The Tell Tail Heart

by Cate Conte

  The headache that had started at lunch was back with a vengeance. I rubbed my temples. It had already been a long day, and I didn’t even feel like I’d accomplished anything, except for annoying Val, Ellory, and Craig—not my best day. “What kind of detective work?”

  “She wants to see if Dr. Drake shows up again. She’s more determined than ever to nail him. Since you aren’t getting the job done. That last part was a quote, by the way.” She smiled a little.

  I blew out a breath. “Look. I’m not saying there isn’t something sketchy about his meeting with Holt. And probably even what he was saying to you about Ava-Rose’s party fee. But I’m not sure staking him out at the club is going to get you anywhere. Plus, as a board member, doesn’t he technically have access to the place whenever he wants?”

  Val nodded. “He does.”

  “Well, her stakeout will be pretty anticlimactic, then, if he shows up.”

  “I know it sounds flighty,” Val said. “But she’s worried, and she doesn’t have anyone else to confide in. Her husband doesn’t want to hear it.”

  “Because her story sounds crazy,” I said. “He’s a rich vet working in a rich community. Why would he be stealing from the yacht club? I hate to say it, but she’s probably confused about the things they have in there.”

  “I don’t think she’s confused. Her mind is sharper than mine most of the time,” Val said defensively.

  “I would say that if she’s looking for evidence that he ran Holt over, that would make more sense to me.”

  “Maybe it will shake out that way,” Val said.

  “How?”

  “I have no idea. But I think we should go and find out.”

  “We? Like, me and you?”

  “Yes, we. Come on, Mads,” she begged. “She asked you for help.”

  “Not with this!”

  “Yeah, but you didn’t find anything else out, so…” she let the rest of her sentence trail off without finishing the thought.

  “Yeah. So I owe her.” I grimaced. “Val. There’s going to be a nor’easter going on most of the weekend. I don’t think anyone’s going to be out and about—”

  “Fine. Forget it. I’ll go help her myself.” She flounced out of the room. Probably to go tell Ethan what a crappy sister I was.

  Chapter 30

  I’d thought of going down to the cafe to sit on one of my comfy floor pillows while I did a little research on my dead writer, but I decided to stay up here for now given that Val was probably on the warpath. Or at the very least, complaining about me to Ethan in the kitchen. With a long-suffering sigh, I grabbed my laptop and sat on my bed, propping my pillow behind me. JJ was curled into a little ball in the middle of the bed. He hadn’t moved even during Val’s drama. So, of course, I had only a tiny bit of space on the edge. I didn’t mind. JJ could have whatever he wanted.

  I flipped open my computer and Googled Holt’s name. Five million, six hundred twenty-one results. Fabulous. I should probably get comfortable. I reached for my phone and turned some jazz music on while I worked, then settled in and started to scroll, stopping on the hits that seemed most relevant.

  Holt definitely had quite the career going. He appeared to have cornered the market on domestic suspense, despite the plethora of writers out there trying to write the same sorts of books. There was no lack of information on his achievements and his life, either. There were the obvious things, like his public website, his Twitter account, a Wikipedia page, his Amazon page. I went to his website first and read his bio. Basic stuff—he was from the West Coast, Oregon originally, then moved to Los Angeles around age ten, attended University of California, Irvine.

  A writer from an early age, he’d won an award in fourth grade for a story he wrote and never looked back. He’d started his career in journalism—print first, then TV—with a penchant for investigative reporting. He’d won an Emmy at a young age for a story he did breaking a cold murder case. It wasn’t long after that he started to write novels. His first few books were about true crimes, then he’d veered off into fiction. He’d married his wife, Lexie, nearly thirteen years ago. I was sure Becky was right about the divorce, but he hadn’t yet changed his bio to reflect their split. It still said he lived in Los Angeles with his “lovely wife, Lexie, and their beagle, Chelsea.”

