“But Ben’s not showing up, not answering his phone . . . that looks suspicious.”
My worries about what else his nonappearance could mean escalated once more. Then again, knowing Ben, he could’ve latched on to a pretty girl during the flight home and conveniently forgotten about his commitments. I squeezed Dad’s hand. “Let’s wait to see what Ben says when he shows.” Please, Lord, let him show.
“Will you stay until after the funeral?” Dad sounded beyond tired.
“Yes. I’ll call the office once the details are settled and ask for extra time off if I need to.” Aunt Martha and my parents had booked their return flights for ten days from now, but I’d planned to fly home Monday night. “I better call Nate and make sure he’s okay with watching Harold longer.” I pulled out my cell phone. “No reception. Remind me to call him when we return to the road.”
Dad about-faced. “We can go now. I should get back to the house before it gets any darker and your mother starts worrying about me.” I could tell Dad was trying to make light, but he couldn’t mask the heaviness seeping through his words.
“I’ll walk with you partway,” I said. “Ashley’s already asleep. She wore herself out crying.” Instead of following the trail back to Jack’s, I steered Dad across the field to cut the corner and intercept the road farther up.
My call to Nate connected just before we reached the road.
Nate picked up on the third ring. “Hey, Serena. How’s it going? You missing Harold already?”
“Um.” I fumbled my way through telling Nate about Uncle Jack’s death and swiped at a tear that managed to leak out despite my vigorous blinking. “So I was wondering if you could—”
The roar of an engine jerked my attention to the road. Blinding headlights suddenly burst on. I vaulted backwards. “Dad, watch out!”
4
The vehicle clipped Dad and sent him flying.
I scrambled to my feet. “Dad! Dad!” In the deepening darkness, I couldn’t make out his form amidst the scrub brush. I ran blindly in the direction his body had flown. “Dad, where are you?” I paused to listen.
The mournful sound of a distant foghorn was the only reply.
Panic squeezed my throat. My eyes took a while to adjust to the darkness after being blinded by those headlights, but finally I spotted a dark mass the size of a man. “Dad!” I raced toward him.
He didn’t move. Didn’t speak.
I dropped to my knees at his side and pressed my fingers to the pulse point on his neck. His pulse was weak, but there, his breathing ragged. “Dad, can you hear me?”
Did I imagine that hitch in his breath?
I reached in my pocket for my cell phone but came up empty. I’d been talking to Nate when the vehicle roared up. I must’ve dropped it when I vaulted the ditch. “Help! Help! I need help!” I shouted.
For a second, I thought I heard the low purr of a motor and wasn’t so sure that was a good thing. What if it was the maniac driver coming back?
With no moon or stars, I couldn’t see if Dad was bleeding, and I didn’t dare try to move him. I pressed my hand to his cheek. “Dad, everything’s going to be okay. Stay with me.”
Blood, warm and sticky, trickled over my fingers. I carefully probed to find the source—a gash on the side of his head. I whipped off my sweater and pressed it to the wound. “Dad, can you hear me?”
The wind picked up as fog slinked around us, circling like sharks at the smell of blood.
Preston’s porch lights blinked on in the distance.
“Help! Someone help me!” I shouted. I palpated Dad’s torso and limbs, found a probable fracture in his ankle. Even if he regained consciousness, there was no chance I’d be able to walk him back to the house.
“Dad, talk to me.” I felt in his pockets for a cell phone but found only his wallet. “Listen, I’m going to have to go for help. I won’t be long.” My voice faltered. “I promise.” Standing, I looked for some way to mark where he was lying. I didn’t dare take the sweater back from his bleeding skull, but I only had a T-shirt and jeans left on me, and . . . socks. I dropped to the ground to pull off a shoe and sock.
“Serena? Ward? Where are you?” Mom’s voice whispered through the mist.
Had I imagined it? “Mom?”
A pair of flashlights bobbed through the darkness.
“Mom! Over here!” I yanked my shoe back on and frantically waved my arms.
“Serena, keep calling. I can’t see you,” Mom shouted.
