Chapter 23

I really wished Emily were here for this.

“How dare you come to my home and accuse me of having an affair with anyone?” Gina said without missing a beat. “What’s this about, anyway? Is this some sort of island joke at my expense?”

Oh, she was good.

Andy still did not move.

“I will kindly ask you to leave,” she said and opened the door.

“I’ll ask the question again,” Andy said. “Were you having an affair with Simon Sterling?”

I was sure Andy was about to show her the note from Gina’s purse that I’d given him. If he was so worried about me being in danger, he was about to put me right into the thick of things. To my relief, however, he surprised me.

“We have copies of Simon Sterling’s phone records,” he said. “More than half the calls were made to a phone in your name.”

I looked at him with an admiring glance, and he shifted his jaw in that wink-thing he does. As promised, he had done his homework, touched base with a couple of officers who’d been working on the case. In my book, he was one of the island’s finest.

Gina closed the front door.

“Dio mio,” she began muttering to herself in Italian. “Sono stupida. Stupida. Stupida . . .”

Gina left the door and sat on her sofa where she buried her face in her hands and burst into tears. I was not prepared at all for Italian or hysterics. I was prepared for running, threats, any sort of danger, but not tears. I looked at Andy. From the look on his face, I realized I probably had more experience with a woman in a love crisis than he did.

“Affairs, huh?” I said, sitting next to her. Andy could be the bad cop. I decided I would play the good cop. I looked at Andy with an expression that said as much. He nodded the tiniest bit, but enough to encourage me to continue.

Gina sort of laughed in the midst of her tears, which I took as a good sign. She pulled a tissue from a box conveniently placed beside the sofa and dabbed her eyes, taking a few deep breaths to compose herself as she did.

“The answer to your question, Officer Southerland, is yes,” she said. “I was having an affair with Simon Sterling. I can’t imagine how this matters to your investigation of that horrible man, Bill Duffy. I will ask you to please, please, do everything in your power to keep our affair out of the papers. It would be a terrible and unnecessary blow to my career and my personal life.”

“When did you meet Simon?” I said, trying hard to ignore her disparaging description of Bill.

“Last summer,” she said.

Andy sat down on a club chair across from the sofa. I noticed he did not stop me from asking the questions this time.

“Where?” I said.

“Italy,” Gina said. “I live in LA, but I summer in Italy. Kevin usually travels during the summer. Me? I like my cypress trees and the olives and the food and the people.”

“Where is Mr. Bunch now?” said Andy.

Gina laughed a little bitterly.

“I see you don’t read the social columns,” she said. “He’s yachting with a French model.”

I looked at Andy, who was now scribbling down this information. I supposed he was wondering if Kevin Bunch had yachted his way to Nantucket to kill Simon Sterling for having an affair with his wife, but Gina flashed her phone at us.

We peered at the screen to find pictures of Kevin living it up on the Riviera. The lead picture was of an already legendary party on Friday night in which the model Gina had referred to was pouring champagne over Kevin Bunch. Unless he had a super-sonic speed boat, he was not Simon’s killer.

“Do you and Simon have mutual friends? Is that how you met?” I asked, getting back to Simon. She had shared the when and where of their meeting, but not the how.

“We met outside of Naples, at a café,” she said and grabbed another tissue. “We were seated at tables next to each other. I was impressed that a man of his sophistication was happy to spend an afternoon alone at a café in such a small town. I told him as much. One thing led to another, and we ended up spending all afternoon talking. By that night, I was a goner.”

I had a feeling that the café near Naples was probably in the small town where the Sterling brothers had shared their land. Simon was likely enjoying his espresso and the southern Italian landscape after snooping out the land his brother wanted to sell. It occurred to me that perhaps Simon had changed his mind about selling the land because he wanted an excuse to stay near Gina. Why she wanted to be with him, however, was still beyond me.

“He called me Belle,” Gina said.

“And what happened?” said Andy. “Was he threatening to go public? Was he blackmailing you? Did you track him down to the Melville and hit him with a candlestick?”

Gina laughed.

“Do you think this is some Hollywood B-movie?” she said. “Gina Ginelli does not go around killing people. Do you know how many people would be dead by now if I went around killing men who let me down? Give me some credit!” And with that, she tossed her crumpled tissue onto the side table.

“Do you have an alibi for the night of the murder?” he asked, holding steady.

“I was here. Working,” she said, and shifted in her chair with a sudden shudder. “Why does it matter? Why are you asking me these questions? You have your man.”

“We know you were in the Game Room,” I said, cutting to the chase.

Gina sunk back into the sofa’s cushions. She looked very small.

“How do you know that?” she said, without contradicting my accusation.

“Your perfume,” I said.

She nodded. Defeated.

“How did you get into the Sun Room?” said Andy. “Did Simon let you in?”

“No,” she said. She sunk her hands into her pocket and pulled out a room key to the Melville. Andy took it. “The key was on the kitchen counter when I arrived with a note from Simon to meet him in the Game Room from the side doors in the Sun Room.”

“Why meet at the inn?” said Andy. “If you wanted privacy, the inn’s not the best spot.”

Gina buried her head in her hands. When she looked up, her face was older and sad.

“Did Mrs. Sterling tell you how Simon had once wanted to be an actor?” she said.

Andy shook his head and made a note.

“Go on,” I said.

“He was the one who encouraged me to take this role. It’s different for me,” she said. “He loved to help me on it. I’m working on a scene where my character breaks into a hotel in the wee hours of the morning, to meet her lover. I told Simon about it, and he thought it would be fun for us to act it out. He had a wonderful imagination.”

