Gone with the Twins

by Kylie Logan

“I’ve got to go,” I told Hank and Levi, though I think they probably could’ve guessed that, since I was already on my way out of the room. “That was my security company. There’s been a break-in at the B and B!”

  6

  It’s amazing how fast lights and sirens cut through a crowd, even on a Friday evening on an island that’s known for partying.

  Not that it was my idea to head out in Hank’s squad car. I was all set to hoof it back to the B and B but he insisted, pointing out that the department would have to respond to the call anyway, and since we were already together, it just made sense. He left a uniformed officer in charge at Estelle’s and before I had a chance to voice an opinion (I had a feeling Hank didn’t want to hear it), Levi hopped into the car, too.

  “I’ll take the front,” Hank told Levi the moment we’d skidded to a stop in the driveway. “You go around the back.”

  “And me?” I asked, but it was already too late. Moving faster than any guy his age should have been able to, Hank was already on the front porch and Levi had sprinted around to the back of the house.

  I can move pretty fast, too, but really, there didn’t seem to be much point. Instead of trying to compete with either of them, I did my best to control the queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach that had erupted the moment I’d gotten the call.

  A break-in.

  My mouth went dry and my heart battered my ribs.

  Standing out on the walk, I looked over the Victorian monstrosity of a house, with its teal paint accented with purple and terra-cotta and the distinctive brick chimney that hugged its outside all the way from the ground level to where it towered over the roof. I’d lived there for just about eighteen months, and when I’d bought it, all I was looking for was a place to hang my hat and hide out from the world. At the time I started searching for a home far, far away from New York, the location didn’t matter as much as it being isolated did. The house itself didn’t matter, either, except that I knew I wanted a place that was big enough to be an inn and provide this way-too-famous-for-comfort author a little cover and a whole lot of peace and quiet.

  I hadn’t found either.

  I mean, not if I counted the number of murders I’d been involved with since I’d come to the island.

  What I had found, though, was a home.

  The realization hit like a physical thing, somewhere right between my heart and my stomach, and I pressed my hands to the spot and whispered a prayer that everything was all right inside the house.

  While I was at it and anxious to quiet the sickness inside me, I had a look around.

  No suspicious cars in the area.

  No activity in the tiny park overlooking the lake across the street.

  No footprints on the slate walk that led up to the front porch, but then, that would have been too easy. It had been a dry late spring, so I really didn’t expect to see any.

  In fact, the only sign of life there in my little corner of South Bass was the flick of the beaded curtain on one of the windows of Chandra’s house next door.

  I wasn’t the least bit surprised. I knew better than to think she’d miss something as exciting as a police car with lights flashing in my driveway.

  I joined Hank at the front door.

  “They didn’t attempt to get in this way,” he said.

  “Then it had to be the back door.” By the time I had decided this, Levi was already on his way around to the front of the house.

  “They tried back there,” he called out and poked his thumb over his shoulder toward the backyard. “The door-frame is scratched and someone smashed one of the glass panels in the door. That’s when the alarm went off, and it must have scared them away. I don’t think they got in.”

  There was only one way to find out.

  While Hank went around back and called the station to have a cop come over and dust for prints, I punched in my security code and opened the front door.

  “I’ll go in first.” Don’t ask me how he got up the front steps so quickly, but Levi put out a stiff arm to stop me.

  “Really?” I stepped back, my weight against one foot. “You said it yourself—he didn’t get inside.”

  “I said it didn’t look like anyone got inside.” Because I had no choice, I had to wait until he stepped into the entryway before I could follow him.

  Back when I purchased the property, it was what Estelle Gregario had described as “one holy heck of a mess.” She was absolutely right. Four thousand square feet on the first two floors alone, and over the years, the size of the home and the cost of maintenance had overwhelmed each of its previous owners. One by one, they had finally just stopped trying, and by the time it was up for sale again and Estelle showed me the house, the neglect more than showed. Peeling paint, pitted floors, holes in the walls. The electricity had needed a complete overhaul. The plumbing had to be totally replaced. Decorating—one aspect of moving that I’d always enjoyed—was the least of my worries, not when I had to think about weight-bearing walls, a new slate roof, and the army of island critters who had decided that even a crumbling house beat living out in the wild.

