Silence.
The buoy banged louder against the side of the hangar.
Angie cleared her throat. “Were some of you perhaps trying to spook the women because Jasmine Gulati was disrespectful in the pub that first night?”
A ripple of energy coursed through them. The wall of hostility thickened. Wind gusted and sent a crate cartwheeling over the paving with a loud clacking sound. It landed in the water and started drifting into the mist. No one moved.
“Look, I know she was difficult,” Angie said. “It’s all on film what she said to you. It was blatantly rude, so I wouldn’t blame anyone trying to teach her a lesson by spooking her.”
“That Jasmine Gulati was bad news,” Wallace growled. “She needed a warning. If there were banjos out there, it would’ve been to teach Gulati and her friends that you don’t come in here badmouthing locals, I don’t care who you are.”
“Or you don’t go committing adultery with the locals?” Angie prompted carefully, still conscious of her recorder rolling, of her escape routes.
“Thou shalt not lead into temptation,” Beau Tollet offered darkly, his voice low. Metal clanked. A horn sounded in the mist.
“So it washerfault that Garrison Tollet cheated on his wife? Because he was lured, tempted by a sinful, evil woman?”
Silence.
“And then the sinful woman went and slipped and fell. Right above the falls.”
“Sounds about right,” Wallace said.
“Okay,” Angie said, defusing, de-escalating. “I understand your point of view, I do. She might have needed a lesson. Might have needed to be spooked into her place. Maybe one of you had a banjo. That’s fine. No harm, no foul, right? But if you guyswereout there lurking in the woods, tracking, following, hazing the women, watching them, one of you must have seen Jasmine fishing alone. Maybe you even saw her fall into the river?”
Silence.
“Did anyone see what happened?”
Wallace took a step closer. “I’m going to say this one more time, Miss Private Investigator, and I’m going to say it nice and slow. Why don’t you go put your ass back into that little dinky vehicle of yours and drive yourself out of town? You be gone come morning, and nothing goes wrong.”
“Thanks. I appreciate your time, Jessie, Wallace, Joey, Beau. And your advice.” Angie calmly stuck her photos back into her sling bag as she spoke. She looked up and met Wallace’s gaze, feeling a chill inside as she did. “And I will be gone. Soon as I’m done here.”
She zipped her bag closed and repositioned it across her body. “You wouldn’t know what happened to Jasmine’s purple journal would you, Jessie? The one she was always writing in, the one with the sexy content?” She looked into his face, wet with rain. In his eyes, in his stance, she detected conflict.
Something in Jessie Carmanagh wanted to help, but he was afraid. Energy coursed through Angie at this realization. There was a lot more happening here than had at first met her eye. The dynamic of this group of males was charged.
“No,” Jessie said. “Last I saw of that diary, the Hart kid was reading it in the bushes.”
She stalled. “What?”
“Rachel Hart’s kid was reading it. In private. In the bushes.”
Eden’s words raced through her mind.I never read it. But I wanted to.
“Are yousure?”
Tension hung thick.
“You calling me a liar?” Jessie said.
“No. I just want to be certain.”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Only surprised me that the kid hadn’t taken it sooner the way Jasmine was tempting her with it.”
Tempting her with it?
“Right. Thanks, gentlemen.” Angie tried to walk back to her car in a casual fashion, but she felt the men’s eyes boring into her back. In her gut she knew she had not heard or seen the end of this Tollet-Carmanagh gang. She fully expected the twang of banjos in her own near future.
