by Fiona Grace
Now it was Tom’s turn to look stung. “What are you suggesting?”
“I’m not suggesting anything. I’m asking a question.”
It was getting tense between them. Lacey could feel the discomfort increasing.
“You’re asking me why I rowed over here?” He ran his hand through his hair. “Dammit, Lacey. Didn’t it cross your mind that after you messaged me to say you were leaving the meeting with Ivan early that you’d get to the beach well before me and decide to cross the sandbar on foot?”
But Lacey was shaking her head. The explanation was inadequate. There were gaps in it. Holes.
“You were already here. It must take way longer to row here than it took me to run across the sandbar. So you were already on the island.”
Just then, a hubbub erupted from the huddle of officers who’d been around the trees. The commanding voice of Karl Turner boomed out. “Let’s get those two out of here.”
An officer immediately began to jog toward them.
“We need to escort you off the island,” he said, gesturing to the dinghy.
“What about my boat?” Tom said.
“It’ll have to stay here for now,” the officer replied. “It may be part of the crime scene. We might need to take it in for evidence.”
Tom looked over at Lacey, the color draining from his face. It seemed that he’d finally caught up to the reality of the situation; that the pair of them looked extremely suspicious, that their actions that evening, no matter how innocent, had linked them inextricably to a murder investigation.
Without saying a word, they clambered aboard the dingy, Chester hopping to get over the rubber edges. The officer started the boat’s engine, and it buzzed like a hornet. Then the boat pulled away, cutting across the flat ocean.
Lacey watched the island shrink, more than acutely aware that what she had seen upon it would change her life forever.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It no longer felt like spring when Lacey awoke the next morning. The empty side of her bed felt colder than normal, knowing that Tom was supposed to be occupying it.
Lacey heaved her body out of bed, disturbing Chester in the process, who sprang up ready to start the day. Lacey, on the other hand, felt heavy. Weary. Like all the good things about yesterday—the meeting with Ivan, the auction—had never really happened, and that everything had always felt dreary and filled with doom.
She dressed without much care, pulling her hair into a low ponytail, and headed downstairs. Despite her fatigue, the thought of drinking coffee made her feel nauseous. In fact, the idea of putting anything in her body after what she’d seen yesterday made her stomach turn.
“Let’s just go,” she told Chester. “No point hanging around.”
She fetched his leash from the hook. He looked at her quizzically. It wasn’t usual for her to put him on a leash in the morning, and he was perceptive enough to notice the change in routine.
“Sorry, boy,” she told him. “You got me into way too much trouble last time by not wearing this thing. I’m not risking it again. You’re staying right by my side.”
She clipped the leash on, and they headed out the back door.
Since she’d skipped breakfast and left earlier than normal, Lacey decided to take the longer beach route into town; partly because it was far more tranquil to walk beside the ocean than along the cliff path, where she’d have to squish up onto the verge to allow cars to pass by, but also out of morbid curiosity. Lacey wanted to see what was going on at the island.
She reached the bottom of the cliff steps that led from her garden and headed eastward a few paces, squinting to see across the water. Her eyes scanned the horizon, seeing there was plenty of police activity still going on. They must’ve been there all night, a team of people prodding and probing an abandoned island for clues. At least two more police vessels had moored up—big metallic ones the size of fishing trawlers, with the police insignia emblazoned across the side, far more intimidating than the dinghy the first had arrived in. Bright police tape was visible even from this distance.
“Everyone will know,” Lacey said to no one in particular.
She took a deep breath and turned back the way she’d come, beginning the trek toward town.
Now she knew that the police activity was more than visible from the shore, she knew that every single person in Wilfordshire would know something was going on. Perhaps not the specifics, but two huge trawlers and bright police tape were not usual goings-on and the whispers would have started. Lacey braced herself.
The long route always took her to the wrong side of the high street, the end opposite where her store was located, and to the corner where the Coach House Inn stood. Getting past there would be her first challenge. The pub was a hotbed for gossip.
