by Kylie Logan
When I first moved here, I had thought it was because after Friday and Saturday nights, all the tourists were partied out and hiding their heads under their pillows until long after the sun was up and they decided they had no choice but to get up, get out, and be human again.
The longer I live on the island, though, the more I learn that it’s more than just that. Sure, that Sunday morning, like every Sunday morning, the partiers were recovering, and that definitely explains why the downtown sidewalks that teemed the night before were empty now and why the streets, packed with golf carts just a few short hours before, were deserted.
But that doesn’t explain the way the light always looks a little softer on Sundays, or why that one day a week I always want to breathe a little deeper and walk a little slower. The tempo of island life ratchets back, at least until the brunch crowd starts in on their pitchers of Bloody Marys. The sound of the bells from Mother of Sorrow Church ride the air. And early—as early as Hank and I made our way to Vivien’s in his squad car—there were lots of gulls squawking overhead, and, when he stopped the car to let a cat cross the road, I heard the gentle sounds of lake waves licking the rocky shore.
My house is near the narrow point on the island just outside of downtown, more on the eastern edge of South Bass than the west, and definitely more north than south. Vivien’s place, Hank explained since I’d never been there, was off in the other direction, closer to Tara and the ferry dock and to the retreat center where, a few months before, I’d worked with a group of nuns to solve not one, but two murders. Since Hank knew where we were going and this was official business, I rode shotgun and sat up, curious, when he pulled into a driveway shaded by maple trees and bordered by a lawn that was shaggy and had enough brown patches in it to make me think that, from the air, it might actually look like a crop circle.
“Not what I expected,” I commented, taking a look at the old stone farmhouse. It had two stories and a front porch that someone had made the unfortunate decision to close in. There were no flowers planted in the beds, and the one bird feeder that hung from a metal shepherd’s crook from the nearest tree was empty.
When we made our way up to the front door, Hank gave me a sidelong glance. “You were expecting . . .”
“Showy, I guess. Flamboyant. You know, like Vivien. Fountains. Maybe a pond with swans in it and water lilies, too. This place seems . . .” I climbed the stone steps. “Too solid. Too homey. Where are the pink roses climbing a trellis? And the white picket fence?”
Hank grunted. “Vivien was not the white picket fence type, and you know it. Besides, you haven’t seen the inside of the house yet.” He stuck a key in the lock of the front door and turned the handle. “She saved all the really outrageous stuff for—”
The rest of what Hank had to say was lost in his mumble of annoyance when the door slammed into something on the floor of the built-in porch and refused to move another inch.
“Son of a gun. Something must have fallen. There was nothing on the floor yesterday when I was here.” He gave the door a no-nonsense push and once again I was reminded that there is only so long anyone—or anything—can resist Hank. Whatever was behind the door got pushed aside and the door opened enough for us to slip inside.
“Oh.” The comment was mine, though it could just as well have come from Hank. Fists on hips and eyes narrowed, he glanced around the porch. There was a glass-topped table against the wall, a couple of chairs near it. The rest of the porch was covered with debris.
Archives boxes like the one on the floor that had made it hard to open the door were open and dumped and left on their sides.
Books with pages torn out were scattered around.
There were magazines everywhere, or at least what was left of them, their glossy pictures ripped to shreds.
“What the—” Hank stalked through the door and into the main part of the house, and I followed along. Apparently he saw more of the same in there. At least that would explain his grumbling. My own attention was diverted for a moment.
Just like my own heartbeat started a sudden clatter inside my ribs.
But then, it’s not like anyone could blame me.
Not when I saw the tiniest scrap of fabric that clung to the door frame between the porch and the living room.
It was white and gauzy, and I might not have noticed it at all except for the way the morning sun crawled through the windows on the porch and put it in the spotlight.
Looking back on the moment, I’d like to think that I at least considered the ethical implications of what I knew I was about to do. Truth is, I acted on impulse and impulse alone, and snatched the teensy piece of fabric away from where it was snagged without even thinking about it. I tucked it in my pocket and by the time Hank looked over his shoulder at me, I had already wiped any trace of guilt from my expression. To make sure it stayed away, I looked beyond him and to a living room that was just as much of a mess as the porch was.
The floral-print couch in shades of ecru, baby blue, and mauve that matched the color of the paint on the walls was overturned. The bookshelves, pretty little matching ones on either side of the painted-white fireplace, had been emptied. While Hank took it all in with the eye of a trained professional, I ducked around him and into the dining room with its Louis XIV–inspired white and gold table, chairs, and sideboard. That room was just as much of a mess as every other part of the house we’d seen—with the addition of broken dishes that looked like they’d been scooped off the shelves of the china cabinets built in on either side of the window seat and left to break wherever they landed.
Before I could even begin to take it all in, Hank had his phone out and was calling the station and asking for someone there to get ahold of the state bureau of criminal investigation so they could come by and examine the scene. By the time he had ended the call, his breaths were coming in short, heavy gasps that reminded me of the sound of a teakettle about to hit a boil.
“It wasn’t like this yesterday when I was here,” Hank rumbled. “Someone got into the house after I left.”
