“Hideous,” Billy said, lifting the foil to get a peek. “Just as I feared, topped with chop suey noodles. And almonds.”
“Mona Gillespie is a dear, sweet friend,” Evelyn said. “Wasn’t that thoughtful of Mona, Riley?”
“Very thoughtful.” Riley pushed the eggs around on her plate, clockwise, and then counterclockwise.
Five minutes later, the doorbell rang again, and then again. It had been only twenty-four hours, but word of Wendell Griggs’s death had already begun to spread. The phone rang, and offerings of food began to pile up.
“Where’s Maggy?” Billy asked, standing with the refrigerator door ajar, as he searched for a place to stash Sheila King’s tomato aspic.
“She went to the beach with some of the Billingsley kids, first thing this morning,” Riley reported. “Shane, the oldest one, had a cast-net. They seem to think they’re going to catch a shark.”
“Good for Mags,” Billy said approvingly. “No use her sitting around the house all day with us.”
“That’s what I think, too. But I told her she needs to be back in time to shower and change so we can make the two-fifteen ferry,” Riley added.
“You’re going to town?” Evelyn asked, her coffee cup poised inches from her carefully made-up lips. “Traffic will be terrible.”
“I know, but the sheriff has arranged for us to go to the hospital so Maggy can see Wendell.”
“Of course.” Evelyn’s face radiated disapproval as she removed the plate of eggs and dumped them in the trash with deliberate ceremony.
“You talked to the sheriff this morning? Did he have any news?” Billy asked.
“Not really. He wanted my permission to take the Boston Whaler over to the mainland, so they can have somebody from the state crime lab take a look at it.”
“What do they want with the boat?” Scott asked.
“They’re assuming Wendell came over to the island on the Whaler since his name wasn’t on the ferry manifests for the past week, and they found him close to where the boat was tied up. I told him Wendell did that sometimes, if he needed to. I guess they’re looking for fingerprints or something. He was pretty vague about everything.”
“Fingerprints?” Evelyn frowned. “This was a horrible, tragic accident. It’s clear that Wendell must have slipped, hit his head on the dock, and fallen into the water. Why would they want to fingerprint the boat?”
Riley’s headache was back. The truth was, it had never really gone away. She’d gotten little sleep the night before, and now, it felt as though a band of wire was wrapped tightly around her skull.
“They think there’s more to it than that. There’s another head wound—the sheriff called it blunt force trauma. Somebody hit him. Hard. Hard enough to knock him down.”
“Jesus!” Billy whispered.
“Who would want to kill Wendell?” Evelyn asked, her pale blue eyes filling with tears.
I would, Riley thought, remembering the shock and humiliation she’d suffered on the ferry, and feeling yet another wave of guilt.
“But why?” Billy gave up on finding a place for the aspic. He set the dish on the counter, alongside Sylvia Sutliff’s pineapple fluff and Marilyn Butler’s strawberry pretzel salad, which sat next to Cleo Metcalf’s chocolate sour cream pound cake.
Why not? Riley thought. And she was immediately ashamed. Again.
“The sheriff seems to think it might have something to do with Wendell’s business dealings,” she said finally. She swallowed hard, blinking back sudden tears. “Maybe something connected to our house being foreclosed. I don’t understand any of this.”
The back door swung open with a bang, and a tall, lanky woman with damp silver hair worn in a long braid breezed into the kitchen.
“Good morning, everybody,” Mary Roosevelt Nolan sang out in her husky voice. She wore a baggy, faded black one-piece bathing suit with a towel wrapped loosely around her hips and she had a pair of white rubber swim goggles pushed up into her hair as a headband.
“Hi, Aunt Roo,” Riley said, grateful for the distraction of her aunt’s arrival.
Mary Roosevelt Nolan was used to being a distraction. Christened such by her New Deal–loving father, her name had been shortened to Roo by her baby brother, W.R., who happened to be Riley’s father.
