by Fiona Grace
While circumnavigating the usual process of buying and selling property would save them both money, it did leave them vulnerable. A relationship breakdown, for example. Lacey thought of her late alimony payment to David, which had been beyond her control and yet could easily have landed her in some hot water. If a similar thing happened with one of her installments, it could damage Ivan’s trust in her. There was no middleman. No cushion. No bank that could repossess the house if it fell into debt. It would just be hers, like that, with the promise of paying Ivan’s installments.
“I’m certain,” Ivan said. “You’re already doing me a huge favor taking it off my hands. The holiday cottages are filling up quickly as we approach summer and I just don’t have the time to be worrying about this place. Honestly, the quicker we get this done and dusted, the better for us both. Unless you’re not sure you want to settle here anymore? I don’t want to make you feel like you have to if you’ve changed your mind and—”
Lacey squeezed his arm, interrupting him mid anxious monologue. “I want it. That’s not in question. I just want to make sure we’re both protected. This deal relies on a fair bit of trust.”
“I have trust in you,” Ivan said.
He left, the meeting ending far sooner than Lacey had imagined, and having gone better than she could’ve ever dreamed.
Feeling like she was walking on cloud nine, Lacey sent Tom a message explaining that the meeting was over and she was heading down to the beach with Chester. She couldn’t wait to tell him about the deeds face to face.
She headed out the back door, grabbing Chester’s leash from the hook where it was hanging, and went across the lawn to the hidden cliff steps she’d discovered. Chester went on ahead, hopping down the crude steps cut into the cliff face with the elegance of an ibex. She went down after him.
On the beach, there was no sign of Tom, but Lacey wasn't surprised; it was far earlier than either of them had anticipated, after all. In fact, the meeting with Ivan had ended so quickly, there was still a small sliver of sandbar out, a strip of bridge linking the beach to the island.
At that exact same moment Lacey decided she’d better put Chester on his leash, the dog went racing across the beach, heading straight for the sandbar.
“Chester!” Lacey bellowed, pulling the leash from her pocket and racing after him. “Stop!”
Uncharacteristically for her usually obedient dog, Chester ignored her command.
He was so much faster than her, and quickly became a little spot in the distance. It was like he was on a mission!
Lacey reached the sandbar, panting, and looked at the sliver of sand with water lapping up either side of it. The ocean was ready to consume the path at any moment, but Lacey hated the idea of being separated from Chester.
She swallowed her nerves and hurried after him.
Her shoes were soaked by the time she made it to the other side.
“Chester!” she cried, calling out to the dog once she’d reached the island. “Where are you?”
She could hear him scrabbling around, sniffing and barking. The noise was coming from the other side of a small patch of trees.
She went through.
“There you are!” she said, emerging through the thicket to see Chester standing on the beach beside a large, dark object.
But as Lacey drew closer, she gasped.
It wasn’t an object. It was a person. A person lying face down in the surf.
Lacey raced over, dropping to her knees beside them. She reached, taking them by the shoulders, and turning them over. She found herself staring into the eyes of Buckland Stringer.
The man was dead.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Lacey leapt back like she’d touched flame, and landed on her backside in the sand. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. A dead body!
Another dead body.
Feeling burning bile rise in her throat, Lacey tried to scrabble backward. But she was so disoriented from shock, her sodden shoes seemed unable to find purchase, and she ended up kicking sand onto Buck’s bulky chest.
‘Stop!’ she scolded herself, as the horrible reality began to sink in that she had, once again, stumbled upon a crime scene.
Although… perhaps not?
With morbid curiosity, Lacey noticed that Buck showed no obvious signs of having met foul play. Maybe he’d died a natural death? A heart attack, perhaps? He’d had a penchant for steaks and angry outbursts, after all. They were probably the two biggest contributors to poor heart health.
