by Jenn Vakey
The small diner was close to a mile down the deserted road. Rilynne had a surge of excitement running through her, and she wanted to talk to Ben about the details of the case, but she knew he didn’t hold the same enthusiasm about it as she did. When she thought about it, a pinch of guilt hit her. No one wants to spend their vacation working. Even more than that, they were on their honeymoon. In that moment, it wouldn’t have surprised her a bit if Ben really was regretting his decision to marry her.
Her ill feelings must have showed on her face, because Ben wrapped his arm around her and pulled her to his side. When she looked up at him, he greeted her with a warm smile and a soft kiss.
“What was that for?” she asked.
Ben shrugged and turned back to the road ahead of them. “You think you’re the only one who knows what’s going on with people? I may not be able to see things like you can, but I know exactly what’s going on in that pretty little head of yours.”
Rilynne wanted to respond, but she couldn’t find her words. After a few moments, he continued. “So, what did you see in the ship? I could tell you saw something, but our little discovery distracted me and I forgot to ask. Was it related to the case?”
“No,” she replied. “It was actually pretty cool, though. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything from that long ago before. It had to have taken place at least two hundred years ago. Do you know when that ship went down?”
Ben’s expression twisted in contemplation before he finally shook his head. “No idea. It was probably in the materials I was reading when researching the best dive locations, but I don’t remember what it said. It must have been pretty interesting to see what happened when it was still in use.”
“It was,” she stated. “It looked like they were caught in a pretty bad storm. All of the men were trying to hold on as the ship rocked from side to side. Then I heard a loud crash and the sound of wood breaking. I’m guessing that’s when the ship when down.”
“I’ve never thought about it before, but you would be the ideal person to take on a treasure hunt,” he chuckled. “Did you happen to see where they might have stored any treasure that wouldn’t have already have been discovered?”
“No such luck, my love,” she replied, shaking her head at the excitement in his eyes. Truth be told, it wasn’t something she had actually considered before. He did have a point, though. If she was able to see things as far back as when the ship was still afloat, it might be fun to see if she could find any of the hidden treasures that had eluded detection over the years.
Ben must have seen the wheels turning in her head, because the grin still sitting on his face only grew with every step they took.
“You’re actually going to plan a trip to someplace with a story of a long lost treasure now, aren’t you?” she chuckled after a few moments. Ben just shrugged, the smirk not leaving his face.
“We wouldn’t really have to go anywhere,” she offered minutes later. “Matthews did buy that land that’s supposed to have all of the money from a bank robbery hidden on it. That might ruin his fun, though. I think he’s actually more excited about going out and trying to find it than anything else.”
Ben laughed. “He is, but I think he would look past that if you uncovered all of that money. With as much as he dotes over Katy, you know he’s going to end up going bankrupt trying to give the girls everything they want.”
Rilynne laughed. He wasn’t wrong.
There was a large truck still parked in front of the station when they walked up ten minutes later. Ben took a quick glance in the back before they pulled the front door open.
Perez looked up toward them from where he stood against his desk for a brief moment before looking back at the clipboard in his hands. “You’re stuff is here,” he said shortly. As hard as he tried, he was unable to keep the impressed look from his eyes. Rilynne grinned to herself, wanting more than anything to bring up last night’s conversation, but she held her tongue.
“Well, it’s going to take him a little while to get everything set up. Why don’t we start looking into the victim. Do you have an identity for her yet?”
Sergeant Perez handed Ben the clipboard and reached behind him for the loose papers sitting on his desk. Ben didn’t wait before heading back out the front door. “Her name’s Caitlin Burton,” he said. “She’s not a local, but she’s been on the island working for the last few months. She’s been staying in a house on the east side of the island.”
“Good,” she said. “We can head over there while Ben starts on all of this.”
Perez looked like he wanted to argue, but he gave a slow nod and grabbed his keys off his desk. When they walked outside, Rilynne found Ben in conversation with a man that seemed familiar. She eyed him curiously as she walked toward them, but she couldn’t place him. It wasn’t until she walked up next to them that she finally realized who he was.
“Rilynne, this is-” Ben started.
“Chaznik,” she interrupted. “It’s great to see you again. Sorry again for my friends at the reception. They, for some reason, thought it would be a good idea to kidnap one of the guests. Call it a sick sense of humor.”
That was an understatement after their original wedding day had to be postponed when the daughter of her best friend had been kidnapped from their rehearsal dinner.
“Please, call me Chaz. And you’re kidding, right?” he asked, reaching out and embracing Rilynne. “That was hilarious. They’d had just enough to drink that they wouldn’t have been able to get anyone out of there without cooperation. I thought it was too funny not to play along.”
“I’m glad,” she replied. “And thank you so much for helping us out with this. It couldn’t have been easy to get all of this out here on such short notice.”
