Chapter Nineteen
Proximity is Motive
Mary fixed her lipstick, gazing at her image in her phone as she sat on a stool at JL’s. Outside, sunlight bounced off the glass. Inside, the bar held a hush that invited stories.
“Top off?” the bartender asked, already reaching for the vermouth.
“Yes.” Mary set her elbow on the dark wood. “People like me shouldn’t get too comfortable with day drinking.”
“People like you?” His smile was polite but forgettable.
“Women who know exactly where to hide a body.” She acted mysterious on purpose, wanting people to keep guessing her motives—that way, they stayed away from her as she preferred.
He blinked, the quiet thinning.
At the far end of the bar, two tourists spoke in low, excited voices—the tone people used when grief made them feel important.
“. . . they say she was arranged. Like a painting.”
“. . . and the boyfriend? The handsome one—”
“. . . Zach? He looked wrecked on Instagram last night.”
Mary stirred an olive with a cocktail pick, her hand trembling just enough to betray her nerves. “People do love a pretty suspect,” she murmured, voice edged with a bitterness she wished she could hide.
The air stirred beside her. She turned as Gypsie slid onto the neighboring stool. The petite woman had hands like a goddess and gave the best massages on the island.
“I love another day drinker,” Gypsie said with a grin.
“Usual?” the bartender said. She nodded.
“I’m trying not to make it a habit,” Mary said.
“Don’t be a quitter,” Gypsie replied.
Mary smiled. “I’ve never been called that.”
“No, you’re strong,” Gypsie said, patting her arm.
Mary’s phone buzzed. A banner slid across the lock screen like a shiver.
Do you believe in fairy tales?
How about happy endings?
You left your knife at home.
Mary didn’t react. The questions weren’t questions. They were a clammy hand pressed tight on the back of her neck. Not much could scare her anymore. Not after everything she’d been through. The structure was familiar: short lines, no emojis, no name attached.
She held up her fingers for another drink. Gypsie looked into her glass, pretending she hadn’t seen the message. Fear felt too real these days.
“People are nervous with all the storms we’ve had lately,” the bartender said as he set her drink down. “Tourists keep wandering in asking for candles and stories.”
“Stories and storms are the same,” Mary told him. “Candles just make it look like a religious ceremony.”
He chuckled, though there was tension under the sound. “Are you okay, Mary?”
“I’m an island,” she said, a line she’d been repeating long enough to believe. “I erode slowly.”
She intended to keep saying it. Some mantras were survival.
She and Gypsie chatted for a few more minutes. When Mary finished her drink, she glanced at the door.
“If anyone asks, I wasn’t here.”
They laughed as she slid off the stool and walked out. There were no secrets in Avalon.
Unless you were a murderer.
Whoever that was could keep a secret very well.
She smiled at the thought.
She pushed the door open. A deputy brushed past her on his way in, the patch on his sleeve catching her eye. He gave her a polite nod, eyes flicking to her face, then to the bar behind her. His radio hissed once, then went quiet again, like someone had just muted a room.
On the sidewalk, people moved along without slowing, the tide of daily life undisturbed. Mary merged with the crowd as her phone buzzed again. She shouldn’t look. She did anyway.
We’re all safest when the truth is told.
“Are we?” Mary asked no one.
She lifted her face to the sun, eyes closed, and let the heat wash over her skin. Baptism by fire always felt purer than that done by water.
She set her phone on silent and continued walking. She’d keep surviving. Survivors were rarely innocent for long.
***
Near Lover’s Cove, the sun turned the water into glittering diamond dust. Tosh sat cross-legged on the pier, a rod between his knees, his mirrored sunglasses reflecting the gentle waves. Zach baited a hook with hands that never minded getting dirty.
“Fishing is a bold choice for a man who checks his phone every five seconds,” Zach said, laughing.
“I’m detoxing,” Tosh said. He set his phone face down beside the tackle box. It lit up anyway. “Or trying to.”
“Try harder.” Zach lobbed his line out. The bobber made a precise circle, a period at the end of a sentence. “You look like a man waiting for a verdict.”