Luckily, it wasn’t open for business yet.
But just as she was celebrating her good fortune, Lacey spotted Brenda the bartender trying to shoo seagulls off the picnic benches outside. By the looks of things, the tables had been used after closing time by a group of people eating fries and drinking shop-bought canned beer, because the detritus from their gathering lay strewn all over the place. Brenda was looking understandably pissed about it, which Lacey could fully appreciate. If she had picnic benches outside the store that got messed up overnight by people who weren’t even customers, bringing a bunch of notoriously aggressive birds with them, she’d be pretty annoyed too.
She tried to pass quickly, but Brenda spotted her and looked up.
“Lacey!” she exclaimed, dropping her arms and abandoning her attempts to shoo the seagulls. “Did you hear what happened?”
Lacey paused. She felt her stomach clench. Brenda had never been chatty with her before. She couldn’t help but feel suspicious of her.
“Morning,” she called, trying to play it off as if she’d not heard the question.
But the girl paced over. “You’ve not heard, have you?” she said. “Lacey, there’s been a murder!”
Lacey had no choice. She had to stop walking. And she had to be honest. When it came out that she’d been the one to find the body—and it would come out, Lacey was sure of that—then pretending not to know now anything would come back to bite her in the ass.
She nodded slowly. “Yes. I heard.”
“Do you know who it is?” Brenda asked, in a tone that implied she did but was testing Lacey’s knowledge. She sounded almost like a school child on the playground, her tone a mixture of excitement and terror.
“Buck,” Lacey said. “The American tourist.”
Brenda nodded. “Yeah! Can you believe it? He was murdered! Out on the island!”
Lacey tightened her arms against her chest. That was some pretty specific and accurate information. She wondered whether Brenda’s source was an officer.
“Gruesome,” Lacey replied vaguely.
Brenda nodded again. She looked like a wide-eyed child, half disturbed but half enthralled. “You know,” she said, lowering her voice, “I don’t think he’ll be missed around these parts. Him and that wife of his have been pissing off folk left, right and center. You know he slapped my arse the other night? Right in front of his wife. She just laughed like it was some kind of joke, but the joke was on them, because my fella was sat at the bar visiting me during my shift. He went ballistic. You should’ve seen him! Barry had to step in. He kicked Buck and Daisy out and threatened to ban my Ed if he ever did anything like that again!”
Lacey listened attentively. She knew Ed even more tangentially than she knew Brenda, but she knew he was a bit of a tough guy, the type who walked with a swagger and showed off his gym honed physique in black T-shirts. Could Brenda’s boyfriend have gotten his revenge on Buck? Evened the score for disrespecting his girlfriend? He could definitely match him physically, and had already had one altercation with the man.
Lacey filed her suspicions away in her mind.
The seagulls that had been pestering the pub before were back, and Lacey decided to use them as an ou
t.
“Looks like you have some unwanted visitors.”
The blond girl looked over her shoulder, then huffed loudly. “Ah. I’d better sort them out.” She turned and hurried away, but called as she went, “Watch your back, yeah? There’s a murderer on the loose.”
Lacey shivered at the thought and left.
As she strode along the cobblestones, the bunting that criss-crossed the street seemed too bright and cheerful now considering the circumstances. The spring bulbs in the planters that dotted the road seemed equally incongruous. Mocking, almost. Buck’s life had been taken from him at a time when the whole town was celebrating new life.
Just then, Lacey noticed her next hurdle. The toy shop was coming up on her righthand side, and standing in the doorway, sipping coffee from a mug, stood Jane, the store’s owner. Jane was another local business owner who always seemed to have her finger on the pulse and her ear to the ground, knowing everyone’s business.
