by Dixie Davis
“Not this. Nobody in town thinks he killed her anymore.”
The chief arched an eyebrow, and Lori realized that maybe she didn’t know the gossip quite as well as she thought. Would her friends — especially the town’s reigning gossip queen, Kim Yates — keep her in the dark? Because she was dating Mitch?
But wouldn’t that be all the more reason to warn someone you cared about?
Lori mentally added get a neutral opinion about Mitch’s innocence to her to-do list and turned back to the matter at hand. “What if you’ve spent so long thinking he’s guilty that you can’t see him any other way?”
She braced herself at the backlash that would inevitably follow. The chief wasn’t exactly a fan of her correcting him, and it had happened a lot more often than either of them liked.
“When Debbie went missing ten years ago, who reported her?”
“Oh, that was Kim Yates,” Doris piped up. Lori turned to her — maybe the old woman was the person she should have been interviewing all along. “She missed their weekly girl’s night at the nail parlor.”
Lori nodded in a go-on gesture. “Mitch wasn’t the one to report her?”
“No, he claimed he was out working and hadn’t seen that she was gone. Said he figured she’d gone straight to the salon with Kim.”
“Did that seem unusual?”
“No, Lori,” Chip broke in. “It was totally normal. That was why we arrested him. For doing absolutely nothing suspicious.”
“Well, what did he do that made him look suspicious, then?” Lori didn’t mean for her tone to sound confrontational, but it did come out that way.
Chip ticked off the reasons on his thick fingers. “One, he sold the boat that he’d allegedly taken her out on the water with about three days later. Two, he didn’t want us to search his house for evidence. We can’t hold that against him by law, but this is Dusky Cove. He shouldn’t have had anything to hide.”
Lori was far from a legal expert, but she was fairly certain that selling a boat and refusing a warrantless search didn’t exactly meet the standard of probable cause.
“And,” the chief added, acting almost like it pained him to lay this evidence on top of the already preponderous pile, “there’s the little fact that she must have broken his heart.”
Those words snagged along the thoughts flowing through Lori’s mind as she’d waited for Chip. “Didn’t she break yours, too?”
Chip quirked both eyebrows this time. “I’m sorry?”
Lori realized she only knew Mitch’s side of the story when it came to his rivalry with Chip. Maybe he didn’t think of it the same way. “Did she pick Mitch over you?”
Chip snorted. “In high school. It’s been thirty years.”
“Right. But if she didn’t want to be with Mitch anymore — ten years ago — why didn’t she divorce him and marry you?”
The chief stared at her, his neck growing pink above his collar. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re right; I don’t. But I know I’d be upset if the person I’d carried a torch for for thirty years suddenly turned up to tell me there’d never been anything between us. That she’d rather play dead than be with me.”
Now the chief was flat-out mad. “Lori, don’t pretend like you knew Debra, or me, or the situation ten years ago.”
“I’m trying to understand that. Don’t you think that’s got something to do with why she showed up again — dead?”
The red spread up into his cheeks. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know anything about my history with Debra.”
“I’d love to hear more about it. When did you date? How did it end? Why did she choose Mitch?” As soon as the name crossed her lips, Lori bit them, as if she could bite back the words she’d just said. That was a mistake.
Chip took two steps toward her, looming over her like a menacing threat. Lori’s heart shrank, and she cast a glance at Doris. The chief followed her line of sight before finally backing off a step. “For the last time. You don’t know anything about the situation. For once in your life, keep your nose out of our business.”
The words carried a vehemence belied by their very normal volume. Lori just nodded slowly. “Okay.”
To be honest, it wasn’t his words or his tone that had her cowed; it was the way he’d just purposefully tried to intimidate her. Or worse. What would he have done if Doris hadn’t been there?
Lori looked over at the old woman behind the desk, fixated on them with rapt attention. Lori turned to go, still so taken aback by the chief’s threat that she almost didn’t know which way was out.
“Here,” the chief said, and Lori thought he was going to show her out. Instead, he grabbed a paper off Doris’s desk and shoved it into Lori’s hands.
Lori stared down at the 1980s Glamour Shot of a woman with dark hair. In loving memory, the caption read. Debra E W Griffin, 1959-2002
“Never forget there is a real victim here.” Somehow, his words seemed to carry even more of a threat.
“Sorry.” Lori half-stumbled to the street, still trying to calm her racing heart.
She’d never seen Chip behave that way before, and she’d stuck her nose pretty far into police business more than once. The case was obviously more personal to him — to both of them.
Lori hurried to her car and got in, locking her doors behind her. She glanced back at the door, past the porch with the rockers. What would have happened if it weren’t for Doris, Lori wondered again. The chief wouldn’t have hurt her.
Would he?
And if he was mad at Lori for trying to talk about Debra — all right, and for provoking him, she wasn’t totally innocent of that — but if merely talking about Debra made the chief that mad, how would he react to seeing her after all this time?
Obviously, the chief had thought she’d been dead for the last ten years instead of living heaven knows where, pretending her life in Dusky Cove had never happened — including Mitch.
And Chip.
