Word to the Wise

by Jenn McKinlay

  “Hearing that almost makes this whole long, boring day worth it.”

  “Almost?”

  “If you had told me that without me being a suspect in a murder, the day would have been just that much better,” he said.

  “But it might not have meant as much.”

  Sully grinned. “Nah, it would have meant just as much.”

  Lindsey returned his smile. She couldn’t help it. He was her everything.

  “My parents are still with your parents on Bell Island,” Lindsey said. “I’m having breakfast with them in the morning. I’m not going to tell them what’s happening. I don’t want them to worry if there’s no need.”

  “Good call,” Sully said. “I just got off the phone with my parents, and they were unaware of how I’d spent the day, so I decided to tell them after everything gets sorted.”

  Lindsey squeezed his hand in hers. They were both close to their parents, and it hurt to leave them out of this, but what could their parents do besides worry? Not a thing.

  “I think that’s for the best. Come on—I’ll buy you dinner,” she said. “Plus, there’s someone I think we want to talk to. At least, I hope there is.”

  She grabbed her things and walked past him out the door. Sully was watching her with a concerned expression.

  “Why does that sound so ominous?” he asked.

  “Because you’re overthinking it,” she said. “It’s just a lead. Potentially a very good lead but still just a lead.”

  He fell into step beside her as they exited the building. Lindsey waved to the staff at the circulation desk, telling them she’d see them tomorrow. She waited until they were out of earshot before she explained.

  “I did some digging,” she said.

  “Of course you did.”

  The automatic doors slid open, and a wall of heat hit them in the face. Lindsey almost fell back into the building, the change from the cool temperature of the library to the hot dry air outside was so dramatic.

  “When will this heat break?” she asked.

  “No time soon,” he said. “According to the weather forecast anyway.”

  “Ugh.” She could feel the sweat bead up on her skin and run down her back as they crossed the street and headed toward the Blue Anchor.

  “You were saying about the digging you did,” he prodded.

  “Sorry, the heat melted my brain.” She shook her head and tried to focus. “Okay, so I thought I’d follow the botanical trail and see what sort of relationship Grady had with the local gardening club in addition to the one he left behind in Massachusetts.

  “I spoke with the president of the Berkshire Rose Club and discovered that Grady had been written about by a local reporter. I figured I would track her down and see what her impression of him was, especially as, according to the president of the gardening club, Grady and the reporter had had a falling out.”

  Sully nodded. He took her elbow as they crossed the street, keeping an eye out for cars while she talked.

  “The reporter all but vanished shortly after the story ran,” Lindsey said. “I called Charlene La Rue to see if she had heard of the woman in any of her journalism circles.”

  They paused as they stepped up onto the curb, and Lindsey turned to face him.

  “Turns out she had, but the reporter is going by a different name now.” Lindsey nodded when Sully frowned. “Brace yourself. It gets weirder. She lives out on one of the Thumb Islands. When I spoke with her—”

  “You talked to her? Lindsey, what if she’s the killer?”

  “She isn’t,” she said. “She didn’t even know Grady was dead.”

  “But she could have been lying,” he said. He ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t like this.”

  “Well, you’re going to like it a lot less since we’re on our way to meet her right now.”

  “What?” he cried.

  “She said she would come in and meet me so we could talk,” Lindsey said.

  “Oh hell no,” Sully said. “What if she murdered Grady? You just made yourself a loose end. She’ll think she has to shoot you, too, or you might tell what you know to the police.”

  Lindsey shook her head. “She’s not going to shoot me in the middle of the Blue Anchor. There are too many witnesses. Besides, I heard her voice when I told her about Grady. She was relieved but still scared. Whatever he did to me, he must have been ten times worse with her.”

  They entered the restaurant, and Sully immediately moved in front of Lindsey as if to block her from stray gunfire. Lindsey scanned the restaurant until she saw Robbie sitting at the bar one seat away from a pretty brunette, who looked to be the right age for Chloe. Robbie met Lindsey’s gaze and gave her a slow nod.

