Chapter 12 June
JUNE
The forensic team arrived at the Morrison mansion within forty minutes of Holt making the call.
June stood in the entrance hall and watched them come through the front door in their white protective suits, equipment cases in hand, moving with the quiet, methodical efficiency of people who did this work every day and had long since stopped being surprised by the places it took them.
There were six of them. Holt met each one at the door, spoke to them in low, direct exchanges, and directed them toward the areas he’d already identified as priorities.
The master bedroom. Victoria’s personal study.
The garage. Alfred’s quarters off the kitchen corridor.
June stayed out of their way and let Holt work.
She was good at knowing when to step back.
It was one of the things legal practice had taught her early, that there were moments when the most useful thing a person could do was be present without being in the way, and this was one of them.
Holt knew how to run a forensic team through a property.
He’d been doing it for three decades. June’s role right now was to observe, to think, and to wait for the detail that didn’t fit.
She was still waiting for it.
The nagging feeling she’d been carrying since before the storm hadn’t gone away.
If anything, Sienna’s visit to the station that morning had made it heavier rather than lighter.
Everything Sienna had brought them was useful.
The footage, the letter, the confession about lying to Rad.
It all pointed cleanly and convincingly in one direction.
June had learned over years in courtrooms to be deeply suspicious of anything that pointed cleanly and convincingly in one direction.
Holt finished briefing the last team member and crossed back to where June was standing near the hallway table.
“They’ll be here for at least two hours,” he told her. “Possibly three. The garage alone is going to take time.”
“Do you want me to stay?” June asked.
Holt shook his head. “I need you to take me to the Sandpiper Inn. Tom’s room needs to go through the same process. I’ve already called ahead.” He looked at her steadily.
“I’m ready when you are.” June nodded and picked up her bag.
The Sandpiper Inn looked exactly as it always did from the outside, the white clapboard front and the carefully tended window boxes giving nothing away about the search team that was not too far behind them.
Holt pulled into the parking lot. They found Margo in the boardroom.
She was standing beside a man in his fifties with a set of plans spread across the desk and a younger man who was listening to what was being said.
Margo looked up the moment June and Holt stepped into the doorway.
“June, Holt.” Margo excused herself from the two people she’d been with and crossed the room toward them.
“We need to have a word with you, in private, please, Margo,” Holt said politely.
“What’s going on?” Margo asked, stepping out of the room and walking to the front of the inn with them as three people in white walked into the lobby.
“We have a lead in the case,” June told her carefully. “We need to search Tom’s room here at the inn. We have his full permission.”
Margo’s brows lifted. Her eyes moved briefly to the people in white again. “Of course,” she replied without hesitation. “Whatever you need. I’ll let you in.” She glanced back at the architect and contractor. “Give me two minutes.”
June waited while Margo disappeared into the boardroom. She wasn’t long when she popped out again and went to the person at the front desk.
“Can you please get some refreshments and snacks for my guests in the boardroom?” Margo asked the clerk.
“Of course,” the young woman said.
Margo returned to June, Holt, and the three people, then led them to the room Tom had occupied for the past year.
She unlocked the door and stepped back.
“I’ll be downstairs if you need me,” Margo told them.
“Thank you,” Holt replied.
June watched from the doorway as the team got to work and Holt gave them instructions. Just then, her phone rang, and she looked at the screen. It was Lucy.
“Hello, Lucy,” June answered.
“Hello, June. I’m so glad you answered.” Lucy’s voice resonated with relief.
“Judy is awake. She’s asking for you specifically.
I wasn’t going to call because she’s very weak, and I didn’t want to get you here for nothing.
But she’s getting agitated and insisting she sees you.
” There was a brief pause. “I don’t know how long she’ll stay conscious.
If you want to come, it needs to be now. ”
June was already moving toward the staircase. “I’m on my way.”
“June, where are you going?” Holt popped his head out the door.
June stopped and glanced back at him.
“I have to go to the hospital,” she told him. “Judy is awake and asking for me. Lucy doesn’t know how long she’ll stay conscious.”
“Go,” Holt replied immediately. “I’ll stay with the team here. Call me the moment you’re done.”
