Mac had stayed overnight at Harmony Harbor on the Fourth of July. Ken Jackson said there’d been a kayak on the beach when we returned that awful next morning. Could Mac have taken the kayak out to Model Sailor? It was definitely doable. Nobody would have seen him. But why? He seemed to have a thing going with Stellene. But maybe that was a ruse. Maybe he was jealous of Patrick’s affair with Hayley? But how would Mac know Patrick would go to Model Sailor? Could Mac have arranged the rendezvous?
I texted Bronwyn. I wanted to tell her about Mac Macallen and his obsession with Hayley.
Meet me at the town dock, she texted back.
I picked up a coffee for Bronwyn and tea for me at the Tick Tock Coffee Shop. We met at the dock.
“Your sister had every cop at the Plex checking her out.” Bronwyn took the coffee. “Thanks.”
“They can get in line behind Officer Paul Gibson,” I said.
Bronwyn laughed. “Seriously?” She sipped her coffee.
“He sent her flowers.”
Bronwyn choked.
I shrugged. “She has that effect on guys.”
Quickly I told Bronwyn of the events of the last couple of days, fudging slightly about Patrick’s phone. “We discovered it on Miranda and called Detectives Rosato and Budwitz.” After you warned me about the chain of evidence.
Bronwyn nodded. “Listen, Allie, I don’t know about those Harbor Patrol guys. They sound creepy, that’s for sure. But maybe they’re just keeping an eye on things. That’s their job at the marina.”
I gave her a level look. “This is the most important thing, Bronwyn. I remember you told me that the investigators hold some things back.”
“Yes,” Bronwyn said. “I told you. The semicolon tattoo.” I’ve known Bronwyn since we were in preschool. She wasn’t lying. She didn’t know. I tossed my half-finished tea in the trash.
“Do the police know that Tinsley Lupo recently got a kidney donation?”
Bronwyn blinked. “I don’t know. What’s that got to do with Hayley Castle? Or does it have to do with Patrick’s death?”
“Maybe both?”
“Listen, I’ve got to go.” Bronwyn’s gray eyes were troubled. “I know you’ve got a lot of skin in this game, what with Lorel and Patrick, and you being a friend of Hayden’s, not to mention that you were the one who found Hayley Castle. Just be careful, okay? Let the police do their jobs.”
“You’ll keep an eye on Lorel, right?” I said.
“Her interview’s just a formality.” Bronwyn looked away. Now I was sure she was lying.
She jogged back to the Plex.
Suddenly, I was dying to see Hayden. We’d left on such bad terms. I called him but he didn’t pick up so I left a message.
“Hi, Hayden. I just wanted to say hello. I’m sorry about the other night. I guess I’ll see you, um…” When would I see Hayden next? It struck me that no one had said anything about a funeral for Patrick. “I’ll try you later.”
* * *
Back at the Mermaid, I looped a pink apron over my head and joined Aunt Gully at the counter. “Aunt Gully, is Mrs. Yardley having a funeral for Patrick? His friend at New Salt said something about scattering his ashes?”
Aunt Gully took a plate from the pass-through window. “Patrick wasn’t religious. Ages ago he told his mother he didn’t want a church service.”
Mrs. Yardley was the president of the St. Peter’s Church Ladies’ Guild. This probably didn’t make her happy. Poor woman.
Bertha banged through the screen door. “Lemonade all around!” she crowed. “And my usual.”
“Bertha’s usual,” I called into the kitchen. “Good news, Bertha?”
Bertha took the last seat at the counter. “Remember I told you I did some cleaning for Mrs. Lupo? Her assistant just called me.”
“Zoe Parker?” I handed Bertha a lemonade.
“Thanks.” Bertha took a swig. “She said Mrs. Lupo needed the Cat Island guesthouse cleaned and would I mind doing it as soon as possible? And she’s paying me a pretty penny to do so.”
I wondered if there was a phone on Cat Island that might be programmed with a number for Harmony Harbor. My pulse quickened. Maybe I would be able to reach Tinsley.
“Bertha, could you use a hand with the job?” I set her lobster roll in front of her.
“Thank you. Sure.” Bertha bit into her roll.
“When are you going?”
Bertha swallowed. “Leaving on Queenie soon as I finish this roll.”
“We’ll be back by four, right? I have opening night tonight.”
