I didn’t sleep well that night.
Ice was within grabbing distance on my bed, but I tossed and turned, wondering what the hell had gone on in this house. PTSD isn’t a big secret anymore. Almost all of us who’d served in combat were some degree of permanently fucked-up. My nightmares tended to come and go in batches—good for a few months, bad for a few months. So many times, I’d tried to grab that corporal in my sleep before he blew us both up. One more second. That was all I’d needed. Quite frankly, it just sucked.
When I woke up at dawn, I walked down the hall, inspecting the other four empty bedrooms. It was still pretty dark inside the house, and I didn’t turn on any lights. They were tight rooms, typical for Victorian architecture, with lots of heavy crown molding and woodwork.
I looked around in each room, checked the small closets and wooden floors for anything resembling a clue but found nothing. I sat down in the middle of the hardwood floor in the second bedroom. I looked down the hallway toward the master.
Suddenly, it clicked! If Anne Stone had been in her bedroom, she would have heard every sound in here. There was no way she didn’t know what was going on in her own house. My face got hot and my stomach flipped. Old hardwood floors tended to creak, and Earl Stone’s footsteps for his unwanted visits would have been heard by anyone at home on a quiet night. Any noises, none of which I allowed myself to imagine, would echo off these wooden floors.
Was she so terrified of her husband that she let him do whatever he wanted and never spoke up? How could she not defend her daughter? She could have simply taken the child and left. Was she in total denial? All of a sudden, I wasn’t so sure I really liked my house anymore. I knew it was ancient history. Hell—two other families had lived here since the Stones, so the ghosts were long gone. But damn, the place was creeping me out. I went downstairs, made coffee and called Amanda. I guess I should have looked at the clock first.
“Cory! What’s wrong!” She sounded hysterical.
“Nothing, baby. I just wanted to say hi.”
“God, you scared the crap out of me, Cory! It’s five-thirty.”
“Oh.” Five-thirty. That was kind of early for civilians.
“You okay?”
“Yeah…well, no. I finished her diary last night. I need to talk to her friends, the ones she was with the night she was murdered.”
“Cory, you need to call the police or the FBI.”
“I know. I will. Soon. I promise.”
“Cory…”
“Sorry to wake you up so early. Go back to sleep. I love you.”
I hung up the phone, knowing I had screwed up her morning. I seemed to have a habit of messing up people’s days lately.
I checked my notes and found the names of the four other kids with Casey and Ben that night. Unfortunately, she had only used first names. I was hoping that Agatha Miles might remember who they were. Darla, Mike, Lynn and Pete. That was all I had to go on. Four first names from twenty years ago. Super.
I decided I would use the morning to clean up the gardens outside the house and maybe take a plant over to Agatha Miles as a conversation starter. I wasn’t sure she’d remember my name from the other day, never mind four kids from twenty years ago.
I drank my coffee and headed out to the garden. By eight, the sun was already getting hot and the air was sticky. I had pulled about a hundred pounds of weeds and decided I was definitely finished for the day.
A beautiful pink and green ‘whatchamacallit’ plant was in one of the beds, and I decided it would be a great gift for Agatha. I dug it out and plopped the root-ball into a clay pot I had found behind the house. After I washed up inside, I took the plant next door to Agatha’s. It was still pretty early, but what the hell. Old people don’t sleep late, do they?
I walked to the door and saw that it was open behind the screen door. I sang out a cheerful “Good morning” to my lil’ ole lady neighbor. A moment later, she hobbled over to the door, a large mug in her hand.
She adjusted her glasses, looked at me, then smiled broadly. “Well, good morning, Mr. Wal-kah!” she said so cheerfully that I actually smiled too.
“Good morning, Miz Miles,” I replied. “But I really do wish you’d call me Cory. I brought you a little present from Mrs. Stone’s garden.” I held up the pink and green whatever-it-was so she could see it.
“Oh, my! How sweet! Seashore mallows are one of my favorites!”
Right, mallows—how could I forget? “Really? That was a good guess, then.”
She opened the door and said, “Come right in! I was just making coffee with Timothy.”
