by Blythe Baker
“Theodore’s,” Page said, nodding her head.
Mason looked at me, his eyes asking a question I couldn’t answer. It didn’t make sense. Everyone, whether they admitted it or not, was looking at me to solve this. They expected me to have all of the answers like I had in the past, but I didn’t have a single clue. And it was terrifying. Sure, Mr. and Mrs. Smith had a drawer full of purses and wallets, but that only proved that they were thieves. It didn’t mean they were murderers. They could have planted the wallet in Page’s room, but something about that felt wrong. Why would they plant the wallet so close to where they kept their own stash? Surely, they would have wanted to get it as far away from themselves as possible.
“Why did they suspect you in the first place?” Jude asked, taking an almost imperceptible step away from Page, leaning against the dining room door as if he had half a mind to sprint out the door.
“Witnesses saw me arguing with him in front of the bed and breakfast,” she said.
“And that’s all they said?” Jude asked. “They didn’t see you near the crime scene or anything like that?”
Jude’s line of questioning suddenly felt less curious and more suspicious. Sure, he didn’t know Page well, but I wasn’t going to stand by and let him accuse her of something she didn’t do. Not in my house. I shot him a dark look, and he shrank back ever so slightly.
Page didn’t seem to take any offense from his question and simply shook her head. “They had almost nothing on me, so I agreed to let Shep search my room to put the whole thing to rest, and now he has the wallet. I have no idea how it even got there.”
“Maybe he left it here when he tried to check in and it just found its way up to your room?” Blaire suggested, her tone prodding, as if she wanted to lead her mother to the explanation. As if the answer were locked away in Page’s mind, and all she needed to do was fiddle with the padlock before it would snap open and we’d have all of the answers.
Page’s shoulders lifted slightly, and then sunk down even further than before. “I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t remember, but…maybe.”
For as long as I could remember, Page had always had all the answers. She faced down every challenge that came her way without complaint, but now I could see weariness creeping in. Since we’d discovered the identity of the dead man, Page had been lost, worried. I’d never seen her so flustered before. If she wasn’t my sister, I may have even suspected her. But she was my sister, and I knew it was impossible.
“Why don’t we let Page get some rest,” I said, more of a command than a suggestion. “It has been a very long day and we all need to process.”
Jude rushed off, not eager to insert himself any more than he already had into our family drama, and Mason offered to stay and help take care of things.
“No, really, you’ve done enough,” I said.
“Are you sure?” He grabbed my hand. “I don’t mind.”
“You have work to do, I’m sure, and you’ve already spent so much time here. I’ll call if we need anything.”
“You promise?”
I smiled and squeezed his fingers. “I swear.”
Blaire stayed seated at the table. “Why don’t you get out of the house for a bit,” I suggested. “You need some normalcy in your life. Why don’t you call Matthew?”
She tensed. “He’s at work.”
“That’s never stopped you before,” I said.
“Yeah, Blaire. I’m fine. Go have fun,” Page said.
“I don’t want to,” Blaire snapped. Just as quickly, her face softened into an apology. “I’m just going to go to my room.”
When her footsteps were halfway up the stairs, Page sighed. “She shouldn’t have to be dealing with this. It’s my mess, not hers.”
“This isn’t your mess. None of us should be dealing with it,” I said. “But we’ll sort it all out, and you’ll be off the hook soon.”
“I hope you’re right,” Page said, her head shaking almost imperceptibly. She looked defeated, which scared me. Despite her innocence, Page really thought she might take the rap for this.
I followed Page all the way up the stairs and into her room.
“You don’t have to help me,” she said, giving me a smile that I didn’t believe.
“I’m just assisting my elders,” I joked.
“I’m not an elder!”
“You’re seven years older than me. That makes you my elder,” I said.
She rolled her eyes at me, but let me pull back her comforter and help her lay down.
“Do you want anything? Water? A snack?” I asked.
