by Tess Lake
Will and Ollie sat down on the sofa while I grabbed three glasses of cold water for us. I sat down on the other sofa and Adams jumped up on my lap.
“So how’s the library?” I asked Ollie.
“It’s going okay. We’ve had some thefts recently. Books dealing with this area, the treasure rumors.”
“Five dollars says it was some lunatic in my family,” Will said.
“They still really believe they’re going to find a big chest full of gold coins and jewels?” I asked.
“I’d say at least half the family is completely obsessed with the idea. Of that crazy half, maybe half of them are really happy the Gold Mud Run is happening because then all of these areas will have been dug up and they won’t have to worry about looking there. The other half hate the run because they want to be the ones to find the treasure. Then there’s the general bunch of lunatic treasure hunters from all over the Internet who come here to follow clues taken from diaries and paperwork from two hundred years ago. I think they’re all crazy. The chest would probably be worth millions now, though, so you can see why they search for it,” Will said.
I couldn’t mention to Will, of course, that I’d seen a scrawny-looking pirate from the past beckoning at me or that we’d seen an entire Spanish ship crash onto the shores of Truer Island.
I guess it didn’t matter. It was all a long time ago and if there ever had been any treasure it was probably gone by now.
“So how’s the newspaper going?” Ollie asked.
“I guess it’s not really. I should have thought more about taking such a long vacation. Since I’ve come back it has been kind of hard to get into the momentum of it.”
“Do you have any more on the skeletons you found?” Will asked.
Another question where I did actually have a whole lot of information but I couldn’t share it with them.
“Nope. Sheriff Hardy is investigating and I think he’ll find something soon.”
We chatted a bit, mostly about our jobs, until Molly and Luce emerged from their respective bedrooms freshly showered and dressed and looking beautiful.
Will and Ollie jumped up to greet them and there was a mass public display of affection right in front of me.
“Ready to go?” Will asked, once all the kissing had stopped.
“Absolutely,” Luce said, smiling at him. Then my cousins both looked at me, and suddenly realized that I was sitting there like a fifth wheel.
“We’re going to Valhalla Viking, do you want to come?” Luce asked.
“Thanks for the offer, but I’m exhausted. I still have some work to do as well. You kids have fun.”
They filed out of the house, with Molly giving me a shrug and mouthing I’m sorry to me. But honestly, she didn’t look too unhappy about it. Soon it was me and Adams sitting on the sofa again.
“You should get a boyfriend, then you can go,” Adams murmured and settled down to sleep on the sofa.
“Thank you for that, Captain Obvious,” I said, but he was already asleep.
I made myself a very quick dinner. It was the height of fancy cuisine: grilled cheese on toast accompanied by a decaf coffee. I sat around watching television and thinking of nothing at all before I took myself to bed.
I don’t how long I lay there tossing and turning, trying to get to sleep, but I knew what was keeping me up. It wasn’t Franklin Cordella and the possibility that he was a murderer. It wasn’t even that someone had tried to burn down the lighthouse with us at the top of it.
It was my cousins kissing their boyfriends while I sat on the sofa alone. Before I drifted off to sleep, I resolved I was going to do something to fix that problem.
Chapter 15
“Article number six done!” I said and published it on my website.
It was midmorning and I had a fire in my belly. Despite struggling to get to sleep last night because of certain male problems that occupied my mind (as in my lack of a male), I woke in the morning refreshed and full of energy.
I had the fastest breakfast in the history of time and rushed out of the house, noting with only the tiniest spark of jealousy that Will’s truck and Ollie’s car were parked outside our end of the mansion.
That didn’t matter, though, because today I was going to solve the problem of Jack Bishop!
I admit I wasn’t entirely sure how I was going to solve that problem given I still didn’t even have a phone number for him, but his half-brother worked downstairs and Harlot Bay honestly isn’t that big. I’m sure if I drove around long enough I’d probably see him walking around.
I was pondering whether I should go downstairs to see if Jonas was around when there was a knock at my office door and Jack stepped in. He was wearing a charcoal suit and a crisp white shirt with the top button undone. He looked like he’d just walked off a movie set.
“Little formal for ten thirty in the morning, isn’t it?” I said, a smile playing on my lips.
“I have an appointment at the bank in about fifteen minutes and I figure the better I look, the better chance I have of them giving me money.”
“I’d certainly lend you some money,” I said, adding a bit more vamp than I really intended.
Jack raised his eyebrows and grinned at me. “Anyway, I… is it hot in here? It feels warm.”
“It’s certainly hotter than a few minutes ago,” I said.
Okay, reel it in, girl. Step one of the getting-a-boyfriend plan certainly involved flirting, but I felt like I was jumping right into the deep end.
“I would love to play this game with you, but I have some information about Franklin Cordella. Can I sit?”
I waved towards the sofa.
“Be my guest.”
Jack sat down, leaning back on the sofa. Now it looked like he was a model about to do a photo shoot.
I swiveled my chair around and looked him up and down, unable to stop myself. If he hadn’t been here to talk about Franklin, I think I would have a very strong desire to kiss him.
Jack checked his watch.
