Black Rock Bay

by Brianna Labuskes

  Izzy dismissed the apology. “You think it was a pact. You think they killed themselves.”

  Lacey hugged herself, huffed out a breath. “I mean, they talked about some weird stuff. Whenever we were drinking. Or the boys were getting high.”

  “Weird stuff like what?”

  “Death? But also living forever. Monroe spent too much time around the artists. She just talked that way to sound cool to them,” Lacey said, and Izzy refrained from pointing out that Lacey was now part of that group, her look complete with dark clothing, pale skin, and an asymmetrical bob. “I think Asher and Mia took her too seriously, though. They kind of wound each other up or something.”

  “But not Cash?”

  Lacey smiled, that same one that she’d been wearing earlier while looking at the kid’s chubby cheeks. “He’s always been the sensible one.”

  Which is how Izzy would have described Mia before this. “Quiet” was the first word that came to mind. But “sensible” was right up there, too. She couldn’t align that woman with the one Lacey was describing. But what did Izzy know?

  “Mia seems good now,” Lacey said as if Izzy had spoken her thoughts out loud. It was jarring. “More stable.”

  Which was an odd thing to say. Izzy lifted her brows, and Lacey flushed pink. “Not that she wasn’t . . .”

  Izzy waited, but Lacey seemed to be done. She debated telling the woman about heading to the mainland, giving Lacey her cell in case anything cropped up while she was gone. But the last time someone tried to leave after they’d been poking around, they’d ended up dead. The fewer people who knew her plans the better.

  Just as Izzy stood up, Lacey’s hand shot out, quick like a snake, her fingers wrapping around Izzy’s wrist.

  When Izzy turned back, Lacey’s eyes were pleading. “I hope I didn’t make you think anything bad about Mia. We were all just . . .” She shrugged. “Young.”

  In that moment, something from one of Izzy’s nights at the bar came back to her. Patty Masterson, talking about Cash and Mia. Lacey’s probably not too happy about Mia being back. It had barely stuck with Izzy at the time; there had been too much other information that needed sorting. But it was there, wedged in beside every other odd thing that had happened in the past few days.

  Izzy shook her head. “You didn’t make me think anything.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  MIA

  Mia found Cash in the middle of the room, surrounded by people who weren’t talking to him. His head was bowed as he stared at the watery white dip and carrots someone must have shoved into his hands. When he looked up, they locked eyes above the chaos that pulsed through the house.

  She pushed off the doorjamb she’d been leaning against and snagged his arm, just above his elbow.

  “Let’s walk,” she said, slowing down only enough to make sure he was following. They pushed through the tight hallway, and people let them, too uncomfortable with the clear grief on Cash’s face to bother him.

  When she hit the porch, she kept going, taking the stairs at a light jog. They were near the port, but she turned left instead of right, heading for a seldom-used pier that jutted out into the black water of the bay. It was calm today, the stillness almost unnerving because she knew a storm hovered on the horizon.

  Cash followed her out along the old planks, both of them skipping over a board that looked loose. Leaning her forearms against one of the last posts, she kept her gaze directed at the ocean instead of him. “I’m sorry,” she finally said. “About your dad.”

  Timid waves lapped at the wood beneath them, and a seaplane’s engine rumbled overhead. There was a shuffle behind her as Cash settled up against the post next to hers.

  “Want to know the worst part?” he asked, and she cut her eyes to his face. It was softer than she would have guessed, his jaw relaxed, his shoulders loose. He was staring out toward the nothingness that was interrupted by a single tanker that was moving so slowly it seemed to have stopped.

  She made a questioning sound in the back of her throat to get him to continue, and still he didn’t look at her.

  “The relief.”

  “Cash,” she said on an exhale.

  He laughed, just once and without humor, and blinked too fast for there not to be tears threatening at the corners. “That was my first reaction. Relief. How messed up is that?”

  His hand shook as he brought it up to scrub at his face. She could tell he hadn’t shaved in a few days, his five-o’clock shadow grown out to proper scruff.

  “Most of the time he didn’t even recognize me,” Cash continued when she didn’t move to offer sympathy. It was an odd position to be in. Cash and Earl were both suspects, but they were also family of sorts. Even Earl, with his stiff New England coldness. He had been such an institution on St. Lucy’s. It must have been devastating to watch him deteriorate, lost in the years that had come before.

