“Oh good,” I said.“I was hoping I’d develop some kind of sixth sense where criminals are concerned.Like a beacon would appear on their foreheads and I’d know they were bad.”
“You’re in an odd mood.”
“I’ve had a lot of caffeine today,” I said by way of apology.“He’s been helping us from the beginning.Giving us access to the foundation records.Why would he do that if he had something to hide?”
“To know what we found during the investigation,” Dash said.“Any evidence.Who we questioned.Our thought processes.”
“Keep your friends close, and the cops sniffing you out closer, huh?”
“Something like that.”
“He could have hidden evidence from us,” I said.“We’d never know.”
“He could have,” Dash agreed.
We passed the park and Henry Wainwright’s old house and then a little farther down, Dottie’s.I watched it as we went by.
“You think he did it?”I asked.“Killed him?”
“That’s what we need to find out.It’s the last piece of the puzzle.”
James’s house sat on the north end of the island where the old families had built deep into the live oaks and turned everything toward the water.It was Federal style, white with black shutters, three stories with a double gallery across the front.A low brick wall ran the perimeter, just high enough to mark the line.A pair of old crape myrtles flanked the front walk, their trunks gone silver with age, their branches grown into each other overhead after decades of reaching for the same light.
His car was in the drive.
Dash cut the engine and waited a few seconds while the engine ticked to see if the rain would slow down.It didn’t.
“No time like the present,” I said, but Dash was already out of the car and had his umbrella up before he came around to open my door.
We were halfway up the walk when Dash slowed.
The front door was standing open.
“Stay close,” he said, handing me the umbrella and unholstering his weapon.
He pushed the door open wider and called out.“Mr.Everett?It’s Sheriff Beckett.”
I closed the umbrella and left it out on the front stoop so not to track in the rain, and I stepped in behind him.
There was no answer.
The foyer had dark wood floors and a staircase rising along one wall, with framed photographs running the length of the hallway.A lifetime of family and documented good works lined up on both sides.
“Mr.Everett?”he called out again.
Still nothing.
Dash moved deeper into the house and I followed, past the photographs and through a sitting room that was cool and dim with the curtains open and the rain casting odd shadows across the furniture.There was a half-finished crossword on the side table.A pair of reading glasses folded on top of it.The ordinary evidence of a morning that had started like any other.
The kitchen was at the back of the house, with a wall of windows facing the river.
James Everett was sitting at the kitchen table.
I breathed out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding when I saw he was alive.
He wore pressed khakis and a white linen shirt.There was a bottle of whiskey at his elbow, a good single malt, and a glass with a little amber left in it.
He looked up when we came in.
