“Please,” he said, settling into the empty chair at the head of the table. “Black, two sugars.”
I poured his coffee, acutely aware of how domestic the gesture felt, how easily we’d fallen into these small rituals over the past few weeks. When I set the cup in front of him, our fingers brushed, and I felt that familiar spark of electricity that made me want to both step closer and retreat to a safe distance.
“So,” Dash said, accepting the coffee with a nod of thanks. “Let’s see what Pickering was hiding.”
With everyone assembled, I distributed the copied pages from Pickering’s journal.
“Goodness gravy,” Bea breathed after a moment, her eyes wide behind her reading glasses. “I knew Margaret Calhoun had secrets, but an affair with her husband’s brother? And she’s still married to Harold after all these years?”
“Maybe she recommitted to her marriage,” I said.
“Or maybe Harold never found out,” Walt said grimly. “Some secrets stay buried because everyone involved works very hard at the burying.”
“Here’s one about the Rutledge family,” I said, reading aloud. “‘Thomas Rutledge isn’t actually a Rutledge by blood. His mother, Catherine, had an affair with the family’s groundskeeper—a man named Samuel Price. When she got pregnant in 1968, the family paid Samuel fifty thousand dollars to leave South Carolina and never come back. They told everyone the baby was premature. Thomas has his real father’s eyes, but nobody dares say it out loud. Catherine keeps a photograph of Samuel hidden in her Bible.’”
The room went silent. The Rutledges were one of the oldest families on Grimm Island—their ancestors had signed the state constitution.
“Thomas Rutledge is a judge now,” Hank said quietly. “Circuit court. Very respected.”
Bea had found another entry, her expression darkening as she read. “Oh, this is ugly. ‘Dr. Laurens Middleton has been writing fraudulent prescriptions for opioids for five years. Sells them to a dealer in Charleston for cash. His wife, Marie, thinks the extra money comes from his investment portfolio. She has no idea her Lexus was bought with drug money.’”
“Middleton still practices,” Walt said, his jaw tightening. “Has an office on Harbor Street. My cardiologist refers patients to him.”
“Here’s the Prioleau scandal,” Deidre said. “Judge Benjamin Prioleau took bribes from developers for favorable rulings. Twenty thousand per case, paid through his law partner’s consulting firm. His son James knows—helped set up the shell company. The Prioleau family legacy isn’t old money, it’s dirty money wrapped in a bow tie.”
“Judge Prioleau retired in 1990,” Hank said, his expression grim. “But James Prioleau is the attorney who handles most of the island’s real estate closings. Everyone uses him.”
I flipped to another page, this one making my stomach turn. “Listen to this: ‘Eleanor Ravenel’s daughter didn’t die in that car accident in 1974. Eleanor was driving drunk, hit a tree on River Road. The girl survived but was brain damaged. Eleanor and her husband Phillip put her in a facility in Georgia, told everyone she’d died, even had a funeral with an empty casket. They visit her twice a year and pay cash so there’s no paper trail. The girl’s name is still Sarah, but she doesn’t know who she is anymore.’”
“Dear God,” Dottie breathed. “I remember hearing about that funeral. Everyone on the island mourned that poor child.”
“Eleanor Ravenel is the garden club president,” Bea said, her voice hollow. “She gives out a scholarship every year in her daughter’s memory. Lord have mercy.”
“There’s more,” Dash said, holding up another page. “The Lowndes family—Pickering documented an affair and what looks like embezzlement from a family trust. And here’s one about the Pinckneys covering up their son’s involvement in a hit-and-run by paying off the victim’s family.”
We continued reading in horrified silence, each entry more damning than the last. The morning light streaming through the windows seemed to lose its warmth as we catalogued Grimm Island’s sins—adultery, embezzlement, blackmail, abuse. Pickering had been thorough in his documentation through 1985, noting dates, amounts, specific details that could only have come from confession or careful observation.
“Some of these people are still alive,” Walt said grimly. “Living right here on the island. And some of them have children and grandchildren who’ve inherited their secrets along with their money.”
“I can attest to that,” Bea said.
“We’ve identified seventeen entries that mention people still living on Grimm Island or their direct descendants,” Walt announced finally, having made a list as we read. “Each one represents a potential motive for murder.”
We couldn’t investigate seventeen different scandals simultaneously, much as the Silver Sleuths might enjoy trying. We needed to focus on the murders themselves, on the blond woman in white who kept appearing in the narrative like a ghost that refused to be exorcised.
I pulled out the diary entry from late September, the one that had made my skin crawl when I first read it. “‘Someone is watching me. I feel eyes everywhere now, like God finally got tired of waiting for me to confess and sent an avenging angel to hurry things along. Ruby’s scared too. More scared than I’ve ever seen her. She knows something she won’t tell me, something about why we’re being watched. Tomorrow night at Turtle Point. Ruby says we need to talk about leaving, about starting over somewhere safe. Maybe she’s right. Maybe I’ve been playing God for too long, collecting sins like baseball cards. Maybe it’s time to run.’”
The silence that followed was profound, broken only by Chowder’s snoring from his bed in the corner. He’d positioned himself in the early morning sunlight streaming through the window, his bow tie slightly askew, completely unconcerned with human drama.
“He never made it to ‘starting over,’” Dottie said softly. “Neither of them did.”
“There’s only one other mention of feeling watched,” Dash said, flipping through his notes. “An entry from two weeks before this one. Pickering wrote that he thought someone had been in his office, that his desk had been disturbed. But he wasn’t sure if it was real or paranoia.”
“That’s it?” Walt asked. “Just two entries about surveillance?”
“The rest of the journal is all about documenting other people’s sins,” Dash confirmed. “These two entries about feeling watched stand out because they’re personal. They’re about his own fear.”
“So we don’t actually know who was watching them,” Hank said thoughtfully. “Or if anyone was. Could have been paranoia from a guilty conscience.”
