by Clover Tate
“Okay, I’m ready,” he said. “You have something else to tell me.”
“First, I want you to know that I’m not one hundred percent sure it’s Matt, but it might be. For one, the murderer left a silver kite charm near Allison’s body to put the blame on Jack. As far as I know, Matt didn’t have a kite charm, and he hadn’t seen Claire or Jack to take theirs.” I edged forward. “Do you know where yours is?”
Dustin hesitated. “No. No, in fact I don’t. I lost it a long time ago.” He examined his fingertips a moment. “Maybe Matt found it at the farm.”
I nodded. “Plus, the day your father died, Matt disappeared from the winery for a few hours. A photographer was there taking pictures of the new tasting room. He caught Matt on film walking into the forest between the properties, near the path where Gus fell.”
Dustin picked up his fork, but he hadn’t touched his waffle. Neither of us had. “Maybe he was just taking a walk. You know, a coincidence.”
“Maybe. But he told me and Jack that he hadn’t left the winery that day.”
Dustin made a show of buttering his waffle and moving a few bits around his plate, but he still didn’t eat. “Okay. How do I fit in?”
“As I said, there’s no way to prove Matt did anything. I want to clear Jack’s name. Of course. So, I thought—”
“You’d tell us you had a photo, then see if Matt would try to steal it. If Matt killed Dad, he also killed Allison. That’s it, isn’t it?”
“In a nutshell. It’s evidence to point the sheriff in the right direction and away from Jack.” As I talked, the morning’s confidence faded. I realized that I wanted more than his technical expertise. I wanted his support that I hadn’t come up with a cockamamie scheme. “What do you think?”
He kept his eyes on his plate. “It’s harmless enough, I guess.” At last, he met my gaze. “How can I help?”
I relaxed. “I don’t know how to rig up a camera. Can you help?”
Seagulls swooped over the marina, cawing and waddling as they landed. Past the new dock’s pristine walkways dock, Ace’s boat was barely visible near the blackened pier of the old dock. I wondered if he was blasting AC/DC right then next door to Stella.
“I’ll help,” Dustin said. “You’re not going to eat that, are you?” When I pushed my plate toward him, he said, “Let me take this out to feed the seagulls.”
“Do you mind if I stay in where it’s warm?” Clouds started to gather on the horizon. Despite the yacht’s efficient heater, my hands and, curiously, thighs, shivered. “I’m sorry to wreck the mood. You were so happy when I arrived, and now—”
“It’s all right.” He smiled, just a little. “If we find who killed Allison—and, maybe, Dad—it will all be worth it.” His gaze lost focus as he turned toward the bay. “Matt. I never would have thought it.”
“I know,” I whispered. “I’m sorry. Maybe I’ll be proven wrong.”
Dustin slid my waffle onto his plate along with his own and took it to the dock. I watched the seagulls swoop to take up huge chunks of waffle in their beaks and fly away again to keep their brunch safe from their greedy friends. Maybe humans weren’t as evolved past animals as biology books made out. We weren’t so different.
I wandered to the opposite side of the cabin to look at the ocean and rested my hand on the windowsill. A small piece of metal pressed into my palm. When I lifted it, I found a kite charm next to Dustin’s keys and change he must usually keep in his pocket. The charm was just like the one found at Strings Attached. Just like Jack’s.
Only, it wasn’t like the one I’d taken to the sheriff’s office. The awareness struck all at once. This charm was shiny, as if it had been carried in a pocket for years. The one I’d taken to Sheriff Koppen was tarnished. This charm wasn’t like Jack’s. It was Jack’s.
chapter thirty-three
A smile on his face, Dustin stood in the cabin’s doorway. I dropped the charm behind me and turned. He froze in the doorway a moment, then came in, his smile broadening. I held my breath.
He stooped next to me and picked up the charm. “I see you found my kite charm. Grandpa Sullivan—that’s how I think of him, even though he wasn’t my grandfather—gave them to all of us.” He laughed. “I told you I’d lost it. I guess I was wrong.”
