Black Rock Bay

by Brianna Labuskes

The painting was every nightmare that hibernated in Mia’s chest, waiting for her to fall asleep.

  Neither she nor Lacey had escaped that summer, it seemed.

  “Can you tell?” Mia murmured the question, even though Lacey was well ahead of them.

  “Not her,” Izzy said.

  “You’re confident?”

  Izzy tipped her head. “As much as I can be. Too short. The person definitely had a few good inches on you.”

  And Lacey was about Mia’s height.

  But Ellen would fit.

  Still, this wouldn’t be a wasted trip. They’d needed to interview Lacey anyway, and all it had taken for Mia to stop dragging her feet was Izzy getting shot.

  By the time they got to the kitchen, Lacey had cracked a window and was toying with a box of cigarettes.

  She didn’t ask if they minded when she slid one out of the neat row. Flipping it between her fingers, she tipped her chin toward the long, artsy farmhouse table that ran the length of the room.

  Mia slid onto the bench on the far side, so she could lean her forearms on the wood. Izzy propped herself against the wall just inside the doorway. It gave them the observational advantage.

  Lacey plucked a gold-plated lighter from the windowsill, the click of the flame the only sound in the kitchen. Her cheeks hollowed as she took the first drag, and then her red apple–painted mouth twisted to the side so she could direct the smoke toward the window. Haloed as she was by the light, she looked like a disgruntled movie star who’d been misplaced in time.

  “You’re here because of the reporter,” Lacey finally said, her fingers holding tight to her own arm, protective once more. No small talk, no catching up between long-lost friends. Mia didn’t mind. What else was there to say, really?

  “I heard he was bothering you up here,” Mia said, framing the question, tilting it, so that maybe Lacey would relax her arm, lower her guard.

  The woman pulled again at her cigarette, the thin line of smoke quivering from her trembling hand, coiling, obscuring her face so that for a half second she was held apart from them, a veil slipping into place to let her keep her distance. Then Lacey dropped the cigarette back to her side, and the smoke was gone.

  “He was asking about Monroe.” Lacey paused. “Though from the look on your face, I’m guessing you already knew that,” she continued, even though Lacey had barely glanced at Mia since she’d arrived. “A real prick, that one.”

  “I’m sorry you had to deal with that,” Mia said, and meant it. No matter what she felt about Lacey—and what that was, she was still deciding—her ulcer pulsed as she tried to imagine being cornered and surprised by the reporter, being asked about a sister who had killed herself, a friend who had followed suit.

  Lacey’s shoulder jerked as if to shrug it off, but the violence of the movement belied the carelessness she tried to wear on her face. “Told him what he could do with his story.”

  “Did he ask you anything in specific?” Mia pressed.

  Lacey crushed the lit end of her cigarette into the ashtray and slammed the window shut. Then she looked at Mia. “Mostly about how they didn’t leave notes. Asher and Monroe.” A pause. “You.”

  It wasn’t suicide.

  Lacey shrugged, and the arms of her sweater slid down to her knuckles, hiding her hands. “Was kind of odd, wasn’t it?”

  Mia tipped her head. She’d looked for her own when she hadn’t been able to sleep after being dropped off from the lighthouse, torn her room apart, trying to guess where she would have left it had she written one. Had been consumed with needing to know what it had said.

  There hadn’t been a letter, though. Not one that she could find.

  “Did Monroe ever seem . . . ?”

  “Like she was going to off herself?” Lacey cut in even before Mia could ask the question. If Lacey was trying to offend or shock her, it wouldn’t work. The brashness, the audacity, the pretending not to care was not unusual to see in the victims’ families. Everyone handled grief differently.

  Mia nodded.

  “Do you know how many times I’ve answered that question?” There was a manic bent to Lacey’s voice, and she must have heard it herself. Her throat rippled. When she spoke again, her tone had evened out. “She didn’t tell me everything. You know, she liked her secrets. But. No, she didn’t seem like she was on the verge of slitting her wrists open.”

  “Did she ever talk about Asher to you? Was she serious about him?”

  Lacey laughed, her brows disappearing beneath the curtain of bangs. “Asher? He was just a summer fling. She . . . she liked the chase. He wasn’t even . . .”

