by Eva Gates
We arrived back at the parking lot and went to Watson’s car. Fluffy sniffed the tires.
Detective Watson got in his car and drove away.
* * *
About the last thing in the world I felt like doing today was having lunch with Mom and Evangeline. Yes, I wanted to have some mother-daughter time, but not with Evangeline tagging along. Not to mention Ricky and Leon Lions and Stephen Livingstone and whoever else might be invited to participate in the cheerful outing.
Connor called as I was considering joining Ronald and the gang in the marsh. Since I’ve come to live in the library, I’ve spent a lot of time exploring the wetlands, but I hadn’t gotten to know as much as I should about the flora and fauna and the other creatures who are my neighbors.
“I got a call from Lisa,” Connor said, referring to our realtor. “She has word of a house that’s coming onto the market today, and she can arrange a showing for us tomorrow evening, if you’d like.”
“Book club’s tomorrow.”
“Oh, sorry, I forgot. I can ask her if we can see it around lunchtime instead. How’s that sound?”
“That should work. Let me know the address and time and I can meet you there. What did she say about the house?”
“It’s in an up-and-coming area and needs a tiny bit of work.”
“Did she actually use that word? Tiny?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s hope.” We’d agreed we didn’t want a house that needed a lot of renovations or repairs, but if the price was low enough, we’d consider it. My home-maintenance skills stop at changing a lightbulb, but Connor’s dad was a carpenter and Connor grew up helping him out, so he could do a lot of the work if needed, himself or with his dad’s help.
A friend of mine in college maintained that the most important thing in choosing a life partner is that you love each other. The second most important is that he be handy. Although, as she pointed out one evening when we were celebrating the end of exams, love doesn’t always last, but handyman skills never expire.
“While I’ve got you on the phone,” Connor said, “I ran into Butch a few minutes ago in the parking lot, and he said he and Steph are going to the Dockside Lounge Bar to have a bite and listen to the band tonight and asked if we’d like to join them.”
“Sounds like fun. I would.”
“I’ll swing by at seven.”
The call had scarcely disconnected before my phone buzzed to announce a text.
Mom: Lunch at Owens. 1:00
Me: I’d rather not
Mom: Lunch at Owens. 1:00
Me:
Mom: Please?
Me: Ok
* * *
I let myself into the Lighthouse Aerie at three. Finally, at last, I could have some time to myself.
Lunch had been uneventful. Evangeline had been surprisingly quiet and Ricky on edge. Mom tried to make polite conversation about the delights of summer on the Outer Banks, and Leon Lions joined in with his praises. Evangeline said she’d never been here before and was finding it very nice, and Leon suggested that, in that case, she might want to come more in the future.
Did that mean she hadn’t visited Leon the times she’d been here, or was he in on her attempt to lie about it?
I threw her a look, and she avoided my eyes.
Eventually Mom and Evangeline began talking about plans for the country club’s Christmas ball. Leon turned to Ricky, seated on one side of him, to ask if Ricky wanted him to act as a tour guide and show him all the sights, while Stephen Livingstone, on the other side of Ricky, tried to get the lowdown on the gossip from Richardson Lewiston.
I enjoyed my chowder and plotted my escape.
“Book club.” Evangeline’s voice dragged me out of my thoughts. “I suppose that would be something to do, if we’re still here tomorrow.”
“What?” I said.
“Suzanne tells me your library book club meets tomorrow evening.”
“Uh, yes.”
“You’re reading The Hound of the Baskervilles. I love that story, although it’s been many years since I read it.”
Something was up: earlier Evangeline had been highly dismissive of Sherlock Holmes.
“Ricky and I would like to attend, if we may,” she said.
“We would?” Ricky said.
“Yes. We would.”
“You’d be welcome,” I said.
“You have nothing to do this evening,” Evangeline said to Ricky. “You can download the book and read it tonight.”
“Don’t assume I have nothing to do, Mom.”
“Do you?”
“I haven’t decided.”
“That’s settled, then.” She tapped her lips with her napkin.
“Maybe this’ll all be over by tomorrow and you can take Rich home,” Mom said.
“I hope so,” Evangeline said. “But, if that is not the case, we’ll attend the meeting of this book club.”
The waiter brought the bill, and Leon snatched it directly out of his hand. He smiled at Evangeline and said, “Lunch is on me.”
“Thank you. That’s very kind of you. Suzanne, I feel a headache coming on. I hope you and Lucy don’t mind if I bow out of our visit to the outlet shops.”
I refrained from leaping to my feet and performing a victory dance.
“Not at all,” Mom said. “I’d enjoy a quiet afternoon myself. It’s been a stressful few days.”
We all got to our feet.
“Ricky and I’ll drop you off at the hotel,” Leon said to Evangeline, “and then carry on to the Wright Brothers.”
“What’s the scoop on Melissa in human resources?” Stephen said to Ricky. “I heard her cousin got taken on, even though he was bottom of his class in law school.”
Not interested in the scoop on Melissa in human resources or her relatives, I hurried Mom out of the restaurant and to my car.
“Thank you for coming,” she said to me when we were on our way. “I’m grateful for your support, Lucy, while I’m supporting Evangeline.”