Lacey felt herself tense up, knowing that the second Jane spotted her it would be game over. How many more of these interruptions was she going to have to endure before she reached the safety of her store? Was she going to be forced to drag up those images and memories every foot along the high street? Was every store clerk going to want to engage in conversation about the horrible murder? Despite its many positives, the small-town gossipdom that ruled Wilfordshire was not to Lacey’s taste. She’d grown up with the blank impersonality of New York City, after all.
“Lacey!” Jane called, waving.
The last thing Lacey wanted to do was go over, so she tried to keep walking, giving Jane a cursory yet noncommittal wave.
“Did you hear about Buck?” Jane called loudly.
Lacey tensed, but didn’t slow her step. “Grim business, huh?”
“Did the police speak to you yet?” Jane called.
Well, there was no getting out of it now. Lacey stopped in her tracks. She knew it would look worse in everyone’s eyes if she appeared to be hiding anything, and so she accepted her fate and turned her full attention to the toy shop owner.
Jane had the friendly demeanor of a preschool teacher, but she’d been right in there accusing Lacey with the rest of them when Iris had been murdered. Lacey didn’t quite know whether she could trust her or not. But if Jane had reason to think Lacey had spoken to the police already, then perhaps even more gossip had filtered to the locals than Lacey had anticipated. Because, although she’d been the first on scene, and therefore spoken to the police immediately, there was no reason for Jane to assume as much. Someone must’ve told her.
“Yes,” Lacey said, taking a few tentative steps toward the woman. “Why do you ask?”
Jane took a sip of coffee. Her right shoulder was butted up against the door frame, in a position that seemed too languorous considering the heaviness of the topic they were discussing.
“Because of the sextant,” she said.
The mismatch between Jane’s tone and expression was not lost on Lacey. She’d said her statement innocently enough, but there was a hardness in her eyes, that seemed to be pinning Lacey to the spot. Judging her. And the small twitch between the woman’s eyebrows was enough to tell Lacey she was suspicious of her.
“The sextant?” Lacey asked. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Buck bought it in your auction, didn’t he?” Jane asked, failing to fully maintain the tone of fake innocence, and starting to sound slightly accusatory. “And demanded to take it with him?”
Lacey immediately picked up on Jane’s tactic. She was deflecting Lacey’s question with one of her own. It was the same thing Superintendent Turner always did, the thing that infuriated her. A swirling pit of dread opened up in her stomach as it became more and more apparent that Jane suspected her of having something to do with Buck’s murder.
“Yes…” Lacey said, her mouth now bone dry. “And why does that matter?”
“Because Daisy told the police the sextant was stolen from their hotel room.” She eyed Lacey in a way that suggested she was searching for a reaction. “The police reckon Buck was killed over it.”
Involuntarily, Lacey felt her hand fly up to her mouth. A million thoughts came to the forefront of her mind. Could Buck really have been killed over an antique? An antique she’d been the initial proprietor of? And if what Jane was saying was true, where did it put her in the picture? Surely it gave the police even more reason to suspect her!
“There was a man,” Lacey stammered, speaking before her brain had had the chance to fully engage.
“A man?” Jane asked. Any attempts on her part to conceal her true curiosity had failed. She studied Lacey like she was a museum artifact.
Lacey shook her head, something in the back of her brain telling her not to speak to Jane of all people about any of this. But the Spanish man had popped back into her mind’s eye, his image crystal clear and pristine. He’d been bidding on the sextant. He’d dropped out of the race without even a hint of emotion. Could he have been the one to do this?
“Lacey?” Jane asked.
Lacey snapped back to the moment. “I have to go. Sorry.”
She hurried away, stumbling over the uneven cobbles in her haste. Her desire to get inside her store was more imperative than ever.
It was barely ten feet from her when she slammed right into her next hurdle. Someone had stepped directly in front of her.
“Lacey,” a male voice said. “I was just coming to see you.”
“Stephen?” Lacey said, drawing back and looking into the eyes of the man who leased her the store. “You were? Is everything okay?”
“With me? Yes. It’s you I’m worried about.”
Just then, Lacey noticed Taryn had come to the door of her boutique, and was watching her like a hawk.
