Chapter 13 Holt #2
“Not that well,” Margo said and then glanced at Tom. “I’m sorry, Tom, but Victoria was horrible.”
“I’m sorry,” Tom breathed, his voice raw with horror, pain, and remorse. “Oh gosh, I’m so, so sorry, everyone.”
“Tom, this is not on you,” June said again for everyone at the table.
Holt waited a beat before he moved to the second section of the board.
“In the present day,” he continued, “Victoria identified that Lacey, Judy, and Margo had taken over the Hidden Truths YouTube channel and were actively working to clear Gilbert Fry’s name.
Victoria had access to the police station through her position as Tom’s wife. She had ears in the right places.”
Tom’s chair shifted slightly, but he didn’t speak.
“When Victoria realized what clearing Gilbert’s name meant, she began with warnings,” Holt said.
“Fires. Notes. Incidents designed to frighten rather than kill. When those failed, she escalated. Victoria tried to frame Judy for attacking Margo, using their connection to Gilbert’s death as a false motive.
She tried to construct a counter-narrative where Margo had retaliated against Judy.
When the vet office fire failed to achieve what she needed it to achieve, she began planning something larger.
” He looked around the table. “Her journal outlines a plan to lure June and Lucy to kidnap them and use them as leverage. Victoria was going to bring Lacey, Judy, and Margo to the same location to make a deal in exchange for June and Lucy. Then she was going to do what she’d done ten years ago and blame it on Judy this time.
Making it look like it was a retaliation for her brother, Gilbert. ”
Everyone at the table stared at Holt in shock.
“When her plans began to fail, and she understood that the investigation was closing in on her,” Holt finished, “Victoria took the safe from Sienna’s room, collected Alfred and Mrs. Clark, then left Sandpiper Shores. She is currently at large. We’re actively looking for her.”
The room held the silence for a long moment.
Then Margo raised her hand.
Holt looked at her. “Go ahead, Margo.”
Margo glanced at the boards and then back at Holt.
“While I know it’s a relief to finally have the mystery solved. But, doesn’t it all just seem a little too...” She trailed off, her brow furrowing.
“Neat?” Willa finished for her.
Margo pointed at Willa. “Exactly.”
Holt waited.
“Think about it,” Willa continued, her eyes moving from Margo to Holt with a focus that, for some reason, reminded him so much of his late sister, Carly.
Holt pushed the thought away as he concentrated on what Willa was saying.
“For ten years, none of us even thought to look Victoria’s way.
” She shook her head slightly. “Then all of a sudden she’s getting messy and all over the place? ”
“I have to agree with Willa,” Tom said. “And not because I’m trying to stick up for Victoria.
But because if she was so cautious and careful that not even I suspected her…
” He frowned. “This all seems like too much all over the place. Where’s the careful planning of ten years ago?
” His frown deepened. “The subtle threats letting the people who were investigating know that she knew who they were and what they were doing?”
“I think she followed that pattern again,” Margo told him. “The only messy part was the thing with the accidents.”
“Exactly,” Tom said. “That report, Holt said, that Victoria signed and paid for the express crush of Clive’s new car.” His frown was back. “And she paid with the same credit card for that Lucy look-alike truck.”
“When you put it like that…” Willa said. “I can see why you’re questioning it.”
“Maybe she just got careless because she was about to leave town anyway to move to Miami, and she didn’t really have much time to think things through,” Rad offered a suggestion.
“Last time it was only you and Nigel here.” He held up his hand.
“And I don’t mean that offensively. But you, she was married to, and Nigel, she had something to manipulate him with. ”
“I understand, and no offense taken,” Tom assured him. “It makes sense because now you and then Holt are in town with an attorney with a reputation for being an avid investigator on each of her cases.”
“So she got spooked and careless,” Rad said.
“Okay, that’s a good explanation,” Margo agreed. “But why would she have left Carly’s bracelet in Teacups?”
“We don’t know, and it’s not in the journal,” Holt admitted. “That particular decision isn’t documented.”
“But we’ll ask her when we catch her,” June told Margo.
“Why do you think she’s in Miami?” Willa asked. “Rad told me you’re looking for her and her associates in Miami.”
“When June visited Judy in the hospital,” Holt told her, “Judy used the last of her conscious effort to tell June to get Victoria. Then she said to look in Miami.”
Willa’s eyes widened in shock.
Her eyes shot across the table to Margo.
Margo was already looking at her.
“Did Judy say those exact words?” Margo asked, directing the question to June rather than Holt. “Look in Miami? Those exact words?”
“Yes,” June confirmed, her brow furrowing slightly. “Why? Does that mean something to the two of you?”
Willa was quiet for a second. When she spoke, her voice was steady, but the effort of keeping it that way was visible.
“The day Shaun died,” Willa began, “before he left to meet the others, he told me something.” She swallowed once. “He said that if anything ever happened, I was to look in Miami.”
The room went completely still.
June’s hand moved to her bag. She took out her phone and began scrolling through it with a focus that told Holt she’d already arrived somewhere he hadn’t caught up to yet.
“June,” Holt said carefully.
