When Izzy stepped out into the hushed world, she drew in a breath, her rib cage expanding, rung by rung, as she tasted the hint of salt against her tongue. The muscles at the top of her neck unlocked; her teeth, her jaw, her fingers unclenched.
There was something inherently uncomfortable about being on St. Lucy’s. Izzy felt out of step, like she was tripping on cracks, like there were rules and rituals that everyone knew but that she’d never been taught.
The silence that came in the wake of the storm was a relief, was a break from the weight of holding herself so tensely.
The trees were stark silhouettes against the Armageddon-esque orange-and-brown-tinted sky. The world was fresh and yet bleak at once, the pretty coating of snow simultaneously obscuring any ugliness beneath while enhancing the end-of-the-word isolation of the island.
Izzy started down what would be the path toward the bar, her boots sinking in to her knees, her jeans damp and cold against her skin in an instant. Three steps later and she was regretting the rash decision to leave the house.
But she couldn’t go back now with her tail between her legs and face a warm, dry, and, more important, smug Mia after only a few minutes of braving the outdoors. She trudged forward, the snow, which was now the consistency of wet cement, grasping at her each time she tried to lift her legs free.
Panic tickled her throat at the thought of coming back up the hill. This had been such a bad idea. But there was light up ahead, a savior in the darkness, and so she pressed forward.
It took her another ten minutes to get to the bar, despite the short distance she had left to cover.
The room wasn’t as empty as she’d been expecting. A few men were perched on stools, just like before, and a family with a couple of kids had taken over some of the center tables. Pub food was piled high as little hands grabbed for chicken fingers and fries and mozzarella sticks. Quinn, the pilot, was in a back booth with another woman Izzy hadn’t met, and Patty wiggled her fingers at Izzy from her place in front of the dartboard. An older guy was taking his turn, and Patty was pushing up her cleavage to try to distract him. Izzy smiled and raised a hand in greeting.
Instead of joining her, though, Izzy started toward the bar. The same man was working the taps again, his broad shoulders stretching out a simple black tee. His arms were covered in a rainbow of fading tattoos that danced under the lights as he slid a wineglass across the wood to one of the customers.
When the person reached out to grab the stem, Izzy realized it was Lacey Bell, in the flesh. The opportunity was too tempting to pass up. Izzy settled in beside her at the bar, keeping one seat between them.
“Eagle Rare.” The bartender pointed at her, already grabbing for the bottle. Izzy didn’t have the heart to tell him it wasn’t her preference. It was like when she’d been nice about a ceramic frog her grandmother had bought her for Christmas one year, and the next thing Izzy knew, everyone in her life started buying them for her. She’d ended up with a sizable collection that she’d felt too guilty to sell online. So now she was just stuck with hundreds of frogs.
Lacey hadn’t looked up during the exchange. She was bent over a bit, her choppy, hipster bob falling in front of her face, hiding it. Once again, she was dressed in an oversize and clearly expensive sweater along with leggings, topped off with a chunky necklace and elaborate dangling earrings.
Her hands were petite but sturdy, with cuts along the knuckles, and chipped black nail polish. She was sketching something on a napkin carelessly.
When she was finished, Lacey pushed it over to Izzy without having once looked up or acknowledging her presence. Izzy grabbed the rough drawing as Lacey lifted the wineglass to her mouth. A glossy red smear coated the rim when she set it back on the bar.
“Monroe,” Lacey said, breaking whatever game of chicken they’d been playing. She finally flicked a glance toward Izzy, her dark makeup playing up her eyes.
Izzy picked up the napkin, tilted it so the low ambient light turned the loose, overlapping lines into something resembling a girl’s face.
The hair was long and straight, black by default of the pen, but judging from Lacey’s coloring, it had probably been that way when she was alive. Most of the other features were similar to Lacey’s, as well—a fox face, with a pointed chin and nose, high cheekbones, and a delicate neck. But Monroe’s lips were plush, too big for her face, and her eyes sloped down, a seductress in training.
Or at least that’s how Lacey had portrayed her.
