Over Maya Dead Body

by Sandra Orchard

  I muffled my chuckle and quickly clicked back to the message list.

  “Tanner, Tanner, Tanner, and . . . Tanner,” Nate read aloud, then exchanged a look I couldn’t quite read with Aunt Martha—exasperation, maybe. “Doesn’t the guy know you’re on vacation?”

  “I—” I pursed my lips closed again, not ready to have Ashley hear I’d called an FBI agent to look into Ben’s whereabouts, especially when I still didn’t know the answer to that and what I did know didn’t look good for him.

  “Oh, I almost forgot to tell you that I heard from Ben,” Ashley blurted, as if she’d read my thoughts. “He texted me earlier this morning.” She flashed Preston a sheepish look, probably because if she’d seen a message from Ben, she had to have seen Preston’s message explaining why I was here this morning instead of at the cottage. A message she apparently hadn’t believed until she saw my state. “He said he missed his flight. And since there was no way he could make it in time for the engagement party now, he decided to stay in South America until the wedding.”

  “Are you serious?” I exclaimed, stunned by Ben’s outright lie. To think I’d feared he’d been a victim too. “Did you call him back to tell him about Uncle Jack?”

  “I tried but he didn’t pick up.”

  “Did you text him the message then?”

  “Do you think I should? It seems like such a horrible way for him to hear the news.”

  Somehow I doubted it would be the first he’d heard of it. Nausea roiled my stomach.

  Preston gave Ashley’s hand a tender squeeze. “I think you should. Phone service can be hit and miss in the places your brother travels. It could be days before you catch him, but he can retrieve the text as soon as his phone connects again.”

  “Preston’s right,” Aunt Martha said gently. “Under the circumstances, it’s the best you can do. I’m sure he’d want to be here.”

  Tearing up, Ashley blinked rapidly and thumbed the message into her phone with shaky hands.

  I gritted my teeth to contain my anger at Ben. I could think of only one reason why Ben would lie to Ashley about missing his plane—to avoid being a suspect in Jack’s murder.

  I excused myself to use the restroom and took the opportunity to put in a call to Agent Jackson.

  He picked up on the first ring. “Jones, what part of—?”

  “I think whoever killed Jack tried to kill my dad and me last night,” I interjected before he could finish his rant.

  “What?”

  Preston and Ashley’s voices drifted through the bathroom door.

  I turned on the faucet so they wouldn’t hear me talking and filled Jackson in on last night’s hit-and-run.

  “So you think the alleged killer spotted the two of you snooping in Jack’s house?”

  “It’s a little too coincidental, don’t you think, that Jack would accidentally fall to his death at Menemsha Hills and the next night we’d be run off the road outside his house?”

  “Did you relay your suspicions to the police?”

  Examining the state of my clothes in the mirror, I pinched my blood-encrusted shirt away from my skin. “Right, and paint an even bigger bull’s-eye on my back.” Jack had clearly confided in someone he shouldn’t have. My breath snagged. Isaak?

  “Point taken. When are you returning to St. Louis?”

  “I’m not going anywhere until Jack’s killer is behind bars,” I said, mentally replaying yesterday’s conversation. What had Isaak really been doing when I surprised him at Jack’s house?

  “Hey, trust me, I’m going to turn over every stone I can find that’ll shed any light on this antiquities smuggling ring Jack called about.”

  “Have you even tried to locate Ben yet?” Isaak had claimed Jack said his nephew was the one with the information, so tracking down said nephew should’ve been at the top of his agenda.

  “Yeah, I know he flew into Boston the day before yesterday.” His grim tone sounded empathetic, as if he knew I was thinking what Ben’s nonappearance could mean.

  Okay, so maybe I could trust him. My personal connection to the case was clearly hampering my objectivity. Dad’s suspicions of Jack’s business partner flitted through my mind. If Dad was right, Jack’s call to the feds about an art crime might not even have anything to do with his death.

  “Have the police run down alibis of everyone who stood to benefit from Jack’s death?”

