Homeport

the Institute was the lead story on the local eleven o’clock news. In New York, it earned thirty seconds in the lower half of the hour. Stretched out on the sofa in his apartment on Central Park South, Ryan sipped a brandy, enjoyed the tang of a slim Cuban cigar, and noted the details.
    There weren’t many. Then New York had plenty of its own crime and scandals to fill the time. If the Institute hadn’t been a landmark and the Joneses quite such a prominent New England family, the burglary wouldn’t have merited so much as a blip outside of Maine.
    Police were investigating. Ryan grinned around the cigar as he thought of Cook. He knew the type. Dogged, thorough, with a solid record of closing cases. It was satisfying to have a good cop investigating his last job. Rounded off his career nicely.
    Pursuing several leads. Well, that was bullshit. There were no leads, but they would have to say there were and save face.
    He sat up as he caught a glimpse of Miranda leaving the building. Her hair was smoothed back in a twist. She’d done that for the cameras, he thought, remembering how it had been loose and tangled when he’d kissed her goodbye. Her face was calm, composed. Cold, he decided. The lady had quite a cold streak, which inspired him to melt her. Which he would have done, he thought, if there’d been a bit more time.
    Still, he was pleased to see she was handling the situation well. She was a tough one. Even with those pockets of shyness and sadness, she was tough. Another day or two, he calculated, and her life would slip back into routine. The little bump he’d put into it would smooth out, the insurance would kick in, and the cops would file the case and forget it.
    And he, Ryan thought as he blew cheerful smoke rings at the ceiling, had a satisfied client, a perfect record, and some leisure time coming.
    Maybe, just maybe, he’d bend the rules in this case and take Miranda to the West Indies for a couple of weeks. Sun, sand, and sex. It would do her good, he decided. And it sure as hell wouldn’t hurt him any.
     
    Annie McLean’s apartment would have fit into Ryan’s living room, but she did have a view of the park. If she leaned far enough out her bedroom window, twisted her neck until it ached, and strained her eyes. But that was good enough for her.
    Maybe the furniture was secondhand, but she had bright colors. The rug might have come from a garage sale, but it had shampooed up just fine. And she liked the overblown cabbage roses around the border.
    She’d put the shelves together herself, painted them a deep dark green, and crammed them with books she bought when the library held its annual sale.
    Classics for the most part. Books she’d neglected to read in school and longed to explore now. She did so whenever she had a free hour or two, bundling under the cheerful blue-and-green-striped throw her mother had crocheted and diving into Hemingway or Steinbeck or Fitzgerald.
    Her CD player had been an indulgent Christmas present to herself two years before. Deliberately, she’d collected a wide range of music—eclectic, she liked to think of it.
    She’d been too busy working to develop a wide range of tastes in books and music when she was in her teens and early twenties. A pregnancy, miscarriage, and broken heart all before her eighteenth birthday had changed her direction. She’d been determined to make something of herself, to have something for herself.
    Then she’d let herself be charmed by slick-talking, high-living, no-good son-of-a-bitching Buster.
    Hormones, she thought, and a need to make a home, to build her own family, had blinded her to the impossibility of marriage with a mostly unemployed mechanic with a taste for Coors and blondes.
    She’d wanted a child, she thought now. Maybe, Lord help her, to make up for the one she’d lost.
    Live and learn, she often told herself. She’d done both. Now she was an independent woman with a solid business, one who was taking the time and making the effort to improve her mind.
    She liked to listen to her customers, their opinions and views, and measure them against her own. She was broadening her outlook, and calculated that in the seven years she’d had Annie’s Place, she’d learned more about politics, religion, sex, and the economy than any college graduate.
    If there were some nights when, slipping into bed alone, she longed for someone to listen to her, to hold her, to laugh with her when she spoke of her day, it was a small