“It wasn’t,” he replied honestly. A devilish grin stretched across his face as he turned back to Ben. “That two has turned into a four for those speaking appearances. You have no idea how many strings I had to pull to get some of this stuff out here. Honestly, it would have been easier if you’d have just brought everything to my lab in Hawaii to analyze it. Although, I’m not complaining. With you talking to the committees for me, I might just end up with all of the new equipment I’ve been wanting.”
“I thought about that, but I would rather just have it all here,” Ben stated. “I don’t really want to be leaving Rye here to go out there to process it. Who knows what trouble she might end up getting herself into.”
Chaz nodded in agreement. “Yeah, it wouldn’t really be a honeymoon if you spend it apart.”
“It isn’t really a honeymoon if you spend it looking into a case that isn’t even in your jurisdiction,” Perez stepped in. His cold tone left everyone silent. “If you’re no longer planning on going out to the victim’s house, then I’m going back inside. I don’t get paid enough to stand outside in this heat listening to small talk.”
Rilynne felt Ben tense up where her hand was rested on his arm. When he reached up and started dragging his knuckles along his chin, she turned to Perez and nodded. “I’m ready now,” she said quickly before Ben could say a word. She rose to her tippy toes and kissed him quickly on the cheek. With a polite nod to Chaz, she followed Perez to his car.
She could tell by the shocked look on Chaz’s face when she shut the door that Perez’s behavior would be the topic of conversation as soon as they left. It was something she and Ben had discussed themselves the night before. He had wondered aloud if there might be a reason he was acting so rude toward them, but Rilynne was sure it was just due to them stepping in on his case. It was something she had seen several times before, though generally not to this level. There was a very good chance this was going to be the only murder case he ever investigated, which would explain his annoyance.
His demeanor didn’t change during the drive to the small beach house. Rilynne didn’t even try to break the silence, knowing that she wouldn’t receive a warm response. It wasn’t until they pulled up in front of the house that Se
rgeant Perez finally spoke.
“This is where she’s been staying,” he stated shortly. Without waiting for a response, he stepped out and shut the door. Rilynne waited for a few seconds, wishing silently that Ben had come with them just so she would have someone to converse with.
The house was very similar to the one she and Ben were staying in. The only noticeable difference was the lack of a swing on the small front porch. She was just wondering to herself if the inside would be the same also when Perez unlocked the door and pushed it open. When she saw what awaited them inside, everything else on her mind disappeared.
“Oh, hell,” he muttered.
Chapter Four
Perez was apparently even more shocked than Rilynne was. He was still standing in the open doorway when Rilynne walked in to get a better look.
The small sitting area, similar to her own, had been completely turned upside down. The cushions from the couch were on the floor across the room and the chairs had been flipped on their sides. The coffee table had also been overturned, and one of its legs was hanging off. The floor itself was covered in the contents of the shelves and the decorations from the walls. She carefully maneuvered through the room toward the bedroom with Sergeant Perez following close behind.
The bedroom was in a similar condition, though not to the same degree. “Whoever did this found what they came for,” she stated as her eyes swept the room. “Only part of the room has been searched. They found what they were looking for before they reached the vanity or the bathroom.”
“Yes, I can see that,” he responded coldly. “It’s also possible they were interrupted before finishing. We’ve had a few break-ins over the last couple years. Just teenagers looking for some easy cash and a quick thrill. They tend to split at the first sign someone is coming.”
Rilynne walked around the room, studying everything that had been searched. She was trying to determine the last place the intruder had looked, while Perez moved toward the open bathroom door. “Usually if a murder victim’s house has been torn apart, there is a reason behind it other than just the misbehaviors of teenagers. It could be that word got around that she had been killed and someone took the opportunity to search through her stuff, but I’m leaning more toward the notion that the person responsible also had something to do with her death.”
Rilynne pulled a glove out of her back pocket and slid it on before lifting up a drawer that sat overturned on the floor. After sifting through the clothes piled beneath it, she lowered it gently back down and moved on.
“I don’t suppose you have a forensic team?” she asked, studying a picture that hanged awkwardly on the wall. “There’s a chance that prints can be pulled off of some of these surfaces, starting with the window back here that appears to be how they got in and out. The victim must have left it unlocked. Assuming it wasn’t the first one they tried, there might be prints on the outside of several of them.”
Sergeant Perez laughed. The sound of it was not one of amusement, but that of condescension. Instantly, she regretted even asking. “I don’t need a group of people to come in and show me how to investigate a crime,” he stated. Rilynne glanced back and found him leaning against the doorframe watching her. The sight itself sent a wave of fury through her and she fought back the urge to call him on it. He seemed to sense her thoughts as he met her eye, because he pushed off and pulled on a pair of gloves of his own before moving toward the opposite side of the room. “I’ll have Max bring all of my supplies over from the station. When we’re done here, I’ll also round up the local hooligans. I’m not going to wait for your investigation to prove to me that it was just a teen getting into trouble. They tend to run in packs. It won’t be hard to get one to break and turn on the others.”