“I’ll be quick because I only have a few minutes. Franklin Cordella is a freelance computer programmer. He’s been traveling from place to place for at least the last three years, mostly seaside towns up and down the East and West Coast. I couldn’t track down any family. I’m fairly sure he’s single. I’m not entirely sure what he’s doing but he doesn’t have a permanent place of residence, he stays in hotels, and he has only been visiting seaside towns. I tried to find him to have a conversation, but since he left the hospital he hasn’t gone back to the hotel. He might still be in town somewhere.”
“I found a Franklin Cordella yesterday who was a computer programmer. There was no photo, though.”
“That may have been him. He has a business website and I found some old forum messages from a few years back. Something definitely feels off to me. But I couldn’t find any more evidence than that. He might be a really good computer programmer who likes the beach and happened to get caught up in some random attack. Or he could be into something.”
The photo I’d taken in Franklin’s room of his photo was on my camera and practically singing out to me, begging me to show Jack. While that certainly might lead towards solving the murder of a father and daughter, it definitely would not help me on the “convincing Jack to be my boyfriend” side of things. I know that sounds bad and selfish. I didn’t want to lie, but I didn’t want to tell him that I spent my time breaking into hotel rooms on a hunch. He was also an ex-cop, and did that mean he had to still report any crimes he became aware of?
“I think Franklin is connected to the death of that man and his daughter. We have to keep looking and hopefully we’ll find something,” I said.
“Did Sheriff Hardy discover something else? They’re definitely father and daughter?”
Oh, crap. I forgot that that wasn’t officially known.
“Oh, I guessed. I mean, I think it’s likely, that’s all,” I said.
Jack checked his watch again and then stood up.
�
�Okay, gotta go to the bank now. I’ll keep looking into Franklin.”
What? No! I hadn’t even asked him out yet!
He was halfway to the door when I blurted out, “Come out with me tonight!”
Jack turned around in the doorway and gave me a cheeky smile.
“You want me to come out with you?”
I stood up from my chair and mentally pushed down the embarrassment that was threatening to turn me pink. I was a grown woman! I was a somewhat powerful witch with her own business and I was on my home turf. I was going to be as cool as a cucumber.
Unfortunately, before I could say something witty and kinda cute, Jack noticed my ears.
“Your ears are turning pink,” he said, the smile broadening on his face.
I clapped my hands over them.
“Don’t worry about my ears. Do you want to go out tonight or not??”
“I do. Unfortunately, tonight I have a prior engagement. Your mother invited me to dinner. So I guess I’ll see you there.”
I think I blurted out some random jumble of sounds but Jack didn’t hear them. He was already down the stairs and out the front door, heading to the bank. I was on the phone with my mother in a flash and we had a five-second conversation that can be summarized as: yes, I did, because you weren’t doing anything. We also have a big announcement tonight and everyone is going to be there. Then she told me she was busy making cakes and hung up, leaving me protesting to nothing.
I tried to call Molly and Luce but I got no answer. Presumably they were busy making ten million coffees.
I sat down on the sofa, suddenly feeling the office temperature had spiked again. I had to look at it rationally.
Okay, yes, so the mothers were meddling again and normally I’d be completely against it, but I had to admit it had worked incredibly well the last time they’d stuck their witchy fingers into things. Molly and Luce both had boyfriends. I was the only one left behind.
I would have certainly preferred to have a steak and beer at Valhalla Viking with just the two of us rather than a family dinner but there was nothing I could do about it now. The meddling mother had beaten me to the punch. It might work out okay.
Despite the fact that I was going to be seeing Jack tonight and he had said he did want to go out with me, which meant we might go out on another date, I managed to get myself back to work, sinking into the words until a call pulled me out again. It was Sheriff Hardy.
“Harlow, meet me in the park for lunch.”
Oh, right. The whole burning lighthouse thing.
“Um, okay. That sounds good.”
“See you in twenty minutes.”
My somewhat good feeling started to deflate and a cold worry took hold. I knew I wasn’t under arrest and Sheriff Hardy was a good man but I also knew he was going to ask me why we were at the lighthouse. I’d crack and tell him about the email from a potential source. Sure, I’d try to hide behind the “I’m a journalist” thing but I’d known Sheriff Hardy my entire life and somehow he always managed to know when I was lying.
If I wasn’t careful I’d spill everything – Franklin’s photo, Jack’s info, the works.
I quickly finished up what I was doing, locked up the office and walked down to the park. The day was warm, heading to hot, and there was a feeling in the air that all the moisture was getting sucked up into it and in a few days would come tumbling down in an epic thunderstorm.
Sheriff Hardy was sitting on a bench in the shade of a tree. I nodded to him and sat down beside him.
He launched straight into it.
“What were you and your cousins doing out at the lighthouse?”
I considered lying but he gave me a severe look even as he passed me half a sandwich. Roast beef with mustard.
“I received an email asking me to come to the lighthouse to meet a source. I took Molly and Luce for backup.”
“Backup. Hmm.”
“I thought about telling you, but… I’m a reporter, or at least I’m trying to be, and if it was legitimate, then I thought maybe I could end up helping.”
