Over Maya Dead Body

by Sandra Orchard

  Somehow, everyone else had already congregated on the veranda, but I was still standing at the bottom of the steps. Only everyone didn’t include Ashley and Preston. I asked where they were.

  Preston emerged from the house carrying a tray with more teacups and a second teapot. “Ashley has a migraine. She went back to her cottage to sleep it off.”

  “I let Harold go with her,” Aunt Martha added, “to keep her company.”

  I showed Preston the picture I took of Carly and Gaudy Souvenir Guy. “Do you know this guy?”

  “Sure, that’s Carly’s brother, Charlie.”

  “Charlie and Carly?” Nate asked, disbelief modulating his tone.

  Preston chuckled. “Charles is his given name. Why?”

  “Wait a minute. Don’t they have different last names?” According to Aunt Martha, Charlie’s luggage tag had said Anderson.

  “Carly’s an Anderson too. Their dad died when they were little, and neither of them took their stepdad’s last name when Marianne remarried.”

  “What happened to her second husband?”

  “He died.”

  “The poor woman. She must’ve been crushed.”

  “She was really depressed for a few years afterward, Jack said. Did a stint in the hospital. It’s probably what made Carly and Charlie so close. He was out of high school but apparently stuck around to take care of her.”

  “What does Charlie do for a living?”

  “I don’t really know. He travels a lot. You could ask Marianne. She wants to meet with Ashley and the funeral home director tomorrow morning. Ashley was hoping you’d accompany her.”

  “Of course I will. Maybe I should go down to the cottage and check on her.”

  “No, when she gets like this, she just needs to sleep.”

  “Did she hear from Ben?”

  “Not that she mentioned.”

  Nate shot me a silencing look. I helped myself to a cup of tea from Preston’s tray and meandered over to Nate’s side at the railing. “What was that look for?”

  “I don’t think you should tell him what you know about Ben,” Nate whispered.

  “Why?”

  Nate urged me to stroll with him to the farthest end of the veranda. “Mind if I look at Jack’s photos?”

  I handed him the packet and then texted Isaak the correction on Carly’s last name.

  Nate gave the photos a cursory glance without pulling them out, then studied the negatives. “There’s another photo they could’ve printed. It’s half over-exposed, but we may be able to see something in it.”

  Aunt Martha ambled over to us, apparently having eavesdropped on our conversation. “You could use Jack’s darkroom.”

  “Sure, if I knew how to develop prints,” I said wryly.

  “Nate knows how.”

  I gaped at him. “Really?” Was there anything this man didn’t know how to do?

  He nodded and then shrugged, as if he’d also heard my unvoiced question.

  “I don’t know,” I wavered. “We probably should ask Ashley if she minds.”

  Dad waved us back to the group. “What are you all whispering about over there?”

  “Using Uncle Jack’s darkroom. Do you think Ashley would mind?”

  “I wouldn’t bother her now,” Preston said.

  “What’s this about, sweetheart?” Dad probed.

  “The last photos Jack took before he died.” I slanted a wary glance at Preston, but it wasn’t as if he didn’t already know we were looking at Jack’s film. He’d probably just been trying to make sure we didn’t disturb Ashley unnecessarily. “We thought they might offer a clue to what happened.”

  “Then of course you should use his darkroom,” Dad said.

  I gulped down my cup of tea, then turned to Nate. “Okay, let’s do this.”

  Nate drove us the half mile back to Jack’s.

  “Park next to the cottage,” I said, reaching for my door handle. “I want to check on Ashley before we go in and let her know what we’re up to so she doesn’t panic over the strange car in the driveway.” I hurried into the house, being careful not to let the screen door slam.

  All the curtains were drawn, but Ashley’s bedroom door was ajar. I poked my head inside. “You awake?” I whispered, only to see she wasn’t in her bed. I checked the connected bathroom. Empty.

  A sound came from my room. What was she doing in there? Did she fake the migraine to buy time to search my stuff?

  My stomach knotted. This was her house. She had every right to be in whatever room she wanted. But that didn’t mean I had to knock. I quietly clasped the doorknob and jerked it open. “What are you—?”

