Enright Family Collection (6 page)

“Would you want to take me someday?” she asked hopefully.

“Sugar plum, I would take you with me every day.”

“And crabbing too? Aunt August
hates
to go crabbing. She says, it’s a waste of time at her age to float around the bay waiting for the crabs to bite when she can go right down to the dock and buy them by the bushel and it only takes fifteen minutes.”

“Well, I can’t say that I won’t feel the same as she does when I get to be her age, so maybe I should get all my crabbing in now, while I still enjoy killing a few hours just floating on the bay.”

“Early in the morning is best, Ry said,” Corri confided.

“Looks like you found a partner, Nick,” India said, laughing, “though you might end up doing a lot more crabbing and fishing than you had bargained for.”

“It’s okay,” he said softly. “I enjoy her company. And we’re pals, right, Corri?”

“Right.” Corri slapped the open palm he held out to her. “So can we go tomorrow? Aunt August will cook ’em if we catch ’em. And clean ’em, of course. That’s what she always told Ry and me.”

“They will be caught and cleaned and all ready for your Aunt August to cook.”

“Yippee.” Corri danced from the blanket onto the sand. “Ow!”

“What did you step on?” India bent down to inspect the bottom of Corri’s foot.

“A sharp shell!” Corri wailed, pointing to the offending piece of clamshell.

“Well then, looks like I’ll have to give you a ride back to the house.” Nick swept her into the air and plopped her onto his shoulders. The small cut on her foot immediately forgotten, Corri threw her thin arms around his neck and squealed her approval.

Nick took a few steps toward the dune, then turned to call over his shoulder to India, “Are you with us?”

“Yes,” she said, “I am with you.”

“Good.” His eyes narrowed slightly as he watched her approach. “I’m all out of shoulders, but I can offer you a hand.”

He held one out to her, and she took it.

“A hand will do just fine today,” she said quietly as she folded her fingers into his and walked with him across the dune.

Chapter 4

“Aunt August, what do you know about Nick Enright?” Feigning a nonchalance that didn’t fool either her or her aunt, India poured cream from a blue and white pitcher into the morning’s first cup of coffee while she rummaged through the flatware drawer in search of a spoon.

“Nick?” August set her own cup down on the counter and opened the back door to allow some early morning breeze to fill the kitchen. The last bit of dawn lingered in the semidarkness, but already the birds were gathering to sing in the branches of the pines. August never seemed to get enough of their songs.

“Well, I know he was a good friend to Ry, India.” August sat down on the edge of the bench forming the window seat overlooking the side yard. From there she could watch the wrens. “And that he’s been a good friend to me. What exactly did you want to know?”

“Who is he?” India wished it hadn’t come out in such a blurt, but there it was. “Where did he come from? Why is he in Devlin’s Light?”

“Ry met Nick in graduate school at Rutgers years back. I believe they were both going for their master’s in marine biology at the time. They stayed in touch afterward. Nick visited several times over the past few years.” August sipped cautiously at her coffee, testing the temperature of the brew,
and, finding it to her satisfaction, took another sip or two before continuing. “Nick decided to go for his doctorate and began a study on the ecosystem of the bay, what species were here ten thousand years ago, five thousand years ago, a thousand, which are still present in one form or another today. How the bay has changed, and how it is likely to evolve, and so on.”

“You seem to know a lot about him,” India noted.

“We spent many an hour talking about the bay, Nick and Ry and I. Nick spends a lot of time here,” August said, then corrected herself, “or at least he did. I hope he still will. For Corri’s sake. And for mine. I’d miss his conversation and his company, I don’t mind saying.”

“That’s why Ry talked me into agreeing to sell the old crabbers cabin to Nick.”

“Yes. And I have to say that at first, there was no one more surprised than I was when Ry told me he was selling it. There hasn’t been so much as a foot of Devlin land sold in over a hundred years, since your greatgrandfather sold off that parcel to the town for the park and the library. Charged ’em a whole dollar for the entire transaction. But after I got to know Nick a little better, I knew it was a good thing. He respects the bay, respects its life. He’s been an asset to Devlin’s Light, I don’t mind saying so.”

