Word to the Wise

by Jenn McKinlay

  Charlie met his gaze and then smiled. “Or is it?” He lifted his shirt and pulled a handgun out of his waistband.

  “Charlie, you did it!” Sully cried. He sat up with a grin and slapped Charlie on the back. The gun wobbled in his hands, and they all dropped to the ground.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, take it easy, cowboy,” Robbie said. “Do you know how to use one of those?”

  “I’ve never touched a gun in my life,” Charlie said. He looked at it as if it were a live snake. “Take it, please.”

  Sully held out his hand, and Charlie gently put it in his palm. Sully looked at Lindsey. “Let’s call Emma.”

  “On it,” she said. She’d already opened her list of contacts and pressed Emma’s number. She held her phone to her ear. Emma picked up on the third ring.

  “Lindsey, where is everyone?” she asked. “I can’t find Sully or Robbie. Are they with you?”

  “Yes,” Lindsey said. She then proceeded to tell Emma everything that had happened. At the end of it, Emma was her usual terse self.

  “Don’t touch anything. Do not move. I’ll be right there.”

  Lindsey glanced up at the others. “She’s on her way.”

  She didn’t think she imagined the sense of calm that swept through them all. Emma had that way about her of making people feel as if everything was under control even if it was utter chaos.

  “Come on,” Lindsey said to Sully. “Let’s get those cuts washed out.”

  He rolled up from the ground and put his arm around her shoulders, then he pulled her close and kissed the top of her head. “Not gonna lie—that was a bit intense for a moment.”

  Lindsey laughed. “Agreed.”

  When they were back inside the house, she marched him straight to the sink, where she began to wash the cuts and scrapes. Sully looked amused by her nursing him, but Lindsey thought he should count himself lucky that she didn’t wrap herself around him as tight as a boa constrictor, she was so relieved he was all right.

  “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful,” Chloe said. “Because believe me, your timing was spectacular, but how did you know I was being attacked, and how did you know to arrive here when you did?”

  Lindsey glanced up from where she was blotting a particularly nasty cut on Sully’s hand. They were all quiet, as if no one wanted to admit that it was sheer dumb luck. There was no point in prevaricating.

  “Actually, it was just great timing. We were on our way here to talk to you about what you know about Grady’s past,” Lindsey said. “We thought maybe you could tell us who the third woman is.”

  “Third woman?” Chloe asked.

  “In his shed,” Lindsey explained. “There were pictures and mementos of you, me and a third woman. Her picture was under a shelf.”

  Chloe stared at her. “Oh, yeah, the shrines.” She shivered, and Lindsey resisted the urge to do the same. “I don’t know who the third woman was. I told Chief Plewicki I’d never seen her before, and I haven’t.”

  “It’s odd, though, isn’t it?” Robbie asked. “I mean, her picture was in the shed, but not a full shrine. And it was hidden, even more than your pictures were, as if there was an extra layer of secrecy about her.”

  “Like he didn’t want his wife to find the pictures, but most especially, he didn’t want her to find that one,” Sully said.

  “Maybe she was his first obsession,” Charlie said. “If his wife found out about her, it might have caused a problem in their marriage.”

  “But who is she?” Lindsey asked.

  They were all silent, mulling over who this woman could be and why her picture was in the cabinet but hidden. Chloe put down her bag of ice and moved over to the coffeepot. She held up the carafe in silent question, and they all nodded.

  All except Robbie, who asked, “You don’t happen to have a nice oolong or Darjeeling, do you?”

  “Sorry, no,” Chloe said. She began to prep the coffee. Looking over her shoulder as she filled the carafe with water, she said, “The only commonality between you and me is our interest, or rather our perceived interest, in Grady’s roses. I would think that the woman in the picture, whoever she is, must also be tied to the rose community somehow.”

  “Maybe Trudy Glass from the Berkshire Rose Club knows who she is,” Lindsey said. “I can call her and send her the picture if she’s willing to take a look at it.”