  Fortunately, thanks to all those bestsellers and movies and, yes, the TV show (residuals are a wonderful thing), I didn’t just have deep pockets—I had endless resources, and the good taste to pull off a miracle. These days, Bea & Bees shone, baseboards to ceilings, front door to back.

  The stairway that led up to the six suites of rooms I rented to island visitors was directly opposite the front door. Every step was spotless. The banister gleamed. The parlor was on my right and I peered inside—with its leather furniture and the Oriental carpet in shades of tobacco and red and green, it was perfect. The hardwood floor of the hallway in front of us that led to the kitchen reflected the soft glow of the overhead lights.

  The antique tall case clock behind me ticked to a steady beat.

  Not so my still-racing heart.

  “It’s pretty quiet.” Yeah, Levi already knew that, but I’d learned early on in investigating murders that it never hurts to point out the obvious when my stomach’s in knots and I’m finding it hard to pull in my next breath. “Nobody’s here.”

  “We don’t know that. Not for sure.” He moved down the hallway. “I’m going to take a look around, and I don’t suppose there’s any point in telling you to go back outside.” He knew better than to wait for my answer. “Just stick close, okay?”

  I bit my tongue. Sticking way too close to Levi was what had caused all my problems in the first place.

  Rather than remind him—and myself—I dutifully followed him when he carefully walked through the entire first floor, including my private suite off the kitchen. I had a small sitting room there, a bathroom, my bedroom. The last time we’d been in there together . . .

  Rather than think about it, I forced myself to concentrate on Levi opening closet doors and looking under the bed.

  There was no sign that anyone had been there, and none of the mess I was sure there would have been if someone had ransacked the house.

  “Anything missing?” he asked.

  I glanced around my bedroom. A few months earlier, I would have been tempted to give him a sultry smile, motion toward the bed, and say, “Yeah. You, me. Over there.” I kept my mouth shut. The opportunity for that kind of easy banter had passed us by, and after all this time, I was surprised the realization was still so painful.

  I cleared the thought away with a cough and opened dresser drawers and my jewelry box. I’d never been flashy when it came to jewelry, but my great-grandmother’s pearls were one of my prized possessions. They were right where they were supposed to be.

  “Nothing,” I told him. “Everything’s fine.”

  “We’re still not taking any chances.” He walked out of my suite and instructed me to lock the door behind me, and we did the same thing in the rooms upstairs. Levi checked out everythi
ng, even the attic, though the door to Suite 6 that led to the attic was locked.

  By the time we dragged back downstairs, I felt like a wet rag that had been wrung out and tossed aside. I leaned against the black granite breakfast bar in the kitchen.

  “Thank goodness no one got in,” I said.

  To which Levi responded, “We still haven’t checked out the basement.”

  I let him handle that on his own and made coffee while he did, watching with more than a little interest as Hank and a cop I knew as Officer Jenkins worked their forensic magic on my back door.

  “Nothing.” Levi tramped back upstairs and into the kitchen, and when I waved toward the coffee mugs on the counter, he grabbed two, filled them both, and handed one to me.

  Over the rim of his cup, he watched me cradle my mug in two hands. “You okay?”

  “I’m . . .” I would have liked nothing better than to slough off the whole thing, but then I’d have to deny the rat-a-tat going on inside my rib cage. “Why would anyone want to break in?” I asked him and myself.

  His shrug said it all. “Nobody home, quick in and out. Grab anything you can to sell or pawn. That’s pretty much how these folks think. Except . . .” He’d been about to take a sip of coffee, and he paused, the mug halfway to his mouth. “A B and B isn’t the best target, is it? There are usually people coming and going, especially on a summer evening. And you never know who might be hanging around, upstairs in a room or out in the garden. Seems pretty nervy.”