“This is your charm?” I tried to sound casual.
“You know how it is. You lose something; then it turns up years later in a coat pocket. I forgot. I found it just the other day.” He touched the kite’s tip where its tail had broken off. “Design flaw.”
Had I completely misread the situation? Dustin couldn’t have killed his father. He wasn’t even in the same state when it happened. I’d established that. But Allison? Seen through this new lens, Ace’s words came back to me. “She sure runs nice, too,” he’d said of the yacht. How would he know that? Ace was occupied with annoying Stella the afternoon the Claire de Lune sailed in. Yet he might well have been at his boat at the old dock the night before. If the yacht had pulled in to drop off a passenger—Dustin—Ace might have seen it. He couldn’t have seen the Claire de Lune leave the marina for our post–Tidal Basin cruise. I clearly remembered Stella saying Ace’s music had kept her up all night.
And the charm. The sheriff told me the crime scene team hadn’t found a charm, and they’d photographed every inch of Strings Attached. At the time, I’d attributed Mom’s thorough “cleansing” to her finding it. Now, I wondered. Before dinner at the Tidal Basin, we’d all stopped by the shop. Dustin could have easily planted the charm—his charm—then. Later, he stole Jack’s. He’d lied to me just now. Dustin had lied.
I fought to control my breathing. “Yes, I remember that Jack’s was broken, too.” Dustin looked at me a little too long. I never was much of an actor. “Well, I guess I’d better be going. My parents are coming to town for a Watergate reenactment session, and I need to get Bear to them. You know, to play Vicky, their poodle.” My cheeks were stiff with my forced smile. “Ha-ha-ha.”
Dustin’s gaze held me in place. “But we haven’t talked through the remote camera yet.”
I edged toward the door. “Why don’t you send me a list of the parts I’ll need, and I’ll run up to Astoria for them?”
The cabin door was across the room—with Dustin between it and me. Except for the seagulls, the dock was quiet. The marina didn’t have a full-time attendant in the off-season. I swallowed hard.
“No,” Dustin said. “Stay here.”
I bolted for the door. He grabbed my arm and twisted it behind my back, sending pain shooting through my shoulder. I stomped on his foot, as I’d been trained to do in a long-ago self-defense class, but the move was a lot less effective than the teachers had made it out to be. He held me firm.
I let my legs give and dropped to a dead weight. A viciously sharp yank on my arm shot pain through my shoulder and brought me standing again. “Let go!” I screamed and kicked at his shins.
He clapped a hand over my mouth and pushed me toward the stairs to the galley. “Shut up. It will go a lot more easily for you.”
I yelled against his salty palm, and he pushed me forward again. This time, I fell free of his arms but hit the stairwell wall. Still, I was free. Just as I scrambled to my feet, he grabbed my arm again and whirled me into an open door. Before I could open my eyes, the door shut and locked after me.
I banged on the door and rattled the handle. Wood creaked as Dustin ran up the steps. Using all my force, I hurled my hips against the door. It gave slightly but didn’t budge. I tried again with no result.
Gasping, I leaned against the wall. Get your head together, Em. Think.
I was in a closet across from the engine room. No window, no light, and very little space to move. My arms ached from being jerked around. My cheek was tender from where I’d hit the wall, and it would probably puff into a real shiner. I remembered Allison, and my fingers dropped to my n
eck. At least I was alive.
My suspicions about Matt had been all wrong. Dustin was the murderer. But why? What did he want that was so valuable he’d kill for it? It couldn’t be money. Sunny might be a bit ditsy in some ways, but she was a crack judge of financial worth. Dustin had money to spare. Claire had told me Gus had warned her against Dustin. Maybe he knew something about him that Dustin didn’t want public. Yet Dustin couldn’t have killed Gus. It was impossible. He was in California. My breathing had calmed, but my racing heart beat in my ears.
Maybe Gus’s death truly was an accident. Maybe his death led to this secret being revealed. He had rewritten his will. I filled my lungs. Strength. That’s what I needed. The “why” of the situation paled next to the “How the hell am I going to escape?”
