “Sorry. I should be down on my knees thanking you, not lashing out. I suppose I’ve gotten so accustomed to thinking of you as an adversary that it’s hard to understand why you came here today to do me a favor.”

  “Is it? I think that if the situation were reversed, you would have done the same for me. We’ve been on opposite sides in a struggle over the pier, but we certainly don’t hate each other.”

  Phyllis frowned. “No, of course not.”

  “And we both play fair.”

  “Yes. But sometimes it’s too easy to become totally focused on a goal. Too easy to forget about the personal side of things. Law and politics do that to a person.”

  “Other things besides law and politics can have the same effect.” Charity glanced at the envelope. “Is that all of the photos?”

  “Yes, thank God. When I realized what he was doing, I came unglued. I undid the cuffs and grabbed the camera. Smashed it. But he already had those three shots.” Tears glistened in her eyes. “I still can’t believe I was so stupid.”

  Charity was stunned by the sight of the unstoppable Phyllis Dartmoor in tears. “Don’t. It’ll be all right.” She rose quickly and crossed the short distance to put her arm around Phyllis’s stiff shoulders. She recalled what Elias had said. “At least they’re Polaroids. Single shots. That means it’s very unlikely that there are any duplicates.”

  Phyllis’s eyes widened. “Good God. I forgot about that possibility.”

  “From the looks of those photos, Swinton was obviously not a professional photographer. I think it’s safe to assume he didn’t have any way to duplicate them in that motor home of his, and he could hardly take them to a commercial photo lab.”

  “That’s true.” Phyllis blinked back her tears. She did not look entirely reassured, but she had regained a measure of composure. She looked up at Charity. “I’ll burn these immediately.”

  “Good idea.” Charity hugged her quickly and released her. “Hang in there, Phyllis. You’ve got the photos. The worst is over.”

  “You’re right.” Phyllis raised her chin. It was clear that her natural self-confidence and determination were already kicking back in. “I swear, I could kill that S.O.B., Rick Swinton.”

  Charity rose quietly and let herself out the front door.

  She was still reflecting on the interview with Phyllis an hour later as she sat in the passenger seat of her Toyota and watched the narrow road unwind through the windshield. The fog had lifted, but it had begun to rain. The tall, stately firs on either side of the pavement dripped. Puget Sound was a leaden gray.

  Elias drove her car the way he did everything else, with a control that was so complete it appeared effortless. Charity could feel him sinking deeper into the cold waters of h
is own thoughts.

  “What did you do with Otis?” she asked to break the silence.

  “Left him with Yappy.”

  “That’s good. Otis loves the carousel. After Hayden died there were some days when a spin on a horse was the only thing that would lift his spirits enough to give him an appetite.”

  “You know, Charity, Otis really is very grateful for the way you looked after him during the weeks following Hayden’s death. He just doesn’t know how to express himself well.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  14

  He who would change the future course of the river must be prepared to get his hands wet in the waters of the past.

  —“On the Way of Water,” from the journal of Hayden Stone

  So you managed to force your way in here, Winters.” Garrick Keyworth did not turn around. He spoke from the depths of a wingback chair that faced the rain-drenched garden. “Disappointed that I was unsuccessful? Never did like pills. Couldn’t keep the damn things down long enough to do the job. But don’t fret. Hell, maybe next time I’ll use something that’s more effective.”

  “Don’t do it for my sake, Keyworth.” Elias walked slowly across the terra-cotta tiles that covered the floor of the glass-walled solarium.

  The Keyworth house was a huge, aging brick relic on the shores of Lake Washington. In another era it had no doubt dripped with gracious elegance. But as Elias had walked through the dark-paneled hall to the garden room, his footsteps had echoed with a bleak, hollow sound. It seemed to him that there was no soul in this house. It was as if something had died here long ago.

  He had been obliged to get past an electronic gate, two rottweilers, a sullen gardener, and a determined housekeeper in order to gain access to Garrick Keyworth. Now that he was here, he wasn’t sure what he was going to say.

  “Bullshit,” Garrick muttered. “It’s the perfect vengeance. Isn’t that what you wanted? Revenge?”

  “The perfect revenge requires that you live. I want you to look down the river into the future and change the reflections you see there.”

  “What is this garbage? An updated version of the Ghost of Christmas Past? Someone told me that you practice some bizarre martial arts philosophy crap. Whatever it is, don’t try to foist it off on me. I may be suicidal, but I’m not crazy.”