by Tessa Wegert
“Tell me what’s going on. You owe me that. And if you still want to leave afterward,” he said, “I’ll take you back to shore myself.”
Tim Wellington stepped past me into the doorway of the boathouse. I knew what he was doing. Setting my flight into motion was his way of proving I could trust him on his word. But he didn’t understand what he was asking of me.
With no effort at all, Tim located the switch I’d failed to find and the interior of the barnlike building was bathed in light. All the while he held my gaze. That meant I was first to see what lay beyond him in the slips. He watched in confusion as my face twisted in horror. Only then did he turn around to see it for himself.
The boathouse was empty. Our police boat, and the Sinclairs’ skiff, were gone.
Tim thrust his hair out of his eyes. “What the . . . did you—”
“No! So who . . .” Under my skin my blood felt like water, fast flowing and cold. “Someone was here, on the island. The trapper?”
Tim’s eyes darted from the hydraulic door to the brass cleats on the decking. Norton had used them to tie up both boats earlier. Now they were bare. “No. The door’s closed. Norton said there’s no remote. Someone opened it from the inside, and closed it the same way. Whoever got rid of the boats was already here on the island.”
All day long we’d been stranded on Tern, but this? This was different. A deliberate attempt to rob us of what little power we had. To trap us all. And here we stood while our suspects wandered freely out of sight.
In unison, we turned our wet and sallow faces to the hill.
TWENTY-THREE
Tim took the stairs at a run, and I followed. Halfway up, I slipped and cracked my kneecap against a stone tread, but I got back to my feet and, muddy and sore, limped after him. I tried not to dwell on where we were going, or that there was no chance of escape. No time for those thoughts now.
When we got to the porch, Tim stopped. The front door stood wide open, the hall empty. The entryway floor was plastered with wet leaves, and the mess almost felt like as much of an affront as the bloodstains on Jasper’s bedsheets. Like the people inside it, the house’s pretense of perfection was in ruin.
The scream reached me in stages, carried by the wind. This time when I drew my gun the act was deliberate. I had no qualms about putting my finger on the trigger, or the pain it caused. Tim motioned with his weapon, and I shadowed him down the hall.
The house was eerily silent. Tim made for the library while I went right, to the parlor. That’s where I found Flynn.
Twenty minutes. That’s how long we were gone. In that time someone had thrown another log on the fire and Flynn had positioned himself next to it with a glass of scotch, now nearly empty, in his hand. He was shirtless, his hairy chest on display, and I could see the bandage on his upper arm was soaked with blood. Somehow he’d managed to secure a cigarette. Maybe he bummed it from Jade. It was tucked neatly behind his ear. He was alone.
Flynn looked up with a start. He eyeballed my shirt—Tim’s shirt—and the mud on my pants, and his expression darkened. Even with my weapon drawn, Flynn made me wary. All the things he’d done to Jasper were fresh in my mind—and what had Jasper done to deserve them? I’d planned to be long gone by now, halfway to the mainland. Instead I was face-to-face with a man who was hemorrhaging from a hole I’d put in his arm.
“Been working hard to find my brother, I see.” I could hear both innuendo and the onset of a drunken slur in Flynn’s voice.
“Someone screamed. What happened?”
“Is that right?” He reached for the bottle and topped off his drink, never breaking eye contact. “Didn’t notice. I’ve been sitting here all this time. Thinking of you.”
I felt my insides spasm. Flynn’s eyes glittered black as he held my gaze. The lights in the parlor flickered.
“Shana.”
I startled at the sound of Tim’s voice. “Did you see that?” I said. I was worried my eyes were playing tricks on me again, but Tim gave a stern nod. Above our heads, a floorboard creaked. Tim looked up at the ceiling.
“Upstairs,” he said; then to Flynn, “Stay here.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Flynn said as he glared at Tim in his damp undershirt. “I can promise you that.”
I led the way out of the parlor and into the hall, where we ran into Norton coming out of the kitchen. “What’s going on?” he said anxiously. “I thought I heard a scream.” There was a dish towel slung over his shoulder and he smelled of raw garlic and lemon. Not even Flynn’s gunshot wound could stop this man from doing his duty for Camilla Sinclair.