I felt around the floor of the coffin-sized space for something that could get me out of there—or serve as a weapon. I made out a broom, a mop, a bucket, and a jug of some sort of cleaner. That was all. My cell phone was in my bag upstairs.
And then the yacht’s engine stirred and chugged. The boat was moving. “No!” I yelled and fell against the wall. The motor’s hum rattled against my back. I pounded my fists against the door, but it didn’t give.
Dustin was planning to kill me and dump me at sea.
* * *
• • •
The drone of the yacht’s engine vibrated in my skull like a hive of angry hornets. Dustin would need to stay at the wheel to keep the yacht moving. How long, I didn’t know. At some point, the engine would stop. And Dustin would come down to get me. Although each second brought me closer to my death, it also gave me time to prepare to escape it.
I squeezed my hands into fists, then released them. Forcing myself to breathe slowly, I felt along the closet’s wall, starting from the doorframe. What I was looking for, I didn’t know, but I couldn’t stay slumped in the closet, waiting for my demise.
First, I felt at the door’s edges. The outside of the door would be padlocked, so there was no chance of picking the lock from the inside, even if I knew how. But what about the hinges? If they were inside, perhaps I could work out their screws and open the door that way. I pressed my fingers into the crack where the door joined the wall. The hinges were on the outside.
Suppressing my disappointment, I worked my hands up and down the wall to my right, then turned to the wall behind me. Here, I found a shelf. With a box on it. Feeling in the dark, I pulled down the box. My fingers lit on a cell phone. Heat, then chill, washed over my face. Could it be Allison’s phone? I said a prayer and clicked the power button. Nothing. Besides the phone, the box held what felt like business cards and ID—the sorts of things that would have pinned her identity when we’d found her.
And that was it. Besides the cleaning materials. I unscrewed the jug’s cap, and a whiff of ammonia hit my nose. That was something, at least.
If I pulled up my knees, I could sit on the closet floor. I tipped the mop into my lap. It was a simple mop made of lengths of thick cotton twine sewn together and stapled to a wooden handle. Thanks to my kite-making experience, working with line was second nature. I dug into the mop’s head and pulled. The mop head would not come apart.
So, I waited. Just as Dustin had waited in Strings Attached’s closet the night he’d killed his stepmother. I hadn’t understood why the murderer had stayed in my shop all night, but now I wondered if I’d overthought it. Dustin might simply have needed a place to spend the night without being seen. Keeping the doors locked had the benefit of adding to the suspicion against Jack, since Jack might have automatically locked the door on leaving. All Dustin had to do was escape once Stella and I were safely in the studio. I hoped to escape, too, but it wasn’t going to be as easy. Maybe not possible at all.
The engine continued its measured chugging, but the yacht bounced as if fighting the surf. Outside, Rock Point would have vanished into the horizon. I stretched my fingers. My arms prickled. I was cold and damp with perspiration. Time passed. It might have been minutes—or hours.
How could I have been so stupid as to trust Dustin? I’d been so sure Matt was the murderer that I overlooked every clue to the contrary. Stoked by fear, adrenaline surged through my core. I slammed my palm against the floor. Stupid! Dustin would undoubtedly find some way to frame Jack for my death, too.
The yacht’s engine stopped.
My anger vaporized into a heightened awareness. Here the steps came, tentatively at first, then faster. In the dark of the closet, I rose and uncapped the cleanser.
Dustin was standing in front of the closet door now. The padlock clicked as his key turned. My heart beat so hard I half feared passing out. The door opened.
I screamed as loudly as I could and tossed the cleanser at his face. He stumbled back, and I shot past him up the stairs. Behind me, he yelled, but he hadn’t stopped for long, and when I turned, I saw why. His back was drenched. He’d known my plan all along and had turned away.
Now I was in the lounge. The sun off the ocean—even with the thickening cloud cover—was almost blinding after the lightless closet. Dustin crept forward, his grin giving him the look of a horror movie villain.
