Chapter 34
Hours After the Hurricane
I want to chase after the cruiser that pulls away with Beau inside. I want to do something—anything—to get Beau out of the back of the car.
Before Beau is even out of my driveway, Officer Powell hands me a search warrant. “This is to search the house, Mrs. Walker.”
The warrant is all legalese, but one phrase jumps out: “items associated with the commission of a homicide.”
They’re looking for a weapon. Something to explain the gash in Simon’s head. The blood in my pool.
“You can’t be here while we conduct the search,” Powell says.
“But we’ll let you pack a bag before you go.
” Then he tips his head toward a fresh-faced cadet whose attempts at looking serious only make him look like a kid playing dress-up.
“I’m going to have Officer Smith go with you to make sure you don’t disturb any evidence. ”
A warrant. I know how this part goes. I watched it happen to Nora last year.
Only last time Beau wasn’t in handcuffs. So that’s new.
“Mrs. Walker?” Officer Smith says, shifting his weight from one foot to the other like he’s not sure if I’m going to pack a bag or burst into tears.
I get the impression tears would really freak him out, but I don’t care about packing a bag either. I’m about to tell him I don’t want anything in this house unless Beau is in it. But that’s when I remember I’m in my pajamas, and there’s only so much humiliation I can endure in one day.
So I nod, and Smith follows me to my room, stopping just outside.
“Are there any weapons or firearms in the house?” he asks.
I shake my head, and then he waits while I pull on real clothes, throw a few overnight supplies in a duffel bag, and try not to feel like I’m packing for the apocalypse.
I can’t be. After all, the apocalypse has already come.
I’m zipping up the duffel when I remember Gemma’s jar of tees. Of all the things I’ve found, I know the least about this little gem. I could leave it here, and there’s a chance it will go unnoticed by the police. They already passed over it once in their search of Lemon & Fig.
But I have to keep everything that could mean something to Gemma close to me.
I grab it from my underwear drawer and stuff it into my purse—a giant bucket of a bag. Some bottomless trendy designer thing that seemed like a good idea—until it started taking me five minutes to locate a hair tie in the expanse of the interior.
But it will help me hide the evidence I’m sneaking out of my house.
I wrap a sweatshirt around the jar, hoping it won’t make any noise as I ferry it away. Smith follows me down the stairs and into the garage. Once the garage door yawns open, and he’s sure I’m leaving, he disappears back inside.
Pulling out of the driveway, I see Tippy coming down the street on foot. She’s shielding her eyes from the early afternoon sun, wearing sunglasses, athletic shorts, and a tank top. I park on the street and get out of my car to meet her.
“I was going for a walk around the neighborhood—thought I’d get a little exercise and a better look at the storm damage,” she says as she approaches. “What the hell happened here?”
The storm caused some irreparable damage, Tippy.
I follow her gaze back toward my house, now shrouded in a gloom I fear will linger long after the forecast has brought sunny days back to Winter Park.
When I turn back to Tippy, I wonder how strong our alliance really is.
If I tell her Simon’s dead, will she blast the news on a group chat to the whole town?
As much as I want to keep my secrets close, I can’t prevent this from getting out. All I can do is control the story.
“We don’t know for sure, but something happened to Simon last night.” I wait for Tippy to close the distance between us before I deliver the heavy news. “He’s dead.”
Her hands fly to her heart. “My God,” she gasps, tugging off her sunglasses and perching them up on her head, like she needs to see me more clearly to understand. “Dead?”
“Tippy—”
Officer Powell opens my front door to glare at me.
“Do you have power at your house?” I ask.
“No, but I heard some of the stores on Park Avenue do.”
I climb back into my car. “I’ve gotta go.”
Before Muscle Milk and his buddies haul me out of here.
I head straight for Lemon & Fig, not bothering to call Marcus and announce I’m inbound and Beau’s in jail.
Some news is better delivered in person.
The storm’s wreckage is everywhere—branches and leaves are strewn across the sidewalks and roads—but at least the streets are passable. Most of the windows of the homes and retail spaces are darkened without power. But pulling onto Park Avenue, I spot a lone light on in the back of Lemon & Fig.
I’m pounding on the front door before I can remember parking.
“Hey,” Marcus says, cracking the door open, his face pulled taut with concern. “What’s wrong?”
“Beau’s in jail.” I rip the Band-Aid off quickly. “Simon Avery died in my pool last night and they think Beau did it. And I think it’s my fault. I am in hell. And I’m a selfish kind of person, because I don’t want to be in hell alone.”
Marcus takes it all in with a kind of patience that endears him to me more. He doesn’t cause a scene or throw up his hands in shock. He nods.