  As for Cash, Mia was still struggling to reconcile the boy he’d been with the man he’d become. So she didn’t comfort him, didn’t soothe as might have been her instinct back when they’d been growing up. Instead, she kept her distance, her arms tucked beneath her breasts, bearing her weight against the post.

  “You think I’m horrible, don’t you?” Cash asked, a little boy’s vulnerability in his voice, like that moment in Edie’s kitchen. She turned once again to look at him, her chin resting against her shoulder.

  “I think being relieved that your dad’s at rest makes you human.” She could give him that at least.

  “What about the other stuff?”

  She raised a brow in question.

  “I’m on your suspect list,” he said.

  “Everyone on the island is on our suspect list,” Mia shot back, though it wasn’t quite true.

  Cash shifted, shoving his bare hands into his pockets. They were both underdressed for the weather, as she hadn’t stopped to grab her gear. They wouldn’t last on the pier much longer.

  “Dad was.”

  A suspect. She didn’t confirm it, just watched the water particles in her breath freeze into visibility.

  “You think he killed himself because of it,” Cash said, and again that wasn’t quite true. She thought he was killed because of it. She wasn’t sold on the fact that he was the one who did it. That was a bit more than semantics.

  “You said he was living in the past most of the time?” Mia asked. If the deaths had been weighing on his conscience for the past decade and a half, it could have been the heaviness of them that was dragging him back to that particular summer.

  “Yeah, but not like what you’re thinking,” Cash said. “It was mostly from when we were real young. Babies.”

  There went that theory.

  “What do you think he was apologizing for in his note?” Mia asked. Had he been the father of Monroe’s baby? How had he gotten to the lighthouse so quickly? What had he been doing out in the woods?

  “Being weak.”

  “For killing himself, you mean?” she clarified.

  Cash nodded. It’s not like he would have said anything else, anyway. If he’d suspected his father’s involvement in whatever had gone down, that was.

  “Does Lacey ever talk about it? That night? That summer?” Maybe it was cheap to ask Cash about his girlfriend, but Mia knew Lacey wouldn’t tell her what she was actually thinking herself.

  He slid her a glance from the side of his eye. “Are you asking as Detective Hart?”

  “Some friendly advice. You should always assume you’re on the record with cops, Cash.” Mia pushed at his shoulder. “You know that.”

  “Eh, not much criminal law going on around here.” He shrugged a little, his grin self-deprecating. “Most of what I handle is contracts and wills.”

  They were quiet for a beat. Then he broke. “She’s had a couple nightmares. ’Bout Monroe, mostly,” Cash said, the words drawn out like he was reluctant. This time the pause was longer. He straightened and paced to the other side of the pier, his back to her. She almost
thought he’d given up talking, but then he sighed. “And her father.”

  Her hand twitched in her pocket. Charles Bell. “Does she talk about him at all?”

  “Mostly about her mother,” Cash said, rolling his shoulders into himself. “Lacey adored her.”

  “Adored?” Past tense.

  Cash seemed to realize. He swung around. “She just . . . she doesn’t talk to them anymore. Cut off contact,” he said.

  “But she’s living in their house.” Mia tilted her head to make it a question.

  “No.” Cash shook his head. “It’s hers. Her grandmother deeded it to Lacey in her will. The grandmother bought it for Charles and Bix in the first place.”

  “So, legally, she could keep them away from it,” Mia said, and that made more sense as to what Lacey was doing back on the island. Perhaps it was the only safe haven available to her. Especially if she’d cut off her parents’ financial help.

  “Do you ever think about it?” Mia asked, because it was cold and she was tired and this was the first time since she’d been back that she felt like she was seeing Cash. The boy she remembered and not the violent hothead, not the man lying with every breath. “That summer.”

  “Mia.”

  The way her name caught in his throat almost made her wave off her question. But she just waited instead.

  “No,” he sighed. “I try not to. It was . . . I lost everyone, you know?”

  Her, Asher. Monroe, even, though she hadn’t thought they’d been close.

  “Did Earl tell you that night?” she asked, because she was also still a cop, down to her core.

