Black Rock Bay

by Brianna Labuskes

  The caution didn’t prove to be necessary. Everything was neat and in order, jeans folded on top of a few flannel button-downs, a handful of T-shirts slotted in next to boxers and socks.

  “Anything?” Mia called from somewhere behind her.

  Izzy shook her head as she stood. “Just clothes. Toiletries kit on the sink in there.” She tipped her chin toward the bathroom. “Not seeing much else.”

  “He must have had his wallet on him,” Mia said. She was standing over the desk, the tip of her pen hovering by the corner of one of the notebooks like she was about to flip it open. But she hadn’t yet.

  “Or someone with a copy of the key cleaned up behind themselves.”

  Mia’s mouth twitched at that suggestion. “They can’t exactly just run down to the local locksmith.”

  “So he probably took his important stuff with him,” Izzy conceded. “What do you think are in those?”

  “Whatever he was working on.” A no shit answer to a no shit question.

  Frigid air licked at the exposed skin of Izzy’s wrist when she took the gloves off, and her exhale was a frozen white coil that drifted toward the ceiling. “Can we take those somewhere else to read?”

  Izzy’s request earned her an actual smile. “Yeah, we’ll see if tech has any suggestion on the laptop, too.”

  “Bless you,” Izzy said, swiveling to flip the light switch off in the bathroom. As she did, she noticed something right near the bottom leg of the bed. Bending down, she slid the small object out from the darkness.

  “What is it?” Mia asked. She’d moved closer.

  Izzy held it up so they could both see.

  “A phone.”

  Mia met her eyes. “That’s out of place.”

  Nodding in agreement, Izzy looked down at the black screen, then glanced back to where the cell had been pushed under the bed. “I think . . .”

  “What?”

  “Maybe he was trying to hide it,” Izzy said, knowing it was a wild leap of logic but unable to silence the thought. “For us to find.”

  Mia stopped on the path back into town so abruptly Izzy had to sidestep to keep from crashing into her. The messenger bag full of the reporter’s notebooks that Izzy had slung over her shoulder wasn’t as quick to react and slammed against Mia’s side.

  A swallowed grunt was her only acknowledgment of pain.

  “Sorry, but your brake lights must be out,” Izzy said, her eyes flicking toward the sky. Thick sludge clouds had been rolling toward them all morning, and Izzy was anxious to get to shelter before the storm made landfall.

  “One stop,” Mia said, squinting at the oncoming weather as well. After a few seconds, she nodded, a tiny confirmation to herself almost, and then took the left path instead of the one that took them back to Edie Hart’s house. And a roof. And heat. “We’ll have time.”

  There was nothing to do but follow. “Who are we visiting?”

  “Martha Lowe.” The answer was so quiet it took Izzy a second to catch on.

  “Lowe. Like—”

  “Asher, yes,” Mia interrupted. “Martha is his grandmother.”

  Izzy studied the side of Mia’s face, trying to read anything there. Her expression was empty, though. “Does that mean . . . you do think Twist’s death has something to do with Asher’s? And Monroe’s?”

  Mia bit her lip, but that was the only sign that she wasn’t completely composed. “I don’t know. Probably not.”

  Probably not. An echo of what Izzy had thought at the cabin. They both seemed to be dancing around the possibility, not trusting it but unable to ignore it. If Twist’s story had been about Asher’s and Monroe’s deaths, there was a chance, likely or not, that he could have been killed over it.

  She wondered if Mia’s opinion about whether Twist’s death was suicide had shifted yet. Izzy knew for herself if the journals confirmed that the reporter had indeed been asking about that night, it would make Izzy more convinced that they were looking at a homicide here.

  But where that left Mia, she didn’t know, and she didn’t have time to ask, either. They came to a stop outside a sky-blue house with a pristine white door.

  The woman who answered Mia’s knock had the weathered, hardy look Izzy was starting to associate with living in Maine. She was short but stout, not frail, her silver hair braided down her back.

  “Mia Hart,” Martha said, like she’d been expecting her.