What would he do if the love of his life — who he really did still love, somehow — showed up and rubbed it in his face that she didn’t want him?
How angry would that make him?
Lori had just seen him resort to violence last night. He’d hit Mitch without even a moment’s hesitation, no split-second consideration of the badge he wore. What if that wasn’t the first time?
She stared at the beige stucco of the police station for a long time, as if she could read the minds of its occupants.
The stucco had no answers.
And neither did Lori.
But every time she talked to someone else, she certainly came up with a lot more questions.
Lori only made it as far as her parlor before her investigation was interrupted again by her guests.
Or, rather, her guests reminded her that innkeeping was her real job.
“Hello!” Manuel Besas called, strolling in after her. “The beach was wonderful.”
“Nothing like relaxing in the waves,” Chelsea sighed. “Thank you for the picnic basket!” She handed over the wicker basket.
“You’re so welcome,” Lori said, returning their broad smiles. Her mind, however, was running through ways to get rid of them so she could go back to hunting for the truth.
“We’re going to go clean up for dinner,” Chelsea announced, faster than if she’d been reading Lori’s mind.
Of course, if she’d read Lori’s mind — or the flyer still in Lori’s hand — she probably wouldn’t have been smiling anymore. “Sounds great.”
Lori was alone in her office before the Besases even made it halfway up the stairs. She set Debra’s flyer down next to her computer. No matter who she’d hurt in her life, Debra was the victim. She deserved justice too.
Finally recovered from her brush with Chief Branson, Lori’s mind had latched onto an important little fact: Doris has said it was Kim who reported Debra missing.
Lori shot off a quick text to ask Kim to come over, then warmed up some breakfast leftovers from the freezer. That had become her safe place when it came to food — but she could only poke at them.
How did the most important men in her life — other than her sons, of course — suddenly become potential murderers? Mitch, Ray, even Chip. She didn’t want to believe it of any of them, but she also couldn’t dismiss them either. She’d let herself overlook people she cared about in the past, and that almost ended very badly for them all.
Lori was washing her plate when the knock came at the back door. Few people came to this door, so Lori could guess who it might be.
The stupid hope bloomed in her chest against her will, but that hope died when she looked out the window and saw Kim standing there. Kim offered her a small smile and a wave, and Lori opened the door for her.
Of course it wasn’t Mitch. He was in jail.
Kim gave her a quick squeeze. “How are you holding up?”
“Trying to keep busy.” But keeping busy by investigating the very thing that upset her wasn’t exactly a recipe for happiness.
This was a murder investigation. By definition there was no “happiness.”
“Anything I can do to help you with that?” Kim asked.
“I need to work while I think. And talk. Is that okay?”
“Of course.”
Lori crossed the kitchen to where she’d hung up an idea list. She couldn’t bear to do a formal menu plan — she’d only end up changing it at the last minute anyway — but a list of ideas gave her the freedom to pick what sounded good now. “I’d like to prep for breakfast tomorrow. I saw this interesting breakfast sausage on the Internet.” She pulled down the three-ring binder that held the printouts of her ideas and thumbed through until she found the right recipe.
“Cherry tarragon?” Kim murmured. She looked to Lori. “You’ll have to let me know how these taste.”
If that was Kim declining to help, she’d have to be more direct. Lori directed her. “There’s a package of ground pork in the fridge. Will you grab it?”
Kim turned to obey, and Lori headed for the pantry to gather the spices, an onion, and a bag of dried cherries. Kim put the dried cherries in water and measured the spices while Lori plopped the ground pork into a bowl and then chopped onions.
“Have you been investigating?” Kim asked. The tone of her voice said she already knew the answer. How could Lori not?
Just like Kim couldn’t keep away from teasing out gossip, Lori couldn’t keep away from teasing out the truth when it came to a murder investigation. It wasn’t a question of whether she wanted to or not. It was a question of getting to the bottom of it.
“I’ve spoken to Ray and to Chip, but I still don’t have a good handle on what happened when Debra went missing ten years ago.”
“I’m afraid the only person who knows what really happened won’t be able to tell us anymore.”
It wasn’t like Kim not to offer speculation or some small smidgen of dirt — and this had to have been the most scandalous thing to hit the town in half a century. Hadn’t Doris said Kim reported Debra missing?
“I heard you knew more about it at the time,” Lori said, walking a fine line with her words.
Kim nodded slowly. “A little.”
“You reported her missing.”
“Well, she was. She missed our appointment. I’ve never had a friend like her again.” She dropped her measuring spoon and turned to Lori. “No offense.”
“None taken.” Lori took the little bowl where Kim had poured the spices and dumped it into the bowl with the pork. “What did you think happened at the time?”
“At first, I was worried she’d been in an accident, of course, and then the longer it went that day, the more I wondered. When I found out there wasn’t an accident, that nobody had seen her since she went out with Mitch —” Kim broke off.
“You’ve known Mitch a long time, too.”
“Of course.”
“And sometimes knowing someone a long time — and being friends with their spouse — means you get to know another side of them, don’t you?”