As she stared at his pale, bloodless face, unable to look away, Lacey found herself silently praying the man had succumbed to a natural death. But some instinct inside of her told her that this just wasn’t the case. His expression was surprised, as if he’d had no warning his final moment was coming.
Then there was the sand...
His mouth and nose was covered in it, as if someone had shoved his face into the sand to suffocate him.
There was no denying it. Buck had been murdered.
Lacey turned her face and vomited onto the sand. Chester barked, becoming even more agitated by the sight of his mistress heaving than he’d already been by the presence of a dead body.
“I’m okay,” Lacey assured him, wiping the acid from her lips with the back of her hand. “Don’t worry, Chester.”
The dog whinnied sadly and nudged her.
Suddenly, coming from somewhere behind her, Lacey heard the sound of footsteps thudding against wet sand. She wasn’t alone. And whoever else it was on the island, they were coming right for her.
Her coordination came back in a split second as her ancient instincts of fight or flight kicked in. She leaped up so fast, black spots flashed in her eyes.
“STAY BACK!” she screamed, jutting her hand forward, palm up, in a “Stop Mr. Postman” dance move. As if she could in any way ward off an attacker with just her hand, Lacey thought, chastising herself, before quickly adding, “MY DOG WILL BITE YOU!”
“Lacey?” a male voice replied. “What the heck is going on?”
The black stars disappeared from her eyes and Lacey saw that the figure emerging before her was not a murderer at all, but Tom.
Tom!
He rushed toward her, his expression turning to utter panic.
The freeze response released its hold on Lacey and she practically fell into him, burying her face against his broad chest, breathing in the familiar, comforting smell of freshly baked pastry.
“Oh Tom,” she whimpered, as she trembled in his arms. “Tom, it’s Buck. He’s… he’s dead.”
She felt a sudden hitch in Tom’s chest, then the tightness of his arms around her loosened as he went to see for himself.
Now that her fixation on the cadaver had finally been broken, Lacey couldn’t bear to turn back and look at it another time. She kept her eyes averted, even when she heard the sharp intake of Tom’s breath that told her he’d now seen the body.
“What…” Tom said, the word sounding as if it had been pulled out of his lungs involuntarily. “What happened?” He took her by the shoulders, searching her eyes. “Did he hurt you?”
Lacey wrenched herself free.
“I didn’t do this!” she exclaimed, stung by the insinuation that she’d been responsible for Buck’s death. “He was like this when I found him!”
Tom hesitated. His words came out in flustered stammers. “Right. Sorry. Yes. Of course.”
But there was no back tracking. The damage was done.
Lacey reeled. How could Tom even think for a second that she could have done such a thing? Beyond the fact Buck had at least a foot and a hundred pounds on her small feminine frame and killing him would have been physically impossible for her to do, there was the small fact that she was not a murderer!
“I can’t believe you thought I killed him…” Lacey said, pacing away from her beau.
The comfort Tom’s presence had brought to the scene before seemed to suddenly disappear. Now she wanted him gone. She want
ed distance.
She crossed her arms and tightened them around her middle.
Tom paced toward her with an outstretched hand. “I’m sorry, Lace. I didn’t mean—”
“Don’t call me that,” Lacey snapped.
“What?” Tom asked.
He was frowning now. Confused. Unsure what he’d done wrong or how to put it right, Lacey thought. And he couldn’t put it right. There was no way for him to take back what he’d said, or the fact he’d entertained the thought she could be capable of murder, no matter how brief.
“It’s what David called me,” she said. “Lace. I don’t like it.”
It was the first time Lacey had realized she didn’t like the pet name. And now was obviously not the time to be bringing it up, but the stress of the moment had made her speak before thinking.
“Oh,” Tom replied.
Lacey noticed the dejection in his face; the downturn at the side of his lips that she’d never seen before.
She lowered herself down onto a boulder. Chester rushed over, nuzzling his nose into her lap. She stroked him, hypnotically, the feel of his fur beneath her fingers barely registering.
