Death in the Family

by Tessa Wegert

  I raised an eyebrow. Typed Send them in.

  “Ah,” Norton said when he saw them coming down the hall. “I’ll leave you all alone.”

  “No need,” I said quickly. “Please. Stay and finish up.”

  Norton gave a reluctant nod and went back to work.

  “Not the happy hour you’re used to, I guess,” I said when Miles and Jade stepped into the room.

  “Please don’t,” said Miles.

  “Don’t what?”

  Jade snatched a piece of salami from the plate. When Norton smiled at her, his cheeks plumped up and his eyes turned into crescent moons. Miles said, “Say it like that. Lump us together with them.”

  I wrinkled my brow. “You’ve been part of the family for how long now?”

  “Long enough to know it’s a bad thing to be. We’re leaving. I already told you that.”

  “You did. But for the moment you’re still here, and as long as you’re on this island, you’re as much a part of this as they are. Now, what can I do for you two?”

  Neither his fresh shirt nor his smart tweed jacket could make Miles look composed anymore. “I have a request,” he said, and I thought, Again? His voice quavered and he cleared his throat. “I want your assurance you can keep my daughter safe. I want you to protect her. No matter what.”

  “What exactly are you expecting to happen?”

  “You saw what went on in there. They’re all crazy, literally out of their minds. She’s a child,” he said. “Promise me.”

  I turned to Jade, nibbling mouselike at the meat in her hands, and felt my annoyance with the girl ebb. The skin around her eyes was puffy and red. She was a child, and for the first time since I’d met her, she actually looked it. “I promise,” I told her directly. “This is going to be tough on you, huh? I know you and Jasper were close. It may not feel like it now, but you’ll be okay.”

  Jade said, “It’s not like I didn’t know.”

  Norton’s bald head snapped up. “Excuse me?” I said, equally startled.

  “Daddy told me, like, a month ago? And I’ll still be able to see him. We all live in the city. Jas and I can still hang out.”

  I glanced sidelong at Miles. Discomfort issued from his body like a heat haze. “I don’t—” I began, but he cut me off.

  “She’s talking about the divorce. I wanted to give her plenty of time to get used to the idea. That’s important with children this age. You can’t spring things on them. It’s very upsetting.”

  “Jade, I’m not sure you understand,” I said. “A horrific thing happened here tonight, and Jasper’s still missing. There’s evidence he was seriously hurt. I’m sorry to have to tell you this”—why hasn’t Miles told her?—“but there’s a chance Jasper’s not coming back.”

  “Um, no, you’re wrong,” Jade said, but there was uncertainty in her tone. She might not have confided in her girlfriends, but she was still a typical teenager. She wanted to believe what she was saying, but wasn’t wholly convinced.

  “I hope I am wrong.” I turned back to Miles. “You’ve known you were leaving Bebe for a month?”

  “It wasn’t a snap decision.”

  “It’s no big secret,” said Jade. “They fight all the time. They were fighting last night.”

  “There’s a child involved,” Miles was quick to remind me. “My main concern is making sure Jade’s okay.”

  I said, “I got the impression you’d only just found out about . . . you know.”

  “You can be blunt. Jade’s well aware of her stepmother’s indiscretions.” Miles snorted. “Everyone is.”

  “Everyone except Flynn. Up until an hour ago he had no idea. It sounds like you did, though. So if you knew about the affair before today, why didn’t you leave Bebe sooner?”

  “You aren’t paying attention. For all intents and purposes Bebe and I have been separated for weeks.”

  “So she’s been sleeping with Ned for weeks?” I confirmed. “And you’re still living together?”

  “It’s an arrangement of convenience. We don’t even share a bed.”

  “What about last night?” I said. “I thought you both slept upstairs, in the room next to Jade. Did Norton put you up in the library or something?”

  “Correct.” Miles nodded in the caretaker’s direction. “He made up a bed on the couch in the library after the others went to sleep. I didn’t want to upset Camilla. We’re transitioning, do you understand?”