  “Didn’t wake me up till he got home. It was early.”

  Had Earl been cleaning up the crime scene?

  “You were gone before I even—” Cash cut himself off, swallowing hard.

  They’d never said goodbye, that was true. But of all the things she’d worried about in the past fifteen years, it had been pretty low on her list. They had been high school sweethearts, built to fall apart.

  But they’d been best friends before that. Maybe not like her and Asher. Still. He’d run through the woods beside her, just like Asher had. Cleaned up cuts and made up adventures and patted her hand when she cried.

  She saw a mirror of the memories in his eyes, glassy and damp as they were. He reached out, his fingers curling around her wrist, his thumb pressed into the jut of bone there. At first she resisted but then gave into his gentle tug, landing against his chest, her arms circling his waist as one big hand pressed against her spine.

  Burying his head in her hair, he breathed in. It was a rough inhale, all jagged and shaky, like he was controlling a sob. She barely moved, just rocked, slightly, into his familiar warmth, that same feeling she’d had when she’d first seen the port coming into view. Nostalgia that was burned at the edges.

  Home.

  Did you kill the reporter? She wanted to ask it, even as he held her, even as his chin dug into the hard plane of her shoulder blade. Did your father kill Monroe?

  Mia let it go on for another ten seconds before she stepped back. His arms fell away without protest, and awkwardness bloomed in the space where their bodies had been.

  She licked dry lips and shifted even farther away from Cash, shoving her hands in her pockets.

  A blush rose on the sharp slopes of his cheekbones, and he shifted back onto his heels. “Sorry,” he said on a cough. “Um. I better get back.”

  Nodding seemed wiser than trying to say anything.

  “You can, uh, you can come look around again,” Cash said, meek now. It was a dramatic change from when he’d plucked her from the ground by her sweatshirt. “At Dad’s stuff. I don’t care anymore. There’s nothing left to protect.”

  Her stomach contracted. “You were protecting something before?”

  He lifted one shoulder. “Don’t know. Maybe. I didn’t want to look.”

  “Cash, you can’t just . . . That’s hindering an investigation.” She sighed.

  “You gonna arrest me?” He actually smirked at that, a little mischievous. He’d flitted through more emotions in the past ten minutes than he’d had the whole time she’d been back. The ground felt unsteady beneath her feet.

  Might have to. But she didn’t say it. “I’ll come by in the morning.”

  He’d already started down the pier, but paused at that. “Just you?”

  “Izzy’s headed back to the mainland,” she said without thinking, lulled into the easy rhythm they’d established.

  “Leaving you here? By yourself?” The sharpness of his tone had her looking up, reevaluating what she’d just revealed.

  “I’ll be okay,” she said, an echo of her reassurance to Izzy.

  The wrinkle didn’t smooth from his forehead as he glanced back to the house, his gaze lingering there before returning to her. “Just. Be careful?”

  She watched him walk away, and then a movement caught the corner of her eye, a shadow flickering into life before it was gone again. She looked up toward the second floor of the Bishop house, where she’d thought she’d seen something. But there was nothing in the window. Not even a silhouette.

  The sky was tinted orange brown by early afternoon. Mia stood at the window as Izzy shoved clothes into her duffel behind her.

  “Am I going to make it?” Izzy asked, breathy and frantic.

  “We have an hour, maybe,” Mia said. “Quinn will get you out of here.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  Mia turned to find Izzy on the floor, patting under the couch with her good arm. “I’m going over to the Bishops’ in the morning. To sort through Earl’s things.”

  Izzy’s head popped up comically fast. “Mr. Dark, Handsome, and Angry is cool with that?”

  “Yes,” Mia said on a laugh. “Invited me actually.”

  “Jeez, take your gun, okay?” Izzy rolled her eyes and then ducked back down.

  “I don’t think he killed Robert Twist.”

  “Why?” Izzy called. “He had motive. Covering up for his father, right?”

  Mia nodded but then shook her head, not caring that Izzy couldn’t see her. “Earl had severe dementia. Nothing he said would have really held up in court.”

  “That’s . . . actually a good point,” Izzy said, sitting back on her heels. She seemed to have abandoned whatever she’d thought she’d lost on the floor. “Covering for someone else?”