  That made me sad. I wondered who would have ended up with Chelsea in the divorce. If it was his wife, I wondered if that had contributed to his decision to take off to a (nearly) deserted island. The more I thought about it, the more it had to be, if he was any kind of an animal person. Which he seemed to be.

  Maybe he’d lost custody of Chelsea in the divorce and been devastated. And he’d stolen her and brought her to the island. Maybe that’s why he was hiding out here. And maybe he’d asked Drake to see Chelsea and that’s why they were meeting the night he died.

  It seemed a little farfetched, but it was still a theory. I tucked it away.

  I wondered why he and his wife had split. I did an image search for the two of them and found a couple of photos. I tried to match up the small, smiling woman with the one I’d caught a mere glimpse of today at the hotel, but even the hair was different. In these photos, it had been gleaming and straight, whereas today I’d seen lots of curls. Granted, she’d been bundled up, hat and all. In these photos she was all dolled up in an evening gown and sparkling jewelry. She’d probably had her hair done.

  There were also lots of interviews with various publications Holt had done over the years. I clicked on a few of them and skimmed. Most of the first batch were about his latest movie, Full Moon Rising. They all asked a variation of the question What did you think of the final movie product since you didn’t write the screenplay?

  I hadn’t seen the movie or read the book, so I clicked on the trailer and watched. It looked creepy. Some kind of domestic suspense where the woman’s husband or boyfriend might be trying to kill her or else she’d lost her mind. The trailer was good, though. Just the right amount of suspense and eerie music. I clicked over to his Amazon page and scrolled through the list of books.

  Holt was nothing if not prolific. Not counting his three true-crime books, he’d written seventeen novels, about half of those with a co-writer, Zach McConnell. It looked like he’d written a few stand-alone thrillers before hooking up with McConnell, then they’d had a good run together. The last book they wrote together had been made into a movie. Then Holt’s next four books—all of which had been adapted for the big screen—were again written solo. I wondered why they’d stopped writing together. Was it a split or a hiatus? Had Holt been offered a contract for a solo book and didn’t want to pass it up?

  Or did it have something to do with how the books ended up looking on the movie screen? I could imagine some writers had that pride of ownership, while others were happy to take a large check to the bank. Maybe McConnell and Holt had felt differently about that. Or maybe one of them had wanted to continue down the movie path and the other simply didn’t. Since Holt had the movies, it made sense he was the proponent.

  I pulled up a fresh note page on my computer and typed in McConnell’s name. And was surprised to learn he had a pen name and a whole other career. As B. D. Lawson, he wrote a series that was described as a “genre-bending sci-fi thriller.” The series had five books in it. None of them had been turned into movies. The last book had been published two years ago. He was also apparently a martial arts superstar. He had a black belt in karate and jujitsu and had even competed nationally.

  Then I looked at IMDb’s website for info on And Then She Was Gone, the movie made from their joint book. It had been six years ago and starred a couple of up-and-coming actors and actresses but no huge name. It had decent ratings but clearly hadn’t made them millions. Holt’s solo books had increasingly done better, and then Keep My Secrets—the one Lucas and I saw together—had been a big hit, followed by the newest one. Apparently another was due out soon—and now he wouldn’t be around to even attend the screening. I figured the mo
vie would make triple what it would’ve made if he were alive. Sadly, that tended to happen when you died—you automatically became more popular.

  I let my gaze drift out my window as I thought about that. How quickly life could change. One minute you were here and enjoying—or not enjoying—an amazing, successful life, and the next minute you weren’t. I wondered what Holt’s deal was. On the surface, he seemed to have had it all. But then again, not really. He didn’t have a marriage anymore. He probably didn’t even have a dog anymore. There’d been no mention of children. Maybe all the guy had was his books. Fictional worlds centering around death and murder.

  If you really stopped and thought about it, that didn’t exactly sound like the most fulfilling life. Sure, it was exciting to see your career take off and to know you were entertaining millions of people through either the written word or the big screen. But if you had nothing or no one to come home to, nothing to spend your money on, what was the point?