  “There she is,” Lindsey said. She jerked her chin in the direction of the woman, and Sully’s eyes narrowed. Lindsey nudged him. “Stop that. You look scary.”

  “Well, I did just get out of jail,” he said.

  Lindsey smiled. She walked toward the woman and held out her hand. “Hi, I’m Lindsey Norris.”

  Chloe glanced up. Her expression was guarded as she shook her hand. She took in Sully bringing up the rear and asked, “Who’s that?”

  “My fiancé,” Lindsey said.

  “I thought you said he was being questioned.”

  “I was. I just got released,” Sully said. He held out his hand, and after a slight hesitation, Chloe shook it.

  “Do you want to grab a table?” Lindsey asked. “Maybe get something to eat?”

  Chloe glanced at them. “All right. Maybe that would help.”

  They moved toward an open table, and Robbie met Lindsey’s glance. She tipped her head at the door, and he nodded. He’d keep watch for them. If Emma should come in, Lindsey wanted to give Chloe a warning. She didn’t want the woman to think she was setting her up.

  Belinda, the hostess, who was one of Lindsey’s favorite library regulars, showed them to a table in the corner. She glanced at Lindsey as she put their menus on the table and asked, “Well?”

  “No,” Lindsey said.

  Belinda stomped her rubber-soled shoe on the hard floor. “Why?”

  “Because it hasn’t been released yet,” Lindsey said. “You know you’re first on the waiting list. When Karen Rose’s latest book drops, we’ll rush it through processing for you. I promise.”

  “Thank you,” Belinda said. “I’d hate to have to seat you just outside the kitchen doors for the rest of your life.”

  “Harsh!” Lindsey said.

  Belinda grinned, otherwise Lindsey might have been more concerned. She watched the hostess walk away and made a mental note to check on the new book orders.

  “You really are a librarian,” Chloe said.

  “Yes,” Lindsey said. “And I really did have a problem with Grady, too.” She reached across the table and put her hand on top of Chloe’s. “I’m sorry that I’m not the only one and that you had to go through it, too.”

  “He’s . . . he was deranged,” Chloe said. “No one would take me seriously. Just because he didn’t threaten me with physical violence, they thought he just had a harmless crush that would go away if I stopped encouraging him. I never did that! From day one, I was like no, nope, not interested, go away, leave me alone. He simply would not hear me. It was maddening and then it got frightening.”

  Lindsey glanced up at Sully. Their eyes met, and she knew he was thinking the same thing she was. Grady had used his clean-cut looks and mild-mannered demeanor to terrorize women. It made her furious.

  “Yes, well, I got a bit of that as well,” Lindsey said. “Some utter garbage about how they couldn’t infringe on his right to be in a public building and wouldn’t kick him out, never mind that I work there and he was creeping me out and making me crazy.”

  Chloe shook her head. “The same thing happened to me. It�
��s like no one considered him a threat because he looked so milquetoast. Let me tell you, when you come out of your house and he’s standing on your front lawn, waiting for you, with his creepy face staring at you like you’re his long-lost love, and you have no idea if he’s going to break into your house and strangle you in your sleep, you start taking it pretty damn seriously.”

  Lindsey hesitated to ask her next question, but she felt it was important. “Chloe, did he ever harm you?”

  “Hell no,” she said. “I never let him get close enough to try. Once my creep radar went off, that was it. My lease was up on my apartment, so I looked for other work in the area. When I got hired to write for the New Haven Register, I moved and never looked back. The day my very first article was published, he called me. That’s when I changed my pen name, changed my phone number and moved out to the island. I didn’t hear from him again, but somehow he must have known I was here. Don’t you think? It’s too much of a coincidence that he moved to Briar Creek, too.”

  “I think he must have, but you never heard from him?” Lindsey asked.

  “No,” she said.