“Pretty,” Izzy said, opening her fingers so the napkin drifted in slow swoops back down to land on the bar.
“She was,” Lacey agreed easily, swirling the ruby liquid against the sides of her glass. “We were born exactly fourteen months, two weeks, and fourteen hours apart from each other.”
“Nearly Irish twins,” Izzy said, and Lacey’s lips twitched.
“I hated that she was older,” she said. “When I was younger at least. If she was still here, I’d probably never shut up about it.”
“I’m sorry.” Izzy wondered how long it had been since Lacey had been forced to think about Monroe so much. And here they were stomping through everything that must have been grieved and buried and somewhat healed. Now Lacey was sketching her dead sister on cheap bar napkins.
Lacey played with the pack of cigarettes, her nail picking at the seams of the box, before she tapped it against her thigh and then brought it up to spin on the wood again. So fidgety. After a few seconds, she seemed to make some decision. “Max, I’m lighting up, and you can kiss my ass if you tell me not to.”
“Hey,” the bartender dragged out the protest as he pointed to a THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING sign hung up behind him.
“You want to call the police on me? Oh, wait, they’re already here.” Lacey tipped her head toward Izzy while digging for a lighter in her little black bag, the cigarette between her lips, the red of them shocking against the white of the paper.
Izzy shrugged when Max looked her way. He grumbled, but when Lacey just raised a perfectly tailored brow and blew smoke out of the corner of her mouth, he rolled his eyes and turned away.
“Thanks,” Lacey said, tugging in another hit of the nicotine. As a former smoker, Izzy knew the way it slithered into your veins and made everything that had been ricocheting around go still.
They sat in silence, which was surprisingly companionable rather than awkward, Izzy working through her Eagle Rare that had gotten better by the fourth or fifth sip, Lacey with her vice of choice.
“We both had so much blackmail material on each other.” Lacey once again was the one to break first. Izzy recognized the need to talk, the need for someone else to know the person you were missing, even though it was impossible for them to do so. “If either of us had started snitching, we would never have seen daylight again.”
“I thought your parents were hippie types,” Izzy said, keeping her eyes on the rows of bottles in front of her. It seemed wise not to look at Lacey, not to startle her when she was talking so freely.
“Mom was,” Lacey said, and the affection there was clear. “Dad, not so much.”
That’s what Mia had said, as well. Bix and Charles Bell, a case of opposites attract. Or maybe not.
“Your father was strict with you two?”
Lacey laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Strict. Yeah.” She dropped the rest of the cigarette into her almost empty wineglass and pushed it away.
“Lacey,” Max muttered, but he blushed when she winked at him.
“Sorry, Max,” she said, a throaty purr turned even raspier from the smoke. “Another merlot?”
The tension in Lacey’s shoulders seemed to validate Ellen’s overheard conversation between Jimmy and Cash—that not only had Charles Bell been contacting Lacey but that it was contentious enough for Cash to go behind her back to try to find him.
“Why did your parents bring you out that summer?” Izzy asked, while Max reached for the open bottle. “You’d never come with them before, right?”
Max also topped Izzy off before leaving them alone once more. Lacey waited until he was at the other side of the bar.
“Monroe was going to be a senior in high school that next year,” Lacey said, her eyes on the sketch. “Mom wanted her to work on her painting, and Dad wanted her to have something to write about for her college essay.”
“And then you met the locals,” Izzy said, trying to imagine what that would have been like for a fifteen-year-old girl. Even as a grown woman, Izzy found everyone on the island intimidating.
Lacey met her eyes in the mirror that ran along the back of the bar. It was an odd sensation, a distorted connection that was tempered by aging glass.
“Monroe thought it was funny,” Lacey said. “To play with them. Asher, Mia, Cash. She treated them like dolls. I thought it was funny at first, too. You know how teenagers are.”
Her fingers were back to tapping, scratching, pulling at the hem of her sweater, sliding along the stem of her glass. Izzy almost wanted to light a cigarette herself just watching the fussing.
“What happened?” Izzy asked, not really knowing what she was expecting. The question was so broad, so sweeping, it could mean anything. What happened that made it not funny? What happened to Monroe? What happened that night? Izzy would take any of the above.
