“You don’t strike me as the outdoors type.”
“I grew up walking over some green hills of me own.”
If he laid on the Irish any thicker, she’d be drowning in shamrocks. But Anahera played along. “Do you know Miriama?”
His smile deepened to reveal dimples in both cheeks. “I’m guessing you mean in the biblical sense.” Dancing eyes. “She’s too clever for me, alas. Not that I didn’t try to rob that particular cradle.”
Amused despite herself, Anahera was about to tell him to grab a towel when Shane shoved back his dripping hair again and said, “She knows what and who she wants, does Miri. And it isn’t a washed-out novelist drinking himself to a slow death on some excellent whiskey.”
“The doctor, you mean?”
Shane lifted one shoulder in a move that could mean anything. “Doc’s only been around for a year. Pretty girl like that, I don’t think she was sleeping alone before he came along.”
“Shane!”
Looking up at the sound of his name, Shane said, “I’ll be off, then. Seems you’re too smart for me, too.”
“Wait.” Anahera put a hand on the rain-soaked sleeve of his jacket. “Do you know who she was dating before the doctor?”
“No, but she had a watch with a platinum band that she started wearing a couple of months after she turned eighteen.” He absently tapped his wrist. “Most people took it for a pretty fake with colored stones, but I was born in the ‘right circles,’ as my sainted mother used to say—that watch is real and those stones are pink and blue diamonds.”
As Shane went to join the group that had hailed him, Anahera thought about what might lead a man to give a woman such an expensive gift… and was hit by the memory of the diamond pendant Edward had given his mistress two months before he simply dropped in the street and never again moved.
The insurance documents for the pendant had been in his desk drawer, a drawer she’d had to empty after his death. He’d also bought the other woman a car around the same time, and begun to pay the rental on her home. The mistress had said it had all been done out of love. Maybe it had been, but Anahera wasn’t so sure it was for his mistress that Edward’s heart had beat.
Miriama, though… she was as bright as a star. A shining creature who could make a man fall so deep that he’d lay treasures at her feet.
“The watch?” Matilda frowned when Anahera asked after the item of jewelry Shane had mentioned. “Yes, I remember it. She told me she picked it up at a market, but I knew it was a gift from that man she dated before settling with Dr. de Souza, the one she used to go to Christchurch to see.”
“Does Miriama still have it?” It should be simple enough to confirm if Shane was right about its value.
“I haven’t seen her wearing it lately.” Matilda poured another mug of strong black coffee. “But I don’t think she would’ve got rid of it. She loves that pretty thing, used to wear it all the time before she and the doctor became a couple.”
Not wearing one lover’s gift while with another? It was a sensitive thing to do. “Do you think you could look for it for me?” Anahera asked. “I want to show it to the cop, in case it helps him track down the Christchurch man.”
Matilda’s jaw firmed. “My girl wouldn’t just have gone off with him and left me to worry.” The words were censorious. “But I’ll look for you, Ana. You make sure you give it back for when Miriama’s home again.”
“I will.” Anahera picked up the fresh tray of coffees, drifted back into the crowd to make sure everyone had a mug. And she listened as she’d told Will she’d do.
Most people were despondent.
“I even went off-track,” one of the gray-bearded locals was saying. “Did the parts I knew you buggers might not be able to. Didn’t find no sign of her.”
Kyle Baker, his hair wet, murmured, “Do you think the water took her?” He directed the soft, worried question at Nikau.
Anahera was surprised. Not by the question—everyone was wondering if the sea had taken Miriama, if she’d slipped and fallen in the wrong place and been swept out without a trace. No, what surprised her was Kyle’s deferential tone.
Last time she’d seen Kyle Baker, he’d been a boy of eleven, but he’d been a boy well aware of his “station in life,” as one of Edward’s more pompous friends had used to say. A private-school boarder during the week, he’d come home to Golden Cove for the weekends. Where he’d made sure the local children knew he had the best of everything—the best music player, the best shoes, the best education.
Anahera had thought him an obnoxious prat.
From what she could recall, Nikau had shared her opinion. Today, however, he gave the younger male a tight smile. “Miriama’s too respectful of the ocean to get so close to the water.”
“Yeah, yeah, she is,” Kyle said, his relief open.
Eight years was a long time. Maybe Kyle had grown out of his prat nature.
“What about those hikers from back when we were kids?” Tom said, his beard glittering with droplets of rainwater and his callused fingers closing gratefully over the last mug on Anahera’s tray. “Josie was saying last night how it was strange, so many women going missing in the bush near here.”
“I’ve heard the stories,” Kyle said. “It was three women, right?”
Nikau nodded. “Pretty young women.” Unspoken were the words “just like Miriama.”
After drinking down half the mug of coffee, Tom said, “We should tell the cop.”
“I’m pretty sure Will already knows.” Dark clouds rumbled across Nikau’s face. “You realize what it would mean if Miriama’s disappearance is connected to the missing women?”
Puzzled expressions all around.
Anahera, unblinded by fresh bonds and able to look at things as an insider who’d turned outsider for a while, said, “It would have to be one of us. A stranger who came back fifteen years apart would’ve been noticed—and there are no strangers in town.”
Tom, Kyle—everyone but Nik—all stared at her before Tom swore under his breath.
“This has nothing to do with those lost hikers.” Vincent’s voice. He’d come to stand beside his taller younger brother. “Golden Cove has its problems, but a serial murderer?” A hard shake of his head. “Even the police back then said it was just bad luck and coincidence.” His tone was calm, practical. “We’re not kids making up scary stories now, and Miriama is alive, probably hurt. I, for one, am going to keep looking.”
Several heads nodded at his firm statement, but Anahera caught the bitter truth in too many eyes—most people thought Miriama was gone, never to be found.
As she began to move on, Kyle stepped out of the group and toward her. “It feels weird to say this now”—an uncomfortable teenage shrug—“but welcome back to the Cove, Ana.”
“Thank you, Kyle.” Leaving him with a small smile, she headed back to the table that held the large coffee urn.