I fingered the piece of fabric in my pocket, and even though I knew it was impossible, I thought about Hank, and X-ray vision, and a cop seeing right through my pocket—and the rush of guilt I suddenly felt for tampering with a crime scene.
I fought to look casual when I pulled my hand out of my pocket and said, “It wasn’t someone who cared what kind of mess he left behind,” and yes, I wondered if that someone could have been Chandra. I pictured her in her white, gauzy outfit, and my stomach soured.
As I reminded myself that plenty of people wore white in the summer, I peeked into the kitchen with retro fifties charm. Pink fridge, pink stove, funky gray Formica table. Not my style, but it actually would have been cute if not for more broken dishes and a pantry that had been emptied. When a five-pound sack of flour had hit the floor, it split, and there was a coating of white over a good portion of the black-and-white ceramic-tile floor.
“Footprints.” I pointed, though I knew I didn’t have to. Hank would never miss anything as obvious as that. “Man’s shoes, I think. They look big enough.” And not anything like the sandals Chandra usually wore, I told myself.
Hank muttered, nodded, then muttered some more when he bent closer for a better look. “They’re too smudged to make out much of anything, but we’ll see what the crime scene team has to say.” He stood and sent a laser look around the kitchen. “See anything else?”
If spilled packages of crackers, a trampled loaf of bread, and a silverware drawer pulled out and the silverware scattered on the floor meant anything, I saw plenty. But not plenty that helped us figure out what happened, to the house or to Vivien. And nothing else—thank goodness—that pointed in Chandra’s direction.
I shook away the thought. “You think word went out that Vivien was dead and the house was empty and someone took the time to come in here and burglarize it?” I asked
Hank.
“Sure as heck looks that way. The murder has been the talk of the island and the locals all know where Vivien lived. Wouldn’t be that hard for tourists to find out, either. Like I said, talk of the island.” His forehead puckered. “Unless it was just some stupid thrill seekers. I don’t understand this kind of stupidity or this kind of destruction. If it was someone who came to burglarize the house, why mess things up? And if it was kids just looking for some jollies . . .” Kicking his way through the Cheerios on the floor, he made a noise from deep in his throat and I couldn’t help but pity those kids if Hank ever got ahold of them. Back in the dining room, he dodged a porcelain umbrella stand painted with pink and white mums that sat on its side and the peacock feathers that had spilled out of it, and he headed for the stairway.
I stood for a moment longer in the doorway between the dining room and the living room.
“What?” Already on the stairs, Hank turned to me. “What do you see?”
What I saw was a chair that had been knocked on its side and pushed up against the fireplace behind the couch. The seat of it was too low to the floor and the back too pitched to look really comfortable.
It was turquoise.
“The chair.” I knew better than to touch anything—well, almost anything—before the crime scene techs arrived, so I just pointed. “Zane Donahue has one exactly like it in his house.”
“Yeah, well, I guess even though Vivien and Zane hated each other, they did have one thing in common after all.” It isn’t often Hank laughs, and the sound reminded me of chains moving over a metal grate. “They both had lousy taste in furniture!”
He was right, and I laughed, too, and followed him up the stairs.
There were four nice-size rooms on the second floor, and though each of them was a mess—just like the rooms downstairs—there was no mistaking which of them was Vivien’s bedroom. The plain room with the twin bed with the nondescript quilt that had been ripped off it and was lying on the floor—guest room. The one with the treadmill and the stair-climber knocked over on its side—exercise room. The one filled with racks of clothing—well, I guess that was her personal wardrobe room, and every piece of clothing in it had been ripped from its hanger and cast aside.
But the one with the vivid pink walls, a canopy bed draped with lace, and the white wall-to-wall shag carpeting . . . Oh yes, we were in Vivien’s inner sanctum.
For the record, it was as an even bigger mess than the other rooms in the house. Drawers had been pulled out; clothing was spilled. There was a vanity against the far wall, and various and sundry bottles of wrinkle cream, eye makeup remover, and nail polish lay around it like colorful petals that had fallen from a flower.
“If there are any clues here, we’re not going to find them,” I told Hank. Yeah, as if he didn’t already know that.
“It’s crazy.” I got the feeling he would have sunk right down on the bed if not for the fact that the mattress was half off and the sheets and bedspread were stripped and laying in a heap. “Twenty-four hours. I’m telling you, Bea. I was here twenty-four hours ago. And I can’t say Vivien was the most careful housekeeper I’ve ever seen, but the place sure didn’t look like this.”
“I believe you.” Carefully, I made my way between a mound of skimpy underwear and a pile of slinky nightgowns. “If there was anything for us to find, someone got to it before us.”
“Maybe. All I’m saying is that if they were looking for something and found it, the whole place wouldn’t be turned upside down.”
“Unless they found the something they were looking for in the last place they looked.”
The single word he mumbled under his breath was all the reply I needed.
“So . . .” He glanced around. “I guess it’s pretty much a waste of time to try and see if we can find anything here that will help us.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” There was a small desk nearby with delicate legs and a small writing surface. Its drawers, too, had been pulled out and emptied. “We know someone’s looking for something.”
