A Killer Plot (2010)

“Just because I play a minister’s daughter on TV doesn’t mean I am one! You have no idea what I’ve lived through. I haven’t told you everything about my life!” Olivia and Camden found Heidi’s indignation amusing and they both smiled and nodded as though one of them had just received the punch line of a rousingly good joke.

“Well, you sure don’t act like a choir girl between the sheets,” Blake said huskily. “If everyone knew how wild Miss Junior Idaho or Indiana or whatever redneck state you’re from really was, you’d be on the cover of all the magazines.”

“Shut up!” Heidi hissed. “Oh, let’s just go. I’m not hungry anymore.”

“Oh, babe,” Blake purred. “I’m just messing with you. You know I think you’re the most smoking-hot chick in the whole world.”

“Notice he didn’t mention brains,” Olivia commented.

Camden smirked. “Or anything about her burgeoning talent.”

Unaware of the acute attention being paid to her, Heidi slipped her thin arms into a white silk cardigan and then folded the garment across her high breasts. “Then why won’t you introduce me to the guys?”

“The guys are not like my bandmates, Heidi,” Blake growled. “They’re not my posse—they’re a bunch of ex- con fishermen and knife-carrying scumbags who’ll do anything for a buck. Got it?”

“Then why are you hanging out with that sort?” Heidi asked and Olivia was pleased on behalf of her gender that the young woman had finally exhibited a hint of intelligence.

“Let’s just say I’m making an investment in my future.” Blake waved his hand in the air, rudely signaling for the check. “That’s the end of the subject, Heidi. We’re going.”

“Well, I just hope you’re not buying drugs,” Heidi said with a sulk. “I don’t approve of them, and besides, there’s plenty of those back home.”

“Right, like you’re such an expert on the subject.” Blake was openly derisive. “You’re not the one who has to rock your ass off in front of thousands of people. You get to sit around between takes, getting manicures and drinking mocha soy lattes.”

“No matter how much pressure I’m under, I’ll never take drugs!” Heidi whispered as she stood. “So I hope that’s not what your big, secret meeting at that gross bar is all about. If rumors about drugs or anything illegal affect my reputation, I’d be kicked off the show and my marketing value would go way downhill. I’m supposed to be a role model. Don’t you care about my future? I have two films debuting this summer!”

Blake grabbed her roughly by the arm and propelled her past Olivia and Camden’s table. “It’s not drugs, babe, so get off your high horse. It’s something much more dangerous than that,” he muttered darkly. “And since I’ve gotta protect your precious rep, I won’t tell you anything else, except that my plan is going to make me a shitload of money.”

Camden stared after them, a greedy gleam in his eyes. “I wonder what bar he could be referencing?”

“If Heidi thinks it’s gross and fishermen hang out there, then there’s one likely choice. Blake is conducting his illicit business at Fish Nets. The establishment where Millay works.”

“Olivia my dear, after we’re done with our dessert, how would you like to—”

“Not a chance,” Olivia cut him off. “Later this evening, after we’re done here, I will be in my lovely house, clad in a pair of silk pajamas, cocktail in hand, watching Masterpiece Theater. I confess to having enjoyed myself tonight, but I have no intention of spending a single minute in a foul-smelling bar filled with men whose cologne is a mixture of smoke, sweat, and fish or with women whose clothes are either three sizes too small or veritably see-through. Nothing you say will convince me to change my mind.” She placed her empty mug against its saucer with a firm clink. “I will never set foot in that disgusting place.”

“Never say never,” Camden said with an expressive wink.

Olivia felt an inexplicable tinge of anxiety as she headed into the kitchen to collect her thoroughly gorged poodle.

Chapter 3

The fog comes on little cat feet.

—CARL SANDBURG

The fog had always brought gifts to Olivia Limoges.

They were infrequent. And odd. Yet she knew they were meant for her. An aloof child, ever drifting along the shoreline near the lighthouse keeper’s cottage, Olivia had spent endless hours turning over the slick husks of horseshoe crabs or collapsing holes dug by industrious coquinas. She poked at sand crabs with sticks and taunted seagulls with crusts from pimiento cheese sandwiches.

Olivia kept her gifts in pickle jars. She labeled each jar with the year on a piece of masking tape. Even now, at forty, she loved to twist the lid from one of the glass jars and pour the contents out onto the saffron and cobalt scrolls of her largest Iranian rug, releasing the scents of seaweed and ocean dampened sand. She’d lean over, her shock of white blond hair aglow in the lamplight, and finger a marble, a wheat penny, a star-shaped earring with missing rhinestones, a rusty skeleton key. Then, another year: a yellow hair barrette in the shape of a dragonfly, a fishhook, a one-shot liquor bottle with no label, a tennis ball, a steel watchband, a shotgun shell.

Today she took the metal detector along on her morning walk. She went out early, as soon as the fog rolled back, dressed in cotton sweats and Wellingtons. Haviland danced through the surf beside her as they marched north by northeast, Olivia swinging the detector back and forth like a horizontal pendulum as she inhaled the salt-laden breeze. Her Bounty Hunter Discovery 3300 issued a cacophony of vibrating clicks and murmurs that sounded more like the language of dolphins than something constructed of metal and electrical wire.

Haviland barked at a low-flying gull as the digital target identification on the Bounty Hunter’s LCD display screen leapt toward the right, showing a full arc of black triangles. Olivia paused, removed her trench shovel from her backpack, and began to dig. She could have ordered a top-of-the-line detector—one with an attached digger, incredible depth perception, and the ability to function underwater, but she preferred the challenge offered by the simpler model.

“Help dig, Haviland,” Olivia commanded her dog in much the same tone she used on the employees of her restaurant or the tenants of the buildings she owned downtown.

Haviland responded immediately, his front paws burrowing into the soft, damp sand. Olivia waited until the poodle had created a pile behind his hindquarters the height of a termite mound and then she began to shift through the sand too.

“Nothing. Let’s see if we need to look deeper.” Olivia leveled the detector over the hole and it chirped excitedly. She turned the volume down and nodded at her canine assistant. He resumed his work.

Then, Olivia saw a flash of metal beneath Haviland’s right paw. “Whoa, Captain.”

Haviland’s liquid brown eyes were sparkling in the morning sun. Olivia grinned at the poodle, her blood quickening in anticipation of their find.

Rubbing clots of sand from the rectangular metal object, which was slightly larger than a matchbook, Olivia held her new treasure flat on her palm so that it might be bathed in the newborn light.

“It’s some sort of box.” She eased open the case and upturned it, shaking loose a sprinkle of sand. The interior was empty. Olivia closed her eyes and lifted the box to her nose. There were no lingering scents, no telltale remnants of a heady perfume or an exotic spice. “There are letters here, Haviland.” She peered at the lid. “Something illegible and then the letters E period M period. Doesn’t sound familiar. Ah! There may be some writing on the front too, but it’s covered by splotches of rust. We’ll have to soak this for a spell.”

Stroking the soft curls between the poodle’s ears, Olivia stood and slipped the small box into her pocket. “Breakfast time, Captain.”