The Inn at Holiday Bay: Proof in the Photo

by Kathi Daley

  “I’ll ask him when I call him about the desk.”

  Once we arrived at the house, Lacy went to work doing what she needed to do in anticipation of her phone conversation with Baron, and I started scouring the shelves for the next diary in the series. The books on the shelves seemed to have been haphazardly placed. I couldn’t find any sort of rhyme or reason why a book about the history of the Revolutionary War was shelved next to a book about dogs, which was next to a children’s book about a misbehaving puppy. I started with the shelf where I’d found the diary I’d read last night, but the only other handwritten document on the same shelf was an essay about religious freedom or lack thereof during the sixteenth century.

  “I’m probably going to have to look through every darn book to find what I’m looking for,” I grumbled.

  “Lonnie does want us to box up all the books in anticipation of the work he has to do in here. The job will be laborious, but it will give us the opportunity to look at each and every volume as we box it up. If there are other diaries, I’m sure we’ll find them then.”

  I exhaled loudly. “Yeah. I guess. I was just hoping to find out more today.”

  Lacy stood up from her crouched position behind the desk and glanced around the room. “Check that wall over by the sofa. It looks like there might be journals or diaries in that stack.”

  I walked across the room to the section of shelving she’d indicated while she continued to work. It seemed as if she’d measured and re-measured the same thing dozens of times. I understood her desire to be precise, but I’m not sure I’d have the patience to be quite as precise as she seemed to be.

  By the time we were ready to leave the house, I’d found two additional diaries in the same handwriting as the one I’d read the previous evening, but after a quick survey of the first pages of each diary, it looked like they came before and not after the one I’d read, but I took them anyway. Suddenly, the everyday thoughts of Richard’s sister had stirred my imagination in the way little had as of late.

  As we prepared to leave, Lonnie came into the library. “I think I might have found out something about the space behind the wall that appears on the blueprints,” he said.

  “And what’s that?” I asked.

  He walked across the room and put a hand on one of the walls that contained shelves from floor to ceiling. “It looks like this wall was added, probably to support the shelves. I’m not sure if it was added to intentionally create the space behind it or if the exterior wall wouldn’t work for the shelves for some reason. I don’t see an access point, and, of course, this wall has no windows.”

  “So, you think there’s just empty space back there?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “That’s the way it looks at this point. I spoke to Baron, and he’s given me permission to create a doorway to the space behind the wall once the books are removed, and I’m ready to work in here. I’ll probably seal it back up when I’m done, but we’ll take a look at that point to satisfy our curiosity.”

  “And when will you be doing that?”

  He looked around. “I guess in a month or two.”

  I sighed. Again with the waiting, but I supposed that all good things come with time.

  Chapter 18

  Colt called later that afternoon to let me know he’d be coming by after he got off work. He mentioned that he had new information relating to the Alvin Connor murder, but he wouldn’t say what he’d found. I supposed I’d just need to wait until he arrived to get the rest of the story, but as I’ve already established, I’m not actually a fan of waiting.

  “Okay, so what did you find out?” I asked once I’d given Colt a cold beer, and we’d both settled in on the outdoor patio.

  “After we all spoke yesterday and you noticed the sand linking the occupants of suite one to the shed where the body was found, I decided to look into the backgrounds of both Jordan and Stephanie a lot closer. As we already knew, Jordan is a real estate agent who has known Carson for quite some time. He isn’t the sort to really hang with Fiona’s crowd, but there has been some cross over between Fiona’s friends and Carson’s since the two became engaged. Jordan had met Alvin before the weekend, although according to Jordan, the two weren’t exactly friends. I spoke to Jordan, who admitted that he never really liked Alvin, but he also didn’t have a specific beef with him and certainly hadn’t killed him. I looked pretty hard for a link between Alvin and Jordan other than a causal relationship via Fiona and Carson, and was unable to find one.”