  She paused and licked her lips.

  “He wasn’t even what, Lacey?”

  “I’m not even sure why we’re talking about this,” Lacey deflected, her fingers tugging at the pearl earring, which nearly brushed her shoulder.

  Mia usually liked this part of her job, mostly because she was good at it. Reading someone, trying to find the right buttons to push, when to stay silent, and when to poke a little bit. But Lacey was hard. She was constantly in motion, a fragile, skittish bird poised to take flight. Just as quickly, her gaze would turn direct, her words provocative for the sake of it. A contrast of nervous hesitation and unabashed confrontation.

  “We’re talking about this because a reporter who seemed very interested in the topic ended up with a blown-out skull after asking too many questions. I’m not trying to dig up the past for the sole purpose of digging up the past.”

  Lacey went still, and it was almost strange. Even the uneasy vibrations that seemed to roll off her body ceased for a few heartbeats. Then a deep breath brought her back, moving, fiddling. “Asher wasn’t her only fling that summer.”

  Mia rocked back on the bench. Monroe and Asher had seemed well and truly in puppy love.

  “Who else was she seeing?”

  There weren’t many options. Not on St. Lucy’s. And all the artists in residence had been adults.

  Lacey’s fingers tangled in the hem of her sweater, pulling, tugging, shifting. “I don’t know. She never told me. But I got the impression he was . . . older.”

  And that opened a few more possibilities. “Was he someone from St. Lucy’s?”

  “I think so,” Lacey said. “The artists weren’t exactly that appealing to her.”

  But someone from the island was? Mia quickly skimmed through the list of who would have been around that summer. It wasn’t long. And certainly no one on it would have drawn the attention of the beautiful, rich Monroe Bell.

  “She would sneak out,” Lacey said as if it meant something, leaning forward a little bit, her eyes wide. When Mia remained silent, Lacey looked away. “If it was an artist, they had plenty of space here.”

  “How do you know it wasn’t Asher she was meeting?” Mia asked. They all snuck out. Sometimes together, sometimes not. She’d assumed Monroe and Asher had found a place to be alone that summer, just like she and Cash had.

  “Little things,” Lacey said, picking up the cigarette pack once more. She didn’t open it. “A weird, I don’t know . . . giddiness . . . she never had around Asher. She’d smell different, too. Like the man wore cologne.”

  So more a feeling, than anything else, really. Mia trusted feelings. She wasn’t sure if she trusted Lacey, though.

  “It was kind of a high for her, you know?” Lacey continued, her eyes on the floor. “Playing men. Getting them to do things for her.”

  That . . . that Bell girl. Dot’s wobbly lip, her wet eyes, came to mind. That’s how she’d painted Monroe. Mean for the sake of being mean.

  “She liked the attention?”

  Lacey’s face contorted, as if she wanted to disagree, defend her sister, but then it smoothed once more. “I wouldn’t say it was like that.”

  “How would you say it was like, then?” There was a harshness that was emerging beneath the soft memory of Monroe Bell.

  Was there something beneath Mia’s own skin that would be just as ugly? />
  Lacey shook her head, looking out the window. “Don’t. That’s not what I meant.”

  Mia recognized a dead end when she came to one.

  “Do you remember?” Mia pivoted, asking what she’d wanted to know since she’d stood in the lighthouse two days before surrounded by ghosts. “Do you remember finding me?”

  Lacey froze, and Mia was starting to be able to read her. It was in the pauses that she revealed her truths.

  The silence that followed the question was unnatural. There was no rumble of the dishwasher, no bird chatter outside the window. Just a fragile hush and too many memories of blood-slick skin and wide eyes and the unrelenting roar of waves.

  “Yes,” Lacey said, a whispered confession falling from reluctant lips. The woman cleared her throat, and then she was back, shifting, hiding. “Yes.”

  “What . . . ?” Mia started, but the rest of the sentence didn’t form, her thoughts too tangled to slot words together.

  Mia stared at her own hands, her eyes tracing the cracked skin there. It always got that way on the island.

  “Why were you coming out there? Just then?” Mia asked finally, lifting her gaze back to Lacey, who had completely composed herself.

