Hearts Grove Cozy Mystery Boxed Set, page 28
part #1 of Hearts Grove Cozy Mystery Series
“You were just giving us a hard time,” he pointed out.
“Mostly just you,” she said with a smile.
“Ah, the double standard. But no, he took some time off this afternoon and came back to work later. He says he likes to work into the night, since there’s not much else to do in town.”
“I suppose that must be hard for someone his age.” She thought—not for the first time—about how Olivia was now single. Granted, the breakup was too new, but she’d seen something between them. Nothing inappropriate or that crossed any line, since Olivia had been dating Nelson at the time, but more like a connection she couldn’t ignore.
She was still thinking about this when Scott popped his head back in.
“Scott are you seeing anyone?” she blurted.
The tips of his ears turned red and he stammered out a no.
“Henrietta,” Ralph said, using her full name, which caused her to shoot him a curious glance.
“I was just—”
“Well, don’t just.”
She held up her hands in a plea of innocence. “I just know that it must be challenging to meet people of quality here in town without much…social activity. Why, I was just talking with Olivia today—”
“Livi?” Scott asked.
“Yes,” Henrietta said with a smile at his familiar tone. “And the poor thing just broke up with Nelson last night.”
She was pleased to see the utter shock on Scott’s face and wondered if there wasn’t a trace of hopefulness there, too.
“Anyway,” she continued, “I was thinking, when the time is right of course, how I could encourage her to meet new people.”
“Of course, you were,” Ralph said, rolling his eyes.
“I care for her,” Henrietta said, meeting Ralph’s gaze with a hard one of her own. “I want to see her taken care of and having thriving friendships.”
“Let me guess, you want Scott to show her around?”
Scott’s blush deepened, but Henrietta pretended to ignore it. “I just think, since they are already friends, it would be easier that way. She just needs to know there are people here who care about her.”
“I-I’d be happy to.” Scott spoke almost too quickly, and Henrietta had to temper her smile.
“That is so kind of you, Scott. Actually—”
“That’s enough of that. Did you need something, son?” Ralph asked, cutting off Henrietta completely.
“I…oh yeah, I’m working on tracing that William Cone guy, and think I got a hit on his credit card.”
Henrietta’s mind was immediately brought back to their case, and her aspirations for both Scott and Olivia were put on hold. Though it was a subject she fully intended to come back to.
“Where?” Ralph demanded
“I’ll show you.”
They all went into the front room and around to get a good view at Scott’s screens. Even though he worked in the open, bullpen-style work space of the front room, he’d specifically positioned his screens so that no windows were behind him and no one, unless they were in his space, could see them.
Henrietta and Ralph crowded behind him, awkwardly pushed up against the wall as Scott’s fingers flew across the screens.
“This is his credit card information.”
“Most of those purchases were a week ago,” Ralph observed.
“Yes, but here,” he pointed at the last one he’d highlighted with yellow. “That was just a few hours ago.”
“Hours?”
“Well, he hasn’t made a purchase since then, or else I’d have it here. If he were to make one as we were watching, then maybe you could apprehend him, but this is more of a guide to tell you his whereabouts.”
“He’s still in town,” Henrietta observed.
“Yes.”
“But if he’s still in town,” she continued, “where is he? I’m assuming the police have staked out his home, so he’s not there. He’s got to be somewhere else.”
“Yes,” Ralph agreed. “And the question after that is, what’s he going to do next?”
“Are we saying we think he killed his wife?” Scott asked.
“My contacts have said that Deborah Cone’s death was foul play, but they weren’t able to tell me who the suspects were.” Ralph rubbed his jaw.
“It stands to reason that her husband would be a likely suspect. Not only are relatives often considered first suspects, but he was also a controlling man, and she was having an affair—emotional or otherwise—with another man who, consequently, is dead too.”
Scott shuddered. “This just got deeper.”
“It did. There’s no way to pinpoint him, Scott?” Ralph asked.
“I did try tracking his phone, but I think he left it behind. It’s pinged off the towers that are nearest his house.”
“Another one who’s watched too many crime shows,” Ralph said.
“And yet it’s worked for him,” Henrietta observed.
“Bah.”
Ralph’s phone rang in that moment, and he pulled it out. “Amelia,” he explained before he answered.
“What?” he said the next moment.