Roo was a confirmed spinster, devoted birdwatcher and, to the chagrin of many of her relatives, a card-carrying liberal Democrat and either her sister-in-law Evelyn’s best friend or worst enemy, depending on both of the women’s moods. She lived in the carriage house at Shutters.
“The water felt glorious this morning, and I even saw a long-billed curlew,” Roo said, helping herself to a blueberry muffin from a basket that had been dropped off moments earlier by Gretchen Lombard.
“I guess you must have loved it, since you decided to track it all across my kitchen floor,” Evelyn said, mopping at the offending drops of water with a paper towel.
“Sorry.” Roo shrugged and poured herself a mug of coffee. “Why are you all sitting around here on such a beautiful morning?” She pointed at the lineup of dishes on the counter. “And what’s with all the food? Are we having a party I’m not invited to?”
Billy and Riley exchanged a look.
“Aunt Roo,” Billy said gently. “Didn’t you get the voice mail I left you last night?”
“Hell no. I hate voice mails. They’re always from some telemarketer trying to sell me a time-share at Disney World. Now, you tell me, what does an old maid like me want with a condo in Orlando? They don’t even have a beach there.”
“Mary Roosevelt Nolan!” Evelyn snapped. “Maybe if you took the trouble to listen to the messages we leave you, you’d know what’s going on around here. For your information, Wendell is dead.”
Roo looked from Riley to her sister-in-law, and then back again.
“Wendell Griggs? Your Wendell?”
Riley nodded. “It’s true.”
Roo took a bite of the muffin and chewed slowly. “That’s awful. When was this? What happened?”
“We’ll discuss it later,” Evelyn said. “I don’t want to upset poor Riley any more than necessary.”
“It’s okay, Mama,” Riley said, taking a deep breath. “They found Wendell’s body in the water at the marina yesterday morning. He had some kind of a head wound. The sheriff doesn’t think it was an accident.”
“Murder?” Roo’s eyes shone with excitement. “Right here on Belle Isle?”
“Roo!” Evelyn shook her head in exasperation. “For God’s sake, have you no sense of propriety? My daughter has been widowed. My granddaughter has lost her daddy. We are inconsolable.”
“Sorry.” Roo leaned over and patted Riley’s hand. “Really, sweetie, even though I never really liked him, I’m sorry about Wendell. Truly.”
Riley managed to choke back a giggle. “Thanks, Aunt Roo.”
“I guess I really am the last one to know. When’s the service?”
“We can’t plan anything until the coroner releases Wendell’s body,” Riley said. “Soon, I hope. For Maggy’s sake, I don’t want to drag things out any longer than necessary.”
“Of course,” Roo said. She walked over to the counter and pointed hopefully at an oval turquoise Pyrex bowl. “Is that Sylvia’s pineapple fluff? It’s my favorite!”
13
The tide was out, and the beach on the north side of the island was a smooth expanse of silvery-gray sand. Parrish stood in the surf for a moment, letting the gentle waves lap at her ankles, allowing her toes to sink into the gritty sand. They mostly had the beach to themselves, save for a pair of men surf-casting up ahead, and a group of kids trying to throw a cast-net.
“The water feels amazing,” she called to her husband. “Come on, Ed.”
He shook his head. “No, thanks. You know how I feel about sand.”
She did know. Her husband had a pathological hatred of sand. He didn’t mind walking on the beach with her, as they did most days when they were together on Belle Isl
e, but he stopped short of walking barefoot, always insisting on wearing his tennis shoes.
“Riiiight,” she said. She dipped her fingers into the water and flicked some at him, but he moved away, unharmed.
She walked along behind him, stooped over, picking up stray seashells, searching, as she always did, for bits of sea glass. Which was a waste of time. She hadn’t found any sea glass in ages.
“I wonder why,” she muttered.
Ed turned around. “You wonder why what?”
Parrish laughed ruefully. “Did I say that out loud? Oh my God. I’m turning into my grandmother.”
“You could do worse.”
His comment stopped her cold. “Aww. That’s so sweet.”
“She was a grand old lady,” Ed said, turning slightly pink.