  “I didn’t know you’d be there,” Lacey said, fiddling with her bangs with gentle fingers. “I was meeting someone.”

  “Who?”

  Lacey lifted one perfectly sculpted brow. “You think you’re the only ones who were getting some that summer?”

  That’s not what she’d asked. Mia waited.

  It was Lacey who broke first, looking away. “Fine. It was Sammy. It was just a hookup, though. He didn’t—he didn’t mean anything.”

  Mia dragged in a breath. Sammy hadn’t said anything. Why hadn’t he said anything?

  It was foolish to expect him to, though. When would Mia remember? Lying was their shibboleth.

  “But he never made it to the lighthouse, right?” Mia clarified.

  Lacey pursed her lips, the light catching on the glossy sheen of them. “No. We didn’t really talk after that, to be honest. But, no.”

  Mia flicked her eyes to her partner, but her face was inscrutable. For the best.

  “Is there anything else from the summer that seemed odd?” Mia asked. “Any of the artists in residence?”

  “More odd than usual?” Lacey asked, but it was tinted with fondness.

  “Right.”

  “No.” Lacey shook her head, her gaze unfocused on a spot beyond Mia’s shoulder. “No one particularly dangerous, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  Mia herself wasn’t sure what she was getting at. The ground was unsteady beneath her feet, and she was snatching at anything to try to make it all fit.

  Artists. Quinn had mentioned Robert Twist had been asking about an artist who had been staying on the island.

  “And what about now? Any artists here now?”

  “Not since the fall,” Lacey answered.

  That would still fit. “Who was that?”

  Lacey tugged at a loose thread hanging from her sweater. “Peter. Just went by that.”

  “Like Cher?” Izzy chimed in, even as Mia’s mind latched onto the name. Peter. Peter. She recognized it from something recently. Peter.

  When Lacey and Mia glanced over, Izzy just shrugged. “Or Beyoncé is more current, I guess.”

  Lacey stared for a heartbeat longer, then gave a tiny shake of her head, enough to send her bob swishing, before dismissing Izzy again.

  “When did he leave? Peter?” Once Mia asked the question, it clicked. Peter. That had been Robert Twist’s last phone call.

  Lacey stilled, her fingers curled around the kitchen counter by her thighs. “Early October? Maybe?”

  Peter. Was it the same man? And was the Peter from the phone log also the artist whom Twist had asked about?

  “Any reason Peter left?” Mia pressed, scenting blood in the water. “Or his residency was just over?”

  Lacey smiled then. “He wasn’t a fan of the cold.”

  Izzy hummed in agreement, and Mia’s lips quirked.

  Lacey scratched at her collarbone, and the sleeve of her sweater slipped down to her elbow. At first Mia thought there was a splotch of paint on the woman’s forearm. Then she realized it was a bruise, fading green at the rim but still a deep purple at the center. It was shaped like a thumbprint, as if she’d been grabbed and yanked. Mia had seen bruises like that before.

  She looked away to find Izzy watching her instead of Lacey. Izzy tilted her head, a silent question. Anything else?

  Pushing to her feet would be answer enough. Mia patted one of her pockets for a card, then held out the small ivory paper to Lacey. “If you think of anything else.”

  The sweater had already slipped back down over her arm when Lacey reached out to take it. She pressed the pad of her pointer finger into one of the sharp edges.

  “I won’t.”

  Mama had told them last night that Ellen lived in the run-down gamekeeper’s cottage behind the island’s church. St. Lucy’s cemetery stretched out behind the little house, the marble of the crosses catching the midmorning light where they stood out from the snow.

  Izzy shivered as they walked by the Montrose family tomb, shameless in its ostentatious design among the other modest grave markers. “Of course she lives in the cemetery.”

  Laughing, Mia shook her head. “Near.”

  “Not sure the ghosts are going to be bothered by your semantics,” Izzy said.

  Mia rolled her eyes as they stopped in front of the cottage, then knocked.

  When Ellen opened the door, her bloodshot eyes told a particular story. Guilt.