“Somehow I can’t seem to picture him living in that little ramshackle cabin.” India smiled, amused at the thought of the handsome Mr. Enright sharing his limited living space with a couple of raccoons.

“Oh, but you haven’t seen it lately.” August’s eyes began to twinkle. “Nick’s mother came down from someplace outside of Philadelphia and practically had it totally rebuilt.”

“What?”

“The cabin. His mother sent some builders down to ‘fix it up a little,’ she told Ry. I can tell you that there’s none of the old crabbers who’d recognize it now.” August chuckled, not for the first time, at the thought of the cabin’s former tenants’ reactions to the new bath and kitchen, the fireplace, the deck, the Berber carpet on the newly installed hardwood floors.

“His mother did that?” Somehow, Nick Enright had not quite struck India as a “momma’s boy.”

“Oh, didn’t you know that his mother is Delia Enright?”

“The writer?” India’s eyes widened. Delia Enright, internationally acclaimed for her series of mysteries, was the only writer whose books India
always
bought on the day they were released onto the book shelves. “Delia Enright is his
mother?”

“Indeed she is. And I can tell you that she is just so lovely.”

“You’ve met her?”

“Oh, yes. She has visited several times.” August refilled both coffee cups while India scraped a little butter onto two English muffins. “She just sort of swept right down on that little cabin and took over. But if the truth were to be told, Nick seemed amused by it all. Oh, yes, Delia definitely has
a way
about her.”

“I am a huge fan of hers,” India told her.

“Really?” August asked, as if she did not know. As if she did not have autographed copies of Delia’s last two books tucked away under her bed as Christmas presents for Indy.

“She’s a wonderful storyteller.” India was oblivious to August’s sly smile of pleasure at having obtained a gift she knew would delight her niece.

“Yes, that she is.” August sat a crock of Liddy’s homemade sour cherry preserves on the table.

India sat down and began to nibble on her muffin, trying to envision what a new kitchen might look like in the old crabbers cabin.

“Don’t act as if you’re not interested, India.”

“Interested in what?”

“In Nick.” August folded her arms across her chest. “Don’t even try to pretend you haven’t noticed him.”

“Why, I …” Suddenly feeling like a fourteen-year-old again, India stammered, then blushed, then laughed out loud.

“Of course I noticed. How could I not notice?” She laughed. “How could anyone not notice a man who looks like that?”

“That’s a relief.” August sighed and spread some jam on
her muffin. “I was beginning to think you’d been working so hard for so long that you’d forgotten what a man looked like.”

“There are times when I have done exactly that,” India conceded.

“Well, Nick Enright’s not a man to be soon forgotten.” August met India’s eyes across the table. “I don’t mind saying that I don’t know what I would have done without him that first day. And you know, Indy, Nick—”

“Damn, look at the time.” Sparing herself her aunt’s recitation of Nick’s virtues, which she was certain was about to follow, India stood up and gulped down the last few remaining mouthfuls of coffee in her cup. “It normally takes me three hours to drive back, and the rain will slow me down. Do you think it will last?”

“The weather report is for thunderstorms,” August replied, pleased to have confirmed that Nick had in fact caught Indy’s attention.

India disappeared through the doorway, on her way to the second floor to grab her things and prepare to leave. August heard the squeaking of the third step from the bottom as India’s foot fell upon it as she raced up the steps, heard the door to the third bedroom—Corri’s room—open and close again softly. Corri had been permitted to stay up late the night before to help Indy pack, so it was unlikely she’d wake before Indy left. India’s soft footfall was almost imperceptible, but August knew that her niece was tracing the steps to the back bedroom. Ry’s room. The same room he had slept in as a child had been the room he had returned to after Maris’s accident and he and August had agreed that Corri needed to be surrounded by as much family as possible. August had welcomed him home and been delighted to have Corri move in with them. It had been so long since the house had been filled with young people.

August leaned on the wide window ledge and looked out toward the bay.
Prima lux.
First light. She had never missed this favorite moment of each new day. It was hers, and she cherished it and gave thanks for it. One more morning. One more day.