Sheriff Hardy nodded and kept chewing his sandwich. I felt the need to fill the silence with words.
“We didn’t know someone would try to kill us.”
Silence. More chewing. Okay, now here comes the lie because I sure couldn’t tell him we flew off the lighthouse using a cleaning broom.
“We climbed down the side of the lighthouse using a rope that we found. Then we ran.”
“You should eat your sandwich,” Sheriff Hardy said, wiping away a dot of mustard from the corner of his mouth. I bit into it and the hit of hot English nearly blew my head off. As I dealt with that, Sheriff Hardy started talking.
“One, there was no rope tied to the top of the lighthouse. Two, you were all wet from the ocean. Three, I’m pretty sure you had that cat of yours stuffed down your top. Four… I don’t care about all that but you should really think about telling me the truth in the future. In the meantime, it might be advisable for you to get out of Harlot Bay until we find the arsonist.”
“Leave Harlot Bay?” I managed to croak.
“Could be a good idea. Ah, Carter’s here.”
I choked down my sandwich, my sinuses still feeling like they’d been bombed as Carter walked over, a suspicious look on his face. He had a small bandage on his forehead and was holding a brown satchel bag in front of him like it was a shield.
“Private police briefing, is it?” he said and pulled out his handheld recorder.
Sheriff Hardy gave him a look and held it until Carter mumbled something and put it away.
“Sandwich? I brought another,” Sheriff Hardy offered.
“Roast beef? No, thank you.”
“They’re pretty good,” I said, kinda hoping to see Carter gulp down a blob of hot mustard.
“Why were you out at the lighthouse?” Carter said.
Sheriff Hardy put up his hand.
“We’re not here to talk about that. I have come to believe the person who attacked you, Carter, also attacked Harlow. Seeing as you were both on the scene when the skeletons were unearthed I think it’s connected. I was advising Harlow that it might be a good idea to get out of town for a little while until we can find this person.”
“The media leave town? A convenient time for the police force to work without scrutiny, I take it.”
Sheriff Hardy sighed.
“Carter, you need to listen to me. There are no grand conspiracies going on here. You and Harlow were both attacked and I have grave concerns for your safety. But if you don’t want to leave town, then you don’t have to.”
Carter looked me up and down as though he were judging me, which he probably was.
“I saw you and your cousins near the lighthouse fire. Any comment?”
Sheriff Hardy put up his hand to stop him again, but I waved him down.
“I received an email from someone claiming they had information about the remains on Truer Island. They wanted to meet me at the top of the lighthouse. I took Molly and Luce for backup. It was a setup – they tried to burn down the lighthouse with us at the top of it. If there hadn’t been a rope up there, we’d probably be dead now. Okay?”
“Can I quote you on that?”
I could see disaster coming, but there was no way to stop it now. Carter would publish no matter what I said – I was sure of it. Even if he cut it down, our mothers would find out we were at the top of the lighthouse when someone tried to burn it.
What is that Jewish saying?
Oy vey.
“Write whatever you want,” I muttered. “But I’m going to write whatever I want, too. Why were you behind the soundstage at the Festival of Lights?”
“I don’t have to explain myself to you!”
Sheriff Hardy cleared his throat and gave him a look.
“I mean… I was meeting Franklin Cordella as a source.”
“He emailed you?” Sheriff Hardy said.
“That’s right.”
&nbs
p; “Tell me again what happened and this time, tell the truth.”
Carter looked around and fiddled with his satchel. He was in a wide-open park but couldn’t escape.
“I arranged to meet Franklin there. He wanted somewhere public. I’d only just met him when he looked over my shoulder. I turned around and then woke up on the ground.”
Sheriff Hardy sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers.
“Is it possible that Franklin was the one who attacked you?” he asked.
Carter frowned and dropped his head.
“I suppose it’s possible,” he muttered.
“You suppose? We let him go because we thought he was a victim, like you!” Sheriff Hardy stood up and started pacing.
“Someone set up a meeting with you and you’re attacked. Then someone arranges a meeting with Harlow and tries to burn down the lighthouse with her in it! You were both at the scene when the remains were found. You’re our only media! Do you think perhaps there’s a connection?”
Sheriff Hardy was simmering and heading to full boil, but I knew if I held back what Jack had told me I’d only delay him exploding at me.
“I did some research on Franklin,” I offered.
I told Sheriff Hardy (with Carter listening in) what Jack had discovered. By the time I’d finished, Sheriff Hardy had reverted back to standard police calm.
“Here’s what we’re going to do. I will bring Franklin in for questioning and arrange a search of his hotel room. You two will not write a single thing about this or each other until I say so.”
“You can’t stop the press,” Carter huffed.
“You lied to the police when you gave a false report. You told me that you were getting some air. That’s a crime.”
He turned to me.
“Do I have your agreement, or do I have to tell your mother about that time I busted you and your cousins over on Truer Island?”
Holy moly, he was bringing out the big guns. When we were sixteen, we’d lied that we were sleeping over at Amy Yardley’s house when in fact we’d snuck over to a cabin on Truer Island where there was a huge party going on and various illegal underage things. It was a decade ago but if he snitched we’d never hear the end of it.