EIGHTEEN

Nate, Rhett, and I all missed our run Thursday morning. Mamma was in the guest room—the yellow one that had been mine before I moved into Gram’s old room. Merry had gone back to the house and packed Mamma an overnight bag. Blake dropped Nate off the night before just in time for him to take Poppy home and get back on the last ferry.

I came downstairs at six thirty, an hour and a half later than usual. Halfway down the stairs I smelled bacon and coffee. When I walked into the kitchen, Mamma said, “Good morning, Sunshine.”

She was flipping blueberry pancakes. I might have groaned. Not that her pancakes aren’t good—they’re legendary.

Nate handed me a cup of coffee. “Sit.”

I sat at the bar. “Have you heard from Blake this morning?”

“Yeah,” said Nate. “He and Nell are calling around to find someone to take the animals. The goats are incarcerated until they get that worked out.”

“So, the plywood on Chumley’s quarters—that worked?” I scrunched my face at Nate.

“Ah, no,” said Nate. “The goats are in the actual jail. Blake has them.”

“At least they are out of my house.” Mamma smiled, slid two plates of pancakes and bacon onto the table by the window. “Elizabeth, stop twisting up your face that way. I’ve told you a million times that causes wrinkles. Come eat your breakfast.”

We moved to the table. I looked at Nate.

“Resistance is futile,” he said. “We’ll run an extra mile tomorrow.”

Mamma went back to the stove and made herself a plate with one small pancake and one slice of bacon. Then she joined us at the table. “I was thinking I could air out some of the rooms upstairs you don’t use very often—change the sheets on the beds. Give them a thorough cleaning.”

“Mamma, that’s not necessary, really. Please. Just relax until things are straightened out at home. Why don’t you sit in the sunroom and read? I’m so sorry, but Nate and I have to work today, or we’d do something fun. Plus, Nate’s headed back over to help Daddy as soon as we get caught up.”

“It’s better I keep busy,” she said.

I knew then she would cook us lunch and dinner if we didn’t stop her. My metabolism couldn’t stand up to a full day of Mamma’s cooking anymore. “I have a great idea. What about that spa day?”

“Hmm. I don’t know. I can take care of you children while you work.”

Nate said, “I think a spa day sounds like a fine idea. When’s the last time you’ve taken some time for yourself, Carolyn?”

Mamma made a skeptical face.

“I’ll make the call,” I said. “Merry hasn’t left to go to work yet. She can drop you off. You can spend the day getting pampered, and hopefully, by the time you get home, your house will be set to rights.”

By eight o’clock, Mamma was on her way to Charleston, and Nate and I were settled into the sofa in the office with more coffee. Rhett walked around the room a few times, then laid down on his cushion in the corner.

“Tell me,” I said, “before I positively pop from curiosity. What did you find at the Drayton house?”

“For starters, thirteen separate sets of emergency room discharge papers for Anne Frances, all local, all since they’ve been married. Radial fractures, multiple contusions, general pain in her torso with no discernible cause. Textbook abuse.”

“Oh, that poor woman.” I closed my eyes, unaware until that moment how much I’d been hoping to find that Poppy was mistaken and the Draytons had been happily married.

“There’s more,” said Nate.

“What?”

“The first time she went to the ER, and in all but four cases, the nurse’s name on the discharge papers is Jacynthe Grimes.”

“That’s how she got involved with them,” I said. “Of course. That’s how they find women who need help. Jacynthe can’t report the abuse without the patient’s consent due to HIPAA laws. So, she tells them if they need help to reach out to her, Tess, or Sofia.”

“Looks like you were right. Probably because victims of abuse are often controlled, like the woman you saw Tuesday, they set up a system for them to communicate when they’re ready to leave their abusers.”

“It’s really a clever setup if you think about it,” I said. “Anything else in the house?”

“I scanned some bank statements we need to go through,” said Nate. “I uploaded them to the case file. There were several joint accounts, and those records were in the study with brokerage accounts, tax records, all that—my guess is it was Phillip’s study. Masculine decor. Nothing that was specifically hers. But she does have one credit card that’s in her name alone, and one bank account. Those records were in the bottom drawer of her dressing table. They’re the ones I scanned.”

“Sonny’s been through all that. He said there was nothing suspicious there,” I said.

“We have more information now,” said Nate. “We should take another look.”

“You’re right. It’s all about context. Anything else?”

“No, not at the house,” said Nate. “But I did listen to the recording from Mallory and Daniel’s dinner conversation before you got up.”

“And?”

“Short version for now. They ate at his home, alone. Apparently, someone cooks for him. Anyway, the chef left before Mallory arrived. Mallory was still upset about being interviewed again. Daniel was indignant on her behalf that she’d been asked for an alibi, but curious why she thought she had anything to worry about. He didn’t come right out and ask her if she and Phillip were having an affair, but he tread pretty close to it.”

“What did she say?”

“That she’d had a crush on Phillip for a long time, but he’d never shown her the slightest bit of attention that wasn’t strictly platonic. She confessed to following him, sometimes sitting in her car waiting just to get a look at him. She’s worried the police have found out about that and see it as a sign of her guilt.”

