Now that was interesting timing. “Were you together the whole time that night?”
“You mean, aside from when he disappeared? Mostly, yes.” Marigold snapped her fingers. “Except for my massage. He booked me a session in the spa as a pre-wedding gift. Or,” she said ruefully, “as a way to get me out of the suite.”
“It’s Adam’s fault that you’re so cynical now, isn’t it?” Tina said regretfully.
“I don’t think I’m cynical. I’m realistic.”
Which was even sadder, thought Tina. Someone like Marigold, with her open nature and refreshing honesty, deserved to have a sunlit path through life. Why did Adam have to come along and mess that up?
“This is helpful. We’re making progress. We’re going to find this lying asshole and make sure he doesn’t hurt anyone else. If it’s any comfort, from what we’ve learned so far about his childhood, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. He’s already suffered.”
“The answer to suffering isn’t more suffering,” said Marigold wisely. “I’m not after retribution. I just want to protect other victims. Is there anything else I can do on this end? I did visit Sandy Clyde, but she had nothing helpful to say. Or anything to say, really. She did not want to talk to me, at all.”
“In a suspicious way?”
“Maybe. Want me to try again?”
Why not? It would give Marigold something more to do. “Sure. There is one other thing. Have you gotten the sense that Luke is working with anyone from outside the department on something big? I’m talking, federal big. Maybe international.”
“International? Wow, I don’t know. I haven’t heard anything like that. You should talk to Luke.”
Except that Luke probably wouldn’t tell her. He would have gotten the same message she had from the police chief—stay out of it.
“Just keep your ear to the ground, would you? I get the sense there’s something big underway that the higher-ups don’t want us knowing about. Which is fine, I get it, but it might be connected to Adam and Jessie. Of course I could be flat wrong about all of it. One more thing. I’m sending you a photo I got off Instagram. It’s a luxury yacht the size of a village, Celine’s been posting from it. You can cruise her timeline for more photos. Can you see if either the harbormaster or maybe Chad, the inn’s marina manager, knows anything about it?”
“Will do. And hey, Officer Chen.”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for throwing me little jobs to do. I appreciate it, even if it’s just to keep me busy.”
Marigold had to be one of the most down-to-earth people Tina had ever met. “You have real potential, Marigold. Don’t underestimate yourself.”
“I fell for a con man. I ought to hang up my badge, even though I think Luke ordered it online from some prop site. But he won’t let me, so I guess Sea Smoke is stuck with me.”
“They’re lucky to have you.”
Jack came out of the bathroom at that point, waving the notepad in the air with the look of someone who just discovered the Pythagorean Theorem.
“I think I know what Jessie’s telling us. I swear, the way my sister’s mind works…I’m literally the only person in the world who’d be able to translate that message.”
“Tell me.”
25
As summer kids, Jack and Jessie were always faced with the task of renewing their island friendships every time they came back to Sea Smoke. Sometimes it was easy and they slid right back into building fairy houses or playing soccer with the other kids their age. They didn’t play much with other summer kids, because their grandparents’ house was located in the western area of the island, surrounded by fishermen and carpenters.
That meant that the other kids in their friend group had spent the school year together, while they’d missed out on all the jokes and common experiences that everyone else had shared.
Being a sociable boy, Jack shifted into island mode pretty easily. But Jessie always found it difficult to make new friends, and having to remake all the same friends annoyed her to no end.
So one summer, when she was nine and Jack was eleven, she announced that she wasn’t going to bother with friends that summer. She was going to read the suitcase full of books that she’d brought, and write an epic saga about trolls living under the garden, and go hunting for the invasive green crabs that were taking over her favorite cove. That was it. Those were her summer plans.
They all knew it would be a waste of time to talk her out of it. That meant Jack, with no need to watch out for his little sister, had free rein to run wild with the local boys. That summer, and never again, he’d hung out with the Clyde clan. Five boys—Eric, Benny, Brendan, Pete and the oldest, who they all called Big Clyde. They were related in one way or another, rough and tumble kids who swore freely and boasted about trying rum in the Clyde family’s fish house and played pranks on unsuspecting tourists at the dock.
The rest of Jack’s family, Jessie included, couldn’t stand the Clyde kids. But Jack, who was just at that age when he was looking around to see what it meant to be a boy, and soon a man, loved hanging out with them. It felt dangerous, wild, rough, cool. He smoked cigarettes with them on the Martha C, on a stormy day when the Clydes didn’t take it out. On a day when they needed an extra few hands, he rode along with them and learned how to snap rubber bands around the claws of the angrily flailing lobsters.
Back home at his grandparents’, in comparison, when he ran back in time for dinner at dusk, everything felt as if it had shifted down into a lower gear. It felt so boring. As soon as dinner was over and his part of cleanup was done, he’d bolt back to the dock, or the community hall, or wherever kids were gathering. Night fishing. Jumping off the freight shed on a warm night. Racing bikes around the flagpole. Making unauthorized campfires on the beach. Telling ghost stories. Goofing off.