“Call an ambulance. We need an ambulance!”
One of the spots of light halted, the other continued its headlong dash toward the sound of my voice. I kneeled at Dad’s side and rechecked his pulse, his breathing, and whispered soothing words between shouts of “over here.”
Eternal minutes later, Mom joined me. She muffled a gasp and immediately repeated the checks I’d already done, all the while begging Dad to talk to her.
Aunt Martha jogged into view, puffing loudly. “The ambulance is on its way.” She surveyed the situation, then added, “I’ll stand at the road and wait for them, or they’ll never spot us in this fog.”
An image of the speeding vehicle returning bombarded my thoughts. “Be careful,” I warned.
Dad roused under Mom’s insistent pleading. She held his hand until the paramedics arrived, then Aunt Martha pried her away to give them room to work. As they put a C-collar on him and secured him to a backboard, the police questioned me.
“It was a bigger vehicle, an SUV of some kind, but I couldn’t tell you the color,” I said.
“And he didn’t stop?”
“Didn’t even slow down,” I clarified, although I was sure the other officer scrutinizing the road with his flashlight could tell that by the absence of skid marks.
He took copious pictures, then pulled out a measuring tape and sketch pad.
The paramedics loaded Dad into the ambulance.
“You ride with them,” I told Mom. “Aunt Martha and I can get Ashley or Preston to bring us.”
“But you should be checked too.”
“I’m fine. I jumped out of the way.” A throb in my ankle flared, asserting otherwise, but I ignored it for the moment.
“Well, I guess that’s all for now, Miss Jones,” the officer said and then handed me a card. “If you think of anything else that may be useful, give me a call. I hope the rest of your visit to the island is more pleasant.”
“Thank you”—I glanced at the card—“Officer Lennox.”
“What are you thinking?” Aunt Martha asked as the officer returned to his partner.
She could read me too well. “I’m not so sure the accident was an accident.”
“Why’s that?”
“Dad and I were in Uncle Jack’s house just before it happened.”
Aunt Martha nodded. “You think his murderer may have come to scrounge for incriminating evidence and spotted the two of you leaving?”
Sometimes it was downright scary how much alike we thought. “Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.”
“Of course, you know how youth like to party at the beach. One of them could’ve had too much to drink and not even seen you,” she said, as if it should make me feel better.
It didn’t. I couldn’t even identify the vehicle. Some FBI agent I turned out to be. I nixed the impulse to fill Tanner in on the new development. I didn’t have my phone anyway.
An SUV pulled to a stop at the roadblock set up by the officers examining the crime scene. Preston burst out of the vehicle and raced toward the officers. “What’s going on? Was anyone hurt?”
Officer Lennox caught him by the arms to stop him from trampling the evidence at the same time Preston spotted me. He shot a frantic glance back toward Ashley’s cottage. “Where’s Ashley? Is she okay?”
“Where was Preston all this time?” I asked Aunt Martha as we closed the distance between him and us. “Wasn’t he at the house with you?”
“He went out for groceries.”
“Who’s Ashley?” Officer Lennox asked.
“The owner of the cottage I’m staying at,” I explained, then to Preston added, “She’s fine.” I squinted back at the cottage, void of lights. “Slept through it all.” Apparently.
Aunt Martha sidled around the roadblock and surreptitiously examined Preston’s front bumper. An uneasy feeling churned my stomach as I kept his attention in the opposite direction. Not because I suspected Preston but because Aunt Martha’s sleuthing could put her in the line of fire of the same creep who’d taken Dad out.
She flicked off her flashlight and gave me a solemn nod a nanosecond before Preston glanced her way.
“Do you mind giving Serena and me a lift to the hospital?” Aunt Martha covered, reaching for the passenger door handle. “I hate for her mother to be sitting there alone while the doctors treat Ward.”
Officer Lennox took down Preston’s name, address, and whereabouts at the time of the accident and then gave us all permission to go.