“While you do that, I’ll actually concentrate on finding the person who killed Caitlin Burton,” Rilynne snapped back. Her tone shocked even her, causing her cheeks to fill with heat. It seemed to leave an impression on Perez as well, but not the one she expected. With her back to him so he didn’t see the effect it had had on her, she could hear an amused chuckle. With it, her face burned only hotter.
“Hopefully we’ll be able to narrow things down when we get an in depth background check on her,” he stated. For the first time since their first meeting, there wasn’t annoyance or anger in his voice. Either he had grown tired of it or he started to agree with her view of the scene. She was still trying to decide which was more likely when he continued. “Have you seen anything that would suggest where she could have had something hidden? If the person who went through here actually did find something, we might be able to figure out what it was if we know where it was stored.”
Rilynne nodded and turned toward him. “I’m thinking in here,” she said, motioning to the chest in front of her. The blankets that had been in it had been shuffled around, but there was a void within it that was unmistakable. “It looks like there was a box of some kind in here. Either she removed it herself, or someone took it. You can see the impression here on the blanket laid out along the bottom. It’s about eight or nine inches wide and a foot and a half long. And it’s heavy. Do you see anything like that around?”
She pushed up and looked herself, but neither found anything that matched the dimensions. By the time Ben and Max arrived half an hour later, they had finished searching the house and Perez had resigned to the notion that her theory was correct.
* * *
“We’re going to head back to our house for a few hours,” Ben stated, walking out of the back room of the station Sergeant Perez said they could set up all of the equipment in. “I’ve started running everything collected so far, and Chaz said he would stay here with the equipment while the evidence processes. We should be back by the time the first of it finishes.”
Perez nodded, not looking up from the crossword puzzles he was working on. Without waiting for a verbal response, Ben took Rilynne by the hand and led her out the front door.
“I’m starving,” he said as soon as it shut behind them.
Rilynne grinned and responded, “Hi starving, I’m Rilynne.”
Ben rolled his eyes and took her arm as they started down the road toward their house. It was more humid than it had been since their first few days there, leaving Rilynne feeling hot and sticky. Of all the weathers she had experienced in her life, humidity was her least favorite. Not only was it murder on her hair, it even seemed to make breathing more difficult. It was the one condition she refused to run in.
The cool air conditioning was a pleasant change when they stepped through their front door half an hour later. While Ben headed straight for the kitchen, Rilynne peeled her shoes off and dropped down on the bed.
“I don’t want to move,” she said. “It feels so good in here.”
Ben walked back in with a plate of leftovers in his hand. “You’re the one who wanted to work,” he stated before shoveling a large bite into his mouth. “You’re not allowed to complain about it.”
“I know,” she groaned. “It just feels gross today. Hopefully it isn’t as bad when we go out on our hike later.”
“Even if it is, we’re still going out,” he replied after swallowing. “We have reservations for the stuff we need and that’s non-refundable. Besides, you aren’t going to let a little humidity get in the way of our plans, are you?”
Rilynne scooted to the edge of the bed and grinned up at him. “While a hike does sound like a fun use of our time, I can think of something else we could do. We wouldn’t even have to leave this nice, air-conditioned room.”
“Oh, really?” he asked, setting the plate down on the dresser and moving toward her, stopping just a foot shy of the edge of the bed. “And what did you have in mind?”
Rilynne gently bit her lower lip as her eyes moved slowly up and down his body. When she made it back up and met his gaze, there was a fire in his eyes that made her chest tighten. Without looking away, she reached her leg out and hooked it around his as she pulled him forward. When his legs hit
the bed, she reached up and grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him down toward her. A surge of heat spread through her as his lips brushed gently against hers. He pulled back just enough so that their lips were barely touching. The heat of his breath and the gentle graze of his lips against hers sent a deep shudder through her body. Rilynne couldn’t take it any longer. She reached up and slid her hand around the back of his head and tried to pull him in. When he pulled back again, she grinned and tried harder. Her body was aching with excitement when he finally gave in and kissed her deeply. She dropped back on the bed, pulling him down on top of her as she went. The weight of his body against hers only made her kiss him harder. She ran her hands up his back. She could feel his heart pounding against her chest as he pulled back. A weak moan escaped her lips as he pushed her hair aside and kissed her neck. She moved her hands back down his back and had just started to pull up the back of his shirt when her phone rang.
“Just leave it,” Rilynne groaned. “I’ll call them back.”
Ben kissed her just below the ear before whispering, “It might be important. Besides, I can think of a few ways you can make it up to me.”
“I bet you can,” she giggled. He was still kissing her neck when she reached over and grabbed the phone. She considered for a brief moment just setting it back down when she read the screen, but decided against it.
“Hello?” she said, trying to steady her voice.
“You know you vacation wrong,” her partner’s voice sounded across the line. “The whole point is to get away from work and just relax.”
“Believe me, I was trying,” she said, running her fingers through Ben’s hair. He gave her one last kiss before rolling onto his back beside her. “You actually sound rested, though,” she joked as she pushed herself back up. “What did you do, sleep at the office last night?”