Page shook her head. “I just need to take a nap. Hit reset on my body and this day. Thanks, though.”
I was about to leave when Page stopped me. “Actually, could you plug in my phone? It’s almost dead.”
I took it from her and bent down to plug it into the charger cord laying on the floor. As I did and her phone vibrated to let me know it was charging, I noticed a small piece of paper laying on the floor where Shep had found the wallet earlier. I reached for it, my hand disturbing the dust bunnies that had built up under the bed since we’d moved in a few months before.
The piece of paper was small, ripped from the corner of a lined notebook, and it had seven digits hastily scrawled across it in pencil. It was a phone number.
I stood up, ready to ask Page if she knew whose number it was, but her eyes were closed and her breathing was heavy. Even if she wasn’t quite asleep yet, I didn’t want to burden her with anything else. Quietly, I tucked the piece of paper into my back pocket and slipped from her room.
By the time I was in the hallway, I’d already pulled the piece of paper from my pocket. I stared at the numbers, willing them to rearrange into a name or a clue. Something.
Could this number have fallen out of Theodore’s wallet when Shep dropped it? Could it lead to another suspect? And if it did lead to Theodore’s murderer, would Page still be implicated? The number was found under her bed with no proof that it was ever inside the wallet. What if the number led to a hit man and then Shep thought Page hired one to kill Theodore? It sounded like the plot of a bad action movie, but I couldn’t rule anything out. I’d never be able to forgive myself if I somehow made things worse for Page. I had to investigate this one on my own. Figure out where the number led before I turned it over to the police.
I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and punched the number into my phone, and held it to my ear. It began to ring, and my heart was pounding, not knowing what I’d find at the other end of the line. Then, I realized I was still standing outside of Page’s door, and I didn’t want her to hear me on the phone and come asking questions, so I ducked into the bathroom across the hallway and shut the door, flipping the lock into place with a dull thud.
The phone rang several more times, and I leaned back against the sink, my foot tapping out a nervous rhythm on the tile floor. Then, finally, a female voice answered.
“Hello.”
“Hi,” I said eagerly, trying to sound as friendly as possible so the woman wouldn’t hang up.
“The number you have reached is not available. Please leave a message at the tone.”
Even though I was alone in the bathroom, my face flushed with embarrassment. I’d been fooled by a robotic answering machine voice. When the beep sounded, I had no idea who I was leaving a message for or what I was going to say, so I simply left my phone number and hung up.
Then, before I could change my mind, I pulled my phone back out and pressed Mason’s name. It barely rang once before Mason picked up.
“Everything okay?” he asked, slightly breathless.
“Yeah, fine,” I said. “I know you just left, but is there any way you could come back?”
I heard a car door shut and the rumble of an engine in the background. He had probably just made it home and gotten out of the car when I called. “Sure, I’m on my way. Did you change your mind about needing help?”
“I just need to run a quick erran
d and hoped you could keep an eye on things around here while I’m gone.”
Within five minutes, Mason was at the bed and breakfast, and within twenty, I was in a rental boat from the Marina. I was going to investigate the crime scene for myself.
CHAPTER 14
The late morning was warm and sticky, but it wasn’t a picturesque island afternoon. The sky was a heavy flannel gray, pressing down on me as I made my way across the bay. The motorboat I rented from the Marina was spotted with rust and I had to turn the key a few times before the engine finally turned over, but it was the last one they had left, and so far, it seemed to keep out water. Matthew had apologized for the state of it several times, and I had made a joke about getting the family discount, at which he became incredibly uncomfortable. I had paid the normal amount and left, hoping he wouldn’t tell Blaire I’d made him uncomfortable. Blaire would no doubt think I was trying to meddle in her relationship, and I’d have to endure the chill of her icy teenage wrath for at least three days before she forgave me.