“No problem. It’s never dirty there. I just put a shine on it.”
I turned to Aunt Gully.
“Go.” She laughed. “Shoo! I’d already scheduled Aggie—I thought you’d like the day off with it being opening night tonight. You’ve been nervous as a cat. Time on the water will calm you down.”
Verity came through the screen door. “Hi, everyone. I got a free moment, Allie. This top hat isn’t going to deliver itself.”
I pulled off my apron. Bertha licked her fingers and rose from her seat. “We’re off to Stellene’s cottage on Cat Island.”
“Seriously?” Verity’s eyes glowed. She pulled out her phone. “I’m coming with you. I didn’t go to Harmony Harbor with you on the Fourth of July and look what happened.”
Chapter 36
At Cat Island, I stepped from Queenie onto the pier and looped a line around a rusty cleat. Verity and I followed Bertha up worn granite steps mossy with lichen to the cedar-shingled cottage.
From the northern approach to Cat Island, Stellene’s guest cottage looked like a snug artist’s getaway, small shuttered windows winking behind trees and bushes, faded lobster buoys covering the one wall.
But as we rounded the house we could see a sprawling addition and another, newer pier on the south side of the island. A wide emerald lawn with a cement circle was hidden by brush and rocks.
“Wow, that’s a helicopter pad!” Verity said.
We oohed as we walked across a broad slate patio topped with a pergola spilling over with grapevine and wisteria. Blue-striped awnings shaded the windows on this side of the house. Pots of red geraniums stood by the door.
“Didn’t I tell you? Like a magazine picture.” Bertha grinned.
A gust of wind tossed my hair around my face and stirred the wind chimes on the deck. The jangling quickened my heart rate. I felt watched, no, more than that, I felt as if I was onstage and a restless audience was waiting for the show to start.
Bertha pressed buttons on a security keypad. The door clicked open.
We stepped through a mudroom lined with slickers and sunhats into a kitchen that was easily thirty feet long. A granite island ran the length of the room. There were two sets of double ovens. Two refrigerators. I scanned the walls and counters. No phone here.
“This is the most beautiful kitchen I’ve ever seen.” Verity ran her fingers along gleaming copper pots hanging from the ceiling.
I opened the tap. The water flowed easily. “Stellene said there was a plumbing problem.” Stellene lied. I guess she didn’t want Eden and Henry staying with her anymore.
Bertha opened a closet and pulled out buckets, cloths, and a vacuum cleaner. “She must’ve gotten the plumbing fixed.”
Maybe she was readying the cottage for other guests. I opened another cabinet and a trash can slid out. “Ew, that stinks.” Banana peels, takeout boxes, two bottles of champagne with the same gold label as the bottles she’d given us that night on Model Sailor. Stellene must have a thousand bottles of champagne.
“We’ll get the trash on the way out. Zoe said all the trash had to go. She repeated it twice and said don’t miss anything in the bathrooms,” Bertha said. “And we have to pack up everything left in the blue bedroom.”
I took the vacuum cleaner and Verity and Bertha carried buckets of cleaning supplies upstairs.
We climbed to a gallery running the length of a light-filled, two-story great room. A w
all of windows with French doors looked south toward Fishers Island. Below, a white rug lay on the shining mahogany floor topped with a navy-blue-striped accent rug and pristine white leather couches. Fishing nets hung on the wall of the gallery, spread out like modern art. It was so tasteful my teeth hurt.
I set down the vacuum cleaner in a spacious, all-white bedroom. “Master bedroom,” Bertha said. There was no phone on the bedside table, just a stack of art books. Over the bed hung a huge abstract painting, gray, silver, and white splatters on a rich blue background. In the corner the artist had signed, MM.
Was that Mac Macallen’s signature?
“Allie! Look at this gorgeousness!” Verity spun around on the deep carpet like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. “It’s a dream.” She opened the doors of a walk-in closet. “Robes. Ah, cashmere. And terry cloth, practical—”
Bertha plugged the vacuum into the wall. “Girls, stop gawking. One of us is getting to work.” Bertha tossed me a box. “You can start packing up that blue guest bedroom.” She jutted her chin at Verity. “I’m not paying her.”
I carried the box and a bucket of cleaning supplies into the smaller guest bedroom across the hall. French doors opened onto a balcony that framed Harmony Harbor in the distance. Sea-blue walls with large mirrors matched a sumptuous silk duvet.
