A Killing On The Water

by Blythe Baker

  The journal was chaotic, with extensive rants about everything from the price of prune juice to her employers’ inadequate household staff. She referred several times to a valuable secret but never went into detail about what the secret was. As I turned to the final pages, I could hear Page and Blaire getting ready for bed. I kept reading, hoping for some hint about what the secret might be. With little remaining hope, I turned to the final entry in the journal. Bearing Thursday’s date, the entry’s handwriting appeared more agitated than usual, making it difficult to read. With effort, I was able to decipher it:

  I still don’t understand why the Prestons insisted on bringing Jacob and me to this miserable island. They’re only renting a single car, which they will disappear with, leaving the boy and me stuck at the inn with no way of getting anywhere and nothing to do. Everyone knows a growing boy needs opportunities to go outside and explore, but they keep him locked up, as if that will protect him. The idiots!

  Still, my plan is in motion, and once I succeed, I’ll never have to raise another spoiled brat for his rich, lazy parents again. I know what’s going on, and all I need is the opportunity to confront Ray. He can’t refuse—not if he wants to save his marriage! One thing I know for certain: Ray Preston will pay to keep me silent!

  It was so obvious that I couldn’t believe the thought hadn’t occurred to me before. If Ms. Greenaway was going to blackmail someone, the most likely candidates were her wealthy employers. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that Ray was our number one suspect. Although it was hard to imagine he would hurt his own son, I hadn’t heard about anyone asking for a ransom, which would be expected if the boy had been kidnapped. If Ray had killed Ms. Greenaway and his son had witnessed it, he might have sent the boy somewhere safe off the island. That would prevent Jacob talking to the police. Maybe the Preston couple was just waiting to be permitted to return home, where the boy would be waiting.

  That would explain why the parents hadn’t joined the search efforts. What looked like grief could actually be knowledge that the search was unnecessary. It could also explain why the family had come to the island at all. Ray needed a way to free himself from Ms. Greenaway’s extortion, and the death had to look natural. Maybe his excursions with his wife were really opportunities to scout out possible murder locations.

  My worries about Jacob’s safety during the storm were greatly reduced now that there was a possibility his father was the killer. I drifted off easily, planning to confront Ray with the journal as soon as I could get him alone. Ms. Greenaway would have justice!

  Chapter 13

  The sky was clear when I woke early Monday morning. I smiled as I took Jasper for a long walk under the rising sun. His body wiggled enthusiastically as we walked and I knew he was enjoying the break from the rain as much as I was.

  I was glad to note that we got back before the Prestons came down for breakfast. I stuck Ms. Greenaway’s journal in a drawer to prepare for my confrontation, and then went out to check on the girls and Liam. He told me that he wasn’t sure how much he would be able to help with the search today because the crew was hoping to wrap up their filming. Erica, Allison, and the other girls in their group shot their biggest smiles in his direction, but he ignored them as he quickly finished his breakfast. He gave me a wave as he left the dining room.

  Soon after Liam left, the Prestons came down the stairs.

  “Ray!” I said in greeting. “Would you mind coming into the kitchen for a minute? Page picked up some new breakfast foods and I’d like you to check the ingredient list. There might be something suitable for your digestion.”

  “Don’t you people know by now what I can and can’t eat?” he asked, obviously aggravated.

  “We do,” I responded, “but I’d rather be safe than sorry. You’re going through enough that I don’t want to add digestive problems to your plate.”

  “Fine,” he said, making sure Elizabeth was comfortably seated before joining me. “I really don’t understand why this is so difficult for you,” he said as we walked. “Dairy, gluten, nuts, and spices. It’s not rocket science.”

  Page looked at me questioningly, as if wondering why I’d brought Ray into her kitchen. I pulled the journal out of the drawer and held it up triumphantly.

  Ray looked between Page and me in confusion. “Where is the new food?”

