Wicked After Midnight (Midnight Blue Beach Book 1)

by Olivia Jaymes

  She nodded mechanically and reached into the box, her hands shaking. She furled her fingers into tight fists and took a deep breath to get control of her body. This was no time to reveal her jumbled emotions. She barely knew this man, and she’d already told him too much.

  They sifted through each year he could have attended, finding photos of him in four of the years with a gap between the third and last year. Bailey couldn’t stop staring at the pictures, taking in every detail as if her life depended on it. Frank looked so different, so happy and relaxed.

  “Did he change much?” Chase asked softly.

  Rubbing at her temple, she shook her head. “Physically he didn’t change all that much. A few lines around his eyes and a few gray hairs but I could have picked him out of a crowd.” She ran her finger over the picture of Frank, tracing the outline of his face and shoulders. “What changed was who he was inside. This man has joy inside of him. He’s smiling and optimistic about his life. He’s…happy.”

  Shifting in his seat, Chase turned so he was facing her. “And your Frank was different?”

  Like night and day.

  “My Frank,” she began, having trouble with the phrasing. Even after they’d married, she’d never felt like they belonged to one another. They’d been separate people living parallel lives in the same house. “Somewhere between here and meeting me he lost some of this spark. This man looks open and free. The Frank I knew kept a large portion of himself closed off from everyone, even me. He only let me in part of the way. No matter how I tried to break down those walls, I just couldn’t. Eventually I stopped trying.”

  Her hands were clenched tightly, the knuckles white with the effort not to howl with leftover pain. He’d rejected and hurt her so many times. She’d believed that she was immune but this was bringing up all the old feelings of inadequacy. She’d never been enough for Frank and in his own subtle way he’d let her know.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Such simple words but Chase made them sound heartfelt. She didn’t like the idea of comparing the two men but she couldn’t stop herself from thinking that Frank wasn’t much for figuring out how other people were feeling. He was too self-involved. Not in a mean way. He hadn’t been a cruel man but he had been an indifferent one.

  “Me too,” she finally said, too many memories crowding around her at once. She needed space to breathe. To think. “I tried hard to make my marriage work but in the end I was exhausted. I doubt we would have made it, if I’m brutally honest. Whatever brought us together in the beginning was long gone by the end. I failed.”

  His fingers pressed into the flesh above her knees insistently, keeping her anchored to the here and now. “I’ve been married and divorced and if I learned anything it’s that it takes two. Two to make it good and two to make it bad. I’m sure you both did the best you could at the time.”

  She lifted her head, their gazes colliding. “You were married?”

  He smiled and groaned. “In full technicolor glory. Young love and all that. Cheryl is a good person but we grew in different directions. She’s remarried now and has a couple of kids. I’m genuinely happy for her. Maybe that’s what happened to you and Frank. As time when on, you went in different directions.”

  “I didn’t fight hard enough.”

  His fingers captured her chin, not letting her look away. “You both had to fight. You could have fought all day long but if he wasn’t as committed as you were…”

  “I know what you say is true. It’s not the first time I’ve heard it. I just wish things had been different.”

  “I wish that all the damn time.”

  A smile curving her lips, Bailey let a little laughter escape although it wasn’t all that funny. “I thought I had moved on. Life has a funny way of showing you the truth.”

  “You’ve experienced a great trauma, Bailey. Maybe you should give yourself a break and stop thinking that you shouldn’t be affected. Your husband died while you two were having marital difficulties. I imagine there’s a great deal of guilt inside of you but I’m telling you now that you need to release it. Just let it go. You’re not doing Frank any good and you sure aren’t helping yourself either.”

  “Are you some kind of shrink?”

  It would be just her luck if he was a psychiatrist.

  “Not at all. Actually, I’m self-employed.” A grin bloomed on his face. “So I guess you could say that I analyze people as a hobby.”

  “Take up fishing. Or get one of those machines that find metal at the beach.”

  He sat back in his chair, and she felt bereft at the loss of warmth and comfort from his hands. There was something about Chase that made her feel safe, as if he was a beacon in a storm. That shelter a person runs to when the wind, rain, and lightning become too much.

  “Tell me what you’re thinking right now.”

  No way.

  “You’re nosy.”

  “You’re running,” he shot right back. “Seriously, tell me what’s on your mind. What are you afraid of?”

  So many things.

  Of liking Chase too much.

  Of letting go of the guilt. It had become so much a part of her these last five years she wasn’t sure what to do without it.

  But mostly she was afraid of…

  “Finding out something about Frank that I don’t want to know.”

  “Such as?”

  Shrugging, she stood and wandered over to the window, looking out at the darkness. From this vantage point, she could easily see where she’d stood with the flashlight hoping to gain someone’s attention.

  “What if he was lying to me the entire time I was married? What if my life was all one big lie?”

  Chase also stood but he didn’t crowd her, content to stay a few feet away, somehow aware that she needed her space at the moment. “And if it was? You can’t change the past. You can’t yell and scream at him because he’s gone. All you can do is deal with the here and now. The fact is you don’t have to do anything more. You can get on the night flight back to Tampa and put this out of your mind forever. But I think you’re braver than that, Bailey. It took guts to come here and dig up the past. I don’t believe you want to live in some fantasy world. I think you want the truth whether it hurts you or not.”

