Back in my car, I got Muffin settled, then turned to look back at Drake’s office again. The good doc clearly hadn’t enjoyed me mentioning Jason Holt at all. He hadn’t spoken another word except to bark out the amount I owed him. Then he handed me my receipt and disappeared out back.
It had certainly left me curious, but the truth was I had no idea if he’d just gotten flustered because of his clandestine meeting or if he’d actually done anything he needed to hide.
So essentially, I was no further along than I had been when I started, and nearly four hundred dollars poorer.
I did have a phone number, though. Maybe it was a clue. Or maybe he’d been writing down the number for his new dog food supplier and I was crazy.
Either way, I decided to pursue my other suspect. I still had some unanswered questions about Thea Coleman and her mode of transportation. If I could find out where she was staying, maybe I could find out if she had a car. And while I didn’t expect to find a Jason Holt–sized dent in the front bumper, maybe there would be other clues that would be useful to me.
I dropped Muffin at home, poked my head in to say hi to Ethan and grab a sandwich, then headed back out. A few minutes later I pulled into the parking lot of the Surfside Resort, one of the most popular places to stay in the summer and one of the only hotels on the island to remain open in the winter. Surfside’s location was prime—right on a beach, with the small, quaint town green behind it, conveniently located not far from the ferry dock. The tourist center was across the street, with trolley stops, tour guides, and moped rentals. It was also a short walk to pretty much everything.
Some people thought the owners were crazy for keeping the place open during winter, but I thought it was actually a pretty smart business model. They were open for the people who worked on the island year-round. They didn’t all want to go back and forth every night, given the propensity for the ferry schedule to change on a dime due to the weather. Some had bosses who insisted they stay on-site for the same reasons, to ensure the job was done on time. This usually applied to contractors or construction crews. And while this hotel was a five-star resort in the summer, in the winter they dropped the prices down to something more in line with a Best Western, closed down two of the wings, and operated on a skeleton crew.
I always admired creative ways to grow a business.
I turned into the parking lot, turning my windshield wipers up higher. The weather had started to deteriorate already, and the weather reports were getting more ominous by the minute. No snow was predicted, but rains and high winds seemed to be inevitable.
There were no cars in the front lot of the hotel. I turned the corner and drove to the back, where there were only a few spaces. A red Ford pickup, with a Cape & Islands plate. A white Kia Sportage with North Carolina plates. The third car was a gray Toyota Corolla with Massachusetts plates. I pulled up next to it, pulled my hood over my head, and got out to inspect it. The license number stood out because of the last three letters: SKY. And there was the bar code sticker on the front windshield. This was a rental.
I peered into the driver’s side window, trying to see through the raindrops. It was neat inside. A shopping bag sat on the passenger side floor. I could see loose change in the console, and a paper cup from the deli on Bicycle Street where we’d had our face-off yesterday. I checked the back. And there was the red parka in the back seat. Bingo.
No sign of any damage to the front of the car, though. No dents or dings or colors that didn’t match the color on the rest of it. No clear indication she’d recently run someone down with enough force to kill him. As I’d suspected. If she’d run down Holt with this car, she’d gotten some fast—and expert—bodywork done immediately thereafter. Which would be cause for conversation if she’d gotten it done on the island, so I was guessing that hadn’t happened. If she had run him down, had she used someone else’s car? Whose? Did she really have that much of a network on this island?
I ducked back into Grandma’s car, sluicing water off my coat, and thought. I could go inside, but that would probably be fruitless. They wouldn’t tell me anything about a guest. Maybe I should wait to see if she came out and where she was going. But if she’d just gotten back, she could be in there for a while.
I blew out a frustrated breath. I didn’t really know what I would gain by following her, though there was the possibility that she’d lead me to Leopard Man. I hadn’t seen him since he’d slipped out of our house the other night, and that was definitely odd. He was always around town. And always stopping by the cafe.
Clearly, I was floundering here. But since I had no other leads to follow, I’d sit here for a bit. I would call the number I got from Drake’s desk and see what that was about.
Might as well wait with the heat blasting. I’d just cranked it up and was about to move to a more discreet parking space when none other than Thea Coleman herself came rushing around the side of the building, talking animatedly on a cell phone. I froze for a second, then ducked way down, hoping she wouldn’t notice me, even though I was parked right next to her.
But she seemed like she was in a huge hurry. She got into the rental and screeched out of the parking lot. I sat up and watched her careen onto Main Street.
Without thinking twice, I took off out of the lot right behind her, fumbling in my console for my sunglasses. It was cloudy and overcast and had been raining on and off already, but I didn’t want her to look in the rearview mirror and make out my face.
She was driving kind of fast. I’d lost some momentum slamming on my brake for a car that had pulled out in front of me, hydroplaning a little in the growing puddles of water, and she’d covered a lot of ground in the meantime. I hit the gas and urged Grandma’s car to keep up. I wondered who she was talking to. I could see the phone still pressed against her ear as she drove. Why had she left the hotel in such a hurry?
But the car that had cut me off was driving so slowly it stopped me from getting through the light. Slamming my hand against the steering wheel, I jerked the car to a stop and watched Thea’s gray rental bypass Bicycle Street, the main drag, and careen around the corner onto Atlantic Avenue. The light seemed to take a year and a half to turn green again, but I’d barely inched forward when two cop cars hit the sirens and came around the corner, stopping me again. They were heading in the direction from which I’d just come.
Which could be coincidence—there were a million places they could be going—but so many coincidences in one week stopped being coincidences. Plus, my gut was screaming at me that these sirens were related to Thea somehow.
I faltered, my gaze straying to the rearview mirror to see where they were going. The driver of the car behind me, anxious to move, blared its horn at me. I resisted the urge to flip the driver off—old Boston driving habits die hard—and did a quick calculation in my head. Follow Thea, who was probably way out of my sight by now, or go be nosy and see what was going on with the police. I made a command decision, flipped the car around in an illegal U-turn, praying the cops were too busy to give me a ticket, and commenced my second attempt at a car chase. I hoped this one would be more successful. At least I had flashing lights and sirens to follow.