Now she’d gone and embarrassed him. Ed Godchaux didn’t like people to think he was sentimental. Or sweet.
“I was just wondering why I never find sea glass here anymore. When we first started coming to the island, when David was a baby, I could always find a piece or two. Green, blue, brown, even purple. I had jars of the stuff. But I can’t remember the last time I found a piece. Can you?”
He gave that some serious thought. Everything was serious to Ed. She’d loved that about him when they’d first started dating. He’d been a seasoned thirty-two-year-old litigator, and she was just out of law school, at her first job, but he’d always treated her as an equal, never dismissed her as “just a girl.”
He removed his sunglasses and polished them on the hem of his golf shirt. Ed didn’t own any shirts without collars. He didn’t do T-shirts. Or jeans. A logoed polo shirt and well-tailored, lightweight, Orvis fly-fishing shorts were about as casual as he got.
“I think it probably has something to do with the fact that people don’t take glass to the beach anymore. They take plastic, or aluminum. And, luckily, people have gotten a little bit better about not littering and recycling.”
“True,” Parrish said.
“Tide patterns change, too. And remember, this beach was just dredged and renourished a couple of years ago, so that might have had an effect.” He pointed to a spot in the surf, about a hundred yards offshore. “That sand bar probably catches whatever glass or good shells might otherwise wash up here.”
“Very wise,” Parrish said. “It still makes me sad.”
“I think I saw one of your jars of sea glass out in the garage when I was putting up the screens. If you want, tomorrow I can come down early and sprinkle some around, and then you can hunt it up again.”
“You’d do that for me?”
“Of course. It would be like an Easter egg hunt.”
Parrish was astonished to find a lump in her throat. This was a side of Ed she hadn’t seen in a very long time.
She caught up to him and put an arm around his waist, kissing him on the cheek.
He seemed caught off guard. “What’s that for?”
“That’s a just-because kiss.”
He kissed the top of her head, and then sighed.
“What?”
“I was thinking about Wendell. Poor bastard.”
“Poor bastard nothing,” Parrish said indignantly. “He’s left Riley and Maggy homeless. Do you really think somebody murdered him?”
Ed frowned. “I think Wendell was maybe a victim of his own ambition. I’ve heard rumors … very vague rumors, starting months ago, that he’d gotten over his skis on this Belle Isle development project with the hotel and the new oceanfront lots. And all that.”
“You never said anything to me about any rumors.”
“Because as far as I knew, that’s all it was—rumors, gossip, innuendo.”
“I still wish you’d said something,” Parrish said. “Riley’s been totally blindsided by all of this. Maybe if she’d known he was in financial trouble…”
“Hindsight is twenty-twenty,” Ed reminded her. “Right now, I think the best thing we can do for Riley, and Maggy, is be there for them.”
Parrish shivered and turned up the collar on her shirt.
“What’s wrong?”
“I was just thinking. Somebody murdered Wendell Griggs. Right here on this island. What if the killer is still hanging around? What if it doesn’t really have anything to do with the development deal? My God. What if it’s somebody we know?”
“Not likely,” Ed said calmly. “Whoever killed him—for whatever reason, that person is probably miles and miles away by now.”
She looked at him wistfully. “Do you really have to leave so soon? We had a pretty sucky start to the weekend. Doesn’t even feel like Memorial Day.”
“Can’t be helped. I need to go over the transcripts from the last deposition we did on the thing in D.C. before I fly out to Chicago first thing Wednesday.”
“Can’t one of your associates handle the Chicago thing?”
“No. The clients are paying for me, so they get me. You know that, Parrish.”
She nodded. “I know it, but that doesn’t mean I like it.”
Ed glanced at his watch. “It’s almost nine. You want to go get breakfast at the Sea Biscuit?”
Parrish slid her arm around his waist again. “Maybe later. I’ve got a better idea.”
“What’s that?”
She leaned in and whispered in his ear, letting her hand slide casually down, until it rested lightly on his butt.
His face lit up. “Really?”
“Absolutely.”
