by Edwin Hill
“I can’t.”
“Arrest her,” Barb said to Rory. “For child endangerment. And call family services. We’ll have Ethan in foster care by this afternoon. It’s actually a relief to say that.”
Rory reached for his handcuffs.
“I’ve been running drugs,” Frankie said quickly. “All over Maine.”
“Big surprise,” Rory said, but Barb shot him a glare that told him to shut up.
“What else?” she asked.
“Three weeks ago, I got pulled over,” Frankie said. “I had balloons in my mouth. I swallowed them, like I’m supposed to, but the cops took me in anyway. And it turned out they weren’t cops, they were with the DEA. They kept threatening me, telling me I’d go to jail for an eternity or I could turn state’s evidence. So I played along.”
“You turned state’s evidence?” Barb asked.
“Nope.” Frankie stared off. “Believe it or not, I’m not a fucking idiot. They didn’t have anything to hold me on. They knew it, and I knew it too. The minute they released me, I got Ethan, took the ferry here, and hid out. I’ve been here ever since. And I thought it was the end of the world. I thought no one would ever find me here.”
Barb leaned forward and spoke slowly and softly. “What. Made. You. Panic?”
Frankie closed her eyes. “Ethan disappeared. And Seth showed up.”
“And who is Seth?”
“I said, I need a deal.”
“Only the DA can cut a deal. But I can still arrest you and send your kid to foster care.”
“Seth is who they wanted me to turn on,” Frankie said.
“You should have told us this when Ethan disappeared.”
“He had what I needed,” Frankie said, her shoulders slumped.
“And you needed what?” Rory said, stepping toward the woman. He despised her. He couldn’t wait to slap cuffs on her. “Another hit?”
“Back off,” Barb said, her voice barely a whisper. “Frankie,” she added. “Did Seth know Annie? Does he have anything to do with where she went?”
“I don’t know,” Frankie said.
“Where is he now?” Rory asked.
When Frankie didn’t answer, Barb called Nate into the kitchen. “Get a description of this guy Seth and start looking for him. I need everyone on this. And don’t let her out of your sight.”
CHAPTER 19
Hester watched from the pier till the ferry disappeared. If she could have, she’d have leapt into the ocean and swum after it. Instead, she texted Morgan: Everything okay?
A moment later, he sent a photo of Kate sitting above-deck, wearing his sunglasses and posing with Sebastian and Waffles. Hester texted him again.
Don’t let her near the rail. And make sure she wears a hat. And sunscreen. The sun is brighter than you think.
She sounded like a harpy, and she knew it.
Will do!
Morgan had the decency to respond, and Hester somehow found the willpower to put the phone in her pocket and start to move. “Ready?” she said to Oliver.
He saluted the state trooper and dashed ahead. At least watching him distracted Hester from looking around, listening, and searching for Kate.
At the inn, she found Lydia sitting in the front room, staring out the window. “You’re back,” Hester said.
Lydia looked up, and it seemed to take a moment for her to focus. Then she put out her arms, and Oliver ran to her. She held him tight till he squirmed away.
“We saw seventy-seven ladybugs,” he said.
“Seventy-seven!” Lydia said. “See if you can find seventeen more in the garden.”
“Where’s Daddy?”
Lydia paused. “I’m not sure,” she said.
Oliver kissed her on the cheek and dashed out the front door. Lydia watched after him, gripping a mug in both hands. “I thought I saw you on the pier,” she said. “I wondered if you’d left without settling up.”
“I couldn’t really leave if I still had your kid,” Hester said. “Where have you been, anyway?”
“I was hiding from the grieving masses. Plus I had to talk to Barb. Detective Kelley.”
“What did she ask you?”
“Oh, where I was, what I was doing. If I had a reason to stab my husband in the back. She probably thinks I did this. Isn’t the wife always the prime suspect?”
“If you believe what you see on TV,” Hester said, wondering how much Lydia had actually told the cops. “I’ll be here for the day, but I can check out now if that’s easier.”
