TWENTY-SIX 

I stopped off at the Bonaparte House before going to the docks, taking a few minutes to compose myself. When I went back down to the docks, the wind whipping around in icy gusts, Brenda was there waiting for me. She had her hat jammed down over her ears. Her little boat with the open cockpit was tied up, rocking away in the waves, which appeared to be picking up. If I’d felt nauseous in MacNamara’s office, I actually needed a bucket now. It would be suicide to try to cross the water in that thing.

Brenda looked at me. “Yeah, I don’t think we should try it either. But we need to get over there.”

I looked out over the St. Lawrence again. Off in the distance, there was a lone boat headed in the direction we would be going. It seemed to be making progress. Great sprays of white flew up from either side as it bobbed up and down.

Brenda was right. I did have to get over there. To see for myself that they were getting better. To take care of them. I could call the police or the fire department and ask them for a ride. But if I called, they’d tell me to stay home and let them handle it. Good advice, smart advice, until it was people you loved who were sick and in trouble.

Steve Murdoch’s boat Witch of November was tied up at the dock. Brenda and I looked at each other. This was not the first time I’d borrowed a boat, but this one was bigger. And by the looks of that leaden sky and choppy water, we needed a bigger boat. This time, the weather was worse and the stakes were higher.

“See if you can find the keys. You better drive,” I said.

Brenda nodded. She had far more experience than I, and frankly, my hands were shaking, so I trusted myself even less. We boarded, and we snooped until we found some keys, hidden under a seat cushion in the bridge.

Brenda switched on the twin engines, which rumbled to life.

The wind blew stinging mini icicles against my face and whipped the water around us into whitecaps that sloshed up against the side of the boat. Brenda steered away from the dock and pointed the bow out across the water. The boat rocked sickeningly. Fingers numb, I pulled out my cell phone and dialed the nurse. She didn’t answer. Neither did Melanie or Caitlyn or Liza. Damn. What was going on over there?

I cupped one hand over my ear to try to drown out the noise of the boat and the wind and dialed 911.

When the operator, who wasn’t Cindy Dumont, thank goodness, picked up, I shouted into the phone and asked her to call the police and the volunteer fire department EMTs. That I thought someone was having a medical emergency on Valentine Island, and possibly another kind of emergency. The operator promised to send help.

Brenda picked up speed, expertly aiming the boat straight into each small wave, which broke with a small thump and sprayed up in a cold mist along either side of us. Over and over. I closed my eyes, hoping to ward off motion sickness.

But it wasn’t just the rolling of the boat that was making me nauseous. Why had I waited so long to go and get them? The fact that Dr. Phelps had said that Melanie, Caitlyn, and Liza were stable and should stay put did not make me feel any better. But I couldn’t blame him. He’d gone above and beyond by making the trip to Valentine Island, examining them, and taking samples for testing. He had no reason to suspect poisoning until the results came back, nor had any of us. We were lucky that the tests he’d done hadn’t taken much time.

Because time might be running out.

My mind raced along with the engines. Ben MacNamara was guilty of some things, but had he gone so far as to kill his own father? Over money? Surely if he needed cash, he could have simply asked his father—who, thanks to my family’s trust fund, was almost certainly flush unless he’d spent it all. But Jim MacNamara had never displayed the trappings of the very rich. He wore nice clothes, drove a nice car, belonged to a nice country club, and sent his son to a nice school. But he wasn’t Thurston Howell III tossing bricks of cash around as though they were candy bars.

As we neared Valentine Island, which wasn’t that far from the mainland, the turrets and spires of Castle Grant were visible in the distance through a hazy filter of stormy air. They grew larger as we approached, though not nearly at the speed I would have liked. Brenda could only go so fast under these conditions, but that didn’t mean I had to like it.

Finally, after what seemed like hours but was really only a few minutes, we pulled up at the Valentine Island dock, the side of the boat bumping up against the platform. I scrambled out and Brenda tossed me a line, which I tied off loosely.

“Go on,” she said. “I’ll tie us up and wait for the EMTs. Unless you want me to come with you.”

“I guess you should wait here. And thank you.” Brenda and I had been friendly in the past. But after the events of the last few weeks, I now considered her a friend.

She tossed me a can of pepper spray. “Give me your cell phone,” she ordered. I complied, and she punched in a number. “Keep the screen open here so all you have to do is hit the redial button if you run into trouble. I’ll be on my way. And be careful,” she said.