She stared out at the ocean. The sky had turned gray, like a watercolor painting, and the ocean beneath it was flat, barely moving. A cold breeze stirred at the base of her neck, making Lacey aware that she’d been perspiring.
“We should call the police,” Tom said, his voice sounding like it was a million miles away.
Lacey thought of Detective Superintendent Turner. Detective Constable Inspector Lewis. She’d fought so hard to clear her name with them, and now she was about to be thrust into that nightmare all over again.
She kept her gaze out to sea as she nodded. Her voice came out monotone with defeat. “Yes. We should.”
*
They arrived by motorized dinghy boat. A whole squad of professionals. Police officers. Crime scene investigators in hazmat suits. Paramedics, who, on realizing they’d be no help at all to Buck, turned their attention to Lacey, declaring her to be in shock, and covering her in one of those silver foil blankets she’d only ever seen on cops shows.
The whole thing felt so surreal. Lacey seemed unable to rise from her boulder, so she sat there, looking out to sea like a siren, while a white tent went up around the body and yellow and blue striped police tape was looped from tree to tree, while crime scene investigators walked around in white suits like they were dealing with an alien invasion rather than a deceased man. She sat there while Tom answered the detectives’ questions.
Superintendent Turner had wanted to speak to her first, obviously, but the paramedics had declared she was not yet in a fit state and turned him away. But Lacey knew her turn would come eventually, and she kept catching Superintendent Turner looking over at her suspiciously while Tom was speaking. It was very clear they were far more interested in what she had to say than anything Tom did. She’d found the body, after all. That made her suspect number one.
Just then, she noticed a change in the body language of the detectives. They were finished with Tom now, and were thanking him for his time. There was no more avoiding it. It was her turn.
She tried to keep her breath steady as the two detectives approached.
“Lacey?” Beth Lewis began, flashing her badge. “You remember us, right? I’m DCI Lewis. This is—”
“Superintendent Turner,” Lacey finished for her, looking the man directly in the eye. “Yes. I remember you well. How are you, Karl?”
The man blinked, but didn’t acknowledge her question. He pointed over to Tom. “I understand from Mr. Forrester you were the first to discover the body.”
“That’s right,” Lacey replied. “Well, Chester found him first, really.”
Superintendent Turner’s jaw twitched, and he looked down at Chester, obviously displeased. “Ah, yes. Your trusty canine companion. Who could I forget dear Fido?”
Chester growled.
DCI Lewis side-eyed her superior and, wisely in Lacey’s opinion, interjected before he could say anything else derisory.
“Can you tell me what you were doing on the island?” she asked.
“I came to see the ruins,” Lacey said, pointing at the now black silhouette of the medieval castle she’d still not had a chance to explore.
DCI Lewis nodded as she jotted down Lacey’s words in her notepad.
“You had plans with Mr. Forrester?” Beth Lewis continued.
Lacey noted the precise way she selected her words, always leading but always vague enough to catch out any discrepancies. Plans could mean anything, after all. One can plan to stroll romantically along the beach hand in hand just as well as one can plan to murder.
“We were going to explore the ruins together under the moonlight,” Lacey said confidently. “It was a date.”
She watched as DCI Lewis’s pen swirled across the paper.
“And where had you arranged to meet Mr. Forrester?” Beth Lewis asked, her gaze flicking up from the notepad to Lacey.
There’d been a shift, Lacey noted, in the detective’s gaze. It was a little piercing. Somewhat distrustful. Lacey felt the change.
So this was it. The moment they thought they may catch her in a lie. Because she’d obviously arranged to meet Tom on the beach. And yet she’d then come to the island without him. Didn’t that look suspicious?
“The beach,” Lacey replied, pointing across the ocean, to the blinking lights of Wilfordshire.
“The plan changed?”
“Chester ran across the sandbar. I went after him.”