  “Maybe that’s why he fixated on you, Lindsey,” Sully said. “Maybe being on the island made Chloe untouchable, so he switched his attention to you.”

  “If that’s the case, I’m sorry,” Chloe said. “I wouldn’t wish that living nightmare on anyone.”

  “There’s no need—it’s not your fault. Do you know what triggered his interest in you?” Lindsey asked.

  “The article—” Chloe began, but the waitress arrived to take their order.

  Sully and Lindsey went with the house special, which was a stuffed broiled cod, and Chloe ordered fried clams. As soon as the waitress left, Chloe continued.

  “When I went to the first meeting of the Berkshire Rose Club, it started,” she said. “He invited me to see his garden, which I thought was great because I needed pictures to go with the article. Honestly, despite what a nut he was, his garden really was spectacular.

  “I toured a few of the other members’ gardens so the article wasn’t just about Grady, but you wouldn’t know it the way he acted. He brought flowers to the newspaper, and at the time, I thought it was just a very nice thank-you, but no. It was just the beginning.”

  Lindsey glanced at Sully. His expression was grave. It was clear Grady had an MO and he’d used it on both of them.

  The waitress returned with their food, and Lindsey waited until she left before she asked, “Then what happened?”

  “More flowers, then he started showing up where I got my coffee in the morning,” Chloe said. “Then I was on a date, and he was in the restaurant. It was not a coincidence. Then he started emailing me and calling me. Not every day and not all day long, just often enough that it was creepy but if I complained to anyone, they thought I was crazy. He was married. He seemed so nice. Couldn’t a guy be nice without a woman making a big deal out of it? Blah, blah, blah.”

  “Because he never said anything threatening or weird,” Lindsey said. “He was just there, a presence, making you feel uncomfortable in your own skin.”

  “Exactly,” Chloe said. She took a bite of her meal, looking as if she was hardly tasting it. “When you read his texts and such, they all seem friendly, but there’s an almost imperceptible inappropriateness to them. His smirky smile and the way he just sat there at the restaurant, staring at me while I was on my date, was so unnerving. My date, who was a fix-up, thought I was completely nuts when I made him take me home after the appetizers. That night I got a text from Grady, telling me how pretty I looked.”

  “That is creepy, but what made you leave town the way you did?” Sully asked. “I mean, you left your job and moved out onto an island. That’s pretty drastic.”

  “I know,” Chloe said. She took a sip of the beer she had ordered. Lindsey noticed she was relaxing a bit. Maybe it was because Grady was dead, or perhaps it was because she realized she wasn’t alone in this. “There’s no way to explain how vulnerable that guy made me feel. He was literally always there, watching me. No matter where I went or what I did, I felt like he was there all the time. Once, when I went home, I was certain someone had been in my house. Things were sort of in the same place I had left them but just a little off, you know?”

  Lindsey shivered. She had never even considered this possibility. What if he had tried to get into their house when Heathcliff was there alone? Would he have hurt her dog? The mere thought made Lindsey’s heart spasm in her chest.

  “After my first article came out in the New Haven Register, I got this weird text from a number I didn’t recognize with detailed wedding plans. Something like June first would be a great day to get married, and I would of course carry a bouquet of roses from his garden. It went on and on, describing my dress, the food, the color of the roses that would be woven in my hair. I completely freaked out.”

  Lindsey remembered getting the creepy text when she was trying on wedding dresses. “I can imagine.”

  “I showed the text to the local police, but there was no way to tell who it was from, and they didn’t see anything threatening in it,” Chloe said. “One officer actually thought it was just a spam text from a store or something. No one would take me seriously, and I had this feeling I was going to end up kidnapped and living below ground in a root cellar, wearing a wedding dress and having roses in my hair for the rest of my life, which I was beginning to think was going to be cut unduly short.”

  Her brown eyes were wide, and it was clear that Grady had scared Chloe to death.

  “Did you tell your family?” Sully asked.

