The next morning, I woke to a tickling under my nose. As I pried my eyes open, Rocky’s tail whipped across my face.
“Good morning to you too.” I sat up and looked at my phone. Dead. I’d forgotten to charge it. As I plugged it in, the time flashed: 9:00.
“Time to make the ice cream,” I groaned. Rocky looked out the window with the unnerving focus that cats have, then he turned back to me with a little yowl. His meaning was clear. Get up, lazy human. I have important things to do.
“Five more minutes, you beast.” With a groan, I rolled over and closed my eyes.
Thud. Crash.
I sat up. Rocky had climbed onto the bookcase. He sat very still, held my eye, reached out a paw, and knocked another photo off the shelf.
“Rocky!”
Undeterred, he slid onto the bureau and knocked my hairbrush onto the photos. I scrambled as he started to nuzzle a lamp.
“All right, I’m up.” I grabbed him and set him on the floor. He sauntered away from me with a dismissive swish of his tail. “You’ve been spending too much time with Sprinkles.”
Caroline stuck her head in the door. “What’s all the noise?”
“Rocky decided it was time for me to get up.” I looked for something to wear, then realized most of my things were on the clothesline. “Thank you for doing laundry.”
She nodded. “That naughty little beast was busy yesterday.” She scooped Rocky up and nuzzled him. “Weren’t you, cutie pie?”
Rocky looked back at me as if to say, Look what you’re missing! If you were quicker to obey, you’d get to nuzzle me. Sprinkles came in and wove around Caroline’s ankles with a purr.
“I’ll start breakfast,” Caroline said, and they all headed downstairs.
Chopped liver. That was me.
I picked up my brush and ran it through my hair a few times then stacked the photos back on the shelf, stopping at one of Mike and Kyle sitting in a Mustang, Kyle holding up keys, squinting in the sun. I sighed, still envious. I remembered that car, Kyle’s eighteenth-birthday present. It helped to have an uncle who owned a car dealership. I ran downstairs where Caroline was breaking eggs into a bowl.
“I’m going to pull in the clothes.” Tucking the basket on my hip, feeling like a real farm wife, I went out to the clothesline and looked out at the waving fields of sunflowers. Already people were moving through the fields taking photos, enjoying the relative cool of the morning air.
I folded a pink top and placed it in the basket. The color made me think of Emily Weinberg. Meet me at midnight. The usual place.
Had Emily left that note? Had she gone to the barn to meet Mike? That would be pretty nervy, with his girlfriend right there, but they’d exchanged business cards, had each other’s numbers. Emily could’ve slipped in; Mike and Angelica left the Love Nest twice that night, once to help in the shop, once when we gathered in Buzzy’s kitchen. But why a note? Maybe Emily’d worried Angelica would see a message on Mike’s phone.
A black police SUV pulled up in front of the house and Detective Voelker got out carrying a small paper bag. Tillie must’ve given him my message. I hadn’t been entirely sure she would—from what I’d seen, the words “Tillie” and “professional” didn’t belong in the same sentence.
I picked up the basket and went to meet him. I wasn’t at my best—no shower, still in yesterday’s clothes, and no breakfast. My hand flew to my hair. At least I’d brushed it.
“Good morning, Detective.”
“Good morning, Ms. Rhodes. I’ve been trying to return your call.”
“I’m sorry, my phone battery died. I was so busy making ice cream yesterday I forgot to charge it.” I went up the steps. “Please come in.”
Caroline stood at the screen door, smoothing her hair. “Good morning.” As she opened the door, Rocky shot out.
“Rocky, no!” I yelled.
Sprinkles stood at the open doorway and gave a plaintive yowl but Rocky streaked across the road and disappeared into the field of sunflowers.
“Oh, no! I should’ve known he’d try to get out,” Caroline moaned. “I’m so sorry!”
“They always come back at dinnertime.” Voelker said.
My heart fell as Rocky disappeared. “I hope so.”
Voelker took off his sunglasses and smiled at Caroline, his expression and voice gentle. “How are you doing, Miss Spooner?”
“Fine, thanks,” she said. “Please call me Caroline.”
Is this a social call? Who was he here to see? Me or Caroline?
“You’ll have to excuse us,” he said. “I need to talk to Ms. Rhodes.”
“Call me Riley,” I said, but I was sure he wouldn’t. Caroline got the smile and the charm. “Caroline can hear anything I say.”
Sprinkles didn’t move, so we all edged around her. Her head swiveled between Voelker and the porch, where her buddy had just escaped. I almost felt sorry for her. I could imagine her thoughts. Ingrate! How could you leave after all I’ve done for you?
Leaving Sprinkles pining at the door, Voelker and I sat at the kitchen table while Caroline took mugs from the cabinet. There was a steaming pan of scrambled eggs and toast on the counter.
“I’m sorry to interrupt your breakfast,” he said.
Would Rocky come back? I’d lost my appetite. “They’ll keep.”