Henrietta didn’t like the look of concern that washed over his features.
“Right. Okay. We’ll be right over.” He closed his phone, his expression heavy, and turned to Henrietta. “That was Amelia. She says the lighthouse is on fire.”
12
The flames rose up into the air like a torch lighting up the night sky. Yellow and orange blazed before them as Ralph parked in the gravel parking lot and came up to the police line, where they saw Amelia standing with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders.
A fire truck with flashing lights stood blocking off most of the lighthouse from view, and firemen scurried back and forth, doing what they could to put out the flames.
Henrietta felt sorry to the core of her being at the sight of a historic monument being destroyed before their eyes. “This is awful.”
“It is,” Ralph sympathized. “I can’t believe that it was an accident.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” she admitted.
“William?” Ralph suggested.
“It makes the most logical sense—though I don’t know why. Not exactly. What does he gain? Was there evidence in the lighthouse that could convict him? At the point before his wife was killed, it appeared he’d gotten away with murder. This is assuming it was him who killed Gerald.”
“Right. Well,” they drew near to Amelia, “we’ll see what happened, and then go from there.”
Amelia turned as they were drawing near and came up to them. Tears streaked her soot-covered face, and she looked as if she were about to fall asleep standing up.
“Oh, dear, are you all right?” Henrietta asked.
Sniffing, she wiped a finger under eyes. “No. Yes. I don’t know.”
“Of course.”
“I’m glad you called us,” Ralph said.
“I couldn’t think of who else to call. First my father, now his lighthouse. Why?”
“That’s what we’re wondering,” Henrietta agreed.
“Want to sit down?” Ralph asked.
“Sure.” She followed them to a bench on the other side of the firetruck. Henrietta had a feeling Amelia wouldn’t be able to leave the scene for a time, waiting to see what happened to the lighthouse, and now was as good a time as any to gain any theories she may have about the lighthouse and her father’s involvement with another man’s wife.
Amelia’s gaze traveled back to the lighthouse and stayed there for a time before she seemed to be pulled from her haze, if only a little, to look back at them.
“My father was working on a secret project,” she started. Henrietta’s ears pricked at this. “He wanted to gain historic notoriety for the lighthouse.”
Henrietta’s hopes sank a little, as she knew the information already, but she didn’t say anything. There was a possibility that Amelia knew more than she did.
“He felt so strongly that the Starlight Lighthouse should be preserved for the next generation that he put a lot of his own money into it,” Amelia went on. “He spent weeks researching who had worked here, and even found a tie to a semi-famous Canadian writer who had taken six months to stay in the lighthouse, keeping it running at night, only to turn around and write a well-known novel that made him a decent amount of money. It was things like that that convinced my father the Starlight needed to be preserved.”
“Was there opposition to this?” Ralph asked.
“I wasn’t completely aware of everything that happened. My father was a private man. After my mother died, he didn’t often confide the hard things to me. He kept them to himself to deal with and only shared the good with me. Mostly.”
“A father’s protection,” Henrietta mused.
“Something like that.” She pushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear, her eyes seeking out the lighthouse again. “I only found out about the buyer later.”
“The buyer?” Ralph prompted.
“Yeah.” Amelia met his gaze. “I didn’t know—until recently—that it was my father, not the city or some private owner, who owned the lighthouse. He got some type of settlement from my mother’s death, which I knew nothing about. He said it went toward purchasing and restoring the lighthouse first, and then he’d put it into something for me. That’s how he phrased it.”
“Perhaps the life insurance policy,” Henrietta said.
“Now that I know about it, it wouldn’t surprise me.” She sniffed again. “Anyway, I came to see my father a few months ago and found him in a terrible mood. He said that there was ‘some guy’ offering a ridiculous sum of money to purchase the lighthouse. He raged against it, because he knew this man wanted to tear it down. He might have considered selling if it was to go to someone who appreciated history, but this person clearly wanted to tear down the lighthouse for some sort of commercial investment. I can’t remember what he said exactly.”
Henrietta exchanged a glance with Ralph. This was exactly the type of motive they had been looking for. Someone had to have a vested interest in the lighthouse in order to kill for it, if it had been the motivation.
“Your father didn’t mention who it was?”
“Oh no, it was a miracle that he even told me about the person. But I do know that he wasn’t interested in selling. There was no amount that he would have settled for.”
