by Joy Avon
“Were you alone at the lighthouse when she came to see it? You weren’t married to Elvira yet?”
“I was, yes, but we had married abroad, and she still had to wrap up some things to be able to come live with me, so she wasn’t in town yet.”
“I see.” Callie turned the cardboard with her reconstruction of the last hours back over and studied it. “And you have no idea what happened to Monica on that last day? What she did, who she met?”
“I know she dined at the Cliff Hotel that night.” Dave rubbed the scar on his right hand. “I helped some friends with fishing, and when we brought in the fresh catch for dinner, I saw her walking through the lobby.”
“What was she wearing?”
“A gold top, I think. Something glittery.” He smiled sadly. “I think she felt obliged to look glittery because people expected that of her. Must be very exhausting.”
He pushed himself up. “Well, that was all I had to say. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention this to Elvira. She’s happy in her own little world. Better to keep it that way.”
Callie looked at him. “Didn’t she see the broadcast this afternoon, my call for information?”
“We don’t have a television at home, but I caught it when I was having lunch at a roadside café. I was picking up some stuff we use in our treasure hunts.”
“I see.” Callie used her pen to push against the felt-tip marker on the table, rolling it away. “You can’t hide the old case from her forever. She’s bound to see some newspaper article about it. It will make waves, I suppose.”
Dave sighed. “You know …” He shuffled his feet. “Elvira didn’t have an easy life before she met me. She didn’t believe in good people or good places. Heart’s Harbor has been a very good place to her. I want her to keep feeling that way.”
Before Callie could even respond, he walked to the back door and disappeared into the night.
Callie sighed. Maybe she should never have let Quinn talk her into this. What had they set in motion? How many people would be affected by this? And all probably for nothing.
Still, as she looked at the cardboard in front of her, with her reconstruction of Monica’s last hours in Heart’s Harbor, that provisional time line, she felt like something was staring her in the face. Something important.
But she couldn’t quite make out what it was.
* * *
The next morning Callie came down with a head full of fluff from dreaming about glittery tops on dogs that ran away across a rocky beach while a boat came up from the sea with the letters Monica on its bow.
Yawning as she walked into the kitchen, she didn’t find Iphy there. A few uncut oranges lay on the counter, suggesting Iphy had wanted to make some juice. Had a phone call interrupted her breakfast preparations?
In the far corner of the counter, on some plastic foil sat a tiny marzipan picnic basket with a bit of a bottle and a baguette sticking out. Iphy had created a woven look to the basket, and the bottle of green marzipan even had a tiny beige cork. “So cute!” Callie exclaimed. “I knew she could make this work. Iphy? Iphy!”
Itching to tell her great-aunt how perfect this was as decoration for the Fourth of July treats, Callie rushed into Book Tea and saw Iphy at the window, standing on tiptoe to look into the street. Her expression betrayed deep concentration while she angled her head for the perfect view. Callie grinned mischievously as she approached her softly and then suddenly put her hands on Iphy’s shoulders. Iphy yelped and stepped back, almost on Callie’s foot.
“Guilty conscience?” Callie asked with a wink. “I never knew you loved peeping.”
“There’s something wrong at the newspaper building.” Iphy’s tone was worried, her expression tense. “The police are there.”
Callie’s mouth went dry. “The police?”
She stretched her neck to look out at the angle needed to see the building in the distance, and indeed caught the flash of blue lights. The lights were only necessary in an emergency. What was up?
“I’ll have a look. Okay?” Without waiting for an answer, Callie turned the lock on the tearoom’s entry door, opened it, and headed out into the street.
Several people were gathering at some distance from the Herald’s building, talking and pointing. Callie passed them without stopping to ask anything.
At the building, the door was open, and she could look in. A woman stood in the room, her hands up to her mottled face. Callie walked in and asked her in a soft voice, “Are you alright?”
The woman looked at her and whispered, “He’s dead. Our boss is dead.”
Callie froze. “Joe Jamison? Dead?”
“Yes. I found him.” The woman sobbed into her hands.
Callie left the woman to herself and closed the distance to the office quickly. She kept her hands clenched together in front of her so she wouldn’t accidentally touch anything. This was a crime scene, after all.
She went in and saw Jamison’s desk as she had seen it the other day, his swivel chair empty behind it. The file cabinet with the combination lock stood open. Falk leaned over to it, wearing thin white gloves, apparently intending to take something out of it.
He heard a rustle and looked up. “What are you doing here? Get out.”
“I want to help you. That file cabinet was closed the other day. I think Jamison kept really important stuff in it. He was nervous when we talked about Monica Walker.”
Falk straightened up. “I can figure out for myself what happened here. Please leave.”
Callie held his gaze. “I need to know something.” She ignored the shaking in her knees and the light feeling in her head. “Is Jamison dead because of the Monica Walker case? Did I …”
Her throat was tight, and she could barely get the words out. “Did I cause this?”
Falk looked her over. “I don’t know that. I can’t tell from a dead body on the floor what killed him or who did it or why. I just need quiet to work it out.”
A dead body.