One more day to be there for Corri, for India. One more day to mourn Ry, to carry the void her beloved nephew had
left. One more day to anchor the Devlin family, to breathe the salt air and to hear the gulls cry, to watch for the herons, to listen for the call of the geese as they passed overhead, heralding the coming of fall.

Tempus
doth indeed
fugit.
She sighed.

Twenty minutes later a red-eyed India came into the kitchen, suitcase and travel bags in hand, and kissed August goodbye before leaving. Watching her from the doorway, August said a little prayer that the trial would go quickly so that India could be back in Devlin’s Light before Corri might begin to wonder if India, like her mother and Ry, had vanished from her life for good.

“Hey, Indy, welcome back.” Barry Singer, a detective from the city’s vice squad, greeted India as she plowed through the ever-crowded space allotted to the district attorney and his staff in the basement of City Hall.

“I told you I’d be here for the trial,” she told him.

“Indy,” Singer said, laying a hand on her shoulder, “we’re all sorry as hell about Ry.”

“I know, Barry. And I want to thank you guys for the flowers. I appreciated the thought. So did Aunt August.”

“How’s she taking it?” Singer, himself raised by an elderly grandmother, had been extremely solicitous to August on those few occasions when she had visited India at the office.

India paused in the doorway of her assigned workplace and reflected. “Aunt August is strong. She is the backbone of the family. Even my dad acknowledged that, that it was August who kept us all together over the years. But she adored Ry, and frankly, I am concerned about her. She is terribly sad. As we all are. And of course, now there’s Corri …”

“Did Ry appoint you as her guardian?”

“He didn’t spell it out in a will, if that’s what you mean. But of course, between Aunt August and me, Corri will have all the loving family she could want. And since Ry had formally adopted her, Corri will inherit his share of the family trust. She’ll be well provided for, in any event.”

“Anything we can do, me and Liz”—he made reference to his wife—“we’re there.”

“Thanks, Singer.” India acknowledged the kindness with a half smile, then turned the corner of the gray divider used to create cubicles for the assistant district attorneys in the basement of City Hall.

“So”—India plunked her pocketbook and briefcase on the floor next to her desk in the overcrowded and chaotic cubical and was suddenly all business—“did you get a statement from that kid who was hiding behind the swings when Axel scooped up the Melendez girl?”

“His mother won’t let him talk to me. And Indy, I don’t know that I blame her. Axel Thomas is a really nasty guy. Between you and me, I don’t know that I’d want to bring my little boy to his attention.”

“Maybe I could give it a try.” Indy flipped through a pile of messages on her desk. “Do you have their number?”

“Yeah, I’m sure you can convince her to let her five-year-old come in to open court and make an I.D. on a child molester who may or may not go to jail. You are smooth, Devlin, but if it was my kid, I’d tell you to—”

“The number, Singer,” India deadpanned, “or I’ll tell everyone that ‘Barry’ is short for ‘Bardolf.’”

“That’s low, Devlin. Real low.” The short, stocky detective turned pale.

“That number was …” She batted her eyelashes expectantly.

The detective wrote it down on a piece of paper and handed it to her. “India, I really don’t think—”

“Look, Barry, it won’t hurt for me to talk to her. I want this guy.” She dialed, then looked up at him. “I’m not going to try to talk the parents into letting their son testify, if that’s what you’re worried about. I would not jeopardize a child’s welfare for the sake of a conviction. I just want to talk to him, maybe get just enough information so that we won’t need to have him on the stand—Hello, Mrs. Powell? This is India Devlin, Paloma district attorney’s office. I’d like to stop in this afternoon to speak with you about Axel Thomas …”

By seven-thirty that evening, India had met with the Powells and, through careful questioning, discovered that there may have been another witness. The Powell boy had described a woman who had been leaning out the second-floor
window of an apartment overlooking the park at the same time that he had seen Thomas take off with the little girl. India called Singer and asked him to try to track her down and see if he could get a statement.

Returning to her office, she read through piles of statements that had been taken while she had been in Devlin’s Light pertaining to yet another case before pulling out the files on the Thomas case. She would need to refresh herself on the facts if she was going to go to trial on Monday.