“And you brought the key with you to the Melville when you went to meet him?” I said.

She nodded. “He was going to open the door to the Sun Room himself to let me in, of course, but I brought the key with me anyway. When I got to the inn, I waited. Three o’clock came and went and he didn’t open the door. It was getting cold, so I decided to go inside. That’s when I saw the body. You don’t think I killed him, do you? Because I would never do anything to harm that man. That’s why I went to the hospital, to the inn. I’ve wanted to learn about his death. Not for my movie, but because I loved him. You don’t understand, I thought you found the murderer. That’s why I haven’t said anything to the police.”

“So, you went to the Game Room,” said Andy. “What happened?”

Gina’s eyes welled up again with tears.

“Nothing,” she said. “He was dead. He was on the floor, splayed out with that hideous medieval candle broken in half beside him.”

After that last comment, it took all of my will not to tell Andy to arrest her right there.

“What was your plan for that night?” he said, probably afraid I would do exactly that.

“He was very excited about the night. For the whole weekend actually.”

“Was it why he told Jessica he’d walk her down the aisle?” I said. “So you two could secretly meet?”

Gina nodded.

“I made it clear we could never be properly married,” said Gina, “but he didn’t care. He said he wanted to prove his love to me. He said that he had a ‘gift wrapped in a gift’ for me that would symbolize our union and make us a family, even if no one else could ever know. He said he had branded himself for me, and that he had something for me to bind myself to him. It was such a riddle, and now I’ll never know what he meant.”

“Did you see anyone or hear anything when you went to the inn?” said Andy.

“No.” She shook her head. “Except. Oh, I don’t know.”

“What?” I said.

“I thought I heard footsteps coming toward the room. That’s why I fled.”

If those footsteps were Tony’s, he was off the hook.

“Did you see who it was?” said Andy.

“No,” said Gina. “But I can prove to you I could not kill Simon.”

“How?” said Andy. His question was open-ended, but his tone was skeptical.

“My shoulder,” she said. “There was no way I could lift that candle and hit him over the head with enough force to kill him. Last year, when I was in a stage production of Taming of the Shrew, I hurt myself in rehearsal for a fight scene. I almost had to drop out of the play. I had surgery two months ago and I’ve been in physical therapy since. You can ask my doctors.” She ran to the kitchen table, to her purse, and rifled through it until she produced a card that she handed to Andy. “Call Dr. Bilky. He’ll confirm everything. You can even test me if you have to.”

“If what you say is true, Gina,” said Andy, “you need to think. Did you see Simon earlier that day? Was there anything unusual about him? Anything that would suggest that he was in danger?”

“I never saw him,” she said. “Our first meeting was supposed to be that night.”

A bottle of wine sat on the counter next to her purse. Gina opened a cabinet above her, took out a glass, and poured with a shaky hand.

“I was so angry about the injury,” she said after a healthy sip. “Now, it turns out, the accident might save me from a life in prison. It’s so unpredictable how life works, isn’t it?”

It was a little melodramatic, but I got where she was coming from. Andy closed his notebook, but I was still thinking about Simon’s riddle.

“I’ll call your doctor,” he said. “And in the meantime, please do not leave the island this weekend or we will put out an APB for your arrest.”

She nodded, obediently.

“I’m sorry we’ve upset you, but I think I can answer a couple of the riddles for you,” I said. “I think the brand that Simon was referring to was a tattoo of a bell that he had recently inked onto his shoulder.”

Gina smiled and looked really, really sad.

“I’ll always wonder what he meant by our own secret family,” she said.

I nodded, sympathetically.

“And Tinker,” I said.

Gina looked at me blankly.

“The cat you met yesterday,” I said. “We found him in Simon’s room. Could he have been a gift for you? His name is Tinker. Along with Simon’s bell tattoo, the message is Tinkerbell. That might have been just the right kind of secret code for the two of you.”

Gina’s hand flew to her mouth.

“Poor Simon,” she said.

“We have the cat in the car outside,” I said. I felt an immediate loss over the idea of handing over Tinker, but he wasn’t mine to keep. “I can get him for you.”

Gina shook her head.

“Simon didn’t know,” she said. “Why should he? It’s not the sort of thing that comes up much. The truth is, I’m allergic to cats.”

“Ms. Ginelli,” said Andy. His voice had softened significantly since our meeting had begun. “You said he had three secrets. His brand, a family, and something about a gift wrapped in a gift. Given the answers to the first two riddles, do you have any idea what he could have meant by the third?”

Gina shook her head. “No. I’m sorry I don’t.”

“OK,” said Andy, opening the front door. I rose and followed him. “We’ll keep in touch. I don’t think you are in any danger, but I’ll swing by later to check in on you.”

“Please do,” she said. “I was so scared last night. I didn’t really hang out with the revelers. I was packing.”

My last image as we let ourselves out was of Gina pouring another glass of wine. Two steps down the path from her door, Andy stopped, his hand on my arm.

“Thanks, again, for your help,” he said. “But promise me, no more sleuthing. This looks darker and darker. I don’t want anyone else getting hurt.”

“Here’s the deal,” I said. “You go to Bellamy and let him know what you’ve found so they can release Bill. Then I’ll sit back and you can do whatever you need to do.”

That was mostly the truth, but I was still reeling from Gina’s description of my candle as a hideous medieval thing.

“I can’t go to Bellamy yet,” said Andy. “Think about it. She told us some interesting information about their love life, but nothing changes the facts about Bill. Something’s missing.”

We turned to head to Andy’s car when the door to Gina’s cottage flew open.

“Wait,” she said. “I thought of something.”