9. June #2
Alfred drove them north to South Beach, where the hotels ran thick along the oceanfront boulevards and the traffic was dense enough that their tinted-windowed town car blended in with considerably flashier vehicles.
June directed him to a five-star hotel near the quieter end of the strip, the kind of place that catered to wealthy international visitors and asked very few questions as long as the cash was good.
There was a boutique beside the hotel that sold men’s and women’s clothing.
They took a quick turn in there to buy a few changes of clothes before heading to the hotel.
She approached the concierge desk alone, her new identification in hand and her most polished professional smile in place. The young man behind the desk didn’t ask questions, handed her a keycard for a three-bedroom suite on the twelfth floor, paid in full in advance.
Victoria and Alfred joined her at the elevator a few minutes later.
The suite was considerably nicer than June had expected.
Floor-to-ceiling windows ran along the length of the main living area, looking out over the ocean and the beach below. Each of the three bedrooms had its own bathroom. The kitchen was stocked with complimentary water and coffee, and a silver bowl of fresh fruit sat on the marble counter.
Victoria stood in the middle of the living room and looked around with an expression June couldn’t quite read, before turning toward her. “June, Alfred, and I weren’t expecting you to go to all this trouble for us.”
“We were just going to ask you if we could find what we figured out Shaun might’ve sent to you,” Alfred told her.
“There was no way I could’ve left the two of you after finding out what I did in the gift Shaun sent me,” June told them. “Now, let’s order some food. I’m starving.”
“So am I,” Victoria admitted.
They ordered room service. Club sandwiches and fries and a proper pot of tea for Alfred, who’d requested it with the quiet fervor of a man who’d gone too long without.
They ate at the dining table in the suite’s main room, the conversation drifting into lighter territory than June would have thought possible for the day they were having.
Which quite honestly had kept her mind from going quietly crazy as she wondered what Holt and Willa were up to and how they were ever going to work things out.
If they ever could. June, you’ve really made a mess of that relationship.
Her heart still felt bruised. Just when she and Holt had found their way back to each other, her secret had ripped them apart once again.
And Willa… Oh Willa. Her daughter had every right to be angry with her, and June would be lucky if Willa ever spoke to her again.
She took a mental deep breath and cleared her mind, bringing it to the conversation at hand.
“June,” Victoria said. “Why are you back in Miami?” She frowned at her. “I thought you were in Sandpiper Shores for the summer.”
“It’s a long, messy story,” June answered, feeling her appetite fading.
“Well, turns out we have time,” Alfred told her. “I was certain that you and Holt were…” He stopped himself and straightened. “Forgive me, June, that was very personal and none of my business.”
“It’s okay, Alfred,” June told him. “You’ll find out, I’m sure, when you’re back in Sandpiper Shores. The grapevine is probably already buzzing with the news.”
“Is this about Holt being Willa’s father?” Victoria asked June, surprising her.
“How did you…” June gaped at her.
“June, I might have held people at bay being a terrible person,” Victoria told her.
“But that gave me an advantage and a particular birds-eye view that the rest of your crowd didn’t see.
” She gave June such a compassionate smile that June nearly fell off her chair. “Besides, Willa looks just like Carly.”
“Then there’s her age,” Alfred said. “You don’t have to be a mathematician to figure it out.”
“In fact, I’m surprised Holt or Mina hadn’t done so,” Victoria drawled. “Especially as an FBI agent.”
“Rad figured it out,” June told them as there was no point in denying. As she’d said, the entire Sandpiper Shores would already probably know. “And I think Mina knew all along.”
“Mina…” Victoria said, her eyes widening. “Willa is named after her! Willemina.”
“Yes,” June said. “She was like my second mother after mine passed away. Willa shares hers and my mother’s name as her second name.”
“That’s beautiful,” Victoria said and then raised an eyebrow. “I hope her name is just Willa though because…”
“Yes, it’s just Willa,” June laughed. “I know Mina hated her name and always said she’d never curse a child with her name.”
