“Seems far-fetched.” Julia yawned. “Because wouldn’t Violet be dead, too? And the two of us? Oh, I know, you think we’re in danger, but I haven’t seen hide nor hair of a killer in the last three weeks, so I feel pretty safe.”
I wished I did.
* * *
That evening I deposited Eddie back onto the houseboat and checked the whiteboard for Kate’s whereabouts. She’d written, Working late at Pam’s, sleeping up the hill at Aunt Frances and Otto’s if that’s okay, followed by a stick figure with beads of sweat pouring off that, if you used a lot of imagination, could have looked like Kate.
I stood there, staring at the board. So there was hope. Hope that I wasn’t the worst aunt in the history of the universe. Hope that the two of us would eventually grow into a happy and comfortable niece-aunt relationship. Hope things would all work out.
Smiling to myself, smiling at the world in general, I headed back outside, where it had grown even hotter and more humid though I wouldn’t have thought it possible.
“How do people in Florida stand it?” I asked.
Louisa Axford, who was starting charcoal in one of the marina’s grills installed for the boaters, looked up. “Stand what?” she asked.
“This weather.” I took the neck of my T-shirt and fluffed it up and down, trying to get some air movement. “Hot. Humid. Bleah.”
“You have the question all wrong,” Louisa said, glancing up at the hazy sky. “It’s not how do people in Florida stand the heat, it’s how do people Up North stand the winters?” She shivered, and I wasn’t sure it was fake. “Cold and snowy for weeks at a time, with maybe a single day of sunshine a month to tide you over? No thank you.”
I’d long ago stopped trying to convince Louisa of the joys of winter—that the transformations a fresh snowfall wrought were wondrous, that the one sunny day was so gorgeously brilliant it made all the cloudy ones fade from memory, and that venturing out into winter’s sharp cold made you feel brave and adventurous, even when you weren’t—and we’d agreed to disagree about what climate was best for human habitation.
Louisa dribbled the charcoal with lighter fluid and lit it with a match. She eyed the conflagration, poked at the pile of bricks with tongs, and nodded with satisfaction. “Steak should be done in forty-five minutes. Do you and Kate want to come over? We have extra.”
I explained Kate’s whereabouts. “And I need to get to the house. Rafe promised to pick up dinner.”
“Sub sandwiches?” She laughed. “Veggie with extra cheese for you?”
“When you have a good rut going, it’s best to stay in it,” I said.
“Unless you’re tired of your nice, comfy rut,” Louisa said. “I hear it happens.”
“I’ll let you know.” I sketched a wave and walked off, stopping at the front steps of the house. There was a law enforcement officer on the porch, slouched in a chair with his feet up on the railing, paging through what looked like a recent copy of Field & Stream. “Are you here to help or hinder?” I asked.
Ash looked up. “Can’t I do both?”
“Sure,” I said, climbing the wood stairs and pulling a chair around to match Ash’s arrangement, which looked so comfortable I couldn’t believe I hadn’t tried it myself. “Just not at the same time. Where’s Rafe?”
“Hunting and gathering.”
“Are you staying? Please say yes. We need to install upper cabinets in the master bath, and my height efficiency isn’t exactly a help in this case.”
He nodded. “That’s why Rafe’s getting three subs plus loaded potato skins.”
“Perfect.” I sat and put my feet up on the railing. It was a stretch for me, but still comfortable, and I gave a sigh of contentment. “What would be nice out here is a ceiling fan.”
Ash eyed me. “What, for the six days a year it gets this hot?”
“Do you have a problem with that?” I asked, closing my eyes.
He turned a page. “Not really. But I’m guessing it’s not going to be at the top of Rafe’s punch list.”
Though I figured a ceiling fan was more a change order than a punch list item, Ash was probably right. “Speaking of murders,” I said, and ignored Ash’s heavy sigh. And then before he could object that I was making him work when he was off duty, I went on. “First off, I have to tell you about Kate.”
“How’s she doing?” Ash asked. “She was pretty upset after the fireworks, and I get it. Stumbling across a dead body on TV or the movies isn’t anything like it is in real life.”
No, it wasn’t. On the screen there was no indication that the sounds, tastes, and smells that accompanied such a traumatic experience would forever remind you of what had happened. I figured that, the rest of my life, whenever I heard Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love,” I’d think about Nicole, because that song was playing on the radio as we drove home that awful afternoon. And I wasn’t exactly looking forward to the fireworks next July. So if it was this bad for me, who was reasonably close to a fully functional adult, how must the adolescent Kate be feeling?
“She’s doing okay,” I finally said. “She hasn’t had a nightmare in almost a week.” As far as I knew. “But she’s come up with a theory I promised to share with you.”
He settled a bit farther down in his chair and crossed his ankles. “I had no idea that messing around with murder investigations had a genetic component.”
“The theory,” I said, ignoring his comment, “is that Fawn, Rex’s wife, and Dominic, Nicole’s husband, have been having an affair. And to avoid lengthy and costly divorce proceedings, which Dominic didn’t believe in anyway because he’s a really devout Catholic, Dominic killed Rex and Fawn killed Nicole. Which was why they had alibis for the murder of their spouses.” I was embellishing a bit, but now that I was saying it out loud, I was warming to the idea.
Ash, however, did not look convinced. “One question.” He yawned. “Do you have any evidence that Fawn and Dominic knew each other? E-mails, letters, witnesses.”
Of course not. “I think it’s a possibility that’s worth looking into.”
“Sure,” he said. “I’ll get on that, right after I work through those other theories you’ve tossed into my lap. How many were there for Rex Stuhler? There’s Fawn, naturally. And John and Nandi Jaquay, plus Barry Vannett. And who have you come up with for Nicole Price?”
I refrained from pointing out that Fawn had been their own first suspect. “I have some thoughts.”
“Of course you do,” he murmured.
“Hark!” I said, holding my hand to my ear. “Do I hear the echo of Detective Hal Inwood?”
Ash clutched his chest. “Ooo, that hurt. Stop it, already.”
“If you promise to listen to me, sure.”
“Since it’s way too hot to move, and it’s pretty comfortable here, I don’t have much choice.”
“That’s what I like in law enforcement,” I said. “A captive audience.”
And I proceeded to tell him about what I’d discovered in the last week or so. That Violet Mullaly had expressed deep anger about the library books Rex and Nicole each had just before Rex was killed. That Lowell grew up in the same town where Nicole taught, and had acted oddly when I’d casually asked him about it. That Mason at the convenience store had been friendly up until I’d started talking about Nicole and Rex. The only possibility I didn’t mention was Courtney Drew, the home health aide, who’d worked with Rex’s mom, because that didn’t seem like enough, even for me.
“Violet Mullaly, Lowell Kokotovich, and Mason Hiller.” Ash pulled a large cell phone out of his front pocket. He tapped away without saying anything.
Finally, I couldn’t take it any longer. “What are you doing?”