Smile Beach Murder, page 15
To which I replied, “Yeah, right. Never going to happen.”
* * *
• • •
After work, I swung by the grocery store, then reported to Hudson’s. I made a big kale salad with walnuts and even whisked together my own vinaigrette—lime juice, olive oil, honey, salt, and pepper. I got salmon fillets sizzling on the backyard barbecue while Scupper hopped after invisible vermin in the grass.
Hudson declared it too hot to eat outside. We set up in the kitchen, fan swirling overhead. “What’d you get salmon for?” he asked, sitting opposite me. “Plenty of local puppy drum this time of year. Caught fresh. Ronnie could’ve brought some over.”
“You’re welcome. It’s my pleasure to cook for you.”
“Just saying.” He surveyed the table. “No biscuits? No butter?”
“You heard what the doctor said. Eat your dinner.”
“I’ll eat my supper, thank you very much. Dinner is for cityfolk and millennials.” He wolfed down the salmon and ignored the salad. Then he got up, snatched something from a cabinet, and sat back down.
A Twinkie.
“You’re like a child,” I said. “Didn’t your trip to the hospital mean anything to you?”
“I just ate pink fish. Pink. And if you had put a man-size serving in front of me, rather than the amount you’d feed a china doll at a tea party, I wouldn’t need supplementation.”
My chest grew heavy. I regretted telling Hudson as much as I already had about my week—and I had an urge to tell him absolutely everything. But if there was one thing he didn’t need, it was another reason to worry.
“What happened back in the city, anyway?” he asked, his mouth full. “Why’d you come home?”
I forked some kale, then pushed it around on my plate.
After the buyout, I’d hung around Charlotte for a week. I’d wanted to freelance, but it would have taken months to establish an income stream. And my savings wouldn’t allow for months. It barely allowed for weeks, thanks to student loans I was still paying off. I’d hoisted a farewell beer at the Thirsty Beaver with my former coworkers. Sold my secondhand furniture. Packed up my car in just a few trips. After I closed the door to my apartment for the last time, I knocked on my neighbor’s. More than once she’d delivered homemade dumplings, handed them to me on a paper plate as the hallway filled with aromas of sesame oil and hot cabbage. But Jin-young didn’t answer, so I left my potted ivy on her half-moon table. And before I knew it, I was driving east, the columns of the city shrinking in my rearview mirror.
“You know what happened,” I told Hudson. “I got laid off.”
“So what? People get laid off all the time.”
“I overheard my editor telling his boss that I didn’t have the nerve.” I could see them standing in the corner office, the blinds slicing across their white shirts. They thought the door was closed. But it hadn’t latched, and when the air-conditioning blasted on, the door swung open a crack. Just as I’d been walking by.
“Didn’t have the nerve?” Hudson said. “What does that mean?”
“ ‘Padget doesn’t have the kind of nerve I like to see in a reporter.’ That’s what I overheard.”
“Whether that’s true or false—so what? What’s wrong with working in a bookshop, anyway? You could do a lot of good here.”
“I just don’t like feeling marooned.”
“Marooned?”
“There’s no bridge to the mainland. The inconvenience—”
“But that’s what keeps Cattail Island unique. The isolation’s what makes us the down-home isle that’s—”
“—worth your while. I know, I know.”
“You could settle down here. You should be with someone. Someone decent. You meet a guy? This true?”
Enough of this conversation. I held my kale-loaded fork to his mouth. “Eat,” I said.
He waved it away. “Don’t get your butt hairs up about your old-man uncle.”
“Think of it as lettuce.”
“I am. That’s the problem.”
“If I refilled your water glass, would you drink?”
“Fine, fine.”
I got up and turned on the tap, letting the water run cold.
“Halfway is good enough,” he said.
Halfway.
Pass through blue and into white.
My hand fell heavy on the faucet, stopping the flow. Time seemed to slow. “What did you say?” I asked.
“Nothing as earth-shattering as the look on your face suggests.”
“Hudson, just—” I put the glass of water on his place mat. “Say it again. What you just said.”
“Halfway is good enough?”
Snatching my bag, I planted an exaggerated kiss on his forehead. “You’re a genius.”
“First I’m a child, now I’m a genius. Where you off to?”
43
A single spotlight silhouetted Cattail Lighthouse against the starry sky. I got out of my car to a chorus of crickets and frogs and immediately spotted the Milky Way. The southernmost part of Cattail Island was mostly unbuildable because of the marshland—and that meant no light pollution. The thick, sparkling band of stars rising from the southeast was definitely not visible back in Charlotte.
I had parked in front of the keeper’s cottage, next to another car, a Fiat. Only after I’d taken a few steps did I realize that two people stood on the porch. Gwen Montgomery and a tall boy with sun-bleached hair and leather bracelets. They were pressed against each other, more or less sucking face.
“Evening, youngsters,” I said.
They broke apart. The boy murmured something to Gwen before trotting down the steps. “Ma’am,” he said, flashing me a sly grin. He folded himself behind the wheel of the Fiat and took off.
