Debra Burroughs - Paradise Valley 06 - The Harbor of Lies

by Debra Burroughs

  There was a long pause on the line.

  “Emily?”

  “Okay, here it is.” Emily cleared her throat. “Evan left me some money in the safe deposit box he had hidden away and I never told Colin about it. I told him about all the other things I found in the box, but not about the money.”

  “I see.” Isabel’s shoulders relaxed and the hairs on her neck laid back down. The way Emily had led up to it, she thought it would be something worse. Isabel already knew about all of what Emily had found in the box, including the money. Evan had told her about it before his death…but she couldn’t tell Emily that.

  Isabel’s relationship with Evan had been different than Emily’s relationship with him had been. Although, there was a time when Isabel had wanted what they had. She had grown fond of Evan when they’d worked together in DC, and she had begun to develop feelings for him—romantic feelings—but once Evan married Emily, Isabel moved on. After she’d relocated to Paradise Valley, Isabel fell head-over-heels in love with Alex and she found her own version of happiness in that department.

  Long after his funeral, Emily discovered that Isabel had been Evan’s handler, and she’d had to fight her way back into Emily’s good graces for keeping that from her. It would serve no good purpose now to tell Emily that she knew all about the money, so she kept her mouth shut.

  “That’s all you have to say? I see?” Emily’s voice was laced with a distinct level of irritation.

  “I’m not sure what else you want me to say. Do you really think Colin would care that Evan left you some money?”

  “No, but I think he will care that I didn’t disclose it when I was telling him about all the other items, especially since some of those things helped us find Evan’s killer. What if this is blood money?”

  “Oh, Emily. I think you’re getting yourself all worked up over nothing. The money was probably just a nest egg for you. Evan’s line of work was very dangerous and he probably wanted to make sure you were taken care of. I’m sure that’s all it was.”

  Isabel wasn’t really sure, but it seemed to be what Emily needed to hear.

  “Either way, I’ve got some explaining to do,” Emily said.

  “All you have to say is that Evan left you some money and you wanted him to know that. You don’t have to go into the details about where you found it and when.”

  “You want me to hide the truth from him?” Emily’s voice wavered, as if she was near tears.

  “I want you to be happy. You love Colin and he loves you. Don’t screw it up.”

  The sound of sniffles came across the phone line. “But I—”

  “No buts! Colin is offering you something Evan never could.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A normal life. Take it and be happy.”

  ~*~

  Emily waited up for a while after her conversation with Isabel. She thought Colin might call, but he never did. He did eventually text her a sweet love message, wishing her a good night.

  It was just as well. He would have heard the upset in her voice and pressed her to find out what was the matter. After talking with Isabel, she could see her friend’s point—giving Colin all the details about the cash now would only open up something that was better left alone.

  With so much on her mind, Emily tossed and turned for a few hours, until she finally drifted off to a deep sleep.

  At a little after eight in the morning, her phone rang. She lazily reached for it on the nightstand. “Hello,” she answered in a groggy voice, pushing her curls off her face.

  “Wake up, sleepy head,” Colin said cheerfully.

  “Good morning to you too, sweetheart.” Emily’s response carried a touch of sarcasm. He wouldn’t sound so chipper if he’d had the night she’d had.

  “Everything okay with your sister, Babe? She sounded pretty serious last night.”

  “Yeah, it was just something about my dad. I’ll tell you later.” Emily yawned and pushed up on one elbow. “Come by in about an hour and we can go to breakfast.”

  “I’ll let the others know to meet us in the lobby.”

  As soon as Emily hung up, she slung her legs over the side of the bed and rested on the edge of it for a moment, trying to get her eyes to focus before wandering into the bathroom. Sitting there, she thought she smelled a familiar scent. She sniffed the air. Couldn’t be. But yet, she swore she caught a faint whiff of the same aftershave Evan used to wear.

  “Am I going nuts?” She rubbed her eyes, then scrubbed her fingers back and forth through her tousled hair, trying to come fully awake. “Oh, God, this has got to stop.”