“You’re positive?” Ralph pressed.
“Absolutely. Wealth wasn’t important to my father. Not like history was. Actually, I think that his plan all along was to fix up the lighthouse, get it recognized as an historic sight, and then gift it to the city.”
“Gift it?” Ralph said, surprise showing in the orange light that played across his features.
“Yes. That was my father, thinking about others. He would only have rested if he knew the lighthouse would be protected.” Quiet tears coursed down Amelia’s cheeks as she looked back at the lighthouse, her father’s work gone up in flames.
“It would have been an amazing gift—” Henrietta said, then stopped. Gift. Why did that ring a bell?
Then it hit her.
Turning to Ralph, she gripped his wrist so hard, he winced. “What is it?” he said under his breath.
“We’ve got to go.”
It took Ralph only a moment to know what she was talking about.
“We’ve got to follow up on something,” he told Amelia, patting her hand like a father. “But you’ll be all right?” he asked.
She nodded. “Thank you for coming. I…I don’t know what I’ll do next.”
“Don’t you worry,” Henrietta encouraged her. “This will all come to an end soon.”
Sooner, Henrietta thought, than anyone realizes.
Ralph drove just above the posted speed limit, but Henrietta wished he’d go faster, even though she knew it wasn’t advisable—or legal.
“Oh, for the days when I had a siren,” he bemoaned.
“There, up there,” she pointed out. The hardware store from Scott’s search appeared before them. It was getting close to closing time, but thankfully the lights were still on.
It was a testament to Ralph’s trust in her that he hadn’t asked for full details before they took off for the opposite end of town. When she’d suggested they first go to the hardware store, he’d agreed, but she wondered if he was going to demand more details soon. Perhaps after her first hunch was verified—if it were.
He screeched to a halt in front of the store, taking up one and a half spaces, and they jumped out.
“Hi there,” the man behind the counter said. He wore a red-and-black buffalo plaid flannel shirt, and a cap pulled low. “How can I help ya?”
“We’ve got a bit of a problem we think you can help us with,” Henrietta said with a kind smile.
“All right, ma’am,” the older gentleman said. “What’s that?”
Ralph stepped up with his phone on, a picture of William Cone enlarged on the screen. “Have you seen this man?”
“I—I have,” the older man said. “Why do you ask? He was in not but a few hours ago.”
They knew as much, but now Henrietta wanted to confirm her suspicions.
“I thought so,” she said with another disarming smile. “He bought some gasoline, didn’t he?”
“How’d you know?” the old man said, looking impressed.
“Just a hunch.” She looked over at Ralph. “You’ll want to tell the police that when they come by.”
Now the man’s eyes bugged. “The police?”
“It’s a long story,” Ralph said. “But did he say anything to you? Where he was going? Where he’d been?”
“Nah.” The man scratched behind his back, his eyes searching the ceiling as if it would help him recall the interaction better. “I just remember saying it would be cheaper for him to buy what he was getting at a gas station. I only sell some gas here to cater to a few customers who don’t want to go back up to the other side of town and the station there.”
“Of course.” Ralph nodded congenially. “And his reply?”
“Mostly said that it was just what he needed. He thanked me and left. That was it.”
Henrietta’s heart felt heavy. If they’d known looking at the record of his purchase at the hardware store that William had planned on burning down a piece of history, she would have demanded they act more quickly. Then again, there would have been no way to trace him.
“Did you happen to see what he was driving?” Ralph asked.
“Yup. Had an old white truck. Real beat up, you know?”
“Got it.” They thanked the man and headed back to Ralph’s truck. “He’s definitely not driving his registered car. Could be a friend’s, or something he bought without registering.”
“Seems risky, but then again, there’s a lot we don’t know about this man.” Henrietta thought back to what Amelia had said, and she knew where they needed to go next. “Okay, you’ve gone with me this far. How about a little further?”
He narrowed his eyes at her but said nothing as he backed out of the hardware store parking lot. “Tell me where to go,” he said good-naturedly.
“The marina.” Henrietta rested her head back against the seat. “And Ralph? We may want to call the police to meet us there. I think I know where William Cone is staying.”
13
Ralph took the curve into the marina parking lot at a fast speed and Henrietta latched on to the door handle, her teeth gritted. She didn’t begrudge Ralph his fast pace, though. It was only a matter of time before William disappeared for good, if her hunch was correct.