Gwen narrowed her eyes at me. A cloth headband pulled her hair off her forehead, and she wore spandex-blend clothes and a sheen of sweat. I wondered if her boy toy had interrupted a living room workout of crunches and fire hydrants. “Thanks for that,” she said.
“Dreamy. What’s his name?”
“I’m not going to the police—”
“That’s not why I’m here, Gwen. I need to get inside the lighthouse.”
She leaned against the doorjamb. “The thing is, we already did that. You and me? Up the lighthouse?”
“We need to do it again.” I pressed my hands together. “Please. You know how I was searching for something up there? Well, I was searching in the wrong place.”
“I’m beginning to think I’m in the wrong place.” She disappeared inside the cottage for a second, then returned, twirling a keyring around her index finger. “If you tell me exactly what you’re searching for, I’ll take you up.”
I’d been afraid of that response. And I’d prepared a rebuttal. It wasn’t something I looked forward to delivering, but I had to get inside that lighthouse—now, when no one else was around—and I couldn’t risk sharing sensitive information with someone I’d met only a few times.
Someone I didn’t entirely trust.
“If you take me up,” I said, “I won’t tell Chief Jurecki you lied to him.”
* * *
• • •
Once again, Gwen and I wound up the metal steps. Lamps every ten feet provided murky light. We climbed steadily, not speaking. Ahead of me, her body language conveyed simmering anger. She had confided in me, and I’d used it against her. But I couldn’t assuage her feelings. I had my own excitement to regulate.
Pass through blue and into white. The riddle was explicit about passing through the blue, bottom half of the lighthouse. But it said nothing about also passing through white—merely into it. What if I only needed to get to the halfway point, where blue gives way to white? Halfway is good enough, my uncle had said.
The inside of the lighthouse wasn’t painted; the bricks were all the same uniform natural red from bottom to top. But there were eight stories total, which meant halfway was . . .
I stopped at the fourth landing.
“Breather?” Gwen’s voice had a cutting edge.
“This is as far as I climb tonight.”
“Whatever.” She plunked down on a step, took out her phone, and ignored me.
The semicircle landing boasted six-foot-tall displays on several centuries of shipwrecks. graveyard of the atlantic, the title declared in a font suggestive of bones. One panel chronicled African American lighthouse keepers who made daring rescues during hurricanes using only rope. Another answered the commonly uttered question, Why is there a lighthouse in the middle of a marsh? The Big Move was executed in the summer of ’84, over the course of twenty days. Engineers separated the lighthouse from its base and glided it three thousand feet west to its current location, safe from the rising sea. For now.
I skimmed the displays once. Twice. Nothing stuck out. Nothing screamed hidden sight, or even riddles in general.
Which brought me back to hold on tight. The handrailing. It curved behind the displays, and I was just flat-chested enough to squeeze behind them.
There wasn’t enough room for me to bend, so I simply slid my hands along the railing. I made one complete pass, then reversed direction, back to the start.
Nothing but dust and desiccated insects.
Another fail.
“Guess I was wrong,” I said, reemerging.
Gwen’s phone made her face glow blue. “I’m sorry, for what it’s worth.”
Swiping cobwebs off my arms, I crossed the landing and sat next to her on the step. “Sorry about what?” I asked.
“Tossing those things into the landfill. I can see that it was a mistake.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Maybe not? You made such a big deal about it.”
“I know. But to be honest, it might not matter one way or another, in the end.”
“Good, because I’m still not talking to the police. I do feel bad about things, though. Very bad, actually.”
I put my elbows on the step behind me. The railing continued without a break, stretching from behind the display straight to the stairs. I crouched and began inspecting it at eye level.
“I thought you were done,” she said.
“Me too.”
“How long is this going to take?”
A metal knot in the handrailing caught my attention. Where it inserted into the brick, there was a gap—about the width of a fat pencil eraser. “Wait a second,” I said, putting my eye to the gap.
Something was crammed inside.
“Holy . . .” I stuck in my fingertip and grazed a smooth, rounded surface. I wiggled my finger, trying to gain any kind of hold, but only succeeded in pushing the object farther in.
Gwen crouched beside me. “Is that it? You found it?”
“How do I get it out of there?”
“What is it? Let me see—”
“It’s a glass vial.”
Her brow furrowed. “I can’t let you take anything, Callie. What if it’s supposed to be there? I don’t want to make any more mistakes.”
“It’s not supposed to be there.” I huffed out a breath. There was no getting around it: I had to let her in on my secret. “It’s part of a treasure hunt, okay? Eva was searching for this on Saturday night. Only she misinterpreted the clue, just like I did. I didn’t need to go all the way to the top of the lighthouse; I needed to come right here. It might help me figure out what happened to her.” I riffled through my bag for something, anything, of use. Notebook, tissues, bug spray, sunscreen. I pulled out a pair of battered sunglasses. “I could use the stem somehow. Fashion a tool of some sort.”
She got to her feet. “What you need is tweezers. If I come back with a pair, you show me exactly what’s inside that little hole. Yes?”