“Wait here,” Tim said, and by the look on Norton’s face he was more than happy to oblige. The treads of the stairs groaned under our boots as we ascended. Halfway up, Tim’s eyebrows rose. Bebe Sinclair’s face stared down at us from the second-floor landing.
“Thank God you’re back,” she said, a long pearl necklace dangling from her throat into the abyss. I hadn’t noticed that necklace before, and as we continued to climb I saw she had pearl earrings to match. She’d changed the rest of her outfit, too. Now she wore a tight black skirt and matching mohair sweater. Her mourning clothes. “You,” she growled at me. “You’ll pay for what you did to my brother.”
“We heard a scream,” Tim said. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing good,” Bebe replied. “As usual.”
Miles and Jade were in the second-floor hallway, near the room I’d identified earlier as a bathroom. Jade had her face buried in his chest. The bathroom door stood ajar and a light was on inside, but father and daughter blocked my view.
“You better take a look in there,” said Miles. He’d put on a fresh dress shirt he hadn’t had time to button, along with a tweed sport jacket. “It was Ned who found her, just a minute ago.”
My stomach clenched. Who was missing? Camilla. Camilla and . . .
“Out of the way.” Tim gestured for them to move, and at the sight of our weapons they took a step back. We had a clear path.
We were in.
Under United States law there are two degrees of murder, but those aren’t the only ways to classify a killing. There’s voluntary manslaughter, like a crime of passion, and involuntary manslaughter, like what I thought I faced after shooting Flynn. When I’d accepted McIntyre’s job offer in the tiny town of Alexandria Bay, I hadn’t thought Tim and I would ever do more than investigate a break-in at the local dive bar. Like he said, violent crime wasn’t common in these parts.
Over the past few months I’d convinced myself what happened with Bram was irrelevant, nobody’s business but my own. My past was separate from my present reality. You might even say it was an island. There was no need to tell Tim about Bram, because Bram was one in a million. It was a convenient excuse that allowed me to keep my misery to myself.
But the islands in the St. Lawrence River weren’t immune to sin.
Abella Beaudry lay sprawled on the black-and-white checkerboard tile floor. In the too-bright light from the vanity fixture her face was violet, eyes bloated and blank. The rope that killed her was still looped around her throat, and the ring it left was deep and red and raw. Her wounds were fresh, but lethal. There was no saving the girl. Dressed in her pajamas, staggered by the loss of her soon-to-be fiancé, she’d followed this twisted family upstairs to her death.
Ned crouched next to her body mumbling garbled half words as if he were trapped in a nightmare, talking in his sleep. Tim got down next to him and put a hand on Ned’s shoulder. The act woke him from his trance.
“Wait in the hall,” I told Ned. “Don’t go anywhere. You understand?”
“No,” Ned whimpered. “No, no, no.”
“Go, Ned,” Tim said softly when the man didn’t move. Only then did Ned stand and walk zombie-like out the door.
“Son of a bitch.” Tim’s open palm smacked the tile floor so hard
I swear I felt the sting. I was too hot, too cold, too everything as I leaned in close to Abella and touched her still-warm arm.
“Look at her fingers,” I said. “Rope burns there, too. Someone snuck up on her from behind.” I pictured her clawing at the rope as it tightened around her neck. My legs felt wobbly.
“They came up here to change. We were only gone a few minutes. That means . . .”
“Someone’s been waiting for their chance to get to her. Norton was downstairs. Flynn, too. But . . .”
“Yeah. But,” said Tim. “And what about Ned? Miles, Bebe, Jade . . .” He blinked at me. “I shouldn’t have left. No matter what, I should have stayed. Jesus, of all the stupid things to do.” He clasped his head in his hands. “This is on me.”
“No. She wanted to tell me something. She tried, but I didn’t let her. I never went back to find her. Abella was afraid of Jasper’s family—I saw it during lunch. She and Jasper had an argument last night. I think he told her something that worried her, or she figured it out for herself. All she wanted was to get away from them. And I left her here alone.”
