Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Scarlett
Shea’s kitchen smells like cinnamon and strong coffee. She stands at the counter in yoga pants and a Haven Bed and Breakfast hoodie, slicing apples like she’s organizing them. Dean sits at the table with a mug between his palms, staring at the wall like it might have answers written on it.
“Good morning,” Shea says without looking up. “There’s toast. Dean burned the first batch, so I took over.”
“I didn’t burn it. It was crispy.”
“It was charcoal.” She slides a plate toward me, the toast golden-brown with butter melting into the crevices. “Eat. Chief sounded impatient.”
I take it and sit across from Dean. He doesn’t look at me. His thumb traces the rim of his mug, around and around. The table isn’t wide, but this morning it might as well be a harbor.
“You okay?” I ask.
“I’m fine.” He swallows a mouthful of coffee. “They’ve got footage from three angles. He climbed the east balcony around twelve-fifteen, stood there maybe thirty seconds, climbed back down. Clear as day. No question who it is.”
“Who?”
“Curt Malloy.”
It’s not who I expected. At. All. “Why would he—”
“Because he’s an asshole.” Dean sets his mug down hard enough to slosh coffee onto the table. “I fired him a year ago for showing up drunk. He never got over it. Been a thorn in my side ever since.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “Sorry. Not your fault.”
“It’s a little my fault. I’m the one who brought the treasure hunters.”
“Yeah, well.” He looks at me then, and the anger isn’t for me—it’s for Curt, for the balcony, for the fact that someone scared me and he couldn’t stop it. “Doesn’t give him the right to climb up your fucking wall in the middle of the night.”
Shea clears her throat. “Language. And you both need to go. Chief said he’d be there by nine.”
The station sits at the end of Harbor Street, a squat brick building with a flag out front and a single cruiser parked at an angle in the lot. Dean pulls in beside it, kills the engine, and sits for a second with his hands still on the wheel before he says anything.
“Stay close to me in there.”
“It’s a police station, Dean. I think I’m safe.”
“Humor me. Until we know this is done.”
The light through the windshield sharpens his profile, jaw set and eyes already tracking the door, and I understand that the Coast Guard never really left him—he holds himself like a man who maps the exits of a room before he needs them. “I’ll stay close,” I say, and he nods and gets out.
Inside, the station is smaller than my apartment.
One main room with three desks, a coffee maker that looks older than me, and a corkboard layered with flyers for the harvest festival and a missing cat.
A hallway runs to the back, where I can see the edge of a holding cell and a man slumped on the bench inside it.
The chief comes out from behind the far desk to meet us. He’s younger than I expected for the job—early forties, maybe, with the kind of build that says he still works with his hands when the paperwork lets him. Dark hair going gray at the sides. He shakes Dean’s hand first.
“Kinsella.”
“Jake.” Dean’s shoulders come down half an inch. “Thanks for the call.”
“Wouldn’t have been my first choice of how to spend the morning.
” The chief turns to me and offers his hand.
His grip is firm and unhurried, and his eyes take me in without any of the sideways curiosity I’ve gotten used to on this island.
“Jacob McNamara, Port Haven chief of police. Sorry we’re meeting like this, Ms. Crawford. ”
“Scarlett,” I say. “Thank you, Chief McNamara.”
“Please, everyone around here calls me Jake or Jacob if you want to stand on formality. Coffee’s terrible, but it’s hot if you want it.”
“We had some at Shea’s,” Dean says.
Jacob chuckles. “Good call. Especially if you want to keep your stomach lining. Shea’s coffee is a thousand times better than here.
He gestures toward the back. “Curt’s been asking for you by name, Dean.
Wants an audience. I told him he could have thirty seconds and then he’s done.
Figured you’d want to hear it from him anyway. ”
Dean’s jaw tightens. “I want to hear it.”
Curt Malloy sits up when he sees us, and his gaze finds Dean first. Something ugly moves across his face.
“Coastie.” He spits it through the bars. “Figured you’d show.”
“You wanted an audience.” Dean stops a few feet short of the cell, close enough. “You’ve got one. Talk.”
Curt’s bloodshot eyes slide to me. “Didn’t mean nothing by it. Just wanted to scare her a little. Get even.” He tips his head at Dean. “Man fired me last year. Showed up three sheets to the wind, I’ll cop to that. Doesn’t give him the right to ruin a man’s livelihood.”
“You climbed to my balcony at midnight,” I say. “You stood there and watched me sleep.”
“Wasn’t watching you sleep. Couldn’t see shit through those windows.” He leans back against the cinderblock, and the fight goes out of him. He suddenly looks like exactly what he is: a tired old man fueled by alcohol and bitterness. “Just wanted you to know I was there.”
“Why?” I ask.
He sneers and jerks his head in Dean’s direction. “Everyone knows he’s fucking you. Thought I’d make him jealous.”
Dean scoffs at that.
Behind us, Jacob leans a shoulder against the doorframe, arms crossed. “Curt,” he says, easy, “the day Dean’s jealous of you is the day I retire to Fiji. Now you want to tell us about the items that you took from Ms. Crawford’s room?”
“What items?” He looks from the chief to me, and for the first time the belligerence drops clean off his face.
“I never went inside. Door was locked. I stood on the balcony for a minute—two, tops—and climbed back down. Somebody else took ‘em.” Curt’s leaning forward now, gripping the bars, and there’s an edge of real offense in his voice.
“I climbed a wall to spook a woman. I’ll say that to a judge.
But I never set foot in that room, and you can stand here askin’ till you’re blue, Chief, the answer don’t change. ”
I believe him. He didn’t take the journal.
Curt climbed a wall to frighten me, loud and stupid and drunk. Whoever’s been coming into my room did it quietly, more than once, and left with something each time.
Beside me, Dean exhales, but I can’t tell if he believes Curt too or if he still thinks the man is behind everything.
Jacob straightens off the doorframe. “That’s your thirty seconds, Curt.
” To us, quieter, walking us back toward the front: “We’ll hold him on the trespass and the harassment, and I’ll pull all of the resort’s footage to compare against the room entries myself.
If Curt’s lying, I’ll know. Scarlett, if anything else goes missing, you come straight to me. Not a neighbor, not a rumor. Me.”
“I will.”
“Good.” He holds the door for us. “Try to have a better day than you’ve started with.”