“Monroe wasn’t mean,” Lacey said.
Dot’s bitter voice echoed in Izzy’s memory. That . . . that Bell girl.
“Okay.”
Lacey shifted on the stool, bringing one leg up beneath her. “She wasn’t. It was just . . .”
Izzy didn’t fill the silence. There was no quicker way to shut someone up than by doing just that.
“She got bored quickly,” Lacey finally said. “Asher was so easy for her, too. Didn’t even pretend not to be. I thought maybe Mia and them had some weird triangle thing going on.”
They both laughed, nervous, because Izzy didn’t know if there was any truth to that, and Lacey probably didn’t, either.
“But Mia was always moony eyed over Cash.” Lacey smiled, and it wasn’t possessive. Her gaze was on the bar, but Izzy wondered if she was somewhere else. There was a softness to her voice that betrayed her as lost in a memory.
Izzy finally decided to poke a little. “And that made you the fifth wheel?”
Lacey shook her head. “I already told you I kissed plenty of boys that summer, too.”
There was a smug tilt to the corners of her mouth, which smoothed out as she took a rather large swallow of the wine. She slid Izzy a glance while doing so, her head tipped back, her eyes hooded, her throat exposed. Seductive, but also clearly performative.
Izzy looked away. “So what kind of artist was Peter?”
“Sculptor,” Lacey said easily.
“What did you think about him?”
Lacey’s eyes narrowed, her gaze suddenly intent on Izzy’s face. “You’re interested in him. You and Mia, both.”
Izzy lifted a shoulder, feigning her nonchalance. When someone kept popping up in an investigation, there was usually a reason for it. Before Ellen’s interview, Izzy had been on the fence about whether he’d been important. That had sealed it, though.
“When we work these cases, sometimes it’s easier to eliminate options,” she said. These people weren’t the only ones who could lie. “Helps narrow the field.”
“Is everyone on the island a suspect, then?” Lacey asked, batting her heavy lashes, playing at coquettish. “Even me?”
Your boyfriend is, at least. Izzy just smiled, though, keeping it relaxed. “It’s good to start with a broader net and winnow it down.”
Lacey laughed, throaty and unconcerned despite the act she’d just put on. “You’ll do fine here, Detective. No one can give a straight answer on St. Lucy’s, either.”
“You moved back here, though,” Izzy commented, careful to keep any accusation from her voice.
But the subject alone was enough to shut Lacey down. Her fidgeting ceased, and she angled her body away from Izzy, her foot sliding down to the lower rung of the barstool, ready to flee. “Yes.”
“That must have been . . . hard.”
Lacey shifted even farther away. “Not everything here is tainted, you know.”
It seemed like it would be, though. Mia hadn’t come back since that night. Even if she wasn’t showing it, being back was difficult for her. If Izzy knew anything, she knew that much. But maybe living on the island numbed some of the pain, layered new memories over the ones that were so ragged.
Before Izzy could say anything else, a door slammed in the back, a loud crack ripping through the buzz of low conversation.
If Izzy hadn’t been watching closely, she’d have missed Lacey flinch. But Izzy had been, and she saw it. She saw it, and she saw Lacey’s fingers tremble against the stem of her glass. And when Lacey looked over, she was blinking too fast, her pupils eating up the color in her eyes.
Izzy held up her palms, because in her experience frightened people like to see what you are doing with your hands. “It was only the door, Lacey.”
Lacey sucked in a deep breath, her chest shuddering on the inhale, and then she laughed, and it was too bright, too high like tin wind chimes. “I’m so jumpy. Always have been. Silly of me.”
But now the woman was in classic defensive mode, her shoulders hunched, her arms crossed in front of her, each hand holding on to the opposite elbow. Making herself small, protecting organs.
“Lacey . . .” Izzy couldn’t not say something.
Predictably, it sent Lacey running. She smiled, a twist of lips that was more concerning than reassuring, and slipped off the stool. Lacey was already zipping up her coat by the time Izzy realized she was about two seconds from leaving.