  “You have the picture?” Chloe asked.

  “I might have snapped a quick picture of it when Emma was called away,” Lindsey said.

  “What? That’s crossing a line, Lindsey. You’re messing with my girlfriend’s investigation,” Robbie said.

  Lindsey stared at him.

  “Well, I have to have some outrage on her behalf, don’t I?” he asked. “Don’t tell her I said this, but nice work.”

  Lindsey shook her head.

  “If it turns out the woman in the photo shot Grady, you both have to be careful,” Sully said. “That picture is old, and who knows what she looks like now. She could be in Briar Creek, and we’d never even know it.”

  “You’re right,” Lindsey said. “Let’s keep this between all of us.”

  “Who am I going to tell?” Chloe opened her arms wide to encompass the house.

  Lindsey made a mental note to encourage Chloe to come into town for the night. She could stay at the house with her and Sully until they knew it was safe. Any thoughts she’d had about Chloe being Grady’s killer were vanquished by the fact that Chloe had almost been killed.

  “What do you remember about Grady’s backstory?” Lindsey asked.

  “Not much. I didn’t really do any background research on him,” Chloe said. “The piece was about the rose club, not Grady. He just thought it should be about him and his roses.”

  “So no deep biographical study?” Robbie asked.

  “No, in fact, when he started to get weird, I tried to avoid using him in the article as much as I had planned to, because I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea.”

  “Which probably didn’t work,” Charlie said. He shook his head. His man bun had been knocked loose, and his hair swept down across his shoulders. “Stalkers never get it.”

  Robbie stared at him in disbelief. “You’ve had stalkers, plural?”

  “They’re called groupies in my industry,” Charlie said. He bobbed his head as if listening to some beat the rest of them couldn’t hear and then smiled at Chloe, clearly trying to charm her. “I’m a musician.”

  She blinked at him.

  “Okay, so we don’t have much background information,” Lindsey said. She cut in before the smoke from Charlie’s crash and burn choked them all. “I think the very first thing we should do when we get out of here is to find out everything we can about Grady’s personal life.”

  Chloe wrinkled her nose as if the idea had a bad smell attached to it, but she shrugged in reluctant acceptance. “All right. I can review my notes and see if I have any contacts to follow up with who might know something.”

  “Who might know something about what?” a voice asked from the open back door.

  CHAPTER

  15

  They all turned around to see Emma Plewicki and Officer Kirkland enter the house. They were both in uniform and looked windswept, hot and tired. Lindsey figured this case had to be running them into the ground.

  “Anyone who might know something about Aaron Grady,” Lindsey said. She wasn’t going to lie. She had too much at stake—namely, Sully’s freedom—to pretend she wasn’t one hundred percent invested in figuring out who had killed Grady. “We’re trying to figure out who from his past might know the identity of the lady in the picture that was under the shelf in his gardening shed.”

  Emma shook her head. “I might have known you wouldn’t let this go.”

  “Sorry, not sorry,” Lindsey said.

  Emma
, to her credit, laughed. “It’s all right. I showed the picture to Sylvia, and she had no idea. She was completely unglued by the pictures of you two in the cabinet. She even went so far as to say that you two broke into the shed and put the pictures there yourselves. She seems to think you planned the murder together.”

  “Oh, that is too much,” Robbie said. “I understand denial as much as the next guy when I don’t get what I want, but that is just lunacy. For what possible reason would these two put their pictures in his shed?”

  Everyone glanced from Emma to Robbie and back. Emma blew out a breath and said, “Mrs. Grady seems to think that upon her husband’s rejection of their advances, Lindsey and Chloe got together, murdered him and then made it look as if he’d been harassing them to absolve themselves of the crime.”

  “That is . . . that’s . . . I can’t . . .” Chloe stammered, clearly struggling to form a sentence.

  “Exactly,” Lindsey said.

  “I agree,” Emma said. “But let’s deal with the situation at hand. What happened here?”

