Devlin's Light Read online

  Suddenly there was too much loss to deal with. It hit her like a sharp blow to the head and took her breath away. She fled to the back porch, seeking refuge where she always had when things became more than she could bear. She leaned over the white wooden railing and forced deep breaths, filling her lungs with the thick humid air laden with the smell of the salt marshes and something decomposing— probably some beached horseshoe crabs, she guessed, or maybe some hapless fish—down on the beach just a short walk over the dunes.

  Why did it all look the same, she wondered, when their world had changed so suddenly and so completely?

  The wooden porch swing still hung at one end, its new coat of white paint giving it a clean summer look. Aunt August’s prize yellow roses stretched over the trellis in full and glorious bloom. The day lilies crowded in a riotous jumble of color against the stark gray of the back fence, line-dancing like manic clowns in a sudden gust of breeze. Fat little honey bees went from blossom to blossom, like little helicopters, oblivious to everything except the promise of pollen and the effort necessary to gather it and take it home. A small brown sparrow plopped upon the ground below the railing and pecked intently in the dirt. Finding what she was seeking, she returned to her young, all plump, dun-colored and downy-feathered little bundles waiting to be fed by the base of the bird bath in the midst of the herb garden. An ever curious catbird landed on a nearby dogwood branch and began to chatter. Just like any other summer day in Devlin’s Light.

  So. It was true what they said: Life went on.

  “Indy?” Darla Kerns leaned out the back door, her long blond hair hanging over her right shoulder like an afterthought.

  “I’m here, Dar.”

  “Want some company?” Darla asked hesitantly.

  “If the company is you.” Indy smiled and patted the spot next to her on the swing. Darla sat, and for the third or fourth time that day, Indy put an arm around the shoulder of the woman who was her closest friend, and who, for the last year and a half of his life, had been Ry’s lover.

  And for the third or fourth time that day, Darla totally shattered into gut-wrenching sobs that seemed to hold her very soul.

  “Indy, I’m so sorry.” Darla wiped away mascara, which had been long since wept into a darkened patch under her eyes. “I just can’t cry it away. No matter how hard I try …”

  “It’s okay, Dar. I understand.”

  “Every time I think about it, I just …”

  “I know, sweetie. It took you and Ry so long to get together.”

  “When I think about the years we wasted … years I spent married to a man I never loved … when Ry and I could have been together …”

  “Don’t, Dar. You can’t change it. Be grateful for the time you had.” India heard the words roll off her tongue and wished she had something more to offer than clichés.

  “Oh, I am,” Darla whispered. “I am. It just wasn’t enough.”

  “It never is.” India stroked her friend’s soft blond hair, much as she had earlier stroked Corri’s. So many in pain. So many to be comforted. “How are your kids today?”

  “Devastated. Especially Jack. He has been so withdrawn since this happened. He and Ry had become so close.” She mopped at her face with a wet linen square trimmed in lace. “Corri doesn’t look much better today.”

  “She is so filled with pain it’s a miracle she can hold it all in so tiny a body.”

  “Well, to have lost her mother … such as she was … and now Ry, who was—let’s face the truth here—the only loving parent that little girl ever knew …” Darla’s voice held a decided and bitter edge.

  “Ry told me that Maris left a lot to be desired when it came to being a mother to Corri. But you know, I just never understood why he married her. Maris was just so … so …”—India sought to be tactful—“not Ry’s type.”

  “Maris was a hot little number and she wrapped that hot little self of hers around Ry so tight and so fast he never knew what hit him.” The words snapped from Darla’s mouth in an angry clip. “I swear, Indy, I never saw anything like it. I never saw a man go down for the count as quickly as Ry did for Maris Steele.”

  Amare et sappere vix deo conceditur. Aunt August, a retired Latin teacher whose conversations were inevitably sprinkled with Latin phrases, had muttered this when Ry announced his marriage to Maris. Even a god finds it difficult to love and be wise at the same time.

