Lights Out at the Lighthouse

by Danielle Collins

  She trailed her pen along the crossword puzzle that Olivia had half filled out when the young woman appeared in front of her.

  “You all right there, boss?”

  “Yes. Just thinking. Plotting, really.”

  “Please tell me this is about your book.”

  Henrietta cracked a grin. “Yes.”

  “Oh, good.”

  “Hey,” Henrietta sat up straighter. “Have you decided if you’re coming to the Valentine’s dance?”

  Her countenance fell. “I really don’t think so. I can’t convince Nelson to take me.”

  “Why not go with…Scott?” Henrietta suggested.

  “I, oh, I couldn’t go with him.”

  “Why not? You’re friends, right?”

  The light blush on the young woman’s cheeks was a clue, indeed.

  “I mean, if your boyfriend isn’t interested but you want to go, why not go with a…friend?”

  Henrietta knew she was meddling, but something about her frustration in her literary ventures made her want to be successful in at least one type of plotting.

  “I…I don’t know.”

  The distinct sound of the mail slot falling back into place made them both jump.

  “The mail already came today,” Henrietta observed.

  “That’s odd. Maybe someone is dropping off something?”

  “Why wouldn’t they come in?” Henrietta made her way down the hall and found an open envelope with nothing on the front. She peered out the window, but whoever had left the note was now gone.

  She carried it back to the desk and slid onto her stool behind it.

  “What is it?” Olivia asked.

  “I’m not sure.” She opened it, and a tri-folded piece of paper fell out. She unfolded it and narrowed her eyes. The writing was very faint but asked to meet her at the Starlight Lighthouse at two that afternoon.

  “Someone wants to meet me at the lighthouse this afternoon.”

  “That sounds dangerous. You should bring Ralph with you.”

  “I’ll give him a call, but what could happen in the afternoon in broad daylight?” Though, even as she said it, she wasn’t sure she was comforted by that fact. It wasn’t as if the lighthouse was in the busiest section of town.

  She picked up her cell phone and put in a call to Ralph. When he didn’t answer, she tried calling the office. Scott picked up and explained that he was at a doctor’s appointment, though he was quick to assure her it was just a routine checkup.

  She thanked him and hung up, still uncertain what she should do. When she looked at the letter again, she analyzed the handwriting. It looked as if someone had purposefully written in very distinct script, so as not to have their identity betrayed through their hand. Henrietta knew that wouldn’t matter to a true writing expert, but she didn’t think the person was thinking that far ahead.

  Still, as she studied the page, she was almost positive it was the writing of a woman. She couldn’t be completely certain, but if she had to guess, that would be it.

  With that in mind, and the reality that it was during the day and she would make sure to let Olivia know exactly where she was going, Henrietta felt confident she could make this meeting without harm to herself.

  “Are you sure?” Olivia said when Henrietta told her she was going. “I’ll come with you. I could stay in the car.”

  “No,” Henrietta said, looking at the note again. “I really think this is someone who wants to share some information with me. It could even be someone from the preservation committee who just didn’t want to identify themselves, but has something to share. I’ll go and make sure to text you the minute I’m there, and when I leave.”

  “If I don’t hear from you twenty minutes after you get there, I’m sending the police, Henrietta. I mean it.”

  She smiled at her adamant employee. “You do that. I’d be grateful for it.”

  Olivia nodded and watched as Henrietta pulled on her coat and prepared to leave. She reassured the woman that she would be fine and headed out.

  The drive to the lighthouse, now becoming all too familiar, didn’t take long, and she pulled into the parking lot just a few minutes before two o’clock.

  She scanned the area, looking for signs that someone was either already there or coming, but she didn’t see anything. When her phone’s clock turned to two, she got out and made the trek to the lighthouse.

  The sun dipped behind clouds, and Henrietta wished she’d taken Olivia up on her offer. What harm would it have been to let her stay in the car? Then again, there was always the possibility that whoever had asked her to come wouldn’t like the intrusion of another person.

  Confident she’d made the right choice, but also remaining overly cautious, Henrietta walked up to the door that led to Gerald’s home. It looked the same as it had before. She tried the handle and noted it was locked.

  She took the narrow path around the lighthouse to the other side and saw the back door. There, taped just above the handle, was a folded piece of paper. Henrietta’s heartbeat quickened. Had the person she was supposed to meet with left it there for her?

  She reached out to take the note just as she heard the sound of rustling in the leaves behind her. Spinning around, note in hand, she saw movement in the bushes. “Hello?” she called out.

  The bushes moved again, and Henrietta heard the sound of running feet. She sprinted forward and pulled the bushes back to see a thin trail leaving through the brush that ran along the coastal cliff. Up ahead, a short, thin woman with dyed blonde hair ran away. She nearly slipped, and Henrietta noticed she was wearing white boat shoes, now covered in mud from the trail.

  “Wait,” she called out, hoping the woman would stop. It only fueled her to go faster, and Henrietta gave up hope that she’d get the chance to talk with her. Instead, she pocketed the paper and headed back to her car, confident the meeting had been a ruse to get her this information.

