The Island Matchmaker (Blue Skies & Alibis #4)
Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
To Daisy’s credit, she hadn’t tried to push Roma on anything she just revealed; she simply sat there and let her process how she felt about it all.
However, Roma wasn’t exactly sure how she felt about discovering that the lead detective in Matthias’s disappearance, who seemed almost negligently nonchalant about it, was credited with being the only reason Daisy hadn’t been falsely accused of murder.
In fact, she seemed to be wildly swinging from one extreme to the other; one moment almost certain that he was secretly working to clear her name and that she should just relax, and the next, convinced that he either just didn’t like her or believed she had done it, so he was likely working just as hard to get her convicted as he had worked to help Daisy.
If she were being totally honest, neither really made her feel much better, but that was just one more thing she was pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to explain to Daisy.
So, instead, she sat there staring blankly at the table while she tried not to let all the thoughts in her head overwhelm her and spill out of either her eyes as tears or her mouth as words.
“Why do you think he did it? Helped you, I mean,” she finally asked.
Daisy shrugged, looking abashed. “I don’t really know, I think he…understood.”
“Understood what?”
Roma didn’t like how uncomfortable Daisy seemed. Was she missing something?
“That a lot of the so-called evidence around me was actually more like hearsay than actual evidence, and that the one piece of vaguely legitimate evidence was…well, kind of justified.” Daisy continued only when Roma’s reaction made it clear that she wasn’t content with that answer.
“I was overheard yelling at Peter a few days before he went missing. I may have said—well, yelled—something along the lines of ‘if I find out you’ve been visiting those very friendly ladies again, I’ll fricken’ kill you.
’ Except that wasn’t exactly the way I described them, and I didn’t say frick. ”
Involuntarily, Roma’s jaw dropped as her lips formed a comical O in surprise. “Oh, yeah, that’s…not great.”
“Yeah, I have to admit that, considering the other facts, it didn’t set me up for success.
” Daisy’s eyes shifted around the room. “More than a few people had seen him out and about with some of those very friendly ladies at restaurants or bars far nicer than was probably necessary for that particular, uh, business arrangement. So to speak.”
“Ah, well, I couldn’t really say,” Roma stammered, not sure how she was supposed to react to Daisy’s various admissions.
“Not to mention, a few of my friends had started to suspect something,” Daisy said.
“Like what?” Roma thought that, surely, if they’d seen Peter at hotels with women in that line of work, it would count for more than mere suspicion.
Fine lines appeared between Daisy’s eyebrows and around the corner of her mouth, seeming to deepen the longer she paused. Finally, she squeezed her eyes shut and let out a long, steady breath.
“Well, remember when I told you about the gifts and the love-bombing, and the promises of it never happening again?” Daisy turned to look at her, only continuing after Roma nodded.
“Well, that ‘sorry phase’ was usually accompanied by long sleeves on warm days and increasingly well-executed attempts at color correction makeup. And they often followed more clumsy accidents around the house than was strictly believable. Apparently, breaking three bones in three separate falls over the course of a year is above average.”
Roma’s confusion evaporated and was replaced instantly by a thick anger that made her taste bile at the back of her throat. “Three?”
“Left wrist, collarbone, right humerus,” Daisy answered, touching each spot lightly as she listed them.
Roma swallowed her rising anger that quickened her heartbeat, pressed her lips into a firm line, and met Daisy’s gaze. “Well, whatever happened to him, I’m sure he got lucky. I can think of many ways he could’ve gone, and they would’ve been very, very painful.”
A quick, sharp burst of laughter was quickly silenced when Daisy pressed her hand to her lips and cleared her throat.
“I’d like to point out that the morning he went missing, during the entire time he was supposed to be on his run, I was either in a yoga class with thirty other women or driving myself there and back. I couldn’t have done it.”
Seeing that her friend actually sounded worried about not being believed, Roma raised both her hands in mock surrender. “I never thought you did, and even if I had, I wouldn’t be brave enough to say so.”
She said the last part with a smile on her face in an attempt to reassure her, and, for a long second, she held her breath as Daisy processed the words.
Finally, her friend cracked and smiled, rolling her eyes. “Yeah, because I’m so scary.”
“Just don’t be offended if I insist on walking on the land-side of the path next time we go for a walk along the cliffs,” Roma joked, then, hoping she hadn’t pushed her luck, continued with a laugh. “And I promise not to be offended if you decline to go on any boats with me.”
Daisy snorted, pulling the still-damp log of gatehouse records closer. “Sure, or come to your home alone at night—oh, wait.”
It felt good to laugh and ease the tension as Daisy gestured at the darkening sky outside the window.
With the conversation friendly again, Roma’s hunger returned, so she leaned across the table and began unpacking the Chinese food Daisy had brought.
She watched Daisy from the corner of her eye as her friend flipped through the log.
When Daisy didn’t look up from it, even when Roma slid an open container of Szechuan steak and noodles toward her, she wondered if Daisy’s curiosity would get the better of her.
“So, how far down did you check for the plate?”
Bingo. Roma tried not to smile, just in case Daisy saw.
“Through the next day, then I just skimmed it for a few pages.”
Daisy hummed to herself, eyeing the table. “Let’s…”
She stood, moved the Chinese off the table, and started spreading out the pages one by one, snapping a picture of each with her phone. When she finished, she re-stacked the originals and set them aside.
“Come on,” she said, gesturing to the living room.
Roma gathered their takeout and followed, only to see Daisy pull out a small laptop from her bag.
“Oh, I don’t have a cable—” Roma started to say, cutting herself off as the TV screen lit up and displayed Daisy’s login screen. “I didn’t know you could do this…”
“Yeah,” Daisy said offhandedly. “It’s built in. I have the same one in my gym.”
Her friend settled on the couch and started pulling up the vehicle log photographs, dedicating one side of the screen to a new spreadsheet where she entered the date, time, and license plate for the first few entries, along with their coded descriptions.
Roma looked on, half in awe and half in dread at the tedious task Daisy was assigning them.