by London James
"Right. It reminded Seb of the cutout pieces on the threatening notes to you."
"But that wouldn't make any sense, because those notes came after he was dead," I say. "So, he couldn't have made them, unless he was planning some really elaborate suicide, American Beauty-style, which I highly doubt. That would still require him to have help, anyway."
"Which means…" Owen starts but doesn't seem to know where to go with the rest of the sentence. He stops, but I notice his eyes go to the window and his eyebrows knit together. There's a strange sound outside, but I don't pay much attention to it.
"I'm not sure what it means," I admit, taking another bite of my sandwich and swig of tea. "But it has to mean something."
Owen walks over to the window and looks out, moving one heavy curtain aside so he can lean and see more of the area around this section of the palace. His head tilts up, and his expression becomes confused.
"Avery, is there any reason we have helicopters coming to the island?" he asks.
"Uh no. Skylar and Sebastian are coming to bring me some stuff I asked for. But as far as I know they are borrowing a boat," I tell him.
"Yeah. Well there are two of them just kind of hovering around out over the water like enormous dragonflies getting ready to mate," he says.
"Oh, no," his voice falls.
"What? What's wrong? They didn't send like a helicopter brigade after me, did they? Is that a thing? Do they have helicopter cops?"
"I really have no idea. If they do, they probably don't routinely send them after somebody who hasn't even been formally charged with a crime. But that's not what's going on."
"Who is it then?" I ask.
"My parents."
My stomach drops so fast I worry it's going to split in two so it can make its way down my legs.
"Your... parents?" I ask. "Like the King and Queen?"
"Those would be them," Owen says.
"Of course, you have a helicopter pad," I say.
"Where else would we land the helicopter?"
"Do you have any idea how ridiculous you sound when you say things like that?" I ask.
He wraps his arms around my waist and pulls me in against him. His mouth settles over mine, and the touch of his tongue ignites my body. I'm ready to let him bend me over the desk when a realization shocks me away from him.
"What is it?" he asks. "What's wrong?"
"They're going to come in here," I say.
He laughs. "Yeah, that was probably the intention," he says. "If they're in the helicopter that means they were visiting somewhere fairly close by and probably decided to stop by for a visit."
"They know you're here?" I ask.
"I mentioned it. What's wrong?"
"Do you see what I'm wearing?" I hiss. "This is the King and Queen we're talking about, and I'm about to meet them in a sweat suit and socks."
"They aren't going to care. You aren't being presented to them."
I don't know if that makes me feel better or not, but I don't have much of a chance to think about it. My diagram is only partially folded up out of the way a few moments later when I can hear their footsteps coming down the hallway. There's far too many of them to only be the royals, so I know they've scooped up my wayward friends along the way.
When they appear at the door to the library, Seb is standing behind the King, his eyes locked on the back of his head and his mouth hanging partially open. He likely walked the entire way from the kitchen like that.
"Hello, Mother," Owen says, crossing the library to her and kissing her cheek. "Nice surprise. Hi, Dad."
"It does look like it's a surprise," the Queen says, looking around the library.
Her eyes don't stop on me, but the way they sweep over me is searing enough. That's when it occurs to me; I'm standing here holding a partial tuna sandwich and glass of tea.
So classy.
"I told you I was here," Owen says. "Isn't that why you came?"
Seb is still standing behind the King, and I walk around Owen to grab him by the wrist and yank him away. Skylar follows, and I lead them to the far corner of the room.
"Do you know who that is?" Seb whispers. "It's them."
"Yes. Owen's parents."
"Oh," he says. "Right." He looks over at them and then back to me. "What are they doing here?"
I shake my head. "No idea. Owen didn't even know they were coming."
"Avery," Owen calls, gesturing for me to go back over to them.
Oh, dear lord. I am being presented.
"I don't know if you'll recognize Avery," he says.
A smile comes to the Queen's lips like they have a mind of their own and she only lets it stay there for a second before fighting herself back into her formal, emotionless state.
"You look like your grandmother," she tells me. "She's in your eyes."
"It's nice to see you again, Avery," the King says, sounding distinctly more jovial. "You probably don't remember us."
Not knowing what to say, I shake my head. "No," I admit. "But it's nice to meet you now."
He grins, and Owen tucks me close against him, kissing the side of my head.
"We aren't going to be staying," the Queen says. "I notice Angela and Miles aren't here."
"I gave them some time off," Owen tells them.
"Then I suppose we should plan on lunch elsewhere," she comments.
"There's tuna," I tell her, holding up what's left of my sandwich.
"Owen's been in the kitchen, I see," she says with a softer look toward her son.
"Maybe I'll have some," the King says.
They walk away toward the kitchen, and Owen turns a strained smile to me. "That was awkward," he says. "Anyway, let's get back to the topic at hand."
"Right," Sebastian says, pulling a satchel around from his back to his stomach and digging through it. "I brought pictures. Lots and lots of pictures." He hands them out toward me. "I must really love you because I went back to the rides at the festival for you, and it was creepy as hell."