  I lowered my arm slightly, realizing the man probably had no idea that his nanny had kept a journal, let alone what it looked like or what it contained. Feeling foolish, I flipped the book open and found the last entry.

  “I found Ms. Greenaway’s journal,” I explained.

  “Oh?” he replied nervously. “And you read it?”

  “I did.” I waited.

  Finally, he said, “What did she write?”

  “That you have a little secret and that you would have to pay for her silence,” I said.

  Page gasped.

  Ray raised his hands and shook his head. “I know how this looks,” he said, “but I swear I didn’t kill her. She was trying to blackmail me, but I didn’t have to kill her to get her off my back.”

  Page and I just looked at him.

  “Okay, fine,” he said. “About a year ago, I had an affair with my office assistant. It only lasted a couple of months, but my assistant was Ms. Greenaway’s niece’s daughter’s roommate. The niece’s daughter pieced it all together when she found out the family Ms. Greenaway was working for was mine. She told Ms. Greenaway, who came to me demanding half a million dollars to keep quiet. Rather than paying up, I decided to confess to Elizabeth about the affair.”

  He took a long breath. “That’s why we came to Sunrise Island. I thought a romantic island getaway would soften the blow and it would show how much I regretted my actions. Then, together, Elizabeth and I could handle Ms. Greenaway.”

  I wondered in just what way he had planned to “handle” the blackmailing nanny, but I kept that question to myself.

  Instead, I asked, “Can your wife confirm all this?”

  “I haven’t told Elizabeth about any of it yet,” he said. “Things just kept happening to prevent it. First, she hated everything about the island. She was so miserable that I didn’t want to add to it. Then, the nanny died and Jacob went missing. I don’t know if she could take this news on top of everything else.”

  He sat on a stool, looking exhausted. Either he was genuinely distressed or he was a very good actor. I couldn’t decide which.

  He continued, “I didn’t kill Ms. Greenaway and I don’t know where my son is. Am I glad that I don’t have to worry about her blackmailing me anymore? Absolutely. But that doesn’t make me a murderer.”

  If I hoped to get further information out of him, it seemed wisest to pretend I believed his story, at least for the time being.

  “If you didn’t kill Ms. Greenaway, do you have any ideas about who did?” I asked.

  “Not really,” he said. “She rubbed most people the wrong way but I wouldn’t think anyone would get angry enough to kill her.”

  “Have you gotten any ransom notes or calls that you haven’t told anybody about?” I asked. “Any contact that would suggest somebody has taken Jacob?” It was a hard question to ask a distraught father, if that was really what Ray Preston was, but we needed to figure this case out sooner rather than later. Jacob’s life was on the line.

  “If I had gotten a ransom note, don’t you think I would have reported it to the police?” he asked sharply, reclaiming some of his usual unpleasant demeanor. “That’s why we’re staying here at the house, instead of going out looking. We keep hoping that someone will contact us because at least that would mean Jacob’s alive. But now it’s been almost forty-eight hours and I’m starting to think—” He bit off the words abruptly, as if unwilling to show pain in front of us, but he couldn’t hide the sheen of tears glinting in his eyes.

  I thought again that if he was faking his emotion, he was good at it.

  Page cleared her throat. I could t
ell by her sympathetic expression that she, at least, was buying the show.

  “I’ll make you some egg whites,” she told him. She took a bowl filled with cut-up pieces of fruit out of the refrigerator. “When you’re ready, you can take this out and join your wife.”

  I added, “If you remember anything else, will you let me know? I want to help.”

  His curt nod told me he hadn’t forgiven me for my prying questions.

  He took the bowl from Page’s hands and left the kitchen.

  “What do you think?” Page asked, cracking two eggs and separating out the yolks. “Do you believe him?”

  “I don’t know. He seemed sincere but he also had the most motive.” I sighed. “And if he didn’t do it, who did?”

  “Are you going to give the journal to Shep?” she asked.

  “Of course! I just wanted to read it first,” I said sheepishly.

  “What’s the next step?”

