The coffee’s bitter aroma mixed with her expensive perfume—something French and aggressive—creating an oddly comforting combination of luxury and necessity.
“Early for a Thursday,” Deidre observed, her reading glasses sliding down her nose as she consulted her ever-present notebook, the one where she recorded everything from grocery lists to murder suspects with equal dedication.
“Prayer meeting maybe,” Walt suggested, his fingers drumming against the mahogany table. “Some churches do those before work hours. Gets the faithful started right.”
“Or,” Bea said, setting down her coffee cup with deliberate precision, “they’re having emergency meetings about us reopening the investigation. The scandal of George and Ruby was bad enough forty years ago. Everyone accepted that George and Ruby stole that money and got killed for it—crime of passion mixed with righteous anger about theft. Nice and neat. But if we prove they were innocent of the embezzlement…”
“Then someone else was guilty,” Deidre finished quietly. “Someone who’s been letting a dead man take the blame for forty years.”
“The families of those board members are still prominent,” Walt added. “The Hammonds, the Forsythes, the Bakers—their children and grandchildren still live here, still attend that church. If it comes out their fathers knew the real thief and covered it up, took hush money to stay quiet…”
“That’s the kind of truth that would tear a congregation apart,” I said, understanding dawning like cold water down my spine. “People who’ve believed one version of history for four decades finding out it was all a lie. Maybe we’re on the wrong track. Maybe it’s not the same killer.”
The morning light streaming through my lace curtains painted everything in watercolor washes of gold and shadow, making even our grim purpose seem somehow softer, though I knew that was just another of the low country’s beautiful lies.
I filled them in on Inspector Morse’s findings, watching their faces shift from curiosity to anger as I described the crowbar marks on my back door, the deliberate pouring of gasoline in patterns meant to destroy everything we’d gathered.
“Inspector Morse said we were lucky last night. That group of people out for their evening walk called it in immediately when they saw the smoke. Another ten minutes and the fire would have breached the wall between the back room and main shop. The arsonist knew what they were doing—poured gasoline specifically in the back room where we’d been working, wanted those specific materials destroyed.”
“What about security cameras?” Walt asked immediately, leaning forward with the intensity of a bloodhound catching scent.
“None in the back parking lot,” I said, my fingers wrapping around my coffee mug for warmth I didn’t really need. “But Morse said to check island gas stations. Someone bought a couple of gallons of gas somewhere, and in a town this small, someone might remember.”
The floorboards creaked—that particular spot three feet from the doorway that Patrick had always meant to fix but never gotten around to, one of those small imperfections that had become part of the house’s personality—and Dash materialized in the doorframe like he’d been conjured by our collective need for authority. His uniform was crisp despite the early hour, but I could see the exhaustion written in the lines around his eyes, the slight shadow of stubble he’d not bothered to shave.
“We need to push harder on Stephanie Donaldson,” Dash said. “Jane Sutherland is dead. Hank’s in the hospital with a cracked skull. Your shop was torched. Someone’s panicking, trying to shut this investigation down. That means we’re close, and we need to push before they do something worse.”
He looked at me. “Stephanie wouldn’t be so worried if she was telling the truth about being at Turtle Point. We’ve got to confront her with what we know about her being in Pickering’s journal. With bodies piling up, we can’t afford to be gentle anymore. She’s working today—her shift started at 9—I’ve already checked.”
“What about us?” Walt asked, looking slightly offended at being left out of the action.
“Keep working the financial angle,” Dash said. “Go through those church records again, see if there’s anything we missed about the building fund. Check with your contacts about those board members who made interesting financial decisions just after the murders.”
“And Elder Crenshaw?” Deidre asked.
“We’ll go see him this afternoon after Stephanie,” Dash said. “No advance warning. The element of surprise might shake something loose, especially if he’s been sitting on information for forty years.”
We caught Stephanie in the hospital cafeteria during what must have been a late morning break. She sat alone at a corner table, picking at a salad while scrolling through her phone. The cafeteria buzzed with the controlled chaos of medical staff grabbing quick meals between crises—doctors in scrubs gulping coffee, administrators in suits discussing budgets, the constant flow of people trying to fuel themselves for whatever emergency came next.
She didn’t see us until we were already pulling out chairs at her table. Her fork stopped halfway to her mouth, a piece of lettuce dangling precariously.
“You can’t keep bothering?—”
“Your stepmother Mary Jane went to Reverend Pickering for counseling,” Dash said quietly, sitting down with the casual authority of someone who belonged wherever he decided to be. “About your affair with a married man.”
The lettuce fell back onto her plate. Around us, the cafeteria bustled with a mixture of those who were worried or grieving and those who were picking at food to pass the time, but our table had become an island of tense silence.
“That’s not—” She stopped, looked around at the nearby tables. A group of residents sat three tables over, too exhausted to pay attention to anything but their coffee. “That was forty years ago. You don’t understand.”
“Then help us understand,” I said, keeping my voice gentle. “Pickering called you that Friday.”
Stephanie’s face flushed, then went pale. She set down her fork with excessive care, like it might shatter if she moved too quickly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Elsie Crawford saw you,” Dash said simply. “Nine o’clock. Blond woman in a white nurse’s uniform, arguing with Reverend Pickering by his car.”
“Who cares?” she shrugged. “Elsie Crawford has mashed potatoes for brains now.”
Dash smiled, but it was the kind of smile that sent shivers down the spine. It was a look I hadn’t seen before, and I held my breath as I waited for the standoff between them.