As they barreled toward the dock access of the marina, she spotted an old white pickup truck that fit the description the man at the hardware store had given. It sat on the edge of the parking lot, looking for all the world as if it were abandoned.
“You going to tell me how you knew he’d be here?”
Her stomach clenched in knots. So, she was right.
“I started to have an idea back when we were talking to Amelia,” she began. Ralph pulled up next to the truck, and they both got out.
He went to the back and began sniffing around. “It’s faint,” he finally said. “But there’s been gas back here. I’ll bet you anything he drenched the lighthouse and tossed the cans over the cliff. But why?”
“We’d have to talk to Daryl Quinn, but I’ve got a feeling that William Cone was the one who wanted to purchase the lighthouse land. I’m guessing, but I have a feeling that there was more behind Gerald’s death than a jealous husband.”
“And now that Gerald is gone and his daughter had the property—”
“Why keep a piece of property with a burned lighthouse?”
“I’ll be,” Ralph said, shaking his head. “All to get a piece of property, even after his wife’s death.”
They returned to the car and drove back toward the dock area. “Why the marina though, Henri?”
“Something that Amelia said made me think back to when I was reading through those love letters. Amelia said that Gerald had meant for the lighthouse to be a gift to the city. The word ‘gift’ lodged in my mind, and I couldn’t think of why.”
“But obviously you remembered what it was,” he said, looking at her with a quick sidelong glance before he pulled his truck to a stop near the entrance to the ramp that led down to the docks.
“Yes. I remembered that Dee had mentioned something about a gift. It came up several times, along with the name The Starlight. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but one letter hinted at the fact that it was a boat.”
“A boat?” Ralph pulled her to the side before they could go down the ramp. “Gerald gave her a boat?”
“I know,” Henrietta shook her head, “extravagant. But perhaps, as Amelia said, he had no use for money aside from helping others. It really seemed as if he wanted to do things that would help others. To reclaim the lighthouse for the future generation. Have a life insurance police for his daughter. Give a boat to Dee.”
“But how would a woman who couldn’t leave the house get to a boat in the marina?”
“I have no idea,” Henrietta admitted, “but I think that William must have found out about it.”
“Mostly just you,” she said with a smile.
“Ah, the double standard. But no, he took some time off this afternoon and came back to work later. He says he likes to work into the night, since there’s not much else to do in town.”
“I suppose that must be hard for someone his age.” She thought—not for the first time—about how Olivia was now single. Granted, the breakup was too new, but she’d seen something between them. Nothing inappropriate or that crossed any line, since Olivia had been dating Nelson at the time, but more like a connection she couldn’t ignore.
She was still thinking about this when Scott popped his head back in.
“Scott are you seeing anyone?” she blurted.
The tips of his ears turned red and he stammered out a no.
“Henrietta,” Ralph said, using her full name, which caused her to shoot him a curious glance.
“I was just—”
“Well, don’t just.”
She held up her hands in a plea of innocence. “I just know that it must be challenging to meet people of quality here in town without much…social activity. Why, I was just talking with Olivia today—”
“Livi?” Scott asked.
“Yes,” Henrietta said with a smile at his familiar tone. “And the poor thing just broke up with Nelson last night.”
She was pleased to see the utter shock on Scott’s face and wondered if there wasn’t a trace of hopefulness there, too.
“Anyway,” she continued, “I was thinking, when the time is right of course, how I could encourage her to meet new people.”
“Of course, you were,” Ralph said, rolling his eyes.
“I care for her,” Henrietta said, meeting Ralph’s gaze with a hard one of her own. “I want to see her taken care of and having thriving friendships.”
“Let me guess, you want Scott to show her around?”
Scott’s blush deepened, but Henrietta pretended to ignore it. “I just think, since they are already friends, it would be easier that way. She just needs to know there are people here who care about her.”
“I-I’d be happy to.” Scott spoke almost too quickly, and Henrietta had to temper her smile.
“That is so kind of you, Scott. Actually—”
“That’s enough of that. Did you need something, son?” Ralph asked, cutting off Henrietta completely.
“I…oh yeah, I’m working on tracing that William Cone guy, and think I got a hit on his credit card.”