“I will,” June promised, then jogged down the stairs.
She was in the car and pulling out of the parking lot in record time. Lucy was waiting for her at the hospital entrance.
June pulled up and got out of the car, hurrying toward her friend.
“I thought I’d wait here so I could take you straight through,” Lucy said the moment June joined her at the door. “Come on.”
As they hurried along, Lucy glanced toward June with a telling look.
“How are you holding up?” Lucy asked her. “Tom called and told me what he could.”
June felt a wave of something that wasn’t quite guilt but was close enough to it.
“Lucy, I’m so sorry. The timing of all this, with you and Tom just finding your way back to each other—” June’s voice cut off.
“June.” Lucy’s voice was firm but not unkind.
She pressed the elevator button. “Tom has nothing to do with whatever Victoria did. We both know that.” She glanced at June with the steady, clear-eyed composure of a woman who had been a doctor long enough to have learned how to hold complicated feelings in both hands at once without dropping either of them.
“He’s devastated and embarrassed and furious, but he’s not involved. I know that.”
“I know you do,” June replied. “I just wanted to say it.”
The elevator doors opened, and they stepped in.
“I still can’t quite believe it,” Lucy admitted as the doors closed.
Her voice was quieter now, the professional composure softening slightly at the edges.
“You know… about Victoria. I always knew she was difficult. Cold, sometimes vicious, absolutely insufferable at a dinner party.” She shook her head slowly.
“But arson. Attempted murder. All of it.” Her eyes met June’s. “Do you really think it was her?”
“The evidence is pointing that way,” June replied carefully. “We still have gaps that need to be filled in and dots to connect.” She swallowed. “But it’s pointing that way.”
“What about ten years ago?” Lucy asked. “Was that Victoria, too?”
June held her gaze. “We don’t know yet.”
The elevator doors opened on the third floor. They moved quickly along the corridor, and June matched Lucy’s pace.
“Before we go in,” Lucy said, slowing slightly as they approached a closed door at the end of the hall, “I want you to be prepared. Judy doesn’t look good right now.
” She stopped and turned to face June directly.
“The secondary bleed was serious. She’s out of immediate danger, but she’s very weak.
Her speech will be fragmented and effortful.
Don’t try to push her and don’t try to fill in what she’s saying.
” Her eyes held June’s with the quiet authority of someone who meant every word. “Let her say what she needs to say.”
“I understand,” June replied.
“Good.” Lucy pushed open the door.
June stepped inside.
The room was dim, clean, and very quiet.
The monitors beside the bed produced their steady, unhurried rhythm, and the afternoon light came through the half-closed blinds in pale, even stripes across the floor.
Judy lay in the bed with her eyes closed, and the sight of her landed in June’s chest with more force than she’d anticipated.
Judy had struck June as a woman of contained, purposeful energy.
Even in the difficult circumstances of their first meeting, there had been a quality of intention about her, the sense of someone who moved through the world with a clear idea of what she was doing and why.
The woman in the bed had none of that visible.
She looked small against the pillows. Her face was pale and still.
The bandaging around her head was clean but significant.
Her hands lay loose at her sides with the particular, undefended quality of someone who had spent a long time unconscious.
Seeing Judy like that hit her full force as June realized that Judy was utterly alone in the world. She had no family, as her brother was gone and so was her husband. June had to swallow a lump in her throat and push the thoughts away.
“She has no more family,” June said softly and for Lucy’s ears only, the words tumbling out before she could stop them. “No next of kin to notify or anyone to be here when she wakes up.”
“You and my sister think so much alike.” Lucy smiled.
“We’ve been making sure she knows she’s not on her own,” she assured June softly from beside her, as though she’d followed the thought exactly.
“Lacey, Dean, Noah, Ginny, and I have all been taking turns to sit with Judy. She’s not going to wake up to an empty room while any of us can prevent it. ”
June swallowed harder against the tightness in her throat. She wasn’t surprised. Of course, that was what Lucy and Lacey and Dean had done. It was what the people of Sandpiper Shores did for each other, and it never stopped moving her, even after all the years she’d been watching them do it.