  “Is that true?” I asked Norton, thinking back to my interview with Ned. “Did Miles sleep in the library last night?”

  Norton’s head was bowed over the platter again. Leisurely, he looked up. “That’s right. All set here.” He grabbed a handful of cloth napkins from a drawer, hoisted up the platter of appetizers, and pasted on a smile.

  “You all can go back to the parlor,” I said. “And don’t worry. Wellington and I are perfectly capable of keeping you safe tonight. The rest of our team will be here before you know it, and then we’ll get you back to shore.”

  “Really?” said Miles, letting his eyes drift to the window, where the rain slapped at the glass.

  “On their way,” I lied, watching Miles, Jade, and Norton go. Then I took out my phone.

  I was starting to understand, and this new awareness made me fear for our safety even more. I was getting close. Closing in.

  But there was still something I needed to do.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  I called Carson. In the kitchen. In the middle of an investigation. But I didn’t do it for me. My personal life was irrelevant, my engagement immaterial. I was on a case I’d fucked up bad, determined to stanch the bleeding. And as astonishing as it was at the time, there was a chance Carson had intel I needed in order to make things right.

  “Shay, thank God, do you know what time it is? I’ve been waiting for hours, do you have any idea how worried I’ve been?”

  “I talked to Maureen.”

  He didn’t miss a beat. “I also spoke with Maureen McIntyre. I had to know you were okay.”

  “And suggest I was mentally ill?”

  “Now listen to me. You left me no choice.”

  “Why, Carson? Because I didn’t stay home like a good little girl? Because I wanted my career back and expected my fiancé to support me?”

  “We’ve been over this a million times. You’re not ready!”

  “And you’ll keep saying that forever, no matter what I think, while you make sure I continue to feel like a failure. You were never going to help me recoup my career. From day one you’ve been plotting to keep me at home. What was your plan, exactly—to get me fired? Tell all of Jefferson County I’ve got PTSD so there’s nowhere left for me to go?”

  “I’m trying to protect you.” As hard as he worked to regulate it, I could hear the faintest trace of insecurity in Carson’s voice. “You aren’t in your right mind. What is it, flashbacks? That’s it, isn’t it? You’re experiencing a sense of disassociation, like you’re outside your body, losing touch with reality. Of course you are, in an environment like that—and that’s just the beginning. This is exactly why I need you to come home.”

  He was doing it again, trying to make me distrust myself. As he spoke I imagined him in his high-priced glasses and novelty socks, clenching his jaw just enough to convey discontent. Flexing his foot to tap his toe in the irregular rhythm he knew made me jumpy. Every word Carson spoke, every movement he made, was carefully crafted to send a message. I wondered if he’d used the same tactics on Tim all those years ago.

  “The flashbacks are going to keep happening. You may think you’ve managed to pull yourself together, but you haven’t. Soon you’ll shut down completely—and what will you do then? How are you going to protect yourself when you’ve regressed to the state you were in when we met?” Carson’s voice got hard and low. “Don’t ever forget how that cop loo
ked at you when he found you in that basement, crouching over his partner’s dead body while a killer ran free. Or how you felt when you saw the gun just lying there and made the conscious decision to let an unconscionable monster walk. You could have stopped him. Given the families of those poor girls some peace. But you didn’t, Shay. You let him go.”

  My heart hammered against my ribs. “Come home,” Carson said, softly now. “We’ll work through this, just like we did before. I’ll make it right. I always do.”

  The speech was exactly what I expected from Carson. If I’d been just a smidge weaker, it might have worked.

  “Tell me about Moonshine Phil.”

  It was the question I’d been waiting to ask, and just as I’d hoped, it caught him off guard. It took longer than it should have for him to recover. “That’s a name I haven’t heard in a while,” he said. His laugh was synthetic, a cheap simulation of the real thing. “My ears are burning. Have you and Tim been gossiping behind my back? Don’t tell me you never broke the rules to have some fun.”

