A Death on the Island

by Blythe Baker

  I would have expected Julia to speak up for herself, to tell Daniel to stop treating her like a child. Or, at the very least, tell him that I hadn’t done anything wrong. That, in fact, I’d been a listening ear for her troubles. Of course, Julia didn’t know that I’d only been talking to her because I had suspected her of murdering her own father, but that would be my little secret. There was no reason to burden her with that information, especially considering how weepy she had suddenly become. Instead of doing any of that, though, Julia crumpled, folding herself into his chest and sobbing.

  Despite how obnoxious Daniel had been all night and the knowledge of Holly sitting in my brain, I couldn’t help but feel jealous. Once upon a time, Daniel would have walked into the room and wrapped me in his arms, been concerned about my safety. Now, though, I was the threat. It was almost laughable considering he was the one who had hurt me. He was the one who had ended our relationship and fired me from my job and thrown my entire life into chaos. The only thing I was guilty of was staying in a relationship where I liked the other person significantly more than they liked me. As embarrassing as it was to admit, I may have even loved Daniel. However, that was in the past, and the present was infinitely more interesting. I pushed my jealousy aside and stood tall.

  “I uncovered a substantial clue. I think I may know who the murderer is.”

  Daniel’s eyes widened. “You did? Who?”

  “Holly,” I said. “She may be the daughter of Robert’s ex-partner.”

  “The partner who…” Daniel mimed a noose around his neck.

  I nodded.

  “Wow.” He bent his head down to whisper in Julia’s ear. “You’re safe. No one is going to hurt you. I’ll take care of you.”

  The sight was nauseating.

  “We need to find her,” I said. “We need to warn everyone about her connection to Robert. They should know that she had motive.”

  “We don’t need to do anything,” he said. “Julia is clearly in no state to go hunting down a murderer. Plus, you’re the one who brought Holly here. It feels like it should be your responsibility to track her down. As far as warning people, I’ll tell anyone I see. Otherwise, you’re on your own.”

  Even after everything Daniel had put me through in the past few months, I was still unprepared for how little concern he had for me. For how little human decency he was capable of displaying. I wanted to warn Julia that this was the kind of treatment she’d receive once Daniel decided he was done with her, but I figured it was best to let her figure it out on her own. She was young, after all, and had plenty of time to make her own mistakes with men. And as far as I was concerned, Daniel was one big mistake.

  “How chivalrous,” I said, my voice as monotone as I could muster.

  Daniel shot me a cool glare, and then brushed past me, his arm around Julia’s trembling shoulders, leading her back to the sitting room.

  Chapter 14

  The house felt cavernous in the dark. Hallways leading forever into blackness, the empty rooms echoing with the sound of the wind and rain outside and my footsteps inside. Shanda and Ward had closed off the doors to the room with the main stairwell—at the bottom of which was the dead body of Robert Baines—but luckily the house was big enough that there were several different routes between the west wing and the east wing. One of which was a glass hallway along the backside of the mansion. It reminded me of the glass tunnels a lot of aquariums have, the ones you can stand in while sharks and all species of fish swim above your head. The major difference being that when I looked up, I saw the dark gray sky and trees, not fish. Though, if the rain kept up at the rate it was going, the ocean would be in Mr. Baines’ backyard in no time.

  I kept glancing back over my shoulder, stopping at every noise, nervous I was being followed. When the murderer had been nameless, faceless, I hadn’t been afraid. I had been chasing a ghost. Now, though, I was chasing someone I’d known. Someone I had let into my home. Holly had been the bed and breakfast’s first guest, and now she was very likely a killer.

  Page was going to hate that. First, a body turned up on our beach. And now, our first guest was a killer. Perhaps Robert Baines had been right. Perhaps the bed and breakfast was a murder house. The thought was depressing. However, businesses had come out of worse public relations problems, I was sure. If we just spun the story the right way we could be a hit at Halloween. Or, perhaps we could get one of those ghost shows on television to come do a special at the bed and breakfast. Mrs. Harris was always talking about the spirits in the house. Maybe she was right, and we could cash in on it. I groaned.