I start flipping through the pictures as I head back toward my rolled-up diagram.
"The rides are still there?" Owen asks.
"It's there," I tell him, flopping down onto the floor because I figure the royal couple have already seen my lack of elegance, so there's no point in fronting now. "It's just closed."
"Why did they leave it? I'd think people would want that Ferris wheel out of sight as soon as possible," he says.
"Yeah, it's that whole 'as possible' thing. The Ferris wheel is technically still a crime scene, and the police haven't released it yet. Of course, you can't just have a big wheel sitting out in the green by itself, so the committee just left the rest of the rides sitting there."
"The company that supplied them didn't want them back?" Owen asks.
"It's based in Vidalia Isle. One of the many things funded by the committee formed from the oldest and wealthiest families on the island. The police told them they aren't to move anything," Skylar clarifies. "Until this case is wrapped up, everything is suspicious."
“What is this?” I ask, pointing at a picture of Mr. Mercer Seb had gotten from someone’s cell phone.
“That would be a body,” Seb says, shuddering slightly.
“No, I know that. This. What is this on the body?”
My fingertip taps over the image of the corpse’s hand. There’s something on it. It’s at a distance and not terribly clear, but it looks like a sketch of some kind in green ink. I flip through some of the other pictures people had taken of the festival and Seb had collected for me. I notice the same thing on several other people and show them to Seb and Skylar.
“Those are hand stamps,” Skylar tells me. “They were putting them on everybody who went into the beer garden.”
“Awww,” I say toward Owen. “We missed the beer garden. Why did they put one on him, though? He’s obviously old enough to drink.”
“They were giving out samples, so once you’d gone in, they’d stamp you so you couldn�
�t go back through again,” she explains.
“That makes sense.”
I look at the stamp on Mr. Mercer again, and a slightly sad feeling settles over me. He never would have struck me as someone who would go into a beer garden, yet there was the stamp of proof. I wonder what else I don’t know about him and if any of it might have changed the image of him in my mind. Now I’ll never know.
“Owen, we’re leaving, son.”
The King’s voice breaks me out of my moment of melancholy, and I look toward the door where the royal company has taken their place again.
“It was good to see you,” Owen says. “We’ll come by soon.”
The sound of him saying we makes my heart soar, but it’s shot down in a second by the sour look on his mother’s face.
“Yes,” she says. “Just remember, Owen. You have responsibilities and obligations at home. Keep that in mind.”
He stiffens and doesn’t say another word as they walk out of the room.
“What did that mean?” I ask when he comes back toward us.
He forces a smile and shakes his head. “Nothing,” he says. “Don’t worry about it. Just my mother being my mother.”
Owen sits down with us and starts sifting through the pictures, but I can’t just brush the words way. They don’t sit well with me, and by the look on Owen’s face when he first turned around, he didn’t want to hear them, either.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Avery
I have stared so much at these pictures over the last two days all the images are starting to blur together. Sebastian and Skylar had to go back to Vidalia Isle so as not to create any suspicion, but I have pages of notes both of them scribbled lined up along the top edge of my diagram. I'm sitting on a section of the library rug that probably has a permanent indentation of my ass by now, trying to make sense out of the inconsistencies I've noticed.
My head swims, and I press my fingertips into my eyelids to try to relieve some of the pressure. I've barely been sleeping, and all the energy and thought I’ve poured into trying to unravel this mystery has started to take its toll on me. My body feels exhausted, my stomach sensitive as the stress starts to chip away at me. The exorbitant number of tuna sandwiches I've consumed probably hasn't helped.
“Anything?” Owen asks from behind the desk where he's sitting, going through his own papers.
“I'm still going with Brandon,” I say.
“The quiet guy staying at the bed-and-breakfast, right?” Owen asks.
“Him,” I say nodding. “He struck all of us as a little odd from the time he checked in, but that's not the important part. It's the trash can. The little pieces of paper in Mercer's trash can didn't make any sense. It just wasn't in his character to have little bits of disorganized trash in the bottom of the can. But it would be just like a withdrawn, kind-of-shady guy who doesn't talk to people.”
“You're working with some serious stereotypes here,” he says.
“I know, and usually I’d give myself some sort of lecture about it, but that's not all I'm going on. Look at this picture. This is the trash can sitting in the room where Mercer was staying, and this is the one in Brandon's room. I don't know how Sebastian got in to take that picture, and I'm not going to ask any questions. What matters is the color.”
“They still don't look any different to me,” Owen says.
He sounds slightly frustrated, but to his credit, this is probably the fifth time I've gone over this theory with him, and in none of the other times has he noticed the different shade of trash can.
“I know you don't, and the lighting of the picture is pretty bad, so it's hard to tell. But trust me, they're different. It's not a dramatic difference or anything, just subtle. The one in Mercer's room is brown, and the one in Brandon's room is dark bronze. If I'm right and if I’m seeing what I think I'm seeing, that means the trash cans were swapped at some point; probably when the police were using their search warrant to go through the entire bed-and-breakfast. Shawn said they took as much out of the rooms as they could so they could scour every inch of them. They very easily could have taken out the trash cans and put them in the hallway, then accidentally swapped them when they put them back in. That would mean those little scraps of paper belong to Brandon, not Mercer.”
