“But if Ardell is in charge of the evidence, he can make it look however he wants, right?”
Marcus frowns. “I know Ardell gives off a bad-guy vibe. I think he’s a little socially awkward, and he’s been more reserved since his wife left him.”
I snap a look in his direction. “He was married?”
“Years ago.” Marcus squints like he’s trying to do the math. “His wife and I went to high school together. They’ve been separated for a long time. I think she moved to Wisconsin or something. He never talks about it, but I’m not sure they ever finalized the paperwork.”
“I’m sorry, what?” I say, remembering the clipped smile Gemma threw his way when Ardell tried to speak to her at the Lemon & Fig party.
“An uncontested divorce costs a couple thousand dollars. It sounded like they were arguing over how to pay for it. I stopped asking, honestly. It was complicated. He has his moments, though,” Marcus continues. “He’s been looking after the Hall House for Nora since she bought it. Even before then, he was making sure it didn’t get vandalized by high school kids.”
Adrenaline courses through me. “Ardell? He was in the Hall House?”
The Hall House. Where Gemma was meeting some mystery guy. The mystery guy with a complicated marriage.
“I don’t think Nora likes it when we call it the Hall House,” Marcus says.
“Does he have a key?” I pull out my phone.
“He did for a while, I think?” Marcus looks at me like the details are fuzzy.
There’s a knock on the door near the kitchen, and I’m already on my feet as Nora walks into the back of the house, lifting the coffee and pastries she is carrying like an offering. Her smile falters when she sees me, though.
“Gemma was sleeping with someone, and it was complicated,” I say. “And they used to meet at the Hall House.”
Nora stomps a foot. “It’s not the Hall House any—”
“Okay, your house. But Ardell was in it. I think he might be framing Beau. Maybe Simon paid him to do it? Maybe there was something going on between Gemma and Ardell?” I’m pacing the tiled floor of Marcus’s kitchen now. “He was there last night. At Ford’s house. He came to tell us all to go inside.”
“And then he killed Simon?” Marcus tries to follow the thread for me, not believing it.
Nora’s face goes pale as she drops the bag of pastries. They land with a smack on the floor. “Simon’s dead?”
“And Beau’s in jail,” I add.
Nora turns toward me, her eyes wide, and asks, “What are you going to do?”
As the thought comes to me, it’s disorienting.
Before Beau, the only person I could really count on was myself, and when we married, my bench grew by just one.
But if I need someone to persuade a midlevel political figure, like Eric Kennedy, to take an accusation against Travis Ardell seriously, there is someone I can call.
“I think I have to call my aunt Delia.”
Chapter 35
Five Years Ago, Winter Park
“What about Capri?” Beau asked, handing me his phone so that I could see the photo he’d found of a cliffside view of Capri’s emerald-blue waters and jagged Faraglioni peaks.
“Everyone there is so obsessed with the see-and-be-seen crowd.” I winced. “Don’t we get enough of that here?”
With a hand, I gestured toward the Interlachen Country Club patio. Beau had played a round of golf that morning, and I’d come up to meet him, lazing by the pool with a stack of wedding magazines.
It had been a few weeks since I proposed, and we were in the thick of wedding planning. We had taken to tossing destinations back and forth.
He’d say Ireland, and I’d protest about the cold. I’d suggest the Maldives, and he’d describe the twenty-plus-hour odyssey that would require.