Timothy? I thought. Was she still hittin’ it with one of the locals? That made me smile. Having changed from work boots to sandals before walking over, I followed her into her small kitchen, where a giant gray housecat was sitting on the windowsill. I mean giant. Siegfried and Roy’s cats weren’t much bigger.
“Timothy, we have company. Say hello to our new neighbor.” The cat looked at me and meowed on command. It was a little freaky.
I said hello to the cat and faked a smile. I hate cats. The cat knew it. Agatha made me a coffee and tried to feed me, but I got her to settle on coffee. She spent ten minutes talking about how the plant would like the little spot in her center bed, because it got full sun.
“You just love the sunshine, don’t you? she asked the plant.
I tried changing topics before she got into what her favorite fertilizer was. “I figured this would be like the old days for you—exchanging flowers with your neighbor in the Stone house.”
“Well isn’t that sweet of you, Mr. Wal-kah.”
“Cory.”
“Mr. Cory. And yes, it does bring back memories. Anne and I would trade seeds sometimes, swap flowers… She was such a dear.”
“Yeah, I was thinking about what you were telling me the last time I was here, about Casey.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, about her becoming quieter as she got older. One of the locals was talking to me about her a few days ago. She seemed like a popular kid. He mentioned some friends of hers…Darla and Lynn? And a couple of guys. Pete and Mike, maybe?”
She put her hand to her mouth and seemed to be scanning her memory banks.
“Miss Darla. Darla Reynolds. Now that’s a name I haven’t thought of in a long time. She went away to college. Smart girl. Never came back to Harkers Island. Can’t recall a Pete. Lynn Hopkins became a nurse, I think. Her parents still live here. And Mike Jackson works over at the ferry.”
Jackson. It rang a bell. “Mike Jackson? Caleb’s son?”
“Caleb’s youngest. He used to work for Caleb on the fishing boat, but they were fighting like cats and dogs. No offense, Timothy.”
Like the cat gave a shit.
“He ended up working at the ferry,” she repeated.
I sipped my coffee, which was better than the pot I’d made at home, and smiled. Two solid leads.
To be polite, I let Agatha ramble on for another forty minutes and offered to plant her flowers for her, but she declined. This was evidently the most excitement she had enjoyed in years, and I wouldn’t deny her the pleasure of planting something from Anne’s garden. I said goodbye, promised to visit again and left, after saying goodbye to Timothy in baby-talk to score brownie points—totally demeaning.
I’m pretty sure Timothy told me to go eff myself.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Walkin’ and Talkin’
I went home and found my machine blinking. It was Amanda. I called her back and got her voicemail. She was probably torturing some poor bastard at physical therapy. Did I mention she was a hundred-plus pounds of bad attitude who could make grown men cry? I hoped the guy wasn’t staring at her ass as obviously as I used to do. I left her a message and decided to go ‘feeshing’.
Kate’s Diner, such as it is, was one of two or three places for breakfast on the island. We’re talking a small island here. I walked to the diner, about a ten-minute walk from my house, and had a seat at the counter. The
place was right out of a 1950s movie. In fact, that was probably the last time the décor had been changed.
A very nice little old lady brought me a menu. I figured she had been in Agatha’s kindergarten class. I introduced myself, which turned out to be a solid move, because she then introduced me to several of the locals, most of whom spoke in the same Toider accent she did.
I wasn’t ready to start grilling the locals yet and raise any suspicions. This was strictly a recon mission, getting the lie of the land, but I did meet several old-timers, which was good. The locals were slightly clannish, but now, being a resident of the famous Stone House, I was treated like one of the gang…almost. I’m pretty sure they all made fun me after I left.
Fully fueled on diner food, I headed over to the ferry dock at the east end of the island. It was a longer walk than most trips around the island, being at the very eastern tip of Harkers, but I didn’t mind. The sun was up, and the quiet beauty was exactly why I’d purchased the house in the first place. I could see myself being very happy here with Amanda—just as soon as I solved a twenty-year-old murder case that had already been solved, as far as the justice system was concerned.