  Not only was the thought of a house full of ghost hunters depressing, but the thought of Mrs. Harris reminded me that she was still missing. Or, just as likely, she was lost in the endless hallways that made up the mansion. I needed to find her, but if Holly was the murderer, that took precedence. I needed to talk to her, confront her. I needed to warn everyone.

  Finally, I was nearing the end of the glass hallway where it turned inwards towards the house, connecting with another hallway that lead to the kitchen, where I hoped everyone was still cleaning up after the branch had flown through the window. Walking along the endless wall of windows made me feel exposed. I kept looking to my right, scanning the backyard for signs of movement, which there was plenty of since the wind was nearly uprooting the trees. I jumped each time the branches of the tree closest to me shook, afraid that it was either a person running towards me or that, similar to the branch in the kitchen, it was about to shatter through the window, sending glass shards flying everywhere.

  A huge gust of wind whistled through the gaps in the house and the tree outside the window was flailing in the wind, but I forced myself not to look. I convinced myself it was only the tree. Only the wind. Nothing to worry about. As I repeated this mantra in my head, my peripherals caught another glimpse of movement. I tried to ignore it, but my survival instincts kicked in, and I whipped my head to the side, my eyes locking onto the source of the movement before my brain could even comprehend what was happening.

  It was a person. A dark figure, drenched and huddled against the rain was running towards the house, headed for the door at the end of the glass hallway. The door that I was only ten feet away from. I wanted to run, but I couldn’t find the energy. Every part of me was focused on the figure, on what different outcomes I could expect. Was this the killer running towards me? Was this a random burglar taking advantage of the storm, unaware they were about to crash in on a murder scene? Or, on a bright note, it could be Shep making his way to us on foot? I couldn’t be certain what to expect, so I just watched as the inevitable moment grew closer when the person would crash through the door and I’d find myself face to face with them.

  The door opened, and I felt a rush of cool, moist air. It would have been refreshing had I not been so terrified.

  The person didn’t see me right away. They ran through the door, closed it behind them, and shook out their limbs, water droplets catching and reflecting the light as they dripped to the floor. Finally, the figure pulled back what appeared to be a poncho from their head, and turned around.

  It was Jimmy.

  Panic creased his forehead and hung from his open mouth, and it took him several seconds of looking at me to rearrange his features into their usual doughy state. However, no sooner had he done that than his face shot back up in panic.

  “It’s happened again,” he yelled.

  I jumped at the suddenness of it, my muscles tensing up, preparing for whatever was coming.

  “A body,” Jimmy continued, his voice lowering dramatically to a harsh whisper as he moved towards me too quickly. He looked like a ghostly shadow flying at me down the hallway, and I backed away from him, my hands extended to ward him off.

  “What’s going on?” I said, trying to remain calm, but hearing the frazzled nerves in my own voice.

  I had always thought of Jimmy as a calming presence. Like a grandpa who fell asleep watching the news. Dependable, p
redictable. As unexciting as the seafood in the restaurant he owned. This Jimmy, though, was chaos. He practically hummed with energy.

  I tried to get the news out of him, but he grabbed my arm and pulled me to the door, practically dragging me down the hallway as I struggled against him, all the while shouting for help.

  Had I gotten it wrong again? Was Jimmy actually the killer? Had his quiet, humble façade been just that, a façade? Did a deranged killer lie beneath the surface? He was acting mentally unstable, reminding me of Mrs. Harris.

  “Help!” I screamed for what felt like the hundredth time, my voice already beginning to go raw from the effort.

  Finally, Richard tore around the corner as gracefully as he could in his butler suit, and took in the scene in front of him. Like me, confusion was plain on his face, but he quickly jumped into action, grabbing the hand Jimmy had clamped around my arm, prying his fingers away from me.

  “What is going on?” he asked, grunting with the effort of restraining Jimmy.

  “I have no idea,” I said, massaging the bright red handprint on my arm. “He was outside in the rain and he ran in and grabbed me.”