  “Ma’am.” It was the most deferential that Izzy had ever heard Mia. “This is Detective Santiago. We’d like to ask you a few questions if we can.”

  Martha’s gaze swung to Izzy, and she instinctively straightened under the attention.

  “Come in.”

  There were no pleasantries, no offers of tea or coffee. Martha directed them to sit on an overstuffed two-seater couch as she took the hard, wooden chair that was kitty-corner to it.

  “You’re finally investigating Asher’s murder.”

  Mia’s small inhale was hardly a gasp, but it was noticeable nonetheless. “Murder?”

  Martha’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t waste my time, child.”

  Izzy saw an opening to play dumb. “I thought it was ruled suicide, ma’am.”

  “My grandson did not kill himself.” Each word was enunciated as if it were its own sentence, and Martha stared them both down, her chin tipped up, her lips pinched.

  It wasn’t uncommon for family members to refuse to accept the suicide of a loved one. These kinds of assertions were useless to them, as coldhearted as that might be to admit. But it also happened to follow the same path they were tentatively considering. “Did you tell the police that? Back then?”

  “They ignored me.” The words were loaded with contempt.

  “Okay, tell us, then,” Mia interjected. “What happened?”

  “Asher saw something.” The lines on Martha’s face deepened as she scowled, everything about her an unmovable fortress. Whether she was right, she had certainly convinced herself that she was. “Something he shouldn’t have seen. They were trying to shut him up. They did shut him up.”

  Izzy tried to follow her. “Who are ‘they’? What did he see?”

  “Don’t know,” Martha said, fast and clipped.

  “Why do you think someone was trying to shut him up, then?”

  She rubbed a thumb over her knuckle, her eyes on her hands. “Haven’t seen Bix Bell since before that night.”

  Bix. As in Charles and Bix, as in Monroe’s mother. Again, Izzy was able to plead ignorance.

  “I was under the impression they’d left the island in the days following the deaths.”

  “That’s what everyone thinks,” Martha said. “But they used a private boat. No one actually saw them leave together.”

  “Wait, did you say ‘before’?” Mia asked, latching onto the part Izzy had missed. “You mean ‘after,’ right? Bix was there, at the lighthouse.”

  “Says who?” Martha lifted her thick, silver brows.

  That shut Mia up, and Izzy was no help there, either.

  Martha leaned forward and swiveled her jaw once, and then again. “Everyone assumes they saw her. But no one actually did. Because she wasn’t there. The cops only talked to Charles Bell.”

  “My mother didn’t go to the lighthouse, either,” Mia said, almost to herself, her focus turned inward.

  “Yes, but I bought a hammer from your mama three days ago at the shop,” Martha countered. “No one on this island has seen Bix since before that night. You know that old house on the Bell land where the workers used to stay? It’s just sitting there. Abandoned. Makes you wonder why.”

  Izzy was going to need her to spell it out. “You think Charles killed Bix, and Asher saw it happen?”

  “That boy saw something,” Martha answered with the same kind of tactic as Patty—not a confirmation, not a denial, but an evasion.

  And this, this right here was what had Izzy worried about, with starting down this path. There was a reason fringe conspiracy theories didn’t go mai
nstream. Coming from Martha, the scenario sounded outlandish and leaned heavily on that wisp of an idea that Bix’s possible murder and Asher’s and Monroe’s deaths were connected.

  “Did Asher tell you something?” Mia asked.

  Martha’s lips pursed. “No, but he came home earlier that day all pale and sweaty. Shaking a little. Had a black eye and wouldn’t say where he’d gotten it.”

  Mia shifted beside Izzy, straightening. Something she hadn’t remembered?

  “He’d been in a fight?”

  “Hmm, yup.”

  “And had he been acting odd at all in the days leading up to that one?” Izzy asked.

  “No, he was right as rain until then.” Martha nodded once as if to punctuate that. “Then the black eye.”

  But. But why would Charles have given him a black eye? Even if Asher had seen something he shouldn’t have. That didn’t make any sense.

  The details weren’t adding up. They were spiraling here.

