by Kathi Daley
“Maybe, but you’ll need to finish the journal tonight if you want to know. I’m taking it back tomorrow.”
“Will you be at the house long?” I asked.
“A couple hours. Once I have a chance to look over the notes I made today, I need to call and speak to Baron. If he is agreeable to my plan and pricing, I’ll want to take another look before I begin ordering the supplies I need. It’s going to be a big job to restore the desk to its original brilliance, but I’ve decided I’m up to the challenge.”
“If you don’t mind, maybe I’ll come along tomorrow. I figure if I poke around long enough, I’ll stumble across something I can sink my teeth into.”
“That sounds fine with me. I’ll be by to pick you up as soon as I drop the kids at school and daycare.”
“I’ll be ready,” I promised.
Chapter 16
Jeremy and Georgia were sitting on the back porch, sharing a pitcher of iced tea when I arrived home. I grabbed a glass and joined them.
“So, how was your search for your next big adventure?” Georgia asked.
I set the diary on the table. “I’m not sure this volume holds a big adventure, but it is interesting, and there’s a hint of romance. Or at least lust. I’m really not sure yet. How’d the cleaning go? Did you find any damage after our rowdy group left?”
“No damage,” Georgia said. “But we did find the photos. Fiona left so quickly that I don’t think she even thought to take them, and apparently, no one else did either. I guess I can package them up and send them to her, although I’m not sure she’ll want them after everything that happened.”
“Before you box them up, we should take a second look,” I suggested. “Now that we know more about what was going on, maybe we’ll notice something we didn’t before.”
She shrugged. “I’m game. We can spread them out on the dining table.”
“I have to pick Annabelle up from school, but I’ll help when I get back,” Jeremy offered.
“I think I’ll call Colt,” I said. “He planned to do research into both Caspar and Stephanie. I have to admit I’m interested to see what he found.” I looked around. “Did Nikki already leave?”
“She never came. She called me earlier and told me she was feeling sick and wouldn’t make it in.”
“I hope she’s okay,” I said.
“It sounded like a twenty-four-hour bug. Might have been something she ate. I’m sure she’ll be fine,” Georgia assured me.
“I did find one thing when I was cleaning the main living area,” Jeremy said as he held up a key.
“Does that go to one of the rooms?” I asked.
“It’s a master key. I found it behind the check-in counter. I assumed it was one of ours, but I have mine, Georgia has hers, we called Nikki, who has hers, so unless you lost yours or Lonnie lost his, this is an extra key that shouldn’t exist.”
I frowned. “I’ll call Lonnie and ask him about the key, but he hasn’t mentioned losing it, and he hasn’t been by to do repairs for weeks. I wonder if whoever broke into Naomi’s room to plant the syringe found a way to duplicate the master.”
“It would explain how someone got into the inn and Naomi’s room without coming around to the back.”
“In order to make a duplicate, one of the guests would have had to have stolen one of our keys, taken it into town, had it duplicated, and then returned it,” Jeremy said. “I use my key all the time. I would have noticed if it was missing.”
“Yeah, me too,” Georgia said.
“I really don’t use mine much,” I offered. “I have it hanging on a peg in the cottage. I suppose someone could have taken it while I was out walking the dogs. I usually don’t lock the door if I’m only going to be out for a few minutes.”
“Any idea who?” Georgia asked.
I slowly shook my head. “Not offhand. I’ll need to think about it. I know that Caspar was here while we were all next-door that first night, but Ramos was in the cottage and would have scared anyone away who tried to break in. It has to have been taken while I had the dogs out for a walk.”
“Did you walk them that night?” Georgia asked.
I nodded. “Actually, I did. After I left the inn, I took them for a quick walk before Colt showed up. I was gone maybe fifteen to twenty minutes. I didn’t lock the door in the event Colt showed up while I was out. Alvin wasn’t dead or missing yet, so I wasn’t on high alert. I suppose someone could have let themselves in and taken a look around.”
“Do you remember missing your key?” Jeremy asked.
