“We don’t need Elsie’s testimony,” Dash said. “Do you think we’d be here talking about your affair if we didn’t have something else? And guess what, Jane Sutherland was murdered yesterday. You’re going to need to give me a very good alibi for where you were between the hours of midnight and 3 a.m Wednesday morning. Because otherwise, I can hold you for seventy-two hours in a cell while we get things sorted out. There’s no statute of limitations on murder, Ms. Donaldson.”
“I didn’t kill anyone,” she said, her face paling and panic evident in her eyes.
“Then I’d start talking,” Dash said.
She looked around the cafeteria as if searching for an escape route. A doctor at the next table glanced over, and she forced a smile that looked more like a grimace. Stephanie’s hands trembled as she reached for her water glass. She took a sip, then another, buying time while her world tilted on its axis.
“You don’t understand what it was like,” she finally said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Being twenty-two and stupid and thinking you’re in love with someone who keeps promising to leave his wife. Sure I was dating Matt Crenshaw, but that was obligation. Our families were friends. He was easy. But I never loved him. And obviously we weren’t meant to be. I’m still amazed I made it ten years with that sniveling wimp.”
She laughed, bitter and short, and pushed the hair that had fallen over her forehead back behind her ear. “Pickering called me that Friday afternoon. Said Mary Jane had come to him, begged him to intervene. She asked him to counsel me about my iniquities.” The words came out like shards of glass. “That’s what he called it.
“I wore my white uniform. I was supposed to be off shift at 7, but we had an emergency come in and everyone was stuck at the hospital. I slipped out as soon as I could. No one noticed with all the chaos.” Her voice had gone flat, emotionless. “Pickering was there by his car when I arrived. Standing in the moonlight looking so righteous, so disappointed. Like he had any right to judge when everyone knew about him and Ruby Bailey.”
“What did you talk about?”
“He said I was destroying my family. That Mary Jane was heartbroken. That I needed to end it immediately or he’d tell everyone—the hospital board, Greg’s wife, the whole island.”
Her knuckles were white against the coffee cup. “I told him he was a hypocrite. Carrying on with Ruby while his wife sat home. He said it was different—he was planning to leave June, make things right with Ruby, get married.”
“You argued,” I said, not a question.
“I laughed at him. Told him he was deluding himself if he thought the church would let him divorce and remarry his mistress. That Ruby was smarter than him—she knew he’d never leave June and the respectability.” Stephanie’s eyes opened, focusing on something beyond us. “He got angry. Said I didn’t understand real love, that what he and Ruby had was blessed despite the circumstances. And that the elders wouldn’t have a choice in the matter if they knew what was good for them.”
“Then what?” Dash’s voice was gentle but insistent.
“I left. Got in my car and drove away.” She met our eyes then, and I saw truth mixed with four decades of fear. “I stopped at a payphone and called into the hospital. The nurse who answered was one of my good friends and I told her I forgot to clock out. She clocked out for me at just after 9:30. She didn’t know she’d given me an alibi.
“I was the last person to see Reverend Pickering alive. When I heard the next morning—both of them dead, shot at Turtle Point—I knew how it would look if I said anything.”
“So you said nothing,” Dash said.
“I said nothing. Ended the affair with Greg. Married Matt two years later—someone safe from a good family.” Her laugh was hollow. “Matt never knew about any of it. Still doesn’t. I built my whole life on that silence.”
“Did you see anyone else?” I asked. “Another car?”
She thought, her forehead creasing. “There was a dark sedan parked down the beach. But I was so angry, so focused on leaving, I didn’t really look.”
“Make? Model?”
“Dark. Four doors. That’s all I remember.” She straightened, pulling herself together like armor. “I’ve told you everything. I left George Pickering alive and arguing with God about his hypocrisy. Someone else killed him and Ruby. Someone else cut out her tongue.”
The detail made me shiver. She’d said it so matter-of-factly, but the violence of it—silencing Ruby even in death—spoke of rage beyond simple murder.
“Go back to your rounds,” Dash said finally. “But stay available. We may have more questions.”
Stephanie took her food tray and walked away, dumping the half-eaten salad in the trash. She didn’t look back.
Dash and I sat for a moment in the buzzing cafeteria, processing what we’d learned.
“Someone with a dark sedan,” I said quietly. “That’s not much to go on.”
“No,” he agreed, standing. “But it’s more than we had. Let’s go see what Elder Crenshaw has to say about his financial windfall in 1986.”
We made our way out of the hospital, passing through the automatic doors into the humid morning air that hit like walking into a wet blanket.
The drive to Sea Pines felt longer in the morning light. I found myself humming something I couldn’t quite place—an old hymn maybe, something about truth and revelation, about secrets laid bare in unforgiving light.
Through the window, the low country rolled past in shades of green and gold, beautiful and treacherous as everything in the South, hiding its dangers beneath a surface of aggressive hospitality.
