Deep Waters

about the weather when it became clear that there was nothing else to talk about. "Looks like we've had our summer for this year."
    She sounded just like one of the clerks at the checkout counter in the Whispering Waters Grocery, she thought.
    Elias did not respond. He walked beside her, but he might as well have been in another world. He had retreated all the way back behind the facade of complete control that his philosophy provided.
    Charity's spirits sank lower. She'd ruined everything, she told herself. Then again, perhaps there had been nothing of importance to destroy. Just an illusion of a growing love between herself and Elias. In the end, all illusions crumbled.
    The last of the late-summer evening twilight was nearly gone. The cove was an endless, restless sheet of gray steel that would soon turn black as night descended. Charity looked down at the beach. There was just enough light left to see the object that had been deposited on the rock-strewn shore by the incoming tide.
    She came to a halt.
    "What's wrong?" Elias asked as he stopped beside her.
    "There's something down there." She held her blowing hair out of her eyes with one hand and studied what appeared to be a tangle of seaweed and old clothes. "I hope it's not a dead seal. We get one washed ashore every once in a while."
    Elias glanced disinterestedly over the edge of the bluff. "Probably something lost overboard from a boat." His attention suddenly sharpened. "Damn. Not another one."
    "What do you mean?" Charity stared harder at the dark shape on the beach. A queasy sensation stirred in her stomach. "Oh, no. You don't think that it's ... a person, do you? It can't be. We would have heard if some tourist had been lost or washed overboard or ... or—"
    "Wait here. I'll take a look." Elias flicked on the flashlight. He walked along the edge of the bluff until he found the path that led to the beach. He went down it with a reckless ease.
    Ignoring his terse instructions, Charity followed at a more cautious pace. By the time she reached the beach, Elias was already crouching beside the object that had washed ashore. He aimed the flashlight at one end of what appeared to be a twisted bundle of rags.
    Charity stopped several feet away when she realized that her worst fears had been realized. It was not a dead seal that lay there. "Oh, my God."
    "Looks like we just found out where Rick Swinton went when he disappeared," Elias said.
    Elias stood near Hank Tybern and watched as Rick Swinton's body was loaded into the town's one ambulance. Not that there was anything useful that could be done for Swinton in a hospital, he thought. Swinton was headed for the morgue.
    "Have to wait until the county medical examiner does the autopsy," Hank said. "But I've seen enough people pulled out of the water to estimate that Swinton was in the cove for no more than a day or so. And he sure didn't drown."
    "No," Elias remembered the large hole in Swinton's chest. "He didn't drown."
    "What do you want to bet that we'll discover he was shot with the same twenty-eight-caliber that was used on Gwen Pitt?"
    "No bets." Elias glanced at Charity. He was worried about her. In the harsh glare of the ambulance lights he could see the sick, stark tension in her face. A body pulled out of the water was not an easy thing to look at. Then again, no dead body was easy to look at, and Charity had seen two of them recently.
    "So much for my little theory that Swinton murdered Gwen Pitt," Hank muttered. "Too bad. I was gettin' real fond of that one."
    Elias thought about it. "You don't have to rule it out. You don't have the autopsy results yet. Could be two different guns. Swinton could have killed Gwen Pitt and then gotten himself killed by someone else. He must have made a few enemies in his time."
    "Can't argue with that. Not a real nice guy." Hank exhaled slowly. "But I'd stake my job on the hunch that it was probably the same killer using the same gun. Be stretching things a bit to believe that we have us two murderers running around Whispering Waters Cove this summer."
    Elias considered the situation from that logical angle. "Could be the same motive, too. A disgruntled Voyager might have concluded that Swinton was just as guilty of fraud as Gwen Pitt."
    "And said Voyager would be right." Hank looked at him. "But I don't think it was one of those cult members. I talked to all of them. Double-checked their alibis. They were all clear. And besides, they're getting most of their