  Forcing herself to her feet, she tugged her nightgown over her head and threw it on the bed. “I need a shower and a strong cup of coffee.”

  ~*~

  As the friends filed out of the small café, appropriately named The Breakfast Place, Colin received a phone call from Chief Taylor. With the girls excitedly chatting about the wedding, he stepped away from them to answer it. “Morning, Chief. What’s up?”

  “I heard from the medical examiner this morning. She gave me the official cause of death. It appears that while our victim did suffer blunt-force trauma to the side of his head—which we saw the night he was found—his death was due to the stab wound in his chest.”

  “That makes sense,” Colin replied. “If Ben had been stabbed first, the head wound wouldn’t have bled like it did. His heart would have stopped pumping blood.”

  “Eyah, makes sense.”

  “I know he didn’t die from the blunt-force trauma,” Colin said, “but could the ME identify what Ben was hit with?”

  “No, but she emailed me a picture of the wound. Looks like the killer used something flat, and—not really sure how to describe it—I guess kind of T-shaped or something. Anyway, why does it matter now? The stab wound is what killed him.”

  “It might not mean anything, but I’m hoping it could help us narrow down who our perp might be.”

  “Oh, I get it.”

  Emily came up behind Colin. “Did the ME say anything else?”

  Colin relayed her question to the chief.

  “She said the stab wound was deep but narrow, like a knife with a long skinny blade—like a fish fileting knife, maybe—right in the heart.”

  “Man, in an area like this, there must be hundreds of people who have those,” Colin surmised.

  “Have what?” Emily asked in the background.

  Colin held a finger up to Emily and continued speaking to the chief. “Am I right?”

  “Eyah,” the chief responded.

  “I’d like to get a look at the picture the ME sent over.”

  “I want to come too,” Emily said, tugging on Colin’s sleeve.

  Colin nodded to her. “Maybe together we can figure out what it was, Chief.”

  ~*~

  Alex and Isabel had talked Camille and Maggie into going with them over to Seal Cove to the antique car museum. They invited Emily and Colin too, but they declined because of the case.

  Leaving the door open, Alex climbed into the rental car and turned back to Colin as he pulled his seatbelt on. “Don’t forget you promised to go fishing with me this afternoon. One o’clock, on the dock.” Alex grinned at his own rhyming.

  “One o’clock. I won’t forget.” Colin closed the car door for him.

  As Maggie climbed into the back seat with Camille, Emily bent down to whisper to her friend. “And don’t forget what you need to do this afternoon.”

  Maggie nodded. “Don’t worry, we’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

  “You guys have fun!” Emily called out, waving at her friends as they drove away.

  Casually dressed for the cool weather, Emily and Colin headed on foot to the police station, just a few blocks away. As they approached the entrance, someone called her name and they both turned.

  Whitley Donovan came rushing toward them, her floral dress billowing in the wind. Furiously waving one hand, with the other she held her deep green ca
rdigan snuggly wrapped around her body. In the breeze, her auburn tresses floated around her shoulders.

  When she reached Colin and Emily, she was nearly out of breath. “I’m glad I caught you, Emily.”

  “Calm down,” she urged the young woman, whose cheeks were flushed from exertion. “Take a minute and breathe.”

  Whitley pulled in a few gasps of air and dug a small yellow note out of her dress pocket. She handed Emily the handwritten message that read, simply, this Friday night.

  “I tried your cellphone and left you a voicemail.” Whitley pressed a hand to her chest and sucked in another deep breath.

  Emily looked at her phone and saw the voicemail icon. “It must have been so noisy in the restaurant I didn’t hear it. Sorry.”

  Colin peered over Emily’s shoulder and read the note. “What does that mean?”

  “It means they’re taking the boat out tonight,” Whitley replied. “Caleb said he had to leave this evening to pick up a couple in Boston first thing in the morning. He asked me to check on Momma while he was gone.”

