That almost stopped Betsy's heart. But the payment wasn't for that much, surely not enough for a man to commit murder.

The second two payments were made in the past week, for considerably more.

The second sheet surprised her. At the top, again in all caps, Luke had written, S.S.M.

Who?

Her heart jumped, and she almost yelled out in surprise. Steven Stickney Monroe.

"What on earth?" she whispered, shocked. Her vision blurred for a few seconds as she stared at the list of numbers, unable to make them out.

They were payments to Stick, not from him.

Why would Luke need to pay Stick Monroe? They both liked a poker game now and then, but Luke was too much of a control freak to get in over his head. She didn't know about Stick.

Well, they both were honest men. It was a lot of money by her standards-she added up thirty thousand dollars-but undoubtedly not by Luke's or even Stick's, although he wasn't nearly as wealthy.

A small loan between friends. It was in the same folder as the record of payments to Teddy Shelton because they both were informal, if not illegal.

Teddy worried her. She couldn't help it. He worried Judge Monroe, too.

Instead of resolving her questions, the file only added new ones. Warning herself not to jump to conclusions, Betsy quickly returned the folder to the filing cabinet, shut the drawer, locked up and returned the key to its spot inside the bell. The tape still stuck. She didn't have to replace it.

The ice had melted in her margarita when she returned to the afterdeck. She added two more cubes from the ice bucket, took a huge gulp and sat down.

Luke was out on the dock doing his post-run stretches. He was drenched in sweat, and she thought he looked nasty, hated the idea that he had secrets from her. Possibly explosive secrets. What had he paid Teddy Shelton for last September?

But Betsy had secrets of her own-she'd never breathed a word to him about Olivia's certainty that she knew the identity of her nephew's killer.

When he climbed onto the afterdeck and kissed her lightly, a drop of his sweat landing on her shirt, she didn't mind. Whatever he and Shelton and maybe even Stick were up to, Luke meant well, and he was very rich.

Eighteen

When Zoe decided to walk to dinner alone, J.B. didn't argue with her, not because he liked the idea but because he might kiss her again, and she could get spooked and throw him out. Then he'd have to camp out on the rocks, in the cold to keep an eye on her. He could anchor his boat off the bluff, but that made a quick reaction to any goings-on impossible.

And he'd probably have to get wet.

Either way he'd be cold.

The larger point was he didn't like what was going on in Goose Harbor. He had a bad feeling about Teddy Shelton. Betsy O'Keefe's visit. Kyle Castellane's documentary on Olivia West. None of it felt right, so not right that he'd dug out his 9 mm pistol from its locked compartment in his Jeep and clipped on his belt holster. Time to go around Goose Harbor armed.

Since he was driving, he gave Zoe a head start before finding his way along the maze of narrow streets behind the library to the yellow clapboard house she'd grown up in.

The two sisters were out back talking gardening with Stick Monroe. Christina, in jeans and a sweatshirt as a change from her café clothes, offered J.B. a glass of Chianti from a colorful pitcher on the patio table. He declined. He'd put on a jacket to cover his pistol, but if Zoe or her sister or her friend the retired judge noticed he was carrying a firearm, they didn't say anything. Which meant Zoe, at least, hadn't noticed.

He'd called Sally Meintz before he left for dinner and given her all the names. Betsy O'Keefe. Luke and Kyle Castellane. Bruce Young. Steven Stickney Monroe. And the Wests. All of them. Patrick, Zoe, Christina. Not because he didn't trust the state and local police to do the job but because he was thorough and he'd been blindsided enough this year. In February, by his father's death. Over the summer, by a violent criminal willing to kill a man in front of his own children.

Sally had typed the names into her computer in silence, then asked if he wanted her to make reservations for him somewhere else, like Costa Rica, because it sounded like he needed something new to keep him busy.

Monroe was in a better mood than last night and tipped his glass to J.B. "We were just discussing the glories of good compost. Are you a gardener, Agent McGrath?"

"Afraid not."

"Do you have any hobbies?"

"I used to fly-fish," he said. "My father was a guide in Montana."

"Is that right? That's a gentleman's sport, isn't it?"

He didn't seem to mean it as a dig, but J.B. didn't answer. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Zoe settling into her seat, tucking her feet up under her. He wondered if she realized how close he'd come to carting her up to bed after their kiss on the porch.

All in all, Sally Meintz was probably right. He should head for Costa Rica for the rest of his vacation.

"You'd hate fly-fishing, Stick," Zoe said. "It involves water."

He grinned at her. "Ah, you're right. I like to look at the water, but I don't care for getting in it. Fresh or salt. A wonder I retired to a seaside village. You'd think I'd have picked the mountains." He gestured broadly with his Chianti glass, obviously not his first of the evening. "Agent McGrath-J.B.You don't mind if I call you J.B.?"

"Not at all."

"J.B. it is, then." Monroe was in shorts and a Princeton sweatshirt despite the dropping temperature, but he didn't seem chilled. "You can see how Goose Harbor grows on a man, can't you? But the locals-I've been coming here since I was a boy and I know better than to think I'll ever be one of them. They're a tightknit lot. One local finds out you're with the bureau, the entire town finds out. You beat one local at darts, you've beaten them all." He grinned broadly. "Especially if it's Bruce Young."

Christina sighed. "I don't know why Bruce is so popular."

"Because he's a nice guy," Zoe said. "Stick, you exaggerate the clannishness of those of us who were born and raised here."

"Be careful, Zoe. You left. You might have to reapply to admission as a native."

She laughed. "Oh, give it up, will you?"

His dark eyes twinkled. "There's a rumor J.B.'s staying with you at Olivia's."

J.B. wondered how long it would be before anyone would refer to the house Zoe now owned as hers instead of her aunt's. If it even mattered. She leaned forward and poured herself some Chianti. "If you want to know the truth, J.B. got kicked out of his inn. He spilled tea on his carpet."

"Actually," J.B. said, "Lottie Martin said there was a problem with the room."

"A rare display of diplomacy on her part," Stick said. "I heard she just got spooked having an FBI agent under her roof."

Zoe sampled her Chianti. She seemed relaxed here with Stick and her sister, maybe more than she realized. She smiled at the judge. "I decided I've burned enough bridges with local, state and federal law enforcement in the past year that the least I could do was offer the guy a room."

After he'd already helped himself to one, she could have added. But she didn't, and Stick slung a skinny arm over her shoulders, fatherlike. "I should be more careful what secrets I tell you-I seem only to have encouraged you to dive deeper into the vipers' nest, not jump out of it." He spoke lightly, a little drunkenly. "But since our Agent McGrath unraveled a network of violent, gun-tot-ing lunatics, he's the hero of the moment. Ah, retirement." He polished off the last of his Chianti, then smiled, letting his arm drop from Zoe's shoulders. "I don't have to worry about being neutral or politically correct. I can call a lunatic a lunatic. Operation Copperhead, I believe it was called. J.B. here was lucky to survive."