Henrietta’s mind was immediately brought back to their case, and her aspirations for both Scott and Olivia were put on hold. Though it was a subject she fully intended to come back to.
“Where?” Ralph demanded
“I’ll show you.”
They all went into the front room and around to get a good view at Scott’s screens. Even though he worked in the open, bullpen-style work space of the front room, he’d specifically positioned his screens so that no windows were behind him and no one, unless they were in his space, could see them.
Henrietta and Ralph crowded behind him, awkwardly pushed up against the wall as Scott’s fingers flew across the screens.
“This is his credit card information.”
“Most of those purchases were a week ago,” Ralph observed.
“Yes, but here,” he pointed at the last one he’d highlighted with yellow. “That was just a few hours ago.”
“Hours?”
“Well, he hasn’t made a purchase since then, or else I’d have it here. If he were to make one as we were watching, then maybe you could apprehend him, but this is more of a guide to tell you his whereabouts.”
“He’s still in town,” Henrietta observed.
“Yes.”
“But if he’s still in town,” she continued, “where is he? I’m assuming the police have staked out his home, so he’s not there. He’s got to be somewhere else.”
“Yes,” Ralph agreed. “And the question after that is, what’s he going to do next?”
“Are we saying we think he killed his wife?” Scott asked.
“My contacts have said that Deborah Cone’s death was foul play, but they weren’t able to tell me who the suspects were.” Ralph rubbed his jaw.
“It stands to reason that her husband would be a likely suspect. Not only are relatives often considered first suspects, but he was also a controlling man, and she was having an affair—emotional or otherwise—with another man who, consequently, is dead too.”
Scott shuddered. “This just got deeper.”
“It did. There’s no way to pinpoint him, Scott?” Ralph asked.
“I did try tracking his phone, but I think he left it behind. It’s pinged off the towers that are nearest his house.”
“Another one who’s watched too many crime shows,” Ralph said.
“And yet it’s worked for him,” Henrietta observed.
“Bah.”
Ralph’s phone rang in that moment, and he pulled it out. “Amelia,” he explained before he answered.
“What?” he said the next moment.
Henrietta didn’t like the look of concern that washed over his features.
“Right. Okay. We’ll be right over.” He closed his phone, his expression heavy, and turned to Henrietta. “That was Amelia. She says the lighthouse is on fire.”
12
The flames rose up into the air like a torch lighting up the night sky. Yellow and orange blazed before them as Ralph parked in the gravel parking lot and came up to the police line, where they saw Amelia standing with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders.
A fire truck with flashing lights stood blocking off most of the lighthouse from view, and firemen scurried back and forth, doing what they could to put out the flames.
Henrietta felt sorry to the core of her being at the sight of a historic monument being destroyed before their eyes. “This is awful.”
“It is,” Ralph sympathized. “I can’t believe that it was an accident.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” she admitted.
“William?” Ralph suggested.
“It makes the most logical sense—though I don’t know why. Not exactly. What does he gain? Was there evidence in the lighthouse that could convict him? At the point before his wife was killed, it appeared he’d gotten away with murder. This is assuming it was him who killed Gerald.”
“Right. Well,” they drew near to Amelia, “we’ll see what happened, and then go from there.”
Amelia turned as they were drawing near and came up to them. Tears streaked her soot-covered face, and she looked as if she were about to fall asleep standing up.
“Oh, dear, are you all right?” Henrietta asked.
Sniffing, she wiped a finger under eyes. “No. Yes. I don’t know.”
“Of course.”
“I’m glad you called us,” Ralph said.
“I couldn’t think of who else to call. First my father, now his lighthouse. Why?”
“That’s what we’re wondering,” Henrietta agreed.
“Want to sit down?” Ralph asked.
“Sure.” She followed them to a bench on the other side of the firetruck. Henrietta had a feeling Amelia wouldn’t be able to leave the scene for a time, waiting to see what happened to the lighthouse, and now was as good a time as any to gain any theories she may have about the lighthouse and her father’s involvement with another man’s wife.
Amelia’s gaze traveled back to the lighthouse and stayed there for a time before she seemed to be pulled from her haze, if only a little, to look back at them.
“My father was working on a secret project,” she started. Henrietta’s ears pricked at this. “He wanted to gain historic notoriety for the lighthouse.”