I took the backseat, which I shared with three bags of groceries, confirming that Preston had gone where he’d said. He stopped for a minute at his house to put the perishables in the fridge. I was surprised that I could scarcely see the flashing cruiser lights from here. It was a wonder Aunt Martha and Mom had heard me shouting. I breathed a silent prayer of thanks for that mercy and another for Dad’s recovery.
“You know,” Aunt Martha spoke from the front seat, “I wouldn’t put it past that Carly woman to try to take out Ashley and Ben out of spite. Maybe she mistook you and your dad for them.”
“Her car is a lot smaller than the vehicle that hit Dad.” My thoughts veered to Ben and Carly’s allegations about him. I hadn’t mentioned to Aunt Martha that he arrived in Boston a day earlier than Ashley thought, might already be on the island. Considering the information might tempt Aunt Martha to do more sleuthing, I’d sleep better if she didn’t know just yet. The driver could’ve been Ben as readily as anyone else. And if he mistook Dad and me for Ashley and Preston, then he would’ve had a strong motive to run us down. With Ashley out of the way, he’d inherit everything.
My stomach churned at the realization that theoretically, Ben could’ve arrived on the island early enough to kill Jack too. His plane had landed in plenty of time.
Preston returned to the vehicle. “I texted Ashley to let her know what’s going on in case she wakes up.”
It was after 1:00 a.m. by the time we pulled back into Preston’s driveway. Dad had been admitted for observation. He had a concussion, four stitches on his head wound, and a broken ankle. Mom had insisted on staying with him, and Preston had suggested I stay in my parents’ room at his place for the rest of the night so as not to disturb Ashley. I was too tired to argue.
Hours later, I woke to the sound of Ashley’s caustic tone.
“Wait,” Ashley said, “aren’t those Serena’s shoes? She’s here?”
My heart dove. What did she think? That I snuck over here for an illicit rendezvous with her fiancé? She knew me better than that.
“Didn’t you check your messages?” Preston asked calmly.
I threw Mom’s bathrobe on over the T-shirt and shorts Preston had lent me to sleep in and reached for the bedroom doorknob. On second thought. I quickly changed into the clothes I’d been wearing last night so as not to fuel any more mistaken assumptions.
I emerged from the bedroom as Preston relayed the events Ashley had slept through.
She looked irritated and skeptical until her gaze dropped to the bloodstain on the front of my T-shirt. She gasped. “Preston just told me what happened.” She pulled me into a hug. “I’m so glad you’re okay.” She clearly hoped I hadn’t overheard their conversation, so I let it go. The last thing I wanted was a repeat of the cold-shoulder treatment she’d given me at the end of my previous trip.
“You have company waiting for you on the veranda,” Preston said.
“I do?” I slipped out the patio door and startled at the sight of Nate and Aunt Martha sitting on the veranda overlooking Tisbury Great Pond.
Nate stood and a pained look crossed his face as his gaze tripped over my bloodied clothes.
“Nate?”
He drew me into his arms and hugged me tight. “It almost killed me to hear you screaming for help and be helpless to do anything.”
His heart was pounding against my ear. And he smelled nice. Really nice. Like laundry fresh from the line with a hint of a distinctly masculine spice. He eased his hold just enough to cradle my face in his hands.
My breath caught at the tortured look in his pale blue eyes.
His thumb lightly brushed over my bruised cheek, and he muffled a guttural groan. “I had to see for myself that you were okay.”
I gaped at him, stunned.
“He called my cell phone last night as soon as he heard you scream and couldn’t raise you again,” Aunt Martha explained. “That’s how your mother and I knew to go out and look for you.”
“Oh.” With all that happened, I’d forgotten that I’d been on the phone with him. “Thank you,” I whispered, tears pricking my eyes. “You may have saved Dad’s life.”
His gaze searched mine as his thumb whisked a tear from my cheek. “I’m glad you’re both okay,” he said, his voice a tad wobbly.
My mind flailed about for a quip to lighten the moment. I mean, we watched a lot of old movies together, shared more than a few dinners . . . but we’d never even kissed. Not that the urge to hadn’t crossed my mind. So what was I supposed to make of his dropping everything to fly halfway across the country in the middle of the night to check on me? Wait a minute . . . “How did you get here so quickly? Even the red-eye wouldn’t have gotten you into Boston early enough to catch the first ferry across.” I stepped back so I could think straight.
