by Cate Conte
I pulled the door open and observed the man standing on the other side. Normal enough. Handsome, even, with wavy dark hair and matching dark eyes. Tall. Bundled up in a winter coat, black motorcycle boots, and a scarf. And he looked really familiar, though I couldn’t figure out why.
“Hi,” he said. “I called about an appointment? I’m Zach.”
“Hi, Zach,” I said, holding out my hand. He withdrew his own from his pocket long enough to shake it. “I’m Maddie. Come on in.”
I held the door for him. He stepped inside, glancing around.
“The cafe area is right through here,” I said, indicating the French doors. “The cats live and play here. They’re all around, in various stages of napping. Are you here just to visit with them? Or did you see one specifically that you’d like to meet?”
Zach shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Actually,” he said, “I’m here because I was a friend of Jason Holt’s. You might have something of his?”
Chapter 34
I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach. That’s why he looked familiar. It was Zach McConnell. Jason Holt’s co-writer.
What on earth was he doing on Daybreak?
“Jason Holt. The writer,” I said, trying to keep it together. “Such a tragedy, what happened.”
Zach shook his head. “I can’t even. I mean…” he trailed off. “He was my writing partner.”
“That’s right. Zach McConnell,” I said, snapping my fingers, pretending I’d just made the connection.
His face brightened, just a little. “You knew?”
“Yes, I kept up with all his books. And the ones you did together,” I lied, praying he wouldn’t ask me which was my favorite. “And the movies of course. It’s an honor to meet you. So what are you thinking we have of Jason’s?”
“So, I heard he was working here,” Zach began. Then he stopped and kind of grimaced. “Forgive me, but this is kind of complicated. Jason had never changed his emergency contact information from Lexie. She called to tell me. Anyway, I got here as fast as I could. Lucky, too. Made it in yesterday before they shut the ferry down. I wanted to come to pick up Jason’s things, you know? Things that he probably wouldn’t have wanted her to … well. You know. And some of his work-related items are missing from his room. He’d mentioned he’d been working here while he was in town, and I was wondering if he may have left anything?”
I was trying to process what he was saying. Lexie was Jason’s emergency contact, and she’d called Zach. But they were both here, and he didn’t seem to know she’d come to pick up Zach’s stuff. It didn’t make sense. And what did he mean, Jason left something here?
Then I remembered. I watched the scene play out in my head again: Grandpa escorting Thea out of the cafe, coming back to offer me words of comfort. Bending over to pick up a notebook off the floor.
“Yours?” he had asked.
Then he’d tossed it into the lost and found bin. And I’d completely forgotten about it.
I tried not to look in that direction. I don’t know why I didn’t just point to the box and tell this guy to go to town, but something told me not to. At least not until I’d had a chance to check it out.
What if there was a clue in there?
I pretended to think. “I don’t believe so,” I said. “We clean up every day after the cafe closes, and we would’ve noticed. Especially a computer. And we’re not very busy this time of year, so…”
“Are you sure?” Zach persisted. “It might not be a computer. A folder, a … notebook, perhaps? Could it possibly have been turned over to the authorities?”
I shook my head. “Not without my knowledge. I’m the owner, and I’m the one out here most of the time. It wouldn’t have snuck by me.”
“I see,” Zach said. He looked disappointed and … upset. Or something.
What was going on here? Who was the rightful person to collect Holt’s things, anyway? Did Lexie know he was here? I wondered what Zach was here to make sure she didn’t take. Like maybe a book they were working on? Maybe they were working on a new project and Holt had been updating him on his progress.
But none of those thoughts made their way to my face—or out of my mouth, luckily. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help,” I said. “And I’m terribly sorry about your friend. Will you be finishing the book?”
Zach looked at me, eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I just thought … since you were looking for his work papers,” I said. “At least, I’m guessing they were work related, right? Were you guys working on a new book? I hope you finish it. It’s so sad to think we might not be able to read any of his words anymore.” I wondered if I was laying it on too thick, but Zach looked flattered.
