“What do you think really happened to Ely?”

Over the sound of the insects humming in the underbrush, I again heard him swallow. He opened his mouth as though he were about to say something, but then he only looked down at me and rested a hand on my shoulder. “You said something about a beer?”

I led him back to the cottage and unlocked the door. Before swinging it open, I felt a little moment of panic. For all I knew, this man had played a part in Ely’s death and could be plotting the same for me. After I’d switched the lamp on and the light filled the room, though, such fears seemed foolish. After all, he was the head honcho, the director of Harbor House. He probably dined at the mayor’s house, for Pete’s sake. And lots of people had seen us together this evening.

He went straight to the easel and paints.

“You paint?” he called out as I retrieved two beers from the fridge.

“Yeah, just as a hobby.” I handed him the can, and from his look, I could tell he would have preferred his beer in a glass. He took a paper napkin from the holder on the bar and began to wipe the aluminum top of the can.

“Are you any good?” He settled on the couch and stretched his arm across the back. I wondered if I was expected to sit inside that arm.

“Hmmm ... tough question. Technically, I’m decent, but I don’t have the passion for painting—you know, the artistic temperament. My mother had it, so I know what it is.” Standing in the center of the room with my back to him, I pointed to the dark canvas on the far wall. It depicted a bird-of-paradise flowering in an unruly garden in the midst of a threatening summer squall. “That’s one of hers. My mother had all this emotion in her, all this thought and spirit and soul that she just couldn’t express any other way.”

“I know what you are talking about. That is why many people paint.”

I turned to face him. “Of course. I saw that tonight in your paintings.” I didn’t go so far as to say that I found it very difficult to believe that such a warm, sociable person could make such cold paintings. “You said those canvases were several years old. Do you still paint?”

“No, I’ve found other outlets for my passion.”

He said it matter-of-factly, without a wink or a leer. My mother had found another outlet, too.

I turned back to my mother’s bird-of-paradise painting. “It tortured my mother when she couldn’t paint, when what she managed to get on canvas didn’t look like what was in her head. But when things were going well, she knew a real serenity. I just wish it had happened more often for her.”

The sofa creaked when he stood, so I wasn’t entirely surprised when he rested his hands on my shoulders.

“And your mother? Where is she today?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. As soon as the subject of her death came up, I was that little girl again, the one who couldn’t speak for months.

James bent down and brushed his lips against the side of my neck, and I could barely hide the shiver I felt. “It’s okay,” he whispered.

No matter that I’d been insisting to myself that I really was only with him to try to get some information from him, when he slowly turned me around and kissed my mouth, I didn’t push him away. My eyes closed, and I reached up and ran my hands lightly along his jawline. His skin was smooth and cool, not at all like B.J.’s.

B.J. I placed my hand in the center of his chest, applied gentle pressure, and our lips parted. “James, there’s something I need to ask you ...” I opened my eyes for just a second, and in that flash, I became aware of a movement just past his shoulder at the kitchen window. My eyes flew wide open, and I turned my head in time only to see the blur as a head ducked below the window. Through the closed window, I could hear the rustling of the vegetation as someone pushed through the bushes out there.

“What the hell—” I disentangled myself from James and ran for the front door.

My kitchen window, which is at the back of the cottage, is accessible only through the thicket of bushes that separates the Larsen estate from its neighbors. I pushed my way through the clipped ficus and bougainvillea, ignoring the thorns and branches that cut into my flesh. By the time I’d fought my way clear to the neighbor’s large expanse of lawn, there was no one in sight.

“Damn!” I looked down at my thighs. Blood trickled down from numerous slashes. “Shit.”

“Seychelle? Are you all right?” James’s voice sounded distant, muffled as it was by the thick hedge. Then Abaco started barking inside the wheelhouse.

“Yeah,” I shouted. “I’ll be right there.” I trotted down the hedge to the wooden gate that joined the two properties, where on the rare occasions when both sets of neighbors were in town at the same time, they could socialize without having to exit their enclaves. It was standing open.

James was in front of my cottage when I returned. “Look at you,” he said, the lines on his forehead clear above his arched brows.

I glanced down at my pareu. The cloth had ripped, and a piece hung to the ground. The blood on my legs was starting to coagulate.

“They’re just scratches. No big deal.”

The dog was still barking. “Abaco,” I shouted. “Quiet!”

“What was that all about?”

“Didn’t you see him, or at least hear him?”

James shook his head. “See what?”

“There was a man at my kitchen window. I didn’t get a clear look at him. I just saw him out of the corner of my eye.” I didn’t tell James, but there had been something familiar about that fleeting glimpse.

Had it been a prowler, someone else come to rob me, or someone who was spying on me? Suddenly, I remembered B.J. watching me from backstage at the Mai Kai.

“I didn’t know what was going on when you just ran out of there like that.” James was looking at me as though I were something he had stepped in and he didn’t know how to politely wipe me off his shoe.

Suddenly, I started laughing. “God, you must have thought I was nuts, huh?”

He stepped back, staring, as I bent over laughing. He nodded.

“Guess this whole thing kind of broke the romantic atmosphere, eh?” I tried to control myself, but the giggles just kept erupting every time I thought I was under control.

“Seychelle, are you sure you’re all right?”

“Don’t worry.” I caught my breath and finally managed to pull off a straight face. “I’m fine. Whoever that was is long gone by now. Probably just a Peeping Tom,” I said, although I didn’t really think so. “I think we’d better call it a night, James.”

“I agree,” he said, smoothing out imaginary wrinkles in his shirt and tucking it tightly into his pants.

“Before you go, though, I’ve just got to ask one more thing. It’s about this business with Ely and the sign-in sheet. I saw her go in the door and bend down to sign in, James. I could see there was a person sitting there behind the desk. Now you’re saying no one saw her last night? I was just wondering if you really know everything that goes on at Harbor House. I mean, isn’t it possible that those girls could be into something behind your back?”

“There is nothing that goes on there that I don’t know about. I’m sure of that.”

“Then how can you explain the fact that your story just doesn’t mesh with what I know I saw?”

“I can’t explain it, but I don’t think I’ll have to, either.”

“What do you mean?”

“Seychelle, look at yourself.” He spread his hands wide, smiling his little half smile. “Then look at me,” he said. “Who would you believe?” It was his turn to laugh out loud.

The night felt very cold. The flesh on my arms was dotted with goose bumps.

Then he was flashing me that megawatt smile. “I’m just kidding you. There is a logical explanation for the discrepancy, and I trust that Collazo will find it. He seems very determined.”

“Yeah, Collazo. But I don’t want just any answer, James. I want the truth.”