  Harold burst from the room and wound around my legs, purring loudly.

  “It was you making that noise?” I scooped him up and scratched the back of his neck, the tension in my gut easing. Until . . .

  “What were you doing locked in there? Where’s Ashley?” I checked the kitchen. The living room. The laundry room. The second bathroom. “Ashley, you here?” I asked, louder this time, my mind flashing to Ben as I raced from closet to closet, checked under beds, behind sofas. Would Ben take out Ashley?

  It wouldn’t be too smart since clearing the way for him to be the sole beneficiary would also make him the prime suspect in their deaths.

  My throat constricted. Ashley can’t be dead!

  At the sound of the front door opening, I spun around. “Ashley, thank—”

  “No, it’s me.” Nate came in with the box of Jack’s personal effects Frank sent home with us and set it on the desk in the living room. “Isn’t she here?”

  “No! She’s gone.”

  8

  Nate steered me out Ashley’s front door, then took Harold from me and dropped him back inside. “Her car is here, so she couldn’t have gone far. Probably just walked to the water to clear her head.”

  “But Preston said she had a migraine. She can’t stand the light when she gets them.”

  “Do you think she lied about that? That she went off with someone? Or that she was kidnapped?”

  I strode to the middle of her front yard and turned 360 degrees, scanning Jack’s neighboring property, the trees behind the house, and the scrub brush across the road. Then I raked my fingers through my hair. “I don’t know what to think.”

  “Maybe she felt better and walked back to Preston’s.”

  “We would’ve seen her.”

  “Did you see that?” Nate squinted. “Someone’s in Jack’s house.”

  We hurried across the yard and peeked in the living room window. Inside, Marianne was standing at Jack’s desk and shoving something into a small backpack.

  “What do you think she’s doing?” Nate whispered.

  “I’m going to find out.” I stormed to the front door, then knocked and pushed it open at the same time. “Hello? Ashley? Are you in here?” I feigned surprise at the sight of Marianne. “Oh, it’s you. I’m sorry. I didn’t see a car outside, so I . . .” Feeling a twinge of remorse that my pretense was bordering on an outright lie, I let the explanation trail off.

  She jerked up the flap of her backpack and yanked on the zipper.

  “I found a couple more.” Ashley emerged from a back room carrying a pair of framed photos. “Oh, Serena, hi.”

  My heart jumped with relief she was okay. Then wariness over what the two of them were up to instantly morphed the feeling.

  Nate stepped inside behind me. “Hey, what’s going on?”

  Marianne took the photos from Ashley, not bothering to add them to the backpack she’d already swung over her shoulder. “Thanks. I should get going now. I think I have plenty.”

  “Marianne wants to scan a bunch of Uncle Jack’s photos and put together a slide show for his funeral,” Ashley explained. “I was helping her pick some.”

  “How’d you get here?” I asked.

  Marianne fluttered her hand toward the window. “I parked at that little lot on the bend. Went for a walk through the meadow first.
”

  To sneak up to Uncle Jack’s house from the back? Where no one would see her?

  Only, Ashley did. Had Marianne come up with the photo story so Ashley wouldn’t suspect why she was really here? Whatever reason that might be. I glimpsed the photo Marianne had tucked under her arm of her and a clearly smitten Jack, and my conscience twinged. But only for a second. After all, I didn’t know Marianne from a hole in the ground.

  And I was feeling so punchy, I wasn’t even sure if that was a mixed metaphor, but the point was . . . what if she was better than me at coming here under false pretenses?

  “Can I see the photos you chose?” I asked, angling for a look inside the backpack.

  Marianne tightened her grip on its straps. And that wasn’t just my imagination, because her fingers actually turned white. “You’ll have to wait for the funeral. I want it to be a surprise.”

  I wanted to believe the tearstains on her cheeks were from genuine heartache. Not to mention that I couldn’t imagine Jack asking her to marry him, planning this engagement party, and then turning around and calling the FBI on her.

  Nate elbowed me and whispered, “You’re staring.”