  “Unless everyone on earth knows I don’t have any customers.” I didn’t mean to sigh. It was a sign of weakness, and it was unworthy of me, too, but I just couldn’t help myself.

  “Hey!” He put down the mug and lifted a hand, and I had a feeling he would have pulled me into a hug if I hadn’t warned him off with a look. “Every business is cyclical. You know that. Right now, all the tourists are enamored with the Twins. But folks will come around. You’ll see. Tara isn’t nearly as nice as this place. Your house is more off the beaten path, and it’s way quieter.”

  “Apparently a little too quiet or someone wouldn’t have taken the chance of breaking in.” Since my words were so sour, I added sweetener to my coffee and stirred. “Do you suppose they’ll try again?”

  “Hey, none of that talk.” Levi refilled his coffee mug and, watching him, I realized I hadn’t even tasted mine yet. I sipped.

  Halfway back to the breakfast bar, he stopped. “If you’re worried, I could stay here tonight,” he said, and added instantly, “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know what you meant.” I slid onto one of the high stools in front of the bar. “I can take care of myself.”

  “You’ve made that eminently clear.”

  I took a drink of coffee. “Is that a compliment?” I asked him. “Or a criticism?”

  He had the nerve to offer me one of those grins that sizzled along my skin like heat lightning. “A little of both, I guess.” He set down his coffee cup. “You know, the thing with Vivien . . .”

  I waved away whatever he was going say. “I know. It was just coffee. And dinner. Really, it doesn’t matter. I get it.”

  “Back at Estelle’s, you didn’t act like you got it.”

  “I was surprised, that’s all.” Rather than take the chance that he’d figure out I was lying, I went to the fridge and grabbed a jar of salsa, and on my way back, I took a bag of tortilla chips out of the cupboard. “I don’t know about you”—I dumped the salsa into a bowl—“but I haven’t eaten and it’s late and I’m hungry—and really?” There is only so much aplomb a girl can fake. I plunked the empty jar on the counter top at the same time I sent a laser look in Levi’s direction. “How could you be fooled by a woman like Vivien?”

  “I wasn’t fooled. It’s not like I was head over heels in love with her or anything. I was just looking for something to do. You know, some way to pass an evening in a pleasant way. Somebody to talk to.”

  “You own a bar. You’ve got hundreds of people to talk to.”

  “You know what I mean. And I bet I’m not the only one. I bet you’ve had a couple of dates since . . .”

  Since what, he didn’t have to say, but in case he had any ideas about whether he should, I instantly lifted my chin. “I have not,” I told him. “Not one. And even if I had, it wouldn’t have been with someone whose reputation around the island stinks.”

  “That’s for sure.” He had the audacity to grin. “You picked me, didn’t you?”

  I plunged a chip in salsa, popped it into my mouth, and crunched. “So, did you have a good time?” I asked Levi.

  “You mean when I went out with Vivien? I told you. Not especially. She was kind of annoying, yeah, but that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was . . . oh heck, Bea!” He slammed his coffee mug on the counter, and ceramic meeting granite caused a short, sharp ring that reverberated through my sternum. “The worst part was that no matter what she said or what she did or how charming and funny she tried to be, I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

  I am not often at a loss for words, and even when I am, I can usually cover pretty quickly. Still, I froze, a chip almost to my mouth, and salsa dripping on the kitchen counter was pretty much a giveaway.

  I guess it was a good thing that I was saved when my front door burst open and Chandra zipped down the hallway. “Hank’s in the driveway,” she called out as if I didn’t know. “What’s going on, Bea? What’s wrong?”

  At that particular moment, what was going on and what was wrong had less to do with Hank, the break-in, or even the dead body back at Estelle’s than it did with me and Levi, eyes locked over that bowl of salsa on the counter, at a loss for words and grappling with wayward emotions.