No phone here, either. How would I get in touch with Tinsley Lupo? I kicked the box. What a bust, and now I was stuck doing housework.
I opened the closet door. Dozens of items hung on the rail over a pair of pink running shoes, flip-flops, and several pairs of strappy sandals. I pulled a terry-cloth robe from a hanger, folded it, and put it in the box. Next I reached for a sundress, and then jerked my hand back. Several tops and dresses still had tags. My breath caught. Green tags. I turned one over. Fashion by Franque.
What had Franque said? She wore a sundress and a big black sun hat. She bought a stack of clothes and I’m not cheap. I was certain I’d seen a black sun hat in the mudroom downstairs.
It felt like I was in a dream, watching myself from the outside. In the mirror I saw myself walk to the bureau and open the top drawer.
My hands trembled. The top drawer held makeup, sunglasses, sunscreen, and a dozen pill bottles with names I couldn’t even begin to pronounce. Some I could. Percocet. Valium. Oxycodone. I reached to pick one up, and then remembered the plastic cleaning gloves. I pulled them on and turned the bottle so I could read the label: Hayley Castle.
Why had Hayley Castle been out here on Cat Island?
I hurried into the spacious bathroom off the bedroom, opened the medicine cabinet. More pill bottles, many with the labels peeled off. I opened the lids and compared them to the pills in the drawer. They were duplicates. Some bottles were completely empty.
Why two sets of all the pills? That was a lot of drugs.
What had Bronwyn said? Hayley had another tattoo, a semicolon. People who struggle with addiction or have tried suicide get them because a semicolon’s not a full stop.
The toxicology report said Hayley Castle died of a drug overdose.
Full stop.
Across the hall, the vacuum hummed.
Thoughts tumbling, I ran back to the bathroom.
A cabinet under the sink held a few cleaning supplies. A box of hair dye. Black. I went back to the bureau. The drug labels reflected back at me from the mirror.
Hayley’s tattoo was badly done, probably in some disreputable tattoo parlor.
My hands shook as I tore off my gloves and took a pen from the drawer. In the bedside table I scrabbled and found a notepad.
What had Henry said? We had a band, 3H.
I wrote “3H” on the pad. Turned it to the mirror. I stared at the reflection as I realized what it meant.
HE. The E of Hayley’s tattoo had the rounded shape of a 3. Hayley had had her tattoo of the name of the band she was in with Henry and Eden turned into the word “HELLION.” Why?
Henry and Eden laughing in Aunt Gully’s van. “I was born Hilda, just like an old farm wife.”
Henry.
Hilda.
Hayley.
The girl at the theater had said Hayley sent a program to friends back home, so they’d be proud of her.
I remembered what Eden told me in Verity’s shop. Henry was glad to come to Harmony Harbor because he wanted to look up an old friend in Mystic Bay.
I remembered the blurry old photo of Eden singing in the Boston bar, with Henry and a backup singer behind her. What had Rafael said? Something about Henry being left at the altar. Or was it the other way round? Had Henry left someone else at the altar? Hayley?
And Hayley had turned “3H” into “HELLION.”
A flash of movement made me turn. I hurried to the window, just in time to see one of Stellene’s motor launches pull into the southside dock. Two figures stepped out of the boat. Henry and Tinsley.
I ran downstairs.
Through the living room’s French doors I watched Henry and Tinsley walk across the patio. They were holding hands. Tinsley wore a flirty pink skirt, delicate gold sandals, and a distressed jean jacket over a slim T-shirt. She was dressed for a date.
But the body language was wrong. Henry dragged her forward and Tinsley lunged toward the boat. Henry jerked her back, then slapped her face. I gasped. Tinsley collapsed and fell to her knees. Henry slung her small form over his shoulder.
“Verity! Bertha!” I screamed. The vacuum whined above. Before I could decide what to do, Henry opened the French doors.
He stopped short. “Allie!” He laid Tinsley on the couch, her body limp, his handprint livid on her cheek.
“What’re you doing?” I stepped toward the stairs.
Henry took a gun from his jacket pocket, gestured at a leather chair in front of a mirror. “Sit there, Allie.” he spoke in a monotone. “You know, the Lupos have way too many guns lying around that house.”
