CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I wince as the doctor snips the end off of the sutures. “These are the kind that dissolve after a while,” she says, “so you won’t need a follow up appointment unless you get an infection. If you have a fever or feel nausea or dizziness, you need to call me. Everything else is just mild bruising. I can prescribe you something for the pain, if you’d like.”

I shake my head. The last thing I need right now is a substance that will cloud my mind even further. “No, thank you. I’ll take ibuprofen if I need something.”

I am in the living room on Victor's couch. Celeste and Evelyn are standing on the other side of the coffee table. Celeste is puffy-eyed from crying. I feel terrible for frightening her so. Evelyn looks at me with anger that I probably deserve, unless of course, her anger is because I've found a secret she wished would remain hidden. I can't believe that Victor would tell her about the haven, but if I can snoop, so can she.

I need to talk to Sean. He’s standing next to me and frowning down at me with his arms crossed. He’s not happy with me either, not that I blame him.

The doctor leaves, and the others watch me, waiting, I assume, for some explanation. When I don’t offer one right away, Evelyn says, “What the hell were you doing out there at six o’clock in the morning? Were you trying to get yourself killed?”

She sounds almost exactly like Sean did earlier. I hesitate before answering both of them. My initial desire to tell the police what I’ve found remains, but now that I know the dangers someone down there could face, I don’t want to reveal it in front of Celeste. I fear that Victor may have been caught at high tide in one of his own dissociative episodes and been swept out to sea.

Sean senses my hesitation and says, “Why don’t you take Celeste out to breakfast, Evelyn? I’ll stay with Mary.”

“Is she okay?” Celeste asks. “She’s going to be all right?”

“She’ll be fine,” Sean says, “Honestly, she could use a little knock around the head every now and then. Helps get rid of the fool ideas she takes to sometimes.”

“No,” I say, staring hard at Sean. “I’ll be all right. It’s best if Celeste remains here for now until we know what happened to her father.”

Sean rolls his eyes. “Go ahead with her, Evelyn. I’ll talk to Mary.”

Evelyn nods and leads Celeste away. I glare at Sean, but he meets my gaze impassively. When the door closes behind them, I say, “I hope like hell that you have proof Evelyn’s not involved.”

“There’s no sign of Victor at her house, her bank account is clean, and she nearly stabbed me when Celeste answered the door to a strange man. She loves that girl like she’s her own, and if I hadn’t been able to show them the texts you’d sent me, then I’d never be let inside.”

My eyes widen. “You showed them that I was investigating Victor’s disappearance?”

“No, just the ones about coordinating your ride here when you arrived. You mentioned you had a friend in town, and I’m that friend. Also, since that’s probably not enough for you, I have security cameras from the house across the street showing Evelyn in the kitchen until something makes her jump and drop a tray of hot coffee. Putting two and two together, I’m thinking she was startled when the glass blew out in the studio.”

I sigh. “Okay. I just needed to make sure.”

“So what did you need to make sure of that you nearly got yourself killed down there?” he asks. “Or do you just enjoy frightening me?”

“I thought you said I deserve a knock on the head every now and then.”

“Go to hell!”

He says this so bluntly and forcefully that I flinch. His face is terrible, like a thundercloud, but there is fright behind his eyes, the same fright I see in Celeste’s eyes when she learns that her father is missing.

I feel guilty seeing him like that, but I also feel a strange warmth knowing he cares about me so. I’ll have to deal with that emotion later, though. I have no time for… whatever this is. Anyway, it’s probably only my gratitude that he’s rescued me.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know the tide was so ferocious.”

“But you knew it was pitch bloody black out there. You knew you were swimming through a rock tunnel that you didn’t know where it led to. Or did you know?”

“I knew. I found Victor’s journal. He wrote of a tunnel that led to a hidden cove. I thought he might have fled there after the attack. Or if he simply went insane, maybe that was where he would go.”

“And you found this cove?”

“I did. And he was there. I found the remains of a campfire and bits of beef jerky.”

His eyes widen. “Bloody hell.”

"Will you watch your language?" I scold. "Every time with you, it's bloody this and Christ that and to hell with all the rest."

“Will you stop endangering yourself like you’re the hero of an action movie?” he retorts.

I glare at him, and his lips curl in a smile. “Good work, Mary,” he says softly. “So where did he go from there?”

“That’s just it. I don’t know. And after that tide…”

I don’t put my fears into words, but Sean does. “He might have been washed away.”

I nod. “That’s why I didn’t say anything in front of Celeste.”

I meet his eyes. “There’s another thing I have to tell you.”

“What’s that?”

“I saw Annie there.”

He raises an eyebrow. “You saw Annie?”

“Yes. Not her, of course, but a painting of her on the walls of the cave. She and Victor… well, I don’t know if they were lovers or if she only posed naked for him, but there’s no mistaking that it’s her. She lived with Elias for months, and Victor was smitten with her.”