  “Sure I did. But I never made a friend break the law. Philip Norton. He’s a local, like you. What do you know about his family?”

  “What are you even talking about? I bought booze from the guy twenty years ago. What does any of this have to do with us? Christ,” he said after a beat, “this is Tim, too, isn’t it? What, is this Norton guy a suspect or something? Is Timmy trying to convince you I was friends with a criminal now?”

  “You’re the one who negotiated that liquor deal. Did he talk about his family or not?”

  “How am I supposed to remember that? We talked one time to set things up and Tim did the rest. You ask me, Tim was nuts to go anywhere near him. The pervert had a thing for young boys.”

  “What? How could you know that?”

  “I saw him around town a couple of times with a kid about our age. He wasn’t from our school. What does it matter? Moonshine Phil was a nobody. Just like Tim.”

  “Tim,” I repeated, livid. “You could have ruined his career, his whole fucking life.” I suddenly remembered our text conversation, Carson’s abrupt decision to freeze Tim out. “That’s why you changed your mind about inviting him to the wedding. You’re afraid of what he’ll tell me about how you treated him.”

  “Shana.” Carson loaded my name with displeasure, turned it into a reprimand. “If I was concerned about Tim Wellington, if I spent even a millisecond of my time thinking about what harebrained stories a pathetic, small-town cop might tell you about me, don’t you think I’d ban him from the guest list from the start? Wouldn’t I have explained myself preemptively if I thought he might try to bad-mouth me to my fiancée? You’ve been with the man almost every day for the past several months. If he had any power over me, believe me, he would have used it.”

  Tim hadn’t fully understood why Carson wanted him at our wedding in the first place, but I saw now his hunch was spot on. Tim grew up to become a cop. An upstanding person who did the right thing. And Carson was afraid. The wedding invitation was a pseudo peace offering, a false message to Tim that Carson had changed. With it, virtuous boy that Tim was, he wouldn’t dream of disrupting our relationship.

  But introduce a high-pressure case, throw in our recent spat over taking the job—a job Carson knew McIntyre and Tim both supported—and Carson’s confidence in his plan had waned. He’d spent the whole day picturing Tim and me on the island, engaged in interviews he knew would push me to the limits of my rusty capabilities. It was Carson who’d treated me, and if I lost my shit his role in my recovery was bound to come up. From his perspective, I was playing detective with a man from his past who, with enough coercion, might actually, finally, get angry enough to snap. Carson had been right to worry after all.

  “I have to go.” There were alarming sounds coming from the parlor, a noise like chair legs scraping the floor and raised voices, I wasn’t sure whose.

  “Yes. Good. McIntyre said she hopes to get a boat out to you in a matter of hours. It’s about time that woman started doing her job. Until then, I want you to remember your breathing exercises and—”

  “I’m not leaving the island, Carson. I’m leaving you.”

  Saying it out loud was easier than I thought. I didn’t allow myself to think about the real-world implications—the call to my parents telling them the man they’d come to think of as their son-in-law and I were through, the e-mail to the wedding planner Carson hired explaining we wouldn’t need her services after all. When I spoke those words, all I thought about was Tim in his teens. A boy who hadn’t yet started to lift weights and didn’t realize he possessed all the strength he’d ever need. His eyebrows would have looked even more absurd on a thinner face. They would have hovered in bewilderment over the things Carson asked him to do. Carson, who was sharp and bold and knew, even then, he had a special sway over people in this world. How Tim contained his feelings of betrayal and anger, I’ll never know. What I did know was I could never marry a man who took pleasure in his power to inflict so much pain.

  Carson tried to reason with me. I knew better than to listen. Just like Tim, I didn’t need him anymore. The sad thing is, neither of us ever did.

  I had just ended the call when the kitchen lights flickered. A sound cleaved the silence, the noise like a bolt of electricity zipping along a wire, and the lights went out for good. I spun around to face the kitchen windows. In the distance, through the rain and far off on the shore, a tiny orange flash, and then another. Transformers blowing on the mainland, knocking out the power to the village. Wherever it was, the transformer feeding electricity to Tern Island had failed, too.