  “Well, if nothing else, it’s given Corri a family. If not for that, when Maris drowned, Corri would have been left totally alone. Ry never did find her father when he was going through the adoption proceedings last year.”

  They sat in silence, each lost in their own memory of that day two years ago when Maris Devlin’s small boat drifted ashore without Maris in it.

  India had never warmed to her sister-in-law. She had thought Maris to be an ill-mannered gold digger, and it had always been on the tip of her tongue to tell Ry so, but she could not bring herself to hurt him. It wasn’t until after Maris was gone that Ry admitted he’d been sucker punched but had remained married to her for Corri’s sake. Maris had not been a very good mother, Ry had confided, and Indy had feigned shock even though she’d heard tales of the woman’s shortcomings from both Darla and Aunt August long before Ry had spoken of it. Then, over the past eighteen months or so, he and Darla had rediscovered each other. They had appeared so like a family at Christmas, at the Easter egg hunt at the park last spring, at Aunt August’s sixty-fifth birthday party in early June.

  No one had been happier than Indy when her brother began dating her best friend. Darla and India had been inseparable since their playpen days—literally. They had shared everything through school, from clothes to hairstyles to secrets. No one other than Indy had known for all those years that the love of Darla’s life was Robert Devlin. It had broken Darla’s heart when he ignored her as an adolescent; when, as a high-school junior, he gave his class ring to Sharon Snyder; when he took Julie Long to his senior prom; when he brought home various and sundry girlfriends over the years. Darla had eventually accepted the fact that Ry would never love her and married Kenny Kerns within six months of this truth sinking in. It may have been the biggest mistake of her life, but still, she had confessed to Indy one night several years ago, she had her son, Jack, and her daughter, Ollie—Olivia—and they had made life worth living for her. She had felt badly about leaving Kenny, hotheaded and hot-tempered though he had been, feeling a vague sense of guilt that perhaps she had gotten only what she deserved for having married a man she didn’t truly love. Kenny had been a good husband over the years, Darla conceded, and she knew she had had more than a lot of women had to look forward to each morning. A husband who loved her; there had never been any doubt but that Kenny was crazy about Darla. A cozy home in her hometown. She had friends and a social life to be envied. The only thing she wanted and could not have was Ry Devlin. And for most of the time, it was okay. She had accepted this one sad fact of her life. No one knew but her and India.

  And then Ry took a teaching position at nearby Bayview College and moved home to stay after several years of teaching at a university up north, and suddenly the sham that was her life shattered, and the truth threatened to overtake her and drag her down as cleanly and as swiftly as the bay’s erratic current had dragged Maris out to sea. No longer able to live with a man she didn’t love, Darla had left Kenny, but before anyone knew what had happened, Maris Steele hit Devlin’s Light and snatched Ry from under her very nose.

  And then Maris was gone and somehow a miracle had occurred and she and Ry had found each other. And then, just like that, Ry had died.

  Darla began to weep again.

  This time India wept with her.

  Chapter 2

  “Miss Devlin?”

  Indy looked up at the man who stood in the back doorway holding the screen door in one hand and a glass of Aunt August’s iced tea in the other.

  “Yes?”

  “You’re India Devlin?”

 
“Yes. And you are…”

  What he was, was big. Ry’s size and better, she could not help but notice.

  “Oh”—Darla struggled to compose herself and to rise from the seat of the swing—“Indy, this is Nick Enright. I’m sorry. I had forgotten you had not met.”

  Nick Enright extended a large, well-worked hand in her direction.

  “Miss Devlin …”

  “India…”

  “India.” He said her name as if measuring it against her to see if it fit. “I wanted to express my condolences.”

  “You were the one who found Ry,” India said simply.

  “Yes.”

  “Please, sit down.” Darla gestured to the seat she had vacated. “Indy, I want to check on the kids and see if your aunt needs any help. And I’ll bring you something cold to drink.”