“Coffee?” Caroline said as she covered the eggs. I shook my head, too anxious to drink anything.
“Thank you.” Detective Voelker accepted a cup and took out a notepad as Caroline slid into a seat next to me. “Ms. Rhodes, you called.”
“Yes—”
Caroline jumped in. “We’ve been busy, making ice cream, well, not making ice cream until yesterday. We’ll have our special sunflower ice cream for the festival.”
“Sunflower? I’ll have to try it,” he said.
Can I get a word in? “I’ve heard that an anonymous source told you Darwin Brightwood had been seen near the—” I almost said crime scene—“barn. I think I know who that person is.”
“We can’t divulge the identity of our sources, Ms. Rhodes,” Voelker said.
I leaned forward. “So you know who it is?”
Voelker rubbed his hand across his forehead. “I, we—”
“Emily Weinberg,” I said. “She was at the funeral and she and Mike were flirting. Maybe she was mad that Mike was seeing Angelica. Emily dated Mike in high school, right, Caroline?”
Caroline nodded.
“Do you think she carried a torch for, how long would you say it was that Mike and she graduated from high school, fifteen, twenty years?” He sipped his coffee and for the first time he looked at me with something other than his professional stone face. Was he trying to hide a smile?
“She has a small car,” I persisted. “A Mini. Darwin said a small car passed him that night.”
Voelker set down his mug. I could read his thoughts. A lot of people have small cars.
“This is serious,” I said. “You have to question her.”
“We’ll look at everyone connected to the crime.” He hesitated but then wrote Emily’s name in his notebook. Good. He looked at Caroline. “Again, I’m sorry for your loss.”
Caroline lowered her eyes and nodded. I wondered what would’ve happened if I hadn’t been there. There was so much chemistry sparking between these two I could practically feel the heat.
He cleared his throat. “We’ll also have autopsy results as soon as possible and then we’ll be able to release the body.” Maybe not so romantic, Voelker. “Was there anything else, Ms. Rhodes?”
I shook my head. He flipped his notepad closed and set the bag on the table. “These are a few of your brother’s effects.”
Quiet settled on the kitchen. I craned to look inside the bag as Caroline opened it, and saw a ring, a cell phone, and car keys.
Voelker’s phone buzzed and he looked at the screen. “Excuse me, I have to go.” We all stood and headed for the door, where Sprinkles was still moping. She hissed, and the detective stepped carefully around her. “Have a good day.”
Caroline waved as he got into his SUV and drove down the lane.
“I hope you’re not falling for a man who might arrest me for wasting police time,” I said.
Caroline rolled her eyes at me but smiled. We returned to the kitchen and her smile faded as she looked toward the bag of Mike’s things. “What do I do with these?”
I pulled out the items one by one. “His class ring, keys to his car…”
“Maybe you can drive his car instead of Buzzy’s,” Caroline said.
It was a nice car, but I knew I’d never feel comfortable driving it. “I’ll stick with Sadie.”
Caroline picked up the phone and I wondered if the police were able to access its contents. I remembered that anything found at the scene of a crime is evidence that the police could use. How I wished I knew what they’d found.
She pressed ON and the screen brightened.
“It’s locked,” Caroline said. Her eyes met mine and I knew she was thinking the same thing I was. For years, we’d played Mike’s computer games whenever he wasn’t home. His password hadn’t been hard to guess—his high school football team and the number one.
Had he kept the same password all these years? “Bobcat one?” I said.
Caroline put it in and the screen unlocked. Together we bent our heads over the phone. “Let’s look at his pictures.…” She hesitated then handed the phone to me. “You do it.”
I swiped through the photos. Most were of the farm, probably taken to include in his real estate sale brochure. I swiped back further and stopped at a photo of Angelica on a sailboat, silhouetted against a cloudy gray sky, hunched in a sweatshirt. She did look green around the gills, just as she’d told me earlier about their trip. Going through the photos was like replaying a film in reverse. Angelica and Mike traveled back across the Sound to a charming seafront hotel on Block Island I recognized from a bike trip there a few years earlier.
I swiped again, and there was a selfie of Kyle and Mike on a golf course, then shots of a magnificent seaside home. I wondered if they’d stayed there or if it was a property Mike had planned to list. In another photo, taken on a restaurant patio, Angelica raised a glass to a spectacular sunset. Another hand, a woman’s, held a drink in the frame. I flicked through and didn’t see any photos of Nina.
“Look at that,” Caroline said. “Can you make the photo of Nina’s hand bigger?”
I expanded the photo of the women toasting the sunset.
Caroline pointed at Nina’s diamond watch. “I saw a watch like that once at an auction. Very pricey.”
It looked pricey. “Kyle must be doing well to buy that for her.”
Caroline took the phone, placed everything back in the bag, and put it on the counter next to the TV, then cleared Voelker’s empty coffee cup from the table. A small smile softened her features.
“Let’s eat those eggs,” I said. “When you’re done mooning over that cop, we have ice cream to make.”