“My fault, let’s start with Gabriella,” he says, then leaps up and grabs a slim folder from the kitchen counter, behaving like an excited schoolboy desperate to show me his homework. “Gabriella Woolf can’t speak. She whispers things, but nothing she says makes any sense—”
“So you had something in common then?”
He ignores me. “Her main carer is someone called Mary, but Mary looks like this.”
He puts what looks like a copy of an employment record on the kitchen table. It includes a picture of a blond woman. I stare at it. And at him. Then start to say, “But I thought this was—”
“Eden Fox. I thought so too.” Carter reaches for a pink laptop that I’m guessing belongs to his wife. The screen displays a recipe for “Easy Lasagna.” Carter starts tapping on the keyboard and I see a search engine. He types inEDEN FOXandARTISTand up pops a website full of paintings of the sea and a picture of her face. There is no doubt about it. Eden Fox and Mary are the same woman.
Oh. My. God.
I thought Carter was a nice-to-look-at waste of space. One of those junior police officers who is super keen but just not cut out for the job. Now I think I might have been wrong.
“Why on earth didn’t you tell me this before?” I ask.
“You suspended me before I got the chance—”
“So Eden Fox isn’t dead?”
He frowns. “No, I think the real Eden Foxisdead. I found her key chain on the cliff.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I thinkMarywas pretending to be Eden Fox. I think the woman I arrested who said that her husband changed the locks when she was out for a run was the real Eden Fox and was telling the truth. I think Mary pretended to be her when she befriended people in the village. I think Mary was pretending to be her at the art gallery. I think Mary was pretending to be her husband’s wife, and that Harrison went along with it.”
“Let me get this straight. You think there was more than one wife?”
“Yes.”
“And that Harrison and Mary pretended Mary was Eden?”
“Yes.”
“If that’s the case, where is the real Eden Fox?”
“They killed her. Or tricked her into killing herself. I think she’s who we found on the beach and it’s only a matter of time until the coroner confirms it,” Carter says, looking exceedingly proud of himself. And I think maybe he should be.
“But…why?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet,” he says. “Perhaps we could brainstorm?”
I think Carter’s version of a brainstorm would be more like a light drizzle, but he’s onto something. I’m sure of it. Even if his theory is a smidgen far-fetched.
“You do know that what you’re suggesting sounds batshit?” I ask and he nods. “But it’s also good police work. You’ve shown initiative, you trusted your instincts, and you followed your gut. Well done, Carter. Perhaps we’ll make a detective out of you yet.”
If he were a dog he’d be wagging his tail.
“Thanks, boss. What do we do now?”
I pause to think for a moment, remembering why I came to HopeFalls. Most people might have used the time to say goodbye to loved ones, or kept themselves busy crossing things off their bucket lists. But I just want to do what I am best at while I still can: getting justice for people who can’t get it for themselves. Putting wrongs right.
And there is something very wrong about all of this.
“Well, after what you found out at The Manor, we clearly need to find Mary. But before we do that, we need to take all of this to Harrison,” I tell Carter.
“Really?”
“Yes. We need to question him again.”