  Jimmy turned on Richard and clutched at his suit jacket. “A body, another body.”

  “Another body?” Richard asked, looking from Jimmy to me, his eyebrows raised.

  “You found another body?” I asked, trying to get some sense out of Jimmy.

  He turned to me, shaking his head so hard I thought he’d break his neck. “Outside in the rain.”

  “Outside?” I repeated, looking out the window at the raging storm. “Are you certain?”

  Once again Jimmy grabbed my arm and began pulling, and this time, I let him. He pulled me towards the door just as Mason and Samuel, the caterer, rounded the corner.

  Mason asked where I’d been, where Jimmy was taking me, what was going on, but I didn’t have time to answer him before Jimmy had pulled me out into the rain. I’d thought it was raining hard when I was inside, but it felt even harder once I was out in it. Instantly, my hair flattened to my head, and rainwater poured down my face, flooding my eyes, making it almost impossible to see where I was going. The ground felt swampy, and my heels sank further into the mud with each step.

  Jimmy led me out the door and along the back side of the house. We passed the place where the tree branch had crashed through the kitchen window. From the outside, I could see the collage of tarps and black trash bags that had been taped together to keep the rain out. I looked out over the yard, at the steady darkness of the island beyond the fence, and tried to cling to the hope that the night would end eventually. The sun would rise, the police would arrive, and I would be home. I’d be away from whoever it was that murdered Robert Baines—whether it was Holly or Julia or Mrs. Harris or, like Mason predicted, the Butler. I’d be back with Page and Blaire, and Daniel would go back to the mainland, and things would return to normal. I just needed to make it through tonight.

  When we reached the corner of the house, Jimmy tugged me down the other side, and I began wondering whether Jimmy really had lost it, and he was just walking me around the perimeter of the house. Based on the groans erupting behind me, Richard, Samuel, and Mason were thinking the same thing.

  “Jimmy?” I called out over the din of the storm. “Where are we going? Maybe we should get back inside.”

  Jimmy stopped walking, and I thought perhaps I’d broken him out of whatever spell he’d been under. That somehow my words had persuaded him to get out of the storm and go back inside. However, he then released my arm and stepped to the side.

  Everyone else caught up to us, and Mason stood next to me, breathing heavily, his hand held above his eyes as a shield from the rain.

  “What is this?” he asked, gesturing from Jimmy to me. “Why on earth are we out in this storm? Did you all not see that tree limb that crashed into the house? We’re going to get killed out here.”

  “We might get killed in there, too,” Richard said, hitching his thumb over his shoulder, pointing at the house.

  Mason let out a single dark chuckle. “True.”

  “Jimmy,” I said, stepping towards him, reaching out with a tender hand. “What’s wrong?”

  Shakily, Jimmy lifted his arm and pointed towards a backdoor that led into the kitchen. Next to it sat two black plastic trash cans, both overflowing with trash, and a green recycling bin.

  I almost turned back to him, tried to convince him that he was under a lot of stress, that he just needed to go inside and lie down. However, as I turned my head, I caught a familiar shape in the corner of my vision.

  A human hand. Hanging out of the green recycling bin, pinched between the rim and the lid.

  I rushed forward, and I heard Mason call after me, trying to discern what was going on, but I didn’t stop. I had to prove to myself that this wasn’t happening. I had to prove to myself that there wasn’t another body. That no one else had been killed.

  In the back of my head, I thought of Mrs. Harris. She’d been missing all night. Had she been the first victim? Had the killer disposed of her, literally, before killing Robert Baines? The thought was too horrible to even think about, yet I was only a few steps away from seeing it.

  I heard Richard gasp, and point out the horror I’d seen to Mason and Samuel. Everything went silent after that, though. As I neared the recycling bin and the limp, pale hand, I couldn’t hear anything but my own heart beating in my chest, incredibly alive and terribly frightened.

  Slowly, I grabbed the lid, and realized for the first time how young the hand looked. It couldn’t have been Mrs. Harris. That brought a moment of relief. As I lifted the lid, though, horror consumed me.