  He paused to take a sip of his beer and then continued. “I then looked more closely at Stephanie, her past, and her reason for wanting to attend the party in the first place. As I’d already established, Stephanie lives in Boston while Fiona, Carson, and Alvin all live in New York. She has clients in New York and spends a fair amount of time there. It occurred to me to try to find out where she stayed when she was in New York, which is when I discovered that Stephanie had a sister, Veronica, with whom she stayed when she was in the city. Veronica was married to a man named Garth Braverton, who is a man of means and comes from a family of means. I realized that while Stephanie Stevens might never have crossed paths with either Fiona or Alvin, Veronica Braverton would likely have.”

  “So Stephanie knew Fiona through her sister, Veronica?” I asked.

  “Fiona, no. When questioned, every member of the group other than Fiona, Carson, and Jordan stated that they had never met or even heard of Stephanie before the last Thursday. Jordan stated that he’d met Stephanie a few weeks before the party and that she’d requested to be his plus one, so he’d introduced her to Fiona and Carson when they ran into them at a charity event and asked if they’d mind if he brought her. They didn’t mind, so she made it to the list.”

  “Okay, so if Stephanie had never met Alvin before the party, why did she go to so much trouble to kill him?” I asked.

  “I wasn’t sure at first, but then I found out that Veronica Braverton died of a drug overdose about a little over a month ago.”

  I put my hand to my chest. “Oh, no. What happened? Did she commit suicide?”

  “That is unknown at this point. What is known is that even though Veronica had a husband she adored and two beautiful children, she suddenly became stressed to the point of being unable to sleep or eat. She wouldn’t tell her husband what had caused her to go from being a happy, vibrant woman to a total stress case seemingly overnight, but he did tell the police when they responded to the overdose call that she had started taking a sleeping aide to try to get some relief. It appears she simply took one too many sleeping pills and died. It’s unknown and will probably never be known if that was intentional or accidental.”

  “That is so sad and so tragic, but what does this have to do with Stephanie or Alvin?”

  Colt answered. “It occurred to me that while she never would tell her husband what had caused her so much distress, she might have confided in her sister.”

  Suddenly I knew. “Alvin set Veronica up so he could blackmail her into doing his bidding in the same way he set Naomi up.”

  Colt nodded. “This is only a theory at this point since both Alvin and Veronica are dead, and Stephanie isn’t talking, but that’s my current theory. I believe Alvin trapped Veronica with photos he set up after drugging her the way he set Naomi up because he wanted something specific out of her husband. I don’t know what that something was, but it is a theory that makes sense. The problem was that Veronica was so distressed about the effect the photos might have on her marriage, that she totally melted down and retreated into sleeping pills that eventually killed her. No one, other than Alvin, knew about the blackmail, or so he thought, but somewhere along the way, Veronica confided in Stephanie, so when Veronica died, Stephanie knew just who to blame.”

  I had to admit the theory worked. Stephanie decided to enact her own sort of justice on Alvin, but she needed to get close to him, so she tracked down Jordan, who she must have somehow known was going to the party and got an invite.

 
; “This whole thing works for me, but why frame Naomi? Why not just dispose of the syringe? She could have tossed it into the sea, or disposed of it while in town and no one could have linked it back to her.”

  “I wondered about that myself,” Colt said. “Then it occurred to me that Naomi and Veronica might have known each other.”

  “Naomi introduced Alvin to Veronica,” I realized.

  Colt nodded. “That’s my assumption at this point. Stephanie came up with the idea of killing Alvin and framing Naomi for his murder because she blamed them both for what happened to her sister. She was sloppy about it, but that’s where it seems her head might have been.”

  “So, what now?” I asked.

  “We don’t have enough to prove any of this. My buddy in the FBI is going to pick Stephanie up and question her. She lives in Massachusetts, Alvin lived in New York, and the murder occurred in Maine, so there is justification for his involvement.”

  “Do you think he can get a confession out of her?” I asked.