“Oh, of course I’ll finish it. And I know. It won’t be the same without his touch the whole way through.” He glanced down at the floor, scuffed his boot against my carpet. “He didn’t have a chance to send me his latest draft before … you know.”
“Yeah.” We were both silent for a moment, thinking about this.
“Well. Thank you,” Zach said. “I appreciate your time.” He turned toward the door.
“Zach?” I said, before he could slip out. “I hope this isn’t inappropriate to ask at a time like this, but … could I have a picture with you?”
His whole face lit up. So much for inappropriateness. “Of course,” he said. “Happy to.”
“Great.” I pulled out my phone and stood next to him. He slipped an arm around my waist, squeezed a little bit. I snapped the picture fast. “Thanks,” I said, stepping away. “So, hey, what was the book about?”
He was still feeling proud of himself for getting asked to take a fan pic. He glanced at me distractedly. “What?”
“The book you guys were working on,” I said. “What was it about?”
“Oh. It was a mystery,” Zach said.
“Well, yeah,” I said with a chuckle. “That’s what you guys wrote, right?”
“Yeah. Course,” Zach said. “That’s what we wrote. I don’t want to give too much away right now. I have to see where the book was heading with all his research. So if you do come across anything of his, please call me.” He slipped a card into my hand. “Thanks for your time, Maggie.” He stepped out and shut the door behind him.
“Maggie?” I muttered. “Seriously? And how could I forget about the notebook? What the heck is wrong with me?”
I went to the front door, opened it, and checked to make sure McConnell was gone. He was. I locked the door and headed for the lost and found bin. I dug around under a recently added scarf and some other miscellany. Pulled the scarf out so nothing obstructed my view.
And stared in dismay.
The notebook wasn’t there.
Chapter 35
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I threw the scarf back in the box and sat back on my heels, frustrated.
Ethan poked his head out from the kitchen. “What happened?”
“The notebook. What happened to the notebook?” I pulled the box out and checked behind it, hoping maybe the notebook had fallen behind the box and I just hadn’t noticed. Nothing except a dust bunny. I had seen Grandpa toss it in here with my own two eyes. And I somehow doubted it had just walked away on its own.
“What notebook?”
“The notebook Jason Holt was working in the day he was here. The last day he was here. He left it. Grandpa picked it up and put it in the lost and found.”
“But it’s not there now? Are you sure?” Ethan stepped out into the room and crouched down next to me.
“I’m positive. I’m not blind.” I ripped the scarf back out and showed him the box with clearly no notebook. “And his writing partner was just here looking for it.”
“Was it big? Small? Could it have fallen somewhere?”
“It was a Moleskin. Black.” I picked up the bin again and looked underneath. Nada. “Where could it be?”
“I have no idea. Realistically, where could it
have gone?” Ethan asked, still way too calm.
I glared at him. “I have no idea, either. People have been in and out of here. What if some weirdo voyeur freak who was stalking Holt’s last alive moments realized it was his and grabbed it? And they’re going to post it all over social media or something?”
“There haven’t been that many people in here that that’s plausible, Mads. And there’s nothing you can do about it now if someone did take it,” Ethan pointed out reasonably. “But I’m thinking that’s not totally likely. I mean, we’re on limited hours and you’re here when people are here, usually, right?”
“Right.” I sat back on my heels. “There haven’t been a lot of people, have there?” Thea Coleman, but Grandpa had barely given her a chance to put her coat on before he threw her out. And she’d been more concerned with JJ than anything else. Aside from her, me, Ethan, Lucas, Val, Grandpa, Damian, Craig, Sergeant Ellory. Who couldn’t take anything without a warrant. Plus, how would he even know about the notebook? Otherwise, we’d had a few random visitors. Or had they been random? Maybe they were voyeurs, or stalkers, or creepers hired by Thea Coleman.