“No. But I haven’t needed it all week, so even if it was missing, I might not have noticed. If someone did take my key, they wouldn’t have had a chance to duplicate it until the following day, but like I said, I haven’t needed my key, so I suppose that scenario is possible.”
“It seems odd to me that if someone duplicated the master key with the intent of sneaking in at a later time, they would leave the key behind when they were done with it,” Jeremy pointed out.
“That is odd,” I agreed. “Why not just take it with them and dispose of it somewhere far away from here.”
“Maybe whoever duplicated the key thought we had a bunch of keys and wouldn’t notice one more,” Georgia offered.
“I suppose that might be the case,” I concurred. “I guess we might want to give the key to Colt when he arrives. I doubt he’ll find fingerprints on it, but it wouldn’t hurt to take a look. If nothing else, he might be able to use it as evidence once he does identify the killer.”
Colt arrived not long after Jeremy left to pick up Annabelle. He informed me that he had tracked down Caspar, who confirmed that Naomi had introduced Alvin to him. Initially, he found the man charming and had struck up a friendship, but as time went by, Alvin started asking more and more of him. When he refused to cooperate, Alvin threatened to reveal a secret he’d been holding onto about Naomi. When Caspar confronted Naomi about her secret, she told him the truth. He’d always had a special friendship with Naomi, so initially, he went along with Alvin’s demands, but when Alvin asked him to help him set up his own brother for one of his stings, he decided he was out. He told both Alvin and Naomi as much, and the next thing he knew, Alvin was dead. He swore to Colt that he hadn’t killed him, but at this point, Colt was reserving judgment.
“I found out something else that makes this whole thing a bit more understandable,” Colt added after I’d handed him a beer, and we’d settled onto the patio. “Alvin Connor was broke.”
“Broke?” I asked. “So far, everyone I’ve spoken to has indicated that he’d made millions in the stock market.”
“He did. And then he had a streak of bad investments, and he lost it. Not only did he lose his own money, but he lost other people’s money as well. I guess he figured he needed cash to stay in the game and try to earn his money back, so he’s been aggressively seeking out rich individuals to invest with him.”
“I guess that explains the reason he wanted the introductions to all those rich men and women, but where does stealing Fiona’s designs come in?”
Colt took a sip of his beer before he answered. “According to Caspar, Fiona’s competitor paid Alvin handsomely for the drawings and photos. It was enough for him to keep his head above water while he put everything else in play. In fact, according to Caspar, who seems to know quite a lot about what has been going on, it was the offer from Fiona’s competitor that caused him to target Naomi in the first place.”
“Wow,” I said, shaking my head. “What a dirtbag. I can’t believe how many lives he ruined as he tried to dig himself out of a grave, he seems to have dug in the first place.”
Colt nodded. “The more I learn about the guy, the more I find myself rooting for the killer, which, of course, is wrong in every way.”
“So if not Naomi and not Caspar, who?”
“At this point, I’m taking a hard look at Stephanie. She was new to the group, and it sounded like she’s the one who sought out an invite to the party.
If she wanted to get close to Alvin for some reason, being invited for the weekend would be a way to do it.”
“Yeah, but what sort of motive might she have?” I asked.
Colt frowned. “I’m not sure. Stephanie lives in Boston, where she owns a marketing firm. She seems to do fairly well but is far from rich, and I doubt she would normally run in the same social circle as Fiona and the others. She does have clients in New York City and visits often, so she might have at least a few acquaintances in common with Fiona. At this point, I’m looking at both her clients and her friends. If there is a link between Stephanie and Fiona or Stephanie and Alvin, I’ll find it.”
“Did you ever find out who Alvin was talking to on the phone that night? I remember you said there were a lot of calls to a blocked number.”
“I haven’t been able to trace them. At this point, I don’t think I can. I tried calling the number, but the phone must be off since it goes directly to a voicemail that hasn’t been set up. There is no way to leave a message, and so far, no one has noticed the missed calls and called me back, so I think I’m at a dead end with that.”
