“They’re saying some strange things,” Tyler was explaining to Sam. “About”-he glanced at his mother from under his long bangs before continuing-“about Mom, too.”

“What about me?” Josie asked.

“Well, I heard that Courtney told someone that you would like to kill her.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Sam protested. “Your mother doesn’t get that mad at people she doesn’t even know!”

Josie glanced up at Sam, over at her son, and then down at her empty bowl. She wouldn’t, she decided, say anything. It was safer that way.

TEN

IT HAD BEEN a long time-a very long time-since Josie had felt so completely alone. Awake in the middle of the night and too worried to remain in bed, she had gotten up, planning to walk on the beach for a bit. Instead, almost without thinking, she had found herself driving to Island Contracting’s office.

Now she sat in her truck, engine and lights off, staring at the tiny building, remembering the first time she’d seen it.

Back then her life had been a mess.

Brought up with the expectation that she would continue her education after high school, she had dutifully headed off to the ivyless college her mother had attended. But that was as far as the dutiful daughter role had taken her. No one had expected her to fall in love with practically the first young man she met there. Or to get pregnant by him. And as far as her family was concerned, her decision to keep her baby had been the last straw. They broke off their connection with her, possibly to try to force her to come around to their way of thinking and if not to get an abortion, at least to give up her child for adoption.

Confused and more than a bit frightened, Josie had come to the island where she had spent many happy summers as a child, allowed to run free from parental control on the wide beaches and in the two small towns that made up the community. She had come back for comfort. What she had found was a life.

It’s always easy to get a low-paying menial job in a resort community during the high season. Workers can be difficult to find, and her employer had been willing to ignore her slightly bulging waist when he put her on the payroll. Josie had been a waitress at a local restaurant when she met Noel Roberts. Other than surviving, she’d made no plans either for herself or her child. She had walked from her rooming house to this very spot early in the morning the day after Noel had offered her a future.

And standing near where now she sat, she had decided to take Noel up on his offer. She would work for Island Contracting. He would train her as a carpenter and she would have her baby and raise him or her on the island. At the time, it had sounded like a miracle. And it turned out to be true. Then, after Noel’s death, when she discovered that he had left her his business as well as a trust fund just big enough to send Tyler to boarding school and college, she had been more grateful than ever.

She thought she had left her past behind. Until Courtney Castle arrived on the island. Josie sighed and got out of her truck. If she couldn’t sleep, maybe she could get some paperwork done, she decided, walking down the familiar path in the dark. She unlocked the door and flipped on the lights. The office cat, a regal tabby known as Elizabeth, looked up from the bed she had made for herself in the piles of paper on Josie’s desk.

“You’re going to have to move if I’m going to get anything done,” Josie murmured, heading for the coffeemaker atop a file cabinet at the back of the room.

The cat ignored her, carefully positioning her head on her paws and closing her eyes. Josie frowned. Oh, well, she was too tired to concentrate on figures anyway. She proceeded to make a pot of coffee. She grabbed the mug with the words “Super Mom” on the side, poured out a cup, and walked out on the tiny deck that hung over the bay from the fishing shack Noel had converted into Island Contracting’s office. The sky was turning pink, reflecting the sunrise beginning over the Atlantic behind her. Josie plopped down on a plastic folding chair, sipped her coffee, and wondered what she should do.

It all depended, she decided, on what had happened to Courtney. But what had happened? Josie didn’t for a minute believe that Courtney had been killed or was even missing. She had thought it all out while tossing and turning and trying to sleep.

The police line that had kept the curious from intruding on the work site had, in a sense, created an island on the real island. Courtney couldn’t have walked or driven away without being seen; that was something everyone seemed to agree upon. Unless… Josie balanced her mug on the deck railing and went back into the office for a pen and paper. There was just enough light for her to see, and she wrote three words each followed by a question mark. Disguised? Hidden? Alone? It was the third word that interested her the most.

She doodled as she thought it all through again. Someone-or Courtney herself-had written a note about killing Courtney. That was either true or false. But, she decided, it didn’t make all that much difference. What mattered was that Courtney had vanished. She could have left alone. If dead, she must have been carried. But the third possibility, the one Josie hadn’t thought of until the caffeine kicked in, was that Courtney had left, alive and kicking, and aided and abetted by someone. Someone who had either hidden or disguised Courtney in some way. Someone who knew why she had disappeared, where she had gone, and what, exactly, was going on.

“That woman hasn’t changed a bit since we were kids,” Josie muttered to herself, straightening her spine and propping her legs up on the rail, and accidentally kicking her mug into the water. “Oh no!” She leaped to her feet. A small whirl-pool was the only sign of her mug’s entrance into the water.

She was still staring at the spot when she heard the door open behind her.

“Josie, it’s me.”

She smiled. Sam was such a sweetie, identifying himself quickly so that he didn’t scare her. Then a thought struck. “Why are you here? Is something wrong? Tyler…”

“… is just fine.”

“Then why are you here? Why are you awake?”

“I always wake up when the phone rings. Risa called. She saw you leave your apartment and was worried about you.”

“How did she… How did you know I would be here?”

“I didn’t. In fact, I assumed you were on your way to your current work site, but I didn’t want to cross the police line to find out if you were there unless it was absolutely necessary. I’ve decided that the best thing to do to maintain any peace of mind around here is to stay as far away from the Rodneys as possible. So I drove around a bit looking for your truck.” He brushed her hair off her forehead. “Did I smell fresh coffee inside?”

“Just made.”

“Do you want some?”

“The mug Tyler gave me for Mother’s Day is down there.” Josie looked over the rail.

“That’s what you were looking for just now? I thought you were checking your trap.” Sam looked over at the water, shimmering in the first light of day. “It is down there, too, isn’t it?”

Josie reached behind him to the rope tied to the rail. “It’s a bit early for blue crabs, but I couldn’t resist putting the trap out last week. The bait’s probably gone. I sometimes think I spend the first month of the season feeding minnows.” She was pulling on the rope as she spoke and a large commercial crab trap broke through the surface of the water. Her mug was sitting, eerily upright, on its top. “Hey, look at that!”

“Careful. Just pull it straight up and I’ll try to grab it.” He had done it before he said it.

“And look! Crabs!”

“Frankly, I’m more interested in coffee right now,” Sam admitted as Josie lowered the large wire box back into the bay.