“No. I’d already walked away by then. But everyone knew she and the reverend had their arrangement. I assumed she’d be coming to meet him—she lived close enough to walk to Turtle Point from her house.”
She was quiet for a moment, rocking, her eyes focused on something beyond the window. “When I heard the next morning that they’d been found dead, both of them shot…I knew I’d seen something important. I went to the police station, asked to speak to whoever was handling the investigation. They brought me into a little room, gave me terrible coffee, and this deputy—young man, very earnest—he took my statement. Wrote down everything I said, had me sign it. He seemed to think it was important.”
“But Sheriff Milton didn’t,” I said.
Elsie’s mouth tightened. “Sheriff Milton was a horse’s behind. He came to my house three days later. Sat in my living room drinking tea my sister made and told me very politely that I’d been mistaken. Said I couldn’t have seen what I thought I saw because they had evidence that Reverend Pickering was alone until Ruby Bailey arrived later. Said I was confused, probably saw someone else entirely. When I insisted I knew what I’d seen, he got less polite. Started asking questions about my mental health, about the sleeping pills my doctor had prescribed, about whether I’d been drinking that night.”
Her hands had begun to shake slightly. “He made me feel crazy. Like I couldn’t trust my own eyes, my own memory. My sister—she was worried about me, said maybe the sheriff was right, maybe I had gotten confused. After a while, I started to wonder myself. But then sometimes I’d be falling asleep and I’d see it again—that woman in white, arguing with the reverend in the moonlight. And I’d know I hadn’t imagined it.”
“Miss Crawford,” Dash said gently, “Is there anything else you remember? Any detail that might help us identify the woman?”
Elsie was quiet for so long I thought she might have drifted off or forgotten the question. Then she spoke, her voice barely above a whisper.
“No. I wish I’d stayed longer. Maybe if I had, if I’d been a witness they couldn’t dismiss…” She looked at me with sudden intensity. “You believe me, don’t you? I’m not crazy. I saw what I saw.”
“I believe you,” I said, reaching out to take her hand. Her fingers were cold and fragile, bird bones wrapped in papery skin. “Everything you’ve told us makes sense. You saw something real, something important, and Sheriff Milton buried it because he was corrupt.”
Elsie’s expression shifted then, her eyes losing their sharp focus as she looked at me. Really looked at me. Her head tilted slightly, and a smile spread across her face—sweet and confused and heartbreaking.
“Helen?” she said softly, her voice taking on a younger quality. “Helen, is that you? I thought you weren’t coming until Sunday. Did you bring the buttermilk pie? You know how Daddy loves your buttermilk pie.”
My throat tightened. I glanced at Dash, who had gone very still.
“Miss Crawford,” I said gently, but she wasn’t listening.
“Your dress is lovely, Helen. Is it new?” Her fingers plucked at my sleeve, examining the fabric with childlike wonder. “Mama would have loved to see you in it. She always said you had the best taste of all of us.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I miss Mama. Do you miss her too?”
Nurse Anna appeared in the doorway, her expression sympathetic but unsurprised. “She does this sometimes,” she said quietly. “Helen was her older sister. Passed away in 1973.”
Elsie was still holding my hand, stroking it gently, her face peaceful now as if the confusion brought its own kind of comfort. “Stay for supper, Helen. Please stay. I don’t like eating alone.”
“I think that’s enough for today,” Anna said softly. “She’s had a good spell, but she’s tired now. This is how it goes—clarity comes and goes like the tide.”
We stood slowly, and I squeezed Elsie’s hand before letting go. She looked up at me with those pale blue eyes, and for just a moment, I saw recognition flicker there—saw her remember who I really was and what we’d been discussing. Her expression grew troubled, almost frightened.
“The woman in white,” she whispered. “She came back. I know she did.”
Then the moment passed, and she was looking past me again, searching for her sister who’d been gone for fifty years.
My phone buzzed with a text from Dottie: Ready when you are. Hank and I are at the shop waiting.
“I need to get back,” I said. “Dottie and Hank are waiting on me so we can go talk to Thomas Wheeler.”
Dash nodded, though I could see the tension in his jaw—the part of him that didn’t like sending me off without him. But we’d already decided this approach made more sense.
I found myself singing softly, the words slipping out before I could stop them. “Pennies in a stream, falling leaves of sycamore, moonlight in Vermont…”
My grandmother used to say that music was just longing set to melody—longing for what we had, what we’ve lost, what we hope might come. The old standards understood that better than most. They dressed heartbreak in pretty melodies and called it romance.
The familiar sight of Grimm Island’s bridge emerging from the mainland felt like coming home, though whether that was comfort or trap I couldn’t quite decide. Below us, the marshland stretched out in shades of gold and green, eternal and unchanging, holding its own secrets in the mud and water.
Dash pulled up in front of The Perfect Steep, where Dottie and Hank waited on the bench outside, looking like two people dressed for entirely different occasions. Dottie wore bright green culottes and a patterned shirt that made my eyes cross, her cat-eye glasses perched on her nose. Hank had on his cargo shorts and that fishing vest with its seventeen pockets, each presumably containing something essential for interrogating ex-deputies.
“Be careful,” Dash said as I gathered my things. “Frank Holloway left the force for a reason. If he knows something that Milton wanted buried, talking about it might make him nervous.”
“We’ll be fine,” I assured him. “Three harmless-looking people asking questions about old times.”
“You’re about as harmless as a cottonmouth in tall grass,” he said, but there was warmth in his voice. “Call me when you’re done?”
