“Then we find out why she left the profession,” Dash said. “People don’t just walk away from investigative journalism without a reason.”
“Especially not when they’re onto a good story,” Bea added darkly. “Jane was ambitious. Tenacious. The kind of reporter who wouldn’t let go until she had answers. If she ran, something scared her badly enough to make her quit everything.”
“Or someone paid her to disappear,” Walt suggested. “Cover-up payment.”
“Either way,” Dash said, “We need to find her.”
“I’ll check property records,” Walt added. “See if she owned anything on the island, if she left any paper trail we can follow.”
The conversation continued, plans forming and reforming like clouds before a storm. We divided tasks with the efficiency of people who’d learned to work together through our investigation of the Calvert case. Dottie would track down the medical center nurses from 1985. Hank would research the Flamingo Motel’s employee records. Walt would handle the official documents and property records. Bea would hunt for Jane Sutherland through her network of journalism contacts.
And Dash and I would visit Michael Bailey at the funeral home.
By the time the Silver Sleuths dispersed, the sun had fully risen, painting Harbor Street in shades of gold and possibility. Genevieve had arrived and was handling the morning customers up front while I tidied the back room.
“Two o’clock,” Dash said as he prepared to leave. “I’ll pick you up here.”
“A funeral home.” I wiped down the table. “Very romantic.”
His mouth quirked. “I live to impress.”
He stepped closer, reaching past me for Pickering’s journal. His arm brushed mine—deliberate, warm.
“Be careful,” he said quietly.
“Always am.”
He held my gaze a moment, then left.
I finished cleaning, humming an old folk song my grandmother used to sing while tending graves. Dark and minor key, about secrets that wouldn’t stay buried.
“Oh, dig my grave both wide and deep, place a marble stone at my head and feet…”
Appropriate for where we were headed.
Somewhere on this island, someone had gotten away with murder.
And we were about to dig it all up.
CHAPTER
SIX
Monday’s lunch service at The Perfect Steep proved, as Monday lunch services always did, to be a trial of patience and precision. The tourists—a harried-looking couple with matching visors—were studying the chalkboard menu as though it contained secrets of the Illuminati, while the business crowd hurried in and out with the brisk efficiency of people who had Somewhere Important to Be. I served tea, plated sandwiches, and smiled at customers, all while my brain refused to cooperate with the task at hand. Instead, it insisted on circling endlessly around blond nurses in white uniforms, missing church funds, and reporters who’d fled the island—as though thinking about murder hard enough might somehow solve it.
Marcus Wheeler came in around noon, ordering his Darjeeling with one sugar, settling into his corner table with his newspaper. But instead of turning to the obituaries like normal, he just sat there staring at the folded newsprint like it contained the secrets of the universe.
When I brought his tea, he looked up at me with an expression I couldn’t quite read. “I remembered something last night,” he said quietly. “About Tommy. About someone he trusted.”
I slid into the chair across from him, the lunch crowd humming around us but giving us privacy the way islanders did when conversations turned serious.
“There was a deputy who worked with Tommy back then,” Marcus continued, his weathered fingers wrapping around the teacup like it could warm something deeper than just his hands. “Name was Frank Holloway. Good cop, honest, the kind who actually believed in serving and protecting. He and Tommy were partners for a few years.”
“What happened to him?” I asked.
“He quit.” Marcus took a slow sip of his tea. “About six months after the Pickering–Bailey murders. Just turned in his badge one day and left the island. Tommy said Frank couldn’t stomach what Milton was doing anymore—the cover-ups, the looking the other way, the way evidence would disappear or witnesses would suddenly change their stories.”
My pulse quickened. “Did Frank know something specific about the murders?”
