The Edge

Directly behind the house was a large clapboard structure with a high-pitched cedar shake roof and a large skylight set in each plane of the shakes. There were windows lining the sidewalls and a large exhaust pipe coming out of the rear wall. He peered inside one of the windows and saw that it was set up as an art studio: easels with works in process on them; long worktables with cans of brushes and small bottles of paint lined up, along with sketchpads, jars of drawing pencils and charcoal sticks, and large and small paint-smeared palettes. In one corner was a potting wheel, and in another corner stood a small kiln. There were also large metal tanks next to what looked to be welding equipment, and a large work sink, and a metal tub set on wooden sawhorses.

He tried the door but it was securely locked.

He looked to his left, and far down the property line he could see some of the ancillary buildings he had glimpsed last night.

He walked over to the coastline. He found it was quite elevated as he looked over the edge to the rocks below, though there was a path down that looked well used. Some of the boulders were nearly as large as an Abrams tank. The surf pounded against them, sending a drenching spray halfway up from where Devine stood.

He knew that Maine had a long coastline, the fourth longest of all the states, longer even than California’s, because of all the jagged clusters of coves and inlets. And out of all that shoreline, in the middle of the night in a downpour, Earl Palmer walked through a forest of trees to the exact spot where Jenny Silkwell lay dead on the rocks below? The odds of that happening were enormous. No, they were beyond impossible.

I need to talk to that man, and sooner rather than later.

He turned and walked back around to the front of the main house and knocked.

No answer. He knocked again and then pounded on the wood.

“Go away,” called out Alex Silkwell.

“It’s Travis Devine. We met last night.”

“Then go away faster. I have nothing to say to you.”

Devine stared at the weathered door and imagined Silkwell standing just on the other side of it, all defiant and ticked off. He needed to talk to her, but he didn’t have a warrant and so there was really nothing he could do.

“I’m leaving my card under the doormat.”

Silence greeted this statement, and Devine couldn’t really imagine any scenario where she would be phoning him voluntarily.

He walked back to his car and drove off. He reached the coast road, turned left, and hit the gas. Once around a bend, he pulled off, parked his car, and hoofed it back to Jocelyn Point.

He took up a surveillance point behind a stand of white pines, which were bracketed by some leafless ash, birch, and maples. Using his optics, he kept an eye on the main house and also the art studio.

Thirty minutes later his patience was rewarded as Alex, carrying a cup of something, hurried out to the studio, unlocked the door, and went inside.

Devine put his optics away and marched over to the studio. He peered in one window and saw Alex slipping off her coat. Underneath she had on jean overalls and a long-sleeved thermal undershirt. Her hair was piled loosely on top of her head and secured there with some pins and braids.

She picked up a large palette, loaded it with fresh paint from a variety of tubes, and headed over to one of the canvases set on an easel.

Devine slipped to the door and tried the knob. It turned easily. For some reason he was more nervous than when he had been about to breach places in the Middle East where he knew men inside were waiting to kill him. But he actually knew why.

I trained long and hard for the latter scenario. Not so much for what I’m about to do.

He opened the door and walked in.

Chapter 17

He expected her to start screaming, or maybe throw something at him, or fire up the blowtorch on her welding kit and come at him for a personal charcoaling session.

But Alex just stood there in front of her painting, her palette in one hand and a slender brush in the other. “You’re persistent.”

“My job sort of requires that.” He looked around. “So this is where the magic happens?”

“It’s not so much magic as just hard work, luck, and a dash of creativity and talent thrown in.”

He looked around at paintings in oil, acrylic, and watercolor along with clay sculptures all in various stages of completion. Bronze and other metallic figures bent and curved by heat and pressure into fascinating shapes were arrayed around the perimeter of the space.

“I think it’s more than a dash of talent. I can barely draw a straight line. This... this is really impressive, Ms. Silkwell.”

His frankness seemed to draw down whatever anger she might have been feeling at his intrusion. “I’m Alex. I’ve never been Miss anything.”

“And I’m Travis.”