  Colt shrugged. “I don’t know. I hope so. This is obviously a highly emotional situation for Stephanie. I think my friend has the training needed to get the truth out of her. I guess at this point, all we can do is wait and see how it all works out.”

  Chapter 19

  April had come and gone, and with the arrival of May, spring in Holiday Bay had officially arrived. The mud had given way to green, green grass, and the flowers Jeremy had so painstakingly been babying were beginning to bloom. I really loved this time of the year, and welcomed the arrival of each bright and sunny day with a smile on my face and a song in my heart.

  Life, I decided, was good. Not only had Colt’s FBI buddy managed to get Stephanie to confess to killing Alvin and trying to frame Naomi, but given the special circumstances, the defense attorney she’d hired was working with the prosecutor to reduce the first-degree murder charge to something a bit more manageable. Stephanie was going to prison, there was no doubt about that, it was the length of her stay that still needed to be determined.

  Lonnie and Lacy were still working on the Chadwick house, as I was sure they would be for many months to come. I’d been back a few times in an attempt to find the missing diary that came after the one I read, but so far, I hadn’t had any luck. I had found diaries written by the same author years earlier, which I’d found entertaining if not juicy.

  Lonnie had finally announced that he was ready to begin demolition in the section of the house that housed the library, and gave us the go-ahead to start boxing up the books. We planned to begin next week. I’m not sure why I was so excited about a chore that I was sure would grow to be tedious by the time we were done, but I was.

  Georgia was busy with the inn now that we had guests pretty much every night. We’d both signed up to help with the Clam Bake weekend in July, and we’d also signed up to host a wine tasting competition over Memorial Day weekend. Six regional vintners would provide samples of their wine for tasting to individuals who bought tickets. Those who tasted the samples would be asked to vote for their favorite wines in several different categories, and the vintner with the most votes overall would be featured on Georgia’s show, which had grown to the point where folks in the industry were chattering about syndication.

  I was looking forward to the wine tasting weekend. The event itself was to be held on our lawn. Georgia was providing the food to go with the wine, which would be good publicity for both our inn and her show. The event was going to be televised on local cable, so Jeremy had been working like a crazy man to make sure the gardens were absolutely the best they could be. He planned to fill in the areas that had yet to bloom with barrels filled with annuals. With the sea in the background, I was sure it was going to be spectacular.

  “Can I help?” Annabelle asked.

  I looked up and smiled. “Absolutely. There’s an extra pair of gloves on the table.”

  Annabelle walked over to the table, pulled on the gloves, and then knelt down next to me.

  “We have to be careful to pull the weeds and not the baby flowers,” I instructed.

  “I helped Uncle Jeremy yesterday, and he showed me what to do.” She reached down, pulled out a weed, and put it into the bag I’d been using. “It was fun to be in the garden with Uncle Jeremy yesterday. I can remember helping him pull weeds from his garden when I was little.”

  “Your Uncle Jeremy had a garden?”

  She nodded. “Before Felicity died. It was really pretty. I was only about four at the time, but I remember those purple flowers.”

  “Felicity?” Jeremy had never mentioned anyone named Felicity.

  “She was his girlfriend. They lived together and were going to get married. Before she died, they had a house with a big yard that Uncle Jeremy wanted to turn into a beautiful garden.”

  I was shocked to hear that Jeremy had been engaged. He’d never said a word to me about it. I wondered if he’d mentioned Felicity to Georgia.

  “So Uncle Jeremy moved out of the house with the garden after Felicity died?”

  Annabelle nodded. “He went on a really long trip, and then when he came back, he moved in with mom and me. When mom had to go away again, Uncle Jeremy told her that he would take care of me, so she didn’t have to get another nanny.”

  “I guess that worked out good.”

  She smiled. “So good. I hated being left with the nannies, but I love being with Uncle Jeremy. I’m sorry Felicity died, though. I don’t remember a lot about her, but I do remember that she was pretty, and she smelled good. Her favorite flowers were the purple ones.”