Tosh grinned without humor. “Aren’t we all?”
“Some of us more than others.” Zach’s ball cap shaded his eyes. He had a split across his knuckle, half-healed, the kind you get from contact, not carpentry.
Tosh clocked it and looked away, choosing not to ask. Some questions came with answers you couldn’t unknow.
“If the cops ask again,” Zach said, “what do you want me to say about that night?”
“The truth,” Tosh replied too quickly.
“Which version?” Zach’s lips twitched.
“Mine.” Tosh watched a paddleboarder glide past, wishing he could feel that free. “We were at the fire. We laughed. We drank. Everyone danced. Lisa went for a walk. I didn’t follow.” He paused just long enough to let doubt bleed through, eyes shadowed with what he didn’t, or couldn’t, confess.
“Did you want to?” Zach asked.
“Wanting isn’t a crime.”
“Tell that to half this island.” Zach reeled and cast again. “People are talking.”
“They always are.” Tosh chuckled. He didn’t care what people said. “Let me guess. Tosh is a narcissist with a body count.” He leaned back on his palms. “Maybe they’re saying that I cried just right for the cameras.”
“They’re also saying that Harmony’s a cold block of ice.”
“She’s not ice.” Tosh’s voice softened. “She’s water. Calm until the rip tide hits.”
“Ah, speaking poetry.”
“I can wax poetic,” Tosh said easily.
Zach’s line jerked. He stood and braced, a grin breaking across his face as the rod bowed. “First fish on.”
Silver flashed below the surface, then torqued away. The hook came back empty. Zach scowled.
“Guess not.” Tosh laughed. “Story of your life.”
“Damn, that was a big one.” Zach wiped his hands on his shorts.
“The ones that get away always are,” Tosh said. “Of course, you’re always catching what you don’t intend to keep.”
Zach didn’t rise to the bait. Tosh’s next cast cut clean through the quiet.
“What about you, Zach? You were with Heidi . . . and then she was hanging from the tower.”
Zach frowned, jaw tense. “I told the truth. I was with her, and then I wasn’t.
I know how bad it looks, but there’s nothing I can do about that.
” Despite trying for nonchalance, a flicker of desperation crept into his voice, as though he needed to convince both Tosh and himself that he had nothing to hide.
“I trust you,” Tosh said.
“That matters,” Zach replied.
Nothing made sense anymore, but loyalty was something to hang on to.
Zach’s phone buzzed, annoying him, breaking his rhythm.
He didn’t look. He tossed the phone to Tosh. “Read it,” he said. “If it’s nothing, I don’t want it in my head.”
He met Tosh’s confused gaze.
“What is it?” Zach asked.
“Damn. It says, Keep your tools handy. No number. No name.”
“How cute,” Zach said dryly. He then tucked his phone away with a shake of his head. “Someone thinks this is a game, and we’re players whether we signed up or not.”
The word tasted wrong in his mouth. Game. It sounded too much like the way the anonymous voice in those chapters described things: winners and losers, and the losers didn’t walk away.
“Life itself is a game.” Tosh’s tone was gentle and vicious at once. “Some of us just prefer different rules.”
“Like?”
“Like, maybe don’t kill.”
Tosh didn’t blink. Zach glanced away while rubbing the cut on his knuckle.
“Mary can be scary,” he said after a moment of silence.
“She scares a lot of people,” Tosh agreed. “Fear and guilt aren’t twins, though.”
“And Harmony?”
“She’s a mirror.” Tosh’s voice dropped. “People hate what they see.”
There were others, too, names Zach didn’t want to say out loud yet. Sometimes the quiet ones were the deadliest. It was impossible to pin anything down. For now, they were ants in a glass farm, everyone watching, sometimes, just for kicks, shaking the walls to see what they’d rebuild.
Zach’s next cast snagged and stayed there, line pulled taut, refusing to come free.
Tosh watched it like an omen.
“Do you think it’s one of us?” Zach asked.
Tosh didn’t look at him.
“I think proximity is a motive.”