I passed jet skiers and college-aged kids on boats much larger than mine as I made my way down the coast towards the cave. They blasted music that sounded tinny and hollow coming across the water, and each of them held a red plastic cup as if they were in a spring break destination spot commercial. When we first moved to the island, that’s what I’d imagined life to be like. Maybe not exactly like that. I wouldn’t be blasting rap music and there would be significantly fewer people on my boat, but I’d pictured going out on the water with Page and Blaire, reading while we suntanned, gossiping about the locals. Now I couldn’t picture it. Not after the bodies and the murders. Sunrise Island no longer seemed like the tropical paradise I’d first envisioned. What those kids on the boat didn’t know was that it had a dark underbelly. I’d seen it, and I wouldn’t be able to forget.
It hadn’t taken much asking to uncover where exactly the body was discovered. Though I had done my best to stay out of the investigation, the rest of the island’s inhabitants seemed to have done their utmost to be as much a part of it as possible. I’d quietly asked a couple in their mid-fifties if they’d heard about the body, and before I knew it, I was surrounded by six other people. They pointed me in the direction of the cave, but not before telling me all of their theories. I barely listened, except to note that none of them said anything about Page, which was a relief. That news, thankfully, had yet to circulate in the rumor mill. I wondered how long we had before it did.
I motored out into the bay and followed the curving coastline until the cave came into view. It was barely a cave. Even from a distance, the sun was bright enough to illuminate the back wall, and the mouth was maybe twenty-five feet wide. Based on the excitement surrounding the cave at the marina, I’d assumed the area would be crowded with curious onlookers and kids searching for a thrill. However, the small cave seemed to be deserted. In fact, everyone seemed to be actively avoiding the area, instead cramming into the far side of the bay.
I pulled the boat up to a small wooden dock that looked one storm away from falling to pieces, and threw a looped rope around a moss-covered post. The cave was visible just ahead, the opening like a dark mouth opened wide, ready to swallow anyone who came too near. A chill ran down my spine and I had to remind myself that Theodore was no longer there. He was in a morgue somewhere far away, and this was just a normal stretch of beach.
Shep never said whether they thought Theodore had been killed at the cave or killed somewhere else and moved to the cave, but I immediately believed it to be the latter. Perhaps it was purely to protect myself from the thought that I was standing in a place where a man was violently murdered. Either way, the ground didn’t look to be disturbed, at least, not any more than normal. There were a lot of footprints moving from the dock to the mouth of the cave, probably from the many police officers and EMTs who had arrived after the body was discovered, but otherwise, everything looked normal. No obvious signs of a struggle or blood stains. Just an empty cave and an empty beach.
I wasn’t sure what I’d expected to find. Aside from the phone number I’d already called, I had zero leads and zero suspects, unless I truly believed Mr. and Mrs. Smith were capable of murder, which I didn’t. Going to the cave was a last-ditch effort at picking up a trail, and it was disappointing to realize there was nothing there to find. It was starting to make sense why Shep had latched on to Page as a suspect. She had an argument with the victim the day he died, he threatened our business, and now Shep had found the man’s wallet under her bed. In the face of so few clues, those three things, while mostly circumstantial, were significant.
I gave the shallow cave one last look over before leaving. The walls had been graffitied, no doubt by local kids, and featured an eclectic assortment of indecipherable tags and hearts with initials inside them. Soda bottles faded from sun and water littered the floor of the cave, but otherwise the ground was clear.
I sighed, and trudged back through the sand towards the boat. In the short amount of time I’d been on the beach, the sun had entirely disappeared behind clouds, and the bay was considerably less busy. I lowered into the boat and flipped the headlight on even though it wasn’t quite dark enough to require one, deciding it was better to be cautious. As I did, the boat bobbed with an incoming wave, and the headlight caught on something in the sand just in front of the boat.
Not quite ready to give up and desperate for any clue, I scrambled back out of the boat and sunk to my knees on the beach, sifting through the sand. I had a flashback to the day many months back when I’d done the same thing, only I was uncovering a human body. I pushed the thought from my mind and sifted through the sand until my fingers caught something large and metal. I pulled it from the sand.