I walked along Harkers Island Road—the main highway. Homes along this street were newer, larger and more impressive than most of the others on the island. The houses along the waterside had private docks, and some of them were huge. My own house was classic-looking and I loved it—but I could have dropped three or four of mine into some of these and still had extra room. I was guessing that folks had purchased two or three small lots some years back, bulldozed everything and built one huge house on the new larger parcel. I was having a hard enough time weeding my own yard. These folks probably had full-time gardeners.
I arrived at the dock in between ferry trips. The two greasy-looking men working on a new bulkhead were the only signs of human activity. A few crabs were running around on the old wooden pier and a brown-and-white pelican seated on a wooden post looked at me with boredom. Seagulls squawked from overhead, sounding like maniacal laughter. There was a small office where travelers could purchase fares for the ferry, which would take them and their car to the southern end of the Outer Banks. The office looked deserted.
I walked over to the men. They were both hard-looking and lean from years of physical labor in the hot sun without a lot of Twinkie breaks. In another thirty years, they’d look just like the other guys I had met at the dock. “Hey,” I called out as I approached. They stopped their work and looked up at me, grunting back a greeting of some type. “I’m looking for Mike Jackson. Either one of you be him?”
One of the two looked at the other, who walked toward me. “I’m Mike Jackson.”
I extended my hand, which he looked at and showed me his—which was very dirty.
I reached for it anyway, and we shook hands.
“Cory Walker. I just moved here—to Harkers Island, I mean.”
“Yeah, so I heard.” His accent was not quite as thick as his dad’s. Maybe he had read a few books in his life or traveled off the island once or twice. “My dad told me. Y’all bought the Stone House?”
“Yeah.”
He cocked his head, as if to politely say, ‘So what the fuck are you bothering me for?’ Instead, he merely asked, “So what can I do for ya?”
“You have a minute? Maybe take a quick walk?” I didn’t want to be rude, but I also didn’t know his friend, who was now standing there watching us.
He yelled over to his coworker that he’d be right back and walked toward the office. I followed him inside and he opened a small, battered fridge on top of a beaten wooden counter and pulled out two Cokes. They were in the old-fashioned thick green glass bottles, like God intended. He popped the tops and we each took a slug, then he just stared at me, waiting for me to explain why I was bugging him at work.
“I’d like to ask you about something, but I don’t want to come off as being nosey.”
“Um-hmm.” He leaned back against an old green desk and looked at me.
“You were friends with Casey Stone. You were with her the night she died?”
“I figured that’s what this was about. You been asking around about her…”
I guess the islanders had their own ‘underground’. I wondered if I was a local topic of conversation. “Sort of. You, Pete, Darla and Lynn—you were all together, that night. What happened?”
“That was nearly twenty years ago, Mr.…Walker, is it?”
“Yeah, Call me Cory.”
“Stones kin of yours?”
“No, no relation.”
“How did y’all know who was there that night?”
Damn. I thought I was going to be asking the questions. “Like you said, I’ve been asking around a bit. I’m just a little curious, I guess. Did you know Benjamin McComb was killed in prison a couple of days ago?”
His face showed surprise then a flash of sorrow, then it went blank again. It seemed to me that he didn’t want me to get a read on him. “Nope. Hadn’t heard anything about him in twenty years.”
“Did you think he killed her, Mike?”
“Why are you asking about this, Mr. Walker? You said y’all aren’t family. Why’d you buy that house and start asking about something bad that happened such a long time ago?”
“Do you think Ben killed her? Raped her?”
He made a face again. “No,” he said softly. “Ben was a good friend. He was poor and maybe not the smartest guy on Harkers, but he loved Casey Stone. He never would have hurt that girl. We all told the cops the same thing.”
“We?”
“Me and Pete…and Darla and Lynn. We told them what happened.”
“So tell me.”
He drank his soda and looked outside at his co-worker. “Real quick… I need to get back to work.” He stared at the ceiling as he spoke, like he was looking up into a time capsule.
