“Including the Lisanne incident?”
We both looked to Nolan, and he turned sheepish. “I might have mentioned that to a person or two.”
Ari wrote Copycat? on the board. Nolan didn’t seem happy, but he did stop arguing, at least until I moved on to the next name.
“Add Antonella Cranston.”
“Who?”
“Nolan’s neighbour from the horse farm next door.”
“That place looks fancy. They have money?”
“Plenty of it. Her husband runs a hedge fund.”
“A successful one?”
“Reasonably so. He’s made a few dud investments, but who hasn’t?”
“Most people? Not everyone can afford to play the stock market.”
“Okay, I’ll rephrase. He’s made a few dud investments, but which hedge fund manager hasn’t? For the most part, they’re all just flinging shit at the wall and seeing what sticks, which is why I rarely invest in hedge funds. The Cranstons do have money, though, and they’ve also tried to buy part of Nolan’s land.”
Ari tilted her head to one side. “Oh?”
“It’s more of a standing offer,” he explained. “The vineyard hasn’t always been profitable, and you know what small towns are like—everyone knows everyone else’s business. So Everett Cranston said if I ever needed cash, they’d be open to buying the south side of the property. The part that adjoins their land. If they keep expanding the horse farm, they could use the extra pasture, plus it has a nice network of riding trails. But I let Antonella ride there anyway, and I’d rent them the pasture if they needed it.”
“She still goes on the list,” I said. “Not at the top, but somewhere in the middle.”
“Who else?” Ari asked.
“Margaret Leland. She co-owns one of Dionysus’s competitors, and she’s apparently a smart woman. Shrewd too.”
This time, Nolan didn’t have any argument. “I guess I could see it. Teo says she’s a real tyrant. Silver Hollow can’t keep staff because they work them to the bone and stiff them on overtime.”
Ari wrote her name and added an asterisk beside it. “Any more?”
“One. Marielle Marten. The real one. We know Rayna Bishop is on ice, but there are still so many questions—where’s the real Marielle, what happened after the two of them left New York, and could they be colluding in some way? All we have is a social media post hinting at man trouble, but what if that was a ruse?”
“Like, they could be running a scam?”
“It’s an outside-the-box possibility.”
“The real Marielle is dead,” Jez said from the couch nearest the door. She’d draped herself on it lengthwise, head propped up at one end and legs hanging over the other. “Remember what Rayna did to you? She has the self-control of a firecracker. If the cheating thing is true, then fifty bucks says she ran into Marielle before she left New York, they had a fight, and Marielle’s lying in a shallow grave somewhere. Or maybe a river, depending on where they lived. Do we have that information?”
“Marielle lived on Long Island.”
“The ocean, then.”
“Great,” Ari said. “We have six suspects, no clear motive, and no real leads. Good thing you’re paying me the big bucks.”
“Tell us what you think,” Jez said to her. “You’re the PI. If we need to shoot anyone, I’m your gal, but where do we start with solving this mystery?”
“We start by not mentioning shooting in front of Erin. Or the body in the morgue. Because if Erin knows, then Rusty will find out, and although he’s pretty easygoing, I’m not sure he’d condone us covering up a death.”
“What death?” I asked innocently, secretly pleased because in the time I’d known her, Ari had stepped over from the light side and firmly into the twilight. “As far as we know, Marielle aka Rayna drove south to Mexico, and the cops are on her trail.”
She sucked in a breath. “Right. And as for my thoughts… The pattern is mismatched. You say the first incident was last year? If they’re connected, then why such a big gap afterward? And of the seven non-domestic incidents, five targeted the vineyard, one involved Nolan’s truck, and the last focused on the cottage. So we could have two or even three perpetrators. The only common denominator is that Nolan is the victim.”