I chucked the sunglasses back inside my bag. “Yes.”
* * *
• • •
Gwen panted next to me. She’d run back up the spiral steps.
I inserted her turquoise tweezers into the gap. The pincers closed around the glass. Gently, I tugged.
The vial didn’t budge.
I pulled harder. No movement.
“It’s being stubborn.” I readjusted my grip and pinched the vial as deep as I could and squeezed and pulled—and the glass splintered. A sliver shot into my fingertip. I drew back my hand. The tweezers flew overhead, plinking off metal as they tumbled down the spiral steps. “Whoops.”
Taking off after the tweezers, Gwen flew down the stairs. “Found them.” As she stomped back up, I peered into the gap. The jagged edges of the vial reminded me of clear teeth. A scroll sat inside, its edges burnt, just like the first one.
I wouldn’t be able to retrieve the vial itself. It was a lost cause, half-destroyed and stuck firm. But all I truly needed was the scroll.
Gwen returned, offering the tweezers. I quickly extracted the sliver from my skin and placed it into a tissue she held open.
Then, the scroll.
I gripped the tweezers, pinched the paper as softly as possible, and extracted it.
“That’s it?” she asked.
“That’s it.” Gently, I coaxed it open.
I turned it over once, twice. Lifted it to my face. Tipped it closer to the nearest lamp.
Nothing.
The scroll was totally blank. No markings whatsoever.
Gwen peered over my shoulder. “Shouldn’t it have writing on it or something?”
Groaning, I sat back on the step.
“I take it that’s not what you were expecting,” she said.
“That’s putting it mildly.”
44
I stood at Gwen’s kitchen sink, drying my just-washed hands on a clean dish towel. She passed me a box of Band-Aids. “Too bad about your little piece of paper,” she said. “What are you going to do now?”
“Good question.”
Humidity combined with heat was lethal for a lot of things. Updos, musical instruments, paintings. And treasure hunt clues. How long had the ink lasted before fading? Before the moisture inside the lighthouse, inside those bricks, seeped underneath the wax seal and broke down the ink’s carbons and solvents until no trace remained?
“Can I help?” she asked.
“You’ve already been a big help.” I smoothed a small bandage around my finger, where the splinter had been.
“His name’s Reedley, if you still want to know.”
“Reedley?” It took me a second to realize who she was talking about. And another second to remember where I’d heard that name before. “Reedley Anderson? He’s the potter’s apprentice, right? I dropped off a book for him the other day.”
“He’s on-island for the summer.” Gwen sighed and smiled. “Remember how I told you someone comes to empty my trash? Well, turns out it’s Reedley. Being a potter’s apprentice doesn’t quite pay the bills, so he also does odd jobs for the conservationists. Anyway, he came to collect my trash earlier and . . . well, let’s just say he stayed on for a tour of the keeper’s cottage.”
Something told me the tour he got was a lot different than the one I’d given myself. “Summer fling?” I asked.
“Unclear at the moment. I shouldn’t be getting involved in any kind of relationship until my sobriety’s a lot more . . . sober.” She glanced at her phone. “Speaking of, I hate to kick you out, but my sponsor’s going to be calling any minute now.”
That was fine with me. I had decided to stop by the dojo for my first self-defense date with Toby Dodge.
Not a date. A lesson.
“I thought in AA you couldn’t have opposite-sex sponsors,” I said, picturing the photograph I’d seen on Gwen’s nightstand. Her and the handsome older man. “So that you don’t risk becoming romantically attracted to each other.”
“That’s the general rule. But my sponsor’s super old, and gay besides. Doesn’t apply to us.”
Making my way to the front door, I was about to thank her—but something felt suddenly off. The energy between us had shifted. “What is it?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
Casting a sidelong scowl, she folded her arms over her chest. “How did you know my sponsor was a man?”
I opened my mouth but no words came out.
“I don’t think I ever mentioned that fact,” she said. “No. I’m sure of it. I’m sure I never told you anything about him. How did you know? How could you possibly know? Unless you’ve been inside my cottage.” Her eyes widened. Her nostrils flared. A horse that’s just spied a snake. “Have you been inside my cottage? Inside my bedroom?”
“Gwen, I can explain.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. You have been inside my bedroom. Do you know how totally creeper that is?” Without taking her eyes off me, she sidestepped into the kitchen. “What kind of freak are you? I was actually starting to think of you as my friend. My only friend here.”
“If you’d just listen for a second—”
“Get out.”
“Please let me exp—”
She swiped the Band-Aid box off the counter. Bandages exploded, raining all around. “Get the hell out.”
45
Rattled, I drove back toward the center of the island. Salty air gusted through the open windows and I gulped it down, trying to calm myself.
Gwen’s anger had unnerved me, justified though it was. If I had to go around violating people’s privacy, betraying people’s trust for a just cause, then I needed to be sneakier about it. Savvier.
Moreover—how was I going to tell Summer Meeks that her mother died for a blank slip of paper?
I got out my phone, dialed Georgia, and left a message. “I found something. Something that proves the riddle Eva dug up was for real.”