I backed up. I couldn’t get outside. Not that I wanted to. On deck, it would be too easy to simply push me overboard. Dustin was bigger than I was. Stronger. But at least he wasn’t armed. A shiver ran through me. His fingers were his weapons. That’s what he’d used to kill Allison.
My fingers hit steel strings and I halted. I’d bumped against the Hendrix guitar. Dustin pressed forward. He was only two long strides from me. Then one. His hands reached out.
I grabbed the Stratocaster from behind me and swung it like a baseball bat toward his head, but I only caught his shoulder. He staggered to the side.
I swung again, and this time the guitar’s edge caught the base of his skull. He fell. I didn’t have time for panic—or relief. I yanked down the neon kite he’d bought from me and ripped off its long tail. While Dustin was unconscious, I bound his wrists in front of him, then tied his ankles together.
As I finished off his ankles with a lark’s-head knot, he groaned and pushed his feet at me. But he wasn’t going anywhere. I backed away and watched him thrash on the cabin floor. I only wished I’d gagged him.
Strangely, he laughed. His face was red, and spittle hung from the corner of his mouth. His laughter brought bile to my throat.
“Why?” I asked. “Why did you do it, Dustin? It wasn’t for the money.”
“Money?” He spat, but he was on his side, and I was out of range.
“You’re rich. You’re a famous inventor—”
His eyes hardened. He pressed his lips together.
I remembered his father’s workshop and the hours Jack said they spent together. Plus, the patent application Gus had ordered. It wasn’t money Dustin was after; it was to save a secret. His reputation. “That’s it, isn’t it? You didn’t invent the seching machine after all.”
He froze.
“Somehow Allison found out.” I tested my theory. “Allison had Gus’s will, and when he died, she read it. Or something he’d put in his papers with it. Allison knew you’d lied.”
The yacht jolted with the waves. Dustin’s body convulsed gently. He was crying.
“So you killed her,” I whispered.
He wouldn’t look at me. “She told me. Said she had proof. She wanted to talk to me in Rock Point before we met with the others.” He choked out the words.
“You weren’t written out of Gus’s will at your request. You lied about that, too. He wrote you out because he knew you were a fraud.”
Dustin was curled in a fetal position. I couldn’t see his face. “I gave him enough money to shut him up. He had no business telling Allison anything.” The force of his voice pushed me back a foot.
“So, you decided to frame Jack. You took Allison to Strings Attached and broke in. The repo
rter’s appointment was just a lucky break, wasn’t it? You found my calendar at Strings Attached and dummied a slip of paper to make it look like Allison was the reporter, knowing that no one in town could identify your stepmother—at least, not right away. Then you returned the next afternoon, pretending it was your first arrival. That night, before we went to the Tidal Basin, you dropped your kite charm near the fireplace and stole Jack’s.”
Dustin lay still. He refused to say anything else.
Outside, rain started, thick and fast. The sky was the color of an overturned skillet. All around us were miles of open ocean. Somehow, I had to get the yacht home. But I had no idea how to do it.
Dustin was on his side, his feet and wrists trussed. I couldn’t move him, but I could shut the cabin and shove chairs under the doorknobs. He was tied up well, I knew, but I had no idea how long he’d stay that way.
“How do you pilot this boat?” I asked.
Again, he didn’t reply.
“We’re going home,” I said.
Silence. And why would he answer me? He was going home to a murder charge. If we made it back at all.
“Listen. If we don’t make it to shore, we’ll die. Both of us. Is that what you want?”
He lay still.
I passed through the connecting door to the yacht’s helm. Lightning shivered over the waves. The yacht jolted. I looked through the windows to the cabin behind me, but Dustin hadn’t moved.
The boat’s control panel was a mystery to me. In the middle was a wheel, just like on pirate boats in the movies. In front of it were a myriad of dials, flanked by two levers topped with black handles. Up to the right was a radio. I’d operated radios before. Well, FM radios, anyway.
I picked up its handset and flipped on the power. There was probably a special channel for emergencies, but I didn’t know what it was. Even if I reached someone, I had no idea of our location.