“And they have. Poppy told Sonny that Mallory was stalking Phillip,” I said. “But they weren’t having an affair?”

“Not if she was telling Daniel the truth. He bought it anyway. Seemed very happy with that development, though not quite so pleased to hear the depths of Mallory’s obsession with his brother. He rallied quickly, I’ll give him that much. It’s pretty clear he plans to redirect her attention to him.”

“Are you going to make a run at her building’s security camera footage this morning?”

“Yes, to eliminate her,” said Nate. “But I think if either of them did it, it was him. Now you—did you get a look at who Anne Frances met at Kiawah?”

“I think so.” I explained my deductive reasoning to Nate. “I’m going to look him up, see what I can find on him. Maybe he’s the guy and maybe he’s not. But the only reason you drive forty-five minutes out of town for a two-hour hotel stay is if you’re doing something you’re not supposed to be doing with someone.” I moved to my desk and turned on the computer.

Rhett looked at me glumly from the corner.

I sighed, gave him a rueful look.

Nate said, “Soon as I get inside this server we’ll play some Frisbee, okay boy?”

Rhett huffed. He stood and sashayed out the door, as if to let us know he wasn’t waiting for either of us.

“We need another dog,” I said. “He’s by himself too much.”

“Maybe,” said Nate. “But no goats and no pigs. Not that there’s anything wrong with either. We just don’t live on a farm.”

He searched my gaze from across the room. Sometimes I wondered if he was looking for signs I was developing my daddy’s strain of insanity.

I flashed him an eye roll and went to work.

The Fusion’s plate came back to Ryan Sutton, age thirty-five. The address was for a condo at Folly Beach. I created a profile for him, looking for connections to Anne Frances. The first one popped up fast. He was originally from Chicago and had attended the same public schools as Anne Frances. He’d moved to Los Angeles when he was seventeen and lived there for thirteen years. He had a background in modeling and was a member of the Screen Actors Guild. His work history was spotty, with occasional, short-term stints in the restaurant industry.

But in late 2010, he relocated to Charleston and paid $350,000 cash for the condo. It was small, just over 500 square feet. But it was oceanfront and not cheap real estate. Where had he come by that kind of money? I couldn’t find a local work history. Either what he did for a living now was illegal, or he was paid under the table, or he had some other means of support.

It was a bit unusual for someone who lived on the beach at Folly to be a guest at The Sanctuary, one island over, where rooms started at $500 a night. Maybe someone would do that for a wedding or a special anniversary. But Ryan Sutton had left alone at the exact same time Anne Frances did the same. That, along with the fact that he was originally from the same place as Anne Frances and relocated to Charleston not long after she returned from her honeymoon, made me nearly certain he was the man I’d taken a room service order from the day before.

Was he also a murderer?

I ran a criminal background check. He had a handful of misdemeanors from California—traffic violations, assault, drug possession—but it didn’t appear he’d ever stayed in jail longer than a weekend. Did he have a juvenile record? I had no way to access that information.

I turned to social media but couldn’t find a Facebook profile for Ryan. I couldn’t look for him in Anne Frances’s account, because she didn’t have one either. We’d have to dig further into Ryan Sutton the old-fashioned way. I knew where he lived and what he drove, I just needed to find him and put a tracker on his car so we’d know when it was safe to check out his condo.

I set Ryan aside for a moment and pulled up the images Nate had scanned of Anne Frances’s credit card and bank account statements. She shopped online a good bit, which was consistent with her pattern of shying away from leaving the house. I skimmed for other patterns and spotted one right off.

“Did you look at these statements at all?” I asked.

Nate looked up. “No. I just scanned images and flipped pages. Tried to get as much data as I could. Why?”

“She’s been going to The Sanctuary at Kiawah every Wednesday since November of 2010. The amounts are relatively consistent, going up over time—about what room and tax would be with maybe a hundred dollars in room service charges. If I hadn’t called the room she checked into, I’d think these were spa charges.”

“That’s probably what she told her husband she was doing—going to the spa.”

“And if Sonny asked her about it, I bet that’s what she told him too,” I said. “This makes my head spin.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’ve established that she’s a strong woman—she got herself off a bad path, moved to Naples, started a business. But she was married to a guy who beat her. She stayed with him and cheated on him with this guy from a past she’d put behind her. She knew him when she was in high school. He’s four years younger than her. That means nothing now, but when she was a senior, he wasn’t even in high school yet.”

“So, they most likely weren’t sweethearts way back,” said Nate.

“I’ve seen stranger things, but I’d say almost definitely not. Girls that age, especially girls as pretty as she surely was, date older guys, not ones whose voices are still changing.”

“They might be having an affair now, but passion for her didn’t inspire him to move all the way across the country,” said Nate.

“This case has too many moving parts.” I rubbed my temples. “I still don’t want to talk to Anne Frances yet. I think it’s to our advantage that she doesn’t know we’re watching. I want to talk to someone—anyone—who knows Anne Frances Drayton. She’s such a private person. It’s hard to find anyone who knows her better than Poppy, for goodness sake. Except for Daniel Drayton, who’s obviously biased.”