I drew in a shaky breath. People kept dying. I couldn’t keep them alive. I didn’t stab those three women in New York. It wasn’t me who took a coil of rope from the Sinclairs’ shed and wound it tight around Abella’s neck. But it might as well have been.
Beyond the bathroom door, I could sense the murderer’s body relax. Keen eyes swept the hall, lingering on the others’ faces. This is easy, the killer thought with glee. Easier and easier. Child’s play. There was no question about it anymore. Abella’s murder confirmed what I’d known in my heart to be true. Jasper was dead, and his murderer had killed again. I’d provided a crucial ingredient without which the perpetrator’s formula could never have proved toxic. I provided opportunity.
And the killer took it.
TWENTY-FOUR
In the parlor, the scene was otherworldly. Firelight gave the air a Christmasy glimmer, and the room was so hot we all had a ruddy glow. This time I didn’t argue about the drinks. It hardly mattered now. Wineglasses were claimed, grips tightened. The atmosphere might have been festive, were it not for two bedraggled investigators and a woman’s lifeless body on the upstairs bathroom floor.
I took a breath to calm my jangled nerves and scrutinized the others’ faces, hunting for a clue. In mystery novels, the up-all-night-under-the-covers kind I used to love, guilty people don’t give themselves away until the end. Real-life criminals are rarely that clever. Over the years, criminologists studying serial killers identified several traits the bad guys tend to share. They can be manipulative, egotistical, charming . . . but underneath it all, they’re human. Their palms moisten and their necks go red. They reveal nervous ticks they didn’t even know they had.
I used to rely on these kinds of tells to suss out criminals. I was good at it with everyone except for Bram, when it counted most. As I examined our suspects’ faces, I felt just as inept. All of them looked guilty to me. Each had his or her own breed of suspicious mannerisms, from Flynn’s barefaced disinterest to Bebe’s over-the-top expression of horror and Ned’s sudden weak-kneed demeanor, an about-face from how he’d been in the parlor when he threatened Bebe and Flynn. Miles buttoned his shirt with unsteady hands, maintaining a respectable level of distress. Red-eyed, Jade shuddered and yawned uncontrollably into her fist, but as genuine as her nerve-numbing exhaustion appeared to be, I didn’t totally buy it. Even Camilla had that oddly timed full face of makeup (had she reapplied lipstick after her nap?) to keep me on my toes. Among all our witnesses, Abella was the only one I felt sure I understood. She’d been constant in her normalcy.
No wonder she was gone.
“I have some very upsetting news,” Tim said.
“Don’t tell me we’ve run out of booze.” Flynn reached for the scotch and topped off his glass.
A muscle shifted in Tim’s jaw. “It was strangulation. Abella Beaudry is dead.”
Reporting a death is never easy. It’s the part of the job every investigator hates. There’s a wide spectrum of misery in the reactions you get from friends and next of kin, and though we always try not to, we absorb some of their pain. Tim didn’t need to feign heartbreak to keep up the everyman act. All day he’d defended these people. And they’d failed him in the worst way.
They had to know what was up before Tim opened his mouth to speak. Abella no longer sat among them. They were all aware that Ned went into that bathroom to check on his friend and came back out alone. But when Tim said what he said, Camilla let out a small cry anyway. Jade’s scream had brought her back downstairs, but her energy was fading, the air around her flat. “That poor girl,” she croaked. “That innocent young thing.”
Flynn threw back the scotch in his glass in one gulp. “Innocent, my ass. She hung herself. Phil, can I get a light?”
Norton moved stiffly toward the matchbox on the mantel. Nearby, Ned flexed his fingers in his lap. His voice, when he spoke, came from the back of his throat. “You’re a fucking prick, you know that, Flynn?” Ned said.
Ned was with Bebe in the shed. Either one of them could have grabbed that rope. Ned seemed genuinely upset over the loss of his friend, but he was sweating again. His skin appeared as clammy as it had during our interview, when he’d hidden what he knew about Flynn and the fight.