“You know all of this from his journal?”

“Yes. He spoke of her as a fairy princess of transcendent beauty.”

“How romantic.”

“Yes. The painting in the cave… he made that the day before she left. Or he started it the day before she left.”

“You think he might know where she went?”

“I think so. If anyone still living would know, he would. We must find him, Sean. For Celeste’s sake, and for Annie’s.”

“Well,” he says, “Evelyn has nothing to do with it, but I have an idea who might.”

I sit up, ignoring the aches in my body. “Who?”

He grins. “Lisa Reinhardt.”

“I knew it! How did you find out?”

He chuckles and lifts a hand. “Hold on. I said might be. I haven’t confirmed anything yet. But I followed up on the names you gave me. I headed to the Carmel Art Gallery and pretended to be a journalist for Art magazine. I told Mr. Marcus Fairfax that I was writing a piece on Victor Holloway.”

“You said his name? When he’s missing? You fool, what if he reports you to the police?”

“I don’t think he will. He doesn’t want to be next after all.”

I sigh and rub my temples. “Your confidence is endearing and infuriating.”

“Do you want to hear what I have to say, or—”

“Yes, I want to hear what you have to say.”

He gives me a look of mock sympathy. “Poor Mary. If only everyone was as sensible as she.”

“Sean—”

“All right, all right. In my defense, you bloody Christing deserve it to hell.”

I can’t quite stifle a chuckle at that. “Fair enough. What did you learn from Marcus?”

“Well, I took the jolly lad to a pub on the beach. Got him a couple of cocktails and a couple of beers. Boy did his tongue loosen after that.”

I settle in for an unnecessarily long story. It would be nice if Sean was the sort of person who got to the point quickly, but one can’t win everything, I suppose.

“Anyway, it turns out that Miss Reinhardt is not in the best straits financially.”

I lift an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Oh, oh. It seems that she is relying quite heavily on Victor for income. Evidently, he’s the only artist who will work with her after a few scandals suggested that Miss Reinhardt might not be entirely honest in her dealings.”

“But why would she kill him then? If she needs his money, she would want him alive and well and working.”

“She would, if he were willing to listen to her. Unfortunately, Victor is a rather stubborn artiste .”

This matches what Lisa herself told me. “So he was refusing to make his work more commercially palatable.”

“The way Marcus put it is that Lisa believes that Victor has lost his edge. She thinks his work is repetitive and hasn’t changed significantly in style in over twenty years. People were buying it for a while, so she didn’t really care, but they’re not buying it now, so she cares.”

“And he’s refusing to change.”

“He is. He likes his work and scoffs at the idea that money should matter. And Lisa is desperate and, according to Marcus, has quite the temper.”

This makes sense the more I think about it. If Lisa has managed her money poorly, she may be in a hole and feeling like Victor—who has managed his money well and lives comfortably—is ignoring the financial aspect of art because he doesn’t need to worry about paying the bills like she does. It’s very close to what Lisa herself said about him, except in this version, she’s the one who needs the money.

“We need to go talk to Lisa,” I tell him.

"I plan to. Same disguise. It turns out that I am a very convincing journalist. Not all that different from an investigator, really. Only when you're a journalist, there are fewer rules."

“Good. We’ll go now. Evelyn can watch Celeste. We know she’s not the killer, so—”

“No.”

I blink. “Excuse me?”

“You’re not coming.”

His smile is gone. He’s looking sternly at me now, and some of that fear is in his eyes again. “You’re not putting yourself at risk right after nearly drowning yourself. You’re staying here and resting, and I’m going to talk to Lisa.”

“With me.”

“No.”

I stand and dial a number. Sean frowns. “Who are you calling?”

When Evelyn answers, I say, “Hi Evelyn. Thank you so much for taking Celeste with you. Listen, I have some errands I need to address, and since my friend is here already, I’m going to have him take me into town.”

"Oh, no, you don't," Sean says.

He swipes at the phone, but I twist and stiff-arm him. "Yes, I'll be back well before dinner. I'm all right. No concussion, just the cut. And I really do need to get into town.”

“You’re lucky I’m not the sort of man to hit a woman,” Sean grouses. “Because I could easily take that phone from you.”

“Thank you, Evelyn.” I hang up and admire the phone. “It’s amazing how well these new phones are protected from water. It just needed a few hours of drying, and it’s good as new.” I smile at him, and he glares back at me. “And yes, I rely on the fact that you’re a gentleman and won’t physically stop me. So I’m going to talk to Lisa, and you can come if you’d like.”

“I have the car keys,” he reminds me.

“I’ll walk.”

I head toward the door. When I hear him sigh and follow me, I smile again. He really is adorable sometimes.