SEAMUS WAITED OUTSIDE the Carmichaels’ room while Maxine helped me shed the warm comfort of her nightgown and quilt. I changed into my pants and blouse, wincing as I forced my sore feet into my shoes.
Maxine gave me a worried look as I started to leave.
“I’ll be fine,” I reassured her.
But I wasn’t so sure. My stomach churned, my head buzzed, as Seamus and I lingered in the hallway. He quietly explained what had happened after I burst into the dining room: Seamus, Cormac, Liam, and Eddie had gone down to the southwest dock. He had dived off, found Rosita as I described. With a knife, he’d sliced the ropes that bound her and brought her body up to the surface, laying her out on the dock. Eddie had stared down at her for a long time, quiet, and said simply, Yes, this is Rosita.
While Eddie kept watch over Rosita’s body, Seamus changed back into dry clothes in a back room in the cottage, while Liam and Cormac found an old stretcher. The four men had borne Rosita back to the pool house. Eddie, Cormac, and Liam kept watch over her body, while Seamus went inside to find Henry, who’d unlocked the pool house.
Seamus went on to explain that he, Liam, and Cormac went back for Joey’s body and transported him to the pool house as well.
When he finished his explanation, he gestured that I should precede him up the stairs to the main floor but didn’t touch me or look at me. He was not just reeling from the morning’s events. He was upset with me.
I was surprised at how that stung me. But as we ascended the stairs, I pushed aside that emotion and braced myself to face Eddie.
Eddie sat quietly, again at the head of the long table in the library. His gaze swept over the tips of his steepled fingers and seemed to land on the bookshelf, boring through the volumes of Austen and the Brontës and Eliot and Verne, traveling to even more distant places than in those fictions.
I’d like to think he was remembering lovelier times with Rosita, when they were first courting, or wed, or building this mansion.
Cormac stood at the opposite end of the table. Marco sat on one side. Quietly, Seamus took a seat opposite him.
Cormac pulled the chair back at his end of the table, gestured exaggeratedly for me to sit.
I sat, clasping my hands on the table, focusing on Eddie. My stomach growled; in response, my face flamed. It seemed indecent to be hungry—a need of the living—after discovering Rosita and Joey brutally killed.
“What were you doing down by the dock this early morning?” Cormac asked.
“Taking my usual morning swim,” I said.
“Even in this weather?”
“I’ve made a full-body swimming suit,” I answered. “I was wearing it when I came in to tell everyone—” My explanation faltered as I glanced at Eddie, as still and frozen as he’d been when I’d entered the library. Did he even hear what we were saying?
Cormac turned to Seamus. “Well?”
“It’s true,” Seamus said. “She does like to swim. I’ve seen her.”
I cleared my throat. “So we’ve established that I like to swim. So?”
“So you are the most comfortable of any of us with the lake. The most likely to be at ease underwater, tying up Mrs. McGee,” Cormac said.
“I didn’t kill her,” I said wearily. Of course I was being blamed; I knew I would be. “Why would I? She saved my life after—” I stopped.
Cormac gave a curt nod to Seamus, the cue for Seamus to reach under the table and produce my suitcase. He put it on the table.
Oh. I deduced that after finding Rosita, he’d gone into the cottage to change, spotted my clothes, glasses, and suitcase. In the blur of that horrible morning, I forgot that I’d brought the suitcase.
Seeing it must have made him realize that I’d been intent on leaving without telling him my plans, and this hurt him. My eyes prickled at the notion that he cared that much about me.
I half rose from my seat, stretching my hand forward. “I’d like that back. I just used it to bring my swimming suit…”
I stuttered to a stop as Cormac gave Seamus a pointed look. Seamus clicked the latches, opening my suitcase to reveal my clothes, cigar box, and my bird-watching notebook.
“You were planning on leaving this morning, weren’t you?” Cormac asked. “Taking the speedboat.”
I nodded, miserably.
“And for some reason you went into the water—”
“I just—just wanted one last swim—”
“One last swim? In that freezing water? Or were you tying up Rosita’s body—”
“From the body’s condition,” Seamus said quietly, “Rosita has been under the dock almost as long as she’s been missing.”
“Fine,” Cormac said. “Maybe you wanted to release her, so she’d never be found—”
“I just wanted one last swim!” I said. What I’d really wanted was my lockbox, but I wasn’t about to admit that. “And besides, if I killed her, why would I tie her up to be found? I’m the only one who swam there, the only one who would find her—”
I stopped, realizing that whoever killed her might have tied her up knowing that sooner or later I’d swim there and find her remains.
Perhaps someone who had seen me find the lockbox and tie it under the dock. One of my coworkers? One of them could have later told Eddie or a member of his entourage, reasoning that I’d surely want it because I was planning to run.
My head was pounding. I couldn’t sort out who to trust, or who might be working together. So my only option was to trust no one.