  “They haven’t located the nephew yet, but Jack’s niece and his business partner both had solid alibis.”

  Which left the person Jack intended to expose as our prime suspect.

  I paced the bathroom floor. Do I tell Isaak about Ben’s text?

  I couldn’t believe Ben was capable of murder, but I wouldn’t have believed he’d lie about missing his plane either. “You wouldn’t happen to have a friend at the phone company who could look up where a call originated, would you?” It’d be a whole lot quicker than trying to get the information through official channels.

  Agent Jackson let out a sigh. “I may.”

  I updated him on Ben’s text to his sister claiming he was still in South America, then recited his number from what I’d memorized off Ashley’s phone screen.

  “You think Ben is our smuggler.”

  Whoa. “No, he’s a freelance writer. I just—” Ben wouldn’t. Would he? Listen to me. I speculate about him being capable of murder but balk at the idea of him looting burial sites? “You know what stinks about our job?”

  “You have to suspect everyone.”

  My heart sank. “Yeah.” I shook my head, not that Isaak could see me. Knowing Jack, if he’d figured out that Ben was smuggling antiquities into the country, he would’ve tried to convince him to turn himself in. Which meant either Ben didn’t come on board with Jack’s plan or someone higher up the food chain caught wind of it.

  “I’ll call my friend at the phone company,” Isaak said softly, then clicked off.

  By the time I returned to the veranda, only Nate and Aunt Martha were still there. “Where’d Ashley and Preston disappear to?”

  “They went for a walk,” Aunt Martha said. “And your mother called. She said your father will get a cast put on his ankle this morning and then she’ll call when they’re ready to be picked up. I figured you and Nate could fetch them in his rental car.”

  “Yes, of course. Although before I do anything, I need to head back to the cottage and shower and get into some clean clothes.”

  Nate pushed a muffin on a plate in front of me. “Have something to eat and then I’ll drive you down there.”

  The tenderness in his voice rattled my already shaky grip on my emotions. Not trusting myself to meet his gaze without falling apart, I tore a bite from the muffin and popped it into my mouth. Falling apart was so not me. It was the one trait I was happy to share with my very-British, stiff-upper-lip nana.

  Nate’s masculine scent tangled with the aroma of coffee and salt air, teasing my senses and compelling me to glance his way.

  A wave of warmth washed over me at the concern shadowing his eyes. The eyes of a man who flew through the night to make sure I was okay. It felt pretty nice to be worried about. In a nonmothering way, of course.

  And from the intensity in those darkening eyes of his, it was a good thing my mother wasn’t here.

  My heart did a silly little flip as I forced my attention back to my muffin.

  “Leave Harold with me,” Aunt Martha said. “He and I are going to do some fishing.”

  “I think you need to go out a lot earlier in the morning or wait until evening if you want to catch anything.”

  “Don’t you worry about me. I’ve been fishing since long before you were born.” She shot Nate a wink as she pushed up from her chair, then she gathered Harold’s leash and led him down to the water.

  “Mind telling me what that wink was about?” I said to Nate, not entirely sure I was ready for the answer.

  “Fishing?” His lips twitched into a smile. “Wow, and here I thought I
was sleep-deprived.”

  “Oh no, who does she think she’s going to interrogate around here?” I twisted in my chair to see which direction she’d headed.

  “She’ll be fine,” Nate reassured. “She has a gift for extracting information with no one the wiser.”

  “It’s the British accent.”

  He chuckled. “You’re probably right.”

  Maybe. But it didn’t make me worry any less. I scooped up the remnant of my muffin. “Let’s go. I’d like to talk to Jack’s business partner and start trying to retrace Jack’s steps for the past week or so before Mom calls.” And what did it say about me that talking to Jack’s business partner felt safer than talking to Nate about . . . anything else?

  “Hey.” Nate banged on the washroom door. “There’s some guy hauling a big iron sculpture off your uncle’s front yard.”

  “What? Stop him. I’ll be right out.”

  I quickly rinsed the shampoo out of my hair and jumped out of the shower. It had to be the neighbor. Unbelievable.

