Chapter 5 #3
“We’ve identified seventeen entries that mention people still living on Grimm Island or their direct descendants,” Walt announced finally, having made a list as we read. “Each one represents a potential motive for murder.”
We couldn’t investigate seventeen different scandals simultaneously, much as the Silver Sleuths might enjoy trying. We needed to focus on the murders themselves, on the blond woman in white who kept appearing in the narrative like a ghost that refused to be exorcised.
I pulled out the diary entry from late September, the one that had made my skin crawl when I first read it.
“‘Someone is watching me. I feel eyes everywhere now, like God finally got tired of waiting for me to confess and sent an avenging angel to hurry things along. Ruby’s scared too. More scared than I’ve ever seen her.
She knows something she won’t tell me, something about why we’re being watched.
Tomorrow night at Turtle Point. Ruby says we need to talk about leaving, about starting over somewhere safe.
Maybe she’s right. Maybe I’ve been playing God for too long, collecting sins like baseball cards. Maybe it’s time to run.’”
The silence that followed was profound, broken only by Chowder’s snoring from his bed in the corner. He’d positioned himself in the early morning sunlight streaming through the window, his bow tie slightly askew, completely unconcerned with human drama.
“He never made it to ‘starting over,’” Dottie said softly. “Neither of them did.”
“There’s only one other mention of feeling watched,” Dash said, flipping through his notes. “An entry from two weeks before this one. Pickering wrote that he thought someone had been in his office, that his desk had been disturbed. But he wasn’t sure if it was real or paranoia.”
“That’s it?” Walt asked. “Just two entries about surveillance?”
“The rest of the journal is all about documenting other people’s sins,” Dash confirmed. “These two entries about feeling watched stand out because they’re personal. They’re about his own fear.”
“So we don’t actually know who was watching them,” Hank said thoughtfully. “Or if anyone was. Could have been paranoia from a guilty conscience.”
“Except they ended up dead,” Bea pointed out. “So someone was definitely paying attention to them.”
“We need to talk to Elsie Crawford,” Dash said. “According to Reverend Sutton, she was at Turtle Point that night walking her dog. Saw something. But Milton dismissed her as an unreliable witness and buried her statement.”
“Convenient,” Walt muttered. “Milton had a habit of burying inconvenient truths.”
“The staging bothers me,” Dottie said, tapping her fingers against the table. “Someone took the time to arrange them like that—in an embrace—after killing them. That’s not rage. That’s not panic. That’s deliberate.”
“A message,” Bea said. “About their affair. About sin and punishment.”
“Or mockery,” Hank suggested. “Making a spectacle of what they’d tried to keep hidden.”
“Either way,” Dash said, “It tells us something about the killer’s state of mind. They weren’t just eliminating a problem. They were making a statement.”
“Which brings us back to motive,” Walt said, consulting his notes. “Who benefits from their deaths? Who had the most to lose if Pickering or Ruby talked?”
“It would have taken some physical effort to move two bodies and position them,” Dottie said.
“So we’re looking for someone with strength,” Walt noted. “Or possibly more than one person involved.”
“That complicates things,” Hank said.
Bea had been unusually quiet. Her crimson nails tapped against the paper—a nervous gesture I’d rarely seen from her.
“What is it?” I asked.
She looked up, and there was something sharp in her eyes, the look she got when a story was coming together.
“This entry from mid-July: ‘A reporter from the Gazette has been asking questions around the church. Wants to know about our finances, about donations and where the money goes. June told me the woman came to the house, very polite, very professional, asking about the new community center fund. I told June to say nothing, but she’s never been good at keeping secrets. The reporter’s name is Sutherland—blond, efficient, always dressed in white. She smells like trouble.’”
The room went quiet.
“Sutherland,” Dash repeated. “That name mean anything to anyone?”
“Jane Sutherland,” Bea said, and now her voice carried recognition. “I knew her. She worked at the Gazette from ’84 to ’86. I was still doing the society column then, but Jane—she was investigative from day one. Charleston girl, had worked at the Post and Courier before moving here.”
“What was she investigating?” Hank asked.
“Church finances,” Bea said slowly, piecing it together. “There’d been whispers about some of the churches on the island—money going missing, building funds that never quite added up. Jane thought she had a corruption story. Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian—she was looking at all of them.”
“And Pickering’s church specifically?” Dash pressed.
“First Methodist had the biggest budget,” Bea confirmed. “Wealthiest congregation on the island. If there was financial impropriety happening, that’s where the money would be.”
“So she wasn’t interested in Ruby at all,” I said. “She was after Pickering.”
“Or whoever was embezzling from the church,” Walt added. “Pickering might have just been collateral damage.”
“She wore white,” Dottie observed. “Always white, you said?”
Bea nodded. “It was her trademark. White suits, white blouses. Very Diane Sawyer. She thought it made her look more credible, more trustworthy. People would open up to her.”
“And she left town right after the murders,” Dash said.
“Disappeared,” Bea corrected. “I came in one Monday morning—this would have been the week after they found the bodies—and her desk was cleaned out. Editor said she’d resigned, effective immediately.
No forwarding address, no explanation. We all thought it was strange, but…
” She shrugged. “Journalists move around. It happens.”
“Except it’s awfully convenient timing,” Hank said.
“I can track her down,” Bea offered. “I still have contacts at papers throughout the region. If Jane Sutherland is still in journalism, someone will know where.”
“And if she’s not?” Dottie asked.
“Then we find out why she left the profession,” Dash said. “People don’t just walk away from investigative journalism without a reason.”
“Especially not when they’re onto a good story,” Bea added darkly. “Jane was ambitious. Tenacious. The kind of reporter who wouldn’t let go until she had answers. If she ran, something scared her badly enough to make her quit everything.”
“Or someone paid her to disappear,” Walt suggested. “Cover-up payment.”
“Either way,” Dash said, “We need to find her.”
“I’ll check property records,” Walt added. “See if she owned anything on the island, if she left any paper trail we can follow.”
The conversation continued, plans forming and reforming like clouds before a storm.
We divided tasks with the efficiency of people who’d learned to work together through our investigation of the Calvert case.
Dottie would track down the medical center nurses from 1985.
Hank would research the Flamingo Motel’s employee records.
Walt would handle the official documents and property records.
Bea would hunt for Jane Sutherland through her network of journalism contacts.
And Dash and I would visit Michael Bailey at the funeral home.
By the time the Silver Sleuths dispersed, the sun had fully risen, painting Harbor Street in shades of gold and possibility. Genevieve had arrived and was handling the morning customers up front while I tidied the back room.
“Two o’clock,” Dash said as he prepared to leave. “I’ll pick you up here.”
“A funeral home.” I wiped down the table. “Very romantic.”
His mouth quirked. “I live to impress.”
He stepped closer, reaching past me for Pickering’s journal. His arm brushed mine—deliberate, warm.
“Be careful,” he said quietly.
“Always am.”
He held my gaze a moment, then left.
I finished cleaning, humming an old folk song my grandmother used to sing while tending graves. Dark and minor key, about secrets that wouldn’t stay buried.
“Oh, dig my grave both wide and deep, place a marble stone at my head and feet…”
Appropriate for where we were headed.
Somewhere on this island, someone had gotten away with murder.
And we were about to dig it all up.