My stomach ached at that. I’d grown to care about the Carmichaels and Liam. And in just a few months, I’d become attached to Seamus.
“Goddamn it, why do I have to listen to this?” Marco leapt up.
“You don’t have to,” Cormac said, his voice as tight as a thread pulled too taut. “But staff comes with the island, so you might want to know what you’re buying.”
My throat tightened as if a clammy hand had closed around it. We—the Carmichaels, Liam, and myself—were just part of the transaction, like tea towels and vases and the rest of the mansion’s contents. I glanced at Seamus, who gave a tiny shake of his head: this was not the time to protest.
Marco leapt up. “All I wanna know is, does Eddie inherit the island, with the old lady offed?”
Cormac was by Marco in a blink, grabbing his arm and bending it back. Terror flooded Marco’s face as if he was just now realizing that he was without his bodyguard.
“Mind your manners,” Cormac snapped.
“Mind your manners, Cormac.” Eddie finally spoke. He was still staring into the distance, so riveted that it seemed we might have imagined his voice. “We want Marco to only say nice things about us when this is all over.”
Cormac released Marco’s arm. “Yes, boss.”
Eddie turned his cold gaze on his rival. “Yes, I inherit the island. The mansion. The contents. It was in her will.”
The back of my neck prickled. It was in Eddie’s financial interest for Rosita to be dead. And for her body to be found, to prove she was dead and not just missing.
Marco grinned. “Good thing there are no obstacles in the way of the sale.”
I blanched at that. Rosita—an obstacle. It was also in Marco’s financial interest for Rosita to be dead, her body found.
“But you know, word’s gonna get around that your old lady died here. Folks might think it’s jinxed. May be less likely to come here for me, the way they did for you. Plus coming here has cost me a bodyguard, and I’m gonna have to pay off his family to keep their yaps trapped. So I’m thinking a lower price—”
Eddie clapped his hand down, hard, on Marco’s shoulder. “Or maybe a higher price?”
Marco frowned. “I’m not offering a penny more—”
Cormac pulled back his jacket, rested his hand on his holster. “You thinking maybe we can find another buyer, boss? One who won’t whine about what’s happened here?”
Marco’s ruddy face blanched. “My—my men will be here in a few days, if I don’t return—”
Eddie grinned, his mouth stretching like a snake’s about to surround its prey. “I’m sure they’d be so sad to learn that you fell in the lake. And unlike my old lady, no one tied your body up to be found.”
“I’ll … pay whatever price you ask.”
“Oh no, the original price is fine.” Eddie patted Marco on the shoulder convivially. “Cormac, take his gun.”
“What?” Marco started to protest. “But without Joey—”
“You’ll be fine,” Eddie said. “Cormac is going to gather all the other guns, too.”
Marco pulled out his gun, handed it over. Cormac gave Seamus an impatient look, and Seamus, too, handed over his gun.
Who else was armed? Henry, with his rifle. Liam. Maybe Dr. Aldridge and Douglas. In any case, soon the only ones with guns would be Eddie and Cormac.
Eddie turned his gaze on me. “So, what to do about my wife’s killer.”
“I have an idea, boss,” Cormac said.
The blood drained from my face.
Eddie chuckled. “Cormac, you have got to learn to think with more finesse. No, we need Rosita’s killer alive, for her to turn herself in.”
The realization struck me, just as surely as if Cormac or Eddie had hit me, that Rosita might be a recluse, and Marco and his wife might take over the island, but eventually—at their summer gatherings, their parties, there would be questions.
Whatever happened to Rosita McGee?
Where did she go?
She’s not back in Toledo with Eddie, so …
And Eddie did not like questions about his business or life.
Eddie grinned at me. “You didn’t really think you could get away with murder, did you?”
Oh, but I had once. Or so I thought. Why not blame me?
I clenched my jaw. “I didn’t kill Rosita.”
Eddie smacked his hands down on the table and leaned forward. For a mad moment, I thought he might clamber across the table to me. “Neither did I, doll.”
“Then we should find out who did.” Seamus’s voice was calm. “I will get the doctor. He can examine the bodies. Maybe answer the questions about whether Rosita was already dead at the time she was lashed under the dock, or if she died of drowning. He might even be able to discern a few details about Joey’s death.”
“I’m coming, too.” Eddie stood. “So’s Aurelia. Could be seeing the bodies again might jog her memory for details.”
A large shrieking cry filtered into the room. Everyone looked around, startled. Largo. I had nearly forgotten her. Up in my room, hungry by now, confused, lonely.
Eddie jumped up. “What is that infernal racket—”
“It’s Largo,” I said. “She needs tending.”
“It’d be easier just to strangle her,” Marco muttered.
I wasn’t sure if he meant the bird, or me.
Eddie waved me away. “Go. Seamus, follow her, make sure she doesn’t try to run again.”