Jamison was lying there, dead! The man who had asked her for help. Who had also told her he had always had a bad feeling about the disappearance. A gut feeling. Had he been right? Had he died because of what he knew about the summer of 1989?
Callie couldn’t believe it. “I feel terrible about this.” Her voice shook. “I set this all in motion.” She sensed how cold her hands were. Like she was freezing from the inside out. “My call for information …” She desperately wished she could turn the clock back.
Falk shook his head. “You didn’t set it in motion. That guy Quinn Darrow did. And if we find his fingerprints on anything in this office, he’ll be locked up before he knows what’s happening.”
The ferocity in his tone struck Callie. Moments ago he had said he didn’t know who did it or why. Now he seemed to suspect Quinn and was looking for evidence to support this assumption. Fingerprints on the scene. But …
Callie said, “Quinn was here with me yesterday. He may have touched things. I can’t remember exactly but it doesn’t prove he was involved in this death.”
“It’s not just prints I want to look at. There’s also something here beside the body that I think might give us a nice clue.”
“What is it?”
“That’s none of your business. I recall having asked you now, several times, to leave. Do you really want the other deputy to come in and escort you out by force?”
“No, of course not, but what’s that on his desk?” She angled her head to get a better look. Paper, blue, a marked spot. “It looks like a map of some kind.”
“Callie …”
“I’m going, I’m going.” Callie backed away, still careful not to touch anything. Her disbelief and guilt mixed with determination to find out what on earth had happened here. What had Jamison known? What did Quinn know? Why hadn’t they worked together? Only one way to find out. Talk to Quinn.
Or would that be dangerous?
Was Quinn the killer?
But why? Why would he kill Jami
son? Jamison had been so adamant to Callie that she not tell Quinn what Jamison had told her, so if Quinn hadn’t had any idea that Jamison knew more, why would he have wanted to kill him?
The locked file cabinet. It was open now. Did that mean anything?
Her heart pounding, Callie left the newspaper building in a hurry, brushing past the still crying woman who had found the body.
Outside, another police car had pulled up, and the deputy was securing the perimeter. He saw her and called out to her, “Hey, what are you doing? You’re not allowed to be in there.”
“I’m already leaving,” Callie assured him. “I, uh … I gave Deputy Falk some pertinent information.” It was a lie, of course, but she could hardly tell him she had needed confirmation that this death wasn’t her fault. Her head was spinning, and she could barely think straight. “I’m going back to Book Tea right now. I don’t want to hinder your work.”
He looked like he didn’t believe her for one single moment, but she flashed him a forced smile and was off again, back to Book Tea’s familiar welcoming front.
Once inside, she leaned against the door and closed her eyes a moment. What a total mess! If only she had never let herself be dragged into it. As soon as she found out for sure that Quinn had led her to the Monica Walker story on purpose, she should have told him to pursue it on his own.
Iphy asked softly, “And?”
“Joe Jamison is dead. Murdered probably.”
“What? At the newspaper building? How?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see the body. Fortunately.” Callie snapped her eyes open and faced her great-aunt. “I can’t help feeling like it’s all my fault. This whole Monica Walker thing. I even enjoyed it in a way. The call for information on TV, people responding with all of these clues, and I believed we might find her and present her at the Fourth of July celebration. A story like you might read in a magazine. All’s well that ends well, right? Well, this ended in disaster!”
“Wait a moment.” Iphy placed a soothing hand on her arm. “Jamison asked you to go through with the call for information. He wanted it to happen. Didn’t you tell me that?”
Callie nodded. “Yes, he did. It somehow felt like he was looking for resolution. I can’t quite explain it, but it was important to him. Very important.”
“There you are. He asked you to do this for him, and you did what he asked. You wanted to help him. Now it turns out that someone isn’t eager for this old story to be revived, and that person came after Jamison. After him, mind you, and not after you.”
“Me?”
“Yes. Your face was on TV. If someone was just angry about the old matter getting attention again, they could have come after you. Why Joe Jamison? His name wasn’t mentioned in your call for information.”
Callie hadn’t thought about it that way. “You mean, someone must have suspected he knew something and killed him to keep him quiet?”
“Exactly. We have to figure out who it is and why Jamison had to die.”
Iphy’s face scrunched up. “If Jamison wanted a new look at the case, he didn’t know the solution. Or at least he was doubtful. He wanted confirmation. So what did he know that caused his murder?”
“Hopefully Quinn can tell us. I’m going to grab a banana from the fruit bowl, and then I’m driving out to the Cliff Hotel to find him. He’s the only real lead we have, since he obviously knows a lot more than he ever told us, so I want to know exactly what he’s looking for in our town.”
Iphy followed her into the kitchen. “Are you sure that’s wise? Falk won’t like it if you tell Quinn that Jamison is dead before he has a chance to do so.”
Callie picked up a banana and then looked at her great-aunt. “I think Falk believes Quinn already knows. I had the distinct impression he believes that Quinn is the killer. I want to know what Quinn’s involvement with Monica Walker is before he’s arrested and locked up. I might not get a chance to talk to him again and hear the truth. I’ll confront him at the hotel with people around so he can’t hurt me. I’ll be super careful. Promise.”