“You don’t have to go,” Izzy said, though she knew it was useless.
Waving a hand once more at her empty spot, at the napkin, at Izzy, Lacey shrugged. “Sorry for . . . you know. Have a nice night, Izzy Santiago.”
Izzy thought that was going to be it, until Lacey took a step closer, meeting Izzy’s eyes. The flight reaction had mostly faded into resignation, the delicate skin beneath her eyes revealing her exhaustion. “Seriously. Don’t waste your time worrying about me. I’m not worth it.”
“Everyone is worth worrying about,” Izzy said.
Lacey’s eyes traced over Izzy’s face, and then she looked past her to the exit.
“Not me.”
Izzy snagged her nearly empty glass on her way toward the back of the bar.
“Hey, sugar,” Patty greeted when Izzy sidled up beside her. The woman was playing herself at darts. “Want a go?”
“Nah, you cleaned me out,” Izzy joked.
Patty hooted and then went back to lining herself up just right. “You want some gossip on her then?” As Patty asked, she threw a thumb over her shoulder toward the exit Lacey had just fled through.
“You have any for me?”
“Not really, no.” Patty lifted one shoulder. “She keeps mostly to herself. Dating Cash Bishop, though you already know that.”
“Yup.”
Patty clicked her tongue. “Lacey’s probably not too happy about Mia being back.”
“The ex in town,” Izzy agreed easily, without giving anything up herself. If she had to guess, she’d say Patty was on a fishing expedition to figure out if Mia and Lacey were about to catfight over Cash. So predictable and disappointing. “What can you tell me about Sammy B.?”
Patty’s hand paused, just before release. She lowered her arm and turned to Izzy. “Thought I cleaned you out?” There was a mercenary glint in her eyes, but behind it was interest, confusion. Izzy had surprised her with the question.
“Put it on my tab?” Izzy asked lightly. She’d pull her badge out if she had to, but she didn’t want to be forced into that.
Something must have shown on her face, though, because Patty’s lips curved up. “All right, sugar. Not much to tell there, either. Nice kid. Left to go to school in Boston but came home as often as he could during
it. Moved here a few years back.”
“Dating anyone?” Izzy said, playing dumb.
Patty slid her a look. “What do you think?”
“Ellen?” Izzy asked.
“Dramatic, those two.” Patty waggled her brows, and something sparked in Izzy’s gut. “Like wet cats when they fought. But then the next minute, they’d be canoodling in the diner’s storage room.”
“Word on the street is that the reporter got coffee with Ellen, though.”
“Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”
“So one of those fights caught for good?”
Patty popped a hip. “Now that you mention it, those did die off a while ago.”
Perhaps around the summer when Ellen said Sammy had started getting distant.
Izzy hummed low in her throat.
“Did you know Peter while he was here?” Izzy changed the subject. There was a lot to think about with Sammy Bowdoin and Ellen Baxter, and she didn’t quite know where to dive in.
“That artsy guy who stayed with Lacey?” Patty tilted her head. “Seemed fine. Didn’t make waves.”
“Was he . . . ‘getting coffee’ with anyone on the island?”
Patty laughed. “Think a couple gals were nosing around, but got the impression they were barking up the wrong tree, get my drift?”
Izzy nodded. “Were you here when the Bells still came in the summers?”
Once again, Patty remained unruffled by the non sequitur. “Course, sugar. The Bells were lovely. Bit strange. But lovely.”
Izzy thought about the way Lacey had tensed when talking about Charles. Thought about the conversation Ellen had overheard between Jimmy Roarke and Cash Bishop. “Were they?”
“You want to know if either of them was ‘getting coffee’ with anyone on the island?” Patty made the question seem ridiculous, but Izzy nodded anyway. There were threads she was collecting, and sometimes her own brain didn’t even realize why until it all came together. Something about the Bells was niggling at her, though. She’d learned a long time ago not to fight it.
Abandoning any pretense that she was playing darts, Patty turned to Izzy fully. “Bix liked to flirt, maybe. But nothing serious.”
Black Rock Bay Page 16