  I shook away the suspicious thoughts, and offering her a smile, stepped aside from the door. “I’m sure the slide show will be beautiful.”

  Fresh tears dribbled down her cheeks.

  Maybe Mom was right about me. Maybe I did stare too much. Some people were exactly what they seemed. The challenge was deciphering which ones were and which ones weren’t.

  “I think I’ll go back to lying down,” Ashley said, also moving toward the door. “I’m sorry I haven’t been good company.”

  I waved off the apology as unnecessary and asked her about using Jack’s darkroom.

  “Now?” She sounded as if the idea bothered her. And despite my recent staring-is-rude pep talk, I took that to mean that what really bothered her might be what we’d find in the picture we wanted to develop.

  “Is there a problem?” I asked ever so casually, because I couldn’t help myself.

  “No. Of course not. Go right ahead,” she blurted in a staccato that belied the invitation. “Come over and get me when you’re finished. Preston’s going to order pizza for supper.”

  Nate flicked on the red light hanging over the table in the darkroom and locked the door. His arm grazed mine as he turned toward the enlarger, and I think I might’ve gulped out loud, because he looked at me with concern. “You going to be okay in here?”

  “Sure.” I offered a wan smile. Who was I kidding? Yes, I was claustrophobic, but the room wasn’t that small. My cubicle at work was smaller. Of course, I didn’t have to share my cubicle.

  Nate’s throaty chuckle sent unexpected tingles skittering down my spine. “If you want to wait in the living room, I understand.”

  “No, no. I’m fine.”

  “You’re sure?” He caught my wrist and pressed his fingertips to the pulse point. “Because your heart is racing.”

  “Uh . . . locked in a dark room with a handsome man?” I quipped.

  He squeezed my hand, grinning. “We’d better get this photo developed before . . .”

  “Anything else develops?” I said ever so innocently.

  Nate kissed the back of my hand before releasing it. “Exactly.”

  Ooh, the room suddenly felt a whole lot smaller and a whole lot warmer. I edged into the corner to give him room to work.

  “Before we set up the chemicals, I want to put the negative in the enlarger and make sure there’s something worth developing.” He snapped it into place, then peering through the eyepiece, adjusted knobs. A moment later he stepped back and invited me to take a look.

  I gasped. “Are those Jack’s legs?” The part of the photo that hadn’t been overexposed by Preston’s faux pas depicted the upper thighs and knees of jean-clad legs.

  “That’s what we need to figure out. The photo’s blurry, as if the camera went off accidentally. It could’ve happened when he fell, or it could’ve happened if he’d been startled and turned suddenly. Do you know what Jack was wearing at the time of his death?”

  “No, but I can call the police department and find out.” I pulled out my phone, then glanced at the enlarger. “Is turning this on going to wreck anything?”

  “Not until I take the photo paper out. Go ahead.”

  I put in the call.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m only free to discuss the information provided in the press release,” the person on the other end said.

  “May I speak to the chief?”

  “He’s not in right now.”

  “Okay, never mind.”

  “Marianne would know,” Nate suggested, “since she found him.”

  I cringed. “I don’t want to have to explain why I’m asking, especially if she has reason to be suspicious of my motives.”

  “Good point. Okay, turn off your phone and we’ll get this developed. We can worry about figuring out whose legs they are later.” Nate selected several brown bottles from a shelf on the wall, then poured the different chemicals into a series of trays on the counter. “Ready?”

  I nodded.

  He slipped a piece of photographic paper from a black sleeve he’d pulled from a box on the shelf and lined it up in the holder on the base of the enlarger. Glancing at the clock, he snapped the enlarger light on and off again. “Let’s see what we’ve got.” He put the paper in the developer bath and swished it around with a pair of plastic tongs.

  Slowly the image began to emerge.

  “The fit of those jeans looks too tight for Uncle Jack,” I commented. “It’s been a few years since I’ve visited, but if he was anything like Dad, he’d have favored a more relaxed fit.”

  “When we’re done here, we can check what’s in his closet. But yeah, I see what you mean. We’re definitely looking at a guy who favors tight jeans.”