I glanced toward the inn where Georgia was working in the kitchen. “Fiona left the photos that were taken by the group behind. We thought we’d look at them again before she sends them to Fiona. Do you want to take a look?”
“I do.”
Colt and I headed toward the inn. Georgia joined us at the table, as did Jeremy and Annabelle, once they arrived. There were hundreds of photos, and it was hard to know if anything of importance had been captured, but we all felt that it was worth our time to study each image before setting it aside.
“It seems like Stephanie is missing from a lot of these shots,” I pointed out. “She isn’t really one of the group and had, in fact, only just met most of those in attendance that weekend, so it isn’t surprising she wouldn’t be the focus of the majority of the photos. But I also seem to recall that her name came up several times as being unaccounted for when the various observers tried to recall where everyone was at any given point in time.”
“If she is the killer, perhaps she had things to put into place, or if she was working with someone, Caspar or someone else, she might have been sneaking off to speak with that person,” Georgia offered.
“Perhaps,” Colt said, “but at this point, we have zero proof that Stephanie even knew Alvin before the weekend and if she hadn’t known him, she would have had no reason to put such an elaborate plan into play.”
“Colt’s right. We’re assuming that the killing was premeditated,” I said. “Maybe someone hired Stephanie. Maybe, in addition to owning her own marketing firm, she’s a paid assassin.”
Jeremy raised a brow. “A paid assassin?”
I shrugged. “It happens. Stephanie is tall and looks to be the fit and sturdy sort. We’ve discussed that while Caspar had a motive, he doesn’t really have the physical prowess to kill and move a man as tall as Alvin. Maybe he hired Stephanie to make his problems go away. The fact that he showed up in Holiday Bay even though he hadn’t been invited to the event might be explained if he had plans to permanently remove the man who’d done so much damage to both him and Naomi.”
“I suppose the theory has merit,” Colt admitted. “But we’re still going to need more. A confession would be the best, but physical evidence linking one of the guests to the crime scene would be almost as good.”
We continued to sort through the photos. There were a lot of them. Some funny, some sweet, others romantic. I still wasn’t sure if Fiona was even going to want a reminder of the weekend, but maybe once she had a chance to calm down a bit, she’d be able to look at the photos and remember the memories from the weekend that were worth keeping.
“Look at the floor in this one,” I said, sliding the photo to the center of the table. “There is sand on the floor. Based on what everyone is wearing and doing, I’m going to assume this photo was taken on Friday morning. The only sand in the immediate area is on the beach, and I have no reason to think that anyone had gone down to the beach. It’s a steep trek down and a steep trek back up, and it isn’t exactly beach weather.”
“There’s sand in the garden shed,” Jeremy said. “I use it on the walks sometimes when they are really icy. I used to use salt, but it was damaging the lawn and plant life, so I switched to sand.”
“It hasn’t snowed for a while, so I assume the sand didn’t come from the walkways,” I commented.
Jeremy shook his head. “No. I swept up the remaining sand weeks ago as part of my yard cleanup. The sand has to have come from the garden shed.”
Colt picked the photo up. “So perhaps the killer got sand on his or her feet when he or she was in the shed dumping the body and tracked it inside.”
“That could totally have happened,” Jeremy agreed. “I didn’t notice footprints in the sand, but I wasn’t looking for them. I do know that one of the bags of sand broke a while back, and I haven’t gotten around to cleaning up the shed yet, so there is sand all over the floor. I’m the only one who ever goes into the shed, other than Abby during planting season, and I’m always careful to wipe my feet before I go inside.”
“Were you in the shed for any reason on the day of Alvin’s murder?” I asked Georgia.
“No. I haven’t been inside the shed in a year,” Georgia answered.
“So did either of you notice sand in any of the suites when you were cleaning the rooms?” I asked, hoping the killer had tracked the sand all the way home.
“I don’t remember any sand,” Georgia said.
“Yeah, me either. But Nikki was the one to run the vacuum around,” Jeremy offered.
“I’ll call her,” I said.