  “If I’d known you needed something, I’d have brought you an iced tea,” he said, with the demeanor of a man who was suddenly feeling unexpectedly awkward. India looked up into his face, unaware that her violet eyes struck at his very core and rendered him momentarily speechless.

  “I didn’t know that you looked so much alike, you and Darla,” Nick said once he remembered how to control his tongue. He thought he sounded sort of stupid, then couldn’t resist making it worse by adding, “But then again, you really don’t look alike at all.”

  “When we were in school we used to dress alike and wear our hair alike. We’re the same height and pretty much the same build. From the back, no one could tell us apart.”

  “Your faces are very different,” he continued, wondering how much more stupid he could make himself appear. Oh well, in for a dime, in for a dollar.

  “Once we went to a costume party as each other. I penciled in a mole next to my left eye, like the one she has.” Indy cleared her throat, realizing that she was dangerously close to babbling. “I was hoping to meet you. I wanted to thank you. For what you did for Ry. I am so grateful that he wasn’t alone when he died.”

  “So am I.”

  “You were his friend. It must have been hard for you.”

  “It was.” He nodded tersely.

  “Chief Carpenter said that Ry was conscious for a few minutes.”

  “Yes. For much of the ride to the hospital.”

  “And that he spoke.”

  “He only said one word.” Nick shifted uncomfortably on the swing, almost wishing he hadn’t told anyone about that.

  “’Ghost.’” Spoken softly, in her lilting voice, the word held no menace.

  “Or something that sounded like it. I could have been wrong, it could have been something else …”

  “Do you believe in ghosts, Nick?”

  “Never had a reason to.” He shrugged.

  “You know, there’s a legend in the family that before a Devlin dies, he sees old Eli Devlin swinging his lantern at the very top of the lighthouse tower.”

  “Who was Eli?” Nick leaned against the side of the swing and turned slightly to face her more directly. He wondered if she knew just how devastating her eyes were to a man’s heart.

  Ry had spoken often about his sister. Bragged about her. About how tough a prosecutor she was. About what a great swimmer she was. About how well she knew the marshes and the bay. Nick had seen photographs, here and there throughout the house, and once he had even caught a glimpse of her through a shop window. But Ry had never told Nick that India’s hair spun like a soft golden cloud around her face, or that her eyes were the very color of spring violets. Given the sad circumstances of their meeting, Nick felt almost embarrassed at having noticed. Almost.

  “Eli Devlin was the one who built the lighthouse. Ry didn’t tell you the story?”

  He had, but Nick shook his head. It was a long story, and the telling of it would take a while. A little while to sit and watch her face. A little while when neither of them would be thinking about Ry, and the fact that he now lay beneath the sandy soil in a bronze box.

  “There were three Devlin brothers who were part of the whaling community that settled around New London, Connecticut. They were all single, all pretty lively fellows, so the story goes. Jonathan, Samuel and Eli. All very ambitious. When the opportunity arose to become part of a new whaling venture down in the South River area—which is what the Delaware River was called back in the 1600s— they jumped at the chance.”

  “Whaling? Here? On the Delaware Bay?”

  “Well, it probably sounded like a good idea at the time, and whales do show up occasionally. Just not often enough for it to have grown into a lucrative endeavor. Eli stayed ashore and ran the lighthouse to guide his brothers home safely through the storms. The first lighthouse was not much more than a shack. But over the years he added to it … made it bigger. Taller. Then taller again, until it reached its present height.”

  “But the lighthouse doesn’t appear to be that old.”

  “It isn’t. The one Eli built burned down in the 1700s and was rebuilt on the same spot. It burned again in 1876 and was repaired.”

  “It’s a wonderful structure. It’s obvious why Ry had been so proud of it.”

