More Than Words: Stories of Strength: Close Call / Built to Last / Find the Way

O’Malley smiled at her. “I’m not as big on pink as you are.”

She laughed. “I appreciate your honesty. Anyway, I don’t mean to bore you—”

“You’re not boring me,” he said sincerely.

She angled a look at him. “That’s why you do police work, isn’t it? Because you like people, you like to figure them out?”

“My father was a cop. I knew the work suited me.”

“Jessica? She says she was a police officer, too.”

“For a few years.”

“Her father—”

“Investment banker. Very white bread. Her mother is a volunteer for a bunch of different charities. They almost had a heart attack when she got accepted to the police academy.”

“But they supported her decision? They didn’t try to stop her?”

“They were the proudest parents at her graduation.”

“Good for them.”

O’Malley knew Marianne hadn’t joined him at the tide pool to chitchat. “Look—”

“I think someone’s snooping on me,” she blurted.

“What do you mean, snooping? Spying? Stalking you?”

She shook her head. “Nothing that overt. There’ve been these odd incidents.” She took a breath, not going on.

“Like what?” he prodded.

She squatted down, dipping a hand into the cold water, her back to him. “I don’t imagine things. I don’t make things out to be worse than they are. The fears I have—they’re real fears.”

“You think your ex-husband is in the area?”

“Let’s say I fear it.”

But she didn’t go on, seemed unable to. O’Malley walked around to the other side of the tide pool and squatted down, noticing that she had grabbed something from the bottom of the pool. “What do you have?”

“Starfish,” she said, and smiled as she lifted it out of the water and showed it to him. “I used to love to collect things from tide pools when I was a little girl. I’d put everything back, of course. Once—once I forgot, and I was mortified for days.”

A sensitive soul. “I understand.”

Her eyes met his, just for an instant, and she replaced the starfish back in the water. “When I got up this morning, before you and Jessica arrived, I was positive someone had been through the Saratoga trunk in the living room during the night. It’s an antique, from my great-grandmother.”

“The living room’s open to guests?”

She nodded. “But no one—it was just John Summers here last night. And he wouldn’t be interested in the contents of an old trunk. He’s a hiker. He goes out every day for hours. He pays me extra to load up his daypack with lunch and snacks.”

“What’s in the trunk?”

“Nothing of any value to anyone but me. Family photo albums and scrapbooks of my life before I married.” She spoke clearly, directly, without any hint of trying to hide something. “Some old books and diaries.”

“Your diaries?”

“Oh, no. My great-grandmother’s. She and my great-grandfather came to Nova Scotia from Scotland.”

“Have you read her diary?”

“Bits and pieces. It feels like prying, frankly.”

O’Malley shrugged. “That’s half of what I do for a living. What made you think someone had been in the trunk? Was the latch open, something like that?”

“It was moved and—” She thought a moment as she got to her feet. “I’d draped a throw over it last night. It was on the couch this morning.”

“Maybe Summers couldn’t sleep and came downstairs to read for a while, get a change of scenery, and used the throw to keep his feet warm.”

“It’s possible.” She smiled. “I like that theory.”

“Any other incidents?”

“A few more like that.”

“All with personal items?”

“Yes.”

“Nothing that’d tempt you to call the police?”

“No, not yet. I just feel—I don’t know how to describe it. Like somebody’s looking for something, prying into my life, or if not my life, my family’s past. It’s a very strange feeling.”

“Anything exciting about your family’s past?”

She frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. Was one of your ancestors secretly married to the Prince of Wales or something?”

“Oh, no, no, nothing like that.”

“But like something else?”

“Well—” She shook her head, laughing a little. “My great-grandmother lived in this area during a famous, tragic incident when a Halifax heiress ran off with a no-account foreign sailor. Irish, I think. Their boat went down in a storm just beyond the cove here.”

“They were killed?”

“Drowned.”