Chapter 10 #5
“Come in,” he said, stepping aside. His living room was comfortable in an impersonal way—furniture chosen for durability rather than beauty, bookshelves lined with volumes about grief counseling and bereavement, everything neat and organized and slightly sterile.
The home of someone who dealt with death professionally and didn’t want it bleeding into his personal space.
“I have to admit,” Michael said as we settled into chairs that were comfortable without being memorable, “when you called I hoped it meant good news. Progress.”
“We’ve found some things,” Dash said carefully. “Evidence that was buried by Sheriff Milton. We’re following new leads that suggest your mother’s murder might have been connected to problems with the church finances.”
Michael’s face went very still. “What kind of problems?”
“Money that went missing,” I said carefully. “Your mother was cleaning houses for church board members. She might have overheard something, seen documents, figured out something she wasn’t supposed to know.”
“And someone killed her for it.” Michael’s voice had gone flat. “Not because of the affair, but because she knew too much.”
“We don’t know that for certain yet,” Dash said. “But we’re trying to piece it together. That’s why we need to look through her belongings—see if she left any clues about what she knew or who she was afraid of.”
“The box is in the attic. I’ve never opened it. Never wanted to.” Michael stood abruptly. “I was ten when they gave it to me. Too young to know what to do with it. Then I just…kept putting it off. I’ve lived with the memory of her all this time, thinking that would be enough.”
He disappeared up a narrow staircase, and we sat in his living room listening to footsteps overhead, the creak of floorboards, the sound of boxes being moved.
The house itself felt watchful, as if it had absorbed decades of other people’s grief through Michael’s professional presence and learned to hold sorrow without judgment.
When he returned, he was carrying a cardboard box that had been reinforced with packing tape, the kind of precaution you took when something was too precious to risk falling apart. He set it on the coffee table with the careful reverence of someone handling relics.
“My grandparents said these were things Mama would want me to have someday,” Michael said quietly. “Her Bible. Some photographs. Letters. I don’t know what else.”
Dash had pulled on latex gloves, and he cut through the packing tape with a pocketknife that looked like it had seen decades of use. The box opened with a sigh, releasing the scent of lavender sachets and old paper, time preserved in cardboard.
Photographs came out first—Ruby Bailey young and beautiful, holding a baby who must have been Michael. Ruby in her choir robe looking solemn and proud. Ruby with other women, all dressed in their Sunday clothes, smiling for the camera.
“She was so young,” Michael said, his voice rough. “Thirty-two. I forget that sometimes. She’s been dead longer than she was alive.”
Letters came next, tied with ribbon that had faded from what might once have been pink to the color of old bone. Dash untied the first bundle, unfolded the top letter with the care of someone handling evidence that might crumble.
My dearest Ruby,
I know we shouldn’t be doing this. I know what we have is wrong in the eyes of God and the church and everyone who matters. But when I’m with you I can breathe. You make me remember who I wanted to be before I became what everyone expected.
George Pickering’s handwriting—neat, careful, the script of someone who’d been taught penmanship in an era when it mattered. The words of a man caught between duty and desire, guilt and longing.
“Love letters,” Michael said flatly. “From Reverend Pickering.”
“Several dozen of them,” Dash confirmed, setting the bundle aside carefully. “We’ll need to go through these more thoroughly. May we take the box with us? We’ll document everything and return it when we’re done.”
Michael nodded. “Take it. Take whatever you need. I don’t want them back. I thought I was through being angry with her. Seeing all this makes me realize I’m not.”
Dash continued working through the box methodically.
More bundles of letters, all tied with that faded ribbon.
A journal with a worn leather cover. Photographs of Ruby at different ages—some with baby Michael, others with people I didn’t recognize.
Everything carefully preserved, as if Ruby had been preparing for the day when someone might need to understand her life.
And then, tucked inside a Bible with a cover that had been handled so often the leather felt like cloth, Dash pulled out a bankbook.
Charleston Savings and Loan. Ruby Bailey’s name in neat script across the front.
He opened it carefully, and I watched his expression shift as he scanned the entries. He turned it so I could see.
Monthly deposits going back three years. But these weren’t the small amounts you’d expect from a housekeeper picking up extra jobs. Fifty dollars here, a hundred there, and then—starting in early 1985—several deposits of five hundred dollars. The final balance, dated September 10, 1985: $15,247.
“That’s a lot of money,” Michael said quietly, looking over our shoulders. “How did she—” He stopped, understanding dawning on his face. “The church funds.”
“We don’t know that,” I said quickly, though the numbers were damning. A housekeeper in 1985 would have made maybe two hundred dollars a week if she was lucky. These deposits were far beyond what cleaning houses would earn.
“She was stealing from the church,” Michael said, his voice hollow. “With Reverend Pickering. That’s what this was about. Not just an affair—they were embezzling together and someone found out.”
“Or someone was giving her money,” Dash said carefully, still studying the bankbook. “Pickering could have been supporting her, helping her save up to leave. That doesn’t necessarily mean she was involved in any theft.”
But even as he said it, I could see the doubt in his expression. Large deposits, multiple times over several months—that was more than help. That was serious money.
At the bottom of the box, wrapped in tissue paper that had yellowed with age, was a photograph. I unfolded the tissue carefully.
A large group photo, maybe twenty people standing together outdoors with what looked like picnic tables in the background.
The kind of photograph churches took at summer events—everyone arranged in rows, some sitting, some standing, all smiling at the camera.
The colors had that faded, and several faces were slightly blurred from movement.