  The woman was dressed down in a baggy pair of flannel pajama bottoms and a worn-out looking hoodie that was probably three sizes too big, her hair pushed back into a sloppy bun so that curls had escaped to bounce around her puffy face.

  “Can we come in? We have a few questions to ask,” Mia said. There was mutiny in the twist of Ellen’s lips and the way her shoulders rounded as she hunched in the depths of her sweatshirt. But her eyes shifted between Mia and Izzy and then dropped to the floor.

  “Okay.”

  The living area fit a two-person love seat, a twin mattress that was set up on the floor, a bistro table with two metal folding chairs, and a lone bar stool. Ellen perched on that, her fuzzy sock–clad toes curling around one of the rungs.

  After Mia and Izzy had squeezed together on the sofa, Mia pulled the trigger, so to speak. “Where were you last night, between midnight and four a.m.?”

  Ellen’s chin tipped up. “I stayed over at Sammy’s.”

  It was a classic mistake, not questioning why Mia was asking, just happening to have an alibi at the ready. The unforced error was another puzzle piece when it came to Ellen. So she had experience lying, but maybe not to cops.

  “I didn’t realize you two were dating,” Mia said easily. Where did the reporter play into that situation?

  Pink stained Ellen’s cheeks, and Mia sympathized over the fair skin. A giveaway every time. “Off and on,” Ellen said, a shrug in her voice. As if it didn’t matter. But she was chewing on her lower lip, her gaze somewhere on the floor several feet to their right.

  “He can attest to your whereabouts for the whole night?” Izzy chimed in, a little more demanding than she had been during their time on St. Lucy’s so far. But she had been shot at.

  This time, Ellen met their questioning stares straight on. “Yes.” More resigned and exhausted than anything else.

  “Do you mind if we take a look around?” Mia pushed a little, testing to see if the fire that they’d seen only in her parting shot was still there.

  “I do mind, Detectives,” Ellen said. “Now tell me why you’re here, arrest me, or leave.”

  Their hands were tied to an extent, without easy access to a judge to issue a warrant, and not a whole lot of evidence even if they could reach one. What they had was that Ellen possibly could fit the body type of their intruder
and the fact that she looked guilty as hell.

  It was clear Ellen knew all that, too. Mia considered her options.

  “Look, we don’t care about whatever you’re running from.” Unless it was tangled up in their case. But Mia didn’t add that caveat. “You’re worried we’re going to stumble onto it.” She held up a hand before Ellen could say anything. “You don’t need to respond to that.”

  Ellen chewed on her bottom lip, eyes wide. The radiator crackled, grumpy and noisy; a cat meowed from the kitchen, hiding from them; the washer rumbled, struggling with the load that had been running since before they’d gotten there.

  And Ellen remained silent. Not refuting any of it.

  Mia nodded, once. “Does it have to do with Robert Twist’s death?”

  “No.” The whisper was so low it almost got lost to the low buzz of noise from the rest of the house.

  “Okay,” Mia said. Izzy hadn’t stiffened at all, and, if Mia had to guess, she would think they were on the same page. Under any other circumstance, they wouldn’t have stopped until they’d arrested whoever was shooting at cops. But if it had been Ellen, the way the bullet had just grazed Izzy even at close range suggested that she’d been aiming for a distraction, not to injure. “Now that we’re clear on that, what can you tell us about Robert Twist’s time on the island?”

  Ellen drew in a shaky breath, then rubbed a hand against her eye. The sweatshirt had slipped down enough to cover all but the tips of her fingers. “I honestly don’t know what else I can give you guys.”

  “Did he mention an artist who had come to the island?”

  “Um.” This time Ellen scrubbed at her whole face. “Maybe? I think he had a buddy or something come out here before.”

  Mia straightened. “Did he mention a name?”

  Looking up at them again, Ellen shook her head. “Not that I remember.”

  Disappointment flared, but she tamped it down. Even if Mia mentioned Peter’s name now, she couldn’t trust that Ellen wasn’t just picking up cues from them. That was a good way to get false information.

  “Why did you go out with him? Robert, that is,” Izzy asked, bolder than Mia probably would have been. Which was why they worked well together when Izzy was free to do her thing. “You don’t seem like you’re swept off your feet or anything.”