“I think so, too!” I say. “I mean, they were actually on the boat. They must’ve seen something.”
Cherry pulls her car keys from her purse and folds her arms. “I’m going to look into Mr. Pierson Mantelle. I don’t even know where he lived. And what about his wife? I mean, he was on a boat with a twenty-year-old girlfriend. I’d say the wife would be a prime suspect. Do we even know if the police are looking at her?”
Annie shakes her head. “I wonder if his mother is still on the island. Did we figure out where Leigh Anne was staying?”
“His mother?” Cherry asks.
“Yeah,” I say with an eye roll. “She showed up Wednesday evening when Craig and I were here after the police had left. The first time the police were here.” I close my eyes at the police having been here more than once, then open them and finish. “She apparently grew up on the island. Lucy and Annie know her.”
“Knew her,” Annie emphasizes. “Leigh Anne Potts. Her mother still lives over on Beech Street, but we highly doubt she would stay with her. Lucy did find out she wasn’t at The Isle.”
Cherry looks around. “She came here? To your house? Why?”
“I, uh, I don’t know. She was upset, and she didn’t tell me at first that Pierson was her son. But something, oh… she called Craig C. J.”
“What did he have to say about her? Did he remember her?” Tamela asks.
I half turn to look toward the porch where I sat after she left. I remember being folded over onto my knees and Craig leaving to go get dinner. And not coming home. “He, he didn’t say anything.” I keep my head low and don’t look up at them. I’m tired. Tired of talking, tired of thinking, and really, really tired of seeing Craig through their eyes.
Chapter 20
I’ve never been a scaredy-cat, like Tamela called herself earlier, but being in this huge house alone tonight, the thought of going to sleep isn’t pleasant. This makes it easy to wait up for Craig. Plus, I did fix a big cup of coffee when the ladies left. Plus, I’m still pretty mad. Plus, I can’t go to lunch with them tomorrow without some answers from my husband.
And I really want to go to lunch tomorrow.
It’s ten thirty when I hear his car door close in the back drive. When he unlocks the back door, I’m standing in the hallway. He’s wearing the casual clothes he’s worn all day: shorts and a golf shirt with boat shoes. He’s carrying a small laptop under his arm.
“Jewel? What is it?”
“Where have you been? I put the pizza in, and by the time it was done you were gone. You didn’t answer my texts or calls.”
He turns into his office, so I follow him. He’s not getting out of my sight this time.
“I needed to go out. Did you need me for something?” After laying his laptop on his desk, he turns and leans against the desk, looking at me.
“Yes. We need to talk, and I—” He holds up his hand to stop me, but I just take a breath and talk louder. “I don’t care if you need to get some work done or whatever. We need—”
He brushes past me out the door, finishing my sentence. “To talk. Yes, we need to talk. I’m getting a glass of water. Can I get you anything?”
It’s a little strange, but I am not leaving his side. I follow him into the kitchen and act like I can’t decide what I want. I grab a glass out of the cabinet after him, fill it with ice after him, and then he fills it with water when he finishes filling his.
In the light from the refrigerator dispenser I look at him, and he looks sad, really sad. And tired. Our counselor, Dr. Kahill, said one of our problems is that we both have almost too much compassion. We are so careful to never hurt anyone, including each other, that we have lost ourselves. She said it would be like trying to have a relationship if we were each inside our own clear beach ball—never touching, never being honest, never really connecting at all for fear of hurting the other person. I close my eyes and mind to his weariness. I have to get through to him.
He motions for me to go ahead of him into the living room. I sit on the couch where I’d been earlier, and he settles into the chair across from me with a sigh. I ask, “That laptop you were carrying just now, is that yours?”
“Yes. It’s the one I bought last summer, you remember? We bought it down at the mall, then went to dinner at Red Lobster so we could have those biscuits?” He smiles and looks around. “Who knew we’d be living by the ocean and eating seafood all the time in less than a year?” His smile dims, and he bends forward to set his glass of water on the floor beside him. Looking at the floor he mumbles, “But all the seafood in the world doesn’t make up for all of this. Guess I was right all along about not moving here.” Then he flops back in his chair and looks at the ceiling. “Pierson Mantelle. You know I didn’t go to the marina that day looking for you to have lunch.” He looks at me. “Did you tell the police that?”
“Me? No, but the ladies at lunch all knew that you didn’t know where I was having lunch, so… they might’ve said it. Why were you meeting him? Who is he to you?”
“Some kind of cousin. I never really cared about any of this family stuff. You know I didn’t. My mom didn’t. But when we decided to take this house, I guess we should’ve expected some family drama. ” He stares at me. “Right?”
A flush of heat makes me stir and lift my glass to my cheek. “Yes. You’re right. We should’ve expected that, but…” But… I didn’t know about your family? But… I didn’t want to consider any negatives? But… for once I just wanted my way? But… With a wave of my hand, I finish the sentence by saying, “Whatever.” I clear my throat and push the guilt away. I have questions I need answered; how we ended up here I know all too well.