And then I remembered who else had been here. Leopard Man. Wandering the house alone the night Grandpa had been hiding him from the police. I shot up off the floor so fast Ethan nearly fell over.
“Jeez. What?” he asked, pushing himself to his feet.
I glanced around to make sure no one was lurking nearby. Like Grandpa, who had a slick habit of appearing at the most inopportune moments. “Leopard Man,” I stage-whispered, just in case.
“Okay.” Ethan waited. “What about him?”
“What if he took it?”
“Took what?”
“The notebook! Pay attention,” I snapped.
“Why would he take it?”
“I don’t know. Why was he hanging out with Thea Coleman?” Ugh. I hated this. It still felt wrong to think that he could’ve had something to do with Jason Holt’s murder. But everyone was acting so weird right now I wasn’t sure what to think. Not to mention, the mysterious vanishing trailer.
“Maddie. I thought this guy was your friend?”
“I thought so, too,” I said softly.
“Well, what’s making you change your mind?”
“I don’t know.” I dropped my head into my hands, completely frustrated now. “There has to be a reason McConnell wanted that notebook, Ethan. What if it was more than just a plot outline in that thing? Should I call the wife?”
Now he looked troubled. “Mads. You don’t know what was going on with either of those people. I would stay out of it. If you find the notebook, give it to the police. Okay?”
“Sure. Fine.” I pushed myself to my feet and hurried upstairs with my phone, dialing Grandpa as I went. Voicemail. What was he up to? He was investigating this without me. I knew it. And it upset me.
“Grandpa. Remember that notebook you picked up off the floor the other day? Do you know what happened to it? Call me.”
I disconnected and flopped back on my bed, lost in thought, stroking JJ absently. I had to pick this apart and try to get some of these thoughts straight in own brain. Easier said than done, given the swirl of happenings surrounding Jason Holt’s untimely demise on our island. I started making a list in my head, then finally gave up and tapped some bullet points into a blank note on my phone.
• Holt’s soon-to-be-ex-wife. Does she still love him? She seemed to.
• Holt and Dr. Drake having an argument. What’s the connection between them? Was it really random?
• Holt’s career—in a really good place. Books and movies in the works. Here to (theoretically) finish a project?
• Thea Coleman. Mysterious visitor, seems unstable, knows Holt somehow.
I studied my list and pondered my third point. Which project had Jason Holt actually been working on? Did it matter? And if it did, why?
Chapter 36
“You ready?” Val waited impatiently, keys in hand and one foot out the driver’s side door. The rain beat down around us, an unrelenting pounding on the car. She had her hoodie pulled tight over her head.
It was eight thirty-five, and we’d just arrived at the yacht club for the big stakeout with Ava-Rose. The rest of my day had been uneventful. Too uneventful, without even a return phone call from Grandpa about the notebook message. No sightings of him, either. I had this fantasy of him hiding Leopard Man out somewhere, keeping him from the police. Regardless, I’d torn the first floor apart but didn’t find a trace of the mysterious notebook.
And it was bugging me.
“Yep.” I pulled my own hoodie up and zipped my coat all the way to my chin. Of course we had to pick the dark and stormy night for this grand scheme. “So what’s the plan? We going to hide under the porch or something? Or are we going in and hiding in closets?”
She gave me a look, which I couldn’t see too well since her face was mostly hidden under her clothes. “I’m not sure of the plan,” she admitted. “I was leaving it up to Ava-Rose.”
“Because she has so much experience with this stuff?” I rolled my eyes. “Let’s get inside and we’ll figure it out.”
We ran across the main road. I could feel my clothing being soaked through already. Luckily, the weather and our desire to get inside prevented me from looking for any lingering effects on the road from the incident. Tire tracks or whatnot. I didn’t really want to think about the whatnot. I wondered if there’d been a lot of blood or if his injuries were mostly internal.
We reached the safety of the front awning and I paused to shake some of the water off me.
“This way,” Val instructed, motioning me around the side of the building.
