Flipped Out

by Jennie Bentley

  I nodded. Shannon had essentially told me the same thing.

  “And then the accident happened,” Kate said, with a barely suppressed shiver. “It could have been so much worse, Avery. Either of them—both of them—could have died last night. Josh saved their lives. And I think they both realize it. That they could have lost each other, in a much more permanent way.”

  “So you’re OK with it? With them?”

  “They haven’t asked me,” Kate said, with a shrug. “I’m not even sure they’ve talked about it. Mostly they just sit there and chitchat. They’ve played cards and watched TV and talked, but not about anything important. Just the things they usually talk about.”

  “You can tell that something’s different, can’t you?”

  I had been able to tell just in the minute or two I’d spent in the room with them both before I whisked Kate off for some air and a conversation. It was in the way they looked at each other. And I thought Kate was probably right: The fact that they’d almost lost one another permanently last night had been a shock and a wake-up call for both of them. Josh had decided to stop pretending, and Shannon . . . well, Shannon’s wake-up call might have happened earlier, when Josh went out with Fae, and last night’s accident simply brought the possibility of losing him home with even more of a vengeance.

  “They’ll be all right,” Kate said. And added, “I won’t be surprised if we end up with another wedding in the family within the next year.”

  I nodded. I wouldn’t be surprised, either.

  We went back into the room and spent thirty minutes chatting with Shannon and with Josh, who did not take the opportunity to get himself some fresh air while we were there. It seemed he’d rather be next to Shannon than anywhere else, and who could blame him? She looked at him with absolute adoration in her eyes, and that had to be a nice change.

  She didn’t look bad at all. A little pale, maybe, and with a big, white square of gauze on her forehead, but otherwise not bad. “Five stitches,” she told me when I asked what had happened to the gash on her head. “The doctor said it wasn’t too bad. Clean edges, easy to sew. I might end up with a scar, although I guess I can just wear bangs for the rest of my life.”

  “What about everything else?” I wanted to know. “Any other injuries?”

  Shannon shook her head. “Just the concussion. My head hurts when I don’t take pain pills, and I get dizzy when I try to get up. But it’ll go away.”

  “You were lucky.”

  She shook her head and reached out to take Josh’s hand. “It wasn’t luck. It was Josh. He saved my life.”

  “Does that make it mine now?” Josh wanted to know, grinning. He twined his fingers through hers. Shannon blushed.

  “That was sweet,” I said to Derek when we were back in the truck on our way toward home again.

  He grunted.

  I looked at him. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.”

  “It doesn’t sound like nothing.”

  He shrugged.

  “Seriously. What’s the matter? You’re happy for them, aren’t you?”

  “Ecstatic,” Derek said.

  “You don’t sound ecstatic.”

  He shot me a look. “They remind me of me and Melissa. Really young and crazy about each other, but with no clue about anything.”

  I shook my head. “It isn’t like you and Melissa. They’ve known each other for seven or eight years. Josh has probably been in love with her for six of those. It isn’t anywhere close to the same situation.”

  “Maybe not,” Derek admitted, “but just the way they’re looking at each other . . .”

  “It isn’t the same. Josh and Shannon will be fine. They know each other. She’s not going to decide, five years down the line, to divorce him because he decides he wants to change careers.”

  Derek opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, his phone rang. Instead of continuing the conversation with me, he pulled it out and looked at the display. “Speak of the devil.”

  “Who?”

  Derek answered the phone, and then quickly turned it to speaker in time for me to catch the last of Melissa’s statement. “. . . might be able to give me a ride home.”

  Speak of the devil. Right.

  “Wayne’s letting you go?” I said.

  There was a second’s pause, and then Melissa’s voice came back. “Avery?”

  “Derek put the phone on speaker,” I said. “He’s driving.”

  “I see.” Melissa sounded pissy about that. Or maybe it was just my imagination. She could have been upset about the situation in general and not the fact that she wanted Derek’s undivided attention and didn’t get it. “Apparently he doesn’t have enough evidence to charge me.”