  “Who else would he be invested in enough?” Mia asked.

  “The girlfriend?” Izzy shrugged. “Miss Pouty Artist.”

  “I am going to miss your witticisms,” Mia said dryly. “What was my nickname when you met me?”

  “Ms. Badass, thank you very much.” Izzy winked, and Mia knew she was lying.

  “I don’t know.” Mia returned them to their topic. “That doesn’t seem right, either. Lacey’s scared, too.”

  “So is Jimmy Roarke,” Izzy said, and when Mia just stared, Izzy pushed up to her feet. “You know . . . people seem scared in general. That’s usually not a good sign.”

  Mia sighed. “Maybe when you find the Bells.” She didn’t finish that thought. Who knew if Izzy would actually turn up anything useful.

  Izzy wrinkled her nose. “Do you think Bix is buried somewhere on the island?”

  “Izzy!” Mia laughed her surprise.

  “What? Martha Lowe presented a very reasonable case,” Izzy said. “Charles Bell. Even his name sounds villainous. Maybe she’s still in the mansion. Hitchcock-style.”

  They both grimaced.

  “Or under the floorboards of that abandoned house up there,” Mia said, and any and all humor evaporated. The scenario was no longer far-fetched enough to inspire levity. “I’ll swing by and take a look after I’m done at Cash’s tomorrow. As the storm allows.”

  Izzy looked ready to protest the idea, but she seemed to swallow the argument.

  “Oh, and Lacey didn’t seem to be on board with the Monroe pregnant thing,” Izzy said instead. “She didn’t say Cash was lying, but sh
e kind of looked nervous that he’d told us that.”

  “If Monroe found out that day, she might not have told her sister.”

  “True.” Izzy shrugged. “Might have been trying to protect Lacey, too.”

  “She didn’t tell her who she’d been having an affair with, either,” Mia said in agreement with that sentiment. “Maybe didn’t want to get her involved with it.”

  “Or,” Izzy dragged out, “she just didn’t want to tell her baby sister about her love life.”

  Mia’s lips tipped up. “That, too.”

  “Oh, before I forget, I got an update about that artist Peter guy from a uniform,” Izzy said, slapping at her pocket. “But it wouldn’t open because of whatever the hell is brewing out there.” She pointed to the window. “I’ll let you know what it says once I get internet back.”

  “Might be nothing,” Mia said, though it didn’t feel like nothing. So many pieces, where did they all fit?

  “Enough weirdness to warrant checking out.” Izzy shrugged. “And, of course, the fact that he’s pretending he’s big enough to go by one name.”

  Mia rolled her eyes, but she was actually going to miss Izzy’s relaxed humor. She had a way of breaking tension, which kept Mia just on the right side of sane. “I let slip that you were leaving the island,” Mia admitted to be on the safe side.

  That got Izzy’s attention back on her. “To who?”

  This was the part Izzy wasn’t going to like. “Cash.”

  Izzy’s eyes narrowed on Mia’s face. Her hands were on her hips, and Mia had the distinct feeling of being studied.

  “You really don’t think Cash had anything to do with any of this, huh?” Izzy swept her hand around, seemingly in an attempt to capture the past, the present.

  Did she? No. But there was nothing there to back up that gut feeling—just the vague sense that something was off with that picture.

  It was too easy.

  She could see it: Earl Bishop has an affair with Monroe Bell. Monroe gets pregnant, and Earl loses it, kills her. Stages a suicide pact to cover it up. That part was easy. Suicide was rampant in these parts. Years later, a reporter shows up and starts snooping around. With Earl’s dementia, it would just take one wrong word to bring down the man who had been one of the town’s most respected leaders. And for what? An outsider? Because that’s what Monroe Bell had been. Cash takes care of the reporter. Jimmy Roarke is scared because Earl called him out that night to help cover up the crime. Lacey’s scared because Cash has been acting off for however long the reporter has been in town and it’s raising red flags for her. Cash was the intruder who shot Izzy, but it had been an attempt to keep them from finding out about Earl’s interview more than an actual attack. It had been a flesh wound, a distraction while he slipped out into the night. Earl kills himself over the guilt of it all, which breaks Cash. He figures let Mia find what she will, let the chips fall and all that.