“So, this Pierson,” I say. “Did you talk to him that day? At the marina?”
Craig takes a breath and moves back in his seat. Finally he says, “The inheritance. It’s not as straightforward as it seemed. You’ve heard about all the marina stuff, selling it to a private owner and all?”
“Yes, but what does that have to do with us?”
“Exactly!” He stands up, sinks his hands in his pockets, and starts walking around the room. “Pierson wanted to meet me on the boat that day. He’d sent me a couple emails before we moved, wanting to talk, but I was busy and I really didn’t want to connect with any of the family. My mother always said they were manipulative and backstabbing. But once we were here, he said he had a business venture and so we met.”
“On his boat that day?”
Craig stops his pacing in front of me. “We met a couple times before then.”
“What? Why?”
“He was an important guy in the area, more in the central part of the state, but the company he was representing is huge and growing bigger. We were talking about a job.”
“A job for you?”
“You know I’ve never bothered you with my work stuff. I like to keep work and family separate, and you seem to like it that way, too. I know Dr. Kahill thought we had too many separations in our lives, but I don’t exactly agree. And now, it seems even less important that we share every little detail. You’ve got to know by now that’s just not who I am.”
I throw the pillow he slept on away from me, to the other end of the couch. I’d tucked it and his blanket behind the couch before the ladies came last night. A wave of embarrassment hits me as I think of them eating pizza and drinking wine on his ‘bed.’ I shout, “Except look at us! We have no idea what the other one is even doing! We’re farther apart than ever!”
He jerks at my raised voice, then looks around the room and shrugs. “Point taken. Anyway, that last project I was on was going so badly that it really soured me on the company, and as you know, I was ready to dump it all and retire. However… ”
“I know,” I say. “This project in South Florida is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to really work on something big.”
“And who wants to go out when you’re on the bottom?” He picks up the pillow I just threw and sits down on that end of the couch. “Well, al
l that got me thinking, really thinking about the job Pierson suggested. It would’ve been a really big deal. More money, lots of control, and right here on Sophia Island. We could work on our marriage like you planned.”
“Here? What, were you going to be the manager of the marina or something?” I grin because this all sounds made up.
My grin dies as he says, “Something like that. We hadn’t really hashed out the details, but we were ready to. Plus, my background in environmental engineering was going to help pave the way with the locals.”
Silly me, of course he didn’t make it up; he doesn’t think that far out of the box. I shake my head at his logical, confident demeanor. I can’t get distracted. “Did you meet Pierson Mantelle on his boat the day he died?” All this other talk is making my head spin. I can’t give into that and walk away from this conversation without my questions answered.
He seems to be examining the pillow in his hands, but when he looks up, his face is crunched in confusion. “Is this still about his murder? That has nothing to do with me.” His confusion quickly softens into sadness, and his voice lowers. “But, no. No, Jewel, I didn’t have a meeting with him that day on his boat. ”
“Why not? If this job he was offering was so amazing?” I stop my question there. For some reason I want to cry. My eyes are watering, and my throat feels thick and rough. With some deep breaths, I try to loosen my chest and calm my sick stomach.
He is still playing with the pillow. Then he lays it on the couch between us. “Because I decided I didn’t want the job here.” His voice is solid, sure, and strange. Strange to me. “It only took a few days back here to know I can’t live here. This house. This town. I can’t do it.”
“This wife?”
“I didn’t say that. But Jewel…”
“I know. You were done with your wife back in Illinois. Why would it be different here? I just hoped… I don’t know what I hoped, but I’m sorry. You were right; we should’ve never come here.”
We sit and let time slip around us. Finally I stand up, collecting my still-full glass of water, my coffee cup, and my phone. “I’m tired. I’m going to bed.” After a stop in the kitchen, I pause at the bottom of the front stairs. “Whatever you have to do to sell this place, go ahead. Then we can figure the rest out.”
I’m on the third stair when he says my name. “Jewel, it’s not that easy. Um, the inheritance? Well, it says we can’t sell for five years.”
Chapter 21
Of course I went back down those three steps last night. I was suddenly wide awake. We talked for almost another hour, but a lot of it went round in those same old circles. I’m beginning to see why we stopped talking years ago. Neither one of us is very good at it.
When I finally crawled into bed my brain switched off, and I fell into a deep sleep. Now it’s four thirty in the morning, and I’m awake. Craig slept downstairs again, so I pulled the cover off our bed and am cuddled with it on a chair in our room looking out at the dark. The decorative streetlights are far away from the house itself, and the street looks like a scene in an old painting: pools of light on the narrow street, shadows caused by the thick moss, still air absorbing the circle of light.
When Craig said we were stuck here for five years, my first reaction was to laugh. We? We aren’t stuck; it’s your inheritance. You’re stuck. Maybe I’d move to St. Louis and be near Erin and her sweet little family. Maybe I’d take some time and travel. Maybe I’d even move to Wisconsin to be near the boys in school, rent an apartment until they graduate. The speed with which these options appeared in my mind told me I’d been thinking up escape plans for a while, but they disappeared just as quickly when my husband reminded me of the papers we’d signed. We’d moved so often that we didn’t come close to having a paid-off house; plus, housing in Chicagoland continually goes up in price. So, we’d taken out a loan, using this house as collateral, to pay for moving and provide money for any renovations here.
