Chapter 14 #3
“My money,” Sutton corrected, and there was something almost relief in his voice, as if forty years of performance had finally exhausted him.
“Money I’d earned through while having to cover for George and every other member of our leadership team.
They truly were terrible people. I felt I was justified.
George paid himself three times what I made.
Three times! He had a wife and kids, and a piece on the side.
He was getting his cake and eating it too. Why shouldn’t I?”
“So you embezzled,” I said.
“I took what was mine.” His voice had risen to sermon pitch, but this was a different kind of sermon—one about resentment fermented into rage.
“Every Thursday, my day off, I’d make deposits.
Small amounts transferred to the building fund, then redirected.
I was careful. Methodical. It would have worked perfectly if that woman hadn’t—”
He stopped himself, but it was too late.
“If Ruby hadn’t found the duplicate deposit slips in your trash,” Dash finished.
Sutton’s laugh was bitter as communion wine gone to vinegar. “She threatened to tell George everything unless I helped them run away. Can you imagine? That whore and her hypocrite lover, blackmailing ME?”
“So you killed them,” Dottie said flatly.
“I followed them to Turtle Point.” The words poured out now like a confession he’d been rehearsing for four decades.
“Watched them from the trees. Waited until they were…distracted. Vulnerable. George never even saw me coming. I took them by surprise. Had them both kneel. I knew I had to make it quick. There was no need drawing it out. I’d already decided their sentence.
One shot to the back of the head while he was still naked, still flushed with his sin. ”
“And Ruby?” I asked, though my throat felt tight.
“She ran.” His eyes had gone distant, seeing that night instead of my dining room.
“Screaming about the money, about her son, about God knows what. So I shot her before she could draw attention. You never know who might be hidden nearby.” He laughed, somewhat maniacally, and it brought chills to my skin.
“I shot her again. She fell to the ground, but she was still making so much noise. Even as the blood darkened the sand beneath her. Then I shot her again and there was nothing but silence. Not even the birds or the trees made a sound. I cut out her tongue, just to make sure she couldn’t make any more noise. ”
“Then you positioned them,” Walt said grimly. “Made it look like a crime of passion.”
“Everyone expected it. Jealous spouse, outraged church member—the narrative wrote itself.” He seemed almost proud. “I even provided the perfect evidence to guide the investigation. George’s journal. Witness statements suggesting other suspects. For forty years, it worked perfectly.”
“Douglas Sutton,” Dash said formally, pulling out his handcuffs, “You’re under arrest for the murders of George Pickering, Ruby Bailey, and Jane Sutherland, and the attempted murder of Hank Hardeman.”
Sutton lunged sideways with surprising agility, making for the door. But Chowder—my brilliant, brave, fearless boy—had been waiting. He launched himself at Sutton’s ankle with the precision of a heat-seeking missile, his teeth finding their mark just above the dress shoe.
Sutton went down hard, his knee cracking against the hardwood floor with a sound like judgment day. “Get him off! Get this hellhound off me!”
“Good boy, Chowder,” I said calmly, though my heart was racing. “That’s enough now.”
Chowder released his grip but maintained his position, standing over the fallen reverend with the dignity of a small but victorious gladiator.
Dash cuffed Sutton while reading him his rights, the metal clicking with the finality of a church bell tolling for the last time.
Through the window, I could see Mrs. Pembroke practically pressed against her fence, her watering can forgotten, as the cops that had been waiting for this moment descended through the front door.
“Forty years,” Sutton muttered. “Forty years of being this island’s moral compass, and you destroy it all for a whore and her hypocrite lover.”
“No,” I said, meeting his eyes steadily. “You’re not judge, jury and executioner. Someone in your position should know that better than anyone.”
By 7:30, the murder board bore Walt’s neat inscription—CASE CLOSED. The sidecars had given way to champagne—Bea had hidden a bottle in my refrigerator when she’d first come in. Apparently, she’d had a feeling we were going to need it tonight.