“Okay,” he says as he eases the door wider for me to come in.
I brush past him into the dining room, lit by daylight and the lights in the back of the house.
“Do you need a lawyer, Este?”
“We’ve actually already had to cross that threshold, I’m afraid. When the security footage leaked.”
“Right.” Marcus has the decency to look like he regrets not telling me the whole story about the footage before it leaked.
“It’s fine,” I say. “But whatever happened between Beau and Simon, I think it has something to do with Gemma.”
Then, my thoughts circle back to the surveillance video Marcus showed me yesterday.
“Can I use your computer?” I ask. “You have power, right?”
“Yeah…” He trails off, like he knows there’s nothing that’s going to slow me down. “In the back.”
But I’m already on my way. “I need to see that security footage again.”
Marcus cues up the footage from the night Gemma died, and I drop into his desk chair. I stare at the last frame—that moment when a shadow in the alcove reaches out to grab Gemma—for what feels like too long. Long enough for my eyes to burn from the blue-light exposure.
I zoom and zoom until the white toe box of the shoe stops looking like a shoe at all.
Marcus is standing over my shoulder as the pixelated shoe swims in and out of focus on the screen. But the memory stays maddeningly out of reach.
“Este,” Marcus says. “The police have had this for two weeks. I don’t think—”
“Do you recognize that shoe?”
Marcus steps closer, eyes narrowed. “How do you even know that’s a shoe? It kind of looks like a paper cup. Like trash or something.”
Now, we’re both leaning toward the screen as if we can fit inside the frame to look around the corner hidden from view.
But he’s right. I’m reaching. The police have had ample time to dissect the video for leads.
“Don’t you think it’s weird that Ardell isn’t stopping anyone from thinking it’s Beau when the video footage clearly proves it’s not?”
Marcus clears his throat and looks away from the screen. “What?”
“Why didn’t he say something about that surveillance leak? And why is it that the part most incriminating to Beau is the only part that leaked?”
“I don’t think Ardell can comment on an ongoing investigation,” Marcus offers. “This is evidence. We’re not supposed to have it.”
Right. Evidence.
“But if Ardell is in charge of the evidence, he can make it look however he wants, right?”
Marcus frowns. “I know Ardell gives off a bad-guy vibe. I think he’s a little socially awkward, and he’s been more reserved since his wife left him.”
I snap a look in his direction. “He was married?”
“Years ago.” Marcus squints like he’s trying to do the math. “His wife and I went to high school together. They’ve been separated for a long time. I think she moved to Wisconsin or something. He never talks about it, but I’m not sure they ever finalized the paperwork.”
“I’m sorry, what?” I say, remembering the clipped smile Gemma threw his way when Ardell tried to speak to her at the Lemon & Fig party.
“An uncontested divorce costs a couple thousand dollars. It sounded like they were arguing over how to pay for it. I stopped asking, honestly. It was complicated. He has his moments, though,” Marcus continues.
“He’s been looking after the Hall House for Nora since she bought it.
Even before then, he was making sure it didn’t get vandalized by high school kids. ”
Adrenaline courses through me. “Ardell? He was in the Hall House?”
The Hall House. Where Gemma was meeting some mystery guy. The mystery guy with a complicated marriage.
“I don’t think Nora likes it when we call it the Hall House,” Marcus says.
“Does he have a key?” I pull out my phone.
“He did for a while, I think?” Marcus looks at me like the details are fuzzy.
There’s a knock on the door near the kitchen, and I’m already on my feet as Nora walks into the back of the house, lifting the coffee and pastries she is carrying like an offering. Her smile falters when she sees me, though.
“Gemma was sleeping with someone, and it was complicated,” I say. “And they used to meet at the Hall House.”
Nora stomps a foot. “It’s not the Hall House any—”
“Okay, your house. But Ardell was in it. I think he might be framing Beau. Maybe Simon paid him to do it? Maybe there was something going on between Gemma and Ardell?” I’m pacing the tiled floor of Marcus’s kitchen now.
“He was there last night. At Ford’s house. He came to tell us all to go inside.”
“And then he killed Simon?” Marcus tries to follow the thread for me, not believing it.
Nora’s face goes pale as she drops the bag of pastries. They land with a smack on the floor. “Simon’s dead?”
“And Beau’s in jail,” I add.
Nora turns toward me, her eyes wide, and asks, “What are you going to do?”
As the thought comes to me, it’s disorienting.
Before Beau, the only person I could really count on was myself, and when we married, my bench grew by just one.
But if I need someone to persuade a midlevel political figure, like Eric Kennedy, to take an accusation against Travis Ardell seriously, there is someone I can call.
“I think I have to call my aunt Delia.”