It was a mermaid. A metal one. Seashells hung in her hair, and her arm was raised in a wave. More seashells covered her breasts, and her tail was bent upward, the curve of it resting on a flat piece of metal. It looked like it was meant to screw onto the front of something like a car emblem. I rotated her and noticed deep scratches marred the side of her tail. I crawled forward towards the dock and found a gouge in the wood at the same height as the bow of my boat. At some point, someone had pulled in a little too close to the dock and lost the mermaid. Could it have been from the murderer’s boat? Sure, but it also could have been any of hundreds, if not thousands, of other boats. The mermaid had been almost completely covered in sand, which didn’t lend credence to the idea that it was a relatively new inhabitant of the island. It could have been buried in the sand for months before I arrived. Though, it did have a rather nice sheen to it.
I couldn’t make up my mind, so I decided to call Shep.
“Hello,” he said, clearly not thrilled to be receiving a call from me. “If you’re calling to yell at me, I’d prefer if you didn’t. I’m only doing my job.”
“I found something,” I said. “On the beach in front of the cave.”
“The cave?” he asked.
“Yeah. I came out here to—”
“I thought you weren’t going to get involved,” he said. I could hear the smugness in his voice. The silent “I told you so” between the words.
“That was before you tried to pin the crime on my sister,” I said.
There was a beat, and then Shep sighed. “Unfortunately, it would be wrong of me to accept your help now. Your sister is our main suspect. I couldn’t trust your judgment.”
“I’m not calling to give you theories. I’m calling to present a hard piece of evidence. It’s a mermaid.”
Shep laughed, and it sounded as if he choked on his coffee.
“A metal mermaid. Like a hood ornament, but for a boat.”
“Okay?”
I could tell he wasn’t taking me seriously, and I wanted to yell, though he’d expressly asked me not to. I took a deep breath. “I found it in the sand near the dock. It looks like somebody pulled a boat up here, scratched the dock, and knocked it off. It could be a clue.”
Shep didn’t say anyt
hing for a few seconds.
“Shep?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m here. Listen,” he said. “I wrote everything down. We are looking over the security footage from the Marina. If the mermaid becomes important, I’ll be sure to let you know.”
Shep didn’t want to come down to the cave and look. He didn’t even want me to bring the mermaid to him. Was he right about me? Was my judgment off because Page was involved? Had I just found a piece of trash on the beach and tried to report it to the police? I’d always tried to trust my instincts, but now I wasn’t so certain I could. Everything in me was telling me to do anything and everything I could to clear Page’s name of this murder, and that desire was clouding my thoughts. I couldn’t look at anything objectively anymore.
Frustrated, I pushed the mermaid into my pocket, the base of it sticking out, and climbed back into the boat. A storm seemed to be approaching, and I didn’t want to be out on rough waters in such a small boat. I pulled in the rope, started the engine, and took off towards the Marina, the motor shattering the dark glass of the bay, churning it into bubbles and waves.
I must have spent longer at the cave than I’d thought because the vacationers and boaters I’d seen before had mostly cleared out by the time I pulled the boat up to the dock. As I passed every boat, I studied the bows, looking for a scrape, a sign that this mermaid was missing from her perch. I saw nothing.
When I got to the front office, the lights inside were dim, and a note had been stuck to the front door.
“Closed for lunch. Place keys in drop box.”
An arrow had been drawn in thick sharpie and was pointing down to the mail slot. How professional. Still, with no other choice, I dropped the rental boat’s key through the mail box, heard it clatter on the tile floor inside, and left.
When I got back Blaire was in the sitting room with her feet up on the coffee table—Page would have kicked her feet off the coffee table in an instant—and a book held in front of her face. She didn’t look up when I walked in, and for a moment, everything felt normal. Shep had never suspected Page of the murder and this was any normal day in our lives. Then, Blaire met my eyes. Hers were red-rimmed and swollen with tears.