I know now that it was stupid for me to not pay more attention at the time, but I honestly thought this move was the answer to saving my marriage. I also didn’t want to give Craig any reason to say no. I’ve never pushed him on anything, but I did on this and that might’ve been the death blow to our marriage. It was dying like a candle flame from lack of oxygen, but this move was like throwing a bucket of water at it.
It was some consolation last night when Craig said he completely blamed himself, which was why he’d been secretly trying to figure a way out. Part of his deal with Pierson had been for Pierson to take over this house in exchange for the new job and a condo in the new complex that was going to be built at the marina. Craig said the bigger paycheck would let us pay off our loans quickly, and Pierson moving in would mean no renovation costs.
I jot down condos at the marina on the notepad I’ve got beside me. When I woke up with my mind swirling, I decided I need to try making some notes again. Condos at the marina would mean a big change for the waterfront. Until tonight I’d not heard anyone mention them.
When I asked about the break-in, Craig started in his circles again. He might know what it was about, but maybe it was just a teenager. He was also vague about the laptop. He couldn’t figure out what I wanted to know about it.
I’d finally yelled, “Did someone break into our house to steal your personal laptop?”
After looking offended at my yelling, he shook his head and said, “I highly doubt it. People in small towns like this get all worked up when someone wants to change anything. Could someone think I know more about the marina purchase than I do and attempt to find out what I know by breaking into our home? Of course that’s a possibility, but doesn’t it seem a bit farfetched?”
That’s when I gave up and went to bed.
As I look out the window, the details of the trees and the yard are becoming clearer as the darkness fades. A flush of anger pushes over me. It feels almost like a hot flash, except I’m not hot, just mad. I think I could like living here, maybe not in this ridiculous house, but here on Sophia Island. I like the ladies from last night. There’s the beach, the river. I would enjoy living near my kids, but I really don’t think that would work out in the long run. I’m not ready to just settle into being Grandma. Who would’ve ever guessed I’d feel this young when my kids were gone? So now what?
It felt so proactive when I wanted to move here. A new adventure. Dr. Kahill kept telling us we were taking our same issues with us. That thought drains away some of my anger, leaving a lot of hopelessness behind. She tried to warn us.
Okay. I sit up, pushing and kicking the blanket to the floor. First things first, this murder has to be solved, despite Craig’s obtuse belief it has nothing to do with him. Whoever solves it, the police, Annie, I don’t care, but as long as it’s hanging over us we can’t do anything else.
Sipping a small glass of orange juice, I stand for a moment at Craig’s office door. I know he’s in there, but for the life of me I can’t force myself to even knock. I don’t have anything to say to him right now. Before the sun was up, I was out walking around downtown and enjoyed watching the sun light up the island. That’s another thing we keep meaning to do, a beach sunrise. Craig was off the couch and in our shower by the time I got home from my walk, but then I went straight to the basement to do laundry. Later, while I showered and changed, he made his coffee and ate, then closed himself in his office. Our paths throughout the house crossed a lot this morning, but we were never in the same room at the same time.
And here I stand. It’s still hard to believe he doesn’t realize he is truly in danger of being arrested for Pierson Mantelle’s murder. Lying about being at the scene and lying about their relationship puts him at the top of the suspect list, but since he sees it as illogical, he thinks everyone sees it as illogical.
Whatever. I turn back to the kitchen. I cannot get into one of our conversations again this morning. Plus I’m not sure he would see something like being a murder suspect as important as his job. Friday is still a workday
.
Out the front door, headed for my car, I breathe deeply of the salty, sandy, musty old town. I swing my arms, which makes my jacket sleeves swing, too. This makes me smile. This is the first outfit I bought after moving here, and this is my first time wearing it: gauzy cotton pants with wide legs and a funky, pink seashell trim on the bottoms. The pants and jacket are soft green, accented with gray swirls that look like waves. The sleeveless shirt is seashell pink to match the trim. My gray flip-flops have shiny stones on them, and my hair is up in a clip, which also has shiny stones on it. I bought it all on an impulse when I truly believed Craig and I were going to be happy here. I’ve been saving it for a special day out together.
Oh well.
I turn my car around in the circle drive and pull out, headed for the library. The library is within walking distance but the beach isn’t, and I don’t want to come home in between.
Two matters are taking me to the library. One – researching the marina not only here, but marinas around the state. It seems like that is at the bottom of Pierson being here and is what has the greatest number of people upset. Two – I’m here for a mystery.
The kind that comes in a book.
Chapter 22
When I walk out of the library the bright sunlight makes me shut my eyes tight. I blink until they adjust. This reminds me of being a college student after an extended study session.
The Manatee Did It Page 11