“Dom Pérignon 1996,” she announced. “Been saving it for something special. Figured catching a killer qualifies.”
“Almost anything qualifies for you to take a drink, Bea,” Deidre said.
“You used to be a lot more fun before you became a stick in the mud,” Bea shot back.
The celebration continued, warm and wonderful. But as the evening wore on, Dash caught my arm gently, drawing me aside near the window where Mrs. Pembroke couldn’t quite see us through her curtains.
“I need to head out soon,” he said quietly, his thumb brushing against my wrist in that way that made my pulse skip. “Got to process Sutton properly, and the media have this all over the ten o’clock news. Forty-year-old murder solved by the Silver Sleuths. They’ll be camped outside the station.”
“Of course,” I said, though I felt a small pang of disappointment. “Duty calls.”
“Breakfast tomorrow?” he asked, and there was something hopeful in his eyes that made my stomach perform its familiar acrobatics. “You’ll have mornings off for a little while, until the tea shop opens back up.”
“We can get pastries and coffee from Beaumont’s and have a waterfront picnic.”
“Romantic,” he said, mouth quirking in a half smile. “We need to talk, Mabel.” His voice dropped lower, more intimate despite the celebration happening around us. “About us. About what this is becoming. I meant what I said before—I’m finding it difficult to leave you at the end of each day.”
I remembered that conversation, the intensity of it, the promise of something more that we’d been dancing around since this investigation began.
“Tomorrow then,” I agreed. “Breakfast and…conversation.”
Twenty minutes later, after Dash had left with a final look that promised tomorrow’s conversation would change things between us, Bea caught my eye and nodded toward the kitchen.
She ushered me toward the mudroom, where no one could hear us. The celebration noises faded to a distant hum, like happiness happening in another room, another life.
“Sugar,” she said, and her voice had lost all its theatrical flair. This was Bea stripped of performance, and somehow that made her words heavier. “We need to talk about your sheriff.”
“Now?” I asked, though I knew the answer. Some conversations chose their own timing.
She reached into her purse—that magical repository that seemed to exist in more dimensions than physics should allow—and pulled out a manila envelope, thick with who knew what. The weight of it in her manicured hands felt like holding someone else’s tragedy.
“I do what I do,” she said simply. “I dig into people’s lives. Can’t help myself—it’s like breathing or mixing cocktails. Compulsive. And honey, Dashiell Beckett…” She paused, choosing her words like selecting bullets. “He has secrets that would make your blood run cold.”
The envelope felt heavier than paper should, like holding someone else’s grief, someone else’s guilt.
“I’m not saying he’s bad,” Bea said softly, her hand covering mine.
“Good people can have terrible secrets. But sugar, you’re falling in love with him—I see how you light up when he walks in, how you lean toward him like a plant toward sun.
You deserve the whole truth, not just the charming sheriff who shows up at exactly the right time with exactly the right words. ”
“Maybe the past should stay buried,” I said, surprising myself.
“Maybe,” Bea agreed. “But secrets are like bodies in the marsh, honey. They always surface eventually. Better you know on your terms than have it explode when you least expect it.”
She squeezed my hand once, then turned back to the celebration, leaving me alone with the envelope and the weight of decision.
Some secrets, I thought as I slipped the envelope in the kitchen drawer unopened, could wait for another day. But even as I walked back to join the others, I knew that day would come sooner than I wanted.
The envelope sat heavy in the back of my mind, counting down to a revelation I wasn’t sure I was ready for. But then again, I hadn’t been ready for widowhood, for murder, for falling in love again either.
Maybe being ready was overrated.
Maybe the only thing that mattered was being brave enough to open the envelope when the time came.
But not tonight. Tonight was for victory and friendship and the knowledge that Ruby Bailey and George Pickering finally had the justice they deserved.
Tomorrow, though—tomorrow might be for harder truths.