  “Or a woman.” I nibbled on my bottom lip, hating myself for thinking it, but I couldn’t shake the image of Marianne’s bloodless fingers as she clutched that backpack, refusing to let me see the photos—and whatever else—she’d helped herself to.

  Nate moved the photo on to the stop bath, then jerked up his head and turned his ear toward the door. “Did you hear that?”

  I stilled, but couldn’t hear anything beyond the sound of our breathing. Then I heard it too. The creak of a door. Footsteps. If it was Ashley, why didn’t she announce herself? Was it Marianne back to look through more of Jack’s stuff? Ben?

  Someone here to put an end to my sleuthing?

  The doorknob rattled and I pulled my gun.

  Nate slid the photo out of the stop bath and into the fixative, then whipped out a gun too.

  “Where did you get that?” I whispered as the sound of footsteps grew faint.

  He looked at me as if I’d grown a third eyeball. “I came to Martha’s Vineyard because someone tried to run you off the road. What did you think I’d bring? My boxing gloves?”

  “No, I . . .” He boxed? I shook that wayward thought from my head. “I meant I didn’t know you owned a gun.”

  “There are a lot of things you don’t know about me.”

  Evidently. I hoped he knew that a St. Louis carry permit wasn’t any good in Massachusetts. “Kill the light,” I hissed, figuring red or not, I didn’t want whoever was out there seeing it.

  “We’re in a darkroom. If no light gets in, no light gets out either.”

  Right.

  Something crashed. “That sounded like a lamp.” I turned the lock and using the wall as a shield, swung open the door, my weapon braced between my hands. “Freeze!”

  The intruder, his back to me, set the lamp—minus its mangled shade—back on the table.

  Nate dropped to one knee, his body partially shielded by the wall on the opposite side of the opening, and raised his gun. “She said ‘freeze.’”

  The intruder raised his hands. “Okay, okay, take it easy.”

  My breath hitched at the famili
ar voice. “Tanner?” How’d I not recognize that dark head of hair and those broad shoulders on sight?

  Because he’s supposed to be in St. Louis, that’s why. I holstered my gun and grinned as he slowly turned around, his hands still raised in surrender. “Your breaking-in skills could use some practice,” I teased.

  “Yeah, well, it’s not as bad as the time you fell in the water in front of those Russian mobsters.”

  “That was your fault!”

  Tanner shrugged, a grin tugging at his lips, although he still hadn’t lowered his hands.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “You mind calling off Dudley Do-Right there?” Tanner chucked his chin in Nate’s direction. “So we can have this conversation without a gun pointed at my head.”

  I glanced at Nate, who hesitated another second or two, looking as if he’d rather shoot him.

  9

  “I can’t believe you didn’t warn me Tanner was coming,” I whispered to Aunt Martha as we set out plates and napkins for dinner. After Nate finally holstered his weapon, I’d managed to convince him to finish in the darkroom without me so I could figure out why Tanner was here. But two hours later, I still wasn’t sure of the answer.

  “I did. Your phone went to voice mail,” she hissed into my ear as we returned to the kitchen.

  Oops. I’d forgotten I’d turned it off so the light wouldn’t corrupt the photo development.

  “Trust me,” Aunt Martha went on, “I know exactly how you feel.”

  Of course she did. She’d been enjoying a perfectly pleasant day renewing acquaintances with Winston when Carmen steamed into port.

  Mom stopped stirring the lemonade she was making at the kitchen sink and let out a contented sigh. “It’s so romantic, to think you have not one but two handsome young men fly across the country to come to your aid.”

  “Tanner came because you begged him to.” I’d gotten that much out of him. It explained why Mom had been so unenthusiastic about Nate’s presence. I waited for her to deny it.

  She didn’t, and my heart inexplicably dipped.

  Okay, not so inexplicably. A silly part of me had fantasized Tanner fabricated the fictitious summons to save face. After all, Nate had beaten him here. I muffled a groan. “Mom, with all that’s happened, I’m not exactly thinking romantic thoughts.”