Henrietta’s hopes sank a little, as she knew the information already, but she didn’t say anything. There was a possibility that Amelia knew more than she did.
“He felt so strongly that the Starlight Lighthouse should be preserved for the next generation that he put a lot of his own money into it,” Amelia went on. “He spent weeks researching who had worked here, and even found a tie to a semi-famous Canadian writer who had taken six months to stay in the lighthouse, keeping it running at night, only to turn around and write a well-known novel that made him a decent amount of money. It was things like that that convinced my father the Starlight needed to be preserved.”
“Was there opposition to this?” Ralph asked.
“I wasn’t completely aware of everything that happened. My father was a private man. After my mother died, he didn’t often confide the hard things to me. He kept them to himself to deal with and only shared the good with me. Mostly.”
“A father’s protection,” Henrietta mused.
“Something like that.” She pushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear, her eyes seeking out the lighthouse again. “I only found out about the buyer later.”
“The buyer?” Ralph prompted.
“Yeah.” Amelia met his gaze. “I didn’t know—until recently—that it was my father, not the city or some private owner, who owned the lighthouse. He got some type of settlement from my mother’s death, which I knew nothing about. He said it went toward purchasing and restoring the lighthouse first, and then he’d put it into something for me. That’s how he phrased it.”
“Perhaps the life insurance policy,” Henrietta said.
“Now that I know about it, it wouldn’t surprise me.” She sniffed again. “Anyway, I came to see my father a few months ago and found him in a terrible mood. He said that there was ‘some guy’ offering a ridiculous sum of money to purchase the lighthouse. He raged against it, because he knew this man wanted to tear it down. He might have considered selling if it was to go to someone who appreciated history, but this person clearly wanted to tear down the lighthouse for some sort of commercial investment. I can’t remember what he said exactly.”
Henrietta exchanged a glance with Ralph. This was exactly the type of motive they had been looking for. Someone had to have a vested interest in the lighthouse in order to kill for it, if it had been the motivation.
“Your father didn’t mention who it was?”
“Oh no, it was a miracle that he even told me about the person. But I do know that he wasn’t interested in selling. There was no amount that he would have settled for.”
“You’re positive?” Ralph pressed.
“Absolutely. Wealth wasn’t important to my father. Not like history was. Actually, I think that his plan all along was to fix up the lighthouse, get it recognized as an historic sight, and then gift it to the city.”
“Gift it?” Ralph said, surprise showing in the orange light that played across his features.
“Yes. That was my father, thinking about others. He would only have rested if he knew the lighthouse would be protected.” Quiet tears coursed down Amelia’s cheeks as she looked back at the lighthouse, her father’s work gone up in flames.
“It would have been an amazing gift—” Henrietta said, then stopped. Gift. Why did that ring a bell?
Then it hit her.
Turning to Ralph, she gripped his wrist so hard, he winced. “What is it?” he said under his breath.
“We’ve got to go.”
It took Ralph only a moment to know what she was talking about.
“We’ve got to follow up on something,” he told Amelia, patting her hand like a father. “But you’ll be all right?” he asked.
She nodded. “Thank you for coming. I…I don’t know what I’ll do next.”
“Don’t you worry,” Henrietta encouraged her. “This will all come to an end soon.”
Sooner, Henrietta thought, than anyone realizes.
Ralph drove just above the posted speed limit, but Henrietta wished he’d go faster, even though she knew it wasn’t advisable—or legal.
“Oh, for the days when I had a siren,” he bemoaned.
“There, up there,” she pointed out. The hardware store from Scott’s search appeared before them. It was getting close to closing time, but thankfully the lights were still on.
It was a testament to Ralph’s trust in her that he hadn’t asked for full details before they took off for the opposite end of town. When she’d suggested they first go to the hardware store, he’d agreed, but she wondered if he was going to demand more details soon. Perhaps after her first hunch was verified—if it were.
He screeched to a halt in front of the store, taking up one and a half spaces, and they jumped out.
“Hi there,” the man behind the counter said. He wore a red-and-black buffalo plaid flannel shirt, and a cap pulled low. “How can I help ya?”
“We’ve got a bit of a problem we think you can help us with,” Henrietta said with a kind smile.
“All right, ma’am,” the older gentleman said. “What’s that?”
Ralph stepped up with his phone on, a picture of William Cone enlarged on the screen. “Have you seen this man?”
