The doorbell rang.
Her mouth closed.The moment hung there, fragile as glass.
“That’ll be…” I trailed off, already standing.“I’m so sorry.Excuse me for just a moment.”
I hurried back to the front of the house and opened the front door to find Dash on my porch holding a bouquet of flowers and wearing the expression of a man who had been looking forward to biscuits and a quiet morning and could already tell from my face that one of those was not on the menu.
He held out the flowers.“For the table.”
“You brought me flowers?”I asked, already breathing them in.He’d brought me sunflowers mixed with jasmine and tiger lilies and the fragrance was beautiful.
“It seemed only fitting since I wasn’t allowed to bring coffee.”He leaned in and kissed my cheek, casual and warm, like he’d been doing it for years instead of weeks.Then he pulled back and read my face.“Something wrong?”
“I have a visitor,” I said, lowering my voice.“Josephine Wainwright Hale.She’s here about her brother.”
Dash raised a brow in question.“I don’t think I’ve met her.”He glanced past me into the house.“What does she need?”
“She believes her brother was murdered.She was just getting to the good stuff when you rang the bell.”
He nodded and said, “I can smell those biscuits from here.”Which was his way of saying he understood, and that he’d follow my lead.
I led him to the kitchen.Josephine had not moved.Her hands still held her teacup, and her spine was a vertical line that would have made a ballerina weep.
“Josephine, this is Sheriff Beckett.Dash.”I hesitated, feeling the strangeness of the introduction.“He’s also…we’re…”
“I have functioning eyes, Mrs.McCoy,” Josephine said, and the ghost of a smile crossed her face for the first time.“Half the island was watching you two at the fireworks last night.”
Dash pulled out a chair and sat across from her.He picked up a biscuit, buttered it, and gave Josephine the kind of attention that made people feel like they had all the time in the world.
“Josephine was telling me about her brother Henry,” I said, sitting back down.“He was a physician here on the island about twenty-five years ago.He was found in his study with a gunshot wound to the head, and Milton ruled it a suicide.”I looked at Josephine.“You were about to tell me if anyone would have wanted Henry dead.”
Josephine looked at Dash for a long moment, measuring him against every sheriff and deputy and officer who had failed her before.Whatever she was looking for, she must have found enough of it, because she continued.
“Henry called me that evening.Around seven o’clock.He was agitated.Upset in a way I hadn’t heard since Charlotte died.”
She took a breath that shook at the edges.
“That night he told me he’d discovered something about someone he trusted.He called it unforgivable.He said he should have seen it sooner, that he’d been a fool, and that he intended to make it right as soon as possible.”
Her blue eyes moved between Dash and me, and in them I saw not grief but something forged in the furnace of it, hammered into a shape that would not bend.
“By morning, he was dead.”
The kitchen was quiet.The flowers Dash had brought sat in a vase on the counter, bright and oblivious, and the morning light had shifted to fall across Josephine’s hands where they gripped the portfolio like a lifeline.
Josephine opened the portfolio.“I’ve got everything in here.Photographs of Henry’s study after they removed his body, files of correspondence with law enforcement and the medical board, a copy of the death certificate, copies of his Rolodex, and his will.It’s all organized.All dated.And I’ve got boxes of his personal files and belongings in a storage locker.”
Her voice didn’t waver.
“I’ve been told I’m grief stricken, paranoid, attention seeking, and delusional.I’ve been told that people who lose spouses sometimes can’t go on, and that I should focus on my own health at my age.I’ve been told to let it go.”
“But you didn’t,” I said.
“My only brother was murdered, Mrs.McCoy.He and Charlotte never had children.Our parents were already gone.There was no one left but me.Letting go was never an option.”
She pulled out a photograph, the edges soft with handling.A man in his mid-fifties with dark hair going gray at the temples, a tan, and a physique you get from actually being outside.
He stood on the front porch of a pale yellow house with green shutters that I recognized as the old doctor’s office on Broad Street, one hand raised against the sun, smiling at whoever was behind the camera like they’d said something funny.He had a good face.A kind face.
