Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
We left the island before eight the next morning.
I’d been up since three thirty, which wasn’t unusual when my brain decided sleep was no longer on the agenda.
I’d showered and stood in front of my closet in my slip for longer than I cared to admit, and then I pulled out a black vintage dress with a Peter Pan collar and white buttons down the front and black Mary Janes.
I pulled the sides of my hair back with combs, and made sure my lipstick wasn’t going anywhere for the next twelve hours.
While the coffee was brewing, I stood at the kitchen counter and thought about Perry Mason. I wasn’t entirely sure what that said about my mental state, but the dress felt right for the occasion. Some mornings call for armor and justice. This was one of them.
Chowder had looked at my wardrobe choices and decided to be rebellious by staying in his red-and-white-striped pajamas.
I turned the television on for him and made sure it was on the channel where his favorite soap operas would come on in a couple of hours.
I sympathized. There were some days I wanted to stay in my pajamas and watch soaps too.
“I should be back by lunch,” I told him.
He put his chin on his paws and exhaled.
Dash rang the bell at ten till eight. I handed him a coffee the second I opened the door.
“You look like you’re about to cross-examine someone,” he said.
“Oh, good,” I said. “It’s a fine line between Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Morticia Addams.”
His mouth twitched and I locked the front door. I waved at Mrs. Pembroke, who was staring at us through her curtains, and nodded at Mitchell Degas, who was walking his Pomeranian on the promenade closest to the sea wall across from my house.
“Everyone is very interested in your comings and goings,” Dash said once he got behind the wheel.
“You get used to it after a while,” I said. “Mostly.”
“Good thing you’re a rule follower. You’d be the topic of the town.”
I frowned at that. The way he said it made me wonder if he saw me as some straightlaced prude. I could be fun. I could have adventures. The problem was that my friend group’s adventure plans were limited to things that didn’t aggravate their arthritis or bad hips.
We crossed the bridge off the island in the early morning quiet, the live oaks still dripping from the night before, and the streets empty.
We sped along the highway toward Charleston and for a while, neither of us said anything.
And then I broke the silence because I wasn’t one of those people who could keep holding things in without incurring serious digestive issues.
“You know what’s been bothering me since last night?” I said, somewhere past the first exit.
“What’s that?”
“What you said. About how everyone lies.” I turned my coffee cup in my hands. “That even innocent people lie because they don’t want to be seen in the honest light of the truth.”
“I did say that.”
“I know. And I’ve been chewing on it.” I looked out the window as the water passed us by. “I don’t think I lie. Not in that way. When you asked about my life before I moved to Grimm Island. About Patrick. His death, or what came after. I didn’t make any of it prettier than it was.”
“No,” he said. “You didn’t.”
“So I’m curious.” I kept my eyes on the road. “What is it that you’ve left out? In the name of not making yourself look bad?”
A beat of silence.
“That’s a very specific question for this early in the morning,” he said.
“I’ve had a lot of coffee.”
He didn’t answer right away. We passed a gas station and a Waffle House and one of those strip malls that appears just outside every small Southern city like it was ordered from a catalog. I watched it slide by and let the silence be what it was.
“The past is the past,” he said finally. “What matters is who we are now and where we’re headed. What’s behind us is always clouded through our memories and the choices we made. I don’t know what answers you’re looking for. I don’t think about what I haven’t told you.”
I looked at him. He was watching the road, easy and calm, like he’d just said something perfectly reasonable. Maybe he had. I couldn’t decide if that bothered me more or less than if he’d gotten defensive about it.
“Okay,” I said.
But it wasn’t okay, not exactly, and we both knew it.
I’d watched this man sit across from a dying confession and not flinch, and he deflected the one direct question I’d asked him.
I thought about the kitchen drawer back home.
The manila envelope Bea had pressed into my hands at the end of the Pickering case, thick and accusatory, that I still hadn’t opened because I’d told myself I’d rather hear it from his mouth. In his voice. In his own time.
His own time, it was becoming clear, might never come.
We drove the rest of the way without talking.
The deputies were already staged two blocks over when we turned onto the quiet street off Rivers Avenue.
Dash had texted them when we hit the city limits.
The street was just starting to come alive—a man walking a Lab, a sprinkler going in someone’s front yard, the morning paper still in its plastic sleeve on a porch two houses down. Normal. Ordinary.