“Agreed,” Hank said, “because I’m thinking if this was done by kids, they wouldn’t have been so thorough. Everything’s been touched. Everything’s been gone through, and—”
“We’re here, Chief!”
From downstairs, someone called out from the front door and Hank got up and walked out of the room. “Going to have a couple officers stay here,” he told me on his way down the steps. “Until the crime scene unit shows up.”
As long as he was out of the room, I took the chance, tugged the sleeve of my long-sleeved gray T-shirt over my hand, and poked through some of the detritus on the floor. Clothing, costume jewelry, more makeup than I’d owned in my entire lifetime. It was all pretty unremarkable, and none of it told me what anyone might have been looking for.
Only—
A thought hit and I hurried downstairs to find Hank giving instructions to the two fresh-faced cops who’d arrived to watch the property. I waited until he was done, then closed in on him.
“Did you check out Vivien’s office yesterday?” I asked him.
“Yeah, I was there, but—” I knew exactly when he thought what I was thinking, because he barked out to the two officers, “Stay here and don’t move a muscle. Ms. Cartwright and I are going downtown.”
• • •
It took a while for this New Yorker to get used to the fact that what everyone on the island refers to as downtown is, in reality, simply a small patch of land with a marina on one side of it and Perry’s Victory and International Peace Memorial on the other. Oliver Hazard Perry of “We have met the enemy and they are ours” fame won the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812 not far from the shores of South Bass. Downtown Put-in-Bay is also where most of the restaurants and bars are located, and they bring people to the island by the thousands. When we rolled through, there was a little more activity than there had been on our way to Vivien’s, and Hank slowed just past the historic hotel and turned down a side street not far from Estelle’s where residential houses were mixed with properties that had turned commercial.
Vivien’s office was one of those.
Once a home, the building was small and neat: a white house with green shutters and a sign in the front window that said Frisk Realty, Own a Piece of Paradise! We parked and went to the door, and while Hank unlocked it, I held my breath.
Untouched.
Once inside, both Hank and I looked around and breathed sighs of relief.
“It looks just like it looked yesterday,” he said. What had once been the living room of the house served as the office, and there was a desk over near the fireplace that had a nameplate on it. Vivien Frisk, it said in loopy gold lettering. There was a stack of manila file folders on the desk, all neat and tidy.
The other desk, closer to the front door, was completely naked. No nameplate. No folders. Not a scrap of paper.
It was no secret why. At least no secret to those of us who lived on the island.
Vivien went through receptionists like a buzz saw went through tree limbs. And with pretty much the same results. The latest in a long line of come-and-go assistants was a woman name Grace Monroe, who, from what I’d heard through the grapevine, lasted for exactly three weeks and six minutes—far longer than most. These days, Grace spent most of her time bellied up to the nearest bar, drowning a ferocious case of Post Vivien Stress Disorder in tall, frosty glasses of Long Island Iced Tea.
“There’s nothing upstairs but storage,” Hank said. “But I’ll check up there, anyway.” While he did, I peeked into the kitchen. There was a coffeemaker on the counter, right where it belonged. Boxes of printer paper, paper clips, pens, and other office supplies nearby hadn’t been touched.
So whatever someone was looking for, they’d looked for it only at Vivien’s home.
I was just about to mention this to Hank when he got back d
ownstairs but his phone rang, and he answered, mumbled a curse, and headed for the door.
“Trouble over at the coffee shop.” He held up a hand when I made to follow him. “Nothing serious but I’ve got to handle it. I’ll pick you up in a couple minutes and you can . . .” He glanced around the office. “Take a look around. See what you see.”
I agreed, and once the Hank’s cruiser pulled away, I sat down behind Vivien’s desk.
A dead woman’s desk.
I shook off the little shiver that cascaded over my shoulders and tickled up my neck and, one by one, opened the desk drawers. There was nothing more remarkable than pencils and papers and standard real estate contracts in any of them, and nothing more interesting than a stack of pictures of homes currently for sale on South Bass and nearby Middle Bass, North Bass, and Kelleys Islands, along with lists of vital statistics like square footage, prices, and tax rates.
Done with the drawers, I glanced through the files on top of the desk.
“Not Vivien’s,” I told myself after a quick look. Estelle’s old files.
It made perfect sense. Vivien had been charged with cleaning out and selling off the contents of Estelle’s home, and Estelle had an office there. No doubt Vivien had brought the files here for storage. Her lack of administrative help—and now, of course, her murder—had prevented her from getting the files put away.
Curious, I flicked through and saw that each of the files was dated within the last three years and each was for a property for which Estelle had handled the sale.
Levi’s Bar was among them.
Okay, sure, it had nothing to do with the case. And everything to do with personal curiosity. I slid the other files aside, spread out Levi’s on the desk in front of me, and, one by one, went through the papers in it.
There was a picture of the bar with a “For Sale” sign in the front window, and more pictures of the inside taken from every angle—the long bar that ran the length of the first floor, the pool tables, the restrooms. There were photos of the apartment upstairs, and they’d obviously been taken before Levi moved in and did some major renovation. These days the apartment was comfortable and pleasant, sleek and decorated in a no-nonsense, manly sort of way, but back in the day . . .