“What about his lead?” Superintendent Turner interjected. He was looking down at where Chester’s leather leash was dragging in the sand.
“He wasn’t wearing it before,” Lacey explained.
“Does he usually walk around without a lead? What if he runs off?”
“He doesn’t. Usually. Or if he does, he responds to my command to stop.”
“Not this time, though? This time he ran off and ignored your calls? I always got the impression your dog was obedient.”
Lacey paused. This was going too far, now. The detective’s questions had already veered from information gathering to judgment making, and she was not going to engage with it anymore.
“Is Chester a suspect, Superintendent Turner?” Lacey asked, coldly. “Or are you just generally curious? I have a great book about dog behavior if you’d like to borrow it.”
As was the man’s way, he ignored her, and steered the conversation in his desired direction.
“How were you planning on meeting up with Mr. Forrester if you weren’t in the prearranged place?”
“I have a phone,” came Lacey’s blunt reply. “I was going to message him once I’d gotten Chester back.”
Superintendent Turner folded his arms and cast Lacey a look of skepticism. But before he had time to ask the inevitable question—“can I see your phone?”—one of the police officers appeared at the tree lines and waved an arm over his head.
“Karl! I need you over here!”
The superintendent gave Lacey once last look. “Don’t go anywhere, Miss Doyle.”
He paced away, toward the officer flagging him down. DCI Lewis thanked Lacey, snapped her notebook shut, and followed.
Lacey watched them climb the rugged banks toward the trees through which she’d run while chasing after Chester. They must’ve found something. Some potential piece of evidence. Hopefully, Lacey thought, something that would exonerate her flat out.
She watched all the hubbub taking place over by the trees. Then suddenly Tom was next to her.
His appearance took her by surprise and she flinched.
“Did they say we could talk to one another?” she asked.
Tom responded with a confused frown. “Why wouldn’t we be allowed to talk to one another?”
“Usually they keep suspects apart so they can’t confer with one another and get their stories straight. Are you sure you can talk to me? I don’t want to give them any
ammunition.”
“We’re witnesses, Lacey, not suspects,” Tom stated. “They have our statements now anyway.”
Lacey raised an eyebrow, unconvinced. “Witnesses?” she repeated, tonelessly.
Tom looked perplexed. “Lacey, I know you’ve had a fright and everything but are you okay? You’re acting kind of paranoid.”
“Can you blame me?” Lacey said. “The same detectives who tried to blame a murder on me before are investigating another that I’m linked to. I mean, even you had your doubts about me...”
Tom held up his hand to stop her. It was the same Mr. Postman gesture Lacey had used to ward him off when she thought he might be an attacker.
“Lacey, please,” he said, sounding more forceful than she’d heard from him before. “I already said I was sorry about that. It just slipped out. I know you didn’t do anything. That you’d never do anything like that. My mind just conjured a scenario to fit everything it was seeing into a picture that made sense, and it came up with the wrong thing. That’s all.”
Lacey let his words hang in the air between them. She could hear the logic in what Tom was saying, and yet the emotional impact of his earlier accusation had struck her so hard it felt like nothing would ever make it stop hurting.
“Let’s go home,” Tom added, with a pleading edge to his voice. “I know the date’s been ruined but we could still just hang out. Be together. I have the boat so I can row us both back to shore.”
Lacey paused, her mind latching onto something Tom had said.
“You have the boat?” she repeated.
“Yes. I rowed it here. How else would I have gotten here?”
“The sandbar was out.” She spoke flatly, not even sure what she herself was implying.
“Barely,” Tom explained. “If I’d walked over here, we’d have had no way to get back to shore. What does it matter anyway?”
“Because we weren’t supposed to be meeting here,” Lacey told him. “On the island. We were supposed to be meeting on that side of the beach.” She pointed across the vast, black ocean. “That was the plan. So why did you row here? It wasn’t for me. You had no way of knowing I’d already crossed.”