“Hmm.” Nate had gone back to his hacking project.

I pulled up the profile I’d done on Anne Frances Carlisle Drayton and scrolled to her marriage certificate. “Sasha Alvarez.”

“Who?” asked Nate.

“The other witness on the marriage certificate. Daniel said she was Anne Frances’s girlfriend. The wedding was private. I thought perhaps she worked at the inn where they got married, or with the officiant.”

I started a profile on Sasha Alvarez. She was also from Chicago, was the same age as Anne Frances, and had attended the same schools. Sasha had moved to Naples around the same time as Anne Frances. She’d worked as a hairdresser. Her last job and lease history ended abruptly in June of 2010. Sweet reason, it was as if she’d left the wedding and disappeared. I widened my search, scanned for a death certificate and found one in Los Angeles County, California, dated August 11, 2010. The address on the death certificate was in West Covina, California, an LA suburb. She wasn’t visiting—she’d moved there. Sasha had died of a drug overdose while Anne Frances was still on her honeymoon.

I mulled that. Why had Sasha left Naples when Anne Frances got married? Why Los Angeles? What, if any, was her connection to Ryan Sutton? I needed to talk to someone who knew all these people from Chicago.

I pulled up the copy of Anne Frances’s birth certificate. The software I used had populated information about her parents and brother—the folks from the Chicago area who didn’t fly—along with their address. I pondered a pretext for a moment while I looked for a landline phone number. When I found it, I dialed her mother.

“Mrs. Carlisle?” I asked.

Across the room, Nate looked up from his laptop.

“Yes, who’s calling?”

“I’m with the high school reunion committee. We’re trying to get current contact information for Anne Frances, and I wondered if you could help me. We’re hoping for a good turnout.”

“Anne Frances?” The woman sounded horribly sad and a bit confused. “I wish I could help you. We haven’t seen her since the year after she graduated.”

What? My antennae went up. “I’m terribly sorry, ma’am. We had on our paperwork that she was still in the area.”

“No, I’m afraid not. Last time we saw her she was with Nikki Parks and the Alvarez girl. The three of them left town together. Talked about Hollywood, but who knows. If you find her, I hope you’ll ask her to call home. It’s been a long time, and my husband isn’t in good health.”

“Yes ma’am. I surely will.” I ended the call.

“You’re not going to believe this.” I told Nate what Anne Frances’s mother had said.

“Explains why they didn’t come for the funeral,” said Nate. “Who’s Anne Frances been visiting in Chicago?”

“What kind of person doesn’t talk to their parents for twenty years?”

I searched our primary background database for Nikki Parks. In addition to her birth certificate, I found a couple drug related arrests in the Chicago area from 1995. She would’ve been eighteen. But there was nothing after that. If she’d left town with Anne Frances, she should’ve shown up in Naples, like Sasha.

“Something is not right here,” I said.

“But what?” asked Nate. “Maybe it should be a crime to ignore your parents, but it isn’t.”

“There’s more to it. There has to be.”

I searched every place I knew to look for Nikki Parks. Her parents had passed away when she was seventeen, a few months apart. She didn’t have any siblings. Unlike Sasha, there was no death certificate on file for Nikki—at least not one I’d been able to find.

I was beginning to reconsider talking to Anne Frances. But what did any of this have to do with Phillip Drayton’s death? Maybe nothing at all.

I opened the GPS tracking app on my Mac. What was the widow Drayton up to today?

Hell’s bells. Anne Frances was parked in front of the bookshop, which didn’t open for another thirty minutes.

Was she there to signal for a pickup? Why? Phillip couldn’t hurt her anymore.

Did she suspect Tess knew something about Phillip’s death? Was she doing her own sleuthing?

“Got it,” said Nate.

“The security footage?”

“I’ve got Mallory coming into the garage at 5:10 and back out again at 8:45. And she’s home again at 11:25.”

“Damnation. That gives her plenty of time to swap cars, hit Phillip, and trade cars again.”

“It would’ve been nice to be able to eliminate one of them,” said Nate. “But just because she left her condo doesn’t mean she killed Drayton. If Mallory were homicidally inclined, I don’t see her going after her soul mate. She’d’ve gone after Anne Frances.”

“You’re probably right, but why lie about being at home?”

Nate said, “My guess is she’s nervous. Sonny must’ve asked Mallory questions that made her squirm after Poppy told him about the stalking.”

“Maybe Mallory was somewhere she shouldn’t’ve been that very night. Hell, that could’ve been her on the burner phone—maybe she was parked over there staring at the house and saw the whole thing go down. Nah, that doesn’t feel right. She probably would’ve chased down the car that hit Phillip.” I stood, grabbed my purse.

“Where you headed?”

“I need to get to Charleston. Anne Frances is back at the bookshop.”

“You want me to come with you?” He looked hopeful.

“I’ve got this,” I said. “You’ve got your hands full with Daddy.”

He closed his eyes, nodded. “But I’m going to keep my promise to Rhett first.”