* * *
At the Cliff Hotel most people were still in the breakfast room. On a long table, baskets of rolls, plates of scrambled eggs, brie and other cheeses, cold cuts, and towering fruit bowls invited the guests to come choose whatever they wanted. Waiters brought coffee and tea while a woman in white refilled a basket with croissants. They smelled like they were fresh from the oven.
Acting like she belonged there, Callie walked among the tables, looking for Quinn’s tall figure and blond head, but couldn’t find him. At last she asked someone from the staff and heard that he hadn’t been there the night before. They had no idea where he had gone and even if he would be back.
Perplexed, she left and considered her options. Maybe he really was at the campgrounds like he had told her?
But if he was sleeping in a tent, why had he taken a room at a pricey hotel and paid for it in advance? None of this made any sense.
Callie drove out to the campgrounds and talked to the proprietor, who directed her to the area where Quinn’s camp was supposed to be. Campers had spaces to themselves, but they weren’t far apart, so she could be sure that if she screamed, someone would hear her. As an extra precaution, she clutched her phone in her pocket, her finger poised to hit the call button.
She found a small red tent pitched underneath a couple of trees. A wobbly canvas chair was outside beside a gas stove for cooking. Closing in on the tent, she heard a deep snore.
She leaned over and listened better.
“That’s not me,” a voice said behind her back.
Callie almost jumped a foot off the ground and spun around to see Quinn standing with a paper bag in his hand. He held it up to her. “Not many luxuries when you’re camping, but I do love fresh bread. Want some?”
Callie shook her head. She nodded at the tent. “Who’s in there?”
“Biscuit. He has a mighty snore for such a small dog.”
Callie had to laugh despite her tense mood.
Quinn gestured at the canvas chair. “You sit there, and I’ll sit on the ground.” He plopped down into the grass and crossed his legs, tearing open the bag and taking out a croissant. It smelled just as inviting as the ones at the Cliff Hotel had. Callie’s half-empty stomach growled.
Biting into the fresh croissant, Quinn chewed with his eyes closed, as if in pure bliss. The morning sun shone on his face, and Callie wondered for a moment if she could be staring at a murderer. A pleasant-looking, friendly-acting murderer who would be willing and able to kill again as soon as he understood what she was here for.
Falk had warned her not to do anything alone, and here she was, all alone, with Quinn. Within screaming distance from other people maybe, with a phone in her pocket to use, sure, but still …
It was a lot lonelier out here than it would have been in the Cliff Hotel’s breakfast room.
She really needed to think things through better next time.
If there was a next time.
She spied around casually for something heavy to strike him with, should he attack her, but there was nothing suitable in sight.
Quinn said, “You could have called me. I gave you my cell phone number.”
“Yes, that’s probably the most convenient when you have two places to stay and can’t tell people where you’ll be at any given moment. I was at the Cliff Hotel, and they said you hadn’t been there all night.”
Quinn hitched a brow. “Do you think I can bring a dog like Biscuit into the Cliff Hotel? He’d wreck the room. I had to find another place to stay.”
Of course. That made perfect sense. Still, she was determined to confront him with what could euphemistically be called “incongruities” in his story. “You told me you were camping here before you even had Biscuit.”
Quinn looked her over as if her stern tone confused him. “Why the third degree?”
Callie shrugged. “I felt like a fool asking for you at the hotel when you weren’t ev
en there. People know me around here, and I care what they think of me.” She nodded at the croissant in his hand. “Any good?”
“Delicious. Now what are you here for? A hot lead from the calls about Monica Walker?”
“Well, I do have a lot of information now.”
Quinn surveyed her. “Really? Something we can work with?”
“I have no idea since I don’t know what you’re after.”
“Finding out where Monica Walker disappeared to.”
“At what cost?”
Quinn froze. He narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I don’t see any clear reason why it would matter at all to you what happened to this woman who was a TV star thirty years ago. If she ran off to be with a man she loved, or to escape the paparazzi or whatever, do we really have to go after her and trace her? If she was trying to get away, then wouldn’t being found again just make her unhappy?”
Quinn seemed dumbfounded by the suggestion. He held her gaze, his blue eyes flickering like a computer when it’s processing information. “You think she doesn’t want to be found?”
“That’s possible.” Callie took a deep breath. Without telling him about Jamison’s murder, she wanted to provoke him into betraying his agenda. “We’re looking at this as a nice little search of the past to enliven our Fourth of July party, but it might not be so easy for her.”
He waited a moment. “Or for others involved.”
Now it was Callie’s turn to be puzzled. She tilted her head. “What do you mean?”
“If there was a man she vanished with, what about him? And what if somebody from town helped them get away? Think of the boat that vanished as well.”
“The fisherman reported it stolen.”
“Maybe he was told to do so. Maybe he was even paid to do so. What do we know? If it turns out he lied about the theft, he might get into trouble.”
Quinn seemed to relax now that he had the lead in the conversation. He took another bite and chewed. Then he swallowed. “Well, whatever the case, we’ve started now, and we can’t turn back. Whether Monica Walker wants to be found or not is not for us to speculate about.”
