The Edge

“You can leave that weapon here when you go out,” she quipped, eyeing the key with amusement. “Unless you want to do arm curls.”

“I think I’ll keep it with me, thanks,” replied Devine, who would never leave such an open and easy invitation into his private space lying around.

Kingman’s amused expression vanished as she first looked startled and then suspicious.

“What are you in town for, Mr. Devine? Can’t be pleasure unless you like the inside of a freezer.”

“A little business.” He eyed her steadily. “I understand you had some trouble recently?”

“I guess you can call the murder of a poor young woman trouble, yes.”

“What was her name again?”

“Jenny Silkwell.”

“Wait, wasn’t there a senator by that name from up here?”

“Curtis Silkwell. Jenny was his daughter. He got sick and had to resign. I knew Jenny since she was in pigtails and knee socks. Smart as a whip, pretty and nice as can be. She worked in Washington, DC.” She glanced carefully around, as though there might be someone listening. “Some folks say she was a spy or some such for us.”

“Do these ‘folks’ believe she was killed because of that?”

A stony expression slid down over the woman’s features. “Well, I can’t see anyone from around here hurting one hair on Jenny’s head. Everyone loved her.”

Well, at least one person didn’t, thought Devine. “So she grew up here?”

She nodded. “At the Silkwells’ ancestral home, Jocelyn Point. Named after Hiram Silkwell’s wife. He made money hand over fist well over a century ago, and built that place.”

“Any Silkwells left here?”

“Alex, Jenny’s younger sister, and her brother, Dak. They live at Jocelyn Point.”

“I suppose Jenny came up to visit with them when she was killed?”

Kingman folded her arms over her chest and took a symbolic step back. “My, my, I can’t imagine why I’ve been gabbing so much about the Silkwells to a complete stranger. You have a nice visit here, Mr. Devine. And just so you know, outsiders aren’t usually welcome here.”

“But I would imagine your entire business model depends on the exact opposite of that sentiment.”

She twisted her mouth in displeasure. “Your place is right behind here, first cottage on the right.”

She walked through a blue curtain set behind the front counter.

Devine grabbed his bags and off he went, a stranger in a place that didn’t particularly care for them.

Story of my life.

Chapter 6

The cottage was comfortably furnished, with a big four-poster bed being its chief feature with a duvet and matching canopy done in seascapes and lobsters. A blackened-faced wood-burning fireplace with a small stack of cedar logs and kindling set next to it in a wrought iron holder took up much of another wall.

He put his things away and laid out several telltale traps in case anyone breached his room while he was away. He then sat at a small desk set up by the window and looked over the briefing book on his phone.

Jenny Silkwell could have certainly made enemies in her line of work. But if a foreign government wasn’t behind her death, who else would have the motive?

Well, that’s what you’re here to find out. So let’s get to it.

He slipped his Glock into a belt holster, locked his door, deposited the one-pound lead slug key in his pocket, climbed into his Tahoe, and set off.

He drove slowly past the harbor and marveled at the beauty of nature’s rock carvings. He saw a few boats puttering back in, the men on them looking bleary-eyed and exhausted, and smoking cigarettes and gulping bottled water, even in the cold.

Tough way to make a buck. Hope they scored big on whatever they were going out for.

He drove to Jocelyn Point along the winding coast road. As dusk set in, the equal parts grim and picturesque landscape assumed patches of pulsing darkness shouldered with sections still lit by the fading sun. Devine pulled out his military-grade optics and took a look.

Set far off the road on an otherwise deserted stretch of land, the home’s backdrop was the black rock-strewn craggy coastline that the Atlantic pummeled unceasingly.

Devine had seen pictures of the home, but it hadn’t done the place justice. The building itself looked like every haunted house you had seen in movies or on TV. Grim, stark, joyless, it stood like a defiant remembrance of a far more somber and unforgiving era.

Constructed of rough-hewn timbers and rugged dark stone that was probably locally quarried, Jocelyn Point possessed the tall, looming face of a hunk of marble statuary with a wooden-railed widow’s walk at its zenith. Multiple turrets, both cone- and square-shaped, all topped by slate roofs fouled by the elements, stuck out here and there from the home’s façade like wayward strands of hair. The exterior was covered with nature’s makeup — chunks of moss and patches of lichen, which evidently flourished in the damp, briny air.