  “I think Jeremy planted purple in the barrels near the patio,” I said.

  “I hope so. I was glad when Uncle Jeremy brought us here. My mom lives in a really big house, but the yard is teeny-tiny, and I knew Uncle Jeremy missed the flowers. He used to have all these books with a lot of pictures. When he had his house and his garden, I would sit on his lap, and he would go through the books and tell me the names of all the flowers. I don’t remember any of the names, but I do remember how much fun it was to sit in the yard and think about the garden I would have when I grew up.”

  “Do you still want a garden when you grow up?”

  “So much. But my garden will have a birdbath and feeders.”

  I looked toward a section of the yard that bordered the forested area beyond the section we’d landscaped. “We could put in a birdbath and feeders. It would be nice to have more birds visit.”

  “And maybe we can find a way to get more butterflies. I love butterflies.”

  “I think that we’ll have plenty of butterflies once everything finishes blooming. I used to have hummingbird feeders hanging on my little patio at the condo I used to live in. Maybe we could add some of those as well.”

  Annabelle and I continued to talk about the additions we’d like to make to the paradise Jeremy was in the process of creating. I wondered about Felicity and was tempted to ask Jeremy about her when I had the chance, but he’d had plenty of opportunities to bring her up and never had, so perhaps she wasn’t someone he was ready to talk about. I supposed I’d let it lie for now and let him bring the subject up in his own way when he was ready. Jeremy was like a brother to me in many ways, and I cared about him deeply, but at times, like today, I wondered if I really knew him at all. Georgia and I both had tragic pasts, which we talked about freely. I wondered why Jeremy felt he couldn’t talk to us about his as well.

  “How about some lemonade?” I asked Annabelle.

  “With strawberries?”

  I stood up and dusted off my knees and the front of my pants. “With strawberries. You know I’d never had lemonade with strawberries in it until I met you, and now I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  “It really is the best. Blackberries are good too. Maybe we should plant berries in the garden to bring the rabbits.”

  “I like rabbits,” I said, even though they’d most likely wreak havoc on Jeremy’s flowers. “And ladybugs. Every garden needs ladybugs.
”

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  On May 19, 1995, Austin Brady, a middle school student, along with five of his friends, decided to take advantage of the beautiful spring weather. They cut school and headed to Logan Pond for an overnight fishing trip. After setting up camp, the group gathered around the campfire and told stories late into the evening. When the boys awoke the following morning, Austin was gone. The five remaining boys looked for him but to no avail. It was if he’d simply vanished.

  While most folks living in the area at the time of the disappearance figured he’d simply wandered away and became lost, there were those who believed otherwise. Based on interviews conducted by me, Calliope Rose Collins, it appears Austin was a smart kid, who was nearing his thirteenth birthday. He’d lived in Foxtail Lake his entire life and was very familiar with the area. The idea that he’d gotten lost while visiting a fishing hole he’d visited many times in the past seemed like the easy answer, but in my opinion, not necessarily the correct one.

  I looked at Alastair, my Great-aunt Gracie’s cat, as he sat in the window seat in the attic, watching me work. I’d recently landed a job as a full-time reporter for Foxtail News, and I’d been working on a series of articles relating to Austin’s disappearance as the twenty-fifth anniversary of that disappearance neared. While I was nowhere near solving the quarter-century-old cold case, which was my ultimate goal, I’d done a lot of research and knew quite a bit more than when I started. According to the official missing persons report my good friend, Deputy Cass Wylander, secured for me, after Austin was reported missing, the entire town came together, and hundreds of residents set out to scour the forest surrounding Logan Pond for any trace of the missing child. Unfortunately, the search came up empty. The pond was dredged, friends and relatives were interviewed, and an all-points bulletin was issued, but it seemed as if the boy had simply vanished. According to the acting investigator, even a wild animal attack would have resulted in some sort of physical evidence, but despite long hours scouring the woods, not a single clue was found.