“Is she doing okay?”
“No, she’s not. I suggested she’d be more comfortable at home. She can wait for news there and come back when the police are ready to release Rich’s body. She refused. She wants to be near him. She said they’d never been close in life but it’s her duty to be with him in death.”
“That’s sad. Did you believe her?” I thought of Leon, so eager to please.
My mother gave me a smile. “I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt.”
“Mom, I have to ask this. Do you think it’s possible Evangeline killed Rich? She can’t account for her time when he died.”
My mother gave me the credit of taking my question seriously. She thought for several minutes. “No. I do not. If she wanted to, she would have had more than enough opportunities to do it in Boston, in a less dramatic fashion. She’s intelligent enough to know she’d need an alibi. That she doesn’t have so much as the shards of one indicates to me she did not arrange that unfortunate circumstance.”
“She might have acted without thinking. Impulsively. Seen him at Jake’s, been angry that he’d followed her, they got into an argument, and …”
“I doubt she’s committed an impulsive act in her entire life. Evangeline thinks things through before acting. Besides, as far as I know, she’s not in the habit of carrying a knife in her purse. The purse she carried Monday night wasn’t much larger than necessary to hold her phone and credit card.”
I didn’t mention that even a small knife can do the job, if it’s sharp enough. “Yes, I noticed that.” I’d also noticed that there hadn’t appeared to be any blood on her jacket. The police had taken it away for forensic analysis. If they’d found anything of significance, they’d have questioned Evangeline about it. And not in a polite interview in her hotel room.
“What’s your impression of Leon Lions?” I asked.
“He’s clearly in love with Evangeline, and I assume you noticed that also, thus the question.”
“Hard not to.”
“Quite. He’s probably been in love with her for a long time. I don’t know if the feelings are returned. Evangeline can be a closed book, when she wants to be. They met when he lived in Boston, many years ago. He might have continued to see Evangeline over the years, I don’t know. A surprising number of Boston people seem to be in Nags Head these days. The death of Evangeline’s husband has clearly given our Mr. Lions an opening to make his move. Is it possible, do you think, he’s responsible for that?”
“You mean, might he have killed Rich? Anything’s possible.” I remembered Watson telling me that Evangeline had visited the Outer Banks, despite her saying she hadn’t. Why would she lie? Surely, lying had to mean she’d been here to do something she didn’t want anyone to know about. “He is, by the way, on the police radar for reasons you mention.”
“You told Detective Watson.”
“I did.”
“You’re full of surprises, Lucy,” my mother said. “I’m beginning to realize that.”
* * *
It was nice to get thoughts of Rich and Evangeline Lewiston out of my head. After dropping Mom off, I’d returned to the library and managed to sneak up the stairs unnoticed. I curled up in the window seat with Fluffy’s chin resting on my lap and finished The Hound of the Baskervilles.
I wasn’t entirely happy—okay, I wasn’t at all happy—about Ricky and Evangeline coming to my book club tomorrow night, but I could hardly tell them to stay away.
I was ready for my date with Connor at the appointed time, and we met Butch and Steph in town. To my delight, they’d managed to get Jake and Josie to join us, and we had a fun evening. The band was popular and the place was crowded, but we managed to snag a table close to the wide windows, thrown open to the night. Beyond the line of lights cast by the houses and hotels lining the shore, lights twinkled from boats in the harbor. The moon hung high in the sky, and I could hear the low mummer of the sea rushing to shore. We drank beer, ate chicken wings and hush puppies, listed to some great music, and talked about our lives and our friends.
I laughed at something Butch said as I started to get to my feet to go to the ladies’ room. At that moment, the crowd in front of the bar separated, and I caught a quick glimpse of a woman who looked very much like Charlene coming through the door. The same tall, thin frame, the same short brown hair. She was not dressed, however, in Charlene’s usual library uniform of neat skirt suit or well-tailored trousers and blouse but a short, tight, colorful dress above strappy high-heeled sandals. The waiter stopped at our table to ask if we wanted anything more, and when he’d moved on, Charlene, or whoever the woman was, had gone. I scanned the crowd but saw no sign of her.
“You okay, Lucy?” Steph asked.
“What?”
“You look like you’ve seen something.”
Connor’s head popped up, and he glanced around. “Not that blasted Ricky again, I hope.”
“No. Not Ricky. His mother has him sitting in his room at the hotel preparing for tomorrow’s book club. I’m fine. I thought I saw someone I wouldn’t have expected to see here, that’s all. I guess I was wrong.”
It might not have been Charlene, I said to myself, and she might not have left because she spotted my friends and me. Then again, the man standing next to her had looked very much like James Dalrymple.
* * *
“I have to take the dog out,” I told Connor as we walked up the path to the lighthouse after our evening with our friends. The night was warm and clear and the big white moon was rising in the sky. High above us, the lighthouse flashed its pattern: steady, reliable, and comfortable in a changing world.
“How’s he working out?” Connor asked.
“You mean having a dog? It’s a she, and it’s working out fine having her here, but that’s only because I live where I work, so I can pop up and take her out a couple of times a day.”