“I—I have,” the older man said. “Why do you ask? He was in not but a few hours ago.”
They knew as much, but now Henrietta wanted to confirm her suspicions.
“I thought so,” she said with another disarming smile. “He bought some gasoline, didn’t he?”
“How’d you know?” the old man said, looking impressed.
“Just a hunch.” She looked over at Ralph. “You’ll want to tell the police that when they come by.”
Now the man’s eyes bugged. “The police?”
“It’s a long story,” Ralph said. “But did he say anything to you? Where he was going? Where he’d been?”
“Nah.” The man scratched behind his back, his eyes searching the ceiling as if it would help him recall the interaction better. “I just remember saying it would be cheaper for him to buy what he was getting at a gas station. I only sell some gas here to cater to a few customers who don’t want to go back up to the other side of town and the station there.”
“Of course.” Ralph nodded congenially. “And his reply?”
“Mostly said that it was just what he needed. He thanked me and left. That was it.”
Henrietta’s heart felt heavy. If they’d known looking at the record of his purchase at the hardware store that William had planned on burning down a piece of history, she would have demanded they act more quickly. Then again, there would have been no way to trace him.
“Did you happen to see what he was driving?” Ralph asked.
“Yup. Had an old white truck. Real beat up, you know?”
“Got it.” They thanked the man and headed back to Ralph’s truck. “He’s definitely not driving his registered car. Could be a friend’s, or something he bought without registering.”
“Seems risky, but then again, there’s a lot we don’t know about this man.” Henrietta thought back to what Amelia had said, and she knew where they needed to go next. “Okay, you’ve gone with me this far. How about a little further?”
He narrowed his eyes at her but said nothing as he backed out of the hardware store parking lot. “Tell me where to go,” he said good-naturedly.
“The marina.” Henrietta rested her head back against the seat. “And Ralph? We may want to call the police to meet us there. I think I know where William Cone is staying.”
13
Ralph took the curve into the marina parking lot at a fast speed and Henrietta latched on to the door handle, her teeth gritted. She didn’t begrudge Ralph his fast pace, though. It was only a matter of time before William disappeared for good, if her hunch was correct.
As they barreled toward the dock access of the marina, she spotted an old white pickup truck that fit the description the man at the hardware store had given. It sat on the edge of the parking lot, looking for all the world as if it were abandoned.
“You going to tell me how you knew he’d be here?”
Her stomach clenched in knots. So, she was right.
“I started to have an idea back when we were talking to Amelia,” she began. Ralph pulled up next to the truck, and they both got out.
He went to the back and began sniffing around. “It’s faint,” he finally said. “But there’s been gas back here. I’ll bet you anything he drenched the lighthouse and tossed the cans over the cliff. But why?”
“We’d have to talk to Daryl Quinn, but I’ve got a feeling that William Cone was the one who wanted to purchase the lighthouse land. I’m guessing, but I have a feeling that there was more behind Gerald’s death than a jealous husband.”
“And now that Gerald is gone and his daughter had the property—”
“Why keep a piece of property with a burned lighthouse?”
“I’ll be,” Ralph said, shaking his head. “All to get a piece of property, even after his wife’s death.”
They returned to the car and drove back toward the dock area. “Why the marina though, Henri?”
“Something that Amelia said made me think back to when I was reading through those love letters. Amelia said that Gerald had meant for the lighthouse to be a gift to the city. The word ‘gift’ lodged in my mind, and I couldn’t think of why.”
“But obviously you remembered what it was,” he said, looking at her with a quick sidelong glance before he pulled his truck to a stop near the entrance to the ramp that led down to the docks.
“Yes. I remembered that Dee had mentioned something about a gift. It came up several times, along with the name The Starlight. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but one letter hinted at the fact that it was a boat.”
“A boat?” Ralph pulled her to the side before they could go down the ramp. “Gerald gave her a boat?”
“I know,” Henrietta shook her head, “extravagant. But perhaps, as Amelia said, he had no use for money aside from helping others. It really seemed as if he wanted to do things that would help others. To reclaim the lighthouse for the future generation. Have a life insurance police for his daughter. Give a boat to Dee.”
“But how would a woman who couldn’t leave the house get to a boat in the marina?”
“I have no idea,” Henrietta admitted, “but I think that William must have found out about it.”