The white vinyl-sided bungalow sat at the end of the block exactly as I remembered it. The wind chimes were tinkling in the morning breeze. The ceramic rooster stood watch by the front door.
He looked at me for a moment, assessing me, and said, “You ready?”
“Of course.” My voice came out more strained than I’d planned.
He nodded and we got out of the car and headed up the front sidewalk.
Noreen answered before Dash knocked a second time. She was already dressed for the day and had her lipstick on, which most Southern women did first thing in case company dropped by. She looked at Dash first, then at me, and something in her eyes held a knowing that made me uncomfortable.
“I wondered when you’d find your way back to me,” she said, stepping back. “Come on in.”
She led us through the living room with its photographs and figurines and the rooster collection on every surface, through to the kitchen at the back of the house.
Light came through the window over the sink, warm and yellow.
There was a crossword half finished on the table, a pen laid across it.
She moved around pulling out mugs without asking, unhurried and easy in her own space.
She poured coffee into three mugs, set them on the table, and sat down with her own hands wrapped around hers.
I wasn’t about to drink coffee from a woman who’d potentially drugged Henry Wainwright.
“Well,” she said pleasantly. “What can I do for you?”
“We’ve been going back through boxes of documents,” Dash said. “Henry’s personal papers, files from the clinic and his home office, as well as foundation records. We’ve learned a great deal about what was going on in the months before he died.”
She nodded slowly, her expression open and helpful. “Well, I hope I can fill in any gaps. I was there for all of it, of course. Twenty-two years.”
“You were,” Dash said. “That’s actually why we wanted to talk to you.” He paused. “I’m not sure if you heard, but James killed himself yesterday.”
Her hand came to her mouth, and her eyes watered. “Oh, no. That’s terrible. Why ever would he do such a thing? Poor Edie.”
“Some people aren’t able to live with their sins as well as others.”
“What do you mean? Are you saying James killed Henry? I don’t believe that for a second. They were as close as brothers.”
“Ever hear of Cain and Abel?” Dash asked.
“But still,” she said, color in her cheeks. “You have to be wrong. I knew both of them. Worked for both of them. There’s nothing you can say to make me believe James killed Henry.”
“We don’t think he killed Henry,” Dash said. “What he was doing was stealing from Henry through the foundation. Over a million dollars over a period of a couple of years. He confessed his affair with Jackie was very costly.”
She snorted at that. “Boy, was it ever. Man didn’t think with the brain in his head for almost three years. But he made the choice. No one put a gun to his head.”
“No,” Dash said. “But someone was blackmailing him.”
She blinked. “Blackmail? For what? Surely not for Jackie.”
“Afraid so,” Dash said casually. “Someone sent him pictures.”
“Well, it’s not like they were discreet about it,” she said. “I told you I caught them in one of the exam rooms.”
“Yes, you did,” Dash said. “Someone sent him at least five blackmail demands that we know of, increasing the amount by five thousand dollars every time. Drop locations were in Charleston. Always on a Saturday.”
“We figured the blackmailer must have a regular nine to five during the workweek,” I said. “So that’s why they collected payments on Saturdays.”
“Sounds terrible,” she said. “But it was a problem of his own making. I always worried about James. He had wandering eyes from the day I started working there. Henry used to say James thought fidelity was a brand of mutual funds.”
“And then there’s Henry,” Dash said.
“What about Henry?” she asked.
“He was being blackmailed as well,” Dash said. “By the same person. James was able to tell us that before he died. Handwriting was the same on the notes.”
Her mouth turned down in a frown at that bit of information. “What could Henry possibly have been blackmailed for? The man was practically a saint.”
“Far from it,” Dash said. “He was involved with a woman.”
She waved her hand. “Oh, that. A man’s passing fancy. His wife had been dead for years. I’m sure he had…” she gestured with her hands, “…needs of some sort.”
“You knew about the woman?” I asked.
“I knew everything that happened in that office,” she said. “And don’t think women haven’t tried to get to Henry by setting up appointments to see him. That’s just what that girl did too. Though Henry wasn’t as immune to her charms. She was a family friend of sorts.”
“Serena Jameson,” I said. “Byron Jameson’s daughter. We spoke with her.”