Friday, January 1: ten days after the murder
8:30 a.m.
New Year’s Day. It was officially next year. Funny, it didn’t feel any different. It felt exactly the same, and that was a distressing thought.
After all the excitement at the bar last night, we’d left and come home to ring in the new year in a less-fraught atmosphere. Which meant watching the ball drop with Anderson Cooper and then me slinking off to bed, where I laid awake for hours thinking about Trey and his creepy friends. Drug dealers? Seriously? And why had he run out the back door? Would he have been arrested with the lot of them, or was he just being cautious?
And then he’d made that comment about how he got along with Virgil when Virgil “minded his own business.” He’d clearly been under the influence of something, but wasn’t that usually when people were the most honest? I had to call Craig and tell him. Maybe it was nothing, but maybe it wasn’t. And he was in the strongest position to get the Turtle Point police to pay attention. I also had to talk it over with Grandpa and see what info he’d uncovered the past couple of days. Between Katrina leaving and Craig’s shocking news about Lucas, not to mention getting through another holiday, I hadn’t been in the frame of mind to focus on the murder. And Grandpa had been mysteriously absent most of yesterday, out “checking on a few things,” as the cryptic note he’d left put it.
In the meantime, JJ and I had a big day. I’d gotten up way too early to go feed the ferals, and later this morning we were hosting senior citizens from the senior centers around the island on a special café tour. Grandpa, who had always supported the senior centers in his official capacity, had suggested it and had secured a volunteer bus driver—along with a bus—to pick them up in shifts and bring them over to the café. We had seniors coming from every town.
I was really looking forward to this. First of all, JJ was a common visitor on the senior-center circuit. He loved to meet people, and everyone adored him. We made it a point to visit one of the centers every few weeks, although lately I’d been so busy with the colony and my own personal drama that I hadn’t gotten there.
Also, I loved showing off the café, and I loved the seniors. It was a bright light in a string of bad days and I was desperately latching on to it and trying not to worry. And it was still nagging at me that I hadn’t been able to reach Katrina since she’d gone home—I was worried about her being all alone. She had to be in a bad space.
But I couldn’t do anything about it now. I turned to JJ, who was curled up into his usual ball on my pillow.
“You ready, bud?” I asked. “You’ve got some people to charm. I have a feeling we’re gonna sell a lot of JJ’s House of Purrs tote bags today.”
When we got downstairs, I popped in to say good morning to Ethan, who was heading out to “work” with the crew on his garage-turned-café. He had enthusiastically named himself part of the construction crew, and while I didn’t think he was adding a lot of value to the work itself, the guys enjoyed him and it gave him something to do during our slow season. I filled a mug with coffee and went into the café. Grandpa was already in there.
“I was about to come looking for you,” I said. “We have to talk.”
“Here I am. We have a lot to do for today.” He rubbed his hands together. “And while we do that we can debrief. You first. How was the funeral?”
“In a minute.” I wasn’t even sure if he knew Katrina wasn’t here, and I needed to tell him.
His face turned grim when I described her speedy exit from the house yesterday. “She was already leaving, but when I mentioned Virgil…” I shook my head. “I understand the whole thing has traumatized her, but still.” I took a deep breath. “And it kind of worries me for another reason.”
I walked Grandpa through what I’d learned—Virgil’s art career, Whitney’s boyfriend as his agent, his son’s disdain for his father’s “side hustles”—whatever that meant—Harvey’s lies, and my chance New Year’s Eve meeting with Trey Barnes and his band of merry men at Jade’s bar, as well as his cryptic comments. Especially the one about June “whining about Virgil having a girlfriend.” I wasn’t loving where my head was going.
“Well,” Grandpa said. “Seems I did some nosing around at the hospital for nothing. You were way ahead of me.”
“Hospital?”
He nodded. “I went to find out about this alleged physical therapist of Whitney’s. Pretended I was an old guy with an appointment who must’ve gotten it wrong when they told me there was no Dominic on staff.”
I had to giggle at that. “That’s a lot of effort. Couldn’t you have called?”
He shrugged. “It was kind of fun to play a shuffling old man. But in all seriousness, do we like this Trey guy as a suspect?”
I threw up my hands. “That’s just it. I don’t know who to like anymore. And since when do we use that word? I thought that was for TV.”
“Give me a break,” Grandpa said. “I’m in character as a PI.”
Oh, boy. I ignored that one. “I’m worried,” I said. “I’m worried that Katrina was seeing Virgil Proust.” The words tasted terrible on my tongue, but I’d drawn the conclusion in the dark of this early morning as I lay in bed going over and over everything in my head.
Grandpa sat down heavily on one of the café chairs. “Well. It seems our investigations have collided.”
“What do you mean?”
“I got my hands on Virgil Proust’s cell-phone logs from the month before he died.”
My eyes widened. “You did? How?”
He smiled. “I still have friends in high places.”
“And?”
The smile faded. “That’s the interesting news.” He paused.
I tried to control my impatience. Grandpa hated being rushed. But I couldn’t last that long. “And?”
“Katrina and Virgil exchanged a lot of calls. And texts.”
And there it was. Looks like I was right. Which didn’t bode well for Katrina. But it also didn’t bode well for June, in my mind, if she knew. Or even suspected. “Like how many is a lot?”
“A few a week, at least. Calls and texts from her personal cell and some calls from her office.”
I stroked Simon, the tiger cat who’d just crawled onto my lap. He’d been really coming out of his shell recently. When I first met him I wasn’t sure how adoptable he would be—he was scared of everything and hid all the time. But Katrina told me to give it time, that he’d come around. She’d been right.
“That looks bad,” I said. “But, if she was seeing him and she liked him, she wouldn’t kill him.”
Grandpa nodded. “Unless he broke it off.” He left the rest of it unsaid—that it happens all the time.
He was right, but that didn’t sit well with me. Katrina had never been the type who got all angsty about guys. Not that I knew about, admittedly. She much preferred her animals. I didn’t even know the last time she’d been on a date.
Unless she just wasn’t telling me about them.
“It could also be bad for June,” I pointed out.
Grandpa nodded thoughtfully. “True. But I’m not getting the gut feeling about her. It is interesting, though, that you mentioned that Trey Barnes character.” He pulled out his notebook and flipped pages. “That’s the fella I also read about in the call logs. Seems there were a few complaints about him and some of his associates. Minor things like disturbing the peace and drunk and disorderly. No arrests, though.”
I thought back to the bunch of idiots who’d been dragged away by the cops last night. “Jade mentioned drugs. Who called on him?”
“I thought you’d never ask. It was Virgil.”