“Which means Brandon could be the one who left you those notes,” Owen says.
"Right. Now it's just figuring out why he would want to kill Mr. Mercer. Is this another situation where someone who knows how to do their research found out about the curse and went to Vidalia Isle looking to bring it alive again? He could have planned on leaving those notes all along, and Mr. Mercer was just the collateral damage that gave him reason to do it," I suggest.
"Or he could have had an issue with Mercer and killed him, then heard about the curse and decided to throw more heat your way with the notes," Owen says.
"Framing me would be convenient either way," I say. "Speaking of which, no one Seb or Skylar talked to remembers seeing the extra apples at my table, much less who put them there."
"What I want to know is why the killer would have taken the other apple. He left them there with the note so Mercer would get one and eat it, and it would be traced back to you. So why take the other one? Wouldn't that just be another smoking gun, so to speak?"
"A smoking apple? I have no idea. Maybe he was worried someone else would eat it. Seb is having Shawn and Leo keep an eye on him and see if they can catch him making any more notes or doing anything else suspicious. I'm going to keep going through the pictures of the festival. I'm hoping someone caught him slipping the apples under the table or taking the other one away." I sigh and lower the picture I'm holding so I can look at him. "But what about you? How is all your princely stuff coming over there?"
He grins.
"My princely stuff is coming just fine, thank you. Unfortunately, in order to finish it up, I'm going to have to leave for a little bit," he tells me.
"You have to leave?"
I hate the idea of him leaving me alone in the palace for any length of time, even if it does mean I could probably sneak out one of the bikes I saw in the garden shed and fulfill my vision of riding it through the hallways.
"Not for long," he promises. "I just have to handle a couple of things." He glances at his phone. "I should actually get ready. The boat will be here in fifteen minutes."
"Tell Captain Jacks I say hi," I tell him as I fall into step beside him to head upstairs.
“I will,” Owen laughs.
We get to the bedroom, and he changes clothes. Nerves flicker through me when he takes out his overnight bag and adds folded clothes. He only packs undershirts, boxers, socks, and pajamas, which tells me the boat is outfitted with more appropriate clothing for his activities. At least now I understand what his mother meant when she talked about his responsibilities and obligations.
"I've asked Miles to be on call for you. His cottage is on the grounds, so he can get to you quickly if you need him," he tells me.
"I don't want to bother him. I'll just make sure I have a pocket full of breadcrumbs with me so they can lead me back to the bedroom and the library if I go exploring."
"That's my girl," he says, leaning down to kiss me.
I'll never get tired of hearing him say that. We walk down to the marina together, and my stomach feels heavier with every step. The island suddenly feels enormous and daunting, knowing there won't be the comfort and reassurance of Owen being there with me. It is beautiful here, and the palace is definitely a nice option for a hideout when on the run from the law, but every day I realize more that it's Owen that makes me feel safe and protected, not the place.
Owen takes me in his arms and holds me close, his mouth playing across mine until the boat slides up beside us. Our foreheads touch, and he lets out a breath.
"Don't stay gone too long," I say.
"Just one night," he promises. "I'll be back in the morning to make you decaf coffee and a new bowl of tuna salad."
I laugh and kiss him one more time. "Bye," I say.
"Bye."
The boat is small in the distance when I stop waving and head back inside.
"Hello," I shout into the quiet, cavernous building. The echo rattles back to me through the hallways, sounding like a horde of ghosts coming for me.
Add that to my never-fucking-do-that-again list.
The hours tick by, and I continue to scour the pictures. When my brain has reached full saturation, and I can't look at an image of cotton candy or trash cans or caramel apples for a single second more, I head for the shelves of books. Skipping anything having to do with true crime or mystery, I select one of the dusty old classics that my high school language arts teacher forced us to read under the guise of it being formative and influential.
At the time, it was just boring and filled with words I didn't understand and couldn't care to. But now I'm an adult. Maybe things will look different, and I'll be able to figure out what a few more of those words mean.
I'm exhausted, and without Owen here to make my evening any more interesting, I heed the call of the bedroom. After a long, hot shower, the sheets feel cool and smooth against my skin as I snuggle down into them to read. Just as the teacher promised all those years ago, the story grabs me and sucks me in, and I'm somewhere between disgusted at the vision of inequality and sexism of the book and impressed at just how scandalous it actually is, when sleep takes over.
The promise of Owen getting back soon makes me bouncing out of bed into the cold, lonely room more palatable. I take another shower and spend some indulgent time with my favorite hair dryer, making sure I look my best even if I feel somewhat like only three-quarters of me is awake. When all this is over, I'm lining my bedroom in blackout curtains, abolishing all forms of electronic devices capable of alarms, and sleeping until I feel like me again.
The sound of footsteps echoing through the front hall of the palace when I'm nearly into the landing perks me up. I rush the rest of the way, but when I reach the middle of the staircase and look down, I stop.