  “Is your mom sick?” Emily asked. It wasn’t like the poor girl didn’t have enough on her mind.

  “Not exactly. She’s in the nursing home. Caleb always goes on Friday nights and spends a little time with her, but not tonight because he has to work.”

  Whitley’s comment reminded Emily of her own father, and a sliver of guilt pricked her. She used to go to visit him whenever she could, but once he didn’t know who she was anymore, what was the point?

  “That can be expensive,” Emily said, speaking from experience.

  “I do what I can, but my brother pays the lion’s share of her staying in that place. That’s why he works the two jobs.”

  “The fishing boat and doing maintenance at the inn, right?” Emily confirmed.

  Colin crossed his arms and his interest seemed to pique. “He’s the maintenance man at the inn?”

  “Oh, didn’t I tell you that?” Emily asked ruefully. “Sorry.”

  “Is that important?” Whitley asked, her green eyes widening.

  “We can’t say at this point.” Colin glanced at Emily and met her gaze. She could see his wheels turning.

  She turned back to Whitley. “Isn’t Caleb afraid he’ll get caught in the storm tonight?”

  Colin’s eyes rounded at the prospect. “What storm?”

  “Reports are saying there’s a storm down south, off the coast of Massachusetts,” Whitley reported, “but the weatherman says it’s turning and going east out into the Atlantic Ocean, so it’s nothing for us to be concerned about. They had been getting hammered down around Boston, but it’s supposed to be calm by mid—Mister, you look worried.”

  Colin rubbed his jaw and drew in a quick breath. “It’s just that my friend and I are going fishing this afternoon.” He cast Emily a wary glance. “The guide said he had a cancellation and cut the price in half if we wanted to go. No wonder we got such a good deal.”

  “Who are you going with?” Whitley asked.

  “Harvey McKenna.”

  “I know Harv, he’s an experienced fisherman. Don’t worry, he wouldn’t take you out if it wasn’t safe. As long as you stay pretty close to the bay, you should be fine.”

  A pendant hanging around Whitley’s neck, on a long silver chain, caught Emily’s attention. It was rectangular with rounded corners and deep blue rhinestones covering the face of it. “That’s a pretty necklace, Whitley. Very unusual.”

  She lifted the pendant and looked down at it with a sad smile. “Ben gave it to me for my birthday.”

  “That was sweet of him,” Emily said.

  Whitley nodded slightly, still holding it. “That was how Ben was.” She paused and stared down at it as she rubbed her finger over the stones. She sighed and then looked up at Emily and Colin. “I’ve got to get back to work.” She began backing away. “Good luck out on the boat!” Casually she waved a hand in the air as she turned and hurried toward the church.

  “Let’s get inside,” Colin glanced up at the cloudy gray sky, hesitation pooling in his eyes, “and see what the chief is up to before it starts raining.”

  Chapter 16

  “Hey, Chief. Anything new we should know about?” Colin asked as he and Emily strolled into the chief’s office.

  Seated at his desk, Chief Taylor was concentrating intently on his computer screen, but he looked up when they came through the door and his expression lightened. “As a matter of fact, there is. I finally got the security footage from the Rock Harbor Inn. Here, take a look-see.”

  Colin and Emily hooked their jackets on the coat rack and came around behind the desk for a good look. The chief clicked on the little arrow icon and the black-and-white images began to play. The video was grainy and dark. Poor lighting and thick tree branches in the way made it difficult to clearly make out what was happening.

  “All I see are two shadowy figures standing there.” Colin squinted and cocked his head. “I assume they’re talking…at least that’s what it kind of looks like between the leaves.”

  “Wait for it,” the chief sang. “There! Did you see that?” He hit the pause button.

  “See what?” Emily quirked one side of her mouth.

  Colin leaned down toward the monitor and rested a hand on the desk. “Did one guy just swing something?”

  “Looks like he clobbered the other guy, maybe?” Emily added.