  “No, I’m from Kentucky, and my family would have thought this was a great reason for me to pack up my zany idea of being a journalist and come home, marry Kevin Thompson, my high school sweetheart who manages the car dealership in town, and settle down, maybe be a teacher if I felt the need to do something more than homemaking.”

  “Oh,” Lindsey said.

  Chloe smiled. “Yeah, I see myself as more of a Christiane Amanpour. My family, not so much.”

  “How did you end up out on the Thumb Islands?” Sully asked.

  “My roommate at Boston University hooked me up,” she said. “Her family has a place on Gull Island. They’re renting a villa in Tuscany for the season, so no one was going to be on the island all summer. Her mom thought it was a shame and asked if I’d like to spend the summer out there, taking care of the place. I jumped on it, figuring I could do my writing from there, and other than a few grocery runs, I haven’t left the island in weeks.”

  “Do you think Grady followed you here?” Lindsey asked.

  “I don’t believe in coincidences,” Chloe said.

  “Me neither,” Lindsey agreed.

  They stared at each other, knowing that no one else could appreciate what they’d experienced while being the obsession of Aaron Grady.

  “How do you feel about telling the chief of police what you’ve told us?” Sully asked. “If this is a pattern, and it looks like it is, there could be other women out there that Grady has stalked.”

  “Which means there might be other people who wanted him dead,” Lindsey said. She glanced between Sully and Chloe. “Right now all three of us are people of interest. We need to know if there is anyone else who had a more compelling reason to kill him.”

  Chloe nodded. “I think you’re right. I think there are more women out there. It doesn’t make sense that it’s just the two of us. I’ll talk to the police.”

  “Thank you,” Lindsey said. “I think that’s a good call.”

  “Me, too,” Sully said.

  They finished their meal, talking about the area and giving Chloe tips on things to do and see for the rest of the summer. She seemed like a nice woman, and Lindsey felt bad that they had met under such horrible circumstances.

  “Are you a reader?” Lindsey asked.

 
“Mostly nonfiction,” Chloe said. “I love memoirs, especially of strong women.”

  “Who are your favorites?”

  “Eleanor Roosevelt,” Chloe said. “Talk about a woman who didn’t suffer fools. Also Madeleine Albright and, more sentimentally, Princess Diana.”

  “The library has a fabulous collection of female biographies,” Lindsey said. “I’m just saying.”

  Chloe laughed, and it was a delightfully robust sound. “Now that I feel safe to leave the island, I’ll be sure to pop in.”

  Sully paid the bill before Lindsey could grab it. She gave him a look and he shrugged. She’d have to be quicker next time. They all headed for the door. Robbie was still at the bar, and Lindsey waved for him to follow them. She wanted to introduce him to Chloe so that she felt as if she had friends in town. While living on the island seemed idyllic, at some point it had to get lonely.

  It was dark when they left the Blue Anchor, but the air was still and the evening felt just as hot and sticky as the day had been. They were halfway across the parking lot when she saw Emma coming their way, and she wasn’t alone. Sandwiched between Emma and Detective Trimble from the state police was Sylvia Grady. Lindsey felt her stomach flip-flop like a fish on land. She knew seconds before Sylvia saw them that this was going to be unpleasant.

  Sylvia glanced at them and then stopped walking, as if shock had rooted her to the ground. She took in the sight of them and then pointed at them. In a high-pitched shriek of a voice, she cried, “Murderer!”

  CHAPTER

  11

  Oh no,” Chloe said. “Not her. Not now.”

  “You’ve tangled with Sylvia before?” Lindsey asked.

  “She’s one of the reasons I moved,” Chloe said. “She started telling everyone in town that I was trying to steal her husband. As if I would.”

  “We had a go-round, too,” Lindsey said. “So this should be fun.”

  Sylvia broke away from Emma and the detective and charged them. Her round face was red and sweaty, and her glasses slid to the end of her nose. She pushed them up with a stubby finger as she stomped toward them.