  And why was I so melancholy about this guy? I’d barely kept up with his work. I guess I felt a connection because he’d been here, in my cafe, creating one of those worlds. And because he’d died here in my hometown in a suspicious manner. Either way, it was terribly sad.

  So who killed him? And if it wasn’t an accident, why?

  I turned my attention to Drake. For the heck of it, I pulled up a fresh tab and Googled him and Holt together. No hits. Some of Holt’s solo articles appeared, but always with the note Missing: Dr. Alvin Drake.

  I Googled Drake alone. Website, map to his office, a Facebook page. I read some of the reviews. They ranged from raving to mediocre. I clicked back to the search results. He had a Twitter account, too. For the heck of it, I checked it out. Either Drake had someone do it for him or he actually like social media. He posted at least daily, and many were attempts at being pithy. He referred to the pets under his care as “friends,” which didn’t fit his stiff persona and fancy clothes that he wore in every picture I found, most of them with him at charity events, a pretty brunette by his side. I squinted at the picture and realized it was a younger, more peppy version of the woman I’d seen today.

  I zoomed in on a picture of the two of them. Fairly recent. She looked sad. She was a pretty lady, with a simple, short haircut that accentuated her small features and high cheekbones. She was thin in this picture and she’d looked even thinner today.

  I found a feature article about his office opening up on the island, how he was “bringing high-tech veterinary care” to our little paradise. There were some serious pictures of him performing surgeries and having frank conversations with pet parents or vet techs. The related article that popped up, sadly, was about Dr. Kelly’s retirement. The “man on the street” portion of that article was sad. People genuinely loved him and the way he cared about them and their pets. Whereas the news about Drake was showy. There were pictures of him posing with numerous celebs and their dogs—some of our fancier summer visitors, who apparently needed a vet while they were on-island for their vacations. I wondered if Dr. Kelly had gotten celeb visits. Maybe if he had, he would’ve been able to sustain his business in light of the competition.

  There was an article and a photo about Drake joining the board of directors of the yacht club. It was a short blurb that had appeared in the local news section seven months ago. So he was still fairly new to this job. I scanned the article. Local businessman from the mainland who’d finally made the full-time transition to the island, respected citizen who was involved in charity work, coached Little League, blah blah. His family had a long history of life by sea—his father had done some charity sail around the world years ago—so this job was a natural fit for him. So blessed to part of the nautical community on this island that has always felt like home, yada yada. I was already bored with this guy.

  I was just about to click off the site when I noticed something about a local fundraiser, a benefit for children’s leukemia. It caught my eye because I remembered my father had been involved in it. As head of the Daybreak Island Hospital, he was involved in most medical fundraising activities. I clicked over and skimmed the article. The fundraiser had been held last summer at the yacht club, before I’d returned home, and had raised nearly fifty thousand dollars for research. The cause was near and dear to Drake’s heart because his son had been fighting leukemia for two years. My eyes widened. That changed things. I mean, not that it gave him free rein to be a jerk, but it certainly explained a lot.

  The article also mentioned that Drake was a candidate for the hospital board of directors. I frowned. That would mean he’d be one of my dad’s bosses, in effect. I made a mental note to ask my dad about that when I saw him next.

  In the meantime, I needed to talk to Becky. If she wasn’t already ten steps ahead of me, I had some tips for her.

  Chapter 31

  I figured Becky would be at her desk—she’d sleep there if she could—so I called that number first. “I may have a scoop for you,” I said when she answered her desk phone, sounding distracted.

  “Please tell me it’s about the writer and not something about the storm.” I could sense her leaning back in her chair, maybe sticking her pen in the loose bun she’d probably wrapped her hair in to keep it out of her face while she barked orders at her reporters to get more on this dead-writer story. She would’ve been perfect in the “old days” of journalism. Granted, she wasn’t an aging white guy chomping on a cigar and pounding on a typewriter with a glass of whiskey beside her, but her mind and her approach were completely aligned with the journalists of old. And she’d been known to prefer whiskey on particularly rough days.