  “Could be.” The chief wrinkled his nose at the screen. “Let me play it again.” He rewound the video and ran it once more. “Look there,” the chief pointed at the image on the screen, “this guy fell to the ground and the other one ran off.”

  “How can you tell?” Emily asked, but got no reply.

  “What do you think he hit him with?” Colin asked.

  The chief shrugged. “Can’t tell.”

  “Then what happened?” Emily asked.

  “That’s as far as I got before you two showed up.”

  “Could he have already been stabbed by this point?” Emily questioned. “And then the slam to his head finished him off?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Look at him,” Colin said, “he’s just lying there. If that were the case, how did his body wind up in the chair on your deck?”

  “Why don’t we watch and see,” Chief Taylor suggested. “That is, if we can make it out.”

  In silence, the three huddled around the computer screen, straining to decipher the images and watching to see what happened next. Several minutes passed and nothing did.

  “Come on,” Colin groaned impatiently, hunched over the desk.

  “This is fun,” Emily commented sardonically as she crossed her arms and waited.

  Colin straightened. “There has to be something coming, because that’s not where his body was discovered.”

  After almost five minutes, the video showed the man on the ground stirring. He appeared to be trying to get to his feet a couple of times, but staggered back down.

  “That must’ve been some crack on the head.” The chief pointed to the screen. “Knocked him out for a while.”

  “Too bad someone didn’t find him while he was on the ground.” Emily shot a knowing glance at Colin and he held her gaze for a moment.

  He knew what she was thinking. It had only been a few days ago that she had suffered a similar trauma when he discovered her out cold on the side of the house. If she’d been hit any harder, it could have been possible they wouldn’t have made it to Rock Harbor, planning to get married on Saturday. “Yeah, too bad.”

  “The inn really needs to get a better security set up,” Colin said, turning his attention back to the case at hand. “This video is ridiculously bad.”

  “Eyah, they’ve got the camera mounted in a bad place, looks like.”

  Finally, after a few tries, the victim, presumably Ben, struggled to his feet as another dark figure approached him. From their aggressive body language, pitching back and forth, they appeared to argue a bit when the second person thrust forward
with what looked like the left arm, seeming to make contact with Ben’s body. Something glinted in the low light. A knife maybe?

  The man fell to the ground again and lay motionless. The other person, who seemed to be male too, based on the muscular build, squatted down and pulled Ben to a sitting position.

  Was he grabbing Ben by his upper torso? They watched as it looked like he was dragging Ben away, in the direction of the rear decks that faced the pool side of the inn.

  “So there were two people who attacked Ben,” Emily gasped. “I never would have guessed.”

  “Certainly looks that way,” the chief said.

  Colin rubbed a few fingers over his jaw. “I wonder if the first one knew about the second one.” Two people wanting to murder Ben on the same night? What were the chances?

  “No way to tell,” Emily softly replied. “Not yet anyway.”

  Colin turned to the chief. “Any luck finding the CD at Ben’s office?”

  “I went over to the church and had Whitley check Ben’s computer, but nope, not there.”

  “What about the other computers they have?” Colin reclaimed a chair. “Seemed like there was one on each desk when we paid the pastor a visit.”

  “I’m way ahead of you, Detective. I had her check them all, but still nothing.”

  “Where could he have hidden it?” Colin muttered under his breath. Not at the bed and breakfast, not at his office. “You think maybe he had it on him when he was killed?”

  “Oh, I see where you’re going with that.” Chief Taylor’s eyes lit up with understanding as he rocked back in his chair. “If he was killed by someone working for the kingpin, they probably checked his body for that CD. Maybe he had it on him and now it’s in his old boss’s hands.”

  “Only if Mr. Dominick knew Ben had burned a copy for himself,” Emily piped in, taking the seat next to Colin.

  “Which we don’t really know,” Colin remarked.

  “Well here’s another thought for you, fellas.” Emily cast them a mischievous grin, leaning back in the chair. “As I was listening to you guys go back and forth about the CD, it occurred to me that we all should take a big step into the twenty-first century.”