“Why are you worried about me?” Lacey asked Stephen, her eyes scanning around for some kind of excuse to escape.
Stephen lowered his voice. “I heard about the murder. Of Buck, the man who’d just bought something from your auction. And that the item was stolen from his hotel room. And that the police think that was the motive?”
The swirling in Lacey’s mind worsened. She felt like she was going to pass out. Taryn’s eyes seemed to be burning holes in the back of her skull and into her brain, which was now throbbing.
“I…” Lacey said, opening her mouth, then closing it again without formulating a full sentence.
Stephen took her by the shoulders and looked intently into her eyes.
“It’s alright,” he told her, firmly. “No one suspects you! Goodness, Lacey. Is that what you were thinking?”
He laughed, and the noise was too loud for Lacey’s frayed nerves to handle.
“You don’t?” she asked.
“Of course not!” Stephen exclaimed. “It’s always the partner, isn’t it? Nine times out of ten it’s a lovers’ quarrel gone wrong?”
Lacey should’ve just taken the out there and then. But she thought of the sand filling Buck’s mouth and surrounding his blue lips—evident signs he’d been held down and suffocated face-first in the sand—and blurted, “Daisy? No way! Buck’s a big guy. Double her size. It’d take a lot of strength to overpower a man long enough to suffocate him.”
“Suffocate him?” Stephen said with a gasp. “Is that how he died?”
In the doorway of her boutique, Taryn tipped her head to the side like a dog pricking its ears. Her piercing gaze became laser sharp, and Lacey noticed a small smile of delight twitch up the corners of her lips.
“Where on earth did you hear that?” Stephen finished.
Lacey paused. Damn. She’d said too much.
“Just something I heard on the grapevine,” she said, aware that she was speaking with a much more rapid pace than normal but unable to stop herself. “You know, same as the gossip you heard about the sextant being stolen from the hotel room. I mean it’s all speculation really, isn’t it?” She giggled nervously.
“She’s right about that,” Tary
n called out.
Stephen and Lacey turned to look at her.
“About what?” Stephen asked.
“About Daisy,” Taryn qualified. “She’s not the killer. She and Buck were meant to leave town today. But she’s refusing to return to the states without him. Until his body’s released she says she’s staying put. Not exactly the behavior of a killer, is it? If I’d just killed my husband, I’d be on the first flight out of here.” Her voice had grown distinctly more icy. “Especially if I’d made enemies with every single local within a five mile radius like the pair of them.” She gave a nonchalant shrug. “I guess we’re all going to have to put up with Miss Daisy until they figure this thing out. But we know how speedy Superintendent Turner usually is. Whoever did this won’t get away with it for much longer.”
Her eyes darted to Lacey again, and narrowed accusatorily. Then she retreated into her store, leaving Lacey with an uncomfortable squirming feeling in her guts.
CHAPTER NINE
Lacey couldn’t get inside her store fast enough. As soon as she was in, she marched in the direction of the kitchen. It had taken just a matter of weeks of living in England for a cup of tea to become the thing she reached for when in need of comfort! But she was feeling so fraught right now, so emotionally exhausted, she wasn’t even sure a cuppa would be enough. Maybe a brandy would be more appropriate.
The small kitchenette came off the auction room, so she passed through the main shop floor, passing her counter, and went in through the door to the main auction room. Straight away she felt a cool breeze against her skin, and instantly glanced across the train-carriage shaped room to the glass French doors that led out into the garden. One of the panes had been smashed last month during a break in, and, not having had time to get a proper glazer over to fix the damage, was still secured by a piece of plywood fitted by the firm the police had recommended.
Lacey’s first instinct was to assume the ply had somehow become detached and fallen, letting in the breeze. But no; she could see it, even from the other side of the long room. The ply was still in place. Her assumption had been wrong, and it gave way to a hitch of panic that perhaps she’d been the victim of a second break-in.
