He kissed me then—warm and slow, the kind of kiss that felt like coming home. When he pulled back, he rested his forehead against mine for a moment.
“See you tonight.”
After he left, I stood at the door for a long moment, my fingers touching my lips. Chowder appeared at my feet with a judgmental snort.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I told him. “Maybe you need to meet a nice lady and mind your business.”
My house welcomed me back with the silence of a place that knew it was empty too often. The afternoon light streamed through the windows, painting everything in shades of gold, catching on the crystal doorknobs Patrick had installed, the vintage tea canisters I collected, the framed photographs of a life that felt both intimately familiar and increasingly distant.
I fed Chowder first—his dinner of chicken and rice from the fancy pet store on King Street. He attacked it with the enthusiasm of someone who hadn’t eaten in weeks rather than hours.
Then I stood in front of my closet contemplating what one wore to a murder investigation strategy session. After considerable deliberation, I selected a 1940s blouse in cream silk with mother-of-pearl buttons, paired with high-waisted navy trousers that made me feel like Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story. Confident. Capable. Ready to ask hard questions and demand real answers.
I was pinning back my hair with a vintage comb when my phone rang. Dottie’s name flashed on the screen.
“I found her,” she said without preamble. “The blond nurse. Well, I found three possibles, but one of them is very interesting.”
“Tell me,” I said, putting her on speaker while I finished with my hair.
“Stephanie Michelle Chester, twenty-six years old in 1985, worked at Charleston Medical Center as an OR nurse. Blond, five foot seven, athletic build. Here’s where it gets interesting—she married Matthias Crenshaw Jr. in 1987, two years after the murders.”
The hair comb slipped from my fingers, clattering against the vanity.
“Elder Crenshaw’s son?”
“The very same,” Dottie confirmed, and I could hear the satisfaction in her voice. “She’s Stephanie Donaldson now. She divorced Crenshaw about seven years into the marriage. But she lives right here on Grimm Island and has for thirty-eight years. You’ve probably seen her around town.”
My mind was racing, connecting dots that suddenly felt blindingly obvious. “Elder Crenshaw confronts Ruby Bailey. His son’s girlfriend—or future wife—is a blond nurse. Elsie Crawford sees a blond woman in a nurse’s uniform at Turtle Point the night of the murders.”
“It’s circumstantial,” Dottie cautioned. “But it’s a heck of a coincidence.”
“We need to talk to her and see if we can pin her down,” I said.
“She works at the medical center three days a week. Pediatrics now, not OR. Married to a surgeon. Pillar of the community type.”
“Can you get me her address?”
“Already have it,” Dottie said. “I’ll bring everything to the meeting tonight. Along with information on the other two possibles, though neither of them has the same interesting family connections.”
After we hung up, I sat at my vanity staring at my reflection. The former Stephanie Crenshaw. I checked the time. The Silver Sleuths would be arriving in forty-five minutes, and I still needed to prepare refreshments and give Chowder his evening constitutional.
“Come on, boy,” I called, reaching for his leash. “Let’s get some air before the chaos descends.”
Chowder waddled over with the enthusiasm of a dog who knew that evening walks sometimes involved interesting smells and the possibility of running into Mr. Henderson’s cat. I clipped on his leash and grabbed my cardigan from the hook by the door.
My house sat on the harbor side of Harbor Street, the kind of prime real estate that came with both prestige and property taxes that made my accountant wince. But the view was worth every penny—straight across the street, beyond the seawall, the harbor stretched out in all its moody glory, painted now in shades of peach and lavender as the sun began its descent.
We crossed Harbor Street carefully—Chowder had strong opinions about cars that didn’t properly respect his right of way—and made our way to the public seawall that ran along the water’s edge. The walkway was wide enough for joggers, dog walkers, and tourists taking sunset photos, all of them navigating around each other with the practiced choreography of people who’d learned to share limited space.
Chowder sniffed every section of the seawall with the intensity of a detective gathering evidence. The evening air smelled of salt and mud and the faint sweetness of honeysuckle from someone’s garden. The tide was coming in, the water lapping gently against the stones with a sound like whispered secrets.
“Mabel! Yoo-hoo!”
I turned to see Eleanor Grantham waving from her back porch next door, her silver hair perfectly coiffed despite the hour. She wore a silk caftan in shades of coral, and she clutched a martini glass like it was a religious artifact.
“Evening, Eleanor,” I called back, trying not to sound as reluctant as I felt. Eleanor was harmless but relentlessly curious, the kind of neighbor who noticed everything and forgot nothing.
“I saw the sheriff’s vehicle at your house last night,” she said, not even pretending she hadn’t been watching. “And then again last week. Twice, if memory serves. Which it always does.” She took a delicate sip of her martini. “Things progressing nicely in that department?”