I turned it over. On the back, in neat handwriting—First Methodist Church Picnic, July 4, 1985.
“Church picnic,” I said, studying the faces more carefully. Ruby Bailey stood near the back, her smile careful and composed. George Pickering was front and center, his arm around a woman who must have been his wife. And scattered throughout the group were other faces I didn’t recognize.
“Who are you looking for?” Michael asked.
“Stephanie Chester,” I said. “The woman we interviewed tonight. She claimed she barely knew your mother or Reverend Pickering, but if she was at church events…”
I scanned the faces more carefully—so many people, some in focus, some not. Then I spotted her. Third row, slightly to the left. A young blond woman standing between an older man and a younger man who looked enough like him to be his son.
“There,” I said, pointing. “That’s her. And I think that’s Elder Matthias Crenshaw beside her, and his son on the other side.”
“So she was at church events with them,” Michael said quietly. “Along with everyone else in the congregation.”
We carefully packed everything into the box—the letters still tied in their bundles, the bankbook, the church picnic photograph, the journal. Everything that might hold answers to what had happened that September night. Michael walked us to the door, watching as Dash carried the box to the car.
“I don’t know what to hope for anymore,” Michael said quietly. “That my mother was innocent and died for nothing? Or that she was guilty and got what thieves deserve?” He looked out at his vegetable garden, the tomatoes he’d staked so carefully. “Either way, she’s still dead.”
“Either way, she deserves the truth,” I said.
He nodded slowly. “Call me when you know something. Good or bad, I want to know.”
The drive back to my house took only ten minutes through streets that had gone quiet for the night.
Porch lights glowed from the houses we passed, and somewhere in the distance I could hear the foghorn from the harbor.
Ruby Bailey hadn’t been the simple victim of a jealous crime of passion.
She’d been tangled up in something—embezzlement or the appearance of it, money that looked stolen whether it was or wasn’t, involved in complications that had gotten her killed.
“I’m coming in,” Dash said. “Just for a few minutes. Need to make sure everything’s secure.”
I didn’t argue. The day had been long enough, violent enough, complicated enough that having him check the windows and doors and alarm system felt less like overprotection and more like sensible precaution.
Inside, Chowder greeted us with the offended dignity of a dog who’d been left home during what was clearly an eventful day.
Genevieve had dropped him off hours ago when she closed the shop, and she’d changed him into very dapper striped pajamas, but they were rumpled in a way that suggested he’d been napping.
“I know,” I told him, scooping him up. “It was a long day for everyone.”
He woofed softly and then padded to his doggy door and let himself into the backyard.
Dash moved through the house with professional thoroughness—checking window locks, testing the alarm system, making sure nothing looked disturbed.
Finally satisfied, he returned to the kitchen where I was making tea I didn’t really want but needed something to do with my hands.
“Someone attacked Hank this afternoon,” he said quietly. “In broad daylight in a public parking lot. It could have been plain bad luck. A random attacker. But it could also be because we’re asking questions that are making someone very nervous.”
“I know.”
“I’m going to drive to Beaufort first thing in the morning and talk to the investigating officers. Maybe we can get some camera footage from a gas station or one of the businesses. It’s a long shot, but I’ve had greater miracles happen in cases like this.”
“This has been a long week,” I said. “We’ve got a lot of information to go through. We’ve asked a lot of questions, and we don’t have a lot of answers.”
“And tomorrow we’re going to keep asking them. Going to go through Tommy Wheeler’s evidence, read through Ruby’s letters, push harder on people who’ve kept secrets for decades.” He leaned against the counter. “That makes you a target.”
“Then I’m a target.” I poured water over tea leaves, watched them unfurl in the heat. “Ruby Bailey was thirty-two years old when someone killed her. Beat her badly enough to break bones, then shot her three times. She deserves better than me backing down because I’m scared.”
“I’m not asking you to back down.” He crossed the kitchen, and his hands found my shoulders. “I’m asking you to be careful. To not take unnecessary risks. To remember that whoever did this is still out there, still has everything to lose if the truth comes out.”
“I’ll be careful,” I said, turning to face him.
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
We stood there in my kitchen, close enough that I could see the worry in his eyes, the way the day had worn on him too. Hank in the hospital. Stephanie’s evasions. Michael Bailey’s grief turning to anger as he learned his mother might have been a thief.
“I should go,” Dash said finally, though his hands were still on my shoulders.
“Yes,” I said, though I was reluctant to move out of his grasp.
He sighed and kissed me on the forehead. “Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” I agreed.
Then he was gone, and I watched as his taillights disappeared down Harbor Street.
Inside, I locked the door, set the alarm, and carried my untouched tea upstairs with Chowder waddling behind me.
“It’s just the thought of you…the very thought of you, my love.”
I hadn’t sung that song since Patrick died. There was something in it—some quality of longing made beautiful, of absence made into art—that pressed against my chest until I couldn’t breathe. The kind of romantic ache that felt dangerous, like opening a door to a room you’d locked for good reason.
But tonight it had slipped out unbidden, humming itself into existence while I thought about locks being checked and alarms being set and the particular way Dash had looked at me in my kitchen.
Not with Patrick’s easy certainty—we’d known each other since childhood, had moved from friends to lovers with the inevitability of water finding its level.
This was different. Careful. Deliberate.
Two people choosing each other rather than simply recognizing what had always been there.
The song wound through my thoughts as sleep finally came, and for once the yearning in it didn’t make me weep. It just made me wonder what tomorrow might bring.