  She’d like that to be true but she wasn’t as certain as he was. “I think you’re full of shit.”

  “What if I call your bluff?” He reached for his phone. “I’ll book your airline ticket right now. My treat. Is that what you want? To go home and pretend good old Frank didn’t have any secrets? Because, woman, everybody has things that no one else knows. I bet you’ve got a few and I know I do.”

  “I’ve told you all my secrets and I don’t want to hear yours.”

  Maybe not all of them.

  He held up his phone, his brows raised in question. “What’s the verdict? Are you going home or moving forward? It’s your choice.”

  Choices. They were a luxury she hadn’t always had in her life but he was correct. She had one today and it was in her power to make it. She could walk away and go back to living her life. Or she could keep digging and find out the truth. It might be nothing. It could be a completely innocent reason Frank had kept those clippings. There might not be any connection to Gwen’s death and Frank’s.

  A total, weird and wacky coincidence.

  “I think you know my answer.”

  Because she didn’t believe in coincidences. Not one like this anyway.

  “I’d like to hear it.”

  She turned so she could look right into his eyes, that blue gaze that seemed to see way too much. “I want the truth.”

  “Then we better get back to work.”

  For a while there, Chase was sure Bailey was going to cut and run. He wouldn’t have blamed her. After all, she probably hadn’t truly thought through what her investigating was going to mean. It was one thing to wonder if there was a connection. It was a complete other thing to uncover that connection and then dig deeper to fin
d out what it meant. If there was more.

  Her husband Frank – a man she swears wasn’t sentimental – kept a stack of newspaper clippings regarding Gwen’s death. It could be a simple case of clutter. He’d been interested at the time but forgotten all about them as the years passed. They might have been meaningful once but that time was gone.

  With Chase’s help, they scanned in the pages of the booklets and emailed them to her friends in Florida so they could look for their own husbands. Bailey wasn’t as sure the men would be in the photos but they needed to cover all the bases.

  She held up one of the pictures and pointed to Chase in the background. “I guess you knew Frank.”

  And she didn’t look particularly happy about that.

  “I remember his face but I don’t remember anything about him. I couldn’t have told you his name until you pointed him out. He was older than me so we weren’t friends. But I do remember him hanging out with these guys. I know a couple of them that live in this area and I see them maybe once a year.” Chase pointed to the other young men in the photo. “They were all the same. Spoiled brats with too much money and not enough common sense. Arrogant little SOBs.”

  A funny look passed over her face and too late he realized what he’d said. Trying desperately to backpedal, he kept talking even when he should have shut up. “Don’t pay any attention to me. I’m sure Frank was different. Hell, he was probably going along with his friends. Peer pressure and stuff like that. Plus teenage boys can be a real pain the ass. I’m sure I was too.”

  Somebody wrestle me to the ground and slap a gag over my face.

  Holding up her hand, she looked down at the picture again. “No, I think you pretty much nailed it the first time, although it sounds like he was much less subtle in his youth. Frank came from an incredibly wealthy background and I didn’t. Believe me, his family and friends never let me forget that I was from a middle class family who lived in the cornfields of the Midwest. Frank wasn’t overtly a snob but he had his moments.”

  A sour taste in his mouth, Chase studied the features of Frank Scott. He didn’t even know this guy but he didn’t like him. Anyone who made Bailey feel less than wasn’t the type of person Chase wanted to be around.

  “Tell me he defended you.”

  She folded the booklets and tucked them back into the box, one by one. “He defended me although I think that eventually he was tired of fighting my battles with his family. I guess he thought I should have joined them by then but instead I couldn’t shake my blue collar roots. Honestly, I think he was baffled as to why I wouldn’t embrace the whole money and conspicuous consumption thing. But it didn’t matter. After awhile his family’s disdain became less overt and more passive-aggressive and I became less concerned with what other people thought of me. Frankly, I didn’t give a rat’s ass if they liked me or not. Not one of them has tried to keep in touch with me since Frank died so I’m happy about that. At least I don’t have to keep up the facade of pleasantness and family unity.”

  The Scott family didn’t deserve Bailey. Chase hadn’t known her long but he could tell she was a strong, determined woman who believed in honesty.

  “It’s their loss.”

  Her lips turned up. “Thank you but I’m not sure they see it that way. It was quite ugly at the reading of the will.”

  It hadn’t even occurred to Chase that Bailey was a wealthy widow. She acted so down to earth. Not that he hadn’t met normal, nice people with lots of money. He had. Many of them, in fact, and he was proud to call them his friends. But his early years had made an impression on him and he was well aware of how the one-percenters could act.

  “They were upset?”

  Bailey rolled her eyes and laughed. “Upset? They were livid. Frank’s brother threw a hissy-fit right there in the lawyer’s office like he was a two year old. I didn’t even want the damn money but the attorney insisted that Frank wanted me to have it. He gave me a letter that Frank had written that basically said that and also took responsibility for the marital issues we’d had.”