I lowered myself into the chair, my eyes on the gun.
Henry sat on the arm of the couch. He rubbed the stubble on his chin and his expression softened. “I’m sorry, Allie. I wish you weren’t here to see this. I think we understood each other, maybe even could’ve had something.”
I raised my eyes to his. “Why are you doing this?” I whispered.
“I guess I owe you that.” Henry inhaled. “When I heard the news reports about the Girl with the Pitchfork Tattoo, I dismissed it. Hayley didn’t have that tat when I knew her. That police sketch looked nothing like Hayley. And the short black hair?” Henry shook his head. “Why did she change her hair?”
Hayley was disappearing. I remembered the hair dye upstairs. That was probably part of the deal she struck with Stellene.
“When Hayley sent me that program of her in Mame, she told me a friend helped her get a gig that paid enough money for acting school.” Henry pushed back his hair. “She didn’t tell me it meant selling her kidney to Tinsley Lupo.”
“The friend was Patrick.” So it was true. My crazy idea was true. “Did Tinsley tell you this?”
Tinsley moaned softly and her eyes fluttered open.
“Tinsley told me all about her friend Hayley who gave her a kidney.” Sarcasm made his words bitter. “Her friend Patrick Yardley introduced them. Hayley was a match! All part of her little fairy tale of good-hearted people who wanted to help little old her.” Henry chuckled. “Hayley was a lot of things, but good-hearted wasn’t one of them.”
The vacuum droned overhead.
Henry followed my glance upstairs. His knuckles whitened around the gun.
“I saw your face at Verity’s shop,” he said. “When I reached up to get that stupid hat, you looked like you saw a ghost. I understood after I saw the portrait at Mac’s; ‘3H’ became ‘HE.’” A vein throbbed in his temple. “Hayley turned her tattoo into HELLION. I drove her to that.”
He swore. “Sometimes, you’re just too late, you know? When I got to Mystic Bay for Stellene’s party, I called Hayley, but her phone was disconnected. Then all that stuff h
appened on the boat.” Henry took a deep breath. “When we moved into Mac’s guesthouse Eden told me he ran Broadway by the Bay so I went to talk to him. When I walked in and saw Hayley’s portrait in his studio, saw the pitchfork tattoo on her arm.” He inhaled. “It all came together—the dead girl on the news was Hayley. I lost it. And then I remembered how Tinsley told me about her friend Hayley and her cool tattoo that said ‘Hellion.’ So I asked Tinsley, to make sure. She told me straight out. Her friend’s name was Hayley Castle. My Hayley.”
“Hayley, Henry, Hilda, before she was Eden,” I whispered.
“You know where Hil got that name? We were hitchhiking past a town called Eden. Right then and there, she changed her name.” He laughed but the gun remained steady.
Tinsley curled onto her side and rubbed her cheek, crying. Henry shifted, now watching Tinsley. “Hayley and I almost got married. But Hayley didn’t fit into Eden’s new band. When Hil and I dropped her she got into drugs, tried to kill herself. I felt responsible.” His face reddened. “No, I was responsible. It’s a debt I have to pay. It’s not right that you should live with a part of Hayley in you when she’s dead.”
Tinsley’s voice was ragged. “My mother was wonderful to Hayley. Hayley was my friend!”
“Keep telling yourself that, princess. If your mother was so awesome to her, why did Hayley end up dumped like trash on the bottom of the ocean?”
Tinsley’s voice was small. “I don’t know.”
“You do know, Tinsley,” I said. Keep her talking. She had to have heard something—there were so many places to eavesdrop in Harmony Harbor. Bertha had to stop vacuuming soon and would see Henry with the gun. She or Verity’d call for help. I hoped.
“Patrick was to blame for all of it,” Tinsley pleaded. “My mom paid for all Hayley’s expenses, plus she gave her fifty thousand dollars so she could go to acting school. But Patrick only gave Hayley twenty thousand. He used his portion to pay off some investors. So Hayley asked Mom for more money. It was hers! Patrick was a thief!”
Patrick and Hayley would keep asking for money. Tinsley’s kidney donation fairy tale would crumble when it became known that all that money changed hands with her mother’s old drug connection to make it happen. Kurt Lupo’s own daughter, and his wife, the president of his foundation, betrayed his principles with a drug dealer.
Against the Claw Page 22
