Dash’s head snapped toward me. He was already reaching for his radio.
“What room?” I asked, though part of me already knew the answer like a song you’ve heard before.
“Twelve,” Dottie said. “Same room number where Ruby and Pickering used to meet.”
Through the phone I could hear the controlled chaos of the hospital—monitors beeping, voices murmuring instructions, machines keeping people alive who wanted to die and people dying who wanted to live.
Jane Sutherland. Who’d investigated the church finances in 1985. Who’d tracked Ruby’s and Pickering’s movements like a bloodhound following a scent. Who’d left town the moment their bodies were found and stayed gone for decades, scared enough to abandon her entire career and disappear into someone else’s life.
“We’re five minutes away,” I told Dottie. “I’ll call you back.”
I hung up and looked at Dash, whose knuckles had gone white against the steering wheel. “Why would Jane Sutherland come back to Grimm Island after all these years? Why stay at the Flamingo?”
“Maybe she was coming to meet someone—maybe even Bea. Or maybe the killer found out she was still alive and lured her back.” Dash’s voice was grim. “But they made a mistake this time. Fresh crime scene means fresh forensic evidence—DNA, fingerprints, security footage from a renovated motel that definitely has cameras. If ballistics confirms it’s the same gun, we’ve connected three murders across four decades.”
Something almost predatory flickered across his face. “They stayed hidden for decades by being smart. But desperation makes people careless.”
Five minutes later, we pulled into the parking lot of the Flamingo Hotel, and I barely recognized the place. Gone was the seedy motel where Ruby and Pickering had conducted their affair for fifty dollars a night and the desk clerk’s practiced blindness. Someone had poured serious money into transforming it—cream-colored siding that gleamed even in the fading afternoon light, sage-green shutters, tasteful brass lettering where the old neon flamingo had once flickered its invitation to sin. The parking lot held Teslas and Range Rovers instead of Ruby Bailey’s Mercury Cougar with its dented bumper and impossible dreams.
Yellow crime-scene tape fluttered across room twelve’s door like a funeral ribbon.
Dash’s patrol vehicles crowded the small lot. Deputy Harris stood near the entrance with the hotel manager—a man in his thirties wearing the kind of carefully casual clothes that cost more than my monthly mortgage, gesticulating with the desperate energy of someone trying to contain a public relations disaster. Probably explaining how this sort of thing never happened at the new Flamingo, as if renovation could exorcise ghosts.
Harris spotted us and walked over, his young face looking older than it had this morning. Murder did that—aged you in hours instead of years.
“Sheriff. Mrs. McCoy.” He nodded at me. “Victim is Jane Sutherland, sixty-four. Checked in yesterday afternoon under her own name, paid cash for two nights. Housekeeping found her around one o’clock.”
My stomach twisted into a knot. Jane Sutherland. The reporter who’d investigated the church finances, who’d tracked Ruby’s and Pickering’s movements, who’d fled Grimm Island the moment their bodies were discovered and never looked back.
Until now.
“What do we know?” Dash asked, his sheriff’s mask sliding into place.
“Single gunshot to the back of the head. Execution style.” Harris flipped through his notebook with trembling fingers. “County ME is inside now. Says it’s a .38 Special—same caliber as the ’85 murders.”
Same caliber. Room twelve. The coincidence was about as subtle as a brick through a stained-glass window.
“Time of death?”
“Between midnight and 3 a.m based on body temperature and rigor. No signs of struggle. No defensive wounds.”
“Security footage?” Dash asked.
“Yeah, part of the renovation. Manager’s got it queued up in the office. This way.”
Harris led us past room twelve toward the small office tucked behind the lobby. The hotel manager—whose name tag read Preston—had the footage ready on a laptop, his hands fidgeting with a pen like a nervous tic.
“This is from last night,” Preston said, clicking play. “1:30 a.m.”
The footage was grainy black and white, but clear enough. A figure approached room twelve—medium height, dark clothing, baseball cap pulled low. The person’s face never turned toward the camera, not even for a second. Deliberate avoidance.
A knock on the door. Waiting.
After a moment, the door opened. Jane appeared in the frame—just a sliver of her, backlit by the room’s lamp. She stepped back. Let the person in.
My heart sank like a stone.
“She opened the door willingly,” I said.