  By the time I raced outside, Nate was helping a spectacled, slick-haired twerp lay Jack’s sculpture behind the shed in the backyard. I stalked over, my jacket flap open, the butt of my gun visible above my waistband. “What’s going on?”

  “The sculpture was blocking his view,” Nate explained.

  “So?”

  “So in the interest of keeping peace between the neighbors, I helped him move it out of sight until whoever inherits the house decides what they want done with it.”

  “Seriously?” I said to the weasel-eyed twerp. “You couldn’t even wait until Jack’s body was in the ground?”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said.

  “No, you’re not. You probably jumped for glee when you heard. I hope you wind up with an even worse neighbor!”

  “Serena, come on.” Nate clasped my elbow and steered me back toward the cottage.

  “He’s been harassing Jack over his lawn ornaments for years,” I hissed, ripping my arm from his grasp. “For all we know, he pushed Jack down those stairs just so he could get rid of the sculptures himself.”

  Nate stopped and faced me, clasping both my arms. “Do you really believe that?”

  I glared at him for three full seconds before realizing how crazed I must’ve sounded. I ducked my head. “No, I guess not.”

  Nate pulled me into his arms. “It’s okay. Grief makes us all a little crazy sometimes.”

  The steady thump of his heart calmed my riotous emotions. “It’s easier to be angry than sad,” I admitted.

  “I know,” he whispered, and I knew he did because he’d lost his parents in a car accident when his younger brother was still a teenager. “You want to blame someone,” he said softly, “but what if there’s no one to blame? What if Jack really did just trip and fall?”

  I pulled away enough to look him in the eyes. “Do you think I’m crazy trying to prove he was killed?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “It couldn’t have been an accident.”

  “Why is it so important to you to believe that?”

  “Because it’s not fair!” Oh, great, how totally irrational did that sound?

  Nate’s expression was empathetic.

  I couldn’t handle it. It made me want to cry. And I didn’t like to cry. Crying didn’t help anything. It just gave me a headache.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” Ashley said and stormed across the yard toward us, Preston trailing her. “We just called the funeral home to make arrangements, and they said it could be days before Uncle Jack’s body is released to them. The police sent it to the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office in Sandwich.”

  “Sandwich?” Nate asked.

  “A city off-island,” I explained.

  Preston stopped at Ashley’s side and stroked her back reassuringly. “I told her it doesn’t mean they think he was murdered. The police probably just decided that with Carly screaming murder, they’d better do their due diligence.”

  “Preston is right,” I said to Ashley because I saw no point in stressing her more with my unsubstantiated suspicions.

  We walked back to the cottage together. Once inside, Ashley sank into a corner of the sofa, pulled her knees to her chest, and buried her head in her arms. “What are we supposed to do until the body’s released?”

  “Did the funeral director mention anything about Jack’s personal effects?” I asked.

  “You mean like his camera and wallet? The officer left those yesterday.”

  “You have them?” I glanced about the room. Every tabletop and bookshelf was decorated with dishes of sea glass. Over the years, I’d logged countless hours combing beaches with her for the colorful treasure.

  “They’re on the desk.”

  Spotting Jack’s decades-old beat-up leather camera case tucked between the CD rack and computer monitor, I exchanged a hopeful look with Nate, then sprang up to fetch the camera.

  But Preston was standing next to the desk and scooped it up first. “You should see the gorgeous pictures Jack took of the island,” Preston said to Nate. He lifted his chin to the framed sunset photograph hanging over Ashley’s fireplace. “That’s one of his.” Preston flicked the back-cover switch.

  “No!” I lunged for the camera, but the back had already popped open, exposing the film.

  “What’s wrong? I’m pulling the card reader”—he looked down—“oh, shoot.” He snapped the cover closed. “I forgot Jack still used film.”

  I took the camera from him and manually rewound the film. “We might be able to salvage the first few pictures. Is there a place on the island that still develops 35mm film?”