  “Ry considered the lighthouse almost a member of the family. Restoring it had been his life’s work. His goal was for it to be a working lighthouse again. He wanted to give it back to the bay. He wanted it to be a place where people could come …”

  Her voice broke and he took her hand, a gesture meant to comfort. Her skin was soft though a bit cool, her fingers long and slender. Her nails, streaked with remnants of pale pink polish, were bitten to the quick.

  “Why would anyone want to hurt Ry?” she whispered fervently. “Why?”

  “Well now, you know that the police investigation was inconclusive, India. It hasn’t been proven that Ry was murdered or that there was, in fact, anyone else around the lighthouse that night.”

  “But everything points to there having been someone there, Nick. My brother would not have gotten out of bed in the middle of the night to go out to the lighthouse for no reason at all. Someone did something that gave him a reason. I just can’t imagine who—or why.”

  “Have you discussed this with Chief Carpenter?”

  “Yes. He agrees that there most likely was someone there, waiting for Ry. But there is absolutely no evidence to support a theory of murder.”

  “What did the coroner’s report say?” Nick asked.

  “That he died as the result of a blunt trauma to the head. There was blood on the bottom step of the top landing. The chief said that Ry had apparently hit his head there before going the rest of the way down the steps to the bottom, where you found him.”

  “There was no evidence that he had been struck with anything before he fell?”

  “No. Something caused him to fall backward.” She shook her head. “Someone must have pushed him down the steps.”

  “But there was no sign of a struggle, from what I understand.”

  “No. It’s so strange. I can’t think of anyone he even had a serious disagreement with. I mean, he told me about a group of environmentalists who were hounding him about opening the lighthouse area to tourists during the bird migrations.”

  “Well, they could get pretty intense at times, but I can’t see any one of them becoming violent.”

  “That was my impression too. He did say that some of the bay men were angry with him, they felt that he hadn’t supported their efforts to get the horseshoe crab off the state’s restricted list.”

  “I don’t see any of them taking it this far. In some ways, Ry was one of them.”

  “Couldn’t that have been a motive? Maybe one of them felt he had betrayed them by not taking their part completely.”

  “India, I don’t—”

  “Or Kenny.” She stood up and began to pace. “Maybe it was Kenny. Darla said that he was really upset about her seeing Ry. And he has always had a pretty short fuse when he drinks. And I heard he’s been drinking a lot lately.”

  “Nah. Too obvious.” Nick shook his head. He’d been
over all this ground himself a hundred times over the past five days. “And besides, Chief Carpenter has questioned Kenny—and just about everyone else in Devlin’s Light, for that matter—and he has an airtight alibi. He was on an overnight camp-out with his son’s cub scout troop when Ry was killed, India. And for the record, Kenny has been on the wagon for the past five months.”

  “I guess the first thing we have to do is figure out why Ry was there, in the lighthouse, at that hour of the night.”

  “I think Chief Carpenter is still working on that.” Nick thought that now would be a good time to remind India that the Devlin’s Light police department had not closed the book on the investigation.

  “Nick, I know that you discussed all this with the chief, but would you mind walking me through everything that happened that night? What you saw?”

  “Of course not. Where would you like to start?”

  “What time did you first notice that something was going on over there?”

  “Um, maybe around two, two-ten.”

  “And you were where?” Her eyes narrowed as the interrogator in her kicked in.

  Nick sighed. Her eyes took on the fervor of one who was about to begin a crusade. Well, he’d expected it. Anyone who was as adept a prosecutor as Ry had said India was would want to be involved in the investigation.

  Indy had obviously chosen to begin with him.

  “On the deck of the cabin.” He leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. “I couldn’t sleep. Something woke me up.”

  “Do you remember what it was? A noise? A boat out on the bay, maybe? Or maybe lightning?”

  “No, there was no storm. Actually, it was a very quiet night. I turned in early—right after the eleven o’clock news—and there was nothing, not even a wave on the bay that I can recall.”

  He frowned then, recalling. It had been a moonless night. Totally quiet. All had been still until … until …