“What?” they said together.
Ace shrugged. “It wasn’t anything serious. Somebody cut one of the ropes mooring it to the dock.”
Willa stared at him. “You never told me that.”
“It wasn’t important,” Ace said. “I handled it.”
“Still, we promised to tell each other if something happened,” Willa said, anger creeping into her voice.
“You know now,” Ace replied.
Then he turned toward Holt. “But Rad had it worst at the start. The target on him got physical faster. Filing cabinets nearly crushed him. Then he got locked in a room. Then that shelving collapsed, only it hit Chief Morrison instead.”
“What happened before it escalated into fires?” June asked.
“I went to check the burnt-out cabin,” Willa said. “That was the same day you arrived, Mom.”
“And then a few days later, you arrived, Dad,” Rad added, looking at Holt. “Between those days, Willa and Margo got threatening notes.”
Mina sat back and looked from one face to another before her gaze settled on Holt.
“This is only a hunch,” she said, “but maybe Margo was right after all in her assumption that an FBI agent and an attorney with reputations that precede them arriving in town, both connected to the people reopening an old case, was the spark that finally lit the fuse.”
The room went still after that.
Because whether any of them wanted to admit it or not, that theory made a terrible kind of sense.
And Holt had the distinct feeling that from here on out, nothing about this investigation was going to stay contained. Those things were only going to get worse. Especially now that one of the most prominent families in Sandpiper Shores, besides his, was about to be hauled in by Holt and interrogated. Truths were going to come out, and knowing the likes of Victoria and her daughter, things were going to get a lot uglier around town.
“You know, Holt,” his mother caught his attention, “you’re all so focused on the Morrisons, you seem to be overlooking another family entirely. A family tied to what I believe Shaun and his team were originally investigating.”
Holt’s brows shot up as he stared at his mother. “The Frosts.”
“I’d be more likely to point a finger at Alvin Frost,” Mina pointed out. “After all, he was in the house back when the jewels were stolen, and he was best friends with Victoria’s late older brother, always running 'errands' for her lowlife father…” She leaned back with hooded eyes and the slightest of smug smiles on her face as she landed her final blow. “Then there’s the long-standing affair between Alvin and Victoria, and let’s not forget the Frosts used to live right next door to the Morrisons before Alvin quickly sold up everything to leave town a few weeks after the tragic fire.”
Holt looked at his mother, wide-eyed, and couldn’t help the slight lift of gloom or the tinge of joy that surged through him that they had another suspect to consider besides Tom.
21
MARGO
She sat listening to the exchange between Holt and Mina. Her eyebrows shot up when she realized Mina was right, and no one even noticed when Alvin Frost sold up and left town. They had all just put it down to his grief over the loss of his wife and the fallout with his son, who wouldn’t even look at his father at his mother’s funeral.
But now that Margo thought about it… It was soon after Alvin left Sandpiper Shores that Nigel had closed the case and claimed that his mother’s car crash was an accident after all. And that Gilbert Fry had been the one who set the cabin alight. After that, Nigel became distant from the people in town and shut down anyone who spoke about the fire or his mother’s accident. Most people in town just put his change in attitude down to losing his mother, who Nigel was close to, and then turning his back on his father.
But not one of them even considered that maybe there was a more sinister motive for Alvin leaving town and Nigel shutting everything down the way he did. But the timing fit, and Mina seemed to think that Alvin was not the virtuous man he claimedto be. Then there was Sienna. While Margo had seen Victoria be really horrid and downright biting to her daughter, Margo knew that Sienna was no angel either. She’d often snapped back at her mother, only they never got to see where that dynamic went because Victoria would usually march them both out of the public eye.
Sienna could be lying about who she was keeping the safe for. Margo turned to Rad.
“Rad, what exactly did Sienna tell you about the safe she was keeping?” Margo asked him.
“I was asked to keep the safe secret and secure for my father,” Rad answered.
“Are you sure that’s what she said?” June quickly pounced on that wording, and Margo could see why.
“Yeah,” Rad said with a nod. “I have a very good memory for that sort of thing.”
“He does,” both Holt and Mina agreed in unison.
