Chapter 2
As they closed in on the west dock, the wooden pier came into view, with its dark green freight shed and islanders casting fishing lines into the ocean. Even though it was late in the summer, a few teenage girls were sunbathing on towels spread out on the planks.
A tall figure waved eagerly at the incoming boat. A flash of strawberry-blond hair caught the sun.
“You know Marigold?” the boat captain asked, his tone changing.
“What’s it to you, evil captain?”
“Don’t tell her I messed with you, would you?” He sounded nervous now. Good.
“Afraid of a strong woman, are you?”
“Respect. It’s called respect. That woman beat out every other fisherman in the lobster trap lifting competition. She could probably lift this boat up with one hand.”
“Noted.”
As Tina stepped onto the float, Marigold Olson greeted her with a bone-crushing hug. Maybe the captain had a point. She also grabbed Tina’s two suitcases and balanced them on her shoulders, although both had wheels and could easily be dragged up the ramp.
The evil Captain Sparrow mouthed something to Tina as he reversed the water taxi away from the pier. Maybe he was saying the word “cream” again just to annoy her, or maybe it was a “told you so.” Either way, she ignored him and focused on her client.
“How are you holding up?”
“I’m squarely in the rage portion of the grieving process.
” Marigold’s long legs ate up the aluminum ramp that led to the dock, while Tina scrambled to keep up.
Her own strides felt like hops compared to the other woman’s.
Marigold was easily six feet tall, with a pole vaulter’s build, her long body topped with a gloriously radiant head of bright blond hair.
At first Tina had thought Marigold was an odd name for such a tall and sturdy woman.
She ought to be named after a tree, not a flower.
But Tina’s mother grew marigolds in their backyard garden, and apparently they were so tough that they repelled insects.
Too bad they didn’t also repel assholes.
“Technically it’s called the ‘anger’ phase, I believe.”
“Oh no, it’s rage,” Marigold said firmly as she set down the suitcases on the dock. “I like to be accurate. I don’t like squishy language. I don’t like lies. And I really don’t like fraud.”
“Right there with you. That’s why I’m here.”
Marigold had recently been stood up at the altar.
When Tina first heard about it, she’d wanted to double-check the year, because did that shit even happen anymore?
In the age of Google, didn’t everyone know everything about everyone?
How did you get all the way to the little archy-thingy with the flowers—the wedding had been outdoors—with no idea that your bridegroom had left the state?
Especially because Marigold was no gullible virgin.
She was the island’s assistant constable, working under Luke Carmichael.
Tina had a lot of respect for Luke’s abilities.
He never would have hired or kept on someone unless they were smart and competent.
Marigold was both, he’d told her, as well as salt-of-the-earth, real, strong as hell, good in a crisis, and occasionally hilarious.
Those were all the ways he’d described her. Gullible and naive weren’t on the list.
Of course, love could do crazy things to a person. That was why Tina studiously avoided that crap.
Marigold hauled her suitcases up the gravel road to where she’d parked her truck, a faded red Chevy pickup that was probably at least twenty years old. Out here, no one bothered with new vehicles because the salt air did so much damage it wasn’t worth it.
Marigold shoved aside a pile of mail and an unopened can of WD-40 and three cans of cat food so Tina could sit in the passenger seat. She must be doing errands as well as chauffeur service.
When they were both settled into the bucket seats, Marigold hauled in a deep breath, then whooshed it out.
“Breathing exercise,” she explained. “It’s the only thing that keeps me sane.
Every time I talk about Adam I feel my cortisol levels spike.
I’m not going to let that bastard give me inflammation on top of everything else. ”
“Understandable.” This was going to be a tough investigation if Marigold had to stop for breathing exercises every time Adam’s name came up. “We can just refer to him as the perp if that makes it easier.”
“How about the motherfucking piece of shit stuck to the bottom of my shoe?”
“That works too,” Tina said mildly. Watching Marigold’s hands gripping the steering wheel, she hoped it didn’t break in half under the pressure.
“You know, I thought I was over it,” Marigold said when she’d finished her breathing and put the truck in gear.
“Easy come, easy go. There’s always another man.
They’re everywhere. Some of them aren’t worth much, but plenty are good for a night or a week.
I like men. They’re usually simple to understand.
They respond to signals, you know? You want to get laid, you put on a tight top.
You want them to leave you alone, you turn on the baseball game.
They like a quest, like putting on your snow tires.
They like praise. They like to be worshipped and coddled.
I thought I had a handle on the whole male gender, but Adam seemed so different.
He’s very caring and compassionate, he knows more about emotional trauma issues than I do.
” She waved one hand, causing the truck to swerve slightly.
“I guess he had me fooled. He shook my confidence and made me doubt myself. I can’t forgive him for that. ”
“I understand, more than you know.” That was exactly how she felt about the events around her former partner. “But from what you’ve told me, it doesn’t sound like Adam committed any crime. Not showing up for the wedding isn’t against the law.”
“I know that,” Marigold said irritably. “I work for the constable. I’m not an idiot. He didn’t steal money from me, unfortunately. That would at least be an actual crime. Luke has already explained that there’s no legal recourse here.”
“Then what am I doing here? Aside from being forced to take a vacation whether I like it or not.”
“I had some time to think while I was on my honeymoon.”
“Excuse me?” Tina did a double-take.
“I wasn’t about to miss it. I’ve always wanted to see New Jersey.”
“Your honeymoon was in New Jersey?”