I unlocked the door, and we stepped inside. Charles was beside us immediately, winding himself around Connor’s legs, purring happily.
“I don’t usually get such an effusive greeting,” Connor said. “Charles knows I don’t ever feed him.”
“Charles is attempting to remind you who’s the number-one animal around here. He and Fluffy seem to have come to a tentative truce. I was worried I’d have to take sides. Do you want to come on the walk with us?”
“Sure. I’ll wait for you down here.”
I ran upstairs for Fluffy. When we got back, I found Connor sitting in the wingback chair with Charles on his lap and a book in his hand. He held up the book. The Hound of the Baskervilles.
“Found this on the returns cart, which reminds me, I won’t make book club tomorrow. I had to reschedule the budget meeting so I can see that house with you, and somehow it turned into a dinner meeting.”
He put Charles on the floor and stood up. He bent over and held his hand out to Fluffy to let the little dog sniff at it. Acquaintance made, Fluffy ran for the door, pulling me—at the other end of her leash—after her.
We stepped into the fresh night air. “One good thing about having a dog,” I said, “is it forces you to get outside regularly and go for a walk.”
Overhead, the thousand-watt bulb flashed, illuminating the ground in front of us. Connor took my free hand and we walked slowly toward the boardwalk, letting the moon and the occasional flash of light guide us.
We hadn’t gone far before the light went into its dormancy and a bank of clouds slipped across the face of the moon.
At that moment, up ahead, a light flashed once in the distance before being extinguished.
I stopped walking abruptly. Fluffy tugged at her end of the leash. “Did you see that?”
“Yeah, I did. Someone’s out there.”
“There aren’t any cars in the parking lot.”
“They might have come by boat.”
“Maybe.” I was suddenly very cold. The darkness that moments ago had seemed so peaceful pressed on me. Last year, in the days leading up to Halloween, I’d seen mysterious lights moving in the marsh. Those lights had been faint, colored, drifting. Almost, I’d thought, beckoning me. Corpse candles, the ancients called them, luring the living to their doom. I’d fled and never experienced anything like that again, and I’d pushed the incident aside as a natural phenomenon I’d misinterpreted due to all the talk of the night when the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest.
This wasn’t the same. This light was steady, white, powerful. Electric.
“Is something wrong, Lucy?” Connor said.
“I … I don’t know. I don’t like that light. There it is again.” A series of flashes this time. A long, a short, a short, two longs. “Do you know Morse code?”
“I learned it as a Boy Scout but have almost completely forgotten.” He peered into the darkness. “You don’t think someone’s signaling, do you?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s nothing but random flashes, Lucy. If it bothers you, do you want to go over and check out what’s going on?”
“No!”
He dropped my hand. “I’ll go. You can take the dog back inside.”
I grabbed his hand and clung to it. “No!”
“The dog isn’t reacting.”
I glanced down. Fluffy sat at my feet, scratching behind her ear. “They might be too far away for her to smell anything. And the wind’s blowing in the wrong direction for their scent to carry to us.”
“It’s nothing to worry about, Lucy. People are in the marsh. Lots of people visit the marsh.”
“In the daytime or at twilight or sunrise. Not in the middle of the night. And they don’t come at night without a car. Let’s go back inside. I’m cold.”
“Okay.”
I tugged at the leash, and Fluffy stopped scratching her ear. She stood up, looked around her, and let out one loud bark. Connor hesitated and then came with us. I almost dragged both of them after me. When we reached the safety of the lighthouse, I glanced behind
me. All was dark once again.
Chapter Fifteen
“How was the house you saw today?” Josie asked.
“A complete and total disaster. The thing’s barely standing upright. We didn’t stay more than a couple of minutes. Connor was furious at the realtor for wasting our time.”
“You don’t want a fixer-upper?” Louise Jane asked.
“We don’t mind a fixer-upper,” I said. “That is, Connor doesn’t mind, and he’ll be the one doing the work. If it’s within reason. Not only was that place not within reason, but if we do get a house needing a lot of repairs and renovations, the price has to reflect that. They want top dollar for a bottom-dollar property.” I stuffed an oatmeal cookie into my mouth.
“Help yourself,” Josie said.
“Don’t mind if I do.” I took another.
Thursday evening we were in the third-floor meeting room of the library, getting ready for book club. As always, Josie had brought treats from her bakery to accompany the lemonade and iced tea provided by the library.
“I probably shouldn’t be eating all these myself,” I said. “I’m expecting a full house tonight. Not only is The Hound a popular book, but Mom and her friends are coming.”
“I mentioned it to Daisy and James,” Louise Jane said. “Daisy said she’d try to make it.”
“Not James?”
“He’s busy with something or other,” Louise Jane said.
“Is that so?”
She gave me a look. “Why do you say it like that?”
“No reason,” I said quickly. “Just making polite conversation.”
“They’re due to go back to England next week. Daisy said they’ve accomplished a lot in their time here and she can’t wait to get to writing it up. I’ll miss her.”
“Maybe you can go and visit her in Oxford,” Josie suggested.
“I went on that tour of the haunted castles of England last year, and it was great. I’d like to go back sometime.”