  “I guess I’ll go talk to Shep and see if he has any ideas. You know he’ll want to talk to the Prestons once he’s read the journal.”

  Page turned off the burner and slid Ray’s egg whites onto a plate. I stood to take the food out to him.

  When I got to the dining room, I saw that the college girls were gone, so I began collecting their dishes along with Liam’s. My work was interrupted by a crash from upstairs, followed by a shriek and loud laughter. I set the dishes down, apologizing to the Prestons as I went upstairs to make sure everything was all right.

  Erica and Allison were in Erica’s room, laughing as Allison tried to mark on Erica’s face with a purple permanent marker. Erica was fending Allison off with her legs and arms, her head twisting from side to side. I knocked on the open door, but they didn’t hear me over the shrieks and laughter.

  “Is everything okay in here?” I asked loudly.

  Both heads snapped toward me and the wrestling ended. A guilty silence descended.

  “I’m not trying to spoil anybody’s fun,” I said, “but I hope you’ll both be mindful that there’s a very concerned, stressed family downstairs.”

  “Of course,” Allison said. “Sorry.”

  I paused, thinking. The girls had been gone a lot this weekend, and I doubted they’d been helping in the search for Jacob. Wherever they’d been, there was no telling what useful bits of gossip they might’ve picked up around town. “How have you enjoyed your time on the island?” I asked.

  Erica shrugged. “Fine, except that the film crew won’t put us in the movie.”

  “What have you been doing to pass the time? I’ve been so busy, I don’t think I’ve talked to you much since Friday.” I smiled as I spoke, hoping to gain their trust and get them talking.

  “We mostly followed the film crew around,” Allison said with a shrug. “When they stopped filming to look for the lost boy, we hooked up with this guy with a boat.” She giggled. “He really likes to party!”

  “Sounds like fun,” I said with another fake smile.

  I tried to remember if I had been that shallow at their age. I was pretty sure I would never have been partying while a kid’s life was in danger and his parents were grieving right downstairs.

  “It was fun,” Erica agreed. “We watched Liam interviewing you for a little while Saturday morning, but it lasted so long we got bored. We came back here to change and headed to the beach.”

  “In the rain?” I asked.

  Erica shrugged. “It had let up and we thought it might be okay.”

  Allison continued, “When it didn’t clear up, we decided to find someplace to eat lunch, but that’s when we met up with Duncan.”

  She must have meant Duncan Donovan, a twenty-something with a reputation for taking attractive female tourists out in his boat to party.

  “Did you see Ms. Greenaway or Jacob when you came back to change?” I asked, realizing that the timing was probably right.

  “Yeah, she was knitting in the living room when we came in,” Allison said. “When we came upstairs, it sounded like the little boy was jumping on the bed.”

  “Did you see anything or talk to them?”

  “Why would we do that?” Erica asked. “The nanny was after us from the moment she arrived. And the little kid thought he could do whatever he wanted just because his parents were rich. I’m sorry something happened to them, but we came here to have fun, not to be lectured.” She gave me a pointed look.

  I took it as my cue to leave. Maybe I was being more obvious than I thought.

  “I have to get back to work, but I hope you enjoy the rest of your day,” I said.

  I pulled the door shut and returned to the dining room, passing Ray and Elizabeth on their way back upstairs. Mason called while I was cleaning up, so I took the phone into the kitchen and filled him in on what had been happening and asked if he had any thoughts about the situation.

  He said, “Well, I hate to think that a father would harm his child, but it sounds like this Preston guy had the most motive to kill the nanny. Of course, although it’s hard to imagine someone as likeable as Ed Turner capable of murder, I guess he could’ve snapped under enough pressure—especially if this Greenaway woman had more on him than we know. She was prone to blackmail, after all.” Mason paused for a moment and then asked, “How do you always end up in the middle of these situations?” I could hear the smile in his voice as he teased me.

  “Just lucky, I guess,” I replied.