“Give me a moment,” June murmured, her eyes on the screen.
“Mom, what are you looking for?” Willa asked.
June looked up. She glanced around the table and then settled on Willa with an expression that was part apology and part something else entirely.
“When you and Shaun sold your home in Miami before moving to Sandpiper Shores,” June began, “I bought it.”
Willa stared at her. “I beg your pardon?”
“I bought your house,” June repeated calmly.
“I couldn’t let you sell the house where Grace and Andy were born.
I thought that one day you might want to come back to it, or that the children might want to see where they grew up, and I didn’t want that option closed off forever.
” She paused. “I converted it into an Airbnb. The management company handles everything.”
“Mom.” Willa’s voice had lost its edge. “That’s...” She stopped.
“And before you ask,” Carmen added from further along the table, with the particular tone of someone who had been holding a pleasant secret for some time, “your mother has been putting every cent of the rental income into three separate accounts. One for each of your children’s futures.”
Willa opened her mouth.
Then closed it.
“Two days before the storm hit,” June continued, her voice picking up pace, “the management company called me. Someone had booked the property for two months. They paid upfront in cash.” June looked at Holt directly.
“I didn’t think anything of it at the time because cash bookings through the management company aren’t unusual for that property. It’s a popular listing.”
The table absorbed that in silence.
“But Shaun knew I’d bought the house,” June said quietly.
Holt looked at her as it dawned on him why she thought Victoria was at her Airbnb.
“You think Shaun and Gilbert hid their research at the Airbnb?” Holt guessed.
The words landed in the room like something dropped from a height.
“I think it’s possible,” June said carefully. “Shaun told Willa to look in Miami if anything happened. Judy told me the same thing.”
“If Victoria is as connected as we think she is,” Rad said from across the table. “She’d have found out about the house.”
“That would be my assumption,” June replied.
“Victoria’s gone to Miami to find the last of the evidence to destroy before she and her merry band of misfits disappear for good,” Holt breathed. The final pieces of the puzzle fell into place.
The table erupted into low, overlapping voices.
Holt raised one hand, and the room settled.
“I need the address,” he said, looking at June.
June wrote it on a page from her notepad and slid it across the table to him without a word.
Holt looked at it for a moment. Then he looked at the room.
“This meeting is adjourned,” he told them.
“What June has just given us is a significant lead. I’ll have it followed up on immediately.
” He looked at each person in turn. “In the meantime, please remember that Victoria is still at large. Alfred and Mrs. Clark are still unaccounted for. That means every precaution we’ve been taking stays in place.
Nobody goes anywhere alone. Nobody takes unnecessary risks.
” His eyes moved to Willa and then to Margo. “Are we clear?”
A general murmur of agreement moved around the table.
People began to rise. Chairs scraped back.
Voices picked up again in the low, urgent register of people who had a great deal to process and were already processing it.
Holt stepped to the corner of the room and pulled out his phone, dialing the contact he needed to have the Miami property checked out through the right channels before Victoria could move again if she was there.
The call was brief as the address was passed on and instructions were given. Holt ended the call and then turned back to the room.
It had emptied.
Almost.
June was still seated at the table.
She hadn’t gathered her things yet. Her notepad was closed in front of her, and her pen was beside it, and she was looking at the boards with the expression she wore when she was still thinking something through but had reached the part of the thought where words were no longer useful.
Holt stood and looked at her for a moment.
Something moved through him that he hadn’t let himself sit with properly since the night of the storm, since the kitchen at Willa’s house and the moment before the weather warning had shattered whatever they’d been standing on the edge of.
The case had consumed everything in the days since.
There hadn’t been space for anything else, and he’d used that fact deliberately and without apology because the alternative was thinking about things he wasn’t ready to think about clearly.
But Holt knew he was ready now.
June stood and turned toward him. She crossed the room and stopped a few feet away.
“I was thinking,” Holt said, and then stopped. June waited. “Would you like to go on that date tonight?” The corner of his mouth moved. “The one my mother blackmailed us both into agreeing to.”
June’s eyes brightened. “I’d love to,” she replied without the slightest hesitation.
“And I’m free tonight,” Holt confirmed, taking a step toward her. “As it happens, this rather demanding case I’ve been working on with a very brilliant attorney appears to be drawing toward its conclusion.”
“Oh?” June smiled. She took a step closer.
“I’m glad to hear it.” Her eyes held his with that warmth he’d been carrying in the back of his mind since the morning she’d walked back into his life in this town.
“As it turns out, I’ve just wrapped up a particularly challenging investigation alongside a very stubborn, very capable FBI director. ”
“Well then,” Holt’s voice dropped slightly as he closed the remaining distance between them, “I’d say we’ve both earned a night off.”
“I’d say we have,” June agreed, her voice softer now.
She tilted her head back to look up at him, and the space between them was nothing at all, and Holt stopped thinking about the case and the boards and Victoria Morrison and everything else that had occupied every waking hour for weeks.
His head dipped.
His lips found hers.
The world outside the boardroom kept moving. The sound of the inn carried on around them, faint and distant and entirely irrelevant.
For a long moment, nothing else existed but this.