“Take your time,” Lydia said, raising the mug in a toast. “I’ve got nothing much to do. Nothing but planning funerals and writing obituaries.”
“I’m sorry for everything,” Hester said. “For your loss.”
“Don’t do that,” Lydia said. “I’m sorry I left Oliver with you.”
Hester perched on the edge of a chair. “I hate kids,” she said. “But for some reason I wind up with other people’s. I put the casseroles in the fridge.”
“Thanks. Did you figure out where Annie went?”
“Not yet, but I’ll be on the ferry this afternoon no matter what.”
“Rory told me you and your husband were fighting when he came by this morning,” Lydia said. “I didn’t even know your husband was here.”
“There isn’t much that you don’t tell each other around here, is there? It feels like every time I move, it gets reported back to me. But Morgan and I? We fight and make up. I think it sounded uglier than it was.”
“Where’d he go?”
“To the mainland. We’re looking for Da . . . for Annie.”
A shadow passed over Lydia’s face. “Oh, I heard about the fake name too. I knew there was something off about Annie, something not to trust.”
“Daphne’s complicated,” Hester said. “But she’s good, at the core.”
“I don’t know if I saw the good or the bad. But I saw something.” Lydia held up the mug. “This isn’t coffee, you know. Want some? I hate to drink alone.”
It was early, even for Hester. “Is there somewhere I could make actual coffee?”
Lydia waved Hester through the connecting door to the bakery. “Rory told me your husband is good looking,” she said as she put the coffee on to brew. “Handsome.”
Hester was so used to seeing Morgan that she didn’t think of him as anything anymore, but she supposed he was handsome in his own pasty, redheaded way. How could she have taken that attraction for granted?
“Coffee’ll be a minute or two,” Lydia said. “I’ll bake off some scones too.”
She turned on one of the ovens to preheat and pulled a half tray of chocolate-chip scones from the freezer. When the coffee finished, she poured two mugs.
“Put in as much sugar as you think possible. Then add one more,” Hester said. “Morgan says it’ll give me diabetes.”
“Annie likes it sweet too,” Lydia said. “Daphne, I mean.”
The oven beeped, and she slid the half tray in. Hester tried her coffee, added two more sugars, and joined her at a café table.
“I went to the crime scene yesterday,” Lydia said. “But can you tell me what happened? What you saw?”
“Are you sure you want to hear it?”
“I do,” Lydia said, closing her eyes for a moment. “More than you know.”
Hester told her about walking out to the lighthouse and finding the door kicked in.
“It’s usually teenagers who do that,” Lydia said. “I’m pretty certain Rory and I kicked in that door a few times ourselves.”
“There was some graffiti spray painted on rocks.”
“There usually is,” Lydia said.
Hester told her the rest of the story too, though omitted that she’d seen Vaughn with his dog. Lydia probably already knew that too though. When Hester finally got to the part where she found Trey’s body, Lydia inhaled sharply.
“Should I stop?”
“No,” Lydia said. “If you don’t tell me, I’ll sit around imagi
ning something even worse.”
Hester understood that, so she tried to remember every detail, to keep Lydia from spiraling after the truth. “He was facedown on the sand,” she said. “His feet were over the waterline, so when the surf rolled in, half his body would lift. At first, I thought I’d found someone’s lost coat, but I saw his hair. And one of his hands.”
“What about the knife? What did it look like?”
Hester would never forget the knife. She pictured it, the blue hilt sticking out of Trey’s back. She hadn’t wanted to look at it as she’d approached the body and felt for a pulse.
“The hilt, what color was it?”
“Why?”
“There are a lot of knives around here. I’m curious whose it might be.”
“Ask the police,” Hester said, taking a long sip of her coffee. “Gossip spreads quickly, but you know that already. I heard something about you, about you and Vaughn. And I bet everyone else has heard it too, including the detective. Vaughn was at Cappy’s last night, drunk off his ass. Did he find you later?”