I followed her to a side door I didn’t know existed. Val looked around furtively, slipped a key in the lock, and pushed open the door. I followed her inside. It looked like we were on the lower level. Only a very low light burned somewhere off to the side. I could make out a room with glass windows in front of us that appeared to be designed to look like a ship’s quarters. I assumed it was used for smaller functions or something along those lines.
“Wow. This really is a stealth operation.” I pushed my hoodie off and straightened my messy ponytail. It was a good thing I’d put my hair up, otherwise I’d have had to wring it out. “Is Ava-Rose here yet?” I asked as my eyes adjusted to the darkness.
“I don’t know,” Val said, closing the door behind us and jiggling the handle to make sure it was locked. “The idea is not to draw attention to ourselves.”
“And I think I’m doing a pretty good job of it if you had to ask,” a voice said almost in my ear. I jumped about a foot. And almost screamed. Next to me, Val cracked up. I turned and saw Ava-Rose standing about two feet away from me. She’d switched on a flashlight, and the beam gave her face a bony, eerie quality. Kind of like a walking skeleton. She had always been a small woman, but now she looked like she’d been on some fad diet gone wrong. Despite her age, she still dressed trendily. I could tell even in the dim light that her black jeans were Lucky Brand (I was a sucker for a good pair of jeans). Her metallic gold North Face parka probably wasn’t the best choice for undercover work, but her furry UGG boots had helped her footsteps remain silent. I glanced down at my own plain, boring UGGs and wondered if I was the one who needed a fashion lesson from Ava-Rose.
I offered a weak smile, hand still pressed to my chest. “Hi, Ava-Rose.”
She just glared at me. I figured she blamed me for the police thing. “We should take our places,” she said, turning away.
“So what is the plan?” I asked.
Val elbowed me. I guessed we weren’t supposed to ask things like that. I ignored her.
Ava-Rose’s pencil-enhanced eyebrows arched perfectly into her sleek, white hairline. “We need to strategically position ourselves so we can see who is coming in here and what they’re doing,” she said, as if I were an idiot she had been stuck training during a critical war exercise.
“Right,” I said, trying not to sound condescending. “But what are you planning to do if someone who’s actually doing something bad shows up?”
Ava-Rose pursed her lips. “Why, I’m going to stop them, of course,” she said.
“And how do you plan to do that?” I asked. “If this stuff is worth money, it could be dangerous.”
“Of course it’s worth money!” Ava-Rose exclaimed. “Why do you think I’m concerned about it?”
“Shhh,” Val cut in, holding up a hand. “Did you hear that?”
We all paused. And somewhere above us, a door clicked slowly shut.
Chapter 37
We all paused and looked at one another. Val’s eyes were wide. She looked like the proverbial deer in headlights. Ava-Rose switched off her flashlight and motioned to us to follow her. I hesitated, but Val shoved me along. I nearly tripped over the threshold of the little door she pushed me through. There was a staircase in front of me.
“Where are we going?” I whispered.
“This is the back staircase,” she whispered back. “We’ll go all the way to the bar area on the top floor. If you need to take your shoes off to be quiet, then do it. We can see pretty much everything going on in the place from up there.”
“And whoever is here can probably see us, too,” I whispered back. My Plan B was that if Craig wouldn’t play along, I would call and alert the cops to a possible problem and that way they had to come.
But Ava-Rose shook me off. “Not if we hide behind the bar. But you can stay behind if you want.” And she climbed the stairs, light as a feather even in her winter boots, which she didn’t take off, and was gone.
Val shrugged, kicked off her own boots, and pushed past me. “I’m going.”
With a sigh, I let her go, hesitated a moment, then left my own boots on the floor and followed, hand on my cell phone. I thought of texting Craig now but figured I’d get up there and see what was what first.
We climbed two staircases. When I reached the bar and peered over the railing, nothing was going on below me. There was no sign of anyone, no more noises, nothing. I’d been expecting to see thieves with sacks loading up toy boats from that hideous case in the main room. But no one was there.
