I figured Becky would be at her desk—she’d sleep there if she could—so I called that number first. “I may have a scoop for you,” I said when she answered her desk phone, sounding distracted.
“Please tell me it’s about the writer and not something about the storm.” I could sense her leaning back in her chair, maybe sticking her pen in the loose bun she’d probably wrapped her hair in to keep it out of her face while she barked orders at her reporters to get more on this dead-writer story. She would’ve been perfect in the “old days” of journalism. Granted, she wasn’t an aging white guy chomping on a cigar and pounding on a typewriter with a glass of whiskey beside her, but her mind and her approach were completely aligned with the journalists of old. And she’d been known to prefer whiskey on particularly rough days.
“Definitely the writer.” I filled her in on everything that had happened since I’d left her yesterday—Ava-Rose’s stories about Drake and Holt, my visit to Drake’s office, finding out Thea Coleman’s name and virtually nothing about her online, my car chases, and Thea’s latest antics of trying to break into Jason Holt’s hotel room. “Maybe she thought he stole her dog,” I said, trying to make a lame joke. “And then Holt’s almost ex-wife showed up. And Ellory, which kind of ended my ability to try to participate in any way.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Would I kid you? Well, I was kidding about stealing the dog. But listen, Beck, don’t you think all of this is weird?”
“Of course it’s weird. The guy died under really weird circumstances,” she said.
“So don’t you think we should check it out?”
“We?”
“Yeah. I can help. I want to help. The cafe is pretty dead right now. You know I need another project,” I said.
“Check it out how?” she asked.
I blew out an impatient breath. “There are so many angles here. The vet, the mystery woman, the wife. We need to figure out what the deal really was with our illustrious writer. Why he was here, what he was doing, who Thea Coleman really is and what her connection to Holt is, why he’d be fighting with our new vet the night he got killed. I mean, where do you start?”
“Maddie. Are you looking for a new gig as an investigative reporter?” She sounded amused. “Because I don’t have the budget.”
“Ha. Did you know Holt started out as an investigative reporter?” I leaned forward in my chair.
“I did read that. So Holt fought with Drake, huh? How did Ava-Rose come by that information?”
“She was spying on the yacht club. That’s a long story. But she totally saw them having words. Holt walked away alive, but still. It was right before he got hit.”
I could hear Becky scratching notes in her pad. “Why, though?” she asked, when the scratching of her pen stopped. “How would Drake even know Holt?”
“No idea,” I said. “I’ve been trying to work on that. I did a Google search and didn’t find anything linking them. I wondered if Holt needed information about boating for a new book and found his name. Or maybe he was just nosing around the yacht club looking for information and happened to run into him.” I thought about my other theory about the dog but didn’t mention it. “According to Val, Ava-Rose thinks someone is stealing some of the ship replicas from the club. She’s actually suspicious of Drake, which I can’t quite figure out. But maybe Drake heard her saying that and when he ran into Holt he thought he was casing the joint or something?” I was so into my theory I didn’t notice Becky laughing at me at first.
“What?” I asked, indignant.
“Casing the joint? What year are we in?” she teased.
“Oh, be quiet. I’m serious,” I snapped. “Oh, and Val said Ava-Rose wants to stake out the yacht club tomorrow night. To try to spy on Drake. If he shows up.”
“Huh?” Becky sounded like she was in my former camp about it being a stupid idea.
“I know, it sounds dumb, but maybe I should go. You know, see if there’s anything to this,” I said. “Look at it this way. You might get a scoop out of it.”
“You’re right,” she said, decidedly perkier. “You should go. What time is she planning this stakeout?”
“Not sure. Wait. Are you sending a reporter?”
“I’m not assigning anything,” Becky said. “But if one of my people happens to stumble on something interesting while they’re out covering the bad weather, I can’t do anything about that. I’m way ahead of you on the rest of it, though. I’ve already got one of my reporters digging up everything on Holt. They actually located his sister in Portland. Oregon, not Maine.”
“Really. If he has a sister, why was the wife coming to get his stuff if they were split up?”
“I don’t think the cops could get in touch with her. She could be away or something. But you would think she’d have heard it on the news by now. Given that the national media keeps trying to jump in front of us. Good thing the ferries are so sparse this time of year,” she joked. “It’s giving me some time. Although I heard that Channel Seven landed a helicopter to get their people here before the storm.”
Becky got her nose out of joint when other media came to her island. Secretly, I think she loved the chance to prove herself against the competition.
“Okay. I’ll let you know what happens with Drake. You know, unless you hear the story from your reporter first.” I disconnected and pondered my next move. I figured I’d give Val some time to cool off before I told her I changed my mind.
I picked up my phone and called my web guy out in California. “Bones. Quick question,” I said when he answered.
“What’s up?” Bones was a man of few words, but a genius with websites and all things digital. Despite his name, which before I met him in person conjured up an image of a giant biker dude with a skull bandanna, he was actually not a biker or very bone-like. He was actually a little short and chunky.
“I’m looking for someone online and nothing is coming up. Why would that be?”
“They could have erased their footprint,” he said. “Happens more than you think when someone wants to fly under the radar.”
“How do you do that?” I asked.
“It’s not that complicated, but it’s a little time consuming,” Bones said. “You gotta go back and try to remove yourself from all kinds of things—social media accounts, unsubscribe from everything, maybe even contact some webmasters to get rid of info. Some people remove their email accounts altogether.”
“So you must really want to hide if you’re doing that,” I said. Why would this woman want to fly so far under the radar?
“Either hide, or get rid of old information about yourself,” Bones agreed. “Or it could be a fake name.”
I sat up straight. A fake name. Maybe Thea Coleman wasn’t really Thea Coleman? So why would she lie? It couldn’t just be because she wanted my cat.
“Maddie?”
I’d gone silent on Bones. “Sorry,” I said. “I’m here.”
“There is one more possibility,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“She could just be someone who doesn’t use social or have any kind of online presence. There are those people in the world, you know. How old is she?”
“Not sure. Older. At least fifties. Probably more.”
“Well, that could be it,” he said. “People in the older gens tend to have a lower footprint.”
Personally, I liked the fake-name idea better. “This is really helpful, Bones. I think I might have my answer. Thank you.” I hung up, wondering what all of that meant. Either Thea Coleman was using an assumed name or else she’d spent an awful lot of time burying her tracks so she couldn’t be found in the digital world. Grudgingly, I admitted that Bones’ other theory might be a possibility, too, but I had to make sure I covered all my bases.
Leopard Man, who I hadn’t seen since he slipped out of the house the other night, might be the only person who could shed light on this particular mystery since he was the only one on the island who might have known Thea. That is, aside from Jason Holt. Who was, unfortunately, dead.
Thea’s anonymity on the island didn’t sit well with me. I flipped on the TV and went to the local news channel, looking for a weather update. Although I didn’t need anyone to tell me that it was getting worse out there. The trees were whipping around my windows, gaining speed with every passing moment. Delia Redding, the reporter stuck covering the weather today, stood out at one of the beaches, holding on to her rain hat. I thought of Lucas at his dog-grooming convention and sighed. I missed him. I wished he were here to talk all this through with.
“This is going to be a big storm, and a slow-moving one, Alex,” Delia told her counterpart at the news desk, her words fading as the wind assaulted her microphone. “The winds are picking up now, and we’re expecting to see them gain in force all weekend. This storm will get worse tomorrow and likely not taper off until possibly late Sunday night, given the patterns we’re seeing.”
She paused, glancing at some notes in her hands, which were undoubtedly getting soaked. “We’re already receiving word of ferry cancellations.…”