  Then again, if it was just the paper, why couldn’t it have been delivered in the same way the note was? Had the woman wanted to see her?

  Henrietta rounded the path and looked up to see the same car as the day before pulling away from the parking lot. She was still too far off to see, but she thought it looked like the same man from the day before, as well. Odd.

  Palming her keys, she jumped into her car and immediately locked the doors. She wasn’t sure what was going on, but she wasn’t going to risk being caught unaware as she looked at the paper.

  Sliding it out of her pocket, she read over the information there and knew right away where her next stop was going to be.

  “Thank you for meeting with me on such short notice,” she said to the man with graying hair and a cleanly trimmed moustache sitting across from her.

  “Of course,” he said, smiling back at her.

  Daryl Quinn worked for the assessor’s office and had created the paper she now held in her hands.

  “Obviously, you couldn’t tell that the land the lighthouse sits on is very valuable,” he said. “Gerald purchased it before real estate in that area exploded. I always told him he was sitting on a good investment. He insisted, however, that it was more than that. It was history.”

  “Do you know of anyone who was interested in this land?”

  “Well,” Daryl pushed back against the arms of his chair. He looked uncomfortable, and she knew she’d hit a nerve. Or at the very least, a soft spot. “It’s not for me to share that privileged information.”

  And here was the wall. She’d expected to hit it at one point, knowing that her status as a civilian could only get her so far.

  “Perhaps,” she said, taking it another direction, “you can simply answer me this.”

  He nodded, but she wasn’t sure he looked convinced.

  “Was someone interested in the land? I feel as if you can safely tell me that without giving away anything that is privileged.”

  “Eh,” he grimaced, but she felt as if she’d worked her way around the problem. “Let’s
put it this way. It is a desirable property no matter what, but one person above others may have wanted to purchase it.”

  “I see,” she said, nodding her head.

  After thanking him for his time, she left his office and pulled out her phone. Sitting in her car at the curb, she tried calling Ralph again. This time she was able to reach him.

  “Hey there. Scott said you’d called.”

  She relayed what had happened, enduring a thorough scolding for going to the lighthouse without someone with her. She agreed it hadn’t been the best idea, but then she shared the information she’d gotten.

  “So, it sounds like someone wanted that land.”

  “Yes.”

  “That means we just have to find out who.”

  “Exactly.”

  “The question now is if this person would kill for the property.”

  “And who this person is,” Henrietta added.

  Ralph agreed and said he’d see if Scott could look into who had been interested in the land. Promising to let her know what they found, he said goodbye, and Henrietta pulled out into traffic. The meeting had ultimately been helpful, but now she wondered what their next steps would be without having a name to chase down.

  10

  Henrietta had just poured a second cup of coffee from the downstairs coffee pot when her phone rang. Seeing Ralph’s number, she answered as she slipped into a chair at the large work desk. Since Olivia wasn’t in yet, Henrietta felt the freedom to stretch out her legs on the empty chair.

  “Hello?”

  “Things just got messy.”

  She frowned, her feet thudding to the floor. “What are you talking about?”

  “I take it you haven’t seen the newspaper yet.”

  “No,” she said warily. She walked to the front door, unlocking it, and picked up the paper in its plastic casing. “Hold on.”

  He waited on the line as she walked back to the room, slipping the paper out of the plastic and opening it to the front page. Her gasp was all he needed.

  “Another body at the lighthouse. Something is fishy,” he said.

  “But Ralph,” she said, leaning in with her nose mere inches from the page. “That’s her.”

  “Huh? Her who? Her name is Deborah Cone,” he said. “Do you know her?”

  “No. Well, yes—well, no, I don’t know her, but she’s the woman I saw running away from the lighthouse yesterday. I think she’s the woman who left me the assessor’s paper.”

  “I’ll be,” Ralph said, sounding genuinely shocked. “This just complicates things.”

  “More than that, it goes to show we’re on the right track. Why else kill this poor woman?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure Mr. City Detective will even connect the cases at this point.”

  “He has to see a connection.”

  “If it’s just the lighthouse, I don’t know if that will be enough.”

  Henrietta figured Ralph had a good point, but still—it seemed so obvious. Two deaths at the lighthouse. “Does it look like suicide?”

  “No. Strangulation, I think the article says.”

  “How horrible.” It was terrible to think the poor woman had perished at the hands of someone. “Wait, when do they think she was killed?”

  “Not sure they’ve said time of death yet.”

  “Ralph, I’ve got to go down to the station. I may have been the last person to see her alive.”

  “Yeah, I would suggest it. You want to be the one volunteering information, not having it dragged out of you.”

  She knew this, of course, but remained silent.

  “When will you go down? Want me to come with you?” he asked.

  Henrietta hesitated. “I think it may be best if I go alone. No need involving someone else yet.”

  “I suppose you’re right. Still, if that new kid gives you any trouble you call me, you hear?”