  More bad noises down the hall. I heard a glass shatter with spectacular force, a muffled thump. Jade screamed, then Bebe. There were shouts from the men, brayed orders and exclamations of confusion. I turned to go. That’s when I felt a hand in my hair and the agony of a punch delivered with precision to my spleen.

  Doubled over and breathless with pain, I reached for my gun, but it was dark and my grasp was unreliable. I was too slow. A hot, clammy hand closed over my mouth, and before I could do a thing about it someone was dragging my aching body across the slate kitchen floor.

  TWENTY-NINE

  He moved quickly, towing me along like a disobedient child. For a second I thought he was taking me to the basement, felt a kick of terror to match the fire in my gut, but it was Norton’s room he took me to. Then I realized. It was the closest room with a lock.

  Inside, he slammed my back against the closed door, wrenched my hands above my head, and pinned his body against mine. I felt him reach behind me to find my weapon. He was trying to yank it free. I bucked under his mass, struggled with all my might, but he raked my burned hand down the wooden door. The tender boil left by the burn ruptured and my skin blazed with pain. He jabbed the muzzle of my firearm under my chin and brought his mouth close to my ear. His voice, when he spoke, was thick with rage. “You let her die,” it said.

  The voice belonged to Ned.

  In my state of shock I struggled to catch up. It was Flynn I’d been expecting to fight in the dark. I’d shot the man, on top of which he was vicious and unstable, already facing prison time. Flynn had nothing to lose—but Ned? His friend was missing, and all day Ned remained collected. It took Abella’s death to make him snap. Abella and Ned were friends, too, spent all their time together in the city. It was always the three of them there—Jasper, Abella, Ned.

  Images of Ned Yeboah hurtled through my mind. Ned, overcome with grief next to Abella’s lifeless body. Holding her hand at lunch, and again in the parlor. Comforting her. Stroking her hair.

  Ned was a friend to Abella. But to him, I realized then, she’d been something more. When Ned described his friendship with Jasper to me, he’d omitted a critical point. It wasn’t Ned’s disgust with Flynn that made him desperate to get away from the Sinclairs. It was Abby.

  I coughed out a warning. H
e’d be charged with assaulting a police officer. I wasn’t the only investigator on the island. Ned would be arrested in no time, go to prison.

  “You think I care? It doesn’t matter. You left.” Ned’s hot chest heaved against mine. “She’s dead. Abby’s dead because of you.”

  “What about you?” I winced as the cold, hard barrel of my gun grazed my throat. “Where were you when she went upstairs to change?”

  “I didn’t lay a hand on her. She had to use the bathroom. I thought . . .”

  “You thought she was safe? Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”

  Under the weight of his fury and sorrow, I sensed Ned drop his head. In that split second I acted. Every muscle in my body coiled and released. My knee connected with his groin. He sucked in a breath and let go of my arms.

  I staggered away from him, deeper into the small room. Ned still had the gun. The safety was on, and I had no reason to believe he knew what to do about that. But I’d been wrong before.

  Beyond the window lightning flashed, and I caught sight of Ned’s face. When he saw me it contorted with rage.

  “Put it down,” I said as the room was enveloped in darkness once more. “Killing me won’t bring her back. Lay the gun on the floor and kick it over. Do it now, Ned. You can still turn this around.”

  “You don’t understand. I loved her.”

  “Enough to hurt Jasper?”

  Far off, through the thunder, I heard more shouts. Tim calling my name. Not yet, I pleaded wordlessly, willing Tim to get the message. Wait.

  “What happened after the fight,” I said, “when you and Jasper came back inside?”

  Ned’s adrenaline was fading. He was coming to his senses. “I told you. I went to bed.”

  “In the library.” I needed to know for sure.

  “Yeah.”

  “And then?”

  “She saw us. Bebe,” Ned said weakly. “Me.”