“The six of us built a bonfire and were hanging out on the beach like usual. Three couples, you know? We had gone swimming, and we’d downed a few beers. Just having fun. It was summer. No school. After a while, everyone kind of found their own spots on the beach, you know. Anyway…after a while, Casey’s mom found us and went nuts. I guess she had told Casey to stay away from Ben. She called Casey and Ben all kinds of names and practically dragged Casey off the beach by her hair. It was a scene, all right.”
“Casey left with her mother?”
“Well, not exactly. Her momma dragged her away from Ben. They had been kind of making out on a blanket, you know? We all were. Her momma came out of nowhere and scared the shit out of all of us. Casey was real embarrassed. Started crying. Her momma left her on the beach, crying. Ben tried to calm her down, but she wouldn’t talk to him after her momma left. She was a mess, poor kid.”
“Jesus. So what happened after that?”
“Well, Lynn and Darla tried to calm her down, but she told them to leave her alone. She ran off the beach, toward her house, and we all left right after. We figured Mrs. Stone would be calling our parents, getting us all in trouble, so we split up and went home. Next day, we heard Casey was dead. Thomas found her.”
“Thomas,” I said out loud, remembering the man I’d met with Mike’s father, Caleb. “You know him?”
“This is Harkers Island, Mr. Walker. I know everybody…’cept you. Thomas Woods is one of my daddy’s best friends. He’s like family. Thomas found Casey in the water right next to his boat. It was a horrible day on Harkers Island. I never knew anyone who’d died before, let alone been murdered. Casey was a real nice girl.”
“What happened?”
He eyed his coworker outside. “I gotta get back to work, sir.” He looked me in the eye and added, “After Thomas found her, he called the Stones. The police and an ambulance came. Mrs. Stone killed herself when she heard the news. They arrested Ben later that day.” He stood, chugged his Coke and put the bottle on the counter. “I gotta go. Y’all shouldn’t keep asking about her. People don’t like talking about it.”
“Well, I appreciate you talking to me about it, Mike.”
He stared at me for a long minute with a twisted expression on his face. Finally, he leaned in and spoke with great intensity, like he’d been waiting to say it out loud for a long time. “Ben didn’t kill Casey.”
No shit.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Three Hush Puppies
By the time I walked back to my house, it was almost eleven and the sun was high overhead. It was another hot, sunny day on beautiful Harkers Island, summer home to a depraved psychotic who wanted to be my President. I passed Agatha’s house on the way, and she waved me over. Heavy sigh. I had almost gotten home clean.
“Hello, Mrs. Miles!” I yelled over as I crunched up her shell-and-gravel driveway.
“Hello there, Mr. Cory. I thought you were already home. I saw you had company.” My mouth went dry and I found myself looking for Ice behind my back. Damn it.
He was locked away at home. Maybe Agatha Miles would run next door and kick some butt for me.
“Company? You sure? I wasn’t expecting anyone.”
“I think so. I saw a car pull up a while ago. Come, I want to show you where I planted your beautiful flowers.”
I smiled and followed her to the side yard, all the while scanning over in the direction of my house, looking for a hit team of Secret-Service-looking bad-asses. She rambled on for a bit, something about the particular leaf habit, and I tried to pay attention. Finally, I cut her off and told her I’d better see about my guests. She smiled and excused me, although she was probably puzzled when I ran through the side yard and crept up on my own house very quietly through the wall of pines and thick shrubs that separated our homes.
Then I saw the car in the driveway.
Amanda. Holy shit. She’d almost given me a heart attack. I ran up the front porch steps and found her inside the kitchen, making herself coffee. I was damn glad to see her, although totally surprised.
“What are you doing here?” I asked her as I picked her up off the ground and buried her in kisses.
After a warm welcome, she explained that after some asshole had awakened her at five-thirty in the morning, she couldn’t sleep because she was worried sick. She’d taken the day off and driven down to make sure I was still alive. I was. I decided that what was called for after a rude awakening and a stressful drive to Harkers Island was some serious sex. Much to my delight, Amanda only half resisted, God bless her libido, and we ended up christening the dining room carpet. After a brief recovery, she leaned on her elbow and said, “You’re still on my shit list.”
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