  “You’ll be the first to know,” she said, suppressing a smile.

  They hung up and she read the article. It detailed a gruesome scene for the poor woman. They assume she’d been surprised by someone at the lighthouse, but Henrietta had to wonder how her body was there. Hadn’t she run off? Unless someone had brought her back to the lighthouse. Was that intentional?

  Her mind whirred with possibilities until Olivia came in later. She was as shocked as Henrietta had been to hear of a second murder at the lighthouse.

  “I just can’t believe it. I mean, that’s no coincidence. I’m no police officer, but I can see that,” Olivia said.

  “I agree,” Henrietta said. “But I need to go down and give a statement.

  Olivia gasped. “You don’t think they’d think you had anything to do with it, do you?’

  “Oh, no,” she said, reassuring the young woman. “It’s just smart for me to go to them, rather than wait for them to come to me.”

  “I see. You know, before you go,” Olivia hesitated, and Henrietta asked her what it was. “I just wanted to say that you’ve inspired me—about the dance.”

  Henrietta felt like this was the first bit of good news she’d heard all day. “You’re going to go with Scott?”

  “Oh, uh, no.” She smiled and dropped her gaze. Then she sobered. “I’m going to ask Nelson to go with me again. I mean, I figured what could it hurt? I want him to do things that I want to do, just as much as I do things that he wants to do.”

  “I think that’s a wise decision, Olivia,” Henrietta said. She patted the young woman’s arm in encouragement. “Let me know how it goes.”

  “I will.”

  Henrietta drove down to the police station and, to her great surprise, was only asked to give her statement to an officer, despite her insistence that Detective Paige would likely want to speak with her.

  The young man insisted that this was how it went, protocol-wise at least, so she obliged. She filled in as much detail as she could, but had to admit to the young man and herself that she hadn’t seen much.

  Her duty done, she left the station and headed back to the shop. She still felt as if she should have done something more. To know that she was the last person to see the woman alive felt like such a great weight. But at least she had it on record that she’d tried her best to offer them information, even if it wasn’t accepted as anything more than a tip.

  Back at the shop, she poured herself into mindless work packaging up the clothing that had already been rented for the dance. It was something that didn’t require all of her attention but needed to be done. By the end of the work day she was mentally tired, but physically felt as if she hadn’t done anything that day.

  Placing a call to Ralph, she asked if he wanted to take a walk around the park. Upon his agreement, they chose a location to meet, and she set off to put on warm clothes.

  Henrietta walked around the park to keep warm, keeping an eye out for Ralph. He was already fifteen minutes late and, while she’d called him several times, he hadn’t answered. She reasoned that she would be walking anyway to help her mind process, so she decided on waiting another fifteen minutes, and then going home if he didn’t show. She would, however, call Scott in another ten if—

  Ralph’s truck pulled into the small park parking lot, and a sense of relief flooded through her. She knew Ralph could take care of himself, but still, it wasn’t like him to be so late.

  She started across the field rather than take the walkway back, but he huffed it toward her to meet in the middle.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said, his breathing fast.

  “What happened?”

  “I got some news. Had to verify.”

  “What news?” Her stomach clenched in anticipation.

  “Well, let’s take a walk.” He winked at her, and she knew he was drawing it out for her benefit.

  “Just give it to me straight,” she said with a laugh.

  When it was clear he wasn’t going to say anything until they were back on the path, she complied, and then turned to him.

  “It’s r
egarding Deborah Cone. Or should I call her Dee?”

  “Dee as in…the Dee?”

  “One and the same, or at least I’m about ninety-nine percent certain.”

  “How did you find this out?”

  He grinned, but then his look turned solemn. “It was a real shame to see the news of her death in the paper, but I got to thinking. It was odd, to say the least, that she was found near the lighthouse. Then to say that she was the same woman you think left the paper made me think that perhaps she was more involved in all of this than we’d thought.”

  They turned a bend and slipped behind a row of trees.

  “I started to look into who she was. Basic information on Facebook and things like that. She didn’t have many friends, but all of them were also friends with her husband. Then, every post she made attached her husband’s name to it as well.”

  “I’m not sure where you’re going with this.”

  “I had Scott find where they lived and went there. No one was home—no cars in the driveway and no garage. So I talked to the neighbors, and my initial suspicions were confirmed.”

  He paused for dramatic effect, and she rolled her eyes. “Just spit it out, why don’t you?”

  “Fine, ruin my fun and fine detective work.” He stepped to one side as a jogger came by and waited until they were out of earshot. “Their neighbors confirmed the fact that her husband, William Cone, is beyond controlling.”

  Henrietta eyes widened. “Like the letters.”

  “Yes, but at this time I wasn’t thinking that. I was only thinking that I’d been right in how I observed her social media interaction. Granted, that would be no formal evidence, just a hunch.”

  “Right, but go on.”

  “Well, I asked a few of them about the Cones and basically heard a lot of the same things. She didn’t leave the house during the day while her husband was at work. They always left together. She wouldn’t even talk to the neighbors on her own.”