  “I miss you,” he said after another pause. “Do you think you might come spend a couple of days in Houston once all this settles down?”

  “It would have to be in the middle of the week, when we’re not so busy,” I said thoughtfully. “And naturally I’d have to wait until Shep clears me to leave the island.”

  “We’ll figure it out. It sounds like you’ve got too much on your plate to make a decision right now anyway,” he said, “but I wanted to plant the idea.”

  “Mission accomplished,” I said.

  “Have you been over to check on things at my place?” he asked.

  “Not yet. I forgot about it with everything that’s going on.” I sighed. “I’ll have time to get over there today. I need to track down Shep anyway to give him the nanny’s journal.”

  “I can’t believe you read it.”

  “It was important,” I pointed out. “I learned vital information because I read it.” I sighed, suddenly feeling overwhelmed with the situation. “You know Shep needs all the help he can get.”

  “You’ll figure it out,” Mason reassured me. “You always do.”

  “Thank you,” I said softly.

  “Of course.”

  I heard the heavy slam of a door in the background. “Piper, I have to go,” Mason said. “I’ve got someone here to see my progress on the mural.”

  “Ok, we’ll talk soon,” I said.

  “Be careful,” he warned me before ending the call.

  Chapter 14

  I went back out to the dining room to finish cleaning up. Depositing the dishes by the sink, I quickly wiped down the tables and ran upstairs to clean the rooms. Since the Prestons, Erica, and Allison were in their rooms, I could only take care of Liam’s space and the rooms of the other college-age girls, who seemed to have gone out to the beach. I checked on Mrs. Harris, who was transferring her marbles one at a time into a different jar, and then I ran downstairs to leave a note for Blaire to get the other rooms later in the day. Finally free, I grabbed the journal and Jasper and drove into town.

  Jasper yawned noisily when I parked in front of the police station. He took his time stretching, finally deigning to join me in the parking lot. He panted happily as we walked in the door and planted his rump on my foot while we waited for Shep. After a few minutes, Shep stuck his head out of his office and hollered for me to come back.

  Anderson and Marcuzzi were sitting in folding chairs at either end of Shep’s desk. Shep sank into his chair, nodding at the empty seat across from him. I sat, ignoring the disapproving look Marcuzzi was giving Jasp
er, and handed the journal across the desk.

  “What’s this?” Shep asked, flipping the journal to the first page.

  “Ms. Greenaway’s journal,” I answered. “I went in to replace the bedclothes your people took from the blue room, and I found it shoved under the mattress.”

  “Was this before or after we boxed everything up?” Shep asked wryly.

  I gave him a look. “After, of course.”

  “You’ve read it, I assume?”

  I didn’t dignify that with a response.

  “Would you like to give us an overview of its contents?” he asked.

  “It’s mostly just Ms. Greenaway complaining,” I said. “But the bit that stood out to me was right at the end.”

  He flipped to the last entry. Skimming it, he raised his eyebrows when he reached the final sentence, which he read aloud: “Ray Preston will pay to keep me silent!” He glanced up at me. “What did Ray Preston say when you talked to him?”

  “How do you know I talked to him?” I began. “Maybe I—” I stopped when he gave me his “I know you better than that” look. “Fine,” I said. “Ray Preston had an affair with his office assistant a year ago. Ms. Greenaway found out when her niece’s—well, that part isn’t really important. What matters is that she found out and tried to blackmail him. He decided to tell his wife about the affair so that Ms. Greenaway didn’t have any leverage over him. He swears he had nothing to do with her death.”

  “Do you believe him?” Anderson asked.

  “I’m…not sure,” I said slowly. “He seemed believable, but certainly had serious motive. It makes Ms. Greenaway’s argument with Ed Turner at the post office seem like nothing. Ed was definitely upset, but probably not feeling as threatened as Ray Preston. But what I can’t figure is why either man would have hurt the boy, unless Jacob just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Of course, aside from Preston and Ed, it’s hard to think who else had strong motive for murder.”