Free Sailing to Capri by Elizabeth Adler

few minutes stunned, then, shoving Rats out of the way, I got up and began to pace the room nervously.
Why
hadn’t he confided in me?
Why
hadn’t he told me who he suspected and the reason they wanted to kill him? And now I had to take these murder “suspects” on some crazy cruise.
    I pulled back the curtains and stared out into the night. The snow had stopped and the windowpanes had those curved white snow corners. They looked the way they used to at Christmastime when I was a kid and we’d fake them with that spray-on stuff from the drugstore. Outside was a winter wonderland, a smooth thick blanket of snow that muffled the normal country noises. The silence was so absolute it throbbed against my ears.
    The letter clutched in my hand fluttered in a sudden breeze. Surprised, I stared at it. I glanced at the window but it was tight shut and there was no draft. The back of my neck prickled. Was it Bob, coming back to keep an eye on me as he’d promised in his letter? I swung around, half-expecting to see him. I thought I heard the curtain rustle and turned quickly back, but it hung perfectly still.
    Heart thudding, I ran and switched on every light in the room, then I sank onto the chaise.
“Jesus!
Don’t you do this to me, Bob Hardwick,” I said in a quavering voice.
“Just don’t you do this.”
Eyes closed, I pictured him standing there, a trace of a smile on his big ogre face. Laughing at me.
    “Okay. It’s okay,” I told myself loudly. “I’m just imagining things. I’ll be all right now. Everything’s okay.”
    But Rats jumped from the bed and ran to the door. He stood there, whining.
He knew someone was there.
I willed myself to walk across and open it.
    “Jesus Christ!”
I jumped about three feet into the air. A man was standing in the shadows, looking at me.

10

Daisy
    Mouth agape, hand clutched to my heaving chest, I stared blankly at Montana. He was wearing a white terry robe and carrying a tray with a blue kitchen teapot, two blue-striped mugs and a plate of gingersnaps.
    “I’m sorry I startled you,” he said politely. “I was just about to knock. I knew you wouldn’t be able to sleep once you’d read the letter so I made you a cup of tea. I saw the light under your door …”
    “You scared the hell out of me.” My voice sounded brittle, snappy.
    “I’m sorry.”
    He looked so repentant I almost forgave him. He was barefoot and I thought dazedly how cute he looked, the tanned cropped-headed, tattooed hard-man P.I.
    Exhaustion swept over me and suddenly a nice English cup of tea seemed exactly what I needed and Montana’s companyseemed better than none. I stood aside for him to pass then showed him where to put the tray, on the small glass table next to the chaise.
    Rats put his paws on the table, sniffing the gingersnaps. I gave him one, then poured the tea. The chaise was the only chair in the room apart from my little vanity stool and since I didn’t want Montana sitting that close to me I showed him to the cushioned window seat. He took the mug I offered him and still standing, he stared out of the window with its Christmasy decoration of snow.
    “It’s odd,” he said, “the kind of peace that comes with a blizzard. I don’t know whether it’s because we’re temporarily cut off from the reality of day-to-day living, or whether it’s the complete silence.” He closed his eyes, listening. “There’s not even the sound of the wind blowing anymore.”
    “It must remind you of your childhood,” I said.
    “Nothing in my childhood was ever peaceful.”
    I thought I’d better not get into that, but then it occurred to me that I was so used to being discreet I missed out on a lot of things. For instance, if I’d asked Bob more about his past he might have told me about the woman he’d loved and why he’d never gone back to her.
    “So what happened in your childhood?”
    Montana took a seat in the window. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, the mug clasped in both