A Killer Plot (2010)

but I might be able to land a spot if this new development goes through. I plan to be the first guy in line when they hand out the job applications.” He turned back to her and smiled. “So keep me in mind when you vote, okay?”

“Sure,” Olivia replied and bid the Kraus family good night.

She passed the teacher’s lounge and noted a crack of light at the bottom of the closed door. Pausing, she heard the even bass of the chief’s voice followed by Jethro’s angry rumble. The words were unclear, however, so Olivia didn’t linger.

Outside, she was met by a pleasant breeze. The humidity had receded, leaving in its wake a clear sky filled with crisp stars and a bright sickle moon. As Olivia drove beyond the town limits and later turned off the paved road onto the sandy track leading to her home, she noticed the bank of luminous clouds hanging just above the horizon.

Their silver hue seemed especially celestial against the ebony sky. Upon reaching her house, Olivia opened the sliding door to the deck, released Haviland, and together the pair meandered through the dunes to the beach.

For a long while, Olivia stared at the moon-illuminated clouds, thinking they looked like an ideal setting for a fairy tale castle, or the colossal abode of Jack in the Beanstalk’s giant, or perhaps the pristine, white-marbled temples of Olympian gods.

“I met a man named Atlas tonight,” Olivia said to Haviland. “Either his parents shared a love of maps or they expected him to have enough strength to hold up the world. It’s some name.”

Haviland barked and held his nose high, sniffing the air.

Olivia had always adored Greek mythology and reread Bulfinch’s collection every two or three years. “Atlas was the son of a Titan, brother to Prometheus and Epimetheus,” she spoke to the night-darkened waves. “As punishment for joining in the war against the Olympians, he was condemned to bear the weight of the sky on his shoulders for all time. Because of his assignment, the Titans Earth and Sky would never again be able to meet. Never again would they embrace.”

She glanced above the ridge of clouds to the star-sprinkled heavens.

“What is Atlas Kraus’s burden, I wonder?”

Olivia stood at the edge of the surf, reviewing the evening’s events. Would the next day see the resolution of Camden’s case? What might Jethro Bragg’s anger reveal? Why had he been talking to Camden? Why were Annie and Roy on edge? How would the Planning Board vote next week?

“Let’s go in now, Haviland. We’ll come back bright and early tomorrow. Perhaps we’ll take out the Bounty Hunter and dig for treasures. For now, I just want sleep.”

That night, she had the dream—the dream in which her mind returned to the last time she saw her father. These were not photograph-clear images, but flickered scenes stretched and bent and distorted by time.

The dream walked a tightrope between memory and nightmare.

Olivia was nine years old. There were her tan, skinny limbs, her favorite blue boat shoes with the untied laces stained by mud and grass, and the T-shirt with the unicorn iron-on—faded and cracked from repeated washes. Her hair was stringy and tangled, hanging down the sides of her face like a fisherman’s net. It hid the fear in her dark blue eyes.

She was on her father’s trawler heading toward the open sea. It was the eve of her tenth birthday and the night sky was clouding over. Her father stood at the helm, guzzling cheap whiskey and grumbling to himself. He seemed to have forgotten she was there. Cold, Olivia wrapped an old sweatshirt around her shoulders. It was pink and smelled of salt and fish, but it was still a comfort.

The night wore on.

Suddenly, her father swiveled, his hands leaving the wheel as his eyes flashed with rage. Snatching the sweat-shirt from Olivia’s grasp, he cursed her, using language she’d never heard him speak until after her mother’s death. But every time the whiskey flowed, he searched for words that would wound his daughter. Words that would form scar after scar.

“It’s your fault!” he snarled at Olivia. “She’s dead because of you.”

The black sea seemed to rise with his anger, and for the first time, Olivia was terrified he would strike her. He’d raised his calloused and weathered hand above her many times, but the blows never landed.

Springing out of his reach, Olivia scrambled into the dinghy tied to the side of her father’s boat. She jerked the rope securing it to the larger vessel from its cleat and leapt aboard. Ignoring her father’s wrathful threats, she pulled in the wet mooring line and began to row in the opposite direction.

The clouds multiplied, obscuring the little craft in a shadow of dense, protective fog. After rowing until her arms ached and the blisters erupted on her palms, Olivia slept. When she woke, she looked around at the dark and unreadable ocean. It still felt like night, but there were no stars, no moon, no horizon line to distinguish the ocean from sky. There was only the fog.

Hours later, a shrimper heading out with the dawn light found the drifting dinghy and brought the mute girl back to dry land.

She never saw her father again.

Chapter 10

When one’s character begins to fall under suspicion and disfavor, how swift, then, is the work of disintegration and destruction.

—MARK TWAIN

The dream clung to Olivia like a sweater slung over the shoulders. Though night was long over and the dawn had brought light and heat and a high tide, Olivia couldn’t wait to get out of bed and escape the air of her room. The darkness might be gone, but the space was crowded by the memories the dream had conjured.

Gathering her metal detector and the bag holding her folding trench shovel and nylon dishwashing brush, Olivia followed Haviland as he raced to the beach in a blur of black fur.

As she walked past the lighthouse keeper’s cottage, Olivia glanced at the window of her childhood room, half expecting to see her child self gazing back at her. But the glass only reflected twinkles of sunlight. The day was simply too fresh and full of promise to be held captive by the past, so Olivia turned her face toward the ocean, slipped on her headphones, and felt the presence of the dream dissipate.

She walked along the flat sand for three quarters of a mile and then headed away from the water’s edge into the dunes. It was more challenging to walk there, but she hadn’t hunted this deep around the grass-covered sand before.

Swinging the Bounty Hunter’s disc back and forth, Olivia listened carefully to the chirps and blips, ignoring the low sound signaling pull tabs or nails. Finally, a high-pitched bleep indicated the possibility of a buried coin and Olivia removed her trench shovel from her bag and began to dig up the heavy sand. About a foot down, the tip of her tool struck something metal. Olivia tossed the shovel aside and reached into the damp hole with her fingertips.

Haviland appeared like a phantom from behind a dune and sniffed at the pile of displaced sand.

“Just a shotgun shell,” Olivia told him, placing the find in her bag. “That makes four this year.”

Standing up, Olivia surveyed the flat ocean. “I think we’ll bend the rules a bit this morning. Let’s walk back by