Fortunately, Nikki did remember sand on the floor. She said it started at the back door and trailed through the main story into suite number one. The suite, I realized which had been occupied by Jordan and Stephanie.
“Did we just prove that Stephanie is our killer?” I asked.
“Prove, no,” Colt responded. “But the fact that we have physical evidence tying the suite she was staying in to the crime scene will help. Of course, there were two occupants of the room, and one of them might have invited someone else in. The sand wasn’t obvious on the floor in any of the photos from Thursday night, so it does seem it was tracked in at some point between when the last photo was taken on Thursday night and this photo on Friday morning. Are there any other photos with the sand on the floor?”
We looked through all the photos, but only found two photos that were taken that morning. The first one where I’d noticed the sand had been a photo of Carson and Willa laughing at the foot of the stairs as they prepared to go into town for the day and the second one was a photo of Naomi hugging Fiona from behind. They looked so happy. And so close. The way sisters should be. I really hoped Alvin and his evil blackmail plan hadn’t forever ruined what they’d had for all time.”
Later that evening, after everyone had left and Georgia had gone to bed, I settled in front of the fire with my cat, my dog, a glass of wine, and a decades-old diary. At least I assumed it was decades old. I hadn’t found a date yet, but Baron did say that no one had lived in the house for decades, so I guess I could assume the diary was at least that old. Mostly, while interesting, it was pretty tame. A few references to the good-looking neighbor, Robert, who helped them out at times, but most of the entries had to do with the recall of everyday tasks and thoughts. Tending the garden, longing for a new dress, favorite novels, and ordinary chores related to an ordinary life.
And then I got to the last page of the thin volume.
“Oh my gosh.” I looked at Rufus, who’d jumped up at my outburst. “I know whose diary this is.”
Chapter 17
“So you’re sure the diary belonged to Richard’s sister?” Lacy asked me the following morning after I’d share my late-night reading with her.
“I think so. I remember you telling me that Richard’s mother, Olivia, died after a fall from the bluff whe
n Richard was nine. I also remember you saying that it had only been Richard, his mother, and his sister who’d gone to the summer home since Richard’s father had to work. At the time you shared this with me, I was imagining a younger sister. I’m not sure why. That was just the image that popped into my head. But after reading the diary, I now believe that Richard’s sister was older. A teenager of indeterminate age based on the diary, but I’m thinking she is at least fifteen or sixteen. Maybe older.”
“I guess that could be true. What exactly did the last paragraph say?” she asked.
“Here, I’ll read it to you.” I opened the book, which I’d brought along to return as promised. “‘As the days grow longer, my boredom increases as well. I used to look forward to spending time at the shore but now with Susan gone there seems to be nothing of interest to fill my days.’”
“Who’s Susan?” Lacy asked.
“I don’t know. She never said. I suppose a friend.”
“Okay, go on.”
“‘The one bright spot on the horizon,’” I continued, “‘is that the totally unpredictable and oftentimes hilarious Diana is coming, and I overheard Mother say that she’s bringing Will. Dad will pop a button if he finds out Will is staying for the summer, but Mother has her secrets, and I have mine, so I guess for now I’ll simply enjoy the show and see how it all works out.’”
“That’s it?” Lacy asked.
“That’s it.”
“If Olivia’s daughter knew that her mother was having an affair with Will, you’d think she would be upset and not simply amused.”
I shrugged. “Yeah. Maybe, but it sounds as if the girl is bored, and she had mentioned that her mother had shown interest in other good-looking men in the area several times. Maybe the mother was a tramp, and the daughter was used to it.”
Lacy didn’t look convinced, but she agreed that perhaps that could be the case.
“I’m going to look around and see if I can find the next journal,” I announced. “This one obviously ran out of paper, but the author did write in it almost every day, so it seems likely she continued her dialogue in another volume.” I caressed the book in my lap. “The next time you talk to Baron, ask him the name of his father’s sister. After reading her thoughts, I find I’m very interested in learning more about the teen who has suddenly become a lot more interesting.”