  “Yes, Mosher’s on Main Street in Vineyard Haven,” Ashley said.

  “Hey.” Preston joined Ashley on the sofa. “We could take them to Jack’s and show Nate some of the albums.”

  “Could we take a rain check?” Nate asked. “Serena was going to give me a bit of a tour of the island before we pick up her parents.”

  My breath caught in my throat. What if they volunteered to take us around? I couldn’t exactly justify stopping at Uncle Jack’s office and talking to his partner as a must-see sight.

  “Good plan,” Preston said enthusiastically. “You’ve got a beautiful day for it.” He jotted down an address on a slip of paper and passed it to me. “Take a drive by this place. It’s the most recent completed house Jack designed. Quite a sight.” Preston held my gaze. “The owner’s an avid antiquities collector too.”

  Catching his hint, I telepathed my thanks and glanced at the address near the West Chop Country Club. “We definitely will.”

  “If you want to leave the film with us, we can take it in,” Ashley volunteered.

  “That’s okay. We’ll be driving right by when we go to the hospital,” I said.

  “What was that about?” Nate asked a moment later as he held open the rental’s passenger door for me.

  “What?”

  “That look between you and Ashley’s fiancé.”

  Wow, Nate was perceptive.

  “Because in case you didn’t notice, Ashley thought it was a come-on.”

  My heart hitched at his sour tone. I teasingly arched an eyebrow. “And you?”

  He shrugged, but I didn’t miss the way his lips tipped up at the corners. Nate rounded the car and climbed in the driver’s side. “Well?”

  I filled him in on Jack’s suspicions about the antiquities smuggling. “I confided in Preston about Jack’s call to the FBI and this”—I held up the address—“is a lead.”

  “Excellent.” Nate started the car. “So where to first?”

  “Edgartown. I want to talk to Jack’s business partner. I’m kind of surprised he didn’t call Ashley first thing to pay his respects. He had to have heard the news by now.”

  “May I make a suggestion?”

  “Sure.”

  “We should check out the scene of the accident before the curiosity seekers get there. We may find someth
ing the police missed.”

  “That’s a great idea.” I gave him directions to Menemsha Hills. Between the comfortable seventy-degree temperature, the still air, and the clear skies, the conditions were perfect for surveying the scene.

  When we arrived at the trailhead, there was only one other car in the parking lot, although curiosity seekers could also walk to the stairs connecting the forest trail to the rocky shore from either direction along the beach. Nate grabbed his camera from the trunk. “Ready?”

  I tucked the bottoms of my pants into my socks. “Yes, follow me and try not to brush against the bushes. The ticks are bad this time of year.” It was a thirty-five-minute uphill walk on a sandy path through an airy forest of oak trees. We crossed a back road I’d forgotten about but from the look of all the tire tracks was where the police had parked yesterday.

  I stopped at the top of the hill overlooking the ocean and silently motioned Nate to stop too.

  A silver-haired man was hunched over examining something halfway down the weathered cedar steps.

  Nate took a picture of him, then whispered close to my ear, “That guy’s clearly scrutinizing the scene of the accident. What’s our story?”

  “Let’s play dumb tourists. Might learn more.”

  Nate nodded, then took a steady stream of pictures of the path and surrounding area, even though there’d be no easy way to discern which footprints belonged to emergency responders and which might belong to a killer.

  “Hello,” I called to the man on the steps and started down. “Beautiful day.”

  The man sprang up and spun around to face me. He had a black-and-white cat in his arms and looked as if he was trying to take something from its mouth as the cat struggled to break free.

  The cat wore a red harness and lead just like Harold had had on earlier. I blinked.

  The cat was Harold. “Hey, what are you doing with my cat?”

  6

  Harold sprang from the stranger’s arms and streaked toward me. Correction—past me and straight to Nate.

  “Catch him!” a female voice rose from below the steps.

  “Aunt Martha?” I bent over the handrail to see for myself. “How on earth did you get all the way over here?” Last I saw her she’d been strolling toward Tisbury Great Pond on the other side of the island.