  Maybe Frank Scott wasn’t so bad after all.

  “It takes a big man to admit when he’s done wrong.”

  Nodding, Bailey picked up her phone, which had begun to vibrate. “There was a lot of good in Frank. He wasn’t a perfect man but I’ve never been accused of perfection either. We had some good times and that’s what I try to remember.” She frowned at the screen. “Willow and Peyton looked at the pictures we sent them. Their husbands are in the photos too. It looks like they might have been friends with Frank. That’s strange because I don’t ever remember meeting them or Frank even mentioning them.”

  The case for a connection between the three men’s deaths and Gwen was growing stronger, although at this point Chase was baffled as to what it might be. But Bailey was right – this was no coincidence.

  “Do they ever remember their husbands mentioning Gwen?”

  Shaking her head, Bailey tapped out a text back to her friends. “They don’t but they’re going to go through what they have left of their husbands’ possessions. They might find something although Peyton said she doesn’t have much of Greg’s things. They also are strongly suggesting that they come here to help.”

  “How do you feel about that?”

  Chase regarded Bailey closely, looking for any sign in her expression that this whole situation was more than she could handle.

  “It would be nice to have their support, especially as it’s not just Frank involved, but I don’t want them to drop everything and come here without knowing how they could help. There might be things we need done in Florida. We just don’t know yet.”

  “There are definitely things we need done down there,” Chase replied. “Specifically, we need to know if your husbands had any contact with each other after they left summer camp. That might give us some insight into how they’re connected.”

  Bailey frowned, her fingers poised over the cell phone. “How would we be able to find that out? I don’t remember seeing any of those men. At least I don’t think so.”

  “They should talk to family and friends if they can. Maybe business associates too. Perhaps your husbands had something financial in common.”

  Busily she tapped out the text. “I’ll let them know. Hopefully they can find something. What are we going to do in the meantime?”

  Chase had already been working on that plan. His mental list was getting longer by the minute and he was optimistic for the first time about Gwen’s case.

  “I have a friend who is a detective for the local police. I’m going to ask him to get a copy of the case file. I’d like to see if the cops ever talked to your husbands. I also think we should talk to Gwen’s friends and family from that summer. They might have a better memory than I do of Frank.”

  “They might not want to talk about it,” Bailey warned. “If something like that happened to a friend or relative of mine, I wouldn’t be all that thrilled about rehashing it twenty years later.”

  He’d thought about that too.

  “That’s why we’re not going to tell them.”

  At least not yet.

  Chapter Twelve

  “I can’t just give you the file,” Detective Ellis Hunter protested. “They’d have my ass in the unemployment line.”

  The next morning Chase had stopped by the police station to talk to Ellis before he met Bailey for breakfast. His friend, a pessimist by nature, was not being as cooperative as Chase had hoped.

  “I don’t expect that,” he explained patiently, letting his gaze sweep the small office at the back of the police building. They’d stuck Ellis – lead detective for their little town – as far away from everyone as possible. He didn’t work well with others. “I want you to take a look at it and hopefully answer some questions.”

  Ellis waved his arm toward a stack of files on the corner of the desk. “Do you see that pile of unsolved cases? I don’t have time to look through a twenty-year old cold case file because you’re obsesse
d and can’t let it go. As your friend, I’m trying to help you. Just forget about that summer, bro. That case is colder than the Arctic Circle.”

  All business, all the time. That was Ellis’s motto. At thirty-five he was the youngest head of detectives this town had ever seen and few crimes went unsolved under his watch. He’d run a tight ship for the last six years and Chase respected the hell out of him.

  But sometimes he could be a real pain in the ever loving ass.

  “Will you get that stick out of your butt and help me? Things have changed and I’ve been trying to tell you about it but apparently you haven’t had enough coffee or something. This case needs to be looked at again. There’s more out there. Trust me.”

  Ellis sat up straight in his chair and scowled. “I do not have a stick up my butt and I’ve had two cups of coffee. I’m just trying to save you from more heartache, my friend. That case is nothing but trouble.”

  “So you haven’t been listening to me,” Chase sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “I have new information that might make a difference. You keep interrupting and we’re not getting anywhere but pissed off at each other.”

  Playing with a pencil between his fingers, Ellis nodded. “Fine, I’ll listen. You talk.”

  Chase slowly explained all that he’d learned in the last twenty-four hours to his friend and waited for the explosion of disbelief when he came to the part about the four deaths on July twenty-first. To his shock, Ellis didn’t seem fazed in the least.

  “You don’t seem surprised. I’m waiting for your cynicism to kick in and tell me that I’m full of shit.”

  Ellis grinned and gave an evil laugh. “I love to shock and surprise my friends. You might not believe this but as a cop I’ve seen some weird shit in my time and some of it defied logical explanation. You say that the women think the universe is fucking with them? Well, I have to agree. Of course, this could have a perfectly reasonable explanation. Honestly, I’m less concerned with how these ladies got together than I am as to what this new information means. Let me ask you a question. Do you believe that there is a connection between Gwen Baxter’s death and the supposedly accidental deaths of these three men?”