  “All right, I’m going to give you my card,” Mia said. “You let me know if you think of anything else.”

  Martha took it but didn’t look away from Mia’s face. “You don’t believe me.”

  Mia paused, and then more tactfully than perhaps Izzy would have managed: “We’re just collecting information, ma’am. Haven’t reached any conclusions yet.”

  “You think I’m crazy, just like the rest of them,” Martha accused, her voice rising.

  Izzy went for the Achilles’ heel. “Do you have proof that any of this happened?”

  The answer was obviously no, but Martha didn’t put voice to it. Instead, she tapped the card against her thigh. “Find what happened to Bix Bell. You’ll have your evidence then.”

  For all they knew, Bix was sipping champagne back in Boston with her ridiculously rich husband. But Izzy plastered on a small smile and nodded. Mia murmured something as equally noncommittal, and then they were back outside, the storm gathering force behind them.

  “I don’t know which way that swayed me, to be honest,” Izzy admitted as they started back toward Edie’s house.

  Mia barely seemed to hear her. “I would have known if he’d gotten in a fight that day.”

  “But you don’t remember any of it.” Not that Mia needed to be reminded of that. Still Izzy felt compelled to say it. For the record.

  Mia’s shoulder hunched up toward her ears. “I would have known.”

  “You think she’s mistaken? Getting confused?”

  Glancing back once, Mia shook her head. “I think maybe we should focus on the murder we’re trying to solve instead of hunting new ones out.”

  Izzy didn’t say anything further. But it didn’t escape her that just like Martha, just like Patty, Mia hadn’t answered the question.

  CHAPTER NINE

  MIA

  The words jumbled, spilled into each other, gentle curves knocking against hard edges, slipping past boundaries, bleeding together. The letters were random for as much as Mia tried to make sense of the gibberish scribbled in the tight lines of the reporter’s notebooks.

  “Shorthand,” she murmured, tapping the smudged writing. Left-handed. Twist would have been one of those people with perpetual ink stains smeared against the outside of his palm.

  Izzy glanced up from the journal she’d taken from the pile. They were sitting at the small laminate table in Mama’s kitchen, the same one Mia had done homework on decades ago. There was still that crack running along one side, as thin as a spider’s thread. Mia rubbed at it with the pad of her thumb.

  They had barely made it back from Martha’s before the first flakes fell. Snow alone wouldn’t have been enough to put Mia off the investigation, but the storm that followed was brutal. Hail pinged against the windows; wind battered all the seams of the house until it groaned beneath the pressure; lightning sliced into the darkness behind Mia’s closed eyes.

  “Same here,” Izzy said, holding up some random pages as proof. “But I think there’s a pattern to them.”

  There had to be. What mattered was if they could see it or not.

  The brain so dearly loved patterns, with a tricky tendency to draw lines where lines shouldn’t exist. When there was a lack of solid evidence on a cold case, those leaps were needed to push past brick walls that had blocked others.

  But there was danger there, as well, a vulnerability to having an open mind be exploited. It was like those children’s games, the ones that came on diner menus, the dots that connected to create an image. A bear, a star, a heart. You could almost see the finished product before even laying crayon to paper.

  What happened, though, when all the dots were in the right place but you drew the wrong image?

  That’s what they were always trying to avoid.

  “There are dates and initials,” Mia finally said. “This one’s from early December, before he got to St. Lucy’s.”

  “Ah, you’re right, good eye.” Izzy looked down at her own notebook, a line digging into the otherwise smooth skin between her brows. “This one’s November.”

  “We need January.” Mia pulled half the stack closer. “Or mid to late December.”

  “Yup.” Izzy didn’t quite roll her eyes at the obvious statement, but it was there in her voice.

  Mia ignored it, her gaze tracing over the swooping scrawl until she found what she was looking for. There. January. Twist would have been on the island then.

  “Got it,” Mia said.

  “When was it that you saw him outside the station?”

  The way Izzy asked the question was casual, almost like it was an afterthought.

  “Late October? Maybe. Sometime in the fall.”