  They all looked at Chloe. She recited to Emma exactly what she had told them. Emma listened intently and then nodded at Kirkland. He pulled on a pair of gloves and headed upstairs to examine the room where Chloe had been attacked.

  Emma then turned to Lindsey, who had retrieved the coffeepot and was filling mugs and passing them around with spoons and the sugar bowl while Chloe grabbed a jug of milk from the refrigerator.

  “And what made you decide to come and visit Chloe?” she asked. She took a mug of coffee, black, and sipped the scorching-hot brew without even wincing.

  “We came to find out what Chloe knew about Aaron Grady,” Lindsey said. “We thought there might be something in his past that would shed a light on who wanted to kill him.”

  “I get that you have a vested interest,” Emma said. She glanced at Sully, Chloe and then Lindsey. “I do, but you need to leave this to the police. His killer is still out there, and it looks as if they have decided to make one of you look like the guilty party.”

  Lindsey and Chloe exchanged a look. Emma was right. Whoever had killed Grady had felt desperate enough to try and stage a suicide. If Lindsey and her crew had been any later getting here, they might have succeeded.

  “Speaking of which”—Emma turned to Chloe and continued—“I don’t think you should stay here alone. We have access to a safe house. Would you be willing to stay there until we get this situation resolved?”

  “Yes, please.” Chloe wilted a bit against the counter. “I was planning to go stay at the bed-and-breakfast in town if need be.”

  “You’re always welcome to stay with Sully and me, too,” Lindsey said.

  “Or you could crash with my aunt,” Charlie offered. “She’s great about taking people in, and I live right above her.”

  Chloe looked a bit teary at all the offers. “Thank you,” she said. “Really, I so appreciate it, but I think the safe house might be the best place, since they’ve already tried to kill me once. I couldn’t stand it if I put anyone else in harm’s way.”

  “If you’re sure,” Lindsey said. “But if you change your mind, even if it’s in the middle of the night, our offer stands.”

  “Thank you,” Chloe said.

  Emma interviewed each of them. When a crime scene technician arrived, ferried by Ian in the water taxi, Emma gave them leave to go. Chloe stayed so she could pack and take her laptop once it was dusted for fingerprints. Robbie opted to stay, too, wanting to be with Emma even though she warned him not to get in the way.

  Charlie hopped into Ian’s boat, leaving Sully and Lindsey to return alone in their boat. Lindsey watched over her shoulder as they pulled away and the house got smaller and smaller. She couldn’t shake the feeling that whoever had tried to harm Chloe was now going to be feeling even more desperate to turn suspicions away from themselves, but who was it, and why had they chosen Chloe to be their fall guy? It could just as easily have been Lindsey. But there was more history with Chloe, and she had been on an island by herself. A perfect target.

  “She’ll be all right,” Sully said. He seemed to understand her worry.

  “I know,” she said. “Emma will take care of her. I just feel unsettled by everything.”

  “Understandable,” he said. “Come here.”

  Lindsey hopped out of her seat, figuring he was going to give her a hug. He didn’t. Instead, he slipped out of his seat and nudged her into it. Then he put her hands on the wheel.

  “Let’s go for a ride and blow the cobwebs out.”

  He showed her how to operate the throttle, and Lindsey carefully increased the speed just a little. She turned away from the islands, and Sully helped her navigate around the remaining ones until they were clear and cruising out into Long Island Sound.

  Lindsey cut the wheel so that they were headed east, toward what she always thought of as the “big water,” as in deep, dark and scary. While she had no desire to ever swim in it, she loved being on the boat.

  Sully reached over and nudged her. He raised his voice to be heard over the wind. “Let her rip!”

  Lindsey didn’t need to be told twice. She moved the throttle to a higher speed until they were skimming across the tops of the waves. The wind was whipping at her hair, and the cold splashes of water coming off the bow felt like heaven. She took them farther and farther out, and when she glanced at Sully, he just grinned at her.