Lydia closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. “I used to send Trey away,” she said, softly. “Every week, he’d take the ferry to town and be gone for days. You never met him, but we could get a table at the best restaurant in Manhattan without having a reservation. He was that type of good looking. He was used to it too. He grew up in Bar Harbor, a working-class kid surrounded by privilege. He figured out early on that he could use his looks at the country club to get what he wanted. And it’s not like I trusted him. I’d search his phone for text messages, look at his browser history, steam open his mail. That kind of thing. But he was careful. He was a cop. He was too good at his job for me to ever catch him in the act. But he had power, and he used it, however he could. It won’t take long now for the rest of the secrets to come out. All of them.”
“Did he know about you and Vaughn?”
Lydia answered with a shrug. “Not till the night of the storm. The truth is, I didn’t really like Trey all that much, and he didn’t like me, and we were probably headed toward a divorce, but we hadn’t talked about it yet. I’m still sad that he’s dead. Strange how that happens. But that night, I was glad he wound up seeing what he saw. He’d messed up one too many times.”
“How?” Hester asked.
“It was why we were out in the storm in the first place. Have you met Frankie Sullivan? Did you see her on the beach when you found Trey?”
“That’s who I was looking for.”
“I bet you were,” Lydia said. “And you should find out where she was. Have you noticed how much Oliver and Ethan look alike? I did. And that frumpy Detective Kelley’s bound to notice too, if she hasn’t already. I can’t imagine it was a coincidence that both of Trey’s sons went missing and returned without incident in the same summer. Can you?”
“Wait. What? Trey is, was, Ethan’s father?”
“Yep.”
The timer on the stove went off. Lydia yanked open the door and left the tray to cool on the aluminum counter right as Oliver dashed in through the bakery door. He held his palm over a clear plastic cup in which two ladybugs crawled. “That’s two,” Lydia said. “Fifteen to go.”
Hester had assumed that Lydia and Vaughn and Trey had been at a crossroads when Trey had died, that something was ending so that something else could begin. Out with the old, in with the new, because if Hester were to cheat on Morgan, that’s the only way it could work. But some people, she reminded herself, had more tolerance for the in-between.
“How long have you known?” Hester asked.
“Since the moment I saw Ethan’s photo on that poster. I hadn’t seen him in town, or if I had, I hadn’t noticed him. It was why I gave in and let Trey see Vaughn touch me while we were in the ravine.”
“Did Trey know you’d figured it out?”
“Maybe? Maybe not. We never talked again.”
“You told all this to the detective, right?” Hester asked, and when Laura shook her head, she added, “Well, you should. All of it. She should hear it from you.”
“Yeah, maybe. Or you tell her. I don’t care anymore.” Lydia took Oliver’s hand and headed toward the back door. “Come on,” she said to him. “Let’s let these girls fly free.”
After Lydia and Oliver left, Hester poured another cup of coffee and ate two scones. She checked her phone. The ferry would be getting into Boothbay Harbor right about now, and she thought about texting Morgan, if only to be reminded of everything she took for granted every day and to update him on what she’d just learned. If Hester knew one thing, it was that Morgan, like her, would have the decency to leave before betraying her. It wasn’t a romantic quality to have in a partner, but it was one she cherished.
She found a paperback and set up camp on the front porch, but after an hour of rereading the same page while thinking through everything Lydia had confessed and eating three more scones, she put the book aside and stared out over the water. She couldn’t sit here doing nothing, no matter what she’d promised. She thought about heading to the Victorian to see what else she could learn from Frankie. But then, in the harbor, a boat rounded Bowman Island, and Hester recognized the black lab running across the deck. A few moments later, down on the pier, she found Vaughn in his slip hosing down the boat. Mindy ran with the stream, jumping from the deck to the dock and back again.
“Can your stomach handle a scone?” Hester asked, offering up a white paper bag. “Or are you still hung over from last night?”
Vaughn groaned and covered his face.
“Permission to come aboard?” Hester asked.
“Permission granted,” Vaughn said, giving her a mock salute. “Apologies for anything and everything I said last night. I guess yesterday’s bad news hit home more than I realized.”