  Levi recovered first, and, looking more than a little relieved at the interruption, he turned to Chandra when she came into the kitchen. “Somebody tried to break in.”

  Chandra was dressed in a white gauzy top and white capris, and she blanched to the same pale shade as her ensemble. “Break in?” She caught sight of Hank and Officer Jenkins at the back door and her top lip curled like she’d bitten into a lemon. “You mean here? A break-in here?”

  “They didn’t get in,” I told her and poured her a cup of coffee. “I guess they tried, but Levi looked all around. There’s no sign that anyone got inside.”

  Chandra pressed a hand to her heart. “Thank goodness! We don’t need that kind of bad news on the island, do we? Not at the start of summer when the tourists are flocking in and things are going so well.”

  Only things weren’t going all that well.

  I told Chandra about Vivien Frisk and waited to see her reaction.

  One second. Two seconds. Three.

  I knew she’d heard me because Chandra’s plucked eyebrows sank over her eyes. But she didn’t say a thing. In fact, all she did was stare straight ahead into space.

  “Chandra?” After I figured I’d waited long enough, I closed in on her, inserting myself into her line of vision just in case she’d forgotten I was there. “Are you all right? You heard me, right? You heard me say that Vivien is—”

  “Dead.” The single word oozed out of Chandra like the whispered Amen at the end of a prayer, and I couldn’t help myself; I wondered whether she was giving the dead the reverence that is their due—or thanking her lucky stars that a long-held wish had come true.

  Since I didn’t like the second possibility, I concentrated on the first, and on the gravity of the situation. “Hank says he’s going to want to talk to you,” I told her, and just as I’d hoped, the words snapped her back to reality.

  “I don’t see why.” She grabbed a chip and dipped it in the salsa, and her gaze flickered ever so briefly to where Hank stood on the other side of the back door. “Hank knows—”

  “A lot, apparently,” I said.

  The noise she made while she chewed was pretty much a ha
rrumph.

  Levi backstepped toward the door. “I’m going to see if Hank needs anything,” he said. “That way, you two can talk.”

  It was code for You can interrogate Chandra and ask if she killed Vivien and I knew it, but there didn’t seem to be much point in arguing. Once Levi was outside, I concentrated on my friend.

  “You don’t seem surprised,” I told Chandra.

  She wrinkled her nose. “Someone was bound to kill her sooner or later.”

  “Only I didn’t say she was killed. I just said she was dead.”

  I didn’t think it was possible for Chandra to get any more ashen. She proved me wrong. “That doesn’t mean anything,” she stammered. “It’s just what people say. You know, when someone gets . . . when someone dies who no one likes. It’s just the sort of thing people say about people they don’t like.”

  “And you didn’t like Vivien.”

  She took another chip out of the bowl, but she didn’t dip it in the salsa, and she didn’t eat it. She juggled the chip in nervous fingers. “Not one person on this island liked her.”

  “But you were the only one who was married to Bill Barone when Vivien came along.”

  Chandra tossed the chip down uneaten and brushed crumbs from her hands. “Hank’s got a big mouth.”

  “He came to the crime scene. And it’s his job to get all the facts straight.”

  She tried for a casual shrug, but it didn’t fool me. “Then you two know everything there is to know.”

  I put a hand on Chandra’s sleeve and felt her tremble at the touch. “I know you must have been very hurt when Bill left you for Vivien. And I can understand that. I also know that Bill was a lot older than Vivien and I suspect that had something to do with how she managed to dazzle him, right?”

  She stuck out her lower lip. “It was twenty years ago, Bea. Twenty years this month. And Bill, he was a middle-aged guy with a wife and a job and a mortgage, and we weren’t flashy, but we had a good life. Then she . . .” She cleared her throat. “Then Vivien came along, and I don’t know who she’d been talking to, but someone told her Bill was a real catch, that he had money.”