“I like Mina’s full name,” Alfred said. “But Willa is beautiful.”
“Thank you, Alfred,” June said. “But to answer your question, yes, they found out, and it wasn’t pretty.” Before June could stop herself, she found herself telling them the story.
“I’m sorry, June,” Victoria said, frowning. “But why didn’t you tell Holt about Willa?”
June had already told them so much that she blurted out the rest of the story, leaving Victoria and Alfred both stunned.
“What an idiot,” Victoria hissed, truly outraged for June. “Two days after he’d walked out of your marriage, and…” She was too outraged to finish her sentence; instead, she did something really unexpected. She stood up, and embraced June. “I’m so sorry. You didn’t deserve that.”
“I’m so sorry you had to go through that, June,” Alfred said.
“Still, he had a right to know,” June said. “No matter how hurt my feelings were. But then time got away from me. I met Trevor and the rest is history.”
“They’ll come around,” Victoria assured her. “They just need the shock to wear off.”
“I agree with Victoria,” Alfred told June.
They moved the focus from June’s problems to Victoria, who was starting a new life in Miami once this was all cleared up. She and Tony had plans once he got out of prison, which was soon.
It was a strange, almost surreal hour. The three of them were sitting in a five-star suite in Miami Beach, eating club sandwiches and talking like old friends, while the ground beneath them felt like it was shifting by the minute.
Afterward, Victoria and Alfred retreated to their rooms to shower and change into the clean clothes they’d bought from the boutique.
June went into her own bedroom, closed the door carefully behind her, and stood for a moment with her back against it.
Then she crossed to the dresser.
She pulled the laptop from the shopping bag, set it up on the small desk by the window, and powered it on.
Her hands were not entirely steady. June pulled the thumb drive from the inside pocket of her purse, where she’d kept it since leaving the bank, held it in her palm for a long moment, and then slid it into the laptop’s port.
A folder appeared on the screen.
June clicked it open.
The contents were organized with a methodical, careful precision that she recognized immediately as Gilbert’s.
There were many files, each dated and labeled in a clear, sequential system.
June scrolled through them slowly, reading each filename, getting a sense of the shape of what she was looking at.
Most of the early files were Gilbert’s own research notes, matching what June and Holt had already pieced together about the case.
It was clear that Gilbert knew there were three prominent residents of Sandpiper Shores, living quietly in their small seaside town for decades, who had been among the most notorious cat burglars in the country, complete with evidence he’d gathered.
June scrolled past all of it and kept going.
One file caught her eye. V.Morrison — Interview One. The date was five days before the cabin fire.
June clicked it.
The screen filled with Victoria’s face.
A younger Victoria, by a decade, but unmistakably her.
She was sitting in what looked like a private study, warmly lit, and her expression carried the same composed, careful wariness June had always associated with her, but underneath it was something else.
Determination. Resolve. The face of a woman who had decided she was done carrying her family’s secrets alone.
“I’m sure my father was behind what happened to my best friend, Cynthia,” Victoria was saying to someone off camera. “Not himself, as he died a few years ago. But I know my father would’ve already trained up the next thief to carry on our family’s business.’”
“Wouldn’t that have been you?” Gilbert’s voice came from behind the camera.
“Heck no, I would never take that torch,” Victoria replied, the venom in her voice leaving no doubt.
“He and my grandfather were terrible people. Terrible. But I know one hundred percent that my father had someone helping him for years, even while he was in prison. Someone he passed the business to before he died.”
“Do you know who?” Gilbert prompted.
“Not yet,” Victoria admitted. “But I’m getting close, with the help of people like you, and Nigel, and the firefighters who’ve been helping us investigate.”
June paused the video and sat back.
She was watching a woman she’d been prepared to help send to prison less than twenty-four hours ago, sitting in front of a camera ten years ago, telling Gilbert Fry the same thing Victoria had told June on her doorstep that morning.
I was framed. And watching this footage. June was becoming more and more convinced that Victoria really was innocent.