  “Definitely the writer.” I filled her in on everything that had happened since I’d left her yesterday—Ava-Rose’s stories about Drake and Holt, my visit to Drake’s office, finding out Thea Coleman’s name and virtually nothing about her online, my car chases, and Thea’s latest antics of trying to break into Jason Holt’s hotel room. “Maybe she thought he stole her dog,” I said, trying to make a lame joke. “And then Holt’s almost ex-wife showed up. And Ellory, which kind of ended my ability to try to participate in any way.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Would I kid you? Well, I was kidding about stealing the dog. But listen, Beck, don’t you think all of this is weird?”

  “Of course it’s weird. The guy died under really weird circumstances,” she said.

  “So don’t you think we should check it out?”

  “We?”

  “Yeah. I can help. I want to help. The cafe is pretty dead right now. You know I need another project,” I said.

  “Check it out how?” she asked.

  I blew out an impatient breath. “There are so many angles here. The vet, the mystery woman, the wife. We need to figure out what the deal really was with our illustrious writer. Why he was here, what he was doing, who Thea Coleman really is and what her connection to Holt is, why he’d be fighting with our new vet the night he got killed. I mean, where do you start?”

  “Maddie. Are you looking for a new gig as an investigative reporter?” She sounded amused. “Because I don’t have the budget.”

  “Ha. Did you know Holt started out as an investigative reporter?” I leaned forward in my chair.

  “I did read that. So Holt fought with Drake, huh? How did Ava-Rose come by that information?”

  “She was spying on the yacht club. That’s a long story. But she totally saw them having words. Holt walked away alive, but still. It was right before he got hit.”

  I could hear Becky scratching notes in her pad. “Why, though?” she asked, when the scratching of her pen stopped. “How would Drake even know Holt?”

  “No idea,” I said. “I’ve been trying to work on that. I did a Google search and didn’t find anything linking them. I wondered if Holt needed information about boating for a new book and found his name. Or maybe he was just nosing around the yacht club looking for information and happened to run into him.” I thought about my other theory about t
he dog but didn’t mention it. “According to Val, Ava-Rose thinks someone is stealing some of the ship replicas from the club. She’s actually suspicious of Drake, which I can’t quite figure out. But maybe Drake heard her saying that and when he ran into Holt he thought he was casing the joint or something?” I was so into my theory I didn’t notice Becky laughing at me at first.

  “What?” I asked, indignant.

  “Casing the joint? What year are we in?” she teased.

  “Oh, be quiet. I’m serious,” I snapped. “Oh, and Val said Ava-Rose wants to stake out the yacht club tomorrow night. To try to spy on Drake. If he shows up.”

  “Huh?” Becky sounded like she was in my former camp about it being a stupid idea.

  “I know, it sounds dumb, but maybe I should go. You know, see if there’s anything to this,” I said. “Look at it this way. You might get a scoop out of it.”

  “You’re right,” she said, decidedly perkier. “You should go. What time is she planning this stakeout?”

  “Not sure. Wait. Are you sending a reporter?”

  “I’m not assigning anything,” Becky said. “But if one of my people happens to stumble on something interesting while they’re out covering the bad weather, I can’t do anything about that. I’m way ahead of you on the rest of it, though. I’ve already got one of my reporters digging up everything on Holt. They actually located his sister in Portland. Oregon, not Maine.”

  “Really. If he has a sister, why was the wife coming to get his stuff if they were split up?”

  “I don’t think the cops could get in touch with her. She could be away or something. But you would think she’d have heard it on the news by now. Given that the national media keeps trying to jump in front of us. Good thing the ferries are so sparse this time of year,” she joked. “It’s giving me some time. Although I heard that Channel Seven landed a helicopter to get their people here before the storm.”

  Becky got her nose out of joint when other media came to her island. Secretly, I think she loved the chance to prove herself against the competition.