Chapter 31
The lounge of the staff dorm was uncharacteristically quiet as Sheriff Coyle looked around at the four gathered employees. The only sound was the soft dinging of incoming texts to Garrett’s phone. Felice flashed him a death stare and he reached into his pocket and silenced it.
Coyle stood in front of the flat-screen television, expressionless.
“I know y’all have heard the unfortunate news about your friend Parrish. And I’m sorry for your loss, but we need to get to the bottom of what happened last night, especially since her body was found at the location of that afterparty everyone here attended.”
“Except me,” Felice said loudly. “I wasn’t there. I came back here right after the Beach Bash was over.”
“Understood,” the sheriff said. “But you were at the Beach Bash, correct?”
“I was working, yeah.”
“When was the last time you saw Parrish?”
“I guess it was maybe a little before ten, the last time I saw her. She was helping a mom who had two crying kids on her hands.”
“All right. Noted,” Coyle said. “I’m gonna want to talk to all of y’all individually, but first things first. I couldn’t help but notice how tidy that crime scene was today. I mean, you’d never know a party, with what, maybe forty, fifty people went on in those woods last night.”
Garrett and KJ averted their eyes, staring intently at the floor, apparently fascinated by their own choices in footwear.
“Obviously, somebody went out there at some point today and cleaned up. And in the process, they managed to ruin and contaminate a crime scene. Anybody here got any information on how that happened?”
KJ spoke up first. “Okay, so we did pick up all the beer bottles and cans and trash. Not because we were trying to hide anything. We just didn’t want to get in trouble, because, you know, of the mess from the party.”
“We really did look all over out there for Parrish,” Garrett added. “Like, all around the Shack. But we didn’t see any sign of her.”
Coyle pinched the bridge of his nose and tried not to show his mounting frustration.
“Y’all couldn’t have looked too hard, or you would have seen that shoe that the hotel’s security chief found, less than a hundred yards from the back of that shed building.”
“There was a rat!” KJ protested. “A huge rat. No way I was going digging around in the weeds after we saw that thing.”
“Okay,” Coyle said wearily. “What did you do with all the evidence you two geniuses picked up?”
“We didn’t find anything that was, like… suspicious. It was just a lot of beer bottles and paper plates and leftover food from the Beach Bash. We loaded it all into garbage bags, then we tossed the bags in the dumpster behind the restaurant,” Garrett said.
Coyle swore softly to himself as he pulled out his phone and walked out of the dorm.
Five minutes later, the sheriff was back. “I had one of my deputies check that dumpster. Apparently, the trash was picked up about an hour ago. On a Sunday, no less.”
“We have a contract with a private sanitation company. Because of the smell from all the seafood and stuff in hot weather, the trash gets picked up every couple days,” Felice volunteered.
“Great,” Coyle said, slapping the palm of his hand on his leg. “That’s just great. Any evidence we might have collected at the scene is now headed for a landfill.”
“Sorry,” KJ said, looking sheepish. “We were just trying to stay out of trouble, you know?”
“Never mind that,” the sheriff said. He pointed to KJ. “You. I want to talk to you in private. Everyone else can scatter to your rooms, until I call for you.”
An hour later, Coyle left the dorm and the members of the group drifted back into the lounge area.
Olivia went to the fridge and came back with a bottle of flavored seltzer. She popped the top and sipped while the others flopped down onto the sofas. Her eyes were noticeably red from crying.
“What did the sheriff ask you?” she said, pointing at KJ.
“He had some crazy idea that just because my old man is friends with Parrish’s dad, and because he kinda got me this job, that maybe Parrish and me were like, a thing. I told him, ‘Dude, the first time I met that chick was when I walked into this dorm three weeks ago.’ Why would I want to hurt her?”
“Parrish’s dad got you your job?” Garrett asked. “Figures.”
KJ shot him a look. “Who cares? I work hard, and up until now, I’ve managed to stay out of trouble. Jesus. I wonder if we’ll all get fired when Parrish’s dad hears what we did.”
“Me and Olivia had nothin’ to do with that stupid stunt you two pulled today,” Felice said. “Anyway, Ric Eddings didn’t hire me. Mrs. E hired me, and as far as I’m concerned, she’s the only one who can fire me.”
“Me too,” Garrett said.
“And me,” Olivia agreed.
“So, Liv, what did the sheriff ask you?” Garrett asked.
She sniffled a little. “He asked if Parrish and I talked about guy stuff. Like, who we were dating and whatever. But we didn’t. She was kinda private about that stuff, and since I haven’t dated anyone lately, I didn’t have anything to discuss. And then he asked if you guys were into Parrish, and I told him not that I know. I mean, we were all just friends, right? Like the TV show, but without the great apartment in New York or a cool coffee shop.”
Olivia considered Garrett for a minute. “Wait. The two of you didn’t hook up, right?”
“Hell, no,” Garrett said.
“But not because you didn’t try,” Felice interjected.
“Yeah, I made a play. But she wasn’t into me, so I dropped it. Plenty of pretty ladies around who would be interested, so that wasn’t a problem.”
“Gag me,” Olivia said, rolling her eyes.
“So into yourself,” Felice agreed.
“Hey,” Garrett said, his tone sharpening as he pointed at Felice. “You keep saying you weren’t at the afterparty, and that you were here. But how do we know that’s true? For all we know, you could have been creeping around out in those woods, while the three of us were back here, sleeping it off.”
“Come on, Garrett,” Livvy said.
“Actually, someone did see me here last night. The DoorDash driver who delivered my order of potstickers and pad Thai at about ten thirty.” Felice held up her phone to show the open DoorDash app.
“But you could have gone out after,” Garrett insisted.
Olivia punched his shoulder. “What is wrong with you? Felice didn’t kill Parrish. None of us did.”
“Then who did? And why?” KJ asked.
“Obviously, it had to be someone who was at the party last night. I saw her talking to that guy with the crazy dreads from the steel drum band, and she took a hit off his joint, but then later, I saw him leaving with some girl I didn’t recognize,” Olivia said.
Felice bristled. “Oh. Now you gonna say the Black dude must’ve been the one who murdered Parrish? You know, because he’s Black and probably a stone-cold killer?”
“No! I’m not saying that at all. I just said I saw them together. That’s all,” Livvy protested. “I swear, I’m not a racist.”
“Okay, calm down, Felice,” KJ said. “I saw Parrish with that dude too. Doesn’t make us racists. They didn’t really talk that long, but then it looked like she got mad at something, and she went stomping away.”
“Okay,” Felice grumbled. “Maybe I was jumping to conclusions.”
“Maybe?” Garrett rolled his eyes. “Look. Maybe it wasn’t anybody who was at the afterparty who did it. Last night, this place was crawling with people.”
“We had reservations for four hundred and fifty people,” Felice said.
“And the hotel was packed to the gills with overnight folks. Parrish told me we were sold out weeks ago and a lot of members were bitching that they couldn’t get a room because of all the ‘tourists,’” Livvy added.
“Maybe one of those pissed-off guests took out their frustrations on her,” Garrett said.
“More likely, it would have been Parrish taking out one of them,” Felice said. “Like that old cracker McBee.”
Livvy shook her head vigorously. “You’re thinking about this all wrong.”
“And you know a lot about investigating murder?” Garrett asked.
“I kinda do. I’ve probably listened to more true-crime podcasts and read more true-crime books than anyone else in this whole state.”
“So that makes you a detective?” he asked.
Livvy started to say something, but Garrett cut her off. “Stay out of it,” he advised. “Keep your head down, do your job, and let the cops do theirs.”