  Izzy’s lips pinched and then relaxed, a quick flash of an emotion gone before it caught fully. “Maybe I’ll try to find the one around that time.”

  “If it’s there,” Mia said, off-balance. The man’s face had already begun disintegrating in her memory, the distinct features blurring. They’d been fresh in that moment of shock, of seeing him pale and bloated, of recognizing him when she shouldn’t have. But the nose, the slope of his forehead, his jawline—it had all faded along with the adrenaline.

  Now, she just remembered being cold, pulling her jacket tighter, keeping her eyes on the indistinct figure that stayed a shadow until the headlights had swept across his face. They’d locked eyes across the street that first time.

  The way fear had slipped into her bloodstream, though, that she remembered well. The animal instinct that said run before her brain could question why. Something about him had set off her alarms.

  Mia pressed her thumb against the thin skin of her temple, running it in circles along the hard edge of bone. It was then Mama set a mug of tea at her elbow.

  Nodding her thanks, Mia curled her fingers around the thick cup and blew on the steam. “Did you ever talk to him, Mama?”

  “The reporter?” Mama’s back was already to them while she scrubbed at a pan in the sink, her shoulders hunched. “Saw him a couple times.”

  Izzy looked up from the pages she’d been flipping through but didn’t interrupt.

  “Sammy said he was poking around the lighthouse,” Mia prodded.

  The pan clattered against the metal drying rack, the sound loud and abrupt. “Might have been.”

  “Anywhere else he was looking around?” Mia asked.

  “Mm-hmm.” Mama plunged her hands back in the soapy water. “Went up to the Bell mansion a bunch of times.”

  The Bell mansion. The lighthouse. These were the dots lining up into a shape, one Mia could see but didn’t want to. Mama must have seen it as well.

  It keeps coming back to that summer, doesn’t it?

  “Is the mansion empty now?”

  This time a bowl rattled against the pan. “Nope.”

  Izzy’s lips parted, a question in her sharp gaze. But after catching Mia’s eyes, she swallowed whatever she had been about to ask.

  Mia was thankful. It wouldn’t do well to remind Mama there was an outside
r with them.

  “Who took it over?”

  There was a pause. And then Mama stripped off her washing gloves, slapping them against the counter. She turned, thick arms folded across her barrel chest. Mia didn’t know what was coming, but she knew she wasn’t going to like it.

  “Lacey Bell moved in about three years ago,” Mama finally said.

  Mia inhaled, the swift slide of air passing her chapped lips loud enough to catch Izzy’s attention. “Lacey came back?”

  Her mother’s eyes were hooded, any thoughts there protected by a sweep of lashes. “Three years ago,” she repeated.

  Sliding a finger against the rim of her mug kept Mia’s hand busy so that it wouldn’t find the faded white scar along her wrist.

  Once upon a time Lacey Bell had sworn she was never returning to St. Lucy’s. Mia could see her still, her eyes wet, her glossy black hair tangled around her red, splotchy face.

  “What does she do now?” Mia asked, bereft of any other questions from the sheer shock of it.

  For the first time since they’d started the conversation, Mama’s face relaxed, her lips pulling back in amused derision.

  “She’s an artist.” Mama made quotes around the last word. “You ask me, she’s lucky she’s rich.”

  “Does she actually sell anything?”

  Shrugging, Mama turned back to the sink, the tension that had held them locked in the moment fading from her stance. “She was featured in a fancy art magazine a few months back. Still runs those hippie communities in the summer.”

  “Really?” Mia asked, surprised. “Lacey started them again? The residencies.”

  Mama grunted her affirmative. She’d never been a fan of the artists who flooded in during the warmer months.

  “Are there any up there now?”

  “One or two cycle through,” Mama said after a pause that sounded reflective rather than loaded with the deliberate obtuseness she’d been employing earlier. She shrugged and started for the hallway, clearly done with the questioning. “They never last long.”

  Mia and Izzy stared after her retreating back for a long moment before a sharp ding cut through the silence Mama had left behind. Izzy jumped and then laughed in that way that released nerves sound.