  “That’s . . .” Lucky for Melissa, but too bad for Wayne.

  “I was wondering if Derek might swing by the police station and pick me up,” she said now, smoothly. “It wouldn’t be out of his way at all. After all, he lives just across the street from me.”

  As if I wasn’t already too aware of that.

  I opened my mouth to tell her what she could do with her apartment right across the street from Derek’s and with her need for a ride, but before I could, Derek spoke over me.

  “We’ll be there in ten minutes.” He shut the phone off.

  I turned to him. “Why did you do that?”

  He spared me a glance as he turned the nearest corner. “What?”

  “Why did you agree to go pick up your ex-wife from jail and take her home?” To her apartment right across the street from his?

  “She needed a ride?”

  Well, duh. “Why couldn’t she call someone else?”

  “Like who? She doesn’t have any family here. Her fiancé is dead. My family doesn’t want anything to do with her, and she’s not good at making friends. . . .”

  No kidding, I thought. Derek added, “She doesn’t have anyone else.”

  “That doesn’t mean you need to run to the rescue! She could have taken a cab, for God’s sake. Or asked Wayne for a ride. He would have given her one.”

  “Probably too prideful for that,” Derek said. “You would be, too, if the situation was reversed.”

  He might be right. Not that I’d ever find myself in the situation Melissa found herself in right now—God willing—but even if I did, it would still be different. I’d have no qualms about asking Wayne for a ride. We were friends. He’d probably offer, because he wouldn’t want me to find my way on my own. And the realization that Derek was right—Melissa might not have anyone else—did make me feel just a twinge of sympathy for her. It couldn’t be much fun being all alone in the world, or in Waterfield, surrounded by her ex-husband, his family, his new girlfriend, and a bunch of people who all thought she might have murdered her fiancé.

  And it would only take a few minutes. We’d drive her home and drop her off and that would be it. I sat back and prepared myself to be nice.

  Melissa was waiting outside the police station when we got there, still looking just as glamorous as the night before, in the same jeans but another shirt and sandals with high heels, with her makeup firmly in place and her hair sleek and moonlight pale. She had an overnight bag at her feet, so obviously Wayne had been courteous enough to let her pack a few necessities for her stay at the police station. Or perhaps she had barreled right over Brandon Thomas, if he’d been the one to pick her up, and had insisted he let her gather what she needed before he hauled her off to jail. Either way, she didn’t look anything like a released prisoner. She looked more like we were picking her up from an overnight trip to Boston.

  When Derek pulled the truck up to the stairs where she stood, she minced over to the cab and pulled the door open. “Hi, Avery.” She gave me a big, fake smile as she stowed the overnight bag at my feet. I scooted closer to Derek. She slid onto the seat next to me, and then spoke across me. “Hi, Derek. Thanks for coming to get me.”

  “Nice of Wayne to let you go,” I said.
<
br />   Melissa smiled back, insincerely. “I think he realized I couldn’t possibly have done this horrible thing, Avery. Tony and I were getting married. I adored him.”

  “Right,” I said. “I don’t suppose you know who inherits, do you? Seeing as he died before you guys tied the knot, and he had no other family.”

  Derek glanced at me.

  “I imagine I do,” Melissa said.

  “No kidding.”

  “Oh, no.” She shook her head. “He made a will. As soon as we decided we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together, we each made one in the other’s favor. Of course, I don’t have much to leave. The money from the sale of the house I shared with Ray went to buy the loft, and when Derek and I separated, I was making more money than he was.” She smiled at him in a way that did its best to exclude me.

  “So you inherit everything? The house on Cabot Street? The condo in Portland? The car? Whatever is in his bank accounts?”

  “I imagine so,” Melissa said.

  “And Wayne let you go anyway?”

  Derek shook his head, resigned, eyes on the road. We were entering downtown Waterfield, with its cars and thousands of tourists clogging every sidewalk. In another minute or two, we’d be on Main Street. And none too soon for me.

  “I was under the impression he had arrested someone else,” Melissa said, a tiny wrinkle between her perfect brows.

  “What gave you that idea?”