  She turned sharply to the left, or port side as the sailors said, and they bounced across the water like a stone skipping across a pond. The sheer force of the wind and the water and the power of the engine in her hands made her laugh out loud. She’d always known that Sully loved the sea, and she’d even understood why. It was a glorious and terrifying mistress he had, and she knew that every day he took his boat out, it made him feel alive.

  But Lindsey had never tried to master the ocean. She’d never felt the call to the sea, but at this moment, when fear and death had been plaguing her for weeks, she felt the cathartic release of the wind and waves. It felt as if the ocean air was blasting all her troubles off her. She circled back in the direction of the bay. She enjoyed one more long jagged burst of speed, and then she downshifted into a slower gear.

  The sun was beginning to set. She scanned the water for the large red buoy that marked where they turned into the bay. When they drew close, she slowed down even more and turned the wheel over to Sully. She wasn’t foolish enough to think she could navigate the islands when it was already getting dark.

  As they switched places, she hugged him tight. “Thank you. That was amazing.”

  “You’re welcome.” He kissed her head and let her go. He slid into the captain’s seat, and they puttered into the bay, cruising around the islands without kicking up a wake, until they were at the pier.

  Lindsey jumped out onto the dock to tie up the boat, and Sully secured it for the night. Together they climbed the stairs up to the pier. Once they were up top, Lindsey paused to look at the bay and out beyond at the sound. She felt renewed and refreshed, as if she’d wiped the slate clean and was starting all over again.

  It hit her then that maybe that was what Aaron Grady had been doing. Married to Sylvia for years, had he been trying to wipe the slate clean? Was that why he’d become obsessed with Chloe and then with her? Had he been trying to start over? If that was the case, what did he think he was going to do with the wife he already had?

  “What are you thinking about?” Sully asked.

  “Grady’s text to Chloe,” she said. “She said that he wrote that he thought June first would be a great day for a wedding, but he was already married. What do you think he planned to do with Sylvia?”

  Sully squinted out at the darkening sky. “There aren’t many options if he wanted to get married again. He’d have to divorce her or wait until she died, unless . . .”

  “Unless he planne
d to help her with that,” Lindsey said. “Do you think she suspected?”

  They exchanged a look.

  “Emma said Sylvia had a rock-solid alibi,” Sully said. “Do we know what it was?”

  “Something about being away at a work conference,” Lindsey said. “I’m sure Emma checked out her story and someone must have corroborated it.”

  “Unless she had an accomplice,” Sully said. “The person who slammed into me on that island was strong. Now, it could have been a woman in a panic, or it could have been a man who was helping her.”

  “That makes so much sense,” Lindsey said. “What if Grady wasn’t the only one who wanted out of the marriage? What if Sylvia wanted out, too? She could have had her lover kill him while she was away and then tried to frame it on me or Chloe. And if you think about it, maybe it was Sylvia who found out that Chloe had come here, and she moved here, too, planning to reunite Grady with his obsession, so that he would leave her or she could leave him, but it didn’t work out that way. Maybe Grady found out about her and her lover, and she had to kill him.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Sully held up his hands. “The theories are flying fast and furious.”

  “I know, but I think we might be onto something,” Lindsey said. “I don’t think Sylvia is as innocent as she pretends.”

  “Perhaps not,” Sully said. “But there’s still the dilemma of finding out who the woman in the photo from the cabinet is. She could be our killer. She could be the one trying to frame you and Chloe, which would make sense if she killed Grady.”

  “But who is she, and why would she kill him?” Lindsey asked.

  “I think that’s where we need to start,” he said. He took her hand, and they walked up the pier. “So, librarian, any idea where we can take that picture to have it circulated to possibly identify the woman?”

  “We may not have to. I have an idea but it’s a real long shot,” she said. “I’m thinking I want to try and do a reverse image search.”

  “This is possible?” he asked. They arrived at his truck, and he unlocked the door and opened it for her.