His hands dropped to his side, and his lips tipped ever so slightly downward. “I flew into the island’s airport. I would’ve been here earlier, but they don’t allow night landings.”
“No, not since the Kennedy accident.”
“So I learned.”
“You’re telling me you flew, as in piloted the plane yourself?”
His cheeks colored.
“You never told me you had your pilot’s license!”
He shrugged. “It never came up.”
“He hasn’t flown since—”
Nate cut off whatever Aunt Martha had been about to divulge with a sharp look. Clearly she not only knew about his ability but also knew the reason he didn’t want to talk about it.
Ohh-kay, then. Since I preferred to avoid talking about the cause of my claustrophobia, I knew how he felt and didn’t press. I was sure Aunt Martha would fill me in on the juicy details later anyway. Instead, I asked, “Where’d you get the plane?”
“Oh, that part was easy,” Aunt Martha piped up again. “He borrowed it from a friend of mine.”
“Malgucci?” Whether her newest friend was actually a mobster was still up for debate, but either way he had uncomfortably close ties to the mob in St. Louis, and I sure didn’t like the idea of Nate owing them a favor on my account.
“No, one of my old friends.”
Aunt Martha had traveled so many places for work before she retired that it didn’t surprise me she had a friend with a plane. But a friend that would lend it to a complete stranger on her say-so?
Aunt Martha clearly knew how to turn on the charm, and I couldn’t help but think that Mom had read Martha’s so-called spinsterhood all wrong. I was beginning to think she could’ve settled down with her choice of men . . . if she’d been so inclined.
“Nate’s was the first flight to land this morning,” Aunt Martha said with a healthy dose of admiration, or maybe it was pride, since I had her to thank for the surprise visit. “Preston called a friend with one of the rental agencies to make sure there’d be a car ready and waiting the second the airport cleared Nate for landing.”
“Wow, you thought of everything”—I tugged my bottom lip between my teeth, not wanti
ng to sound ungrateful—“only, who’s taking care of Harold?”
A “meow” sounded from under the veranda.
Chuckling, Nate tugged at a leash I hadn’t noticed anchored under a leg of the chair he’d been sitting on. “He came along too.”
My black-and-white cat emerged rather reluctantly from under the veranda, looking indignant about being harnessed and leashed, which had been a smart move on Nate’s part. Who knew where Harold would’ve gotten to otherwise. I reached down to make a fuss over him, but a fluffy white, no doubt female, cat poked its head over the step, and Harold gave her his attention instead.
“Already making friends, I see,” I said wryly.
Aunt Martha grinned. “Nothing like the ocean breezes to put a little romance in the air.”
5
Preston and Ashley joined Nate, Aunt Martha, and me on the veranda, breaking the awkward silence that followed Aunt Martha’s whimsical statement on romance and ocean breezes. “Breakfast is ready,” Preston announced, setting a tray laden with muffins and jam on the table.
“Is that my phone?” I snatched up the smartphone also on the tray.
“I hope so. Officer Lennox dropped it by. Found it in the ditch after we left the scene last night.”
I thumbed in my password and the home screen appeared. “What a relief!”
Nate leaned over and glanced at it. “Only four missed messages.”
“All from you, I suppose?” I said with an I’m-on-to-you smirk.
He held up his hands in surrender. “Not me.”
I tapped the icon to bring up the messages.
Tanner.
My heart stuttered.
He couldn’t have heard about the hit-and-run. Could he?
Oh, he’d be so ticked at me for not calling him right away. He liked Dad a lot. Squirming, I schooled my expression and scrolled through the messages.
Thankfully, they were all of the cajoling please-tell-me-you’re-staying-out-of-trouble variety. I texted back a cheeky:
You know me.
He instantly texted back a wry:
Too well.
Nate leaned over and squinted at my phone screen.
Over Maya Dead Body Page 4