  She looked politely puzzled. “When I was told I could go, young Brandon Thomas said they were exploring other avenues. And when I questioned why Wayne couldn’t be bothered to release me himself, Brandon said Wayne was interviewing another suspect.”

  “I’m not sure they’re really suspects. . . .” I said, partly because I didn’t really want them to be, but more because I didn’t want to give up on the idea that Melissa might be guilty. Sure, killing Tony for the house on Cabot Street and the condo in Portland and whatever was in his bank account didn’t sound like something Melissa would do—not when she could just marry him and get it all anyway—but I was upset with her, and for that matter with Derek, and although I realized I was being somewhat ridiculous, I just couldn’t seem to let it go.

  “I’m just repeating what Brandon Thomas told me,” Melissa said sweetly.

  “Well, maybe Brandon shouldn’t have told you that! And just because they let you go now doesn’t mean they can’t come after you later, if things change, you know. Just because Wayne isn’t willing to press charges right now, since there are other people involved who look like they may have had motive and opportunity, too, doesn’t mean you’re not still a suspect!”

  “Avery,” Derek said.

  I ignored him. “You still could have killed Tony. The screwdriver has your fingerprints all over it, and if you inherit everything, that’s motive and means, and we both know you had opportunity, because you were there that night!”

  “Avery,” Derek said again.

  “So I wouldn’t feel too confident if I were you. Just because you’re out of jail right now doesn’t mean you won’t be back there tomorrow, or the next day.”

  “Avery!” Derek said.

  I turned to him. “What?”

  “Give it a rest.”

  I blinked.

  He added, “She didn’t kill Tony. I was married to her for five years, and if she didn’t kill me, she wouldn’t have killed him. OK?”

  I nodded, speechless. Melissa smiled, very much like a cat with a big bowl of cream. Derek drove on, seemingly unaware that he’d just taken his ex-wife’s side against me and that I wasn’t happy at all about that.

  As soon as he pulled the truck to a stop in the parking lot behind the hardware store and Melissa slid off the seat and grabbed her bag; I jumped out, too, without waiting for Derek to catch me.

  “I’m going home.”

  “Avery . . .”

  I shook my head. “Not in the mood.”

  “The mood for what?” Melissa inquired, sweetly.

  I rounded on her. “Stay out of this. It’s none of your business.”

  “Avery . . .” Derek tried again.

  I shook my head again. “Just leave me alone. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “But, Tink . . .”

  Going for the nickname was a super-low blow. Still, I walked away. I halfway expected him to follow me, but only halfway, so it didn’t come as a huge surprise when he didn’t. When I glanced back just as I rounded the corner onto Main Street, he was standing there watching me, a puzzled look on his face, as if he had no idea what he had said that bothered me.

  21

  I worked up quite a head of steam climbing the hill from downtown. Some of it was exertion—Waterfield is a steep little town, and it was the end of July and hot as Hades—but a lot of it was annoyance, too. How dare he take Melissa’s side? And in front of her, too! He had no right to treat me like that. And not only because he was my boyfriend and he was supposed to stick by me, especially in front of his ex-wife, but because I was right, dammit.

  All right, so maybe she hadn’t killed Tony. I didn’t really think she had, to be honest. Derek knew her better than me—the bastard—and he didn’t think she had, either. But she’d been there at around the time Tony was killed. She’d had reason to kill him—both for the money and because he might have been thinking of dumping her for Nina—and the bloody murder weapon had her fingerprints all over it. I wasn’t out of line for thinking—or even suggesting—that she wasn’t out of the woods yet. Fae and Wilson had less reason for killing Tony than Melissa did. Nina was right: She and Tony hadn’t been responsible for Aurora Jamison’s decision to drive under the influence. They weren’t the cause of her death. Sure, they probably felt culpable, and morally, maybe they were, at least partly, but it was her own choice. She chose to drink, to go home with Tony, and to try to drive to work in the middle of the night, tanked on whatever he had served her. And besides, it was twenty-plus years ago. If Fae and her uncle were harboring murderous intentions and were determined to kill the people responsible, why choose Tony instead of Nina, and why wait so long? Wilson had had access to Nina for years, and getting Aurora drunk and unable to work had been her idea in the first place. Fae had had access to Nina for at least a month or two. Yes, the two of them had probably been sending the letters, but letters are passiveaggressive. I’m sure they’d wanted Nina to suffer and to feel horrible about what she did, but they didn’t necessarily want her dead. Stabbing Tony with a screwdriver was active aggression: Someone wanted him out of the way and that someone had made sure he’d been dispatched. And I couldn’t get that someone to match up with Fae and Wilson.