Or maybe he hadn’t gotten what he wanted out of that bad news. “Good day on the water?” Hester asked.
“Made my quota, and that’s as good as it gets.”
Hester called the lab over. She scratched her ears, and the dog pressed into her thigh with her whole body.
“Heard your husband showed up last night,” Vaughn said. “He hurled all over Chris Abbott’s boat.”
“I can’t take a shit on this island without everyone hearing about it,” Hester said.
Vaughn raised an eyebrow but didn’t reply. Hester crossed the deck and peered into the gray water. The swells from the storm had gone, replaced with water as still as a lake. “Morgan went to Portland. You lived there, right? Did you know Daphne? Annie?”
“The first time I met her was two days ago,” Vaughn said.
“How was she on the boat?”
“Followed directions,” Vaughn said. “There isn’t much more you can ask for from a sternman. Now that I get how much she was hiding, I can see how adept she was at keeping things to herself. She told me she grew up in Boston. I take it that was true?”
Mindy licked Hester’s hand. “It’s true,” she said. “I’m worried about her. Really worried.”
“I would be too,” Vaughn said, the first person on the island to affirm Hester’s concern.
“Your wife lives in Portland, right?” she asked. “Did Daphne know her?”
“Sophie and your friend have definitely not crossed paths,” Vaughn said. “Sophie doesn’t know people like Annie even exist. But for what it’s worth, here’s my story. I got married right out of college. My wife has a ton of money, and she got bored being married to a lobsterman, and I got bored talking stocks at the yacht club. Pretty simple. In the end, she wanted me to honor every clause of the prenup her daddy insisted on when we were madly in love, and I was only too happy to oblige. By then I didn’t have the money I’d need for a lawyer, which is how they get you anyway. Now she’s kind enough to rent me this boat. But if your boyfriend starts asking questions, it’ll cause me trouble.” He paused. “Have you talked to Lydia today?”
“Just now,” Hester said. “She finally showed up.”
“Any
idea where she went?”
Apparently, she hadn’t been with Vaughn. “I didn’t ask,” Hester said.
Vaughn stripped off his yellow gloves, one at a time. He tossed them onto the deck and took one step toward Hester. “I did my own research,” he said. “You’re nosy. And it gets you in trouble. Watch yourself. Don’t get in trouble again.”
“I don’t like being threatened,” Hester said.
“I’m not threatening you,” Vaughn said. “I’m telling you to be careful, especially if you’re wandering around the island asking questions. You might talk to the wrong person.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Hester said.
She leapt from the boat to the dock. As she retreated up the ramp, she felt Vaughn’s glare following her. She checked the reception on her phone and texted Angela White with Sophie Roberts’s name. The text failed to send the first two times she tried, but when she moved closer to the General Store, it went though.
A few moments later, Vaughn left the boat and headed into the trees. Hester couldn’t help herself. She followed him.
* * *
When it came to finding missing people, Morgan was hopeless. Unlike Hester, his more fearless partner, he either didn’t ask the right questions or didn’t ask the questions at all, withering under the threat of speaking to a stranger. Where Hester would have rushed right in, probing and peeling away layers from a secret, Morgan believed it was best to leave well enough alone. In the time since he and Kate had arrived in Portland, they’d managed to have French fries cooked in duck fat, followed by ice cream. They’d shopped for olive oil. They’d debated whether they’d like living on an island (Kate: yes; Morgan: no). Now they stood in line at a doughnut shop, but they hadn’t asked a single person a single question about Daphne.
“Don’t tell your aunt Hester,” Morgan said to Kate.
“Don’t tell Aunt Hester,” Kate said to Waffles. “Don’t tell Uncle Morgan.”
“You’re too smart for your own good,” Morgan said.
“Did Mommy take Oxy?” Kate asked, her words skipping along like a stone on water. “Ethan’s mommy snorts Oxy.”
“Where did you hear that?” Morgan asked.
“Oliver told me,” Kate said. “What’s snorts?”