I thanked her and race-walked onto the shore and up the sidewalk, as fast as I dared go. Not for the first time in the last few days, I reminded myself I’d be no use to anyone if I fell. It was faster going on the frozen turf next to the stone walkway, so that was the path I took. Dry brown grass coated in ice and snow crunched under my boots. I gripped the can of pepper spray inside my jacket pocket.

The castle doors were unlocked when I reached them. I slipped inside, grateful for the sudden warmth but with my gut in a knot. “Liza?” I called. My voice echoed around the grand foyer and was met with silence.

It occurred to me now that I hadn’t really thought this through. Should I look for Liza, or go straight to my mother?

It only took a moment to decide. I headed for the staircase, barreled up the winding steps, and only stopped when I stood, panting, in front of the door to my mother’s room.

The hallway was empty. And silent. I threw open the door.

Sheets, duvet, and pillows lay askew on the bed and onto the floor. I surveyed the room. Melanie wasn’t there. “Melanie?” I called. “Mom?” I checked the adjoining sitting area and the en suite. No one.

My heart rate ticked up. Where was she? This place was enormous. But she was weak. How far could she have gone under her own power? If she’s not already dead. I silenced the thought.

Or perhaps the nurse had moved her, setting up some sort of makeshift hospital ward. If Melanie hadn’t gone under her own power, but had been moved, either by the nurse or by someone else, she could be anywhere in this castle. Or anywhere in any of the outbuildings. She might even be off-island by now.

I opened the door to Caitlyn’s room. Also empty.

Willing my breath to slow, I did my best to think logically. The next place to look would be Liza’s private apartment. She was sick too, but not as sick as Melanie and Caitlyn, so she might have brought everyone to her rooms. I tried to orient myself. Liza’s office and sitting room were on the first floor, and her bedroom was connected to them by a stairway. Not the ostentatious stairs I’d taken to get here, but a smaller, less obtrusive set. I didn’t know the castle layout well enough to know if I could get there from here.

My gut told me that it would be useless to search the other rooms in this wing. It didn’t make sense that Melanie and Caitlyn would have moved from one bedroom to another. And if somebody else had forcibly moved them, there’d be no point in taking them only a few feet.

So I ran for the stairs and trailed my hand along the ornate banister for support on the way down.

The foyer was still empty when I returned. What was taking the cops, or the firefighters, or whoever was coming so long? Melanie, Caitlyn, and Liza had not poisoned themselves, which meant someone was doing it to them. And that person could be here now. Probably was, unless he’d administered the fatal dose and fled, which was entirely possible, especially if whoever had done it didn’t want to be stuck on this island all night. There were any number of places a boat could have been tied up around the island, and any number of places someone could have gone—north, south, or even to one of the Canadian ports. I was no sailor and even I could see that it was only going to get more dangerous to be out on the water.

I walked as fast as I could across the black-and-white marble floor of the foyer toward Liza’s rooms, my boots making a wet sucking sound every step I took.

It would have been smarter to wait for help, or at least bring Brenda in with me. I knew that.

But I didn’t care. My family was sick, maybe dying, and God help whoever had done this to them.

I knew who was behind it all. That snot-nosed little preppy Ben MacNamara. He was the only one who made sense. He’d made a good show of pretending not to know anything about the Bloodworth Trust. He was young and certainly had the skills to fake the trust documents. I was willing to bet he’d had his father’s briefcase and keys to the locked filing cabinet all along, because he had his father’s topcoat, which he must have taken from Jim MacNamara’s body on my ladies’ room floor. He could have lured his father to the Bonaparte House, killed him, then taken his briefcase and topcoat and worn it back to the office, which was why Brenda thought she saw him walking at a time when he was actually dead.

I had no doubt Jim MacNamara had been in this up to his eyeballs too. He’d been skimming from the trust for years before Ben was old enough to join the firm. Had he confided in his son? Offered to bring him into the family side business of stealing from clients? What if Junior wanted more than his father had been offering?

This was going to end now. Before Brenda and I left, and before I’d called the Bay PD and the fire department, I’d called Lieutenant Hawthorne and told him my suspicions about Ben, that patricidal brat. And my friendly neighborhood state trooper had told me, whether he should have or not, that he’d been watching Ben, and knew where he was right now. So yes, it paid to be cautious, but according to the lieutenant, Ben wasn’t on this island. But Ben might have had an accomplice.

I needed to find Melanie, Caitlyn, and Liza. I pulled out my cell phone to dial Brenda and see if help had arrived.

Suddenly, everything went dark. My arms flailed as I tried to pull something off my face and shoulders—a sack of some kind? My phone went flying and I heard it skate across the floor as my arms were grabbed and bound. I kicked out, but felt only air.