* * *
An hour later, Ed reluctantly rolled onto his side of the bed and yawned. He caught Parrish’s hand and kissed the palm of it.
“That was great.”
She leaned over and kissed his bare shoulder. “If I ask you something, will you tell me the truth?”
“If I know it.”
“Friday, when we were on the ferry, and Riley was telling me she planned to file for divorce, she said she’d wondered if Wendell was having an affair, even though he denied it. Have you heard anything like that? Did he have a girlfriend?”
“If there was another woman, do you really think Wendell would have told me? We weren’t best friends, you know. Not like you and Riley.”
“Men hear things. They gossip just as much as women,” Parrish insisted. “I just want to know what you’ve heard.”
Ed reached for the eyeglasses he’d left on the nightstand. “Okay. I did hear something. But you can’t tell Riley. It might not even be true.”
“Just tell me, for God’s sake,” Parrish said. “This is not a deposition. It’s just us, in bed. Pillow talk.”
“I played golf with a fellow down at Pinehurst, back in the fall. This guy was president of a family-owned bank in Wilmington. I mentioned that we have a place at Belle Isle, and he got this funny look on his face. Sort of a smirk, you’d probably call it. I asked him what was so humorous, and finally, he told me that he’d heard all the development going on at Belle Isle was being bankrolled by another small bank on the coast, and that the buzz in banking circles was that one of the bank’s junior execs, a gal in her early thirties, was literally in bed with the president of Belle Isle Enterprises.”
“That’s it? Did this guy name names?”
“No. There was nothing like that. Just a buzz, no more.”
“I wonder who the woman was?”
“Parrish!” His voice was sharp. “You promised not to say anything to Riley. Remember?”
“Spoilsport.”
Ed leaned over and gave his wife a long, lingering kiss. “Wendell Griggs was a fool. Didn’t his daddy ever tell him you don’t get your honey where you get your money?”
“So he was a fool for sleeping with a banker? But it would have been okay if his girlfriend was a cocktail waitress?”
He blinked. “That’s not what I meant at all. Riley is a good woman. A beautiful woman. He ought never to have cheated on her.” Ed sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “I would never do that to you,” he said, turning to look at her. “And I
know you wouldn’t do it to me either.”
He stood up and padded, naked, toward the bathroom. A moment later, she heard the water in the shower running, and his deep voice humming.
14
Parrish was sitting on the front porch of the cottage staring moodily out at the bay when Riley rode up on a rusty red beach cruiser with a straw basket wired to the front.
“Hey!” She opened the screened door and waved her friend in. “What’s up?”
Riley collapsed onto the porch swing and Parrish sat down beside her. “Where’s Ed?”
Parrish rolled her eyes. “Up in his office. He swears he’s just going to answer a few ‘urgent’ e-mails, but we both know he’ll stay up there until I physically drag him away from that damned computer.”
“Just like Wendell. And yet, nothing like Wendell,” Riley said.
Parrish raised an eyebrow, and Riley shrugged.
“Horrible things just keep coming out of my mouth. Anyway, sorry about the unannounced drop-in, but I just had to get out and away from the house for a little bit.”
“You know you never need an invitation to show up here,” Parrish said. “What’s with the bike?”
“Mama took the golf cart. She and Roo are playing golf this morning. Well, they call it golf. I call it Bloody Marys and gossip and a little putting and very little actual driving.”
“Evvy’s playing golf today? That’s kind of cold.”
“Just be happy she’s out of my hair.”
You want some iced tea? Or an Arnold Palmer? I just made tea and lemonade.”
“Don’t judge me, but I’d love an Arnold Palmer if you could just drop a thimble-full of vodka into it.”
“Me? Judge? Ha!”
Riley sat back in the swing and took an appreciative look around the porch. Parrish and Ed’s house wasn’t particularly big, maybe fifteen hundred square feet in all, and it wasn’t old by island standards. Basically it had been a 1960s concrete block bunker when they bought it, but the way the house was situated, on a knoll at the end of a cul-de-sac with the other houses built downhill, gave it the best, most unobstructed view of the bay on the island.
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