  It was Holly Belden, a knife sticking from her chest where her heart would be.

  Chapter 15

  I screamed and dropped the lid as though it were burning hot, stumbling backwards and crashing into Mason, my hand balled into a fist and held to my chest.

  He wrapped his arms around me, pulling me back, his head swiveling from side to side, looking for the culprit. I could feel his heart beating fast, and I leaned into it, craving the rhythm, the predictability of each beat. The wind howled around us and rain fell sideways, biting into our skin, but there was no movement aside from our own.

  “How did this happen?” Samuel asked, looking at Jimmy, waiting for him to say something. Jimmy, however, merely stood there, staring at the limp hand, his eyes as wide as those of the lifeless fish he served in the Daily Catch restaurant.

  Mason leaned forward, his mouth pressed to my ear. “I thought she left with you, Piper.”

  I shook my head. My neck felt separate from my body, and I worried for one ridiculous moment that it would snap off, fall to the marshy ground. “She was still in the kitchen the last time I saw her. I wanted to talk to Julia by myself, so I slipped away. Holly was sweeping up the glass when I left.”

  “You shouldn’t have gone off on your own,” Mason scolded. “That was reckless.”

  Richard spoke up then, interrupting our private conversation. “I saw Holly in the kitchen when we left to find more tarps.”

  “We?” I asked.

  “Mason, Samuel, and myself,” he clarified.

  Okay, well that ruled the three of them out as suspects, at least.

  “We split up to find things to cover the window because rain was still coming in. As I left, Holly asked where she could dump the glass when she finished sweeping, and I pointed her to the back door.”

  “You split up?” I asked, my voice pinched and strained, my hopes dashed to the ground like the rain.

  He nodded, and I could have cried. Someone in the mansion was killing people, and narrowing down the suspects was proving impossible. At this rate, we’d all be dead by the time I figured it out.

  “So, no one was in the kitchen with her?” I asked, my voice breaking around the words, weariness seeping into every muscle in my body.

  Mason squeezed my shoulder. “I’m so sorry. I should have been payin
g more attention. I should have stayed behind with her.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I said, my back still pressed against him. Though, I didn’t know that. Despite my many theories, I had no idea who the killer was. For all I knew, I was standing in his arms at that very moment. The thought sent ice through my veins, and gave me the energy to lift myself away from him and onto my own feet. Though my legs felt wobbly, it felt infinitely better to stand on my own than to think for even a second that I was being held by a murderer.

  I turned to Jimmy, having almost forgotten him. He was still standing in the same place; his feet having sunk nearly three inches into the mud. “How did you find her?”

  “I came to throw something away, and I saw her,” he said robotically, all emotion gone from him. “I ran and then I saw you in the hallway.”

  “You didn’t see anything unusual?” I asked.

  “You mean besides the dead body?” he asked.

  I sighed. “Yes, besides the body.”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t see anything. I didn’t stick around long enough to see anything. I found her and I ran immediately. I was by myself. It was raining. I didn’t want to die the way she had.”

  That made sense. I suspected I would have done the same thing had I come across a body. Though, perhaps not. Especially since I knew Holly. Well, I knew her as well as anyone could know someone they’d only just met. Holly’s death seemed particularly sad now that I knew her family’s history. She and her father had both died because of their connection to Robert Baines. Though, in Holly’s case, that connection remained a mystery.

  Why would the killer have wanted to kill both Robert Baines and Holly? I immediately cycled back to Julia Baines and, once again, ruled her out. It made no sense for her to kill Holly, especially since she’d as good as shifted my attention towards Holly. Why do that if she’d known that Holly was already dead?

  The Butler had been my first suspect, and Richard had admitted that he may very well have been the last person—aside from the murderer—to see Holly alive in the kitchen, and he’d been the last person to see Robert Baines alive. Plus, Holly had been the one to say that she’d seen Richard and Robert Baines arguing. However, Richard didn’t seem to have a motive for killing Robert. Though, if he had killed Robert, it would make sense that he’d want Holly dead, considering she could be used as a witness against him when the police arrived.