“I call it like I see it.” Flynn accepted the matchbox from Norton and lit up. “Right now all I see is selfish whores.”
He looked straight at me as he said it. Fueled by booze, Flynn’s anger was mounting. Tim didn’t seem to notice. He was focused on Norton, who walked around the room filling wineglasses to the brim. Just as in Flynn’s account of the previous night, Jade held up a glass for her share. This time, Miles didn’t protest. I figured he thought his daughter could use something to calm her nerves. Or maybe Miles only disapproved of Jade’s drinking when Jasper was doing the pushing.
Across the room, Bebe glared at Flynn. “You know Nana hates it when you smoke indoors. I’m sorry, Nana. Flynn’s a thoughtless pig.”
“Extenuating circumstances.” Smoke flowed freely from the sides of Flynn’s smiling mouth. “That bitch killed my brother and then hung herself. You’ll excuse me if I’m a little stressed.”
Camilla’s expression hardened. The skin around her hollow eyes was the color of an old bruise. “Stop it, Flynn. My Jasper’s alive. Whatever happened here doesn’t change that. My God,” she said, clutching her throat. “This is my house—my home. Every summer of my son’s life was spent here. Yours, too,” she said to her remaining grandchildren. “How could something like this happen?”
“It isn’t right,” said Miles. “I feel for that girl, I really do, but suicide? Here? It’s reprehensible.”
“It’s homicide,” I said. “In case you haven’t connected the dots, that means someone here’s guilty of murder.”
There was a collective gasp. These people had skills. Every one of them managed to look shocked.
“You’re no longer witnesses to Jasper Sinclair’s disappearance. All of you are now suspects in a violent murder.” Pacing as I spoke, I looked them each in the eyes. “Someone in this room stole that young woman’s life.” I laid it on thick, giving them my best Poirot. “Waited for their chance to attack, and wasted no time doing it. We have yet to confirm it, but Wellington and I strongly suspect whoever killed Abella is also responsible for Jasper’s disappearance. One or more of you will be charged with voluntary manslaughter. If it turns out whoever did this planned these killings in advance, that’s first-degree murder. Under New York penal law we’re talking a minimum twenty years. Max sentence is life without parole.”
Jade squealed and Miles looked at her in alarm. “Detectives,” he said, pulling his startled daughter to her feet, “I’d like to request that we be excused. This isn’t good for Jade—for Christ’s sake, she’s just a kid. I’d like your permission to take her b
ack to town.”
“There’s no getting to the mainland right now,” said Tim.
“Screw the storm!” said Miles. “Norton knows how to drive a boat in bad weather. You two made it here this morning, didn’t you? Norton will take us. We’ll be fine.”
“I want to go with Philip,” Jade said. She looked up at Norton with huge, wet eyes. “You’ll take us, right?”
Norton smiled. “’Course I will, honey.”
“If they’re leaving,” said Bebe, “then so am I.”
“Me too,” said Ned. “We’ve got two boats. We’re only nine people now.” He paused to swallow the lump in his throat. “Get me the hell off this island.”
“I’m telling you, that’s not an option at this time,” said Tim. “Earlier, when Senior Investigator Merchant left the house, she had the foresight to check the boathouse. Both your skiff and the boat we used to get here are gone. It looks to us like someone willfully let them go.”
Tim had covered for me. Of course he did, I thought. He can’t have them knowing I lost my mind.
Miles looked from Tim’s face to mine in confusion. “Are you telling me there are no boats here at all?”
“No boats, no way off the island until another police vessel makes it out,” I said.
In the sliver of silence that followed, the wind picked up. Even in the shelter of the parlor the storm sounded fierce. Again the lights in the room flickered.
“I want to go home,” Jade cried, louder than was necessary, as she nuzzled her father’s sport jacket.
“Soon, baby, soon—and we don’t ever have to come back here again. Well?” Miles said, raising his voice. “Who was the idiot who sent our only hope of getting out of here into the channel?”
“Phil,” Ned said abruptly. “You handle the boats. You’re the one who helped us dock when we got here.”