She wasn’t even being subtle about fishing for information, but Lori didn’t care even a little bit. This was information she was practically entitled to.
Lori gave Kim a minute to gather her thoughts while she mixed the sausage ingredients. By the time they were well combined, Kim was waiting for Lori to meet her eyes.
“Help me shape the patties?” Lori asked.
“Of course.” Kim scooped out the perfect amount of sausage filling and shaped it into a palm-sized coin. The task seemed to give her something to focus on other than the words she needed to say. “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but Mitch and Debbie were having a tough time at the end.”
“In their marriage?”
Kim nodded, patting the edges of her second patty. “I tried not to think less of Mitch, but when your best friend only tells you the bad things in their relationship, you tend to worry. Still, I don’t really think everything was his fault. Debbie was . . . she wasn’t herself for a while at the end. And when we’d talk, she really seemed to focus on him, when I really thought she needed help. Professional help.”
Lori assumed she didn’t mean a maid. She placed another patty on the sheet pan. She’d have to clear off a shelf in the fridge to make room for this, but it would be worth it tomorrow. “What kind of behavior are you talking about?”
“Well.” Kim scooped up the meat for another patty. “She seemed . . . sad. Dark. She talked a lot about how unhappy she was — how she felt like she was screaming on the inside. Sometimes, she said that the only thing that had helped was going on vacation. Maybe that was what she ended up doing, taking ten years’ vacation from her life.” Kim sighed at her own joke. “She just felt like she was under pressure all the time.”
“From Mitch?” Lori found that hard to believe. If anything, Mitch had been supportive and encouraging of Lori, whether it was sound marketing plans or a harebrained scheme to catch a killer.
“I don’t know.” Kim paused, lost in memory for a moment. “More like she actually, physically felt the pressure. She was stressed. Burned out. Done. And Mitch didn’t want a divorce. He wanted to fight for their marriage.”
“Was it too late?”
“Who can make that call?” Kim set down her latest sausage patty and turned to Lori. “I think they could have turned it around, but only if Debbie could get her head right. She was in denial of how serious her problem was.”
“So it didn’t surprise you to find out she really had run away from everything here?”
Kim snorted. “Of course it surprised me that my best friend faked her own death successfully for ten years and then showed up dead.”
Lori heard the way Kim’s voice caught on best friend. But for the first time, someone she was interviewing wasn’t revealing their own violent tendencies and deep-seated anger, just pain. For the friend she’d lost, for the reasons she might never understand.
“Where do you think she’s been for the last ten years?”
“Wilmington? Walla Walla, Washington?” Kim chuckled to herself. “She could have been anywhere. Anywhere but here.”
Lori tried to put herself in that mindset, but the only thing she’d ever wanted to run away from was grief, and that followed you. She couldn’t imagine being so unhappy that you sacrificed every relationship you had for a chance to start over.
Lori placed the last sausage patty on the tray, and she and Kim washed their hands again. Lori covered the tray and stuck it in the fridge to leave them to fry in the morning. Without evening meal prep, she’d never be able to put on the big breakfasts her guests had come to love.
Kim turned to Lori, her eyes serious. “After everything shook out last time, Mitch gave me Debbie’s journal. He said he couldn’t bear to read it. He probably should have.”
Lori quirked an eyebrow.
“She was a lot unhappier than any of us knew. I mean, if you knew her, it wasn’t like you could miss it. This light inside her had just gone out for some reason. But the stuff in the journal.” Kim shook her head. “I hadn’t realized her relationship with Mitch had deteriorated that badly, if the journal is to be believed.”
Lori found herself clutching the edge of the stainless steel countertop. “Was he hurting her?”
Kim took a deep breath, buying time before she answered. When she finally did, she obviously chose her words carefully. “Not on purpose.”
Lori frowned. “Do many people know this?”
“No. This is the first time I’ve told anyone.”
Lori snapped to look at her. The gossip queen hadn’t talked about the biggest, juiciest story to hit their shores in five decades?
“I know, I know. It’s just — this time, I really knew it wasn’t my right. Debbie wasn’t coming from a good place at the time, and I didn’t know if the stuff in the journal reflected more that than anything Mitch did or didn’t do. But I could never be sure.”
“Did you think Mitch killed her?”
Kim sighed and leaned against the edge of the counter. “For the first couple weeks, I was a hundred percent sure she was coming back. Even when he sold the boat — he said he’d already negotiated that deal and it was only the pickup we’d seen. And then weeks and months passed, and I couldn’t help but wonder.”
“Whether Mitch did it?”
“How — why he would have done it. He was the one who wanted to fight for the marriage. By the time she started talking to him, according to the journal at least, she’d already felt like there was nothing to be done for them. For her life.”
Lori still couldn’t picture feeling that way, but her heart ached for Debbie just the same. “Did she sound suicidal?”
Kim studied her hands. “That was what I thought happened, right up until yesterday.”
“What do you think now?”
Kim’s sigh was deep and wide-ranging and sad. “I don’t think we’ll ever know anymore. It just breaks my heart that it happened this way. It’s so much more . . . real this time around. I guess having the body to bury does that.”