“It’s a beautiful state,” Marigold said severely. “Underestimated and overlooked. An underdog state, you might say. I like an underdog.”
Okay. Moving on. “So what did you think about while you were on your glamorous solo New Jersey honeymoon?”
“I realized that I’m probably not the first person Adam Johnson—or whatever his real name is—screwed over.
He’s probably done it before and might be doing it again right now, except worse, because he might be stealing or defrauding.
I work in law enforcement. It’s my duty to stop him from harming anyone else. ”
“Very noble.” Tina Chen worked in law enforcement, but she rarely thought of it in such heroic terms. At the start of her career, she had.
But then all the drudgery of routine police work had drained her idealism out of her.
“I’m still not getting why you called me in.
You could investigate him yourself, and I’m sure you already have. ”
Marigold shook her head as she frowned at the road.
“Well, I might work in law enforcement, but I’ve spent almost my entire life on an island that’s barely ten square miles.
This guy is a pro. I’m not saying that because I think only a pro could fool me.
I’m saying that because he’s using a false identity and he disappeared like, completely.
I need an actual law enforcement professional to work this case.
I’m an assistant constable. And technically, I’m just the constable’s assistant.
Luke lets me call myself the assistant constable because he’s a good guy.
But let’s be honest here. I don’t know shit about investigating cases.
Add to that, I’m emotionally involved. I wouldn’t do a good job.
I’d rather you find him and I show up at the end and laugh in his face. ”
Tina deeply appreciated Marigold’s direct and honest approach to everything. The sketchy Adam hadn’t known how good he had it.
“Fair enough. I get it now. I’ll do what I can, but no promises. It’s shockingly easy to disappear, especially if you know how to assume other identities. Do you have a recent photo of Adam?”
Marigold handed over her phone and tapped on a photo album. “They’re all in here. It’s weird to me that he never minded me taking pictures of him, if he meant to disappear all along.”
In the photos, which were mostly selfies of Adam and Marigold, he had a magnetic grin, brown hair, and horn-rimmed glasses. He was always hugging her or kissing her cheek or making goofy faces.
“Is there a chance he genuinely cared for you and just got cold feet?”
“I don’t think so. He would have communicated with me by now.”
“Maybe something happened to him? An accident, car crash, meteor strike?”
Marigold snorted. “Believe me, I’ve thought of ten thousand things that could have kept him from the wedding. But all his things were cleared out of our hotel room. Not even a stray razor or balled-up sock got left behind.”
“Where was this?”
“The Lightkeeper Inn. His idea, to spend the night before our wedding living it up in the lap of luxury. We were supposed to catch a boat to the wedding venue in town the next day.”
Tina took out a notebook so she could jot down these details. “So he was gone at that point?”
“Yes. I thought maybe he’d decided to surprise me there, so I went ahead and got on the boat, made my way to the church.”
“It was a church wedding? I heard it was outdoors.”
“We set everything up in the courtyard of the Unitarian Universalist church on Elm Street because it’s super-pretty, and that way the minister could do the deed right there on the premises.
I got my dress on, did my hair the way we planned, with these little daisies in it, and kept waiting, but he never arrived.
I let the guests eat all the food and made them take the leftovers with them.
Then I hoofed it to the airport to catch the plane to Newark. ”
“Man, I’m so sorry.” Tina shook her head as her pencil flew across the page. “That really sucks.”
“No sympathy, please. I’m past that. I just want him stopped.”
“Gotcha.” If it was her, she wouldn’t want any sympathy either. In fact, she’d probably want to pretend it never happened. She gave Marigold credit for not taking that route. “I just need to check in, then I’ll get to work. What room were you in at the inn?”
“The best room. It’s called the Honeymoon Suite.” Marigold turned a sudden smile on her. “But they should call it the Murder Suite.”
“I’m sorry?” Astonished, Tina paused with her pencil hovering over the page.
“I’m not surprised you don’t know. It was a long time ago, and only us locals remember, and no one wants to piss off the Carmichaels by mentioning it. A guest was murdered in that suite, like thirty years ago.”
“Really? I didn’t know the inn had such an interesting past. What happened?”
“If you really want to know, you should talk to Heather and Gabby. They’re covering it on their podcast.”
Heather McPhee was Luke’s girlfriend, which made her one of the few people Tina knew on this island. She and her friend Gabby Ramon cohosted a true crime podcast called Dirty Rotten Bastards, and somehow they still hadn’t run out of material here on Sea Smoke Island.
“Is it a big mystery? Did they arrest someone? Now I’m curious.”
“They never found out who did it, I can tell you that. I vaguely remember everyone on the island freaking out because a murderer might be on the loose. They interrogated everyone who worked there, all the guests, everyone staying on the island. No one was allowed to leave for a day, I remember that. But they never did arrest anyone, and eventually we all just got on with our lives.”
“An unsolved murder mystery. Damn.” She almost wished she could focus on that instead of some dumbass runaway bridegroom. But a crime from thirty years ago didn’t rate against nabbing someone who might still be causing trouble in the here and now.
“If you want to know more about it, ask Heather and Gabby, or look it up online.”
“It was in the papers?” Her fingers itched to start googling.
“I mean…a wealthy guest stabbed to death in the dark…yes, it got some coverage.”
“In the dark? What do you mean?”
“The power went out that night. That’s how they came up with the cheesy name for their overdramatized coverage. They called it the Night Light Murder.”