  By the time I’d huffed down to the end of Bayberry Lane, where Aunt Inga’s house was, the T-shirt was sticking to my back, and the hair on my neck and around my face was damp and frizzy. Sticking the key in the lock, anticipating the coolness of the air-conditioning, Murphy’s Law kicked in and I had to twist the key back and forth several times before it would let me open the door and tumble into the foyer. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have wondered if we’d forgotten to lock up this morning. We had been in a bit of hurry, so it wouldn’t have been surprising.

  A lot of people in Waterfield leave their doors unlocked all the time. In New York City, such a thing wouldn’t have crossed my mind, but here, where everyone pretty much knew everyone else, it didn’t seem like that big a deal. I’d gotten into the habit of keeping everything locked up tight early on, though, back when I’d just moved to town, when someone desperately wanted me gone and wasn’t above sabotaging my house and trying to kill me to do it. I admit it, I did grab a heavy candlestick from the sideboard in the dining room and carried it around with me as I walked from room to room, making sure that I was alone and that nothing seemed to be missing or rigged to kill me.

  After five minutes of creeping around my house, from basement to attic and everywhere in between, I decided that everything seemed to be in order. Nothing was out of place, and there was no si
gn that anyone had been inside. Either we had forgotten to lock up this morning, or I’d temporarily lost my mind in the upset over Derek and Melissa, and I’d thought I’d had a problem with the front door when I had, in fact, just been twisting the key back and forth for no reason other than that my hands were shaking with anger. There was nothing wrong here. My laptop was on the desk in the parlor, my jewelry box was on the bureau in the bedroom, all my designer clothes—the ones I’d made myself—and my designer shoes—that I hadn’t—were in the closet where they belonged. The TV and DVD player were in the living room. There was no sea of broken dishes on the kitchen floor, the way it had been the time I walked in here and someone had broken all of Aunt Inga’s china in an effort to scare me off. All my replacement dishes were neatly stacked on the shelves behind the doors trimmed with Aunt Inga’s never-used wedding veil. Even the basement stairs were safe and sound. Everything seemed normal. I went to the fridge, removed some cold cuts and a roll, and began to put together a sandwich.

  It was then that I realized that something was indeed missing. The cats were gone. And whereas that wasn’t unusual for Jemmy and Inky—they came and went at will all day and night through the cat flap in the back door—Mischa hadn’t shown much inclination thus far to wander. After being on his own for a while before we found him, scrounging for food and warmth through the cold Maine winter, now that he had a place and a warm lap of his own, he tended to stick close to home. He certainly was diligent in protecting it, and his human, from intruders.

  Every once in a while he’d go outside to do his business, however, having never gotten used to a litter box. As I sat down at the kitchen table, with my sandwich and a DIY magazine, I expected to hear the sound of the cat door slapping at any moment.

  It didn’t, and after I had finished eating and had rinsed off the plate and glass and put them in the dishwasher, I decided that maybe I’d better go look for him. He’d only lived with me a few weeks, and he wasn’t used to Waterfield yet. On Rowanberry Island, he’d mostly hung out under the front porch and—as he got more comfortable with us—on the porch and sometimes inside the house while we worked. Here, he’d done the same. I hated the idea that he’d wandered off and couldn’t find his way home. Or that he’d gotten into something he couldn’t get out of. Like, he’d climbed a tree and couldn’t get down, or he’d wandered into Aunt Inga’s garden shed and couldn’t find his way out.